room. >> that's all for now. thanks for joining us. . i'm craig melvin. and i'm natalie morales. and this is "dateline." i'm craig melvin. >> and i'm natalie morassies. >> and this is "dateline." we were going to work behinds closed doors. we were going to work after hours. we were going to go wherever the case took us. >> one of the most extraordinary cases in lapd history -- >> we're not in kansas anymore. >> a newlywed murdered just months after her wedding. >> as she walked away, she gave me a big smile, and i relive that smile for years. >> and all that time the killer was hiding in plain sight. >> no indication she was ever spoken to? >> no. >> then a new detective took a look at an old lead.

>> he said, "it's a match." >> a person no one would have suspected of murder -- >> we were going to end this -- >> was suddenly suspect number one. >> the perfect murder. almost. >> hello, and welcome to "dateline." she was a new bride, married just three months. then she was found murdered. what happened to her remained a mystery for decades, partly because police mistakenly believed she was killed during a break-in gone bad. when detectives finally reopened this case, they discovered it wasn't a burglar but a suspect whose trail led right to their own front door. here's josh mankowitz with "the smoking gun." . february 2nd, twi2009, the homie detective arrived before dawn at the los angeles department's van

nuys station. >> i was tired. i was tired. >> he had hosted a super bowl party the night before, and the beer had flowed freely. >> that seemed to be a good way to spend the day was having a cup of coffee and getting caught occupy my reading. >> couple of aspirin? >> couple of aspirin maybe. >> he reached for a file that had been sitting on his desk for months. the murder of sherri rasmussen. shot to death in her condo just a few miles from from nutall worked. >> one of the worst, most horrific crime scenes i've seen. this woman met a horrible ending. >> and just as troubling, sherri rasmussen was murdered a generation ago, february, 1986. meaning the odds of catching her killer were slim to none. >> memories fade. evidence has to be relocated.

so obviously it's an uphill battle any time you're working with them. >> uphill battle does not begin to describe it. the cold-case file detective nutall opened on that bleary-eyed monday morning would lead him on the chase of a lifetime, and it would shake the foundations of the lapd. it dates back to 1986 and to a battle for the truth by the parents of a young bride. >> you miss her every day. >> those parents are nels and loretta ruasmussen. >> doesn't matter what the day it is. it's a pain that's always there. there's no cure for. >> who would want to kill sherri rasmussen? she was hard working, caring, and popular with her co-workers. trained as a nurse, shsherrie w director of care at a large program. >> it was a devastating day. she was 29 years old, and just

in the prime of her career. >> althea kennedy was sherrie's boss and had originally hired her. >> we couldn't believe it, first of all. it was like how could someone do this. people crying, people upset. the hospital was like a tomb, you know. so the loss was real palpable. >> sherrie had just been married three months earlier to a high-tech engineer named john ruetten. were they happily married? >> unusually so. >> just months after the wedding, john found sherrie sprawled dead on the floor of their home. he might seem a likely suspect, but john was cleared almost immediately. the lapd focused instead on evidence that this was a burglary that turned violent. >> this was no accident. >> yolanda mcclary is a retired crime scene investigator and was

a consultant to "dateline." >> multiple shots fired, shots fired at very close range. >> she's reviewed court records and media reports on this case. we returned with her to the actual apartment where sherri was found murdered to try to understand what happened. police think maybe the killer just walked in the open front door? >> they didn't find any forced entry, so yes, they're assuming that the front door was open, and that the killer just walked right in. >> and right here where we're standing is where there's some kind of confrontation? >> yes. there appears to be some kind of struggle here. not just a struggle, but we also have shots fired at this point. we have one shot that clearly goes straight through this backslider. and we have another shot that went through sherri and back out through the slider, also. >> sherri's wounded and tries to get back downstairs? >> that would be correct. she's bleeding profusely, she's very wounded. she gets down these steps, and

actually would appear that she's trying to get out the door or make it to the alarm box where there's a panic button. at that point, we believe that she went down in this foyer area due to the fact that you could see marks in this as well as broken finger good-- fingernails from her hands. the killer is dragging her back into this area, and then the killer takes a vase and hits her in the head with it, knocking her out. then grabs a blanket, husband else the gun -- muzzles the gun, and does a contact shot into the victim. >> that's an execution? >> that would be correct. >> as for a motive, it seemed to be in plain sight. a few feet from sherri's body. >> they found her vcr and disc player stacked up by the front door. >> as if somebody were about to steal them? >> yeah. giving the indication this was burglary or home invasion gone

wrong. >> sherri's bmw was gone, a present from john. there was no sign of the weapon, but detectives recovered t two .38-caliber slugs. and there was something else that caught detectives' attention. >> on the inside of her left arm they found a bite mark. a crime scene analyst at the time went ahead and swabbed the mark for any possible saliva that could possibly belong to the killer. >> saliva that would contain dna from whoever bit sherri. remember, this was 1986. years before dna testing technology would arrive which could link a suspect to a sample like this one. so back then the dna wasn't much help. but the swab was carefully packaged and bundled with all the other evidence. for now, detectives didn't have much else to work with. no eyewitnesses, no usable fingerprints, no clear motive except the theory that this was

a botched burglary. >> by the level of violence that occurred in this residence, the theory was that it was a man or possibly two men that had entered the residence to do a burglary or home invasion that had gone completely wrong, murdered the victim to cover up the crime, and fled. >> gone wrong because sherrie somehow surprised them. they panicked, shot her, and then fled. the theory seemed to make sense, especially since sherri had no apparent enemies -- certainly no one who would want to kill her -- or so they thought. >> coming up -- >> went to sherri's office and said that if she couldn't have john, nobody could. ld -and...that's your basic three-point turn. -[ scoffs ] if you say so. ♪ -i'm sorry? -what teach here isn't telling you is that snapshot rewards safe drivers with discounts on car insurance. -what? ♪

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the year was 1986. crack was hitting los angeles, and the city of angels had become a violent place. the murders rate would hit 831 killings that year -- nearly three times the amount 30 years later in 2016. and the lapd was stretched very thin. >> this was a time where homicide was just booming in los angeles. >> miles corwin is a bestselling author who's written several books about the lapd. >> kind of a perfect storm of problems.

you had the proliferation of high-powered weapons, the gangs who were expanding. you had crack-cocaine hitting the streets. all these forces created this tremendous homicide rate. and detectives were overwhelmed. >> and now in february of that year, cops had their hands full with an especially heinous crime in the city's sprawling san fernando valley. 29-year-old sherri rasmussen had been brutally beaten and shot in her own home. no suspects and few clues. then a couple of weeks later, a possible lead. former crime scene investigator yolanda mcclary was a consultant for nbc news. >> the same vicinity, another woman was approached in her residence by two males at gunpoint. also involved a home invasion/robbery situation. so police early on thought it was a possibility these two men might have something to do with the murder. >> a composite sketch was released of the two men. still detectives had no prints,

no eyewitnesses, and no murder weapon connecting them or anyone else to sherri's murder, and the dna collected was useless -- at least right now. police went ahead and collected it anyway. why? >> well, at crime scenes, if you know there was possible evidence on anything, you're not going to leave it behind. so it was great forethought on their behalf actually to recover it. >> detectives scoured the condo and the entire complex. the only thing apparently stolen was from the garage. sherri's car, and that was recovered just a mile away from the crime scene with the keys still in it. the only other thing missing -- sherri and her husband's marriage license. it seemed an odd thing to steal. cash, computers, and jewelry weren't touched. but that wasn't the only thing that struck sherri's family and colleagues as strange. the crime was especially violent

for a two-bitburg larry. >> it just seemed a little like overkill. >> reporter: sherri's boss at the hospital, althea kennedy, had to review the autopsy report for insurance reasons and was struck by what she said. >> i thought, wow, she really put up one heck of a fight. which wasn't real surprising because sherri was tall, athletic, and i'm sure wouldn't go down easily. >> the lapd theory back then was that there were two men robbing the house, and so presumably sherri would have fought with two guys. that sound like sherri? >> that part didn't make a lot of sense to me because i thought if there were two men and they had a gun, that just seemed a little weird. >> because sherri wouldn't begin a fight with two guys who were armed. >> i wouldn't think so. >> what about with a woman? >> well, i think she would have taken on a woman. >> we'd really like to know what

happened. >> sherri's parents never thought it was a burglary. they knew weeks before the murder sherri had several strange encounters. one as she dined at a restaurant and thought a woman was watching her. >> she said she has eyes that can see right through you. >> scary eyes. >> there was also a run-in at the hospital where sherri worked. >> she went to sherri's office and said that if she couldn't have john, nobody could. >> most terrifying, an encounter in sherri's own home. and by now, she knew who the mystery woman was. >> she heard a noise, and she looked up, and there was john's ex-girlfriend. >> how'd she get in the house? >> we have no idea. >> john's ex-girlfriend appeared to be stalking sherri, yet

sherri never mentioned the woman's name to her parents. instead, she told them not to worry. >> she told me, i want to see if i can't work this out myself. >> that conversation happened during a dinner celebrating sherri's 29th birthday. afterward, her parents took sherri to the airport. >> as she walked away, she turned and gave me a big smile. and i've relived that smile for years. >> less than three weeks later, sherri rasmussen lay dead. the rasmussens insist that early in the investigation they told the lead lapd detective about sherri's troubling encounters with john's ex-girlfriend. >> i told the detective not once but probably 15 to 20 times. and he said, the trouble with you is you've been watching too much tv. coming up, old evidence offers new clues. >> the suspect made it appear to

look like a burglary. they staged to mislead the investigation in 1986. she was executed. s executed the first survivor of alzheimer's disease s executed is out there. and the alzheimer's association is going to make it happen. but we won't get there without you.

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backing you up with xfinity home. demo at an xfinity store, call or go online today. years had passed, and no arrests had been made in the brutal 1986 slaying of nurse and newlywed sherri rasmussen, killed in her los angeles condo. the trail kept getting colder. in 1993, sherri's parents offered to have the saliva sample from that bite mark

tested for dna. they'd even pay for it. but the lapd declined. >> they said, we don't have a suspect, so if we had a suspect and we had their dna then we'd have something to match. >> and the case sat for another decade. but then in 2004, the lapd's newly formed cold-case unit was conducting dna tests on unsolved cases, and one of them was the murder of sherri rasmussen. it took two months to actually find that saliva sample, buried in a refrigeration unit. the envelope was tattered, the label torn, the vial was poking out. but the saliva was still inside, and the dna was just fluff to blow -- just enough to blow it case wide open. >> the lab reported indicated that the suspect that had bitten sherri rasmussen during the struggle was actually a female.

>> a woman, not two male burglars as the original detectives had suspected all those years. but it would take a few more years before investigators good-bye to -- investigators understood what the crucial evidence meant. it was 2009, and the case was cold once again. 23 years it sat with no apparent leads, no suspects, and no answers for the rasmussen family m family. then came that monday after the super bowl when detective jim nutall began going through the case file and made a right-to-workable discovery. the dna -- a remarkable discovery. the dna mark from 2004 -- once the department realized that a woman was involved, why did it take four years until you picked it up? what was the department doing in the interim? >> from what it appears, investigators may have followed

the initial theory of this crime that it was a burglary. >> and there was a woman involved in the burglary? >> that there was a woman involved in the burglary. in hindsight, it was an opportunity that may have slipped through our hands as an organization. >> now, nutall took a closer look at the crime scene photos and began to develop his own very different theory. remember, sherri rasmussen was shot at pointblank range after a violent struggle, and despite the stereo equipment stacked by the front door, very little was actually stolen. >> the suspect made it appear to look like a burglary. they staged it to mislead the initial investigation in 1986. she was executed. >> in other words, someone had wanted sherri rasmussen dead. now nutall dug deeper through the file looking for names, female names. >> we had five women that would have had access to sherri and perhaps at least some of them may have had a motive to harm her. three of them we eliminated

almost immediately for insufficient motive. >> but there were still two names left. one of them was a co-worker. >> a woman named debra that worked with sherri rasmussen at glendale hospital. this person of interest was later replaced by sherri rasmussen in an official capacity. problems followed almost misdemeanor after that. >> there was bad blood between them? >> there was a motive. >> debra had moved to northern california. nutall asked local law enforcement to watch her and secretly try to snag a sample of her dna for comparison testing. in the meantime, nutall learned more about the second woman. he contacted john ruetten, sherri's former husband, now remarried and living in san diego. >> john explained that he had been involved in a dating relationship with stephanie lazarus. >> stephanie lazarus, that was the other name still on the short list of suspects. nutall pressed rueten for more

on the relationship which started when they were students at ucla. they dated nouf until john got en-- on and off until john dated sh sherri, but then -- you believe the relationship overlapped with the relationship with his wife? >> we know from john that there was at least one occasion where he was engaged that he was intimate with stephanie lazarus. there was a love triangle, and stephanie lazarus had deep feelings for john ruetten and may have had a motive to harm sherri rasmussen. >> was sherri's killer a scorned lover or a jealous co-worker? >> we had two women on the list who in our opinion had a motive to harm her. >> debra, the nurse -- >> correct. >> and stephanie lazarus? >> correct. >> a few weeks later, cops in northern california tracked down debra and secretly scooped up a sample of her trash which contained dna. it was sent to the crime lab in

l.a. for analysis, and 72 hours later came an answer. >> she was not the donor of the dna profile from the bite. >> that left just one possible suspect -- number five on the list, john ruetten's ex-girlfriend, stephanie lazarus. nutall called the rasmussens. >> we came home, and there was a message on our phone from a detective that they wanted to talk to us. i thought, oh, yeah, right. i thought it was just another false hope. >> this is detective nutall? >> right. >> she said that they were opening the investigation. >> he was upset with me. it was sort of like, detective, where have you been for the last two decades? >> and now nels rasmussen explained it all, how he told detectives in 1986 that someone was talking his daughter, sherri. a woman with crazy eyes. the ex-girlfriend of sherri's husband.

nels had never known that the girlfriend's name was stephanie lazarus, but he did know something else about her -- something very important. and by this time, detective nutall knew it, too. >> he was very cautious what he said, but he said that we'd be hearing more from him. >> nutall had ample reason to be cautious. he'd learned that stephanie lazarus wore the same badge he did. >> now have a los angeles police officer as a person of interest in a murder case. >> and you thought -- i've bitten off more than i can chew? >> toto, we're not in kansas anymore. that changed everything. coming up -- a top-secret investigation as detectives go after one of their own. >> we would never leave a pap paper trail of what we were doing. she worked our unit. worked our . i had a heart problem.

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stories. joe biden leads the pack in a new "des moines register" poll of likely caucusgoers in the first of the nation 2020 presidential contest. he has 24% followed by bernie sanders at 16, elizabeth warren at 15 and pete buttigieg at 14. "the new york times" reports that president trump's deal to avert taxes consists largely of actions mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with u.s. officials. now back to "dateline." welcome back, i'm natalie morales. sherri rasmussen had been murdered in los angeles back in the 1980s. from the outset, her parents told investigators about several run-ins sherri had with her husband's ex. now decades later, a cold case detective was focusing his attention on that very same woman who also happened to be a member of the lapd.

here's josh mankowitz with more of "the smoking gun." for two decades, the lapd had but one narrative for sherri rasmussen's murders -- she was randomly killed by two men during a botched burglary. now science had rewritten the script, and this once cold case was suddenly almost too hot to handle. the prime suspect, an lapd detectives named stephanie lazarus. but as detective jim nutall went back through the original murder book, he found almost nothing on lazarus even though she was the ex-girlfriend of sherri's husband. no indication she was ever spoken to? >> no. >> there was just one notation in the official chronology of the investigation from back in 1986. a detective had written, stephanie lazarus, p.o., police officer. as if her name had come up but not as a suspect.

no notes of any conversation with her? >> no paper trail. >> she seemed to be someone above suspicion. stephanie eileen lazarus had grown up in southern california, a tomboy of soerths. loved -- of sorts. loved sports. she attended ucla where she played basketball. it was during her college days that she met and dated john ruetten, long before he and sherri got married. after graduating in 1982, lazarus surprised her family by joining the lapd. this when only a handful of women entered the force. >> i don't think i knew that she was applying. >> stephanie's brother, steven -- >> i was very proud of steph. i thought it was a cool thing. >> stephanie lazarus quickly rose through the ranks at the lapd. from patrol officer to detective. she was popular, friendly, and well regarded. her assignments also included project d.a.r.e., a drug prevention program aimed at

kids. she was twice named detective of the year. later lazarus worked at internal affairs, investigating other officers accused of wrongdoing or corruption, and was then promoted to the lapd's art theft unit. her personal life was good, too. in 1996, lazarus got married to another lapd detective. together they adopted a baby daughter. life both at home and on the job never seemed better. >> she was a happy person. she loved when she did for work. she loved her husband, loved their life. >> but in 2009, this high high-achieving cop because the focus of a homicide investigation. jim nutall and detectives had to be mindful that lazarus had many friends on the force. her husband worked at the same station as nutall did. >> we were going to work behind closed. we would never leave a paper trail of what we were doing.

>> they even gave lazarus a code name -- number five. and contrary to police procedure, they decided not to tell lapd headquarters that their new suspect was a fellow detective. you're doing that to protect her or to protect your investigation from her? >> dual purpose. it would protect the integrity of the investigation. if she was not involved, nobody would ever know about it. >> four cops knowingly skirted department rules to investigate one of their own. >> it was a difficult phase of our careers. she was one of us. she worked our unit. had worked side by side with the people around us. >> but nutall and these three fellow detectives didn't waver. they built a case by exhaustedly reviewing files and interviewing sherri's fence and family. if became clear to them that stephanie lazarus had the means, the motive, and the opportunity

to kill sherri rasmussen. she seemed obsessed with john and jealous of his new wife. was she the same person with the scary eyes who'd been stalking sherri? to nutall it seemed to add up, especially when he considered this -- sherri's purse and all its contents stolen during the crime were recovered soon after the murder except for one item inside. >> the only thing to this day that was never recovered was john and sherri's marriage certificate. >> after three months of intense secretive investigations, nutall's team needed one last piece of evidence that would either clear detective lazarus or incriminate her. >> we needed a surreptitious sample of stephanie lazarus' dna. our investigators were not cut out for undercover surveillance work. >> so nutall finally brought lapd's internal affairs detectives into the loop, hoping they could close the deal by somehow secretly obtained

lazarus' dna. she was tailed for days as undercover cops waited for her to leave some small piece of herself behind. finally at a retail store it happened. lazarus ordered a soft drink and drank it. a trace of her saliva was on the straw which she then tossed in the trash. it was more than enough for testing. two dna samples, separated by two decades. 48 hours later, jim nutall got a call from his supervisor. >> it was real simple. he said, it's a match. >> good feeling, bad feeling? both? >> surreal. that moment, that call, i'll never forget it. >> but stephanie lazarus was still free and had no clue that after 23 years her very own department was on her tail for murder. detectives wanted to speak with stephanie to elicit a statement, perhaps a confession.

but they'd have to do it without revealing how deeply implicated she was in sherri rasmussen's murder. another secret plan was hatched. this time, to get stephanie's side of the story -- and all of it would be captured on tape. >> stephanie lazarus is asked by fellow detectives to help in an interrogation only to discover she's the suspect. coming up -- >> i fought with her so i must have killed her? have killed her? let's see, aleve is proven better on pain

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june 5th, twi2009, started routinely enough for lapd detective stephanie lazarus. she took the train to union station in downtown l.a., reporting for her normal shift that morning at police headquarters in parker center. after arriving, stephanie was told to meet with two detectives. men she didn't know from lapd's elite robbery-homicide division to help them interrogate a suspect involving some stolen artwork which was stephanie's beat as a detective. so lazarus went down to a secured area in the basement to meet with her two colleagues in a small interview room. because it's part of the jail, all cops who enter here are required to give up their guns. unarmed and unsuspecting,

lazarus didn't realize she was going recorded by an undercover camera. >> i don't know if you know pmy partner -- >> hi. hi, you guys. >> that's when detectives revealed that this conversation wasn't about art. >> do you know john ruetten? >> john ruetten? john ruetten? >> you said you dated john, how long did you guys date? >> i mean -- are you guys -- is this something -- i mean, you said i was going to interview somebody about art -- >> detective lazarus seemed uncomfortable and vague in her answers, especially when detectives asked about sherri rasmussen. >> you know, i may have talked to her. i -- you know -- >> we mentioned a hospital maybe. you may have talked to her at a hospital? >> yeah. yeah, i may have -- you know, i'm thinking back now, you guys are bringing up all these old memories. >> detectives turned up the

heat. >> did you ever fight with her? >> you mean like fought? >> yeah, did you ever duke it out with her? >> no. i don't think so. >> you'd remember that, right? the that would be pretty -- >> yeah. i would think so. >> most of us can remember without much difficulty the number of fist fights we've had over the course of our lives. but while detective lazarus at one point answers no when asked if she remembers attacking sherri or being attacked, at other points she can't recall whether that happened. >> it just doesn't stouound familiar. what are they saying? i fought with her so -- so i'm getting the jump -- they're saying, okay, i fought with her so i must have killed her? i mean, come on. >> after about 45 minutes, lazarus realized she was the primetime suspect in sherri's murder. >> now you're accusing me of this? is that what you're saying? >> we're trying to figure out what happened, stephanie. >> well, i'm just saying, you

know -- do i need get a lawyer if you're accusing me? >> minutes later it came to an end that must have as familiar as it was uncomfortable for all of them. >> i know. you guys have to do your job, and i guess i'm going to have to contact somebody. >> that's fair. >> i mean -- i know how it works. >> then stephanie lazarus was read the same words she herself had read to hundreds of suspects over the years -- >> stephanie, you know you have the right to remain silent. do you understand? >> yes. >> for just a moment, you can see the handcuffs placed on her by her fellow officers. >> i'm like, i'm like in shock. i'm totally in shock. >> word of lazarus' arrest traveled fast to tucson where detective nutall was standing by to deliver the news to the rasmussen family. tell me what you said. >> you were right, folks. you folks were right. and i apologize that it took us

over two decades to give them that closure. >> feel better? >> the most gratifying moment of my career. >> i was extremely happy. i said, i feel like i knew it all along. >> back in l.a., the lazarus family also got the news. >> well, it was numbing. >> i'm guessing that one of the things you said or thought was, they got it wrong somehow. this is a mistake. >> absolutely. >> some error has been made here. >> yeah. it's going to get cleared up by the end of the day. >> didn't happen? >> didn't happen. >> stephanie lazarus didn't go home that day after her arrest. bail was set at $10 million, much higher than most murder cases. want judge considered her a flight risk, citing the strong case against her. and for the lapd, it was a bittersweet day. a 23-year-old cold case they

believed had finally been cracked. but the prime suspect worked right beside them. for the rasmussen family, stephanie's arrest was a vindication. it also brought back their bitter memories of the original lapd investigation. >> i think it was because she was a police officer so they figure the that they would cover this one up. >> the family hired prominent l.a. attorney john taylor who filed a lawsuit against detective lazarus and also the lapd claiming the department deliberately inbound norred clues that pointed to a -- ignored clues that pointed to a fellow officer. >> the earlier missteps of the lapd weren't missteps. they were intentional conduct, intentional ignoring of evidence, intentional dereliction of duties beyond just being sloppy or lazy. >> the fact that they didn't close the case and that they didn't listen to the family, those two things are not evidence of a cover-up.

>> it wasn't that they didn't close the case, they didn't do anything to create a case. >> he says that in 1986, the detectives were protected stephanie lazarus. >> they actively covered up the identity of the person who committed this crime. >> the rasmussens' lawsuit alleging a cover-up was dismissed in 2007. charlie -- in 2011. charlie beck was the chief and spoke with us about the case. >> i can accept somebody that is unable to solve a crime that is solvable. i cannot accept somebody that covers up a crime or covers up an individual involved in a crime. and i have absolutely no indication that that's what happened here. >> there's nothing to suggest they deliberately looked away there stephanie or that that was a road they don't want to go down? >> i think it was lack of ability, not a deliberate intentional act to exclude stephanie. >> versus stephanie lazarus -- >> in february of 2012, nearly 26 years to the day since sherri

rasmussen's murder, stephanie lazarus would have her day in court. a chance to clear her name and reputation. a chance to see that dna to sho evidence isn't always right and that the los angeles police department had it all wrong. coming up, did the lapd have it wrong? >> john was still there and stephanie went to tell sherry, look, you guys are getting married. i tell him not to call me. >> we the jury in the above entitled action find the defendant stephanie eileen lazarus -- >> when "dateline" continues. you feel like you're itching all the time. and you never know how your skin will look. because deep within your skin an overly sensitive immune system could be the cause.

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every day, comcast business is helping businesses go beyond the expected, to do the extraordinary. take your business beyond. welcome back. there was a lot at stake at the murder trial of lapd officer stephanie lazarus. the prosecution believed the dna evidence was their smoking gun but the defense said it was tainted. what will the jury believe? here is josh with the conclusion of the smoking gun. >> it took 26 years to get here. a generation of false leads, missed opportunities, a family's frustration, a police department's nightmare. february 6th, 2012, the people versus stephanie lazarus finally

began in a courtroom in downtown los angeles. the prosecution laid out a clear case of how stephanie lazarus was deeply in love with john rutten and was devastated when he became engaged to sherry, then executed her and covered it up by staging a burglary. linda deutsch of the associated press covered the trial. >> the opening statement by the prosecutor, shannon pressby was quite dramatic. he came up with a theme which was the case was about a plate, a gun barrel, a bullet and a broken heart. that resonated in the courtroom. >> they showed journals. stephanie's date book was also introduced, which mentioned locksmithing books. that could explain why there was no forced entry to the condo. and on the day of the murder

then patrol officer lazarus happened to be off duty. the ammunition used in the shooting was the same type issued by the lapd, said prosecutors, and was the same caliber as lazarus's off duty weapon, a .38 revolver she reported stolen just two weeks after the murder but the real smoking gun was the bite mark dna found at the crime scene. >> dna was definitely the center piece of this case. this shows she was there. without the dna they could not have placed her at the condo. >> and the statistics were staggering. a 1.7 sextilion to one chance that the dna belonged to someone other than stephanie lazarus. defense attorney mark overland aggressively attacked that dna evidence insisting it had been mishandled, improperly stored and sealed which compromised the sample. >> the vile was pro trucing

rather than being inside the envelope and sealed in order to protect the integrity of the evidence. you can't rely on the scientific results. >> overland also said that hair, blood and fingerprints found at the crime scene did not come from lazarus. as for the weapon that fired the fatal shots, he insisted there were several other types of guns besides stephanie's that could have fired those bullets and as to motive, the defense argued there was no evidence that stephanie lazarus was obsessed with sherry's husband, john. quite the opposite. >> john was still calling her. and stephanie went to tell sherry, look, you guys are getting married. i tell him not to call me. >> after five weeks it was up to the jury ri. loretta and nels rasmussen had

waited longer than that. >> do the two of you feel confident? >> as confident as you can feel with a jury. we the jury find the defendant stephanie eileen lazarus guilty of the crime of murder of sherry rasmussen. we further find the murder was of the first degree. >> the day the rasmussen family thought would never come finally did as their attorney john ta taylor explained. >> i think the family is overwhelmingly relieved that, again, their suspicions and today's verdict reflects and confirms the identity of the person who killed their daughter and the intent with which she did it. it's a tremendous relief. >> for the lazarus family, their wife, daughter, sister, and once decorated detective was now a convicted killer. >> we really did not expects this result with the state of the evidence and the way mr.

overland presented the case so it's devastating. >> for the lapd a cold case was finally solved but with painful side effects. >> i'm very pleased, but it's bitter sweet. i am thrilled that the conclusion has been reached and that some form of justice has been brought to a family that has grieved forfar too long. we would much rather this was not an lapd investigator. this is a tragedy at a bunch of levels. this is not something that we're proud of in that we had a los angeles police department involved here. >> stephanie lazarus was sentenced to 27 to life in prison. as for that wrongful death lawsuit they filed against lazarus, they were awarded $10 million and so ended the case of a detective finally caught by her very own department. >> she almost got away with it. perfect murder.

almost committed the perfect murder. and who better to do that than a police officer and a police officer. that's all for this edition of "dateline," i'm natalie moralis. thanks for watching. good morning. i'm morgan radford, new york city and msnbc world headquarters. 6:00 in the east, 3 out west and here's what's happening. a new 2020 poll with surprising results as a flurry of democrats hit the hawkeye state for a big event slated for tonight. real deal? new reporting and new questions on the mexican deal. and iran threat. a new video from the edges of the persian gulf and what one gentleman is saying about prospects for a u.s.