The Lazarus Files: A Cold Case Investigation

by Matthew McGough

Overview

A deeply-reported, riveting account of a cold case murder in Los Angeles, unsolved until DNA evidence implicated a shocking suspect – a female detective within the LAPD’s own ranks.

On February 24, 1986, 29-year-old newlywed Sherri Rasmussen was murdered in the home she shared with her husband, John. The crime scene suggested a ferocious struggle, and police initially assumed it was a burglary gone awry. Before her death, Sherri had confided to her parents that an ex-girlfriend of John’s, a Los Angeles police officer, had threatened her. The Rasmussens urged the LAPD to investigate the ex-girlfriend, but the original detectives only pursued burglary suspects, and the case went cold.

DNA analysis did not exist when Sherri was murdered. Decades later, a swab from a bite mark on Sherri’s arm revealed her killer was in fact female, not male. A DNA match led to the arrest and conviction of veteran LAPD Detective Stephanie Lazarus, John’s onetime girlfriend.

The Lazarus Files delivers the visceral experience of being inside a real-life murder mystery. McGough reconstructs the lives of Sherri, John and Stephanie; the love triangle that led to Sherri’s murder; and the homicide investigation that followed. Was Stephanie protected by her fellow officers? What did the LAPD know, and when did they know it? Are there other LAPD cold cases with a police connection that remain unsolved?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805095593
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/30/2019
Pages:	608
Sales rank:	667,530
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Matthew McGough has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and more. His acclaimed memoir Bat Boy: Coming of Age with the New York Yankees was the basis of “Clubhouse,” a primetime TV series on CBS, and his story about his first day with the Yankees was selected to lead the pilot episode of The Moth Radio Hour. Formerly a legal consultant and writer for NBC’s Law & Order, he lives in LA with his wife and children.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Sheri, John, and Stephanie

1 The Aftermath (February 24, 1986) 3

2 Sherri Rasmussen (1957 to 1884) 10

3 John Ruetten (February 1984 to May 1985) 35

4 Stephanie Lazarus (1960 to March 1984) 53

5 "Admit Nothing. Deny Everything. Demand Proof." (March 4, 1984, to March 30, 1985) 74

6 Stephanie at Club Dev (March 31 to June 16, 1985) 102

7 The Hospital Confrontation (June to August 1985) 113

8 Night Stalkers (August 12 to October 12, 1985) 130

9 Tying the Knot (November to December 1985) 158

10 Warning Signs (December 1985 to January 1986) 169

11 The Month Before the Murder (Mid-January to February 23, 1986) 183

Part 2 The Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

12 Sherri's Final Day (February 24, 1986) 199

13 The Chrono and Crime Scene (February 24, 1986, 6:30 to 9:00 p.m.) 204

14 John's Interview (February 24, 1986, 9:00 p.m.) 225

15 The Bite Mark Swab (Early Morning of Ftbruary 25, 1988) 250

16 "The Day Was Boring and Nothing Happened That Was Worth Remembering" (February 25, 1986) 278

17 The First 48 Hours Ends (February 26 and 27, 1986) 324

18 "God Holds the Key" (February 28 to March 2, 1986) 362

19 "A Well-Reasoned, Carefully-Documented and Insightful Investigation" (March 3 to April 8, 1986) 383

20 The Burglary Suspects (April 10 to May 21, 1986) 423

21 "There Is No Power on Earth More Formidable Than the Truth" (May 1986 to November 1987) 440

Part 3 The Murder of Catherine Braley

22 Catherine Braley (Januarys 1988) 493

Part 4 Epilogue

23 "We Do Not Condone Murder" (2008-2012) 539

Author's Note on Sources 591

Acknowledgments 594

Editorial Reviews

★ 04/01/2019

In this engrossing true crime account, McGough, the author of a memoir, Bat Boy, and a former legal consultant for TV’s Law & Order, exposes a horrifying Los Angeles murder that was not solved for decades—and an even more disturbing LAPD cover-up. In 1986, 29-year-old nurse Sherri Rasmussen was killed in her home by someone who battered her face and shot her multiple times, leaving the corpse to be found by her husband, John Ruetten. Though there was an obvious suspect—Ruetten’s ex-girlfriend, Stephanie Lazarus, who had threatened Rasmussen—the investigating officers pursued the theory that burglars killed Rasmussen. McGough proposes a possible explanation for that choice: since Lazarus was an LAPD officer, some of her colleagues were less than diligent in exploring any possibility that led to her. Eventually, a cold case investigator tracked down DNA evidence from a bite mark on the victim’s arm that implicated Lazarus. By then an LAPD detective, Lazarus was arrested in 2009 and convicted in 2012. Despite that verdict, readers will be left with a sense that justice has not been done, since no one at the LAPD was held accountable for the many mistakes that enabled Lazarus to get away with murder for more than 20 years. This memorable and powerful work deserves a wide readership. Agent: Andrew Blauner, Blauner Books Literary. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

2019-03-10

An in-depth examination of a well-known murder.

The book is not a whodunit. Rather, Los Angeles-based journalist McGough (Bat Boy: Coming of Age with the New York Yankees, 2005) offers a police procedural about why a 1986 murder took more than two decades to solve and whether police knowingly protected the murderer: one of their own detectives. The victim was Sherri Rasmussen, a 29-year-old nurse and newlywed who was killed while alone in her home in LA. Her parents and a few of her friends knew that she had been harassed before the murder by a longtime girlfriend of her husband, John. The harasser, Stephanie Lazarus, worked as a young LAPD officer at the time of the murder. John and Rasmussen's father both told the author that they had informed homicide detectives about the harassment. However, because McGough did not start reporting about the murder until Lazarus' 2009 arrest, he could not find definitive information in the messy, incomplete police files about the case. What the author's painstaking digging clearly demonstrates, beyond a doubt, is that the detectives assigned to the case decided nearly right away that Rasmussen was murdered during a burglary gone wrong. Adoption of that theory led to tunnel vision, which meant that the idea of a fellow officer as the perpetrator never received serious attention until two decades later, when a detective looking at cold cases stumbled on the Rasmussen file. McGough does not discuss how the cold-case detectives nailed Lazarus until more than 500 pages in. Before that, he examines the quotidian lives of Sheri, John, and Stephanie while sometimes taking detours to examine dozens of other characters. Relying on extended citations from bureaucratic memos and other opaque documents, McGough delivers a fairly unremarkable narrative until the end of the book, when the investigation of Lazarus as the potential murderer begins.

Despite the impressive research and mostly compelling final chapter, much of the book feels like an information dump filled with irrelevant and repetitious details. Its 600 pages could have been 250.

Kirkus Reviews

"The Lazarus Files is crime writing at its finest. Matthew McGough’s deep dive into one of the most controversial cases in Los Angeles history is expertly researched and recreated in exacting and haunting detail. I was riveted." —Michael Connelly

“[An] engrossing true crime account…This memorable and powerful work deserves a wide readership.” —Publishers Weekly, *starred review*

"The Lazarus Files is a thorough, comprehensive, and impressive account of the murder of Sherri Rasmussen, and how LAPD detective Stephanie Lazarus got away with the crime for more than two decades. Matthew McGough has not only written a singular true crime story, but a careful and damning indictment of systemic failure, one that should reverberate for years to come." —Sarah Weinman, author of The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World

“The Lazarus Files chronicles one of the most fascinating homicide cases in the history of the LAPD. Matt McGough does a herculean job of research and reporting in order to track down the many serpentine threads in this coldest of cold cases. This is a thrilling story of justice long delayed—but justice finally served. McGough has written an impressive book." —Miles Corwin, author of the national bestseller The Killing Season and Los Angeles Times bestseller Homicide Special

From the Publisher