NOTORIOUS MURDERS > WOMEN WHO KILL

The Murder of Sherri Rae Rasmussen

By Tricia Romano

New Details

After Lazarus's arrest, new details emerged. One key piece to the puzzle was missing: the gun used to shoot Rasmussen three times in the chest.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Lazarus had called the Santa Monica Police Department a few weeks after the murder to report that her car had been broken into near the Santa Monica Pier. She reported a stolen gym bag, money, clothes, and her .38-caliber handgun. The two departments never put two-and-two together.

Twenty-three years later, the break-in looks like a cover up—and police now believe that she ditched the gun in the Pacific Ocean.

And the scene was more gruesome than originally revealed: Rasmussen's head had been bludgeoned; she had wounds on her wrists that indicated she'd been tied up. A robe laying on the floor nearby had bullet holes in them; it appeared the killer used it to muffle the shots.

And the slaying might have been averted, had a maid working in a nearby apartment who'd heard screams called the police. But she hadn't.

Lazarus could have been apprehended even earlier. The DNA had been proven to be a woman's in 2005, but the investigators hadn't realized that the original suspects were male at that time. When the case came up for re-review in February, they realized the mistake, and a secretive four-month investigation was launched.

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1. Introduction
2. Rising in the Force
3. Robbery Gone Awry
4. "If I can't have John, then nobody else will."
5. Something out of Law and Order
6. Announcing the Cracking of the Cold Case
7. Redemption: "I told you so."
8. New Details
9. On the Other Side of the Thin Blue Line