Scott Young and Stephanie Lazarus: Rasmussen Murder, DNA, and Trial

Scott Young and Stephanie Lazarus were a married pair of Los Angeles Police Department detectives whose lives became national news in 2009, when Lazarus was arrested for the 1986 murder of Sherri Rasmussen. Rasmussen was the wife of John Ruetten, a man Lazarus had dated before his marriage. Young, who married Lazarus a decade after the killing, was publicly cleared by the LAPD of any knowledge of the crime. Lazarus was convicted of first-degree murder in 2012 and sentenced to 27 years to life. She remains in state prison as of 2026 after multiple parole denials.

The 1986 Killing of Sherri Rasmussen

On February 24, 1986, John Ruetten came home to the Van Nuys condominium he shared with his wife of three months, Sherri Rasmussen, and found her dead on the living room floor. Rasmussen, a 29-year-old critical care nursing director, had been bludgeoned with a vase and shot three times in the chest at close range. She had ligature marks on her wrists and a bite mark on her arm. Stereo equipment was stacked near the stairs, staged to look like an interrupted burglary.¹²

The woman who killed her was Stephanie Lazarus, then a 25-year-old LAPD patrol officer.

The Love Triangle

Lazarus and Ruetten had met as undergraduates at UCLA. By Ruetten’s account, they were friends who had an on-and-off sexual relationship, but he never considered her his girlfriend. Lazarus saw it differently. In an August 1985 letter to Ruetten’s mother, she wrote, “I’m truly in love with John and the past year has really torn me up. I wish it didn’t end the way it did, and I don’t think I’ll ever understand his decision.”²

When Lazarus learned Ruetten was engaged to Rasmussen, she summoned him to her condo and asked him to sleep with her. He complied, then told Rasmussen and cut off contact with Lazarus. Lazarus responded by stalking Rasmussen at her workplace and confronting her on multiple occasions.³ She also called Ruetten’s home just to hear him say hello, a habit she later said “pacified” her.¹

Why the Case Went Cold for 23 Years

Detectives Lyle Mayer and Roger Pida were assigned to the Rasmussen killing. Mayer settled almost immediately on the theory that the murder was a botched burglary committed by two men, and he stuck to it despite the staging, the bite mark, and the ligature marks.⁴

Sherri’s father, Nels Rasmussen, a retired dentist, told investigators from the start to look at Ruetten’s ex-girlfriend, an LAPD officer who had threatened his daughter more than once. Ruetten himself gave detectives Lazarus’s name.³⁵ Neither lead was documented or followed up. Witnesses who had seen Lazarus harassing Rasmussen at work were never interviewed. About two years after the killing, Nels Rasmussen wrote to LAPD Chief Daryl F. Gates asking him to intervene. Nothing came of it.

The LAPD later stated that a reinvestigation “found no evidence of any intentional cover-up.” Journalist Matthew McGough, who investigated the case at length, said no one he spoke with had been contacted during that internal review, and he called the failure either “corruption or incompetence.”⁴

While the case sat dormant, Lazarus built a 25-year LAPD career. She graduated the academy in 1982, was promoted to detective in 1993, and in 2006 transferred to the department’s Art Theft Detail. Investigative records from the Rasmussen file went missing during those years, and Lazarus, as an officer, had access to them. Prosecutors would later argue she “used police training to cover up the crime.”⁶⁷

How DNA Finally Identified Lazarus

In 2001, Detective Cliff Shepard of the LAPD Cold Case Unit reopened the investigation and learned that a tissue sample from the bite mark on Rasmussen’s arm had been collected in 1986 but never booked into evidence. Criminalist Jennifer Francis found the swab in a freezer at the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office. In early 2005, she pulled a complete female DNA profile from it, contradicting the two-male-burglars theory. The profile did not match anyone in CODIS, and the case again went quiet.⁵⁸

In February 2009, Detective Jim Nuttall and his partner Pete Barba of the Van Nuys homicide unit reopened the file. They compiled a list of five women in Rasmussen’s orbit and worked through them by collecting DNA covertly. Four were ruled out. The fifth was Stephanie Lazarus, initially ranked last because she was a police officer. She rose to prime suspect when Nuttall discovered she was the “P.O.” referenced in the original 1986 notes as Ruetten’s ex-girlfriend.⁹

On April 30, 2009, detectives checked the state gun registry and found that Lazarus had registered a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 49 pistol in 1984, the same caliber used to kill Rasmussen. They also found a report she filed on March 9, 1986, thirteen days after the murder, claiming the gun had been stolen from her car near the Santa Monica Pier. The weapon was never recovered.⁸

Surveillance officers followed Lazarus and recovered a discarded drink cup and straw from a trash can outside a Costco. The DNA on it matched the profile from the 1986 bite mark. On June 5, 2009, detectives lured her to an interrogation room at LAPD headquarters under the pretense that she would help question an art theft suspect. When they turned to the 1986 murder, she asked, “Am I on ‘Candid Camera’?” She called the questions “insane,” admitted confronting Rasmussen “several times,” and denied the killing. She was arrested that day. A confirmatory mouth swab matched at all 15 tested loci; prosecutors put the odds of the bite-mark DNA belonging to anyone other than Lazarus at one in 1.7 sextillion.¹⁰¹¹

Where Scott Young Fits In

Scott Young married Lazarus in 1996, ten years after the murder. He was also an LAPD detective, working in the San Fernando Valley, and at the time of the reopened investigation his desk was on the same floor as the Commercial Crimes Division detectives working the case. The couple adopted an infant daughter and lived in Simi Valley, where neighbors described them as “very sweet people.”⁶¹²

LAPD Deputy Chief Charlie Beck publicly cleared Young after Lazarus’s arrest, stating that he “knew nothing about the slaying” and adding, “None of us blames him.” Beck said Young would be interviewed as part of the broader investigation, as would many others. Young has not made public statements about the case. At the 2012 trial, he and Lazarus’s mother left the courtroom when the guilty verdict was read.¹³⁶

The 2012 Trial and Sentence

Lazarus’s trial began on February 6, 2012, in Los Angeles Superior Court. Prosecutors Shannon Presby and Paul Nunez argued she had killed Rasmussen in a jealous rage over Ruetten. They presented the bite-mark DNA, ballistics tying the murder to LAPD-issued ammunition, and the suspicious timing of the stolen-gun report.¹⁴

Defense attorney Mark Overland argued that the 23-year delay in charging Lazarus had violated her due process rights. He pointed to lost evidence, including gunshot residue tests and 911 recordings, and challenged the integrity of the bite-mark swab, whose envelope had deteriorated over 25 years in storage.¹⁵

On March 8, 2012, a jury found Lazarus guilty of first-degree murder and found true the allegation that she personally used a handgun. She did not testify. On May 11, 2012, she was sentenced to 27 years to life in state prison, comprising 25 years to life for the murder and two years for the firearms enhancement.⁸

The Civil Judgment

The Rasmussen family filed a wrongful death action against Lazarus on July 26, 2010, and a court eventually awarded them a $10 million judgment. Lazarus argued the suit was premature because it was filed before her criminal conviction, but the California Court of Appeal ruled she had waived the objection by waiting four years after her conviction to raise it. The court observed that “the Rasmussens have already waited over 30 years in their struggle for justice.”¹⁶

A separate suit the family brought against the City of Los Angeles, alleging civil rights conspiracy and fraudulent concealment by the LAPD, was dismissed as time-barred.¹⁷

Parole Denials and a Belated Confession

In November 2023, a parole board panel recommended releasing Lazarus. At that hearing, she publicly admitted the killing, saying, “I will never, ever harm an individual like I did on February 24, 1986, when I murdered, callously murdered and heinously murdered Sherri Rasmussen.”¹⁸

Governor Gavin Newsom pushed back, saying Lazarus “hadn’t begun to take full responsibility for the murder until she was caught” and had “evaded justice for more than two decades.” In October 2024, a three-member parole panel held a 90-minute rescission hearing and found “good cause” to pull back the earlier grant, deeming it “improvident.”¹⁹

At a new hearing on February 12, 2025, Lazarus gave her most detailed account of the killing. She said she went to the Van Nuys condo “hoping to see” Ruetten and brought both a gun and a cord, planning to strangle Rasmussen “if she got in my way.” When Rasmussen answered the door, Lazarus said she “barged in,” bound Rasmussen’s wrists, and a violent struggle followed. She described Rasmussen as “getting the best of me,” said her gun then came out of her fanny pack, and admitted she picked up a blanket to “deaden the sound” before shooting Rasmussen three times.²⁰

Commissioner Kevin Chappell denied parole, telling Lazarus her account “does not match up with the evidence used to convict you,” and noting that a mutual fight would have left more of her DNA at the scene than a single bite mark. “You were the only one engaging in this extreme act of violence,” he said. Deputy Commissioner Vijai Desai described Lazarus’s “level of minimization” as “pretty entrenched.” Prosecutors Presby and Nunez, along with John Ruetten, opposed the parole bid.¹⁸

Lazarus, now 64, is next eligible for a parole hearing in 2028. She may petition for an earlier one if her circumstances change.⁷

1
Los Angeles Times. It Took LAPD 23 Years to Identify Police Detective as Culprit in Fatal Love Triangle
2
Daily News. Weeping Widower of Murdered Woman Testifies in Stephanie Lazarus Trial
3
Los Angeles Times. Former LAPD Detective Arrested in 1986 Killing
4
Los Angeles Times. Matthew McGough Interview
5
ABC News. Former LAPD Detective Murdered Lover’s Wife, Hid Crime
6
Los Angeles Magazine. In Plain Sight
7
CBS News Los Angeles. Stephanie Lazarus, Former LAPD Detective, Has Parole Denied Again
8
FindLaw. People v. Lazarus
9
The Atlantic. The Lazarus File
10
Police1. LAPD Detective Was Surprised by Her Arrest
11
ABC7 News. Bite-Mark DNA Ties LAPD Detective to 1986 Murder
12
Police1. LAPD Detective Held in 1986 Slaying
13
NBC Los Angeles. LAPD Detective Arrested in Connection With 1986 Killing
14
CBS News Los Angeles. Closing Arguments to Continue in Murder Trial of Former LAPD Detective
15
Daily News. Ex-LAPD Detective Stephanie Lazarus DNA Matched Sample From Van Nuys Murder Victim’s Bite Mark, Testifies Criminalist
16
FindLaw. Rasmussen v. Lazarus
17
MetNews. Rasmussen v. City of Los Angeles
18
Audacy/KNX. Parole Denied for Ex-LAPD Detective Convicted of Murder
19
NBC News. Ex-LAPD Detective Who Hid Murder for Decades Won’t Be Paroled
20
MyNewsLA. Parole Rejected for Ex-LAPD Detective Convicted of Murder