Los Angeles County deputy prosecutors Shannon Presby and Paul Nunez submitted a written statement to the court prior to the sentencing, according to the prosecutor’s office. Rasmussen was brutally beaten and shot three times in the chest, authorities said. Married for just three months, Ruetten found his wife’s body when he returned home from work. Rasmussen, a hospital nursing supervisor, was the new bride of John Ruetten, who had been Lazarus’ college sweetheart. When Lazarus became a suspect, homicide detectives faced “special challenges as Lazarus’ office was located next door to the detectives who were now investigating her,” police said in a statement in March. Then it was reopened in 2004 and again in 2009, when DNA from a bite mark on the victim’s arm came back as a match to the detective. Lazarus was charged with staging the crime scene to look like a burglary gone bad, and police long believed that Rasmussen was the victim of two male burglars.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Perry gave Lazarus credit for time served in jail since her arrest at LAPD headquarters in June 2009.Ī jury convicted her in March of first-degree murder.įriday’s sentence was the maximum under state law, prosecutors said. Lazarus, who rose through ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department and became a veteran art theft detective, could be eligible for parole in 22 years. Stephanie Ilene Lazarus, 52, was convicted of biting and shooting Sherri Rasmussen, 29, in her townhouse in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1986. A California judge sentenced a retired Los Angeles Police detective Friday to 27 years to life in prison for murdering her ex-boyfriend’s wife in a jealous rage more than two decades ago.

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