“Never in my wildest imagination would I ever think she could do something like this,” said one longtime officer, who socialized frequently with Lazarus. Officers responded with shock as news of the arrest spread through the department. Lazarus was being held without bail and could not be reached for comment. Police officials declined to comment on whether they believe anyone else was involved in the killing. One of the original detectives in the case, Lyle Mayer, said he never interviewed Lazarus in the course of his investigation and continued to believe the burglary theory until his retirement in 1991. “We are not surprised that the arrest was made,” he said. Rasmussen Jr., indicated that he believes so. Beck declined to say why the detectives did not look more closely at Lazarus as a possible suspect.Īsked at an afternoon news conference whether Lazarus had been either deliberately or mistakenly overlooked because she was a cop, Beck said: “I don’t know the answer to that at this point.” Reached at his home in Arizona, Rasmussen’s father, Nels E. The two homicide detectives originally assigned to the case have retired and had not yet been contacted by police, he added. Lazarus was not pursued as a suspect at the time of Rasmussen’s slaying, according to Beck.
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The genetic code in the samples matched conclusively, police said. The DNA in her saliva was compared with the DNA evidence collected from the murder scene. Last week, an undercover officer surreptitiously trailed Lazarus as she did errands, waiting until she discarded a plastic utensil or other object with her saliva on it, police sources said. To minimize the chances that word of the reopened investigation would leak, only a small circle of detectives and high-ranking officials were made aware of it. With suspicion falling on an LAPD cop, the case took on sensitive and explosive tones inside the department. Ruetten allegedly broke off the relationship and soon after became involved with Rasmussen, said sources familiar with the investigation who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Beck said they found a reference to Lazarus, who was known at the time to have had a romantic relationship with the victim’s husband, John Ruetten. The DNA tests showed that the attacker was a woman, disproving the theory that Rasmussen had been killed by a man.ĭetectives scoured the original case file for mention of any women who could have been overlooked during the investigation.
Detectives returned to the Rasmussen killing in February, testing blood or saliva samples from the crime scene and thought to have been from the killer.
Like thousands of other homicides from the period, the case remained open and collected dust on storage shelves as detectives struggled to keep pace with L.A.’s dramatic surge in violent crimes.īut with homicides in the city falling to historic lows, LAPD detectives have had unusual freedom in recent months to revisit cold cases. Rasmussen’s parents, newspapers reported, offered a $10,000 reward for the men’s capture. Homicide detectives suspected that the pair had also killed Rasmussen when she came upon them burglarizing her home, according to news reports from the time. She had been shot several times, Beck said.ĭays after the slaying, two men robbed another woman in the area at gunpoint. 24, 1986, to discover his wife’s badly beaten body on the floor in the living room. Three months after they were married, Rasmussen’s husband returned to their Van Nuys condominium on the evening of Feb.
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