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Sherri Rasmussen (February 7, 1957 – February 24, 1986) was an American woman found dead in the apartment she shared with her new husband John Ruetten in Van Nuys, California, United States. She had been beaten and shot three times following a struggle. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) initially considered the case to have been a botched burglary. It remained unsolved for over 20 years despite her father's persistent belief that Stephanie Lazarus, an officer who had dated Ruetten prior to his marriage and stalked Rasmussen since the engagement, was a stronger suspect than police had originally believed. Detectives who re-examined the cold case files in 2009 were eventually led to Lazarus, by then herself a detective. A DNA sample Lazarus unknowingly discarded was matched to one from a bite on Rasmussen's body that had remained in the files. She was convicted of the crime in 2012, and is serving a sentence of 27 years to life for first-degree murder at the California Institution for Women in Corona.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://inmatelocator.cdcr.ca.gov/search.aspx )〕 She is appealing the conviction, claiming that the age of the case and the evidence denied her due process. She also alleges that the search warrant was improperly granted, her statements in an interview prior to her arrest were compelled, and that evidence supporting the original case theory should have been admitted at trial.〔 Page numbers cited here and for other documents at scribd.com reflect those assigned by the publishing website's software rather than those indicated in the document itself.〕 Some of the police files suggest that evidence which could have implicated her earlier in the investigation was later removed, perhaps by others in the department. Rasmussen's parents unsuccessfully sued the LAPD over this and other aspects of the investigation. Jennifer Francis, the criminalist who found that the DNA from the bite mark was from a female, has also sued the city, claiming she was pressured by police to favor certain suspects in this and other high-profile cases and was retaliated against when she brought this to the department's attention. ==Background== While an undergraduate at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1978 to 1982, John Ruetten, a mechanical engineering major from San Diego, occasionally dated Stephanie Lazarus, a fellow Dykstra Hall resident and a political science major from Simi Valley. Both were avid athletes; Lazarus played on the school's junior varsity women's basketball team. She would steal his clothes when he showered and take naked photographs of him while he slept. While the two frequently had sexual relations, Ruetten never considered the relationship as anything more than "necking and fooling around". They continued to meet for sex intermittently after they graduated, when he accepted a job with hard-drive manufacturer Micropolis and she applied to the city's police academy and became a uniformed officer with the LAPD in 1983.〔 Ruetten later met Sherri Rasmussen, a graduate of Loma Linda University who was on a fast career track in critical care nursing. She had entered college at 16, and by her late 20s was the director of nursing at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, giving presentations and teaching classes for fellow nurses. At one point Lazarus threw Ruetten a surprise party on his 25th birthday, unaware that he had been dating other women or that he had developed a serious relationship with Rasmussen. When she learned he was seriously involved with Rasmussen, she was despondent. "I'm truly in love with John and the past year has really torn me up," she wrote to Ruetten's mother in August 1985. "I wish it didn't end the way it did, and I don't think I'll ever understand his decision." In her own journal she wrote "I really don't feel like working. I found out that John is getting married." She visited him at his condo, depressed, and the two had sex—"to give her closure", Ruetten testified years later〔—for what Ruetten says was the only time before Rasmussen's death. Later she woke up a fellow officer with whom she was a roommate to commiserate. During their engagement, Lazarus brought her skis to the apartment Ruetten shared with Rasmussen and asked him to wax them, and despite Rasmussen's objections, he complied. Rasmussen felt this was a little strange, since Lazarus was dressed in flattering workout clothes, and asked her fiancé after Lazarus left if their relationship was truly over. Ruetten convinced her the two were just friends. A few days later Lazarus returned, in uniform and armed, after Ruetten had left for work, to pick the waxed skis up.〔 Rasmussen was unnerved by these visits and pleaded with Ruetten to tell her to stop coming by. Ruetten only said there was nothing to their relationship and to ignore her. According to Nels Rasmussen, Sherri's father, Lazarus later visited Rasmussen at her office. She allegedly claimed that things were not over between her and Ruetten and told Rasmussen, "If I can't have John, no one else will." Shortly before her death, Sherri again confided to her father her fear that Lazarus was stalking her on the street. Ruetten and Rasmussen were married in November 1985, but that did not stop Lazarus from inserting herself into their lives.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Murder of Sherri Rasmussen」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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