Late one night in February of 1986 a man returned to his home in Los Angeles California, after work.
As he pulled into the driveway, he immediately noticed that his garage door was open and his wife's car was gone.
He glanced at his watch and saw it was much too late for his wife to still be at work, so he wondered where she might have gone.
But before he could even think about that, he noticed something else unusual about his home.
There were little bits of broken glass spread out across the driveway.
Now starting to panic, the man threw his car in park and charged inside the house.
And what he would see inside was so traumatic that he covered it with a towel while he waited for police to arrive.
But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious Delivered in Story format, then you've come to the right podcast, because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, please offer to make coffee for the Amazon Music Follow button, but brew it with hot dog water.
Okay, let's get into today's story.
Potential savings will vary.
Not available in all states or situations.
Are you searching for a romantic summer getaway?
Escape with Rich Girl Summer, the new Audible original from Lily Chu.
The phenomenally talented Philippa Soo returns to narrate her fifth Lily Chu title.
This time, Philippa is joined by her real-life husband, Steven Pasquale.
Set in Toronto's wealthy cottage country, aka the Hamptons of Canada, Rich Girl Summer follows the story of Valerie, a down-on-her-luck event planner, posing as a socialite's long-lost daughter, while piecing together the secrets surrounding a mysterious family and falling deeper and deeper in love with the impossibly hard-to-read and infuriatingly handsome family assistant Nico.
Caught between pretending to belong and unexpectedly finding where she truly fits in.
Valerie learns her summer is about to get far more complicated than she ever planned.
She's in over her head and head over heels.
Listen to Rich Girl Summer now on Audible.
Go to audible.com slash richgirlsummer.
For 29-year-old Sherry Rasmussen, heading out to the movies on Sunday night with her husband seemed like the perfect ending to what had been for them an unusually nice weekend.
The popular comedy they'd picked out for that night's entertainment Down and Out in Beverly Hills was just the answer to what John Rutten called their Sunday night blues that feeling that only one night's sleep stood between them and the start of their busy Monday-to-Friday workweek.
As Sherry opened the closet in their townhouse and pulled out their coats, she looked over at the three red roses John had given her that morning, one flower for each of the three months they had been married.
Sherry had rearranged the roses in their slim glass vase and put them in the center of the dining room table, where the flowers added a cheerful note of color.
But seeing them now, Sherry couldn't keep from sighing.
It was February 23rd, 1986, and Sherry and John had known one another for a total of 21 months.
And Sherry had somehow expected that they would have worked out all their problems before they had exchanged wedding vows back on November 23rd.
But that hadn't happened.
Instead, the last three months had seemed to bring their differences in everything from how they communicated to how they handled money, into sharper and sharper focus.
And this evening, as the two of them got ready for the 40-minute drive to the movie theater north of their home in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles California, Sherry just hoped they could avoid a repeat of other times when they'd spent entire car rides arguing with each other.
It was still hard for Sherry to forget one of their first getaways together as a married couple a ski trip to Mammoth Mountain, five hours away.
From the time they had stepped out of their townhouse to the time they had arrived at the ski resort, Sherry had argued with John about money, and two months later that was still a sore subject.
The problem was not their income.
They both had good jobs.
Sherry was the director of critical care nursing at the Glendale Adventist Hospital, 25 minutes south of their home.
27-year-old John was a mechanical engineer who had just started a new job with a manufacturing company located 30 minutes north of their townhouse.
Instead, the problem, as Sherry saw it, was that John had a taste for new and expensive cars and he didn't mind at all going into debt to pay for them.
There was the BMW he'd bought her in place of an engagement ring, and then there was the brand new 1986 Mazda RX-7 sports car that they'd be driving tonight to the movie theater.
Sherry had always been someone who saved money.
Despite growing up in comfortable circumstances in a comfortable neighborhood in Tucson Arizona, Sherry's parents had been very strict about money.
They had taught all three of their daughters to live within their means.
And that meant doing things like not buying fancy cars you couldn't pay for with cash.
On that trip to Mammoth Mountain, Sherry had told John that she was going to split up their bank accounts and set up a savings account in her own name.
By the time they'd arrived at Mammoth, they'd been so upset and annoyed with each other that, instead of skiing and spending a romantic overnight together, they just pulled into the resort parking lot, gone to the restrooms, piled back into the car and driven five hours back home to Van Nuys.
And now, all these weeks later, as Sherry and John walked down the stairway from inside of their three-level townhouse into the garage on the floor level, there was another issue, even more troubling than finances and much harder to put into words, that had also begun to put a strain on Sherry's relationship with John.
And that was Sherry's growing conviction that someone had recently begun to take a very, very keen interest in her and John.
When Sherry had first told John about her feeling that they were being watched and that Sherry sometimes felt like someone was actually following her, John had taken her concern seriously enough that back in December they had installed a new security system inside of their townhouse.
But instead of going away, Sherry's sense of uneasiness just seemed to get worse.
At the same time, whenever she tried to bring the subject up to John, she felt like he was starting not to believe her.
Now, as Sherry opened the front passenger seat and slipped inside the sports car, she promised herself that she was not going to let her annoyance with John spoil the three-month anniversary that had started that morning with his gift of roses.
Instead, Sherry forced herself to think about what a nice day she and John had just had.
After she and John had eaten a leisurely breakfast together, they'd been joined by Sherry's younger sister and her husband Brian, who made the hour-and-a-half drive west to Van Nuys from Loma Linda.
Sherry had let her brother-in-law drive her new silver BMW, while Sherry enjoyed fussing over Teresa, who was five months pregnant with her first child.
And after Brian and Teresa had left Sherry, who loved all outdoor sports and activities, had gone for a long run.
And when she got back, she and John had yet another visitor.
Mike Baldrick was one of several of her husband's old college friends, ex-girlfriends and dorm mates that Sherry had met since she started dating John.
While not all of those people had become Sherry's friends, her smile when she got back from her run and saw Mike was genuinely warm and welcome.
Mike had been one of the groomsmen at Sherry and John's wedding back in November and, no matter what had happened since then in Sherry and John's life, that day in late fall had been such a happy occasion for all of them.
Now, as John started the car engine and backed the Mazda out of the garage, Sherry wondered whether John ever talked to Mike or anyone else about things like money or Sherry's safety concerns.
But looking now over at John's untroubled face, Sherry decided he probably didn't, because to John they weren't really his problems, they were Sherry's problems.
Turning her gaze back to the road in front of them, Sherry hardly noticed the neighborhoods and towns she and John were passing on their scenic route to Simi Valley.
Glamorous places like Beverly Hills and Malibu and Pasadena, places that had made her adopted home state of California famous throughout the world.
Instead, what Sherry was seeing in her mind's eye was the face of that person who was staring at her and John when they were out eating dinner recently at a local restaurant, and then melting out of sight immediately after locking eyes with Sherry.
And instead of hearing the sound of traffic as the maroon Mazda sped north, Sherry heard the sound of the phone calls once and sometimes twice a week, and then a click whenever Sherry or John actually picked up the receiver to say hello.
John could say what he wanted to about there being a problem with the phone line, but Sherry wasn't buying it.
And the more Sherry felt like John was dismissing her concerns, the more Sherry had started to confide about her fears and the issues in her marriage, not to John, but to her friends and to her parents.
And in particular Sherry, had found that her father, Nels Rasmussen, was taking every one of her conversations very seriously.
Nels had always been especially protective of his middle daughter, the child who was so smart she'd been enrolled in college at the age of 16 and who turned heads everywhere she went, thanks to her physical beauty and to the fact that she was a full six feet tall in stocking feet.
And Nels was equally proud of how his joyful and playful youngster had grown up into a kind, independent and fun-loving young woman whose sense of adventure and ambition had taken her from Tucson Arizona, out to the bright lights and big city of Los Angeles.
Nels was also less worried about Sherry's difference with John over money than he was about Sherry's other harder-to-define fears about being watched and maybe even threatened.
Nels might not know all the details of Sherry's marriage and life, but he did know his daughter was not prone to imagining things or having anxiety attacks for no reason.
Nels had also sensed in his latest phone conversations with his daughter that Sherry, who had always been a person of action, had come to some kind of a decision.
And, as Nels later reported to his wife, he had the distinct impression that, with or without John's support or involvement, Sherry was going to take steps of her own to resolve the strains she was feeling in her marriage and to make sure that, both inside and outside of her townhouse, she felt safe and free from any prying eyes.
By the time John and Sherry had pulled into the parking lot surrounding the brightly lit movie theater, the hypnotic motion of freeway driving had worked its magic and Sherry had finally relaxed.
And when John stepped around to her side of the car to open the door for her, she gave him that radiant smile that never failed to take his breath away.
A few hours later, their hands still buttery from the bag of popcorn they had shared, Sherry and John were stepping out of the crowded movie theater into the darkness and making their way through the busy parking lot back to their car.
The movie had lived up to its good reviews, and the story about a rich couple whose stale marriage and lives are changed by the arrival of a homeless vagrant had made both Sherry and John laugh.
But as Sherry settled into the passenger seat of the Mazda for the drive home, she suddenly found herself thinking about the husband in the film who was having an affair with the couple's live-in maid.
Looking over at John, Sherry reminded herself of the very direct conversations she and John had had before getting married about always being able to trust one another.
As for John, from the moment he had met Sherry almost two years ago at a party hosted by a mutual friend, all other women in his life had been instantly forgotten about and the good-looking engineer with the dark hair and white teeth had fallen hook line and sinker for the tall, friendly and vivacious nurse who was now his wife.
Turning to smile at Sherry, John put the key into the ignition, turned on the engine and a few minutes later they had joined the river of cars that flowed south down the freeway into Los Angeles.
By 10 pm that night, Sherry and John were walking up the stairway that led from their two-car garage up to their three-level townhouse.
Stopping in the living room, they locked the door behind them and put away their jackets.
Then they walked up the short flight of stairs that led into their kitchen and dining room, and the two of them chatted while John put together a lunch that he would take to work the next day.
One more short flight of stairs and they had reached their master bedroom and bath on the third level.
As they were both getting ready for bed, Sherry told John that she was dreading a class about conflict resolutions, she was scheduled to teach at work the next day and that she was thinking about calling out sick.
Just before the two of them turned out the light and slipped off to sleep, John urged Sherry to just go in and teach the class and get it over with.
But when the couple woke up just before 7am the next morning, Monday February 12th, only John got out of bed to shower and dress.
Still tucked under the blanket, Sherry told John that she'd decided she was going to stay home.
Before leaving the house.
John said yes, he'd be sure to give Sherry a call later that morning to check in on her, and by 720 he was locking the living room door behind him and walking down the stairs into the garage, where he opened the door of his Mazda and hopped inside.
As John backed his car out of the garage, he paused just long enough to hit the remote button that would close the garage door behind him.
Ten hours later, John was hopping back into his car to make the 30-minute drive back home to Balboa Townhomes, this time stopping just long enough to pick up some clothes from the dry cleaner.
True to his word.
John had called Sherry that morning from his office twice in fact and when Sherry didn't answer either call, John had checked in with Sherry's secretary at Glendale Adventist Hospital to see if maybe Sherry had decided to go to work that day after all.
And as far as Sherry's secretary knew, without having actually seen Sherry that morning, the answer to John's question was yes, she had gone to work.
What John wouldn't find out until later was that that information was wrong.
By noon, when Sherry's sister Teresa, had made her usual call to Sherry, Sherry's secretary told Teresa that Sherry had called out sick.
So it wasn't until John pulled into the driveway of Unit 205 and noticed that the garage door was open and that Sherry's BMW was gone that he felt the first flicker of worry.
That worry intensified when he saw broken glass scattered on the driveway.
So, after pulling his Mazda into the garage and turning off the engine, John only stopped long enough to grab the pile of clean clothes before he stepped out of the car and hurried through the door at the back of the garage that led up to their living room.
Distracted by the thoughts of the broken glass and missing BMW, John didn't notice the dark red flecks on the staircase wall next to him.
But, an instant later, John's attention snapped fully back to the present.
Right in front of him at the top of the stairs.
From the garage he could see that the door into the living room of Unit 205 was wide open.
And right inside, lying on her back in the middle of their living room floor, John saw his wife Sherry.
And he knew instantly that something terrible had happened.
His wife's beautiful face was unrecognizable.
One eye stared sightlessly upward, the other eye was swollen shut and crusted with blood.
The rest of Sherry's face was dark with bruises.
Wearing a short red robe over her sleeveless undershirt and panties.
Sherry's right arm looked frozen in place, with her hand raised stiffly towards the ceiling.
Her left hand lay across her chest, her wedding band shining dully on her long slender finger.
All around Sherry, there were smears of blood and signs of a terrible struggle.
Electrical cords and wires snaked across the floor, most of them leading to the stereo equipment that was stacked in a messy pile right next to the door where John was now standing.
Carefully laying his armload of clothes over the back of the sofa, John took a few slow steps towards Sherry's body.
Then, with the toe of his shoe, he reached out and touched the stiff, cold flesh of his wife's bare leg.
A moment later, John had picked up the phone that had been knocked to the floor and dialed 911.
When the emergency dispatch operator at the Los Angeles police station answered the call and asked John the nature of his emergency, his voice was flat with shock.
I think my wife is dead.
And then, after giving his address and ending the call, John pulled a hand towel out of a small cupboard, walked back over to Sherry's body and draped the towel over her ruined face.
As John would tell the first medics who arrived on the scene eight minutes later, the sight of Sherry's facial injuries was so upsetting that John never even noticed the three bullet holes in Sherry's chest or the bite mark on the inside of her left forearm.
By 8pm, so 1 hour and 45 minutes after first responders had arrived inside of Unit 205, the lead detective on the Sherry Rasmussen murder case had also arrived on the scene.
While the crime scene techs were busy taking pictures and marking the location of pieces of evidence, Detective Lyle Mayer joined his junior partner and the head of the Van Nuys Homicide Bureau to do a walkthrough of the crime scene.
As the husband of the victim and as the person who first discovered Sherry's body, John was automatically a person of interest and the detective planned to question John at the police station as soon as investigators finished this initial examination of each room in the townhouse.
The investigator also knew that it would take days and even weeks before all the evidence collected from the scene would be fully cataloged, tested and analyzed.
But even without all that information yet to come, at the end of an hour Detective Mayer and his two colleagues had formed what Mayer believed was a very strong theory about the cause of Sherry's death.
Starting with the stack of stereo equipment next to the door and the apparent theft of Sherry's expensive BMW car from the garage.
It looked to Detective Mayer like Sherry had been the victim of a burglary that had gone tragically wrong.
And two hours later, after questioning Sherry's husband John at the Van Nuys police station, Detective Mayer had not discovered any information that seemed to contradict that theory.
During his interview with the detective, John had been obviously upset over his wife's death, often breaking down in tears as he answered one question after another.
But over the course of the interview John was able to give the lead investigator, a 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, a complete account of John's last conversation with Sherry before John left for work that morning, and also a complete account of where and how John himself had spent the day.
And when John described exactly what he had done before leaving the house for work that morning, the detective was also sure he just figured out why there was no sign of forced entry at the crime scene.
According to John, while he had locked the door of the townhouse that led into the garage stairway, he had not checked the front door or armed the security system.
It now seemed likely to the detective that all the attacker or burglar had to do to get inside the townhouse was just turn the front doorknob and walk right inside.
And no, John told the detective, he and Sherry did not keep a gun in their house.
No, John had never and would never hurt Sherry.
No, they had no enemies.
And finally, absolutely no, there were no problems or issues with their marriage.
No disagreements about money, no ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends, no unexpected or unwanted visitors and no unusual calls, just a technical glitch that had caused their phone to ring, even though when he or Sherry answered, the line was always dead.
Crying.
John told the detective that he and Sherry had just celebrated their third-month anniversary of their marriage.
Meanwhile, as John's interview was wrapping up, back at Balboa Townhomes, the senior coroner was examining Sherry's body and John's parents were finishing the three-and-a-half-hour drive from their home in San Diego up to Van Nuys.
And by the time the coroner had ordered Sherry's body transported from her home to the county morgue for an autopsy, John and his parents were checking in to the local Travelodge motel.
At 1 am, almost seven hours after John had discovered Sherry's dead body inside of their townhouse.
John asked his father to call Sherry's family and tell them that Sherry had been murdered.
Indeed helps businesses find amazing talent faster during the busy summer hiring season.
When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need.
Stop struggling to get job posts noticed on other sites.
Indeed's sponsored jobs help businesses stand out and hire fast by jumping to the top of the page for relevant candidates.
According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed receive 45 more applications than non-sponsored jobs.
The results speak for themselves.
In just one minute, 23 hires are made on Indeed worldwide.
Plus, there are no monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts.
Businesses only pay for results.
There's no need to wait any longer.
Speed up hiring right now with Indeed.
Listeners will get a 75 sponsored job credit for increased job visibility at Indeedcom.
Slash WonderyUS.
Just visit Indeed.com slash WonderyUS and mention hearing about Indeed on this podcast.
Terms and conditions apply.
Hiring?
Indeed is all you need.
If you've used Babbel, you would.
Babbel's conversation-based techniques teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world.
With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers.
Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket.
Start speaking with Babbel today.
Get up to 55% off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash wandery.
Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash wandery.
Rules and restrictions may apply.
At Marisa's, we're all about great jeans.
You know, the ones that fit you just right.
The ones that simply make you feel good.
Because you don't just wear jeans, you live in them.
Find great jeans starting at $29.90 in stores and at marisas.com.
Hey listeners, big news for true crime lovers.
You can now enjoy this podcast ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime membership.
Listen to all episodes of my podcasts Mr Ballin's Medical Mysteries and Mr Ballin's Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories, along with a huge collection of top true crime podcasts, completely ad-free.
No more wading through cliffhangers or dealing with ads because, let's be honest, Ads shouldn't be the most nerve-wracking part of true crime.
To start your ad-free listening journey, download the Amazon Music app for free or head to amazoncom.
Slash ballin.
That's amazon.com slash b-a-l-l-e-n.
Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today.
At 1pm in the afternoon of April 10th 1986, so six and a half weeks after Sherry Rasmussen's murder, Detective Mayer got the break in his investigation that he'd been hoping for, the one that he was sure confirmed his theory that Sherry had been killed in the course of a robbery gone wrong.
It was also a break that Detective Mayer hoped would help him do what he'd so far failed to do, which was to make an arrest and close the books on this homicide.
Not that the lead investigator hadn't made significant progress since receiving that 911 call from Unit 205 on the night of Monday, February 24th.
Over the last 46 days, the police had gathered witness statements and done interviews that allowed the detective and his team to narrow the time of Sherry's murder to sometime between 730 and 10 in the morning.
Police had also been able to identify the type of gun that was used to fire the three shots that had actually ended Sherry's life, as well as shattered the door to the balcony, scattering the broken pieces of glass that John had seen in the driveway on the evening that he had discovered Sherry's body.
Police had also recovered Sherry's missing purse, apparently just thrown away not far from the murder scene, as well as her stolen silver BMW, which was found 11 days after the murder undamaged, with the keys in the ignition.
In addition to providing police with his alibi, John Rutten had agreed to take a lie detector test, and while he was too emotional for the results of that test to be conclusive, Detective Mayer felt comfortable crossing him off the suspect list.
The most frustrating part of the last six weeks had been the detective's interaction with Sherry's father, Nels Rasmussen, who had arrived in Van Nuys the day after Sherry's murder, accompanied by his wife and Sherry's two sisters.
Nels, a logger and woodsman turned successful dentist, was all about the questions he thought the detective had not asked.
Like, why had John and Sherry installed that security system in the first place?
What were they afraid of?
And why weren't detectives questioning John Rutten's ex-girlfriends?
And why weren't police following up on Sherry's complaints to Nels that she was being followed by someone?
And why couldn't John seem to recall any of these arguments he'd been having with his wife over money?
And over Sherry's conviction that someone was openly watching them?
The detective had been very happy when Nels and his family had left Los Angeles after just three days to head back to Tucson Arizona, where they would bury their daughter at a family-only service on March 2nd, just eight days after her death.
But now, one and a half months later, Detective Mayer wouldn't have minded having a quick conversation with Nels Rasmussen.
Because the police report that had just landed on the detective's desk looked like it answered every single one of Nels' loudly expressed doubts over Mayer's theory that burglars had killed his daughter.
The report detailed a robbery that had happened earlier that day, just two blocks from the townhouse where Sherry had been murdered one and a half months earlier.
Except this time, the woman who had surprised the robbers while they were in the act of ransacking her home.
She had not been killed or injured.
Instead of confronting her, the robbers had fled, leaving a stack of her expensive stereo equipment next to an exit door and driving off in a blue station wagon.
They'd parked at the curb.
Despite these differences in the two crimes, one ended in murder and the theft of a getaway vehicle, while the other did not.
Detective Mayer could almost hear the click in his mind as all the pieces of his burglar theory in the Sherry Rasmussen murder investigation fell into place.
And this time he had an eyewitness, a victim, who had been able to tell police what the intruders looked like.
By late afternoon, police had linked that recent burglary to Sherry's murder and they had released police sketches of two Hispanic men that were now considered likely suspects in both crimes.
But over the next few months, despite police detaining and questioning a handful of men and known criminals who matched those descriptions, Detective Mayer and his team were never able to identify and charge the robbers who broke into the condo near Sherry's house or pull in any other suspects who could be linked to the Sherry Rasmussen murder.
Instead, by the end of May, 86 days after Sherry's murder, the investigation into her death went cold.
Over the next 19 years, the case file of the Sherry Rasmussen murder would be reviewed three more times.
And in 1991, when Detective Mayer retired from the Los Angeles Police Department, the case would be handed over to a new lead investigator.
And during all those years, John Rutten would move on with his life.
He never went back to live in the townhouse he had shared with Sherry and, unlike Sherry's father, Nels John, rarely contacted police to offer any additional information, check in on the investigation or to urge police to try new leads in solving Sherry's murder.
In 1990, John took a trip to Hawaii, where he ran into an old college friend and the two of them enjoyed a short romantic holiday together before going their separate ways.
And by 1993, John had met and married the woman who would become his second wife.
It wasn't until February 2009, 23 years after Sherry's death, that Los Angeles homicide detectives would finally get the tip they needed to break the Sherry Rasmussen murder case wide open.
On Monday, February 2nd, the day after the 2009 Super Bowl football game, Detective Jim Nuttall found a box of files on murder investigations, called murder books, waiting for him on his desk when he arrived at work.
These were cases so old and so cold that his job was to review and organize them before sending them into deep storage.
The first book he pulled out of the box was the file on Sherry's 1986 murder.
But on what should have been a quick and final read-through of the case, the detective's attention was riveted by the results of a DNA test that had come back four years earlier, in 2005.
That DNA analysis, along with several other details of the crime scene, blew huge holes in the theory that Sherry's death had been a burglary gone wrong.
And before long.
Detective Nuttall, with the help of a new team of investigators, had a list of five new suspects in Sherry's murder.
And just three months later, investigators had narrowed that list to just one name.
On June 3rd 2009, a special surveillance unit of the Los Angeles police force was trailing this one suspect into a popular big box retail store called Costco, located in Simi Valley, the same area where Sherry and her husband John, had gone to the movies together on the night before Sherry was killed.
Like so many other shoppers at Costco, their Target had stopped at the store's outdoor food court for lunch.
The team watched as their Target drank from a straw stuck into a cup of soda.
And when their Target had finished eating and tossed that cup of soda into a trash can on the way out of the food court, It was only a matter of seconds before the team had whisked the cup and the straw with its precious load of their suspect's saliva and DNA into a manila envelope, returned to their vehicles out in the parking lot and driven south to hand deliver the package to the Los Angeles Police Department Special Investigations Division.
Two days later, on Friday, June 5th, police brought that suspect in for questioning.
What they would discover over the course of a four-hour interrogation, coupled with new DNA tests and a review of the old murder book on Sherry Rasmussen, would send shockwaves throughout the city of Los Angeles.
Based on those findings, here is a reconstruction of what police believe happened on the day that Sherry Rasmussen was murdered, over 23 years earlier.
Monday, February 24th, 1986, was a beautiful winter day in Van Nuys, California.
By 7.30 in the morning, the temperature was on its way up from cool to warm without being hot.
The sky was clear and the air was still.
But standing outside the Balboa Boulevard townhouses, Sherry's killer hardly noticed the nice weather.
They were too busy watching for John Rutten's car to leave the gated complex, so they could get busy with that morning's work.
And sure enough, a few minutes before 730 there was the maroon Mazda easing out onto Balboa Boulevard and about to turn north for the 30 minutes drive to John's office.
To the killer.
The daily routines of this newly married couple were as familiar as the killer's own routines.
After all, the killer had been spending months watching them, especially after finding out about their engagement back in May of 1984.
Even before that though, the killer had begun to keep careful notes about where and when the killer had observed either John or Sherry, including the visits the killer had made to their townhouse, the restaurants where the killer had watched them together, and the gym where Sherry went to take aerobics classes.
Sherry's killer even took pleasure in knowing that Sherry was aware that she was being watched and that Sherry so obviously disliked the killer, especially after their confrontation at Sherry's place of work back in August of 1985, three months after the couple's engagement.
But as of today, Sherry's killer was done watching.
Padding their pocket, the killer felt the weight and shape of the 38 caliber revolver with the short barrel, along with the length of cord the killer could use to tie Sherry's hands or feet.
As for getting into Unit 205, that should be easy.
Even if the doors were locked, it would not be the first time that the killer had let themselves in using the keypad.
And a few minutes later, before Sherry was supposed to leave for work, the killer, silent as a ghost, was standing inside the living room.
After taking a moment to get their bearings, the killer crossed the tile and carpet to walk up the short flight of stairs to the next level, where the dining room, kitchen and small breakfast room were located.
And that is where Sherry, walking down from her bedroom, dressed in her short red robe underwear, top and black panties, found her attacker.
And that is where Sherry began to fight for her life.
The murderer's first two gunshots missed their target and, instead of hitting Sherry, they passed through a curtain and shattered the sliding glass door leading out to the patio.
As soon as the killer had raised the weapon, Sherry had turned and made a run for the stairs leading down to the living room and to the panic button that was located in the alarm panel next to the front door.
But Sherry's killer was strong and fast and before Sherry could make it to the door, the killer was on her.
Everything about the crime scene, along with the medical examiner's autopsy report, would testify to just how close Sherry would come to disarming and possibly defeating her attacker.
In the struggle that followed, the entertainment wall unit collapsed.
The phone fell to the floor, wires were ripped out of sockets, lamps fell over and crime scene techs would find two of Sherry's torn fingernails on the floor near the security panel, along with a single bloody handprint where Sherry had come so close to hitting the alarm.
At some point.
Police believe that Sherry actually managed to get control of the murderer's gun and put her attacker into a headlock.
It was at that point that the killer bit the inside of Sherry's left forearm to break free and then grabbed hold of a nearby ceramic vase that the killer brought down with all their force onto Sherry's forehead.
Stunned, Sherry crumpled to the floor.
Regaining control of the gun, the killer leaned down and pressed the weapon directly into Sherry's chest and fired the first of three shots.
Then the killer paused long enough to grab a quilt from off a nearby chair, wrap the thick blanket around the muzzle of the gun to deaden the sound, aim the weapon again at Sherry's chest and fire two more shots.
At some point in the struggle.
Ligature marks on Sherry's arms, just above the wrists, indicated that she had been tied with a cord that was left at the scene of the crime.
Her hands, head, and neck would be covered with defensive wounds, bruises, cuts, and scratches.
But the most severe damage to Sherry's face the damage that would be so upsetting to John Rutten that he would cover his wife's face with a hand towel after calling 911 had been caused by blunt trauma, not just from being struck with the face, but by being struck at least twice in the face with the butt of a gun.
When the killer was sure that Sherry was dead, they stood for a moment over her body, letting their breathing return to normal.
Then the killer looked around the room taking in the damage, remembering the three roses in a vase on the dining room table on the next level and planning how to arrange everything in the townhouse.
So it would appear to police that Sherry had been killed in a robbery gone wrong.
It didn't take much work.
All the killer had to do was knock over a few more small items of furniture, pull the drawer out of an end table and put the stereo equipment in a stack by the door.
Then the killer rifled through Sherry's belongings until they found her purse with her wallet and her marriage license inside, as well as the keys to her silver BMW.
As the killer left the living room to walk down the stairs into the garage, they left small flecks of Sherry's blood on the wall.
What the killer did not realize was that they had also left one of their own bloody fingerprints on the stack of stereo equipment next to the townhouse door, as well as a sample of their saliva embedded in the bite wound on Sherry's left arm.
A few minutes later and the killer had slid behind the driver's wheel of Sherry's engagement car, turned on the engine and backed out the driveway.
The killer left the garage door open as they drove out of the Balboa townhouse complex.
Three years later, the killer would finally meet up again with Sherry's widower, John Rutten, on a vacation in Hawaii.
But a relationship that the killer had hoped would end in love and marriage would only last for a few days.
And then John would go back to his new home in San Diego and meet a new woman who would eventually become his second wife.
Just as John had left the killer once before, years ago, for the beautiful and radiant Sherry Rasmussen.
After kissing John goodbye.
In Hawaii.
Sherry's killer, best known to John as the on-again-off-again sexual partner he had met back in college, packed her bags and headed home to Los Angeles.
And once there, Sherry's killer, up-and-coming Los Angeles Police Department detective Stephanie Lazarus, did her best to put both John, a man she had loved obsessively since 1978, and Sherry, the romantic rival she had gunned down on February 23rd 1986, out of her mind.
It would turn out that all of Sherry Rasmussen's fears about being followed were true.
But as far as Sherry was concerned, from the very beginning there had been very little doubt about who that stalker was and why this woman was harassing Sherry.
Because back in June of 1985, just weeks after Sherry and John had announced their engagement, Sherry had gotten a visit from an off-duty police officer named Stephanie Lazarus, who told Sherry point blank quote if I can't have John, you can't either.
End quote.
Stephanie, who had shown up in Sherry's office at work dressed in very tight short shorts and a tank top that showed off her very fit body, then went on to tell Sherry that Stephanie and John, who had met 15 years earlier at the University of California in Los Angeles, were still having sex with one another and that if Sherry's marriage failed, Stephanie would be right there to pick up the pieces.
And when Sherry confronted John about this visit from Stephanie and what Stephanie had told her, John confessed that it was true that, after finding out about his engagement to Sherry, Stephanie had called John in tears and asked him to come visit and comfort her.
John had agreed, and he also agreed to have what he described to Sherry as quote closure sex with Stephanie.
John also insisted that Stephanie might think she was his girlfriend, but as far as John was concerned they were just more like sex buddies.
John promised Sherry he would end things with Stephanie.
But instead of contacting Stephanie directly and making it clear to her that he was not ever interested in a romantic relationship, John just cut off all communication on his end without telling Stephanie why.
Meanwhile stephanie, somehow bypassing the townhouse security system, started to show up at john and sherry's unit, dropping off skis for john to wax or popping in to say hi to john.
When sherry objected to this, john refused to take any action.
Instead, he told his wife to quote just let this die end.
Quote By the time Sherry and John were celebrating their three-month wedding anniversary on Sunday, February 23rd, Sherry's father Nels, had the impression that Sherry was so frustrated and unhappy that she had decided to take steps of her own to resolve the situation with John's ex-girlfriend, a woman who she had only described to Nels as a cop with the Los Angeles Police Department.
Sherry could have no way of knowing that Stephanie had also decided to resolve the situation.
And on the morning of the following day, Monday February 24th, Stephanie Lazarus would accomplish that by murdering her ex-boyfriend's wife and making the crime look like a robbery gone wrong.
But if sherry expected that she would become the next mrs rootin, she was wrong.
John would meet up with stephanie for a fling in hawaii, but other than that, their relationship ended with sherry's death.
Still, it wasn't until 2005, 19 years after the murder, that stephanie's perfect cover-up of that murder started to unravel.
That's when investigators who were reviewing the case happened to stumble across a piece of evidence that had apparently been misplaced the swab taken from the bite wound on Sherry's arm.
Using DNA tests that had not been available in 1986, investigators discovered that the DNA on that swab showed that Sherry's killer was a female.
But when the DNA profile did not match any known offenders in the National DNA Database, police once again closed the investigation.
It wouldn't be until February 2009, four years later, that Detective Jim Nuttall would review the Sherry Rasmussen murder book and understand the real significance of that DNA finding.
If Sherry's killer was a single female, then the original theory about the murderer being two male suspects was wrong.
There was also a picture of a bloody fingerprint on the stack of stereo equipment found by the door of Sherry's living room, suggesting that the equipment had been stacked after and not before the murder had happened.
And just like that, Nels Rasmussen's unshakable conviction that his daughter's killer was one of John's ex-girlfriends suddenly looked very likely.
And going back almost 23 years, Nels had already put a name to that girlfriend.
LAPD Detective Stephanie Lazarus.
And by June of 2009, Stephanie Lazarus was number one on Detective Nuttall's suspect list too.
As he took a closer look at one of LAPD's star detectives now assigned to art theft detail, the circumstantial evidence kept mounting up.
On the day of Sherry's murder, Stephanie had taken the day off and the weapon used to kill Sherry matched the description of a gun that Stephanie would report stolen 10 days after the murder.
There were also the irregularities that the detective had discovered in the case file itself.
Like someone with police-level access to the murder book had removed any reports or paperwork that contained Stephanie's name, including the handwritten notes and chronology that detailed the entire first three months of the Rasmussen investigation.
On June 3rd, a surveillance unit that had been following Officer Lazarus collected a DNA sample from a cup Stephanie had thrown away while eating lunch at Costco.
And two days later, the DNA analysis of that saliva would prove to be a match to the DNA of the killer who had bitten Sherry's inner arm.
Stephanie's DNA would also match tissue collected from under Sherry's broken fingernails.
On June 5th 2009, Stephanie Lazarus was arrested at the Los Angeles police headquarters and charged with the 1986 murder of Sherry Rasmussen.
When police searched Stephanie's house shortly after the arrest, they would find a 600-page long journal that included passages detailing Stephanie's relationship with John and how closely she had watched John and Sherry.
Police would also find a well-worn picture, taken back in 1979, of John sleeping in his dorm room at college.
On the back in Stephanie's handwriting was this inscription quote I snuck in at 1am and took this photo.
End quote.
In 2012, three years after her arrest, Stephanie Lazarus would be found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Sherry Rasmussen, and she would be sentenced to 27 years to life in prison.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast.
If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please offer to make coffee for the Amazon Music Follow button, but brew it with hot dog water.
This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning, but in the meantime you can always watch one of the hundreds of stories we have posted on our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr Ballin.
Consider donating to our charity.
It's called the Mr Ballin Foundation and it provides support to victims of violent crime, as well as their families.
Monthly donors to the Mr Ballin Foundation, Honor Them Society will receive free gifts and exclusive invites to special live events.
Go to mrballin.foundation and click Get Involved to join the Honor Them Society today.
So that's going to do it.
I really appreciate your support.
Until next time, see ya.
Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free, on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today.
And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wonderycom slash survey.
