A parole panel denied Stephanie Lazarus parole again in the 1986 killing of Sherri Rasmussen.

Friday's denial is a suitability finding on a conviction that is already final. Lazarus was sentenced in 2012 to 27 years to life for the Feb. 24, 1986 killing of Sherri Rasmussen. A panel recommended parole in November 2023, and that grant was rescinded in October 2024 after Gov. Gavin Newsom raised concerns. Another panel denied her in February 2025. Friday's panel said it did not see much movement from that hearing.

NBC Los Angeles and Patch, both carrying a City News Service account, reported that a state parole board panel denied parole again on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, to Stephanie Lazarus, a former Los Angeles Police Department detective. The hearing ran through portions of four hours, and the two-member panel deliberated more than 45 minutes. Commissioner Michael Ruff said Lazarus was "still choosing not to be completely honest with this panel." Deputy Commissioner Nga Lam said the panel "did not see a lot of movement" from a hearing last year in which she was denied parole, and told her, "Push the re-set button ... Start with the truth. End with the truth," and "Show us you've really changed." Lam said there was "overwhelming evidence" the murder was premeditated and told Lazarus, "You were a detective who got away with murder for 23 years." A commissioner noted she had been "sworn to uphold the law," that she "chose to break the law," and that she committed a "brutal crime." The denial is for three years. She can request an earlier hearing.

In her final statement, Lazarus said she had broken her oath as a police officer when she "atrociously murdered Sherri" and took away her future, NBC Los Angeles reported. "I am truly and immensely sorry," she said from the California Institution for Women in Corona, where she is 66. Rasmussen's husband, John Ruetten, who has since remarried, opposed release. He said Lazarus used her police training and concealed the crime while knowing husbands are prime suspects, and that her decision to plead not guilty and go to trial added to the family's suffering. He said she was saying what she thought the commissioners wanted to hear, urged them to weigh her "uncanny ability to fool people," and said, "She waited way too long to admit her guilt," referring to an admission at her 2023 hearing. Greg Stearns, a lead detective on the case, and Paul Nunez, a prosecutor at the trial, also opposed parole, NBC Los Angeles reported. Those statements are arguments to a parole panel. They are not a retrial.

The conviction underneath the hearing is from March 2012. Lazarus, a 25-year LAPD veteran who worked as an art theft investigator, was sentenced to 27 years to life for killing Rasmussen, who was shot three times on Feb. 24, 1986, in the Balboa Boulevard condominium in Van Nuys that she shared with Ruetten, NBC Los Angeles reported. Rasmussen had married Ruetten, Lazarus's former romantic interest, three months earlier. Lazarus first admitted the killing at a parole hearing in 2023. A different panel recommended parole that November. The recommendation was rescinded in October 2024 after Newsom expressed concerns. In February 2025, Commissioner Kevin Chappell found her unsuitable and said her account of the attack "does not match up with the evidence used to convict you." He said she had described a "fight" and had to be corrected because "you were the only one engaging in this extreme act of violence." Last year's denial was for three years, and she was given this earlier hearing.

NBC Los Angeles reported she was arrested in June 2009 at LAPD headquarters by Robbery-Homicide Division detectives, after DNA from a bite mark on Rasmussen's left forearm was matched to her. Detectives had collected a drink cup and straw she threw away outside a Costco in May 2009. Rasmussen's father, Nels, had asked police to look at Lazarus shortly after the killing. She had been an officer for about two years then. The case stayed cold until 2004, when the Cold Case Unit asked the coroner's office for a bite-mark tissue sample that had been in a freezer since 1986, according to the 2015 ruling of a three-justice panel of California's 2nd District Court of Appeal that upheld the conviction, as NBC Los Angeles described it. That opinion said her DNA profile "precisely matched the profile of the person who bit Rasmussen shortly before her death," and that she had a "compelling motive" because Ruetten had dropped her and she had confronted Rasmussen at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, where the 29-year-old nursing supervisor worked. Associate Justice Nora Manella wrote that motive, circumstantial evidence, and the DNA "provided convincing evidence" of guilt. The California Supreme Court refused in October 2015 to review the case. After the verdict, then-Chief Charlie Beck called it "a tragedy on every level" and apologized for how long it took to "solve this case and bring a measure of justice to this tragedy." All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.