Matthew McGough - The Lazarus Files: A Cold Case Investigation

Sherri Rasmussen, a twenty-nine-year-old hospital nurse, was just one of 831 people murdered in Los Angeles in 1986.

Sherris husband, John Ruetten, came home from work at six p.m. on Monday, February 24, and discovered her lifeless body. Sherri and John had been married for only three months. The young newlyweds lived in the Balboa Townhomes, a well-kept but nondescript condominium complex in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles.

Van Nuys was a middle-class community in the heart of the San Fernando Valley. As late as the 1940s, Van Nuys was mostly sunbaked farmland. After World War II, its orange and walnut groves were uprooted for vast tracts of single family homes. Practically overnight, the character of Van Nuys changed from rustic to suburban. Major companies like General Motors and Anheuser-Busch built massive plants in Van Nuys that employed thousands. Prosperity fueled more development, until few traces remained of the once bucolic landscape. The streetscape that supplanted it was flat and unglamorous, with broad boulevards lined by all manner of businesses. The 1970s brought more change to Van Nuys. Many single family homes were torn down and replaced by higher-density apartment buildings. Violent crime increased. From 1970 to 1975, the LAPDs Van Nuys Division averaged about a dozen homicides per year. Over the next five years, the Van Nuys murder rate doubled.

The Balboa Townhomes, built in 1980, were well secured compared to other residences nearby. A six-foot wall surrounded the entire condo complex, which spanned the 7100 block of Balboa Boulevard, a major northsouth thoroughfare through the Valley. The only gaps in the wall were a locked pedestrian gate, which opened by key or from inside by buzzer, and an electric car gate. Past the car gate was a paved interior driveway bordered on each side by rows of three-story condos.

John sensed that something was wrong as he pulled up in his car that night. Their units garage door was open, which was highly unusual, and no cars were parked inside. John knew Sherri had called in sick to work that morning, so there was no reason for her car to be gone. The pavement in front of the garage door was strewn with broken glass. To John it looked like auto glass. It reminded him of a minor driving mishap Sherri had a few months before, when she clipped her car while backing out of the garage. John wondered if she might have done something similar, like broken her taillight or side mirror. John figured maybe she took her car to get fixed and forgot to close the garage.

John and Sherri had had a burglar alarm system installed just two months earlier. They typically armed the alarm only when they were both out, and before they went to sleep. When John left for work at 7:20 that morning, Sherri was still in bed. John had not thought to set the alarm, or to make sure that their front door was locked. The front door unlocked automatically when opened from inside. If they didnt manually lock the door afterward, it remained unlocked. John and Sherri rarely used the front door, mostly only to let the cat in or out, or when they had guests. Their friends tended to use it because it was closest to the condos visitor parking.

Sherris younger sister, Teresa, and her husband, Brian, had visited with Sherri and John the day before, a Sunday. Teresa was five months pregnant with her and Brians first child. During the visit, Sherri gave her a present, a maternity bathing suit and swim cap she bought to encourage Teresa to exercise during her pregnancy. Sherri, Teresa, and Brian also took a drive in Sherris BMW to a pet store to look at saltwater aquariums. Sherris car was stylish and still new. She let Brian drive. Sherri and John had bought the BMW 318i for Sherri nine months earlier, the same weekend they got engaged, in lieu of a diamond ring. Sherri decided having a car was more practical. After Teresa and Brian went home, a friend of Johns, Mike, also visited John and Sherri at home.

On his way to work the next morning, John dropped off some clothes at the dry cleaners. He arrived at his office at about ten minutes to eight. John had started work about six weeks earlier as an engineer at a company named Micropolis, which made computer disk drives. Around 10:00 a.m., he called home, to see how Sherri was feeling, but got no answer. A little later, he tried again. The phone rang and rang. John then called the hospital and spoke with Sherris secretary, Sylvia. Sylvia told him that Sherri was out of the office, teaching a class. Unbeknownst to John, Sherris sister Teresa also tried calling her at home and left a message on the answering machine. Sherri did not return the calls. John finished work around five oclock. On his way home, he ran a few errands, stopping to collect their dry cleaning plus a package at the UPS store.

John drove past the broken glass and parked in his usual spot in the garage. He took the dry cleaning and started up the short staircase inside the condo. Johns unease deepened when saw that the door at the top of the stairs was wide open. He was certain he had closed and locked that door when he left that morning. As John walked upstairs, he did not see that the wall alongside him was flecked with bloodstains.

The stairs up from their garage opened onto a tiled entryway near the front door. John saw Sherri lying in the middle of their living room, which was in disarray. A shelf of their entertainment wall unit had collapsed. A corded telephone and pieces from a broken vase were strewn on the carpet around her. A drawer from a nearby end table had been pulled out and its contents dumped in a heap. In the entryway, right at Johns feet, two video components were stacked on the floor. John stepped past them into the living room, where, amid the detritus, Sherri lay motionless on her back.

Sherri was dressed in a short rust-colored robe, which she wore over a sleeveless undershirt and panties. Her right arm appeared frozen in place, with her hand raised to the ceiling. Her left hand, with its wedding ring, rested on her chest.

John couldnt understand why Sherri would be on the floor. He wanted to believe she was sleeping. He draped the dry cleaning across the back of their living room sofa and approached her body with trepidation.

I hope shes okay, John thought. But one look told John that she was not. Sherris face was badly bruised, and her complexion the wrong color. Her left eye was open and unblinking. Her right eye was swollen shut and crusted with blood. More blood was smeared across her forehead. Sherris lips were parted slightly, as if in midgasp.

Tentatively, John touched his wifes calf. Her leg felt stiff and cold. John tried to find a pulse and couldnt. But it was her face, so beautiful just that morning, that most unnerved him. He could tell from her eyes that she was gone. Sherris facial injuries were so disturbing to John that he did not notice the three gunshot wounds in her chest, or the bite mark on the inside of her left forearm.