The Megyn Kelly Show - Fatal Attraction： Nineteen Years in a Freezer — Ep. 2 ｜ MK Confidential

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00:01:11.680 In the fall of 2004, a fledgling criminalist named Jennifer Francis gets to pick her next case 0.92

00:01:19.360 from a stack on a colleague's desk.

00:01:22.640 She has just been cleared to perform DNA analysis on her own.

00:01:27.000 The stack holds DNA requests from detectives all over the Los Angeles Police Department.

00:01:32.840 Jennifer is the newest analyst in the unit and the only one without a backlog.

00:01:38.040 She goes through the stack looking for something simple.

00:01:41.240 She finds a request on a 1986 murder in Van Nuys, a nurse.

00:01:46.940 The detective who submitted it wrote that the victim's blood type was O

00:01:50.500 and that type A blood had been recovered inside her home,

00:01:55.000 blood that could not have been hers.

00:01:57.360 Jennifer reads that and thinks, this one is easy.

00:02:00.360 Pick a type A stain, pull the suspect's profile,

00:02:03.900 run it against the national database, compare it to the victim, close the file.

00:02:08.180 She takes the Sherry Rasmussen case.

00:02:11.100 The request Jennifer picked up has been waiting for more than a year.

00:02:16.100 Cliff Shepard, a cold case detective, submitted it on September 19, 2003, 17 years after the murder.

00:02:25.260 Shepard works in a unit the LAPD created in 2001 to go back through murders the city never solved, between 6,000 and 9,000 of them.

00:02:35.760 Detectives spent a year just cutting that list down to the ones that still had evidence someone could test.

00:02:42.400 Sherry Rasmussen's case made that list because of one line in a report from 1986.

00:02:49.380 Years later, Detective Shepard pointed it out to Dateline.

00:02:52.740 I saw that a bite swab had been collected by the coroner's office.

00:02:58.080 I said, okay, with that swab, there should be a DNA.

00:03:02.520 Shepard attached two documents to his request.

00:03:06.000 Detective Lyle Mayer's follow-up report from 1986

00:03:09.600 and the property log,

00:03:12.260 meaning every item the LAPD booked into evidence in Sherry's case.

00:03:17.440 The property log contains 29 items.

00:03:20.840 The bite mark swab is not one of them.

00:03:24.200 So Cliff Shepard goes looking.

00:03:26.360 The coroner's office tells him they do not have it.

00:03:29.240 I checked with our evidence room.

00:03:31.800 They didn't have it.

00:03:32.500 I looked at our property reports, it's not booked.

00:03:36.960 How could that happen?

00:03:38.300 Incompetence.

00:03:39.360 That happened a lot?

00:03:40.300 Yes.

00:03:41.380 In 2003, Shepard takes a yellow highlighter to the sentence in Mayer's report describing the bite swab

00:03:48.180 and writes a note in the margin asking where it is.

00:03:53.120 It is that handwritten note that newbie criminalist Jennifer Francis finds

00:03:58.080 when she picks up the Sherry Rasmussen case for DNA analysis

00:04:01.900 and reads Shepard's request.

00:04:05.140 Jennifer calls Shepard herself

00:04:06.580 and asks whether she can see some crime scene photographs.

00:04:10.600 It's a normal request.

00:04:12.300 Shepard offers her the murder book instead.

00:04:15.540 This is not normal.

00:04:17.560 A murder book is the complete case file.

00:04:20.500 There is only that one binder.

00:04:22.680 It's irreplaceable.

00:04:24.460 Detectives usually stay while an analyst reads it

00:04:27.160 and then take it back.

00:04:28.780 But Shepard tells Jennifer to keep it

00:04:30.740 As long as she needs. A few days later, she comes back from lunch, and it is sitting on the center

00:04:37.100 table of the lab. A blue three-ring binder. Jennifer shows a co-worker. Check it out, she says.

00:04:44.140 A real-life murder book. Then she starts reading it. Inside, Jennifer finds a security report from

00:04:51.520 Glendale Adventist Medical Center, the hospital where Sherry Rasmussen worked. It describes a

00:04:58.060 nurse, Sherry turned down for a promotion. It says the hospital disciplined that nurse and her

00:05:04.140 boyfriend too, a doctor, after they made harassing phone calls to Sherry. By December 22nd, 2004,

00:05:12.120 Jennifer has finished testing the items Shepard submitted for DNA analysis. Every sample comes

00:05:18.940 back as belonging to Sherry Rasmussen. Three weeks of work and all Jennifer has is the DNA profile

00:05:26.260 of a woman everyone already knows is dead.

00:05:30.780 Frustrated, she thinks about the bite mark

00:05:32.820 she has seen mentioned in this murder book,

00:05:35.640 but not in the case's property log.

00:05:38.200 If any evidence in this case carries the killer's DNA,

00:05:41.180 it is that swab.

00:05:43.040 People do not bite themselves.

00:05:45.580 Jennifer goes back to LAPD property,

00:05:48.240 which contains the 29 items listed on the log,

00:05:51.380 and checks out the sexual assault kit from 1986.

00:05:54.940 There are swabs and slides inside, but not one is labeled bite mark.

00:06:02.700 Tracking down evidence is a detective's job.

00:06:06.060 Frances is a civilian scientist with no contacts at the coroner's office,

00:06:10.500 but she calls anyway because that's where evidence like this might be.

00:06:15.820 A woman answers.

00:06:17.460 Jennifer introduces herself, says she's calling from the LAPD crime lab,

00:06:22.200 and reads off the coroner's case number.

00:06:24.700 She is looking for a bite mark swab.

00:06:28.000 The woman puts her on hold.

00:06:29.960 Ten seconds later, she comes back on and says,

00:06:32.540 there is no evidence booked under that number.

00:06:35.880 Jennifer hangs up, wondering whether the woman typed a digit wrong.

00:06:40.120 She calls the coroner's office again the next day, hoping someone else picks up.

00:06:45.260 A man answers and tells her the same thing.

00:06:48.560 Nothing here.

00:06:50.180 Jennifer considers calling a third time,

00:06:52.960 hoping to reach someone who remembers how evidence was stored

00:06:55.720 before everything went into a computer.

00:06:59.200 One of the other criminalists tells her to stop.

00:07:02.420 You're done, she says. 1.00

00:07:04.100 You don't want to get the reputation of being a pain in the ass. 1.00

00:07:07.080 You're brand new at this. You've already called twice. 1.00

00:07:09.980 Jennifer knows she's probably right.

00:07:13.060 So she goes back to Mayer's 1986 report and reads it one more time,

00:07:17.960 looking for anything she's missed.

00:07:20.940 And she finds a name.

00:07:23.540 The man from the coroner's office

00:07:25.420 who collected the swab in the first place.

00:07:28.860 Senior criminalist Lloyd Mahaney.

00:07:32.640 Jennifer does the math.

00:07:34.360 Almost 19 years.

00:07:36.860 What are the odds this man is still on the job?

00:07:40.320 She calls the coroner's office

00:07:41.760 and asks for Lloyd Mahaney by name.

00:07:45.260 He picks up.

00:07:46.900 Jennifer asks him one question.

00:07:50.020 If you swabbed a bite mark in 1986, what would you have called it?

00:07:55.740 Mahaney says, bite mark swab.

00:07:59.000 Jennifer tells him nobody can find it.

00:08:01.900 The coroner's office says they don't have it, and neither does the LAPD.

00:08:06.600 Mahaney is not surprised.

00:08:08.700 When the coroner's office moved to computers, some of the old cases never made it in.

00:08:14.140 To find something from 1986, you would have to pull the coroner's evidence log on microfiche.

00:08:21.500 It would be a big job, and Mahaney is leaving on vacation.

00:08:26.260 Then Lloyd Mahaney tells her this.

00:08:29.020 We would never get rid of a bite mark swab.

00:08:32.420 We don't keep clothing forever, but a bite mark swab?

00:08:35.920 We would not throw that away.

00:08:38.420 Jennifer tells him there's no rush.

00:08:40.760 Just see if he can find it when he gets back.

00:08:43.380 Before they hang up, she says one more thing.

00:08:46.900 Don't forget about me, Lloyd.

00:08:49.440 Lloyd Mahaney sealed that envelope at six minutes past two in the morning

00:08:54.360 on February 25th, 1986, and sent it downstairs into a freezer.

00:09:01.080 The bite-mark swab has been there ever since, almost 19 years.

00:09:06.860 It isn't gone.

00:09:08.380 It is still there somewhere, but no one can find it.

00:09:12.740 I'm Megan Kelly, and this is MK Confidential.

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00:10:31.640 in the description. Let's go back to 1986 and what the LA Police Department was doing while

00:10:38.820 that envelope sat untouched in the coroner's freezer. It is April 10th, seven weeks after

00:10:45.280 Sherry Rasmussen was killed. Two blocks from Sherry's condo, a woman named Lisa Revali comes

00:10:52.360 home to find two men inside her apartment. One runs past her and out the door. The other points 0.99

00:10:58.140 a gun at her, backs away, and disappears out the door. Detective Lyle Mayer hears about it the next

00:11:04.560 morning. Revali walks him through her place. It is laid out almost exactly like Sherry's and the

00:11:10.820 burglars had stacked her stereo equipment by the door. To Mayer, the resemblance is enough.

00:11:16.880 He connects the two cases. Years later, retired LAPD homicide detective Rob Bubb tells Dateline

00:11:23.860 why it was not a stretch to call the two cases related. No, not at all. Not with the proximity,

00:11:29.340 the time of day, and basically the same M.O.

00:11:33.760 Mayer calls a press conference and brings composite sketches of two men.

00:11:38.240 We have obtained fingerprints in the crimes.

00:11:44.900 We are of the opinion at this point that the suspects may be illegal aliens.

00:11:51.140 Nobody is ever charged in the burglary from April 10th.

00:11:54.440 Mayer would say years later that his detectives arrested around 20 people

00:11:58.920 and ran every one of their fingerprints against the crime scene.

00:12:03.320 None of them matched.

00:12:05.380 On April 7th, 1987, one year and six weeks after Sherry's murder,

00:12:11.400 Lyle Mayer files a progress report on the Rasmussen investigation.

00:12:16.180 Its conclusion is one sentence.

00:12:19.060 No additional leads have developed in this case.

00:12:23.100 In Tucson, Sherry's parents, Nels and Loretta Rasmussen, keep pushing.

00:12:28.980 In October 1986, they put up a $10,000 reward and fly to Los Angeles for a press conference.

00:12:36.260 The LA Times runs Sherry's photograph beside composite sketches of the two men police believe killed her.

00:12:42.940 Local radio picks it up, so does the evening news.

00:12:45.960 A year later, in November 1987, Nels and Loretta do it again.

00:12:52.020 Another press conference, another round of coverage.

00:12:55.300 The reward leads nowhere.

00:12:58.200 Loretta telephones the Van Nuys detectives many times over the years.

00:13:02.900 The calls are brief, and she often comes away feeling like the detectives just want her off the phone.

00:13:08.500 In August 1990, Nels writes to the television program America's Most Wanted.

00:13:14.820 Quote,

00:13:15.060 quote, we feel this case has not been thoroughly investigated and we would appreciate any help in

00:13:20.220 this matter, unquote. The letter produces nothing. Nels keeps going anyway. Years later, Connie

00:13:27.460 remembers to NBC how relentless her father became. As a father, he had felt a responsibility to

00:13:34.600 protect her. And the only way that in her death he could protect her was to find out who killed

00:13:40.500 He would constantly re-dissect the, you know, the information that we knew.

00:13:46.620 In 1991, Lyle Mayer retires from the L.A. Police Department,

00:13:51.160 and Sherry's case passes to whoever is running the homicide desk in Vinay's.

00:13:56.460 Around 1992, Sherry's longtime friend, Donna Robison,

00:14:01.180 tells the family she has a relative who can arrange an exciting new analysis called DNA testing.

00:14:08.400 Sometime in 1992 or 1993, Nels and Loretta fly to Los Angeles with their daughter, Connie,

00:14:15.140 and drive to Van Nuys Station to ask the LAPD about DNA tests of the evidence in Sherry's case.

00:14:22.960 The Rasmussons remember it this way.

00:14:25.700 Nels goes in and asks the officer at the front desk where they should park.

00:14:30.360 Anywhere on the street outside, the officer says.

00:14:33.640 Loretta had called ahead and made an appointment.

00:14:36.580 Upstairs, the three of them are put in a small room and left there.

00:14:40.520 It looks like the kind of room where police interview suspects.

00:14:44.240 They wait for more than an hour.

00:14:46.620 They had expected to meet with Lyle Mayer.

00:14:49.460 Instead, the detective who finally comes in is someone they have never seen before.

00:14:54.260 His name is Steve Fisk.

00:14:56.440 Mayer has retired, Fisk tells them, and he has taken over Sherry's case.

00:15:02.420 Fisk sets a thin folder on the table between them.

00:15:05.040 it stays closed. He never opens it and never takes a note. Connie looks at that folder and

00:15:13.080 thinks, if the LAPD were working my sister's case, it would be thicker than that. What do you want to

00:15:19.920 know? He asks. The family asks about the fingerprints from Sherry's case. Have they been

00:15:25.680 run through the FBI database? Fisk tells them they're still working on it. By this time, Sherry

00:15:32.800 has been dead more than six years. Fisk tells them it is a cold case with no leads and that if

00:15:39.920 anything changes, he'll let them know. Then Nels asks him a question. Have you run the DNA? Fisk

00:15:47.360 tells him DNA testing is expensive and that the LAPD's budget cannot cover it in Sherry's case.

00:15:54.220 Nels says, fine, I'll pay for it. I even have a person who would do it. Fisk tells him that would

00:15:59.680 do no good. They have no suspect, and he says they need one before they can run DNA. The

00:16:06.060 detective asks whether Nels is still suspicious of John Rutten. Nels says he does not believe

00:16:12.980 his son-in-law killed Sherry. However, he does believe John knows something, that he's

00:16:19.240 holding back something. Nels points to the closed folder on the interrogation room table

00:16:25.420 and tells Fisk that what matters is already in there,

00:16:29.160 in the LAPD's own records.

00:16:31.920 Fisk does not even look at it.

00:16:35.140 Connie gets the distinct sense

00:16:36.620 that he wants her and her family to leave.

00:16:39.660 After less than an hour, they do.

00:16:41.960 They did meet with us,

00:16:43.640 but it was also more of a, it was like a show.

00:16:46.740 They walk out of the Van Nuys police station

00:16:48.680 to find a parking ticket on their windshield.

00:16:52.260 Nels goes back inside and says

00:16:53.720 the police told him to park there.

00:16:56.280 He is met with an instruction

00:16:57.460 that he will have to pay it anyway.

00:17:00.860 After meeting with Fisk,

00:17:02.880 the Rasmussons call Sherry's friend Donna

00:17:04.980 and tell her the police turned down Nels' offer

00:17:07.820 to pay for DNA testing.

00:17:10.100 Donna's memory is the only record outside of the family

00:17:13.420 that the conversation with LAPD ever happened at all.

00:17:18.340 There is no reference to the meeting

00:17:20.060 in the LAPD murder book.

00:17:23.060 The next entries in the case log come in October 1993,

00:17:27.740 when detectives run latent or barely visible fingerprints

00:17:30.720 from the crime scene against databases in California and other western states.

00:17:36.480 No hits.

00:17:37.680 They also pull lists of nearby police interactions

00:17:40.420 and state prison parolees from around the time Sherry was murdered.

00:17:44.440 These, too, will come up empty.

00:17:46.480 Then, on October 11th, a detective named Phil Morritt

00:17:49.900 goes to the L.A. County Coroner's Office

00:17:52.160 and signs out the trace or transfer evidence from Sherry's case.

00:17:57.220 This is the evidence that the coroner's criminalist, Lloyd Mahaney, collected the night Sherry died.

00:18:03.120 There are two teams that collect evidence at an L.A. murder scene.

00:18:07.540 One is the coroner's office.

00:18:09.680 They collect the body and everything touching it.

00:18:12.480 In Sherry's case, this includes fibers found on her robe and loose hairs from her neck.

00:18:18.660 The LAPD has its own team of criminalists in its Scientific Investigations Division.

00:18:25.460 They collect the evidence that is not directly touching the body.

00:18:29.380 Bullet casings, fingerprints, bloodstains on the walls, that sort of thing.

00:18:34.400 That evidence was booked into LAPD property.

00:18:37.760 One day, Jennifer Francis will test it and find only Sherry's DNA.

00:18:44.860 The trace evidence from the body went into the coroner's property room the morning after Sherry

00:18:50.540 died. At this point in our story, it has sat undisturbed for seven years. At 1225 p.m.,

00:18:58.700 for reasons unknown, Morit signs out all of that coroner's trace evidence. From there,

00:19:06.460 it vanishes. There is no record that this evidence was ever returned to the

00:19:13.300 coroner. No record of what happened to it at all. Some of the most critical

00:19:18.400 evidence in the case, which could positively ID a suspect, gets checked

00:19:23.520 out and is never returned. No one knows where it went. It simply disappears. There

00:19:31.220 is no mention of any of this in the murder book. In fact there's no entry

00:19:35.500 for anything from October 11th. Years later, detectives working Sherry's case show Morit

00:19:41.940 the signature from the county coroner's office. He confirms that it is his, but tells them

00:19:47.420 he does not remember picking up the evidence, nor ever even working the Rasmussen case.

00:19:53.700 And yet, there is one piece of evidence that Morit left behind at the coroner. It is hidden

00:20:00.100 the way in a basement freezer, and its label is fading. It would be tough to find one tiny

00:20:06.680 cigar-sized test tube that will remain hidden for another 12 years. The bite mark swab from

00:20:14.000 Sherry's left arm. It is still in the freezer, where it has been since the morning after the

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00:21:46.060 fast forward now to january 2005 and criminalist jennifer francis the new dna analyst looking for

00:21:55.140 her next task here's the phone ring in the lapd crime lab she picks up it's been a week since she

00:22:02.000 spoke with lloyd mahaney about the bite mark and asked him not to forget about her the call is from

00:22:07.960 a supervisor at the la county coroner's office we found your bite mark swab he and his team had just

00:22:15.400 spent six hours in the freezer hunting for it.

00:22:18.800 Jennifer calls Detective Shepard

00:22:20.400 from the cold case unit with the news.

00:22:22.740 We found the swab.

00:22:25.320 Shepard asks why they missed it when he asked,

00:22:28.280 and Jennifer tells him about the newfangled computer system.

00:22:31.780 When the swab arrives in mid-January,

00:22:34.380 she sees another reason,

00:22:35.820 and why it took several hours in the cold to find.

00:22:38.960 The evidence envelope is in rough shape,

00:22:41.800 worn by years of being shuffled around the freezer

00:22:44.400 as other evidence was crammed in and out around it.

00:22:48.240 Mahaney's handwriting on Sherry's name is so faded,

00:22:51.860 Jennifer can barely read it to confirm.

00:22:54.820 There is a hole in the top right corner of the envelope.

00:22:58.480 The red cap of the plastic sample tube peeks out.

00:23:02.420 At some point, it pierced clean through the envelope,

00:23:05.320 right where Mahaney had written the case number.

00:23:07.840 What remains of it is illegible.

00:23:11.060 Bite mark swabs are filed by case number,

00:23:13.760 With no legible case number on the envelope,

00:23:16.460 finding the swab required a bit of detective work of its own.

00:23:20.660 But the tape sealing the envelope is intact.

00:23:24.280 The tube is intact, and so are the two swabs inside.

00:23:28.900 So on January 27, 2005, Jennifer Francis

00:23:33.020 puts a sample of cells from the swab under a microscope.

00:23:37.220 It looks like saliva.

00:23:39.260 This is a good sign.

00:23:41.320 She starts the sample through DNA analysis. 0.99

00:23:44.500 As the computer runs, it draws the profile

00:23:46.900 as a row of peaks across her screen.

00:23:50.000 It draws big, tall spikes, meaning the sample is strong,

00:23:54.620 another good sign.

00:23:56.340 The whole process takes 30 minutes.

00:23:59.060 The profile reaches the sex marker,

00:24:01.540 the part that shows whether the DNA came from a man

00:24:04.760 or a woman, XY or XX.

00:24:08.760 Jennifer expects a male result.

00:24:11.000 She remembers the investigator's prevailing theory

00:24:13.520 from the murder book about two burglars.

00:24:16.240 Besides that, most murders are committed by men.

00:24:19.880 She stares at the computer screen, waiting. 0.64

00:24:23.380 An XY reading would cause the line to peak again.

00:24:27.460 It stays flat.

00:24:29.360 Jennifer looks at the flat line, wait.

00:24:32.100 Her first thought is Sherry.

00:24:35.000 Is the computer showing Sherry's DNA?

00:24:37.780 Maybe the bite broke the skin

00:24:39.620 and the swab picked up some of Sherry's blood. 1.00

00:24:42.040 That would explain a female result. 0.84

00:24:44.600 When the computer finishes, 1.00

00:24:46.340 Jennifer takes the final profile

00:24:47.820 and puts it side by side with Sherry's.

00:24:51.220 They do not match. 0.97

00:24:53.140 There is another woman's DNA

00:24:54.680 in the bite mark from Sherry's arm.

00:24:57.600 A woman bit Sherry Rasmussen.

00:25:01.140 Jennifer has read the murder book,

00:25:02.660 and her mind goes straight to the nurse

00:25:04.800 from the hospital security report,

00:25:06.920 the one who harassed Sherry

00:25:08.220 after missing out on a promotion however jennifer does not suggest this idea even as a theory she 0.92

00:25:15.420 is expected to stay in her lane as a criminalist analyze the evidence let detectives come up with

00:25:21.180 the theories and so she does on february 8 2005 jennifer sends her report to detective shepherd 1.00

00:25:30.140 the result catches him off guard she called me and said hey this is an unknown female's dna 0.97

00:25:37.400 That is not what I was expecting.

00:25:40.760 But the surprise does not change his basic theory of the crime.

00:25:44.940 Shepard now looks for a male-female burglary team.

00:25:48.500 The violence at the scene still makes him think a man had to be involved.

00:25:53.520 He explained that reasoning to Dateline in 2020.

00:25:56.640 I believed that, okay, there's a woman and then there's a man.

00:26:01.620 that Sherry had been clubbed from behind, knocked down or unconscious,

00:26:06.860 and then somebody stood over her and shot her.

00:26:09.220 Jennifer does not understand why Shepard fixates on a burglary

00:26:12.720 in light of this new DNA evidence.

00:26:15.900 She thinks the personal motive is at least worth a look,

00:26:19.200 but it's Shepard's case, and she is only a criminalist.

00:26:23.760 No arrest follows. No suspect is identified.

00:26:28.000 Jennifer moves on to other cases.

00:26:30.700 Sherry's case goes quiet again.

00:26:33.960 Fast forward three years to March 2008.

00:26:38.460 Van Nuys homicide, where Sherry's case started more than two decades earlier, is moving offices.

00:26:44.420 Someone plunks a box of files next to Jim Nuttall's desk.

00:26:48.960 Nuttall is a three-year homicide detective.

00:26:51.720 He has spent all three of those years in Van Nuys.

00:26:54.720 He is not thrilled to see this box.

00:26:57.600 Two detectives are about to retire, and Nuttall's wife is eight and a half months pregnant.

00:27:02.600 He's taking time off next month, trying to button up loose ends before the baby comes.

00:27:08.040 He's also got no idea who left the box beside his desk.

00:27:12.680 Inside it are two faded blue binders, murder books from cases waiting to be solved.

00:27:18.440 Nuttall came up under an old-fashioned supervisor who believed that

00:27:22.280 reading old unsolved cases is the best way to learn.

00:27:26.120 So Nuttall has read and he has learned.

00:27:29.680 He does not recognize the books in his newly acquired file box.

00:27:34.760 Catherine Braley killed in Van Nuys in 1988.

00:27:38.760 The other, Sherry Rasmussen, 1986.

00:27:42.860 Jim Nuttall has tried his hand at investigating exactly one cold case.

00:27:47.620 The murder of a biker and bookie who went by Sid the Squid.

00:27:51.920 He read the murder book, spoke to witnesses,

00:27:53.800 and eventually arrived at a final suspect,

00:27:57.000 a fellow biker who beat Sid the Squid to death over money.

00:28:01.200 However, Nuttall hit a brick wall at the DA's office.

00:28:04.760 He had only circumstantial evidence connecting his suspect to the murder,

00:28:08.620 nothing physical.

00:28:10.120 He presented his case and the DA turned it down.

00:28:13.380 No arrest, no charges.

00:28:15.720 The blue book goes back with the others, unsolved.

00:28:19.460 Jim comes away convinced that solving a cold case requires physical evidence,

00:28:24.360 no matter how compelling the argument a detective makes.

00:28:28.900 The homicide unit moves locations.

00:28:31.980 He drops the box on the empty desk next to his own in the new office space.

00:28:36.420 His baby comes.

00:28:38.000 He takes his leave and returns and tackles other cases.

00:28:42.460 The box sits there undisturbed for nearly a year.

00:28:45.480 Super Bowl Sunday, 2009.

00:28:49.480 The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Arizona Cardinals 27-23 on a touchdown with 35 seconds left.

00:28:56.680 Nuttall watches with a house full of friends and a fridge full of beer.

00:29:00.540 Nuttall later describes that Sunday to NBC's Dateline.

00:29:04.200 Super Bowl Sunday is like a holiday to me, so we were having a good time and we were up late.

00:29:09.260 The next morning is Monday, February 2nd.

00:29:12.360 Nuttall comes in tired and a little worse for the wear, as he later tells NBC.

00:29:17.280 We come in early, oh, dark 30, and I was tired.

00:29:20.300 It was the perfect day to have a cup of coffee and then do some reading.

00:29:24.040 Nuttall gets coffee and opens the four-volume Rasmussen murder book.

00:29:28.760 He reads about a 29-year-old nurse fighting for her life inside her own home.

00:29:34.800 Shots fired upstairs, a struggle over the gun.

00:29:38.540 They fight their way downstairs.

00:29:39.980 a vase breaks. Sherry is hit again. Someone bites down hard enough on her arm to leave a full set of

00:29:47.460 teeth marks, and then three bullets to the chest. And somewhere in the middle of volume one, Jim

00:29:54.840 stops. The stereo components stacked by the front door. The stack the original detectives had read

00:30:02.240 as evidence of a burglary had blood on them. He tells Dateline NBC this was a turning point.

00:30:09.980 For me, everything changed with that blood on that stereo equipment.

00:30:13.740 If there was blood on the stereo components,

00:30:16.580 the components were moved after someone, likely Sherry, was bleeding.

00:30:22.020 To Nuttall, that means the stack by the front door was built after the fight, not before it.

00:30:27.760 She's dead or dying.

00:30:29.260 And if you wanted that stereo equipment,

00:30:31.280 you had every opportunity in the world to walk out the door with it.

00:30:34.580 Why stack it and leave it?

00:30:35.660 At that point, you start to draw the conclusion that murder was the main goal, not the burglary.

00:30:41.800 Then Nuttall turns a page and finds a four-year-old lab report.

00:30:46.520 It has Jennifer Francis' name on it.

00:30:49.560 He keeps reading.

00:30:51.400 The major DNA profile from the bite mark swab is female.

00:30:56.760 Sherry Rasmussen is excluded as the source.

00:31:00.680 Nuttall reads it twice.

00:31:02.400 Then it hits him. 1.00

00:31:03.880 Oh, shit. 1.00

00:31:05.660 Not only do I have DNA, I've got female DNA. 1.00

00:31:10.420 We had a woman responsible or involved with this crime.

00:31:14.160 The female DNA profile had been uploaded to the FBI's national database in 2005

00:31:19.920 after Jennifer Francis found and processed it, but was never matched to anyone.

00:31:25.660 The detectives will have to build a list of female suspects themselves.

00:31:30.960 Nuttall tells Dateline that suddenly, 23 years after the murder,

00:31:35.380 This cold case seemed solvable.

00:31:38.220 Once you debunk the burglary theory 0.93

00:31:40.800 and you have a female DNA profile,

00:31:44.500 now this case becomes manageable.

00:31:46.520 Now it becomes a matter of time.

00:31:48.380 Within days, Nuttall calls the crime lab

00:31:50.840 about the DNA work from 2005.

00:31:53.760 Jennifer Francis calls him back that same day.

00:31:57.140 They have never spoken before.

00:31:59.180 Each is trying to figure out how much the other knows.

00:32:02.940 One of the first things she tells him is,

00:32:04.980 Detective, I'm not telling you how to do your job,

00:32:08.020 but I don't think this was a burglary.

00:32:10.960 Nuttall is taken aback.

00:32:12.540 He thinks, I know that, but how do you know that?

00:32:17.100 Jennifer does not tell him, not yet.

00:32:20.400 Fueled by the female DNA discovery,

00:32:23.160 Jim Nuttall, his supervisor Rob Bubb,

00:32:25.700 and two other Van Nuys detectives

00:32:27.700 start Sherry Rasmussen's case over from scratch. 1.00

00:32:32.040 Whoever this killer is, she bit Sherry Rasmussen hard enough to leave tooth marks and saliva on her arm.

00:32:39.400 So the question is no longer which burglars were inside the condo, but rather, who were the women in Sherry's life?

00:32:47.580 Women she knew well enough that if one rang her doorbell, she might open the door.

00:32:53.200 Nuttall is determined to find out.

00:32:55.860 The next day, February 10th, he calls John Rutten.

00:33:00.420 Nuttall asks him, were there any women in your past that Sherry had a problem with?

00:33:06.580 John gives him a name, Stephanie Lazarus.

00:33:10.960 John says he was involved with Stephanie for years before he married Sherry.

00:33:15.220 On and off, he says.

00:33:16.780 He says that Stephanie joined the Los Angeles Police Department before he ever met Sherry.

00:33:23.820 And as far as John knows, she still works for the department.

00:33:27.880 Nuttall turns to another detective in the room.

00:33:30.780 He tells Dateline he will never forget what happened next.

00:33:34.760 I turned in one of the members of our unit,

00:33:36.300 and I said, check a name for me in the directory.

00:33:39.220 And he accessed the LAPD directory

00:33:41.360 and explained to me that she was currently a detective in the LAPD.

00:33:46.460 Stephanie Lazarus, Commercial Crimes Division, Parker Center,

00:33:50.340 Los Angeles Police Department Headquarters, downtown.

00:33:53.700 Not all understands immediately this case has changed total we're not in Kansas anymore

00:34:00.720 I'm Megan Kelly next time on MK Confidential four Van Nuys detectives must decide what to do

00:34:08.820 when their murder suspect is one of their own

The Megyn Kelly Show - September 10, 2026

Fatal Attraction： Nineteen Years in a Freezer — Ep. 2 ｜ MK Confidential

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