The Megyn Kelly Show - September 09, 2026


Fatal Attraction： The Body in Unit 205 — Ep. 1 ｜ MK Confidential


Episode Stats


Length

32 minutes

Words per minute

152.89

Word count

5,000

Sentence count

439

Harmful content

Misogyny

11

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.220 Sonnet Insurance wants to know, what would you do with an extra hour in your day and more money in your pocket?
00:00:05.680 With Sonnet, you can quote and buy home and auto insurance online or over the phone.
00:00:09.760 Your choice, on your time, whatever works best for you.
00:00:12.740 And Canadian university and college alumni could save over $2,000 a year.
00:00:17.000 That's real money back where it belongs.
00:00:18.820 Save time, save money, save yourself from the way insurance used to be.
00:00:22.140 Get your quote at sonnet.ca.
00:00:24.120 Switch. Save. Simple. Sonnet.
00:00:26.400 It is around 12 o'clock on a Monday in Van Nuys, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, 1986.
00:00:34.860 Retiree Anastasia Volanaitis is at home in her condo, where she and her husband Gus have lived for many years just doing chores, enjoying her day.
00:00:44.960 She looks up and sees out the window two Hispanic men in work clothes crossing the driveway, coming toward her house.
00:00:52.300 They look like gardeners.
00:00:54.180 The men knock on her door, and when she answers, Anastasia sees one of them is carrying a brown leather woman's purse.
00:01:02.440 The men don't speak any English, only Spanish.
00:01:06.240 After a few attempts to communicate, one of the men just hands Anastasia the purse.
00:01:11.440 She looks inside of it, finds a wallet, and in the wallet, a driver's license.
00:01:16.780 Anastasia knows the face in the picture.
00:01:18.840 The young woman from Unit 205, directly across their shared driveway.
00:01:25.080 Her name is Sherry something.
00:01:27.600 Her eyes dart over to the name on the license. 0.98
00:01:30.380 Sherry Rasmussen, 29 years old. 0.74
00:01:33.740 Right, the nurse. 1.00
00:01:35.960 She's a newlywed. 0.98
00:01:38.000 Anastasia hands the purse back to the Hispanic man and points him toward Sherry's condo just across the way. 0.93
00:01:44.020 Within five minutes, the men are back, purse still in hand.
00:01:47.580 No one answered.
00:01:48.840 at Unit 205. Anastasia takes the purse from the men. She can return it later when her neighbor
00:01:55.260 is home. But her neighbor is home. Sherry has been lying in her favorite bathrobe on her living room
00:02:02.760 floor, dead, since earlier that morning, her face beaten and smeared with blood. Six more hours pass
00:02:10.180 before anyone finds Sherry. Outside, the condo complex moves through a normal Monday. Cars come
00:02:17.040 and go through the gate. Neighbors leave and return. School pickups, groceries, a stop at the
00:02:22.920 pharmacy. Inside Sherry's home, the refrigerator hums, clicks off, and starts again. On a chair
00:02:29.720 nearby sits a quilt Sherry's grandmother made for her, with sleeves sewn into it so she could wear
00:02:35.420 it around the house when she got cold. Then the phone rings. It is Sherry's sister, Teresa, calling
00:02:41.800 during her break at work.
00:02:43.540 Teresa leaves a message and says she'll try again later.
00:02:47.180 At 5 p.m., Sherry's husband, John, leaves work.
00:02:50.400 On the way home, he stops for the dry cleaning
00:02:52.360 and picks up a package at UPS.
00:02:54.800 Ordinary errands at the end of what he thinks
00:02:57.740 is an ordinary Monday.
00:03:00.060 And all this time, Sherry is there,
00:03:02.820 lying alone on the living room floor,
00:03:05.600 one eye open and unblinking, the other swollen shut.
00:03:10.340 At 6 o'clock, John arrives home.
00:03:13.380 Later that night, he tells police what he saw when he walked inside.
00:03:17.340 I mean, it's right in front of me.
00:03:18.480 When I walk in the door, I saw her lying on the ground.
00:03:21.780 I knew right away that she was dead.
00:03:25.620 Before the night is over, a Los Angeles police detective will stand in John and Sherry's living room
00:03:30.720 and decide he knows exactly what happened there.
00:03:34.120 He will write it down, and he will be very wrong.
00:03:38.380 The truth will remain hidden for 23 years.
00:03:42.200 I'm Megan Kelly, and this is MK Confidential.
00:03:48.140 Everybody's talking about weight loss injections because the results can be so dramatic.
00:03:52.360 They work by lowering blood sugar and reducing appetite.
00:03:55.480 But what if you're looking to lose weight but are not interested in painful weekly injections,
00:03:59.340 especially when you hear about some of those intense side effects?
00:04:02.700 Well, that's why doctors created a weight loss supplement called Lean.
00:04:06.060 and the results could be remarkable.
00:04:09.540 Lean says the studied ingredients in their product
00:04:11.760 have been shown to lower your blood sugar,
00:04:13.820 burn fat by converting it into energy
00:04:16.020 and curb your appetite and cravings
00:04:18.000 so you are not as hungry.
00:04:19.680 But listen, Lean is not for the casual dieter
00:04:21.820 with only a few pounds to lose.
00:04:23.800 The doctors at Brickhouse Nutrition created Lean
00:04:26.080 for frustrated dieters who have 10 or more pounds to lose.
00:04:30.460 You could get started with 20% off and free rush shipping,
00:04:33.540 adding lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Visit takelean.com and enter Kelly for
00:04:39.900 your discount. That's promo code Kelly at takelean.com. Let's go back to the start of the
00:04:45.880 day Sherry is killed. Monday, February 24th, 1986. John Rutten wakes a little before seven
00:04:52.740 in the Van Nuys condo he shares with his wife of three months, Sherry. She has lived there for more
00:04:57.920 than five years. John moved in last summer. That morning, Sherry stays in bed. She's thinking of
00:05:04.180 calling in sick, and she asks John to call her later in the day. John showers, dresses, and takes
00:05:10.680 the stairs inside the condo down to their garage. 720 is when I left. I got to work about
00:05:17.260 10 to 8. John slides into his new Mazda RX-7 coupe, backs out of the garage, and watches the door
00:05:26.180 come down behind him. Sherry's silver BMW, a 1985 318i, is still parked inside. That is the last
00:05:35.600 time John Rutten sees his wife alive. Across the shared driveway, Anastasia Volonitis and her
00:05:42.600 husband Gus pull out around 8.30 a.m. They are true Angelenos and drive a few miles to a golf
00:05:49.860 of course, to then take their walk. On the way out, the couple pass Unit 205. The garage door
00:05:55.800 is closed. About an hour later, around 9.30 a.m., Gus drops Anastasia off near a neighbor's house
00:06:03.280 for an errand. And as Anastasia walks back to her condo, she passes Unit 205.
00:06:08.960 She notices the garage door is now open. An hour earlier, Sherry's silver BMW was inside.
00:06:17.620 Now the garage is empty.
00:06:19.760 It's 9.45 in the morning.
00:06:22.120 In Unit 206, on the other side of Sherry's wall, a housekeeper is cleaning.
00:06:27.720 She has cleaned this unit every Monday for about two years.
00:06:31.300 A few hours into the morning, the housekeeper hears a heavy thud through the wall.
00:06:36.080 She goes to a window and looks outside.
00:06:38.600 Nothing seems wrong.
00:06:40.280 As she turns away, the thud comes again.
00:06:43.900 Then a scream tears through the wall.
00:06:45.840 No words, just one long sound.
00:06:49.400 Then it stops.
00:06:51.360 She checks another window, still nothing.
00:06:54.640 She shrugs to herself and goes back to work.
00:06:58.360 All day, people who love her try to reach Sherry.
00:07:01.880 At 10 a.m., her younger sister Teresa takes a break at work
00:07:04.840 and calls Sherry's office, as she often does.
00:07:08.280 In 2020, she told Dateline what happened on this particular Monday.
00:07:11.960 And her secretary said that she was homesick, so I called her at home after that.
00:07:20.380 Sherry's answering machine picks up. Teresa leaves a message.
00:07:24.780 The two Hispanic men bring Sherry's purse to Anastasia around noon.
00:07:29.460 Anastasia takes it, planning to return it later.
00:07:32.740 That afternoon, John calls the hospital and cannot reach Sherry or her secretary.
00:07:37.300 He's not worried, just mildly annoyed.
00:07:40.120 He assumes she went in late and forgot to call him back.
00:07:43.680 Later, Peggy Daly, a head nurse and one of Sherry's closest friends, calls her house.
00:07:49.520 She also gets the machine.
00:07:52.240 At 5.30, Teresa gets home from work and calls her mother in Tucson.
00:07:57.200 Has anyone heard from Sherry?
00:07:59.100 At 6 o'clock p.m., John Rutten comes home.
00:08:03.580 The garage door is all the way up.
00:08:06.260 Sherry's car is gone.
00:08:07.980 Broken glass lies across the pavement outside.
00:08:11.540 John parks, lifts the dry cleaning from the passenger seat,
00:08:14.800 and starts up the short staircase from the garage.
00:08:17.900 At the top of the stairs is the door into the condo with a push-button lock.
00:08:22.540 That morning, John had pushed the button and heard the door catch behind him.
00:08:27.160 Now it is open.
00:08:29.300 There are flecks of blood on the wall beside the stairs, but John does not see them.
00:08:33.820 At the top, he steps into the tiled entryway, and he sees Sherry on the living room floor.
00:08:42.560 Rob Bubb is a retired LAPD homicide detective.
00:08:46.900 He comes to the case more than 20 years later and reconstructs what John saw when he came through that door.
00:08:53.240 He opens the door, looks inside, and sees his wife, Sherry Rasmussen.
00:08:58.820 She's lying on her back in the middle of the living room, wearing essentially what he had left her wearing that morning when he went to work. 0.79
00:09:07.020 The living room is a disaster.
00:09:09.860 A shelf has come down from the entertainment unit.
00:09:12.640 A corded phone and pieces of a broken vase lie on the carpet near her.
00:09:17.360 A drawer from an end table has been pulled out and emptied onto the floor.
00:09:22.280 John touches Sherry's calf.
00:09:24.560 It is cold.
00:09:26.080 He feels for a pulse.
00:09:27.640 Nothing.
00:09:29.600 Sherry's face is so badly injured that John does not notice the three gunshot wounds in her chest
00:09:35.200 or the bite mark on her arm. He calls 911. Then John takes a hand towel and covers his wife's
00:09:43.260 face. He cannot bear to look at her this way. Paramedics arrive and pronounce Sherry dead at
00:09:49.200 6 10 p.m. In Tucson, Sherry's parents are asleep when the phone rings. It is close to one in the
00:09:56.060 morning. They will later express their resentment that John did not call them sooner. Sherry's
00:10:02.400 father, Nels, gets out of bed and answers. It is John's father calling him. John does not deliver
00:10:09.580 the news himself. Nels begins calling his daughters. First Teresa, then Connie. Both
00:10:16.680 remembered the calls to NBC in 2020. Answered the phone and dad told me that
00:10:24.480 she had been killed and i sat up and screamed bed it was close to midnight by the time i i heard
00:10:38.840 and then i started screaming by morning they are all on their way to los angeles
00:10:44.060 sherry rasmussen was the middle kid of three girls she grew up in tucson arizona where her 1.00
00:10:50.060 father Nels had a dental practice and her mother Loretta ran the front office. As a little girl,
00:10:56.020 Sherry was what her dad called a mama's girl. Nels could promise her anything and she would 1.00
00:11:00.340 not get in that car unless Loretta was coming too. Then Sherry got to school. Her sister Teresa says
00:11:07.580 that Sherry was so ahead of her class that her kindergarten teacher used to use her as an
00:11:12.680 assistant at just five years old. Sherry skipped seventh grade. By the end of her junior year of
00:11:19.400 high school, she had finished the classes needed to graduate. So at 16, she left Tucson for Loma
00:11:25.780 Linda University in California. By 23, she had a master's degree in nursing from UCLA. At 26,
00:11:33.980 she was supervising an 80-bed critical care division at UCLA Medical Center. A year later,
00:11:40.320 Glendale Adventist Medical Center hired her to run critical care nursing. She was 27 years old,
00:11:47.420 Younger than most of the nurses she supervised.
00:11:50.760 At Glendale Adventist, Sherry was management now.
00:11:54.180 She wore business clothes to work, but still put a white lab coat over them.
00:11:59.140 Her dad had wanted her to go to medical school.
00:12:02.080 Nels told Sherry more than once she would make a phenomenal doctor.
00:12:06.520 Sherry thought seriously about medical school,
00:12:08.840 but she told her younger sister, Teresa, there was something else she wanted more.
00:12:13.880 A family.
00:12:15.080 She worried becoming a doctor might mean giving that up.
00:12:19.000 Sherry's priority was always her family.
00:12:22.320 She was the middle sister, and she was a clown. 0.99
00:12:27.660 If everything got too serious, she would make everybody laugh. 0.70
00:12:31.940 She had a very unique little giggle.
00:12:34.380 Sherry was all about family.
00:12:37.900 Sherry was our glue.
00:12:40.860 She kept us all together. 0.93
00:12:43.140 She always switched us.
00:12:44.420 I would have never learned how to snow ski,
00:12:46.820 except for she drug us all to Taos, New Mexico to learn how to snow ski.
00:12:50.920 Even now that she's gone, I think she forces me to be a better person.
00:12:56.480 Sherry Rasmussen turned 29 on February 7th, 1986.
00:13:01.960 17 days later, she is dead on her living room floor.
00:13:06.780 She has been shot three times in the chest.
00:13:10.020 One of the shots is fired with the muzzle pressed against her body.
00:13:13.320 The skin around the wound is blistered.
00:13:15.940 There is black soot inside it.
00:13:18.340 One of her fingers has black soot on it too, 0.87
00:13:21.080 indicating she may have tried to block the gun.
00:13:24.660 Her face has been badly beaten.
00:13:27.760 And on the inside of her left forearm is an oval bite mark,
00:13:31.900 deep and distinct enough that a forensic dentist believes
00:13:35.240 it could be compared to the teeth of a suspect.
00:13:38.820 Here's retired LAPD homicide detective Rob Bubb,
00:13:42.600 who later reconstructed the scene talking with Dateline in 2020.
00:13:46.760 The blunt force trauma injuries were particularly disturbing.
00:13:51.480 The right side of her face, her eye was swollen and blackened.
00:13:55.500 She was actually pistol whipped possibly two times.
00:13:58.480 A stereo speaker had fallen down, was very near her head.
00:14:03.160 There were two fingernails near the front door and a clothesline or a small thin rope also near the front door of the apartment.
00:14:12.340 On her left inner forearm, it was very obvious.
00:14:15.620 It wasn't just small impressions.
00:14:17.160 They were red and raw. 0.59
00:14:19.180 Later, the medical examiner will find marks on Sherry's wrists consistent with that rope.
00:14:25.000 It looks like someone tried to bind her.
00:14:26.960 there are smears of blood across the entryway wall up the closet door on the light switch
00:14:33.620 over the floor and the door leading down to the garage as well low on the wall beside that door
00:14:40.080 is a bloody handprint 13 inches off the floor the palm is lower than the fingers three days later
00:14:48.220 a fingerprint analyst photographs that handprint a week after that the analysis confirms it matches
00:14:54.600 Sherry's left hand. Upstairs, off the kitchen, two bullets have passed through a floor-length
00:15:01.440 white drape and shattered the sliding glass door behind it. Most of the glass fell onto the
00:15:07.120 balcony. Some dropped to the driveway below. That's the broken glass John saw when he came home.
00:15:13.900 AI can clone your voice, forge your signature, even create fake documents that fool experts.
00:15:19.380 and criminals are using these tools right now to potentially steal from you.
00:15:23.900 How? It's called title fraud.
00:15:26.300 Your property records are public by law.
00:15:28.880 Your name, address, even your signature,
00:15:31.740 it's all sitting in a database anyone can access.
00:15:34.820 A cyber scammer can pull your records, use AI to forge a transfer document,
00:15:39.320 file it with your county, and on paper,
00:15:41.500 they are the new legal owner of your property.
00:15:44.220 Then they can borrow against your equity
00:15:46.240 or even sell your property long before you realize anything is even wrong.
00:15:51.180 But let me tell you about Home Title Lock.
00:15:53.860 They monitor your property's title 24-7, alert you of any changes,
00:15:58.540 and if you are a victim, their team of restoration experts
00:16:02.040 will spend up to $1 million restoring your title.
00:16:05.840 So when's the last time you checked your title records?
00:16:08.720 You can do it today.
00:16:10.220 Use our promo code MEGAN at HometitleLock.com
00:16:13.660 to get a free title history report,
00:16:15.660 plus a free trial of million-dollar triple lock protection
00:16:19.080 so you can make sure you are not already a victim.
00:16:22.300 That's HometitleLock.com, promo code MEGAN,
00:16:24.960 or use the link in the description.
00:16:27.700 Beyond the bullet holes on the second floor
00:16:30.000 and the chaotic mess on the first,
00:16:32.340 detectives find a few specific items
00:16:34.380 that explain the lead-up to the violence.
00:16:36.840 At the base of the stairs in the entryway,
00:16:39.180 directly facing the front door,
00:16:41.220 lies a VCR with a disc player stacked on top.
00:16:44.900 The power cords for both lay haphazardly on the floor.
00:16:49.420 They look like someone put them together for a quick carryout, but left before they got the chance.
00:16:55.560 Rodney Forrest is one of the first LAPD officers to arrive at the condo.
00:17:01.000 The stacked-up electronics immediately stand out, as he later tells ABC.
00:17:06.120 I do remember there was electronic stereo equipment right here that I saw when I came in.
00:17:13.640 And that suggested to me that it was possibly a burglary, and a burglary interrupted.
00:17:21.460 I put this together with the stereo equipment stacked over here,
00:17:26.320 and it seemed to me that she could have struggled with the burglar,
00:17:31.180 and she obviously lost that fight.
00:17:35.600 Sherry's purse is missing, and everything in it.
00:17:38.980 So is her new BMW.
00:17:40.280 Within 30 minutes of John discovering Sherry's body, the LAPD assigns two detectives to the case.
00:17:48.560 The first is homicide detective and Medal of Valor recipient Lyle Mayer.
00:17:54.620 Earlier in his career, Mayer broke down a hotel room door to save a man from burning to death.
00:18:00.380 The LAPD awarded him with its highest honor for his actions.
00:18:04.200 By the time he's called to the Sherry Rasmussen case, Mayer has been investigating homicides for 10 years, with more than 20 served in the LAPD.
00:18:14.520 Mayer's regular partner is off duty the day Sherry is found, so he's joined by a young burglary detective, Steve Hooks.
00:18:22.600 Hooks has led roughly 150 burglary investigations in his eight years on the force.
00:18:28.060 As for homicide, he's assisted on a few.
00:18:31.960 This is the first case Mayer and Hooks will work together.
00:18:35.700 When Mayer and Hooks arrive at John and Sherry's condo, John is standing outside.
00:18:41.620 Mayer spends about an hour examining the crime scene,
00:18:44.940 then asks John to come down to the Van Nuys police station for an interview.
00:18:49.340 John agrees.
00:18:50.780 At 9 o'clock p.m., Mayer starts a tape recorder.
00:18:54.740 John is the first to discover Sherry's body and likely the last to see her alive,
00:18:59.440 aside from whoever killed her.
00:19:01.820 Mayer needs to know whether they can eliminate John as a suspect.
00:19:05.560 As they go through the interview, Mayer tells John that he's usually a pretty good judge of character
00:19:10.820 and is fairly certain that John has absolutely nothing to do with this.
00:19:16.560 And he gives John his explanation for what happened to Sherry.
00:19:21.300 I believe your house was burglarized today, sometime before 10 a.m.
00:19:27.360 I believe they got in your front door by prying open the front door.
00:19:31.120 I believe they were trying to steal your stereo on probably some other items.
00:19:37.060 Mayer says he believes the burglars did not know Sherry was home.
00:19:40.860 She hears the commotion, comes down to the kitchen and surprises them.
00:19:44.960 One of them does run.
00:19:47.080 The other fights.
00:19:48.800 They fight down the stairs into the entryway and into the living room.
00:19:53.020 There, he kills her, shoots her, Mayer says.
00:19:56.060 Then, with his getaway driver gone, Sherry's killer leaves the electronics and makes off with her engagement gift from her husband, the BMW.
00:20:05.920 Mayer's theory comes from more than just the condo.
00:20:10.040 Los Angeles is experiencing a massive murder surge.
00:20:14.380 Sherry Rasmussen is murdered in February.
00:20:16.980 By the end of December 1986, more than 800 people will have been killed within L.A. city limits.
00:20:23.460 And the police can feel it.
00:20:26.060 One officer, retired LAPD Captain Anita Ortega, described the atmosphere to ABC in 2024.
00:20:33.560 Anyone that worked in the city of Los Angeles, they knew that they were going to have their hands filled.
00:20:38.120 It was out of control.
00:20:39.700 The city had spent the previous summer under the threat of a serial killer known as the Night Stalker,
00:20:45.520 who invaded homes and brutalized the women inside, killing more than a dozen.
00:20:51.060 Here's journalist Leo Stallworth, also to ABC.
00:20:54.360 It was a dark period in our history. People were terrified to leave their homes.
00:21:00.960 Detective Lyle Mayer has been working homicides in this city for over a decade and has seen the
00:21:06.480 rising chaos. In this environment, the idea that Sherry died at the hands of a surprise burglar
00:21:11.720 makes perfect sense. That does not make it true. One piece of physical evidence flies in the face
00:21:19.820 of the burglary theory. On top of the electronics stacked at the base of the stairs near the front
00:21:25.200 door is a fingerprint, a bloody fingerprint. The blood is the first key. Whoever left it
00:21:33.060 touched the disc player after the fight with Sherry. Given the intensity of the fight and
00:21:39.420 that the disc player is intact, not smashed like the vase, this must have happened after Sherry
00:21:45.180 was killed. At that point, why would a burglar grab the disc player and likely the VCR with it
00:21:51.020 and then leave them behind? Burglars caught in the act typically drop what they're holding and run.
00:21:56.940 This one stayed to fight, then abandoned the prize. The blood suggests a sequence of events 0.99
00:22:03.360 that does not line up with a burglary. And the fingerprint? According to Detective Rob Bubb,
00:22:09.540 the print itself never enters the case.
00:22:13.720 He explains to Dateline NBC in 2020.
00:22:17.300 Unfortunately, it was never recovered.
00:22:20.020 No one lifted it, no one tested it,
00:22:21.640 no one booked the stereo component into evidence.
00:22:25.080 It was lost for time.
00:22:27.600 The bloody fingerprint is not even closely photographed.
00:22:31.080 The blood is not sampled.
00:22:32.600 It's unclear why.
00:22:34.560 The bloody fingerprint is noted in reports
00:22:37.140 and remembered by responding officers
00:22:39.140 but that's it. The disc player and the VCR are left at the scene. Some of the strongest physical
00:22:46.440 evidence against the burglar theory does not enter evidence at all. Responding officer Forrest
00:22:53.340 sees a different issue with the burglar theory, this one based on target selection. He shares
00:22:59.440 his concerns with ABC in 2024. I thought to myself, this is a burglar? Burglars don't usually
00:23:09.040 pick a place by condos from the street they want to get away they pick something next to the street
00:23:16.440 they don't want to be seen it's just strange that they would pick this place author and journalist
00:23:25.200 matthew mcguff who covered the case for more than a decade says the burglars ransacked odd places
00:23:32.380 and ignored the obvious ones.
00:23:35.040 Here he is speaking to Dateline in 2020.
00:23:37.980 If you're looking for valuables,
00:23:40.460 are you going to look in a junk drawer in the living room?
00:23:43.800 Sherry had a jewelry box that was undisturbed.
00:23:48.080 Sherry's purse, one of the few items of value
00:23:50.800 actually missing from the home,
00:23:52.740 is returned to neighbor Anastasia Volanaitis
00:23:55.820 the same day she is murdered.
00:23:57.520 On the night of the 24th, her BMW is still missing.
00:24:02.380 Police find her BMW 11 days later, unlocked and abandoned on a residential street with the keys in the ignition.
00:24:11.840 The car's radio and other parts still intact, and it seemed totally undamaged.
00:24:18.080 Mayer described the neighborhood where it is found as, quote, a very, very, very bad old area.
00:24:24.020 The detectives working the case take the car's location as further support for the burglar theory.
00:24:28.220 but the obvious questions about it being intact and undisturbed go unanswered.
00:24:35.640 Police never find out where the car had been for those 11 days since Sherry was murdered.
00:24:41.920 Tuesday, February 25th, the morning after his wife is shot,
00:24:47.420 John Rutten arrives at the Van Nuys police station for a 10 a.m. interview.
00:24:51.600 It is not recorded and earns a single line in the day of report, re-interviewed deceased's husband.
00:25:00.180 Three months later, the detectives expand on that in a follow-up report.
00:25:04.180 Quote, there were no changes in his account of what happened.
00:25:07.840 It appeared as though John was truthful and he obviously was still in shock over the death of his wife.
00:25:13.500 At 1030 on day two, Mayer and Hooks take John back to the condo to see what, if anything, is missing.
00:25:21.600 Sherry's body is gone. The bloodstain is still in the living room carpet. Upstairs, the shattered
00:25:28.440 glass door has not been repaired and is still wide open to the air. No cardboard, no duct tape,
00:25:34.480 nothing. The walkthrough of the crime scene is not recorded. Three months later, the three-ring
00:25:40.180 binder that LAPD detectives use to document a homicide investigation known as a murder book
00:25:47.080 gives it a single-line summary. John could identify nothing missing inside the condo
00:25:52.860 except Sherry's purse and its contents. Also missing is their marriage license.
00:26:00.480 While John is back inside the condo with Mayer and Hooks that Tuesday morning,
00:26:05.360 Sherry's parents, Nels and Loretta Rasmussen, are still trying to get to Los Angeles.
00:26:10.500 They have been awake all night. They take the first flight they can get out of Tucson.
00:26:14.800 it stops in Phoenix. After takeoff, something goes wrong with an engine and the plane turns
00:26:20.140 back for an emergency landing. Nels and Loretta barely notice. When the plane lands and everyone
00:26:27.040 is ordered off, they remain sitting in their seats until a flight attendant comes down the
00:26:31.280 aisle to get them. They just want to get to Los Angeles. The flight attendant walks them to another
00:26:36.780 gate and Nels and Loretta make the next flight. At LAX, they meet their daughter Connie, rent a car,
00:26:43.360 skip the hotel, and drive straight to Van Nuys. By around noon, they are at the police station.
00:26:50.160 Roughly 18 hours have passed since John found Sherry's body and her family knows almost nothing
00:26:56.260 about what the police have found. Nels and Loretta give their names at the front desk.
00:27:01.660 An officer calls upstairs to homicide. They wait. Finally, a man comes out of an interview room and
00:27:08.840 John is behind him. The man is Detective Lyle Mayer. Later, when Mayer finishes meeting with
00:27:15.100 Nels and Loretta, he gives Sherry's sister Teresa his business card and tells her to call him if
00:27:20.380 she has any questions or any information that might help. The family keeps Detective Mayer's
00:27:26.260 card for years. They remember it going soft at the edges from being handled so often.
00:27:32.920 From the beginning, Mayer had made a promise. He made it to John on tape that first night.
00:27:39.380 We're going to catch these persons.
00:27:41.240 Are this person crying?
00:27:43.020 You got to have a little faith in me.
00:27:44.780 We're very successful at what we do.
00:27:47.020 Very, very successful.
00:27:49.440 They do not catch anyone.
00:27:51.860 Not that year.
00:27:53.500 Not that decade.
00:27:54.940 Not for 23 years.
00:27:57.740 Before we leave the night Sherry died, there is one more thing to see.
00:28:02.560 It is just after midnight.
00:28:04.660 John Rutten's first interview with detectives is over.
00:28:08.180 He sits in the hallway and waits.
00:28:10.460 He sobs quietly.
00:28:12.460 Around him, radio dispatchers call out addresses and codes.
00:28:16.860 Phones ring and ring until whoever is calling gives up.
00:28:20.760 John's parents are driving up from San Diego.
00:28:23.860 Sherry's parents still do not know.
00:28:26.720 John cannot bring himself to make the call.
00:28:28.900 To tell them their daughter is dead.
00:28:32.100 Back at the condo, Sherry is still lying on the living room floor.
00:28:36.620 Two men from the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office pull up at the condo and walk in with their evidence kits.
00:28:42.980 Walter Rainey is an investigator.
00:28:45.740 Lloyd Mahaney is a senior criminalist.
00:28:49.220 This is their second homicide of the night.
00:28:51.740 Their first was a woman found dead in the backseat of a locked yellow Ford Pinto in a Panorama City parking lot.
00:28:59.860 Mahaney and Rainey are working that scene when word comes,
00:29:04.040 another body is waiting in Van Nuys.
00:29:06.880 Lloyd Mahaney has a reputation at the coroner's office.
00:29:10.560 He does not improvise.
00:29:12.520 He collects evidence in the same order every time and writes down every step.
00:29:18.180 Trace evidence first.
00:29:20.060 Fibers from Sherry's robe.
00:29:22.180 Hairs from around her neck.
00:29:23.980 Each sample goes into its own envelope labeled by hand,
00:29:28.100 sealed with evidence tape and Mahaney's initials written across the seal.
00:29:33.480 Mahaney opens a sexual assault kit, lays out its contents neatly on the carpet near Sherry's head.
00:29:40.220 Swab tubes, slide envelopes, a coroner's checklist.
00:29:44.860 He works through it one item at a time.
00:29:48.420 Then Mahaney sees something on the inside of Sherry's left forearm, a bite mark.
00:29:55.040 Mahaney carries spare swabs for exactly this purpose.
00:29:59.060 If he sees a bite, he swabs it.
00:30:01.900 Blood might belong to the victim.
00:30:04.380 Saliva left behind in a bite mark probably does not.
00:30:08.800 He reaches into his kit.
00:30:11.500 The tube he takes out is clear plastic, roughly the size and thickness of a cigar.
00:30:16.820 A red cap screws onto the top.
00:30:19.640 Attached beneath it are two cotton-tipped wooden sticks.
00:30:23.900 Tiny holes in the bottom of the tube allow the swabs to air dry.
00:30:28.000 Mahaney wets them with distilled water,
00:30:30.760 then runs one across the upper teeth impression,
00:30:33.280 the other across the lower.
00:30:36.120 He screws the red cap back on and labels the tube.
00:30:40.460 Left arm, bite mark, his initials, and the date.
00:30:45.720 Case number 86-2676.
00:30:49.240 Then the tube goes into a fresh evidence envelope.
00:30:54.240 On the front, Rasmussen Sherry, swabbed bite mark, left arm, and the time, 2.06 a.m.
00:31:02.680 Lloyd Mahaney seals it.
00:31:05.180 No one in that room knows what this swab will one day be able to tell them.
00:31:09.860 In 1986, DNA testing is not yet available to criminal investigators.
00:31:14.240 investigators. Saliva can be tested for blood type, useful for excluding someone, maybe for
00:31:20.840 narrowing the field, but nothing close to what DNA will eventually make possible. Mahaney's
00:31:27.360 envelope reaches the coroner's evidence room on the morning of February 25th. Bikemark swabs have 0.84
00:31:33.620 their own rule, keep them frozen, filed by case number in a secure basement room. So the envelope 1.00
00:31:40.600 Bookmarked Rasmussen Sherry goes downstairs into a freezer.
00:31:46.000 Case number 86-2676.
00:31:49.960 Stuck between evidence from other people's cases.
00:31:53.800 Lloyd Mahaney never knew Sherry Rasmussen.
00:31:56.940 He spent a few hours in her home that night and followed his procedure.
00:32:01.740 He wet two swabs, labeled a tube, sealed an envelope.
00:32:05.320 And because he did, something from the person who bit Sherry is preserved.
00:32:12.420 In 1986, no one knows how to read it.
00:32:16.300 One day, they will.
00:32:18.940 But not for nearly 19 years.
00:32:22.020 And that ability will change everything about this case.
00:32:27.300 I'm Megan Kelly.
00:32:29.220 Next time on MK Confidential.
00:32:31.800 Sherry's family keeps pushing for answers.
00:32:34.160 Evidence disappears and investigators begin to ask, was the burglary theory wrong from the start?