Prosecution highlights former LAPD detective's journal entries during murder hearing

Dec. 8, 2009 | KPCC Wire Services
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File photo of LAPD Detective Stephanie Lazarus, 49, during an appearance at the Criminal Justice Center on June 9, 2009 in Los Angeles, California.

Decades-old journal entries belonging to a Los Angeles police detective charged with the 1986 murder of her former boyfriend's girlfriend document feelings of stress over her former boyfriend's impending marriage, a prosecution witness testified today.

Stephanie Lazarus' journal was found in a three-ring binder at the bottom of a footlocker in an office at her home when officers served a search warrant there June 5, according to Los Angeles police Detective Gregory Stearns.

The testimony came during the second day of a hearing to determine if there is enough evidence to require Lazarus, now 49, to stand trial in the Feb. 24, 1986, shooting death of Sherri Rasmussen.

On June 4, 1985, Lazarus wrote in another journal entry that she had "found out John was getting married,'' the Robbery-Homicide Detective testified.

"This is very bad. My concentration is negative-10,'' she wrote in the entry.

Within weeks Lazarus wrote that she "really didn't feel like working'' and "was too stressed out about John,'' and had asked for time off work, according to the journal.

A subsequent entry remarks that she got a card from "Mrs. Ruetten'' and that it made her very sad, Stearns said in reading from the journal.

On cross-examination, Stearns testified that he didn't remember seeing any journal entries involving Ruetten after Dec. 12, 1985.

Former LAPD Sgt. Mike Hargreaves, who was Lazarus' roommate in the mid-1980s and described her as "an expert'' in firearms proficiency, testified that she woke him up sometime after midnight in the fall of 1985 and "was very upset.''

"She was crying. She told me that she had been out with John and that he had broken up with her ... that he was getting married to someone else,'' he told a Los Angeles Superior Court Judge.

She had previously expressed that she loved the college boyfriend she referred to as "John,'' and that he was "her idea of a perfect guy,'' Hargreaves testified.

"I know their relationship wasn't going so well. There were tears on other occasions,'' the former sergeant said of Lazarus.

Lazarus went on to marry another man she met later.

A college friend of Lazarus and Ruetten testified that when he accompanied the two on a trip to the San Francisco area in about 1980, Lazarus told him at one point that she was romantically interested in Ruetten. Ruetten did not seem to reciprocate those feelings, according to his former roommate, David Neuman.

"I didn't see him having a serious dating relationship when he was at UCLA,'' Neuman testified.

The murder charge against Lazarus includes the special circumstance allegations of murder during the commission of a burglary and murder while lying in wait, along with a separate allegation of personal use of a handgun.

Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek a death sentence for Lazarus, a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department's Art Theft Unit.

Lazarus was identified as a suspect in the slaying after a DNA sample left at the scene recently came back as a match, according to police.

Lazarus had been a police officer for two years at the time of the slaying and been on the force for 25 years when she was arrested June 5 at the LAPD's downtown Los Angeles headquarters.

The 29-year-old victim, a nursing supervisor at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, was killed by three gunshot wounds to the chest, and had an apparent bite mark on her left inner arm and other injuries to both hands, said Dr. Susan Selser with the Los Angeles County coroner's office, who did the autopsy.

The doctor testified that the apparent bite mark was "certainly consistent with this occurring on or about the time of death,'' but said she could not say exactly when it happened.

Los Angeles police Detective Steven Hooks, who retired from the police force in July 1998, testified that he went to the victim's townhome shortly after the killing and noticed a white rope and some speaker wire, as well as what appeared to be a bloody fingerprint on a digital disc player that was on the floor.

Hooks noted that there was trauma to the victim's head and that her right eye was bruised and closed, and that she had two holes in the robe she wore.

The sliding glass door on the balcony above the garage was shattered, with the remaining glass bowed toward the balcony, the investigator testified. But he said there was no sign of forced entry.

Nothing in the master bedroom, including a jewelry box, appeared to have been disturbed, he said.

Lazarus, who has remained jailed without bail, was charged June 8 with the capital murder count, and was ordered the following month to give a dental impression that prosecutors wanted to be compared to the bite mark on the victim's arm.

The hearing is expected to continue Wednesday morning and wrap up Friday.

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