Just The Tip-sters

On February 24, 1986, John Ruetten came home from work to the condominium in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles that he shared with his bride of three months, Sherri Rasmussen.  What he found inside the condo changed his life forever – and it also changed a lot of people’s perception of the Los Angeles Police Department.  On the living room floor, still wearing the robe and underwear she had worn to bed the previous night, was the body of Sherri – her face beaten beyond all recognition, and the three bullets that finally ended her life.  Little did John know then that it would take 23 years and a determined, unafraid LAPD detective to both solve the murder and expose a rotten corner of the department’s inner culture.  It turns out that for several years Sherri Rasmussen had been stalked and terrorized by one of LAPD’s young superstars – then still a uniformed officer named Stephanie Lazarus.  Lazarus had been friends with Ruetten when they first met in college and the two had been occasional sexual partne