The Lazarus Files: A Cold Case Investigation

A deeply-reported, thrilling account of a murder in LA that remained a cold case until the LAPD used DNA evidence to reveal an unlikely suspect—a female detective from their own ranks

In the summer of 1986, the body of thirty-year-old Sherri Rasmussen was found in her condo in Southern California after what appeared to be a furious struggle. Rasmussen, a Director of Nursing at a local hospital, had been married just eight months to her husband, whom she’d met two years earlier. LAPD detectives dismissed the murder as a burglary and filed it as a cold case.

Twenty-three years later, thanks to the emergence of both DNA testing and an LA cold case unit, an intrepid lab worker discovered that the DNA of the perpetrator at the crime scene belonged to a woman, and investigators determined the killer to be none other than an art theft investigator and respected detective in the LAPD—Stephanie Lazarus. McGough, obsessed and consumed by this case for years, reconstructs the full trajectory of the crime in a thrilling, fast-paced whodunit—and even raises the possibility of a cover-up within the highest levels of the LAPD.