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

case from a stack on a colleague's desk. She has just been cleared to perform DNA analysis

“on her own. The stack holds DNA requests from detectives all over the Los Angeles Police”

Department. Jennifer is the newest analyst in the unit and the only one without a backlog. She goes through the stack looking for something simple. She finds a request on a 1986 murder in Venise, a nurse. The detective who submitted it wrote that the victim's blood type was "oh" and that type A blood had been recovered inside her home. Blood that could not have been hers. Jennifer reads that and thinks this one is easy. Pick a

type A stain, pull the suspects profile, run it against the national database, compare it to the victim, close the file. She takes the Sherry-Rasmus in case. The request Jennifer picked up has been waiting for more than a year. Cliff Shepard, a cold case detective submitted

“it on September 19th, 2003, 17 years after the murder. Shepard works in a unit the LAPD”

created in 2001 to go back through murders the city never solved between six and nine

thousand of them. Detectives spent a year just cutting that list down to the ones that still had evidence someone could test. Sherry-Rasmus in case made that list because of one line in a report from 1986. Years later, Detective Shepard pointed it out to deadline. I saw that a bite swab had been collected by the coroner's office. It's okay with that swab. There should be DNA. Shepard attached two documents to his request. Detective Lyle Mayors

follow up report from 1986 and the property log, meaning every item the LAPD booked into

evidence in Sherry's case. The property log contains 29 items. The bite marks swab is not

“one of them. So Cliff Shepard goes looking. The coroner's office tells him they do not have”

it. I checked with our evidence room. They didn't have it. I looked at our property reports. It's not booked. How could that happen? In competence. That had a line? Yes. In 2003, Shepard takes a yellow highlighter to the sentence in Mayors report describing the bite swab and writes a note in the margin asking, "Where it is?" It is that handwritten note that newbie criminalists Jennifer Francis finds when she picks up the Sherry residence in

case for DNA analysis and reads Shepard's request. Jennifer calls Shepard herself and asks whether she can see some crime scene photographs. It's a normal request. Shepard offers her the murder book instead. This is not normal. A murder book is the complete case file. There is only that one binder. It's irreplaceable. Detectives usually stay while an analyst reads it and then take it back. But Shepard tells Jennifer to keep it as long as she needs. A few days later, she comes

back from lunch and it is sitting on the center table of the lab. A blue, three-ring binder. Jennifer shows a coworker. Check it out. She says a real-life murder book. Then she starts reading it. Inside, Jennifer finds a security report from Glendale Adventist Medical Center. The hospital where Sherry residents had worked. It describes a nurse, Sherry turned down for a promotion. It says the hospital disciplined that nurse and her boyfriend too, a doctor,

after they made harassing phone calls to Sherry. By December 22, 2004, Jennifer has finished testing the items Shepard submitted for DNA analysis. Every sample comes back as belonging to Sherry Rasmussen. Three weeks of work. An all Jennifer has is the DNA profile of a woman everyone already knows is dead. Frustrated, she thinks about the bite mark she has seen mentioned in this murder book, but not in the case's property log. If any evidence in this case carries the

killer's DNA, it is that swab. People do not bite themselves. Jennifer goes back to LAPD property, which contains the 29 items listed on the log and checks out the sexual assault kit from 1986. There are swabs and slides inside, but not one is labeled "bite mark." Tracking down evidence is a detective's job. Francis is a civilian scientist with no contacts at the coroner's office, but she calls anyway because that's where evidence like this might be.

and reads off the coroner's case number. She is looking for a bite mark swab.

“The woman puts her on hold. Ten seconds later, she comes back on and says,”

there is no evidence booked under that number. Jennifer hangs up wondering whether the woman typed a digit wrong. She calls the coroner's office again the next day, hoping someone else picks up. A man answers and tells her the same thing. Nothing here.

Jennifer considers calling a third time, hoping to reach someone who remembers how evidence was

stored before everything went into a computer. One of the other criminalists tells her to stop. "You're done," she says. "You don't want to get the reputation of being a pain in the ass." You're brand new at this, you've already called twice. Jennifer knows she's probably right. So she goes back to mayor's 1986 report and reads it one more time, looking for anything she's

“missed, and she finds a name, a man from the coroner's office who collected the swab in the first place.”

Senior Criminalist Lloyd Mahaney. Jennifer does the math, almost 19 years. What are the odds this man is still on the job? She calls the coroner's office and asks for Lloyd Mahaney by name. He picks up. Jennifer asks him one question. "If you swabed a bite mark in 1986, what would you have called it?" Mahaney says, "Bite mark swab." Jennifer tells him nobody can find it. The coroner's office says they don't have it, and neither does the LAPD.

Mahaney is not surprised. When the coroner's office moved to computers, some of the old cases never

made it in. To find something from 1986, you would have to pull the coroner's evidence log on microfiche. It would be a big job, and Mahaney is leaving on vacation.

“Then Lloyd Mahaney tells her this, "We would never get rid of a bite mark swab. We don't keep”

clothing forever, but a bite mark swab. We would not throw that away." Jennifer tells him, "There's no rush. Just see if he can find it when he gets back." Before they hang up, she says, "One more thing. Don't forget about me, Lloyd." Lloyd Mahaney sealed that envelope at six minutes past two in the morning. On February 25th, 1986, and sent it downstairs into a freezer. The bite mark swab has been there ever since, almost 19 years. It isn't gone. It is still there

somewhere, but no one can find it. I'm Megan Kelly, and this is MK confidential. AI can clone your voice, forge your signature, even create fake documents that fool experts, and criminals are using these tools right now to potentially steal from you. How? It's called title fraud. Your property records are public by law. Your name, address, even your signature. It's all sitting in a database, anyone can access. A cyber scammer can pull your records use

AI to forge a transfer document, file it with your county and on paper. They are the new legal owner of your property. Then they can borrow against your equity, or even sell your property, long before you realize anything is even wrong. But let me tell you about home title lock. They monitor your property's title 24/7, alert you of any changes, and if you are a victim,

their team of restoration experts will spend up to $1 million restoring your title.

So, once the last time you checked your title records, you can do it today. Use our promo code, Megan, at home title lock.com to get a free title history report, plus a free trial of $1 million triple lock protection. So, you can make sure you are not already a victim. That's home title lock.com, promo code, Megan, or use the link in the description. Let's go back to 1986, and what the LA Police Department was doing while that envelope sat

untouched in the coroner's freezer. It is April 10, 7 weeks after Sherry Rasmussen was killed. Two blocks from Sherry's condo, a woman named Lisa Ravali, comes home to find two men inside her apartment. One runs pastor and out the door, the other points a gun at her, backs away, and disappears out the door. Detective Lyle Mayer hears about it the next morning. Ravali walks him through her place. It is laid out almost exactly like Sherry's,

and the burglars had stacked her stereo equipment by the door. To Mayer, the resemblance is enough.

Dateline why it was not a stretch to call the two cases related.

“No, not at all, not with the proximity, the time of day, and basically the same M.O.”

Mayer calls a press conference and brings composite sketches of two men. We have obtained fingerprints in the crimes. We are of the opinion at this point that the suspects may be illegal aliens. Nobody has ever charged in the burglary from April 10. Mayer would say years later that his detectives arrested around 20 people, and ran every one of their fingerprints against the crime scene. None of them matched. On April 7, 1987, one year and six weeks after Sherry's murder,

Lyle Mayer files a progress report on the Rasmussen investigation. Its conclusion is one sentence.

No additional leads have developed in this case. In Tucson, Sherry's parents, Nell's and Loretta Rasmussen keep pushing. In October 1986, they put up a $10,000 reward and fly to Los Angeles for

“a press conference. The LA Times runs Sherry's photograph beside composite sketches of the two men”

police believe killed her. Local radio picks it up, so does the evening news. A year later, in November 1987, Nell's and Loretta do it again. Another press conference, another round of coverage. The reward leads nowhere. Loretta telephones the van eyes detectives many times over the years. The calls are brief and she often comes away feeling like the detectives just want her off the phone. In August 1990, Nell's rights to the television program America's most wanted.

Quote, "We feel this case has not been thoroughly investigated and we would appreciate any help in this matter," unquote. The Loretta produces nothing. Nell's keeps going anyway. Years later, Connie remembers to NBC how relentless her father became.

“As a father, he had a felt of responsibility to protect her and the only way that”

in her dad, he could protect her was to find out who killed her. He would constantly redisec the information that we knew. In 1991, Lyle Mayer retires from the LA Police Department and Sherry's case passes to whoever is running the homicide desk in Venise. Around 1992, Sherry's longtime friend Donna Robison tells the family she has a relative who can arrange an exciting new analysis called DNA testing. Sometime in 1992 or 1993, Nell's and Loretta

fly to Los Angeles with her daughter Connie and drive to Venise Station to ask the LA PD about DNA tests of the evidence in Sherry's case. The Rasmussen's remember it this way. Nell's goes in and asks the officer at the front desk where they should park. Anywhere on the street outside, the officer says. Loretta had called ahead and made an appointment, upstairs the three of them are put in a small room and left there. It looks like the kind of room where police interview suspects.

They wait for more than an hour. They had expected to meet with Lyle Mayer. Instead, the detective

who finally comes in is someone they have never seen before. His name is Steve Fisk.

Mayer has retired. Fisk tells them and he has taken over Sherry's case. Fisk sets a thin folder on the table between them. It stays closed. He never opens it, and never takes a note. Connie looks at that folder and thinks if the LA PD were working my sister's case, it would be thicker than that. What do you want to know? He asks. The family asks about the fingerprints from Sherry's case. Have they been run through the FBI database? Fisk tells them

they're still working on it. By this time Sherry has been dead more than six years. Fisk tells them it is a cold case with no leads and that if anything changes he'll let them know. Then Nell's asks him a question. Have you run the DNA? Fisk tells him DNA testing is expensive and that the LA PD's budget cannot cover it in Sherry's case. Nell says fine, I'll pay for it. I even have a person who would do it. Fisk tells him that would do no good. They have no

suspect and he says they need one before they can run DNA. The detective asks whether Nell's is still suspicious of John Rutton. Nell says he does not believe his son-in-law killed Sherry. However, he does believe John knows something that he's holding back something.

what matters is already in there in the LA PD's own records. Fisk does not even look at it.

“Connie gets the distinct sense that he wants her and her family to leave after less than an hour”

they do. They did meet with us but it was also more of a it was like a show. They walk out of the van eyes police station to find a parking ticket on their windshield. Nell's goes back inside and says the police told him to park there. He is met with an instruction that he will have to pay it anyway. After meeting with Fisk, the residents call Sherry's friend Donna and tell her the police turned down Nell's offer to pay for DNA testing. Donna's memory is the only record outside

of the family that the conversation with LAPD ever happened at all. There is no reference to the meeting

in the LAPD murder book. The next entries in the case law come in October 1993 when detectives run latent or barely visible fingerprints from the crime scene against databases in California and

“other Western states. No hits. They also pull lists of nearby police interactions and state prison”

parolees from around the time Sherry was murdered. These two will come up empty. Then, on October 11th, a detective named Phil Morit goes to the L.A. County coroner's office and signs out the trace or transfer evidence from Sherry's case. This is the evidence that the coroner's criminalist Lloyd Mahaney collected the night Sherry died. There are two teams that collect evidence at an L.A. murder scene. One is the coroner's office. They collect the body and everything touching it. In

Sherry's case, this includes fibers found on her robe and loose hairs from her neck. The LAPD has its own team of criminalists in its scientific investigations division. They collect the evidence that is not directly touching the body. Bullet caseings, fingerprints, blood stains on the walls, that sort of thing. Bad evidence was booked into L.A. PD property. One day, Jennifer Francis will test it and find only Sherry's DNA. The trace evidence from the body went into the coroner's

property room the morning after Sherry died. At this point in our story, it has sat undisturbed for seven years. At 12-25 p.m. for reasons unknown, more it signs out all of that coroner's trace evidence. From there, it vanishes. There is no record that this evidence was ever returned to the coroner.

No record of what happened to it at all. Some of the most critical evidence in the case,

which could positively ID a suspect gets checked out and is never returned. No one knows where it went. It's simply disappears. There is no mention of any of this in the murder book. In fact, there's no entry for anything from October 11th. Years later, detectives working Sherry's case show more at the signature from the county coroner's office. He confirms that it is his, but tells them he does not remember picking up the evidence, nor ever even working the rest of his in case.

And yet, there is one piece of evidence that more it left behind at the coroner. It is hidden away in a basement freezer and its label is fading. It would be tough to find. One tiny, cigar-sized test tube that will remain hidden for another 12 years. The bite marks swab from Sherry's left arm. It is still in the freezer, where it has been since the morning after the murder seven years ago. Everybody's talking about weight loss injections because the

results can be so dramatic. They work by lowering blood sugar and reducing appetite. But what if you're looking to lose weight, but are not interested in painful weekly injections, especially

“when you hear about some of those intense side effects? Well, that's why doctors created a weight”

loss supplement called lean and the results could be remarkable. Lean says the studied ingredients in their product have been shown to lower your blood sugar, burn fat by converting it into energy, and curb your appetite and cravings so you are not as hungry. But listen, lean is not for the casual diet or with only a few pounds to lose. The doctors at Brickhouse Nutrition created lean for frustrated dieters who have 10 or more pounds to lose. You could get started with 20% off

and free rush shipping, adding lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Visit TakeLean.com and enter Kelly for your discount. That's promo code Kelly at TakeLean.com. Fast forward now to January 2005 and criminalist Jennifer Francis, the new DNA analyst looking for her next task. Here's

Mahini about the bite mark and asked him not to forget about her. The call is from a supervisor at

“the L.A. County Coroner's office. We found your bite mark swab. He and his team had just spent”

six hours in the freezer hunting for it. Jennifer calls Detective Shepherd from the cold case unit with the news. We found the swab. Shepherd asks why they missed it when he asked and Jennifer tells him about the newfangled computer system. When the swab arrives in mid-January she sees another reason and why it took several hours in the cold to find. The evidence envelope is in rough shape worn by years of being shuffled around the freezer as other evidence was crammed in and out

around it. Mahini's handwriting on Sherry's name is so faded. Jennifer can barely read it to confirm.

There is a hole in the top right corner of the envelope. The red cap of the plastic sample tube peaks out. At some point it pears to clean through the envelope right where Mahini had written the

“case number. What remains of it is illegible. Bite marks swabs are filed by case number with no”

legible case number on the envelope finding the swab required a bit of detective work of its own. But the tape sealing the envelope is intact. The tube is intact and so are the two swabs inside. So in January 27th 2005 Jennifer Francis puts a sample of cells from the swab under a microscope.

It looks like saliva. This is a good sign. She starts the sample through DNA analysis.

As the computer runs it draws the profile as a row of peaks across her screen. It draws big, tall spikes, meaning the sample is strong. Another good sign. The whole process takes 30 minutes. The profile reaches the sex marker. The part that shows whether the DNA came from a man or a woman. XY or XX. Jennifer expects a male result. She remembers the investigators prevailing theory from the murder book about two burglars.

Besides that, most burglars are committed by men. She stares at the computer screen, waiting. An XY reading would cause the line to peek again. It stays flat. Jennifer looks at the

“flat line. Wait, the first thought is Sherry. Is the computer showing Sherry's DNA?”

Maybe the bite broke the skin and the swab picked up some of Sherry's blood. That would explain a female result. When the computer finishes, Jennifer takes the final profile and puts it side by side with Sherry's. They do not match. There is another woman's DNA in the bite mark from Sherry's arm. A woman bit Sherry Rasenson. Jennifer has read the murder book and her mind goes straight to the nurse from the hospital security report, the one who harass Sherry after missing out on a promotion.

However, Jennifer does not suggest this idea even as a theory. She is expected to stay in her lane as a criminalist. Analyze the evidence. Let detectives come up with a theories and so she does. On February 8, 2005, Jennifer sends her report to Detective Shepard, the result catches him off guard. She called me and said, "Hey, this is an unknown female's DNA. That is not what I was expected." But the surprise does not change his basic theory of the crime. Shepard now looks for a male

female burglary team. The violence at the scene still makes him think a man had to be involved. He explained that reasoning to date line in 2020. "I believed that, okay, there's a woman, and then there's a man that Sherry had been clubbed from behind, knocked down or unconscious, and then somebody stood over her and shot her." Jennifer does not understand why Shepard fixates on a burglary, in light of this new DNA evidence. She thinks the personal motive is at least worth

a look, but it's Shepard's case and she is only a criminalist. No arrest follows. No suspect is identified. Jennifer moves on to other cases. Sherry's case goes quiet again. Fast forward, three years to March 2008. Venise homicide where Sherry's case started more than two decades earlier is moving offices. Someone plunks a box of files next to Jim Nuttall's desk. Nuttall is a three-year homicide detective. He has spent all three of those years in Venise.

He has not thrilled to see this box. Two detectives are about to retire and Nuttall's wife is

before the baby comes. He's also got no idea who left the box beside his desk.

Inside it are two faded blue binders, murder books from cases waiting to be solved. Nuttall came up under an old-fashioned supervisor who believed that

“reading old unsolved cases is the best way to learn, so Nuttall has read and he has learned.”

He does not recognize the books in his newly acquired file box, Katherine Braley killed in Venise in 1988. The other Sherry Rasmussen 1986. Jim Nuttall has tried his hand at investigating exactly one cold case. The murder of a

biker and bookie who went by said the squid. He read the murder book, spoke to witnesses,

and eventually arrived at a final suspect, a fellow biker who beats said the squid to death over money. However, Nuttall hit a brick wall at the DA's office. He had only circumstantial evidence connecting his suspect to the murder, nothing physical. He presented his case on the DA turned it down. No arrest, no charges. The blue book goes back with the others, unsolved.

“Jim comes away convinced that solving a cold case requires physical evidence, no matter how”

compelling the argument a detective makes. A homicide unit moves locations. He drops the box on the empty desk next to his own in the new office space. His baby comes. He takes his leave, and returns, and tackles other cases. The box sits there undisturbed for nearly a year. Super Bowl Sunday, 2009. A Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Arizona Cardinals 27 to 23 on a touchdown with 35 seconds left. Nuttall watches with a house full of friends and a fridge full of beer.

Nuttall later describes that Sunday to NBC's date line. Super Bowl Sunday's like a holiday to me, so we were having a good time and we were up late. The next morning is Monday, February 2nd. Nuttall comes entireed and a little worse for the wear as he later tells NBC. We comminarily

“oh dark 30 and I was tired. It was the perfect day to have a cup of coffee and do some reading.”

Nuttall gets coffee and opens the four-volume Razerson murder book. He reads about a 29-year-old nurse fighting for her life inside her own home. Shots fired upstairs. A struggle over the gun. They fight their way downstairs. A vase breaks. Sherry is hit again. Someone bites down hard enough on her arm to leave a full set of teeth marks and then re-bullets to the chest and somewhere in the middle of volume one, Jim stops. The stereo components stacked by the front door. The stacked the

original detectives had read as evidence of a burglary had blood on them. He tells date line NBC this was a turning point. For me everything changed with that blood on that stereo equipment. If there was blood on the stereo components the components were moved after someone likely Sherry was bleeding. To nuttall that means the stacked by the front door was built after the fight. Not before it. She's dead or dying and if you wanted that stereo equipment you had every

opportunity in the world to walk out the door with it. Why stack it and leave it? At that point you start to draw the conclusion that murder was the main goal not the burglary. Then Nuttall turns a page and finds a four-year-old lab report. It has Jennifer Francis's name on it. He keeps reading. The major DNA profile from the bite markswab is female. Sherry Rasenson is excluded as the source. Not all reads a twice. Then it hits him. Oh shit. Not only do I have DNA I've got female DNA.

We had a woman responsible or involved with this crime. The female DNA profile had been uploaded

to the FBI's national database in 2005 after Jennifer Francis found and processed it but was never

matched to anyone. The detectives will have to build a list of female suspects themselves. Nuttall tells date line that suddenly 23 years after the murder is cold case seemed solvable. Once you debunk the burglary theory and you have a female DNA profile, now this case becomes manageable. Now it becomes a matter of time. Within days Nuttall calls the crime lab about the DNA work from 2005. Jennifer Francis calls him back that same day. They have never spoken before.

Each is trying to figure out how much the other knows. One of the first things she tells him

Nuttall is taken aback. He thinks I know that, but how do you know that?

“Jennifer does not tell him. Not yet. Few old by the female DNA discovery, Jim Nuttall”

his supervisor Rob Bubb and two other vannies detectives start Sherry Rasenson's case over

from scratch. Whoever this killer is, she bit Sherry Rasenson hard enough to leave toothparks

and saliva on her arm. So the question is no longer which burglars were inside the condo,

“but rather who were the women and Sherry's life? Women she knew well enough that if one”

rang her doorbell, she might open the door. Nuttall is determined to find out. The next day,

February 10, he calls John Rutton. Nuttall asks him, "Where there any women in your past, that Sherry had a problem with?" John gives him a name. Stephanie Lazarus John says he was involved with Stephanie for years before he married Sherry. On and off he says, he says that Stephanie joined the Los Angeles Police Department before he ever met Sherry. And as far as John knows, she still works for the department. Nuttall turns to another detective

“in the room. He tells Dateline, he will never forget what happened next. I turned it when the”

members are a unit and I said check and aid for me in the directory and he accessed the LAPD directory and explaining me that she was currently in the tech of the LAPD. Stephanie Lazarus, commercial crimes division, Parker Center, Los Angeles Police Department headquarters, downtown. Nuttall understands immediately, this case has changed. Total we're not in Kansas anymore. I'm Megan Kelly. Next time on MK Confidential, four of An eyes detectives must decide

what to do when their murder suspect is one of their own.