Ex-LAPD detective who spent decades covering up a murder will not be eligible for parole, reversing a previous decision

A former Los Angeles police officer who killed a romantic rival and concealed the murder for more than two decades will not be eligible for parole. That reverses an earlier decision that found she was suitable for release, a lawyer for the victim's family said Wednesday.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for victim Sherri Rasmussen's family said the revocation of Stephanie Lazarus' parole came after a 90-minute hearing before three California Parole Board commissioners.

Family attorney John Taylor said Rasmussen's relatives were pleased with the decision.

“Lazarus was on parole and was able to evade arrest for 23 years after the murder,” Taylor said in a statement. “She has expressed no remorse for the cold-blooded execution of Sherri Rasmussen, which occurred during her time as an LAPD officer. It is unfair to the family that she is now being released and enjoying her life while receiving her LAPD pension.”

A spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the board's parent agency, said a panel that reviewed the earlier decision found “good reasons” for overturning that decision. Lazarus will have a new parole hearing in 18 months, the spokesman said.

A lawyer for Lazarus did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rasmussen, a 29-year-old nurse, was shot to death in her Los Angeles-area apartment on February 24, 1986. Lazarus, an art theft detective with the Los Angeles Police Department who was then an officer in his mid-20s, had previously dated a man whom Rasmussen married.

The lead investigator in the case said Lazarus entered Rasmussen's apartment, hit her in the head with a vase and shot her three times in the chest, using a pillow as an improvised silencer. She then staged the murder to look like a robbery, investigator Greg Stearns said earlier at a parole hearing for Lazarus.

DNA left at the crime scene later linked Lazarus to the murder. She was arrested in 2009 and convicted of first-degree murder three years later after maintaining her innocence at trial.

After a hearing last November, Lazarus was found eligible for probation by a commissioner who cited, in part, her young age at the time of the murder – recent California legislation aimed at changing the way people under 26 are treated in the criminal justice system — and according to a transcript of the hearing, Lazarus posed no risk if she were released.

Rasmussen's family disputed that finding, saying Lazarus did not appear remorseful and questioned why the agency relied on the state's juvenile justice system in her case.

At the time of the murder, Lazarus, who was nearly 26 at the time and had been a police officer for two years, had passed psychological evaluations that allowed her to become a police officer and carry a gun, the family said.

During the November hearing, Lazarus said, according to the transcript, that she had no intention of killing Rasmussen when she went to her home. She said she went to the couple's apartment to talk to her ex, who was not there at the time of the murder.

According to the transcript, Lazarus said she didn't turn herself in afterward because she was ashamed.

After the board determined that Lazarus was suitable for release, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said that while she had an excellent disciplinary record and had tried to improve herself in prison, she had only begun to accept full responsibility for to take over the murder until she was caught.

A separate panel, citing the governor's letter, said the decision to release Lazarus deserved additional scrutiny because it may have been “prudent.”