She also alleged that the search warrant was improperly granted, her statements in an interview prior to her arrest were compelled, and that evidence supporting the original case theory should have been admitted at trial.

[17] A maid cleaning a nearby unit said she heard something that sounded like two people fighting, and then something falling, at around 12:30 p.m.[18] When Ruetten returned home in the evening, he found his garage door open and broken glass on the driveway.

[11] As one of the two detectives in the nation's only full-time unit devoted to that specialty, Lazarus had gained some local media attention when she and her partner had recovered a statue stolen from Carthay Circle.

5", worked on the case after hours or behind closed doors, and developed cover stories to explain why they wanted to look at personnel records for one particular officer from 20 years ago.

Another detective recalled that, at that time, most LAPD officers had preferred a .38 as their backup or off-duty carry gun; in fact, they were required to purchase only weapons compatible with Federal Plus-P ammunition, which had been used in the murder.

Realizing that Lazarus was now their prime suspect, the detectives informed their superiors and arranged to discreetly collect a voluntarily discarded DNA sample from her, knowing they could do so without having to get a warrant.

[10] A short time later, detectives from the RHD, who had been selected for their lack of personal connection to Lazarus, called her from the lockup at Parker Center, the department's headquarters.

[11] After Lazarus had checked in her gun and entered the interrogation room, they explained that this was really about some loose ends they were trying to tie up in the Rasmussen case, since her name had come up in the investigation.

Stearns and Jaramillo knew they would have to tread carefully since Lazarus was well aware of police interview techniques and her rights to silence and legal counsel, which she could invoke at any time.

Lazarus claimed to recall little due to the intervening years, but gradually revealed more and more knowledge—including oblique acknowledgements of her visits to the Ruetten condo and a specific encounter at Rasmussen's office—until she accused her colleagues of considering her a suspect.

Lazarus's lawyer, Mark Overland, said the judge did not understand the case well and contrasted the high figure with the $1 million set for Robert Blake and Phil Spector when they were charged with murder.

In support, he cited missing aspects of the original file such as recordings of interviews, Sherri Rasmussen's blood toxicology report, as well as a polygraph test Ruetten allegedly failed.

[26] Following that denial, Overland moved to quash the search warrants that had been executed on Lazarus's home, vehicle and spaces she used at work, and suppress the evidence obtained from them.

[27] Overland's subsequent motion for a Franks hearing, which would have allowed them to cross-examine the detective who had filed the search-warrant affidavit to better determine whether the evidence obtained was admissible, was also denied on the same basis.

After showing the jury of eight women and four men[14] photographs of a beaten, bloodied Rasmussen, prosecutor Paul Nunez told them, "It wasn't a fair fight ...

[9] Records also showed that, in 1992, shortly after Nels Rasmussen had offered to pay for DNA analysis on the remaining forensic evidence from the case, all samples other than the bite swab that might have helped to identify an attacker had been checked out of the coroner's office by a detective named Phil Morrill.

[8] Francis filed her suit late in 2013, following the rejection of her claim by the city and a finding by the state's Department of Fair Employment and Housing that she had a right to sue.

[43] In another case, after she suggested doing DNA analyses of semen found on two teenage girls also believed to be victims of the Hillside Strangler, another detective discouraged her with the words, "We don't want to open that can of worms."

She told them she was concerned that events leading to Lazarus's arrest in which she was involved had been portrayed differently in the media than she recalled them, putting the department in a more favorable light.

[9] In the wake of these events, Francis claims, she was taken off the upcoming Grim Sleeper case despite the work she had done on it, including analysis of the DNA sample that had led the police to their suspect.

[46] But Tickle pointed[45] to an existing California case, which had expressly held that the state cannot rely purely on the warrant's issuance by a judge to establish sufficient good faith that the search was constitutional.

[47] Tickle also attacked Perry's rulings limiting the defense's ability to put on evidence suggesting the initial botched burglary theory of the crime was more credible than the prosecution claimed.

The prosecution had not moved to exclude third-party culpability evidence, despite claiming during its opening statement that the initial investigation's conclusion was erroneous, which led Perry to ask if they were conceding that it was.

"She is mistaken" since it applies only to information coerced under the threat of termination in explicitly criminal investigations, as opposed to statements given where an officer "had no objectively reasonable basis to believe she was compelled to answer the detectives' questions," as Perry had found.

"The fact that she remained in the room answering questions does not support that she felt compelled, but only that she wished to allay suspicion by avoiding behaving in a manner that suggested guilt.

"[54] Manella called Lazarus's argument that, regardless of what did or did not happen in the interview, California law compelled her to answer truthfully or be disciplined, a "novel proposition" that relied strongly on a case decided in 1939, 30 years before Garrity.

"Appellant, herself a former internal affairs officer, would have been aware that in the absence of a formal complaint or the explicit advisement required by [a state precedent], she was under no danger of termination if she refused to cooperate with the detectives."

"[T]he trial court was well within its discretion in concluding appellant had failed to raise a reasonable inference that the April burglary was in any way connected to Rasmussen's murder", Manella wrote.

"Cross-examining Safarik about a specific burglary that occurred on a later date in a different location would have had little bearing on the validity of his opinions and conclusions concerning the Rasmussen crime scene.

"It makes me sick to this day that I took an oath to protect and serve people, and I took Sherri Rasmussen's life from her, a nurse," she told a parole board panel.