“MK Confidential” tracks the winding road to justice for Sherri Rasmussen — and why it took so long. With her killer in custody, Sherri’s family watches at trial, sentencing, and early parole hearings to keep her off the streets. The process is arduous, and ongoing. Megyn sits down with Sherri Rasmussen’s two sisters, Connie Wilkinson and Teresa Lane, to trace the case through their eyes. From the LAPD investigation that plodded along for decades to the cycle of parole hearings and appeals, the arrest of Stephanie Lazarus proves to be only the beginning. For years, Lazarus maintains her innocence. Then, when it seems her parole is on the line, she flips, and begins revealing details drip-by-drip about the night she took Sherri’s life. Lazarus will make the same case next month; Sherri’s family will be ready. This is Episode 4 of the Sherri Rasmussen story.
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This case follows the murder of Sherry Rasmussen in 1986 by Stephanie Lazarus, a former LAPD officer driven by a romantic obsession with the victim's partner. After 23 years of investigative failure and alleged police cover-ups, Lazarus was convicted via DNA evidence. The narrative details her recent parole hearings, her partial confessions, and the enduring fight for justice by the Rasmussen family.
Stephanie Lazarus sits in front of a camera in a California state prison and answers questions
under oath. It is February 12th, 2025. Stephanie is 64 years old and she has been in state custody
for almost 16 years. She really wants to get out. On the other side of the video screen,
Sherry Rasmussen's two sisters, Connie and Teresa, are watching. So are Sherry's two nieces
and John Rutten, Sherry's husband. The man Stephanie killed Sherry over and still lost.
A parole commissioner named Kevin Chappelle asks Stephanie about a phone call she made
on a February morning in 1986. Sherry had answered. Chappelle asks what Stephanie felt
when she heard Sherry's voice. Yes sir, I was enraged. Stephanie says she went down the stairs
of her condominium and took a cord off of her workbench. Chappelle asks her why she brought
that cord with her to John and Sherry's home. Because I was so angry that if she got in my
way to see John, I was going to strangle her. Chappelle asks what she was thinking by the time
she reached Sherry Rasmussen's front door. I'm going to kill her if I don't see John.
Sherry's younger sister Teresa watches her screen, listening to Stephanie talk about
murdering Sherry. At these parole hearings, Teresa makes a point of staying visible.
She told us why. Personally, I make a effort to be sure that I'm on the screen the whole time.
So she has to, if she looks up, she has to see me. But she never looks up.
Stephanie says she barged into Sherry's home asking for John, and from there she describes
what happened as a hellacious fight. Kevin Chappelle stops her. Why are you calling it a fight?
Stephanie thinks about this. I invaded her home. I was an intruder. So maybe it was just a fight
on my part. Her trying to maybe defend herself would be a better description of the situation.
Chappelle offers a different word. What about assault? And Stephanie agrees with that.
Stephanie describes a violent struggle, hitting Sherry in the face with her gun,
then biting her and smashing a vase over her head. And Stephanie says she picks up a blanket
from the floor, wraps it around her gun, and fires three times into Sherry's chest.
Chappelle comes back to that. When I think of someone in a rage, they're just out of it. They're
not thinking about, well, I need to wrap this up. Why did you wrap the gun up? Stephanie shifts
her eyes and answers to dead in the sound. I'm Megan Kelly, and this is MK Confidential.
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your discount. That's promo code Kelly at TakeLean.com. 13 years earlier in 2012, Stephanie Lazarus
is singing a very different tune. She is on trial for Sherry Rasmussen's murder. Stephanie was
arrested in June 2009. Over the next 32 months, through preliminary hearings, motions, and other
pretrial proceedings, she comes to court shackled in an orange jail jumpsuit. Then on February 6,
2012, the first day of her trial, she appears dressed in black. She pleads not guilty. She
will not testify. Prosecutors tell the jury that Stephanie Lazarus killed Sherry Rasmussen because
of a love triangle. John Rutten chose Sherry instead of her. They put the old evidence back
on the table, the swabs from Sherry's arm, the .38 caliber revolver that Lazarus reported stolen
after the murder, and Stephanie's own words about John preserved in letters, diary entries, and
photographs. And then they call John Rutten to the stand. John is 53. A reporter in the courtroom
watches him choke up several times and reach for a box of Kleenex when he is asked about the day
his Sherry died. The prosecution begins with the relationship. John testifies that he and Stephanie
Lazarus slept together somewhere between 25 and 30 times over roughly three years, beginning the
summer after he graduated from UCLA. Just as Stephanie herself predicted when questioned by
Robbery Homicide in their surprise interview, John says he did not consider Stephanie his
girlfriend. John says that in the summer of 1985, weeks after he asked Sherry to marry him,
Stephanie called him crying, asking to see him. So he went over and they had sex.
Asked to explain it, he says, quote, basically, she had no closure. She was upset. I felt bad.
I was a stupid and young man. Sherry's younger sister, Teresa Lane, is in the courtroom. She's
hearing for the first time that John slept with Stephanie after he and Sherry were engaged. When
we spoke with Teresa for this series, she still remembered what that moment felt like. I was
devastated. I'm sorry. It's hard. Sherry's older sister, Connie Wilkinson, is in the courtroom too.
John's behavior after the murder has bothered Connie for years, as she told us. It wasn't as
difficult for me to hear it because John's, in my opinion, John's behavior around Sherry's death
was suspect to me. He delayed notifying my parents until after they couldn't get a flight out of
Tucson. And they didn't, my parents weren't notified until his parents were there to support
him. Also, when my dad asked him, how did you know Sherry was dead? He goes that he used his foot
and touched her with his foot and that, you know, and she didn't move. Those are behaviors I don't
see as a loving, caring, loving husband. Teresa, who says she's still in touch with John,
sees him differently. Sherry knew about the incident with Stephanie before they got married.
Did he do wrong? Hell yes. But my sister was still willing to walk down that aisle and say, I do.
So I am going to support my sister in that. Then Stephanie Lazarus's defense attorney,
Mark Overland, gets his turn to cross-examine John. Overland argues that it was John,
not Stephanie, who could not let the relationship go. John is already dabbing at his eyes when
Overland takes him back to the night he had sex with Stephanie after becoming engaged to Sherry
and to whether John tried to clean up before going home. The attorney asks, did you take a shower
before leaving Miss Lazarus's place? John Rutten looks down. I don't recall that.
The defense attacks the bite mark evidence. Overland points to that hole in the corner of
the evidence envelope, which poked straight through the case number and argues that someone
could have used it to remove the tube and tamper with the swab. There is a second swab inside that
tube. An independent lab tests the second swab with a defense representative in the room.
It too comes back with the same DNA profile as the first, Stephanie Lazarus. The odds that the
15 DNA markers belong to anyone other than Stephanie Lazarus are about one in 1.7 sextillion.
17 days after the trial begins, on March 8th, the jury comes back with a verdict.
We, the jury, in above-entitled action find the defendant Stephanie Irene Lazarus
guilty of the crime of murder of Sherry Rasmussen.
Teresa watches Stephanie as the verdict is read.
She showed nothing. I mean, a woman that, I mean, you have to have, I assume people have feelings.
I think the best of people that she did not shudder. She didn't do anything. She didn't
even blink. She looked forward and there was nothing left in her soul.
Nels and Loretta Rasmussen stay in their seats in the second row,
sobbing. Two months later, on May 11th, 2012, Stephanie Lazarus is back in the same courthouse
for sentencing. She gets 27 years to life. Sherry's family stands one by one and tells
the court what her murder has done to them. John Rutten speaks too.
The fact that Sherry's death occurred because she met and married me brings me to my knees.
I have resigned myself to trying to endure the daydreams about a world where Sherry is still with
us. And this pointless tragedy never occurred. Teresa remembers watching Stephanie while John
spoke. I remember him standing up there and talking and Stephanie did not move, flinch,
blink or anything. That woman has no soul at all. Stephanie Lazarus says nothing.
For Connie and Teresa, it feels like the end of the story. It was relief that finally,
that she will pay for what she did. Unrealistic, but it was like, okay,
now we can close the book. But the book is never closed. We learned that after the verdict. I
thought it was going to be closed. I thought it would be a done deal that she would be there for
the 25 years. But it hasn't stopped after the verdict. It hasn't. I mean, we don't get arrest.
Sherry Rasmussen was murdered in February of 1986. Stephanie Lazarus was arrested in June 2009,
23 years. The question of what's taking so long has haunted this case from the very beginning.
Connie says their father, Nels Rasmussen, who was tortured by the fact that he could not protect his
daughter in life, became determined to avenge her in death. He began doing his own detective work
the day after Sherry died. The way that dad coped with the loss of Sherry was to be very analytical
and go over every detail and everything that she had said to him. So he did have a short list.
Stephanie was on the list. Of course, we didn't know her name. We just knew that an ex-girlfriend
that was a police officer. According to Connie, Nels Rasmussen gave the detectives two leads back
in 1986. A woman at the hospital who had been passed over for a promotion and had been making
calls to Sherry and the police officer. In his book, The Lazarus Files, author Matthew McGuff
reports that Nels early on tried repeatedly to raise the possibility of John's ex and her
involvement to no avail. Without mayor's clearance, that likely ticked mayor off.
Nels also discussed with mayor the two bullets recovered during Sherry's autopsy.
In his 2009 LAPD interview, Nels recounted,
I'm on his own without mayor's clearance that likely ticked mayor off.
Nels also discussed with mayor the two bullets recovered during Sherry's autopsy.
In his 2009 LAPD interview, Nels recounted, I mentioned to Lyle the fact that they were similar,
if not the same, as what police are issued. According to Nels, mayor never acknowledged
what Nels said about the bullets. He never acknowledged. He wouldn't deny it. He wouldn't
say okay or whatever. He would just go on with whatever he wanted to talk about, Nels informed
the LAPD in 2009. As things went along with mayor, day by day that week, Nels became ever more
insistent and emotional about bringing up the subject that seemed to irritate mayor the most,
John's ex-girlfriend, the female cop. Nels felt mayor was on his case from Wednesday on.
After a certain point, according to Nels, whenever he met with mayor,
mayor got loud with him. Mayor was not afraid to let Nels know he didn't want his input
and often punctuated their conversations with petulant gestures like slamming a book down,
throwing papers, or handing something to Nels and then grabbing it back from him.
Lyle Mayer, the lead detective, says none of that ever happened. No one from the family told him
about a police officer, he says, not even one time. And if they had, he would have run the lead down.
According to Nels, mayor responded to his theories with, you've been watching too much television.
I asked Connie and Teresa how they reconciled those two accounts and what they believe kept
the investigation from moving. Here's a critical question. Do you believe that Lyle Mayer didn't
want to talk about the police officer who John used to date because he wanted to back the blue
and cover up for a fellow police officer or because he had tunnel vision on his burglar theory?
Connie, I'll start with you on that. I believe he had tunnel vision because if you look at
the murder book and the first entry when they come to the site, he already had labeled it as
a burglary. So he was not open to discussing any other theories or alternatives. And what about
Mayer's denial? I don't believe that. I don't believe anything that Lyle Mayer says. I know
my brother-in-law has told me that he said to the police when he was first questioned after
Sherry died that he had a girlfriend that was in the police department. And John has told me that.
And my dad followed up. The sisters agree that the Los Angeles Police Department failed to
seriously investigate Stephanie Lazarus. They are less certain about why. I was naive at the time.
I was very young. And I believe that the police were doing everything they could and they were
pursuing it with an honest heart. And I don't believe that happened. And that's sort of as
distressing to me. On March 12th, 1986, 16 days after the murder, the LAPD gives John Rutten a
polygraph exam. The result is inconclusive. According to the murder book, Rutten was too
emotional to give an accurate reading. Mayer says the two key questions were, are you personally
involved? And do you personally know who killed her? On both of those, he was deemed credible.
There are seven questions listed for the exam. Not one of them is about Stephanie Lazarus.
20 months later, on November 19th, 1987, someone writes one line at the bottom of page 18 of the
murder book chronology. John Rutten called, verified Stephanie Lazarus-PO was former girlfriend.
Her name is in the murder book. Her job is in the murder book. Her relationship to the husband is in
the murder book. Exactly once. That one line is the only time Stephanie Lazarus appears in the file
for the next 22 years. The handwriting has never been identified. The detectives are no closer to
finding her. Then sometime in 1992 or 1993, Nels and Loretta and Connie drive to Van Nuys trying
to restart the case. Nels asks whether anyone had run DNA and offers to pay for it himself.
The detective who tells him no is Steve Fisk, who runs Van Nuys Homicide. He sets a thin manila
folder on the table between them, a tiny case file. According to Matthew McGuff's book on the
case, Fisk says there is no point in running DNA without a suspect. Nels points at the manila
folder, quote, I think it's in your record there about John's ex-girlfriend. Fisk says nothing.
Connie later says he seemed eager for them to leave. Early Monday afternoon, October 11th, 1993,
a homicide detective from Van Nuys drives to the Los Angeles County coroner's office about
30 minutes from the station. His name is Phil Morit. He works under Steve Fisk. Morit is listed
as the signatory, taking out all trace evidence collected from Sherry Rasmussen's body. It is
never seen again. It disappears from the record entirely. Years later, Morit acknowledges the
signature on the paperwork appears to be his, but says he does not remember taking the evidence
and says he never worked on Sherry's case. There is no mention of this removal in the murder book.
No one tells the Rasmussen family. Sherry's sister Connie has been trying to make sense of it
ever since. One thing we do know is that Stephanie Lazarus was stationed at the Van Nuys Police
Division during the 90s. So she had a relationship or worked with that detective
or she may have done and moved the items herself and put his signature. Who knows?
All we know is that it's gone. Stephanie Lazarus is transferred to Van Nuys in March of 1995,
which is a year and a half after the trace evidence leaves the coroner's office.
She works out of that station on and off for the rest of the decade.
Sherry Rasmussen's murder book is in the building, unsecured the entire time Stephanie is there.
She often volunteers to work the morning shift, a time when the building is mostly empty,
particularly of higher ranks. Whether she ever cracked it open or altered what was inside,
no one can say for sure. I asked Teresa for her opinion.
I don't see why she wouldn't have because if you look at her track record from the day she killed
my sister to 26 years later, she has, everything is self-serving. So she has, she has no regards
for anybody else. I hate to think the worst of people to tell you the truth, but if you look
at her life and how she dealt with her family during the trial and lied that she didn't kill
my sister, she has no conscience about other people. I mean, her only thing is her well-being
and what she wants to accomplish in her life and her goal. That evidence is not the only thing
missing from the investigation. The original handwritten log of the first three months after
Sherry died disappears from the murder book sometime between 1986 and 2008. No one knows when,
who took it or why. It is the only real-time record of what the detectives did to track down
her murderer, including possible meetings with family members and various leads. Only a copy
of the log prepared on a typewriter by someone survives. It is dated three months after the
and it is attached to the 60-day report. It is supposed to be word for word accurate.
Without the original, there is no way to verify that. John Rutten's name is misspelled as Rudder
throughout. The break in the case comes from a piece of evidence Phil Morritt left behind at the
coroner. A bite mark swab from Sherry's left arm tucked away in the basement freezer, but it only
comes after the case changes hands. Mayer has retired. Steve Fisk moves on. Cliff Shepard is now
in charge, an LAPD cold case detective from the respected Robbery Homicide Division. When
criminalist Jennifer Francis finds female DNA in saliva from the bite mark, it is because Cliff
Shepard first asked for a fresh look at the forensics. But Shepard does not respond meaningfully
to the news that the bite mark was from a woman. Jennifer's discovery. Jennifer calls Shepard a few
weeks later. She asks him about the Rasmussen case and the other woman. She means that nurse
who the murder book says harassed Sherry at work. Shepard's reply surprises her. Oh, you mean the LAPD
detective? She was not a part of this. He does not say that detective's name and Jennifer Francis does
not ask how she has supposedly been ruled out. That ruled out female detective's name is in the binder
on her desk. Just one line, page 18, written in 1987. Stephanie Lazarus, P.O., former girlfriend.
Francis had read right past it. Four more years pass with no movement. Then Jim Nuttall is handed
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Sherry's little sister Teresa Lane is living in Sierra Vista, Arizona.
She receives an urgent cryptic message from her parents.
And then they called me and they said, you need to be up here today. And I said, okay,
which was, you know, sort of a nice thing and a worrisome thing at the same time.
The family gathers at Nels and Loretta's home in Tucson, and LAPD detectives are already there.
They will not say why. We were sitting around in my parents' family room and my dad was
questioning the detectives, just see what was going on. And they said they couldn't say anything
until the arrest was made. And then once the arrest was made, they came in and told us that
who they arrested. Stephanie Lazarus has just been taken into custody for murder,
off the DNA from a Costco cup. Teresa remembers hearing the news.
It was a relief, but it was just a new starting point.
After Stephanie's arrest, the Rasmussens file a two-part claim against the city of Los Angeles.
First, alleging that Stephanie Lazarus used her position as an officer
to commit and cover up her crime, literally to get away with murder.
Second, that the LAPD protected Stephanie Lazarus and helped cover for her through fraud, negligence
and other wrongful acts. A judge dismisses the lawsuit before discovery begins, primarily on
the grounds of governmental immunity. No witness is ever questioned under oath. No police documents
are ever handed over. No court will ever decide whether the LAPD covered for one of its own.
On February 6th, 2012, Stephanie Lazarus pleads not guilty. She does not testify at her trial.
After being found guilty, she says nothing at her sentencing. She appeals her conviction and loses,
then appeals again and loses. Lazarus never publicly admits to killing Sherry Rasmussen,
that is until doing so could work to her advantage. November 16th, 2023,
the California Institution for Women near Chino, California. Stephanie Lazarus's parole hearing.
Two commissioners, Lazarus and her lawyer are present. The Rasmussen family joins on a video
screen. Connie, Teresa, two nieces, John Rutten and LAPD detective Greg Stearns.
Stearns is one of the detectives who interrogated Lazarus before her arrest in 2009. A California
law makes offenders who were younger than 26 when they committed their crime eligible for parole
earlier than usual. Stephanie Lazarus was 25 years, nine months and 20 days old when she
murdered Sherry Rasmussen. The board asks Stephanie what she did. She describes driving
over to the condominium and barging in asking for John. She mentions the cord she brought and the
vase. Then she says the gun came out of her fanny pack and she and Sherry struggled over it. Two
shots went into the sliding glass door upstairs. Lazarus regained control of her weapon. The
hearing is not recorded on video, but it is transcribed. And here is some of what Lazarus said
word for word. She stumbles throughout quote. At some point she had me in a chokehold and I couldn't
get out of the chokehold. I hit her several times to the right side of her face with my gun.
I still couldn't get out. Eventually I bit her. She continues. I picked up a blanket or a robe,
something off the floor. I wrapped it around my gun and I shot her three times to the chest.
Stephanie adds quote. What I didn't do is I didn't check her pulse. I didn't give her CPR.
I didn't call 911. All I cared about was my selfish self to get out of there. The presiding
commissioner, Patricia Cassidy, asks why would you give her CPR when you were trying to kill her?
Stephanie backpedals and stammers. She's just saying that she could have and that she went to
the condo to talk to John. Sherry was just in her way. Lazarus admits to the board that she staged
the scene to look like a burglary and drove off in Sherry's car. She says that after the murder,
John Rutten mentioned that he had given her name to the police. Lazarus threw the revolver she had
used to kill Sherry off a freeway. Then she reported the gun stolen to the Santa Monica
Police Department because she was certain the LAPD would come and ask her for it. No one ever did.
For 37 years, Connie and Teresa had waited for Stephanie Lazarus to say the words. Connie
remembers hearing them. The first time that we heard that she admitted that she was murdered
Sherry was at the first parole hearing. Up to that, she exercised every appeal and every way
possible to get out of out of prison. But she is still lying. Every parole hearing,
it's not the whole truth. It's a portion of the truth, maybe enough to get paroled. It works.
That day, the board finds Stephanie Lazarus suitable for parole after serving just 11 and
a half years of a 27-year sentence. After the board's decision, LA Police Chief Michael Moore
writes to the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, and asks him to intervene. Moore writes
that Lazarus continues to pose an unreasonable risk to the public. Newsom formally recommends
a second look. He sends the decision back to the full board of parole hearings to reconsider,
and they schedule a hearing. October 2nd, 2024. The board has no questions for Lazarus. It will
decide based on the record from the last one and will allow statements. Stephanie speaks for seven
minutes about the programs she has completed in prison. Greg Stearns is there in support of John
Rutten. Stearns describes the crime to the board and makes the case that the young offenders law
should not apply to Stephanie. In his view, this is a clearly premeditated and thoughtful crime.
Stephanie Lazarus stalked her victim. She chose a time and a place when she knew that she would
have the victim alone. She brought cordage to bind her, used an improvised suppressor to execute her,
staged a burglary. Those are not the hallmarks of youthful offense. They are the hallmarks of
criminal sophistication and maturity. John Rutten speaks as well. Quote,
every day she went to work as a police officer was a lie. The inmate has exercised her rights
to the fullest, but never has never done the right thing. The full board rescinds the grant
for Stephanie's parole. She stays behind bars for now, which brings us back to where this episode
began, February 12th, 2025. This is the hearing where parole commissioner Chappelle will not let
Stephanie Lazarus call the killing a fight. It is also where he asks her how she found Sherry's
address. That's a good question. Stephanie seems to stall. I would say that I probably accessed
LAPD records to obtain where she lived. Later, Lazarus's own attorney takes her back to the
morning of the murder and asks what her plan was when she left her house. She responds, quote,
to murder Sherry Rasmussen. And there it is for the first time, clearly beyond the murder
confession. Detective Greg Stearns calls out another crime for the board to consider.
For the first time today, Ms. Lazarus admitted what we long suspected, that she utilized police
databases in order to obtain the address of John and Sherry. That's a felony in the state
of California. Parole is denied. She will soon be eligible again. Sherry's sister, Teresa Lane,
was in the room that February. She says the pattern is always the same. Every parole hearing
we've done with Stephanie, she adds a little more details about the crime. She'll add a little
tidbit here and there. She never tells the whole story. So I assume this next parole hearing,
she's going to add a little bit more information. The next parole board hearing is almost here,
October 9th, 2026, the same prison dialing in on the same video screen. Connie is confident
they will be prepared. We have an excellent team. I can say that we are blessed. I asked Connie
whether there was something specific in the years since 1986 that she wished her sister Sherry had
been there for. When mom was critically ill and passed away, I would have liked to have, would
Yeah, especially as a nurse. Well, we're both nurses, but sometimes it helps to bounce your
ideas and the symptoms you're seeing off with someone else and talk it through.
There are two people who will not be logging on for the next parole hearing. After the sentencing
in 2012, Nels and Loretta Rasmussen sat down in front of a camera and recorded victim impact
statements about the loss of their daughter. They did so just in case they were gone by the time
Stephanie Lazarus came up for parole, which turned out to be prescient. Nels died in the summer of
2020. Loretta followed in 2022. At the 2023 hearing, the family asks to play those recordings.
The video files are too large for the state's system and they will not play in the room.
So one of the granddaughters, Rachel Buck, asks to read the transcripts aloud. Rachel tells the
commissioner her grandparents would rest better knowing their words had been heard. The commissioner
agrees. Greg Stearns finds a copy and Rachel reads her grandparents' statements into the record.
Here is part of what Sherry's mother, Loretta, recorded in her statement about Sherry.
For a hearing she knew she might not attend, Loretta, who loves Sherry so much, was always
described as the soft one. Quote, she fought so hard to live and it always worried me what she
must have gone through. I would just like to say to the parole board, I beg you not to let this
person out. Sherry's father echoed his wife first about the murder and Stephanie Lazarus. Quote,
I've been able to stand up to many problems in life but this one has put me on the ground
because I think of such a senseless killing. The selfishness that took place is just beyond me.
He continued, we have grandchildren and great-grandchildren now and not only do we miss
Sherry but we miss the children that she would bring into this world. And knowing Sherry,
she would have been a terrific mother and her children would have been tremendous kids.
John Rutten remarried and stayed in California. He now has two sons and a granddaughter.
Teresa Lane tells me that the trial for her sister Sherry's murder reached John's second
family too. He's told me this many times that the trial came about when his sons were in high
school. You know, it was very publicized and also they realized their dad cheated on his wife. They
have a good life but you know it affects them as much as it affects us daily. Teresa has remained
friends with John Rutten. Connie has not. But Connie is careful to say this. John has been very
strong advocate and has really showed up for Sherry in regards to the parole hearing so I
appreciate that. I asked Connie what she really thinks led to her sister's murder. Do you think
this was a fatal attraction where she was just obsessed with John and could not have him be
married to another woman, Connie? Yes, I do. Her perception of the relationship and then what how
John describes their relationship is very different. He considers her an acquaintance
or she considers him his, you know, her boyfriend. So I think she had in her mind
what she wanted and she was going to get it no matter what. Sherry never got to have the children
she so badly wanted. Stephanie Lazarus made sure of that. But Sherry's own family never stopped
loving or fighting for her. When she went off to California, Nels wrote to her, quote,
we all need a friend from time to time to talk to. I hope I will always qualify. He modeled the
importance of a family first life, showing his children how to never lose touch and never give
up. Now Connie and Teresa appear at every parole board hearing and do media around them to keep
the pressure on officials not to release their sister's killer. When I asked them one last
question about Sherry, the sisters who lived with, learned from and loved her so much told me
this. I don't know if you're religious people, if you believe in heaven, a god, but I wonder
if you do, what do you think Sherry's going to say to you when you see her again? Well,
I think she's going to be proud of us for fighting for her and she's going to be really excited to
see us. Now hopefully we're not as old as we are right now when we see her. Not too soon. I think
she'd be so grateful to both of you. You've been just true warriors. Every sister should be so
lucky as to have two sisters like you. Thank you for telling her story and yours. Thank you.
I'm Megan Kelly. This is MK Confidential.