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

September 10, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In the fall of 2004, a new criminalist named Jennifer Francis was cleared to perform DNA analysis on her own for the first time. She picked a case that looked simple: a 1986 murder in Venice, California. The victim was a nurse named Sherry Rasmussen, and the detective's request noted that type A blood had been found inside her home—blood that could not have been hers. Francis thought she could pull a suspect's profile, run it against the national database, and close the file. Instead, she walked into a mystery that would take nearly two decades to crack, one that turned on a single piece of evidence hidden in a coroner's freezer.

The Missing Bite Mark Swab

The request Francis picked up had been waiting for more than a year. Cold case detective Cliff Shepherd submitted it in September 2003, seventeen years after the murder. Shepherd worked in a unit the LAPD created in 2001 to re-examine the city's 6,000 to 9,000 unsolved murders. Sherry Rasmussen's case made the cut because of one line in a 1986 report: a bite mark swab had been collected by the coroner's office. Shepherd knew that swab should contain DNA. But when he checked the property log, the swab wasn't listed among the twenty-nine items. The coroner's office told him they didn't have it. Shepherd wrote a note in the margin of the report asking where it was.

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What you'll learn

1 MK Confidential: Fatal Attraction: Nineteen Years in a Freezer — Ep. 2
2 (01:01) **Jennifer Francis Takes the Case** - A new criminalist picks up a cold case from 1986, the murder of nurse Sherry Rasmussen, thinking it will be simple DNA work
3 (02:05) **The Missing Bite Mark Swab** - Detective Shepherd's request mentioned a bite mark swab collected by the coroner, but it's not in the evidence log — and nobody can find it
4 (03:53) **The Murder Book** - Shepherd loans Jennifer the complete case file, an unusual move that gives her full access to the investigation's history
5 (05:06) **Dead End Testing** - After three weeks of work, every DNA sample Jennifer tests comes back as belonging only to Sherry Rasmussen — the victim
6 (06:48) **Told to Stop** - A colleague warns Jennifer not to get a reputation as a "pain in the ass" by calling the coroner's office a third time
7 (07:36) **The Call to Lloyd Mahaney** - Jennifer tracks down the original criminalist from 1986, who tells her the swab should still exist — it's just lost in the system

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Jennifer Francis Cliff Shepherd Lloyd Mahaney Steve Fisk Phil Morrit

Show Notes

“MK Confidential” picks up nineteen years after Sherri Rasmussen's murder, when a rookie crime lab analyst picks up a cold case that seems simple: one blood type, one stain, an easy match. Instead, Jennifer Francis finds a bite mark swab that no one can locate — not the LAPD, not the coroner's office, not even the property log. She tracks down the man who sealed it in 1986, and asks him not to forget about her.

Megyn traces the two decades in between: a parking ticket handed to grieving parents who offered to pay for DNA testing themselves, a box of critical evidence signed out in 1993 and never seen again, and a detective who closes the file with one sentence: no additional leads. Then, in 2005, the bite swab turns up in a freezer, and the DNA inside it belongs to a woman. Four years later, a detective reading the case notices a bloody fingerprint on stereo equipment, and the burglary theory falls apart in his hands.

By the end, investigators have a name — and she has a badge number. This is Episode 2 of the Sherri Rasmussen story.

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