"Fatal Attraction" - The Murder of Sherri Rasmussen: The FULL MK Confidential Series

On a Monday morning in February 1986, two Hispanic men found a woman’s purse in a Van Nuys, California, condo complex and tried to return it. No one answered at unit 205. The men left the purse with a neighbor, Anastasia Valenitis. Hours later, Sherry Rasmussen’s husband John came home to find her dead on the living room floor—beaten, bitten, and shot three times in the chest. Police arrived and quickly settled on a theory: a burglary gone wrong. The lead detective, Lyle Mayer, told John he was certain. “We’re gonna catch these persons,” he promised. They did not catch anyone for 23 years.

The crime scene and the theory that stuck

Sherry Rasmussen was 29, a critical care nursing supervisor at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, and newly married. The morning of her murder, her husband left for work around 7 a.m. By 9:45, a neighbor noticed her garage door open and her silver BMW gone. A housekeeper in the adjoining unit heard a heavy thud through the wall, then a scream, then silence. When John returned that evening, he found the garage door up, broken glass in the driveway, and the condo door unlocked. Inside, a shelf had been pulled down, a vase smashed, and a corded phone lay on the carpet. Near the front door, a VCR and disc player were stacked together as if ready for a quick carryout, but left behind.