The Lazarus File

Imagine you're a homicide detective in Los Angeles' Robbery-Homicide Division, working a case more than twenty years old. Your prime suspect, confirmed by a DNA match derived from a bite wound on the victim, turns out to be another LA detective who works down the hall. 
        It sounds like a movie. But this time it's real. After a videotaped interview, Detective Stephanie Lazarus from LAPD's Art Theft Detail was arrested for the 1986 murder of her ex-boyfriend's wife, Sherri Rasmussen. Matthew McGough's account of the case is in the latest issue of The Atlantic, and it makes for riveting -- if frustrating -- reading. At the time of the murder, Rasmussen's father told investigators that her husband's ex-girlfriend, a police officer, had confronted Rasmussen at the hospital where she worked. For more than twenty years, that lead was never followed up.
        The Atlantic also has clips from the interview with Lazarus just prior to her arrest. The detectives working the case lured her into the conversation under false pretenses and managed to get quite a bit of information before she lawyered up. McGough includes a nice overview of the way DNA evidence revolutionized homicide investigation, and how defense lawyers fought back.