The victim, Thora Rose, had been brutally killed in her apartment in October 1963. Some jurors took notes during her testimony. Defense lawyers said Walker was solely responsible for the murder and hid it from Stearns, who testified she thought the Grahams had drowned on a fishing trip, and joined Walker on a search that found the Grahams overturned dinghy but no sign of the couple. The detectives went back over the whole investigationbut this time with the assumption that they were looking for a female suspect. Through her lawyer, she declined The Atlantics interview request. Her husband's body was never found. Her manipulative skills are unusually sharp as can be observed while she was at work on Palmyra Island the summer of 1974, and in her interplay with counsel and court during her murder trial. Buck received 10 years for the theft ), At Willie Nelson 90, country, rock and rap stars pay tribute, but Willie and Trigger steal the show, Wildfires in Anchorage? Notorious atoll murderer dies after parole to Willits area They settled on Sherri Rasmussens. So I get up there first and I say, Has anybody ever heard of DNA? Some little retired guy raises his hand and says, Yeah, I know, I know. By that time, police laboratories in England and America were accustomed to analyzing biological evidence, typically blood or semen, using a laboratory method called serology to determine blood type. Stearns was acquitted. In 1973 undercover police officers arrested Mr. Walker in a department store parking lot after he sold them a large quantity of amphetamines. Three months later, she was dead. The defendant will be Stephanie Stearns, 34 years old, of Simi Valley, Calif., who has served one prison term as a result of what happened seven years ago at Eleanor Graham was either shot or clubbed, then her body was placed in a metal chest and set afire, according to prosecution experts. Primitive as the IBM punch-card and mainframe-computer databases might seem today, they were cutting-edge at the time, and they nurtured Lambkins interest in how technology could be used to solve cases. Eventually, a detective arranged to meet at a doughnut shop to discuss what he described as a series of burglaries from automobiles. The two men agreed to talk by shortwave radio at 7 P.M. on Mondays and Wednesdays. The accused killer of a San Diego woman on a tiny Pacific atoll told a U.S. District Court jury that she never harmed anyone in my life.. By Wallace Turner, Special To the New York Times. Walker and his girlfriend, Stephanie Stearns, were arrested in Honolulu in 1974 after they returned from Palmyra in a yacht stolen from Malcolm "Mac" Graham and his wife, Eleanor "Muff" Graham. In 1993, the Rasmussens traveled to Van Nuys for a face-to-face meeting with one of the detectives who had inherited the case when Lyle Mayer retired. In February 2003, a year and a half after its formation, the cold-case unit made its first arrest, solving the 1983 murder of a young nurse and mother named Elaine Graham. In the end, they decided to stage the interview at Parker Centers Jail Division, located on the floor directly below the Robbery-Homicide Division and the Art Theft Detail. Stephanie Garrett-Stearns named Chief Communications Officer You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. While Stearns and Jaramillo began planning their strategy for interviewing Lazarus, Nuttall and Lisa Sanchez, another RHD detective, flew to Arizona to meet with the Rasmussen family. Even as forensic technology was taking great leaps forward, the investigation into Sherri Rasmussens murder remained stalled. MYSTERY ON PACIFIC ATOLL LEADS TO MURDER CHARGE, https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/13/us/mystery-on-pacific-atoll-leads-to-murder-charge.html. But as far as motive was concerned, the information that we had was that [Lazarus and Ruettens] relationship had been over since the previous summer. Knowing she was married to someone else, they told her, theyd selected a place where they could speak privately, away from gossiping colleagues. Stearns, 39, who was convicted along with Walker of stealing the couples yacht, testified that she lied to authorities to help him escape capture but knew nothing of the murder. By early 2007, when David Lambkin retired, the Cold Case Homicide Unit had solved more than 40 old murder cases. stephanie stearns today - negarimon On September 19, DNA analysis was requested on evidence from the 1986 murder of Sherri Rasmussen. In 1993, she made detective, and in 1996 she married a fellow LAPD officer, with whom she later adopted a little girl. In October 1998, the FBI launched a DNA database called the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, which gave detectives the ability to compare DNA samples collected at crime scenes with the DNA profiles of legions of potential suspects. A suspect, Edmond Marr, had been identified at the time but was never prosecuted; confronted with wiretap evidence and a DNA report that linked him to the murder, Marr eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 16 years to life. LOS ANGELES, Nov. 25, 2010 -- New details on a Los Angeles cold case that led to the murder arrest of Reserved. Stephanie Garrett-Stearns named Chief Communications Officer Page by page, for months, the detectives combed the old homicide summary books. WebThe third result is Stephanie Marie Stearns age 60s in Mountain View, CA in the Grant - Sylvan Park neighborhood. PARTINGTON Its been nearly two years of hell, not knowing who did this to Sherri or why, he told the assembled reporters. Two months after the Grahams vanished, Stearns and Walker sailed the Grahams yacht into Hawaii, 1,100 miles away; they were later sentenced to prison for stealing the yacht. The DNA profiles of tens of thousands of California inmates were uploaded to the FBIs vast database. In 1981, as a young cop, Lambkin had requested assignment to the Automated Information Division, which, among other responsibilities, maintained a citywide crime database that could be searched by modus operandi or other basic criteriafor instance, all liquor-store robberies in which the suspect wore a mask. She said she did stand up to Walker occasionally. 5. Everything I knew about Stephanie, she was sharp, Nuttall says. Whereas Van Nuys once recorded 30 to 40 homicides a year, nowadays it averages five to seven. According to evidence presented at the earlier court hearings, Buck Walker's criminal career began when he was a teen-ager in Oregon and he was in and out of prisons through the 1960's. According to other sailors who visited the island in that period, and who testified in the 1975 trials, the two couples became enemies over the two months when they lived in their boats at anchor in the Palmyra lagoon. Chief Bratton didnt want anybody approaching her when she had a gun or access to a gun, Nuttall explains. Mariama White-Hammond, Chief of Environment, Energy, and Open Space., I am committed to building a cabinet that is as talented as the city we serve, said Janey. Someone mentioned to investigators a newspaper article about a local geneticist named Alec Jeffreys, who had developed a novel process for mapping gene variations using DNA molecules. After Bugliosi argued that Buck Walker had Mr. Walker and Miss Stearns were convicted in separate trials of stealing and transporting the Sea Wind to Honolulu. On May 29, Bub was on a day off when his cell phone rang. He asked Nels about women who might have wanted to harm Sherri, and Nels recounted what he had told detectives in 1986 about Ruettens cop ex-girlfriend, who his daughter said had confronted her at the hospital where she worked. Stephanie Stearns The woman called the police, and the naf whod taken the surrogate blood test promptly fingered the man who had talked him into it, a fellow baker with the improbable name of Colin Pitchfork. In his zeal to prove Stearns' innocence, inadvertently, Bugliosi set forth clue after clue proving the guilt of Stearns and her crime partner, Buck Walker. starbulletin.com Garrett-Stearns was previously Head of Public Relations and Chief Corporate Spokesperson for the Siemens division, Osram Sylvania., I am honored to serve the people of Boston as part of the historic Kim Janey administration, said Garrett-Stearns. From the interrogation room, Lazarus was taken to Lynwood, the Los Angeles County jail facility for female prisoners, where she has been held ever since on $10 million bail. But that began to change in 1989, when two lawyers, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck, convinced a New York judge that poor laboratory procedures warranted exclusion of DNA evidence that had been introduced against their client. Laboratories became more careful with evidence; trial courts grew more familiar with DNA; and higher courts affirmed its admissibility as a matter of law. Kahn recalls her desire to find jurors who would be able to make sense of this new universe of DNA testimony. Thats how it looked, at least, to the Los Angeles police detectives who arrived at a gated condo complex in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles on the evening of February 24, 1986. After leaving the Navy in 1966, he fell into drugs and crime, and was eventually sentenced to three years at San Quentin for assault and robbery. As it happened, just a few months before, California voters had overwhelmingly approved Proposition 69, a ballot measure co-authored by Lisa Kahn. Lazarus, considered the least likely suspect, was No. Stephanie Garrett-Stearns is a volunteer and board member for several nonprofit organizations, including the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth (MassINC), the Boston Chapter of The Links, Incorporated and Psi Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. An active member of Union United Methodist Church in the South End, she lives in West Roxbury with her husband and daughter. Both Stearns and Walker had stated the Iola sank on the reef just inside the Palmyra harbor while they tried to tow it back to Hawaii. A $300-million (minimum) gondola to Dodger Stadium?