Francis v. City of L.A. CA2/1
In February 1986, Sherri Rasmussen was murdered in her Van Nuys home. She had been severely beaten and shot three times in the chest area. During the LAPD’s initial investigation, the “working theory” of the case was that the murder occurred during a “botched burglary” by two men.
In 2003, the Rasmussen case was transferred to the cold case unit of the LAPD’s robbery-homicide division. Cliff Shepard was the cold case unit detective handling the case.
In 2004, Francis worked as a criminalist and DNA analyst in the LAPD’s serology DNA unit. In late 2004, she responded to a request from Shepard to perform DNA analysis of evidence in the Rasmussen case. She reviewed the file and noted that a female coworker of Rasmussen had threatened Rasmussen. The file also revealed that Rasmussen had been bitten on her arm during the attack and that investigators had taken a swab of the bite mark. Francis learned that the swab had never been “booked into LAPD evidence.”
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