Decision to parole former LAPD detective who murdered her ex's new wife and hid crime for decades faces scrutiny

A former Los Angeles police detective who killed a romantic rival and hid the murder for more than two decades won’t be released from prison — at least not yet, California parole officials decided this week.

In November, a panel of parole commissioners found that Stephanie Lazarus, 64, was suitable for release, but on Monday the state parole board voted to approve a motion saying that decision deserves additional scrutiny because it may have been "improvident."

The board cited a letter last month from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and referred the case to a separate "rescission" hearing to determine whether the grant of parole was improper.

In the letter, Newsom said Lazarus had an excellent disciplinary record as a prisoner and had sought to improve herself. Yet she evaded justice for more than two decades in the 1986 murder of Sherri Rasmussen, 29, and didn’t "appear to begin taking full accountability for the murder until she was finally caught," the letter says.

Lazarus was arrested in Rasmussen’s killing in 2009 and convicted of first-degree murder three years later.

Rasmsussen's sister Connie said she was "so very happy" with Monday's decision.

"It [will] keep her in prison," she said by text.

A lawyer who represented Lazarus at the November hearing didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

During a parole hearing Monday, several described Lazarus, former art theft detective, as a model prisoner who has mentored younger inmates and established a nonprofit group that supplies women with textbooks and has taken responsibility for Rasmussen’s murder.

But authorities and the victim's relatives and friends countered that Lazarus hasn’t appeared remorseful or acknowledged what one of the case’s lead investigators previously described as the “cold, calculated” nature of Rasmussen’s murder.

Opponents also challenged parole officials’ invocation of California’s youthful offender laws in the case. Lazarus was almost 26 at the time of the murder, and legislative reforms in the state have sought to shift how people younger than 26 are handled within the criminal justice system.

At the November hearing, the presiding commissioner said the law should be given “great weight” in helping the panel reach its decision, a transcript of the hearing shows.

Rasmussen’s relatives have questioned why the law was applied to Lazarus, who graduated from UCLA and had been a police officer for two years at the time of the killing. Connie Rasmussen has pointed to the psychological evaluation Lazarus underwent before she became an officer and the fact that she was found fit to carry a gun.

The lead police investigator in the murder, Greg Stearns, said at Monday's hearing that the sophistication of the crime showed Lazarus shouldn’t be considered a youthful offender.

On Feb. 24, 1986, a few months after Rasmussen — a nurse — had married a man Lazarus previously dated, Lazarus entered the couple’s Van Nuys condo and struck Rasmussen in the head with a vase. Lazarus shot her three times in the chest with a .38-caliber pistol, using a pillow as an improvised silencer, Stearns said.

She then staged the killing to look like a robbery.

Lazarus went on to have a family and work as an art theft detective for the Los Angeles Police Department. She was convicted at trial after having asserted her innocence.

During the November hearing, Lazarus said she had no intention of killing Rasmussen — she had only planned to talk to her ex — when she went to the couple’s home. She said she didn’t turn herself in afterward because she was ashamed.

Although the commissioner who oversaw the November hearing said she had difficulty with some of Lazarus’ responses during the proceedings — including when she talked about whether she intended to kill Rasmussen when she went to the condo — she said Lazarus had shown remorse and didn’t pose a risk if she were released, the transcript shows.

After Rasmussen’s family pleaded with Newsom, the governor, to reverse the parole decision, saying Lazarus had demonstrated a “lack of candor and severe lack of insight” during the November hearing, Newsom asked the state Board of Parole Hearings to weigh in on the matter.

It isn't clear whether a date for the rescission hearing has been set.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com