Yeah. They were very close friends. And then, because she had been doing this a long time, the question that always comes. What’s this all about?
They kept the frame small. It was a case they were working. It involved John. In the file there were notes that he knew her. She said they were good friends. She lived in the dorms for two years. Same dorm? Yeah. Dykstra. Were they just friends, or anything else? They dated. How long? She could not even say. She started UCLA in 1978. She graduated in 1982. She did not remember what year he graduated, whether it was a year or two before her. She thought he was a little older. She was born in 1960. She did not know if he was born in 1958 or 1959. She knew his parents. She knew his sister. His brother went to Northridge. His sister spent the night at her house. She spent the night at his. He probably spent the night at hers.
They told her why they had not done this at her desk. When they saw the chronology, it seemed to indicate some relationship. They did not want to come up and ask those kinds of questions where people could see who was going into an interview room, who was getting supplies, who was talking to whom. They wanted to afford her privacy. Confidentiality. She was married to someone else. They did not want the rumor mill. They did not want gossip. They had done this so her business would not be out there for other people.
God, she said. That had been a million years ago. What year was it now? 2009. She graduated in ’82. They dated. She dated other guys. She was sure he dated other girls. Roughly how long? She could not say. And probably after college. She was trying to think when she met her husband. She met Scott when she was teaching DARE up in Oregon. They had long stopped dating before that. Had she talked to him? She thought she had not talked to him in a long time. She could not even tell them when the last time was. She met Scott, she was thinking, in 1992, maybe April of 1992. Scott being her husband. She was married in 1996. She thought she met him in ’92. Prior to that she could not tell them how long she had still talked to John. Since she met Scott, she had not talked to him. He may have called once or twice before they got married. She moved to Simi in 1994 because she lost her house in the earthquake. Quite honestly, she probably kept in contact with a few people from the dorms. They all lived on the tenth floor.
That was the version she offered. College. Dorms. Dating. Other people. A husband met through DARE. An earthquake. A long silence. It was not nothing. It was also not the history investigators had already built around the name in the chronology.
Stephanie and John had a long, tangled history going back to UCLA. On and off for years. Casual enough that neither one called the other a partner. Serious enough that it did not fully end when John met Sherri. In the summer of 1985, months before Sherri was killed, Stephanie was working alongside another LAPD officer. She told her about a boyfriend. A real relationship, she said. The colleague had no reason to doubt it. Stephanie shared that she had met her boyfriend, John, at UCLA. Said he was a great guy. The colleague never met him, but thought they were going to get married. Not only was Lazarus not dating John in the summer of 1985, he was engaged to Sherri Rasmussen. Nobody connected that story to anything at the time. It was just a colleague talking about her personal life. Years later it would sit next to a bite mark and stop looking like small talk.
In the room they asked if she remembered the first name. She sighed. Shelly. Sherri. She did not know. Something, maybe. It had been so many years. From all the years, as far as she could remember, did she ever talk to her? She had said earlier she may have. It sounded like she may have. They mentioned a hospital. She may have talked to her at the hospital. They were bringing up old memories. Dusting off the cobwebs. She was thinking that because they would date, he would date other people, she would date other people. At one point he may have been dating her, or she did not know, maybe he was married. She did not even remember. And she was like, why are you calling me if you are either dating her or living with her or married to her? She honestly did not remember the time frame. Come on. Knock it off. And now she was thinking she may have gone to her and said, hey, is he dating you? He is bothering me. She was thinking they had a conversation about that. One or two, maybe. It could have been three. She did not want to say she had three conversations with her.