The opinions expressed in the following episode do not necessarily reflect those of the minds of madness podcast.

The listener discretion is advised.

Watch enough crime shows and it doesn't take long to figure out the steps a killer will take to get away with murder.

They stage the crime scene, they ditch the murder weapon, they fabricate an alibi, and at all costs,

make sure to keep their mouth shut until the day they die. But in the case you're about to hear, the killer takes things a step further,

by actually manipulating information in the case file, all while hiding in plain sight for more than two decades.

Join me now, as we take a look at the murder of Sherry Rasmussen, a cold case that left detectives puzzled for 23 years.

You'll hear how a breakthrough DNA discovery uncovered a decades old conspiracy hidden among Ellie's finest and finally brought a murderer to justice.

More than 50,000 pieces of art are stolen each year worldwide.

The F.B.I. estimates are valued between $4.6 billion and with the price of fine art constantly rising, so are the number of people trying to steal it.

While the number of art thieves are on the rise, the number of professionals dedicated to recovering the stolen art remains surprisingly small.

For decades, the Los Angeles Police Department was the only municipal police force in the entire United States with the full-time detail dedicated to solving our crimes, and they even only had two detectives assigned to work the cases.

Despite being a small team, they still managed to get big results, recovering nearly $4.5 million in stolen arti cheer.

In June 2008, the two-man team was made up of lead detective Don Horisic and his sidekick in Protoge 48-year-old detective Stephanie Lazarus.

Before finding Stephanie, Don had sifted through nearly a dozen other partners in his 14 years leading the art theft detail, but now that he had, he claimed she was the best of the whole lot.

His hope was to teach her the ropes so she could take over for him one day when he retired.

The particular crime they were investigating that day was an antique heist in West Hollywood, but it wasn't anything like Ocean's 11 or the Tom's Crown affair.

It was just a classic smashing grab.

The thieves had smashed through the drywall of an adjoining store under construction, loaded up a pickup truck, and drove away as quickly as they arrived.

Stephanie never knew exactly what to expect when she arrived at a crime scene. Fordries, heists, and frauds, she'd worked them all.

Sometimes it was elegant and romantic, like recovering stolen or missing masterpieces.

Other times, it was just simple, low-ranked burglaries like this one.

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