title: Defence mechanism

text: These are commonly found among emotionally healthy adults and are considered mature, even though many have their origins in an immature stage of development. They are conscious processes, adapted through the years in order to optimise success in human society and relationships. The use of these defences enhances pleasure and feelings of control. These defences help to integrate conflicting emotions and thoughts, whilst still remaining effective. Those who use these mechanisms are usually considered virtuous.


title: Defence mechanism

text: There are many different perspectives on how the construct of "defence" relates to the construct of "coping"; some writers differentiate the constructs in various ways, but "an important literature exists that does not make any difference between the two concepts". In at least one of his books, George Eman Vaillant stated that he "will use the terms "adaptation", "resilience", "coping", and "defense" interchangeably".


title: Amanda Bearse

text: Amanda Bearse (born August 9, 1958) is an American actress, comedian and director. She starred in the 1985 supernatural horror film "Fright Night", and later starred as Marcy Rhoades D'Arcy in the Fox sitcom "Married... with Children" (1987-1997). Bearse later began working as television director, directing over 90 episodes of comedy series.


title: Amanda Bearse

text: Bearse grew up in Winter Park, Florida. After she graduated from Winter Park High School in 1976, her family moved to Atlanta. She attended Rollins College, Birmingham Southern College and Young Harris College, where she received an associate of arts degree. Bearse studied acting at New York City's Neighborhood Playhouse under instructor Sanford Meisner.


title: Amanda Bearse

text: Bearse made her television debut playing the role of Amanda Cousins in the ABC daytime soap opera "All My Children" from 1982 to 1983. The following year, she had small role in the comedy film "Protocol" starring Goldie Hawn, and later landed a role in the sex comedy "Fraternity Vacation". In 1985, Bearse played the female leading role in the supernatural horror film "Fright Night". She returned to television with guest-starring role in the ABC drama series, "Hotel" in 1986. The following year, she was cast as Marcy Rhoades (later Marcy D'Arcy), the feminist next-door neighbor in the Fox sitcom "Married... with Children" opposite Ed O'Neill and Katey Sagal. The series ran to 1997; becoming one of the longest running sitcoms in television history.


title: Amanda Bearse

text: Bearse studied directing at the American Film Institute and the University of Southern California. She began directing television while appearing on "Married...with Children", and from 1991 to 1997, she directed 31 episodes of the show. She also directed episodes of "Reba", "Mad TV", "", "Malcolm & Eddie", "Pauly", "The Tom Show", "The Jamie Foxx Show", "Dharma & Greg", "Veronica's Closet", "Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place", "Jesse" (1999; starring her "Married...with Children " costar Christina Applegate), "Jessie" (2011), and "Ladies Man". In 2005, she directed "", a pilot for NBC starring Maggie Wheeler. In 2006, Bearse teamed with Rosie O'Donnell to produce and direct "The Big Gay Sketch Show", which debuted on Logo on April 24, 2007.


title: Amanda Bearse

text: As actress, in 1990s, Bearse appeared only in two films: "The Doom Generation" and "Here Come the Munsters" (both 1995). She returned to acting in 2011, appearing in two episodes of Lifetime comedy-drama series, "Drop Dead Diva". In 2020, she starred in the German comedy horror film, "Sky Sharks", making her first film appearance in 25 years. In 2022, Bearse played Luke Macfarlane's mother in the romantic comedy film, "Bros".


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: On February 24, 1986, the body of Sherri Rasmussen (born February 7, 1957) was found in the apartment she shared with her husband, John Ruetten, in Van Nuys, California, United States. She had been beaten and shot three times in a struggle. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) initially considered the case a botched burglary and were unable to identify a suspect. Rasmussen's father believed that LAPD officer Stephanie Lazarus, who maintained a relationship with Ruetten, was a prime suspect.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Detectives who re-examined the cold case files in 2009 were eventually led to Lazarus, by then herself a detective. A DNA sample from a cup she had thrown away was matched to one from a bite on Rasmussen's body that had remained in the files. Lazarus was convicted of the murder in 2012 and is serving a sentence of 27 years to life for first-degree murder at the California Institution for Women in Corona.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Lazarus appealed the conviction, claiming the age of the case and the evidence denied her due process. She also alleged that the search warrant was improperly granted, her statements in an interview prior to her arrest were compelled and that evidence supporting the original case theory should have been admitted at trial. In 2015, the guilty verdict was upheld by the California Court of Appeal for the Second District of the state (which includes Los Angeles).


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Some of the police files suggest that evidence that could have implicated Lazarus earlier in the investigation was later removed, perhaps by others in the LAPD. Rasmussen's parents unsuccessfully sued the department over this and other aspects of the investigation. Jennifer Francis, the criminalist who found key evidence from the bite mark, unsuccessfully sued the City of Los Angeles, claiming she was pressured by police to favor certain suspects in this and other high-profile cases and was retaliated against when she brought this to the LAPD's attention.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: While an undergraduate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1978 to 1982, John Ruetten, a mechanical engineering major from San Diego, occasionally dated Stephanie Lazarus, a fellow Dykstra Hall resident and a political science major from Simi Valley, California. Both were avid athletes; Lazarus played on UCLA's junior varsity women's basketball team. Lazarus would steal Ruetten's clothes when he showered and take photographs of him naked while he slept. Ruetten never considered the relationship as anything more than "necking and fooling around." They had sex for the first time after he graduated, when he accepted a job with hard-drive manufacturer Micropolis and she applied to the city's police academy and became a uniformed officer with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in 1983. In court, he later testified that they had sex "twenty to thirty times" between 1981 and 1984, but that she was never his girlfriend.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Ruetten later met Sherri Rasmussen, a graduate of Loma Linda University who was on a fast career track in critical care nursing. She entered college at 16, and by her late 20s was the director of nursing at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, giving presentations and teaching classes for fellow nurses.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: At one point, Lazarus threw Ruetten a surprise party on his 25th birthday, unaware that he had been dating other women or that he had developed a serious relationship with Rasmussen. When she learned he was seriously involved with Rasmussen, Lazarus was despondent. "I'm truly in love with John and the past year has really torn me up," Lazarus wrote to Ruetten's mother in August 1985. "I wish it didn't end the way it did, and I don't think I'll ever understand his decision." In her own journal, she wrote, "I really don't feel like working. I found out that John is getting married." Depressed, Lazarus visited Ruetten at his condo, and the two had sex—"to give her closure", Ruetten testified years later—for what he says was the only time before Rasmussen's death. Later that night, Lazarus awoke a fellow officer she roomed with to commiserate.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: During their engagement, Lazarus brought her skis to the apartment that Ruetten shared with Rasmussen and asked him to wax them, and despite Rasmussen's objections, he complied. Rasmussen felt that this was a little strange, since Lazarus was dressed in flattering workout clothes, and after Lazarus left, his fiancée asked if their relationship was truly over. Ruetten convinced her the two were just friends. A few days later Lazarus returned to pick up the waxed skis, in uniform and armed, after he left for work.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Rasmussen was unnerved by these visits and pleaded with Ruetten to tell Lazarus to stop coming by. Ruetten said only that there was nothing to their relationship and that she should ignore Lazarus. According to Nels Rasmussen, Sherri's father, Lazarus later visited Rasmussen at her office to tell her that things were not over between her and Ruetten and told Rasmussen, "If I can't have John, no one else will." Shortly before her death, Rasmussen again confided to her father her fear that Lazarus was stalking her on the street. Ruetten and Rasmussen were married in November 1985.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: On the morning of February 24, 1986, Ruetten left the couple's condominium on Balboa Boulevard in Van Nuys to go to work. Rasmussen was scheduled to give a motivational speech at work that day, a managerial tactic she did not feel was effective. To avoid it, she told Ruetten she might call in sick, using a back injury she had incurred while doing aerobics the day before as an excuse.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: At 9:45 a.m., a neighbor noticed that the Ruettens' garage door was open, with no car visible. Approximately fifteen minutes later, Ruetten made the first of several unanswered calls home over the course of the day. Rasmussen's sister also called without answer. At noon, two men, who the neighbor believed were gardeners in the compound, gave her and her husband a purse that they had found, which turned out to be Rasmussen's. A maid cleaning a nearby unit said she heard something that sounded like two people fighting, and then something falling, at around 12:30 p.m.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: When Ruetten returned home in the evening, he found his garage door open and broken glass on the driveway. In addition, he discovered that the BMW he bought for Rasmussen as an engagement gift was missing. Because of Rasmussen's morning plans, he found it strange that she would have later gone out without letting him know. The house's answering machine had not been activated, despite both of them usually activating it when leaving the house unoccupied.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Inside, Ruetten found Rasmussen dead on the living room floor, shot three times. There were signs of a struggle, such as a porcelain vase that had apparently been broken over Rasmussen's head prior to the shooting, a bloody handprint next to the burglar alarm's panic button, and a toppled credenza. It appeared that someone at least had attempted to bind Rasmussen at some point. She had defensive wounds and a bruise on her face that appeared to have been inflicted by the muzzle of a gun. The gun had been fired through a quilted blanket, apparently to muffle the sound. The investigating criminalist also observed a bite mark on Rasmussen's arm and took a swab from it.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: LAPD detectives investigating the case quickly concluded that Rasmussen had been surprised and killed by a burglar. Rasmussen's attire (a bathrobe, nightgown, and underwear) suggested she was not expecting visitors. Although a maid in a neighboring unit reported hearing screaming and fighting earlier in the day, she did not recall hearing gunshots. She thought the whole event had been a domestic dispute and did not call the police. It appeared that the perpetrator had been in the process of taking electronic equipment when Rasmussen came upon them, and as a result, jewelry had been left behind and the vehicle taken as a getaway. The abandoned BMW was recovered a week later; it yielded no new evidence. The only other item that appeared to have been taken from the home was the couple's marriage license.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Lead detective Lyle Mayer did consider other possibilities. He quickly ruled out the grieving Ruetten as a suspect. Ruetten quit his job and moved away from Los Angeles shortly after the murder. Nels Rasmussen and his wife, Loretta, told Mayer about Lazarus's harassment, and that he made a note of it. Ruetten later told police that he and Rasmussen never discussed Lazarus.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Regardless, the police remained focused on the possibility of burglary, especially in light of one reported later in the same area, in which one of the two reported suspects had been carrying a gun, possibly a .38 caliber like the one that had fired the three bullets into Rasmussen that were later identified by experts as Federal .38J Plus-P. Mayer's partner, Steve Hooks, found the bite mark unusual, as bites during struggles are much more commonly inflicted by women, while the majority of burglars are men. However, because men have bitten opponents during fights as well, the burglary theory stood.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: The suspected burglars to whom detectives ascribed the crime remained at large, despite a follow-up newspaper story eight months later and a reward offered by the Rasmussen family. The LAPD, preoccupied with the violence resulting from gang wars and the crack epidemic plaguing the city at the time, was unable to devote much more attention to the case. The Rasmussens said that detectives at the Van Nuys office were often unhelpful when the family called, hanging up or putting them on hold. A year after the murder, the frustrated family reiterated their offer at a press conference and called for more action. Nels wrote to Daryl Gates, then chief of the LAPD, about the possibility that Lazarus might have been involved. Detectives told him he "watch[ed] too much television." He continued to publicize the reward, and later worked with the short-lived television series "Murder One" on a segment inspired by the case.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Nels in particular was unconvinced that Sherri who had been tall, had a large frame, and was in good physical shape had been the victim of a botched burglary. It would have been a struggle for anyone to subdue her in close quarters, and Mayer had told him at one point that the events may have lasted an hour and a half, a long time for burglars primarily after items of value in the home. Further, whoever shot his daughter had fired directly into her chest at close range and taken the trouble to muffle the shot with the quilt, suggesting that the killing was deliberate and not the accidental byproduct of a struggle.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Mayer eventually retired, and the new detective assigned to the case told Nels that he was unable to follow up on Mayer's notes and did not think that any new leads would emerge. Nels was rebuffed again in 1993 when he offered to pay for DNA testing on the evidence from the murder, now that the technology was available; he was told that the police had to have a suspect in order to proceed with testing. Lazarus briefly reunited with Ruetten in 1989; Mayer's notes show that Ruetten had called him and asked if he was absolutely sure there was no evidence linking Lazarus with his late wife's death.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: In the meantime, Lazarus continued working with the LAPD; she went on to start her own private investigation firm, Unique Investigations. In 1987, she earned medals, including one gold, at the World Police and Fire Games in San Diego. In 1993, after stints at the department's Drug Abuse Resistance Education and internal affairs divisions, she became a detective. Three years later, she married a fellow officer and adopted a daughter with him, moving back to Simi Valley; at work, she became an instructor at the police academy. Ruetten eventually remarried as well; he did not pressure the police as his former father-in-law had.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: In the late 1990s, after DNA testing had become more prominent, the LAPD formed a new unit that looked through the forensic evidence collected from the department's cold case files to determine whether any had the potential for new leads through DNA testing. Among the evidence seen as likely to do so was that collected from the Rasmussen residence. However, it was not until 2004 that another criminalist, Jennifer Francis, was able to analyze it. Some of the evidence from the Rasmussen case, including that which might have contained the suspect's DNA, was missing, having been collected in 1993 by another detective.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Francis did not find any matches in the Combined DNA Index System database, but did find that the saliva in it had come from a female, undermining the initial detectives' burglary theory. Several years later, Francis claimed that, unusually, she had access to not just the sample but the entire case file, which had been given to her to help her decide which other samples to analyze. Upon discovering that the biter (and likely perpetrator) was female, she reviewed it and came across a report of a "third-party female" who had allegedly harassed the victim at her job and residence before the murder.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Francis asked the detective supervising her if this woman had been investigated, to which he supposedly responded with, "Oh, you mean the LAPD detective." He elaborated that the woman, a former girlfriend of the victim's husband, was in fact a current LAPD detective but "she's not a part of this." He insisted that the case was simply a burglary as the department had long concluded. No other detective would pursue the case, and the evidence went back into the files.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: By 2009, crime in Los Angeles had declined enough from its earlier levels that detectives began looking into cold cases to increase their clearance rates. In Van Nuys, Jim Nuttall and Pete Barba reviewed the Rasmussen file and found it interesting enough to be worth pursuing. Because the DNA test pointed to a female suspect, they decided the burglary theory was invalid and they would have to start from the beginning.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Nuttall and Barba looked at the case as a murder, with the burglary staged to throw the police off the trail. Many aspects of the crime were improbable for a break-in, especially one committed in daylight: Rasmussen's jewelry box, an inviting target for a burglar, was in plain view atop her dresser and had not been touched. The condo was in the middle of a gated complex, surrounded by other units from which burglars could have expected to be easily observed. The front door had an alarm warning, and had not been forced open, as it might have been if the putative burglars had not expected anyone to be at home.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Inside, a key aspect of the crime scene was also inconsistent with the burglary theory. At the top of the stairs was a stack of stereo equipment atop a VCR. If, as the evidence suggested, the struggle between Rasmussen and her attacker had begun upstairs and then continued downstairs, that stack would likely have been knocked downstairs and scattered as well. It made more sense to assume that it had been stacked afterwards, when an actual burglar would have fled the scene immediately after the shooting.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: The forensics reinforced this theory. On a record player atop the stack was a thumb-shaped bloodstain. It had no print, suggesting whoever left it was wearing gloves to avoid leaving identification. But the blood was Rasmussen's, suggesting the equipment had been stacked after the struggle and shooting. It had been left behind, the detectives realized, to make the crime look like something other than what it really was. From the four bound volumes of the case file they developed a list of five female suspects. Nuttall was taken aback when Ruetten told him over the phone that Lazarus was a police officer. By then, Lazarus had been promoted to a higher level of detective and was working art theft cases as part of the Commercial Crimes Division.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: As one of the two detectives in the nation's only full-time unit devoted to that specialty, Lazarus had gained some local media attention when she and her partner had recovered a statue stolen from Carthay Circle. To better understand the field, she told a local newspaper, she had begun learning to paint. Off the job, Lazarus had been active in the Los Angeles Women Police Officers Association and organized childcare for families of officers. She also made chocolate-covered cherries and homemade soap for her neighbors in Simi Valley for Christmas. Since Lazarus was still with the department, Nuttall and Barba realized they would have to proceed carefully. Still, they ranked Lazarus as the least promising of the five suspects, since they read in the files that she and Ruetten had ended any relationship they had had over the summer before the murder.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Nuttall and Barba's investigations soon eliminated all but one of the other women. The other, a former coworker of Rasmussen's who had had some disputes with her, was eliminated by a covertly collected DNA sample. With only Lazarus left, they kept their investigation a closely guarded secret; not only did her husband also work in Commercial Crimes Division as a detective, she may have had other friends who could have tipped her off. If she were the killer, she could have improved her defense; if she were not, then they could have unintentionally smeared a fellow officer who had had an unblemished service record over the course of her career, with no disciplinary investigations or civilian complaints. They referred to her only as "No. 5", worked on the case after hours or behind closed doors, and developed cover stories to explain why they wanted to look at personnel records for one particular officer from 20 years ago.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: The detectives began looking into other aspects of Lazarus's life during the mid-1980s. Another detective recalled that, at that time, most LAPD officers had preferred a .38 as their backup or off-duty carry gun; in fact, they were required to purchase only weapons compatible with the Federal Plus-P ammunition that had been used in the murder. State and departmental records showed that Lazarus had indeed owned a Smith & Wesson Model 49 .38 at the time and reported it stolen to Santa Monica police (but not to her own department's armorer) thirteen days after the murder. Since the location where Lazarus had reported it stolen from was near a popular pier, they assumed she had thrown the gun into the Pacific Ocean. Without the weapon, DNA would be the only definite way to connect the crime to Lazarus.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Nuttall and Barba theorized from their own experience about how an LAPD officer would commit a murder. It would be better to do it on a day off, and departmental records showed that Lazarus had indeed been off the day Sherri Rasmussen was killed. Officers would know better than to use their duty gun, since it would have to be disposed of after the crime and the penalties for losing a duty gun or failing to prevent its theft were severe. Instead, it made sense to use a backup gun like Lazarus's .38. Last, a working patrol officer would know how to do just enough to make the crime scene look like an interrupted burglary to satisfy an overworked detective.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Nels told Nuttall about Lazarus's continued contact with his daughter, which had not been in the files, despite him mentioning it frequently during Mayer and Hook's interviews. Realizing that Lazarus was now their prime suspect, the detectives informed their superiors and arranged to discreetly collect a voluntarily discarded DNA sample from her, knowing they could do so without having to get a warrant, which would have let Lazarus know she was under investigation. While off-duty running errands, Lazarus discarded a cup from which she had been drinking, which other police retrieved. A sample was taken from it, which matched the DNA from the bite mark on Sherri Rasmussen.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Rob Bub, the homicide detective supervisor at Van Nuys, began letting his senior officers, all the way up to Chief William Bratton, know of the case along with senior prosecutors from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office. It was transferred to the Robbery-Homicide Division (RHD), which handled many of the department's high-profile cases, including the art theft bureau where Lazarus herself worked. Her arrest was planned carefully. On the day of the arrest in June 2009, dozens of officers arose before dawn. After being briefed on a search warrant they were told would be executed outside the city, but with few details beyond that, they went to wait near Lazarus's home in Simi Valley and that city's Metrolink station, where Lazarus commuted to the city.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: A short time later, detectives from the RHD who had been selected for their lack of personal connection to Lazarus called her from the lockup at Parker Center, the department's headquarters. Bratton had ordered that location be used since Lazarus would have to surrender her gun in order to enter it, limiting the possibility she might resist violently when she was arrested (immediately following the interview, as was the plan) or realized that she was the prime suspect. The detectives, Greg Stearns and Dan Jaramillo, told her they had someone in custody who wanted to talk about an art theft.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: After Lazarus had checked in her gun and entered the interrogation room, they explained that this was really about some loose ends they were trying to tie up in the Rasmussen case, since her name had come up in the investigation. They claimed they wanted a private setting because, while Ruetten was an old boyfriend, Lazarus had long been married to someone else and they did not want her private life to become the subject of office gossip. Stearns and Jaramillo knew they would have to tread carefully since Lazarus herself was well aware of police interview techniques and her rights to silence and legal counsel, which she could invoke at any time.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: They rambled and digressed from the subject at times, sometimes discussing unrelated police business, but eventually came back to Rasmussen. Lazarus claimed to recall little due to the intervening years, but gradually revealed more and more knowledge—including oblique acknowledgements of her visits to the Ruetten condo and a specific encounter at Rasmussen's office—until she accused her colleagues of considering her a suspect. The detectives mentioned it was possible they had DNA evidence from the crime scene, and requested DNA samples from Lazarus. Lazarus declined and thereafter left the room. She was shortly arrested and charged with the murder.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Once she had been arrested, the police officer teams in Simi Valley began searching Lazarus's home and car. In her house they found her journal from the mid-1980s, with numerous mentions of her love for Ruetten and her despondence over his engagement to Rasmussen (and no mentions of her gun having been stolen). Her computer showed that she had searched the Internet for Ruetten's name on several occasions during the late 1990s.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: As the investigating detectives had been, many LAPD officers were stunned at the idea that Lazarus might have murdered someone. Fellow detectives recalled her as vivacious and supportive (although some also recalled that her behavior when angry had led some to refer to her as "Spazarus" behind her back). A case she had been developing from her art-theft work, with elder abuse and real estate fraud aspects, had to be dropped since it was highly unlikely that it could be prosecuted successfully if the lead investigator herself were facing a murder charge.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: After her arrest, Lazarus was allowed to retire early from the LAPD; she was held in the Los Angeles County Jail. A bail hearing was not held for almost six months. Judge Robert J. Perry surprised both sides when he set the amount at $10 million in cash, well above what the defense had suggested and more than twice what prosecutors had proposed. The case against Lazarus was very strong, he said, and thus, she might well be at risk to flee the country or obtain weapons through her husband. Lazarus's lawyer, Mark Overland, said the judge did not understand the case well and contrasted the high figure with the $1 million set for Robert Blake and Phil Spector when they were charged with murder. Several months later, her brother claimed she was not receiving adequate treatment for an unspecified cancer while in custody.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: In October, Overland moved to have the entire case dismissed on the grounds that the initial investigators should have identified Lazarus as a suspect but failed to do so. In support, he cited missing aspects of the original file such as recordings of interviews, Sherri Rasmussen's blood toxicology report, as well as a polygraph test Ruetten allegedly failed. The motion noted Nels Rasmussen's belief that Lazarus was a suspect at the time of the murder, and his ensuing efforts to get the LAPD to take that theory seriously. Because of this failure, he argued, Lazarus's due process rights had been adversely affected since the quality of evidence had degraded in the intervening 23 years.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Overland argued that the truth-in-evidence provisions of the California Constitution required that the long delay in bringing charges which adversely affected the quality of the evidence which might otherwise have allowed him to make a better case that there were other suspects, or that the evidence against Lazarus was not as solid as the prosecution claimed, should be considered sufficiently negligent on the state's part to justify dismissing the case. For example, a witness who could have corroborated the prosecution's account of the confrontation between Rasmussen and Lazarus at the hospital had died in 2000. Prosecutors argued in response that Perry was required to apply federal standards, under which such a delay could only be considered prejudicial if it was shown to have been intentional. Perry agreed, and let the case proceed.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Following that denial, Overland moved to quash the search warrants that had been executed on Lazarus's home, vehicle and spaces she utilized at work, and suppress the evidence obtained from them. They were, he argued, based on stale information and did not sufficiently establish a nexus between the places searched and the likelihood of finding evidence there; Lazarus had not moved to her present residence, he observed, until 1994, eight years after the murder, and the affidavit in support of the warrant did not provide any reason why evidence might be found there. At times the affidavit, Overland claimed, was even deceptive, with the submitting detective asserting that the murder weapon might be found there, when Nuttall and Barba had already theorized that Lazarus had reported it stolen two weeks after the murder and irretrievably disposed of it.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Perry admitted he was "uncomfortable" admitting some of the seized evidence, in particular from Lazarus's personal computers and other electronic storage devices at her home, since either she had not had them or they had not existed at the time of Rasmussen's death, but he felt that since an experienced judge had issued the search warrants, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applied and all the evidence obtained could be admitted. Overland's subsequent motion for a "Franks" hearing, which would have allowed them to cross-examine the detective who had filed the search-warrant affidavit to better determine whether the evidence obtained was admissible, was also denied on the same basis.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Overland's next motion, heard late in 2010, sought to bar the use of statements Lazarus made during her videotaped interrogation at Parker Center. He argued that, per the "Garrity" warning usually given to government employees under investigation, California law compelled her to answer questions as a police officer or face disciplinary action for refusing to cooperate with an investigation, entitling her to automatic use immunity for those answers. The prosecution argued that that only applied where there was an active administrative proceeding, which had not started against Lazarus until after her arrest. Perry agreed with them on the point that Overland's argument was overbroad.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: A year later, Perry denied the last of Overland's significant pretrial motions. The criminalists had used MiniFiler, a new product to type Lazarus's DNA, and he argued it was sufficiently different from previous technology that she was entitled to a "Frye" hearing, to determine whether its results were of sufficient scientific validity to be admissible. Perry ruled that it was just another form of the PCR method commonly used to test DNA samples.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: The case attracted considerable media attention. Many of its elements—a love triangle with a woman scorned, a cold case unsolved for over 20 years and the accused killer turning out to be a police officer herself—were similar to the plots of popular televised police dramas and reality shows such as "Snapped", "" and "Deadly Women". "The Atlantic" ran a feature story about the case before the trial, and "Vanity Fair" ran one by Mark Bowden afterwards.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: The trial began in early 2012. In Los Angeles County Superior Court, prosecutors argued Lazarus's motive for the murder was jealousy over Sherri Rasmussen's relationship with Ruetten. In his opening argument, prosecutor Shannon Presby summed up the case as, "A bite, a bullet, a gun barrel and a broken heart. That's the evidence that will prove to you that defendant Stephanie Lazarus murdered Sherri Rasmussen." A highlight of the case was Ruetten's testimony. Several times, he became emotional and wept, particularly when recalling his courtship of Rasmussen. He allowed that having sex with Lazarus while he was engaged to his future wife was "a mistake".


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: In cross-examining the police detectives and other technicians who had originally investigated the killing, Overland stressed the original botched burglary theory and pointed to evidence, such as the similar burglary that happened shortly thereafter, that he claimed supported it. He also highlighted evidence that was not analyzed, such as a bloody fingerprint on one of the walls, to suggest that other suspects had not been adequately excluded from consideration. He questioned whether it could be truly inferred from the weapon used that it was Lazarus's lost gun, as .38s were in wide use. Since the DNA from the bite mark was central to the prosecution's case, he attacked it vigorously, pointing to improper storage procedures and a hole the tube had left in an envelope that he said would have allowed Lazarus's DNA to be added to it long after it had been collected.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: During the two days in which he presented his case-in-chief, Overland focused on the prosecution's theme of a Lazarus, presenting friends of hers who denied that she was showing any signs of violence or despondence over her failed relationship with Ruetten at the time of the murder. Excerpts from a contemporaneous journal were offered as evidence; Lazarus wrote in it of dating several different men, none of them Ruetten. He reinforced his attack on the forensic evidence, calling as his last witness a fingerprint expert who said that some prints at the crime scene did not match those of Lazarus.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Both prosecution and defense reiterated their themes in closing arguments. After showing the jury of eight women and four men photographs of a beaten, bloodied Rasmussen, prosecutor Paul Nunez told them, "It wasn't a fair fight... This was prey caught in a cage with a predator." Overland dismissed the entire case as circumstantial "fluff and fill", save for the "compromised" bite-mark DNA sample. He moved for a mistrial after Nunez reminded the jurors that no alibi had been provided for the time of the murder, since defendants' refusal to testify cannot be held against them, but Perry denied it, saying he did not take that as directly suggesting Lazarus herself had refused to testify and thus her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination had not been violated.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: In March, after several days of deliberations, Lazarus (then 52) was convicted of first-degree murder. Later that month, she was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison, and she is currently serving her sentence at the California Institution for Women in Corona. After credit for time served before the trial, she will be eligible for parole in December 2034.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: As evidence was introduced at the trial, it became apparent that not all the evidence available and in possession of the LAPD had been found. Recordings and transcripts of interviews with both Nels Rasmussen and Ruetten that discussed Lazarus were absent from the file, although both remembered them when called to testify, and other aspects of the missing interviews are alluded to in other interviews in the file. The only mention of Lazarus during the initial investigation is a brief note of Mayer's in which he reports that Ruetten had confirmed that she was a "former girlfriend".


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Two lawsuits have been filed based on these allegations. One, by Nels and Loretta Rasmussen, has been dismissed as time-barred. The other, a whistleblower suit by criminalist Jennifer Francis (née Butterworth at the time she tested what turned out to be Lazarus's DNA on the bite mark), ended with a judgment in the city's favor. It alleged misconduct in not only the Rasmussen case but other high-profile investigations, and that she and others suffered retaliation and harassment from superiors when they tried to report this and accurately report the results they had found.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Records also showed that, in 1992, shortly after Nels Rasmussen had offered to pay for DNA analysis on the remaining forensic evidence from the case, all samples other than the bite swab that might have helped to identify an attacker had been checked out of the coroner's office by a detective named Phil Morrill. While this appeared to have been part of the routine transfer of records to the LAPD, the evidence could not be located in department files, suggesting the samples were intentionally lost. Only the bite swab, inadvertently left behind at the coroner's office, remained to connect Lazarus to the crime.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: In 2010, the Rasmussens filed a civil lawsuit against the city, the LAPD, Ruetten (named only as an indispensable party without any specific claims), Lazarus and 100 Does. They alleged that the coverup, including the act of allowing Lazarus to periodically review the case file, and the LAPD's hostility towards them, starting on the night after the murder and continuing when they pressed the Lazarus claim throughout the 1990s, amounted to a violation of their civil rights, intentional infliction of emotional distress and fraudulent concealment. They further alleged wrongful death against Lazarus and the Does.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Since the civil-rights claim included a violation of Section 1983, the city successfully petitioned for removal to federal court. After the Rasmussens stipulated to dropping the federal claim with prejudice, waiving the right to any further legal action against the city at that level, they were allowed to refile an amended claim in state court, and did so in 2011. There, the city was found to be immune from liability for all of the claims except the civil rights violation. When the Rasmussens filed an amended complaint consisting of just that, the judge dismissed it because he believed it was barred by their earlier stipulation in federal court.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: The Rasmussens appealed. In its response, the city raised the statute of limitations as a defense, something it had not done when the suit was originally filed. The appellate court upheld the suit's dismissal on those grounds, holding that the Rasmussens' time to sue was limited once they broke off contact with the LAPD in 1998; the last year they could thus have filed suit was 2000. The California Supreme Court declined to hear the case in March 2013.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Francis filed her suit late in 2013, following the rejection of her claim by the city and a finding by the state's Department of Fair Employment and Housing that she had a right to sue. She alleged that after finding that the DNA from the bite belonged to a woman, the LAPD detective supervising her verbally steered her away from Lazarus as a suspect, without naming her. When Nuttall called her and told her the Van Nuys detectives were working the cold case and had identified Lazarus as a suspect, she did not share what her supervisor had told her for fear of retaliation.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: According to Francis, the Rasmussen case was not the only one in which she believed DNA evidence was being purposefully ignored by the department. She was told "We're not going there" in one case where she suggested comparing a partial profile from one victim with that of a suspect in a string of similar unsolved murders, also from the 1980s. Work she did on the DNA found on Jill Barcomb, believed to have been killed by the Hillside Strangler, revealed instead that she was a victim of Rodney Alcala, another serial killer active around the same time in the Los Angeles area; he was ultimately convicted and sentenced to death in 2010. After she suggested doing DNA analyses of semen found on two teenage girls also believed to be victims of the Hillside Strangler, another detective discouraged her with the words, "We don't want to open that can of worms." A short time later she learned the semen samples had been destroyed; she could not find out why.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: At the end of 2009, while prosecutors were preparing for the preliminary hearing in the Lazarus trial, she met with an assistant D.A. and told her about the resistance she had initially encountered over the possibility of Lazarus as a suspect in the Rasmussen murder. Several months later she was called into her supervisor's office and asked to relate those events. A month later, she told Detective Nuttall, who had spearheaded the reinvestigation that led to Lazarus's arrest, as well.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: The next month, she was called into her supervisor's office, and told to go to an employee counseling service, an act she knew to be punitive, "because you look stressed." The therapist who spoke with her seemed to Francis to be more interested in finding out what she knew about the Lazarus case and who she might have shared it with. After two sessions in which she declined to share that information, she was again called into her supervisor's office and told she was not cooperating and needed to "talk this out". She told the therapist she was getting a lawyer, after which further sessions were canceled as a "mistake".


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Two detectives from RHD interrogated her the next month, July 2010. She told them she was concerned that events leading to Lazarus's arrest in which she was involved had been portrayed differently in the media than she recalled them, putting the department in a more favorable light. Nuttall as well, she recalled, had been placed in an equally difficult position, since he told her that Lazarus may have learned that they had reopened the investigation despite the precautions he and Barba had taken.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: In the wake of these events, Francis claims, she was taken off the upcoming Grim Sleeper case despite the work she had done on it, including the DNA sample that had led the police to their suspect. The same detective who had insisted Lazarus was not involved in the Rasmussen killing, she noted, had played a major role in investigating the Sleeper. In another meeting, her supervisor threatened her with more counseling and told her she was "obsessed... emotional" and "shouldn't have said anything". She was transferred to a non-analytical position.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: The retaliation continued after Lazarus was convicted, Francis claimed. She faced more retaliatory action from her supervisors, whom she also accused of sexually harassing other female criminalists, and was again transferred. A report from the department's Inspector General on her complaint to Internal Affairs was delayed and appeared to have been reviewed by someone else prior to her receipt of it.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: In 2015, the parties made motions to the judge as to what evidence could be heard by a jury at trial. At the beginning of 2017, Superior Court Judge Michael Johnson ruled that Francis could proceed to trial alleging a violation of state labor law. He found there were no triable issues of fact on her claims of harassment, discrimination and retaliation. In April 2019, a jury found for the city.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Lazarus filed a lengthy appeal of her conviction in May 2013 with the California Court of Appeal, Second District, Division Four, which has appellate jurisdiction over Los Angeles County's courts. Her attorney, Donald Tickle of Volcano, California, argued that Perry had erred in his rulings for the prosecution on all four pretrial motions Overland had filed. Tickle argued that multiple precedents supported the defense arguments over those of the prosecution, and sometimes directly contradicted them. For example, he argued, Perry had applied the good-faith exception to the detectives' reliance on an admittedly defective search warrant based on the fact that the judge had issued the warrant after reviewing the affidavit. But Tickle pointed to an existing California case, which had expressly held that the state cannot rely purely on the warrant's issuance by a judge to establish sufficient good faith that the search was constitutional.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Tickle also attacked Perry's rulings limiting the defense's ability to put on evidence suggesting the initial botched burglary theory of the crime was more credible than the prosecution claimed. The prosecution had not moved to exclude third-party culpability evidence, despite claiming the initial investigation's conclusion was erroneous during its opening statement, which led Perry to ask if they were conceding that it was. Nevertheless, he told Overland that without "some remarkable similarities" between the burglary that killed Rasmussen and the one that happened nearby later, he would not allow the defense to explore the later burglary, since there were also important dissimilarities.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Perry, Tickle said, had misread the primary California case Overland had relied on as not applying to evidence of third-party culpability, while other cases made clear the statute it interpreted did indeed cover that. That case also imposed a lower standard of admission than "remarkable similarities". The use of a .38 caliber weapon and a similar residence in both burglaries established a strong possibility of a common "modus operandi" for both crimes, Tickle said.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: As a result of this ruling, Overland had been denied the opportunity to cross-examine Mark Safarik, the last prosecution witness and an FBI expert on burglaries, who had testified that the crime scene suggested a staged burglary, as opposed to a real one that had been interrupted in progress. Since the prosecution had told the court at a sidebar prior to Safarik's testimony that they intended to limit their questioning to supporting this theory, Perry similarly limited the defense on cross. However, Tickle argued, since Safarik's own report had considered the other burglary, testimony about that should have been allowed.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: A panel of three judges—Audrey B. Collins, Thomas Willhite Jr. and Nora Margaret Manella—heard oral argument in the case in June 2015. A month later, they reached their decision, unanimously upholding Lazarus's conviction.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: The court's primary holding was that Lazarus and her attorneys had failed to establish that Perry's rulings resulted in any prejudice to her ability to mount an effective defense. Manella, writing for the panel, conceded at the outset that Perry had incorrectly agreed with the prosecution that delays resulting from negligence or neglect alone could not be considered prejudicial—in fact, she said, federal and state precedent called for a balancing test when there was evidence that an unintended delay in prosecution might adversely affect the defendant's ability to challenge the state's case.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: But in applying it to the instant case, she found that the state's explanations for the delays were reasonable enough, and that in turn Lazarus did not show any reasonable likelihood of prejudice resulting from missing evidence and unavailable witnesses. "[The trial court]'s error did not affect the outcome", Manella wrote, pertaining to the absence of chain of custody records for the evidence. "As [it] observed, the passage of time was more likely prejudicial to the prosecution than the defense."


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Perry had also properly denied the defense motion to suppress evidence obtained via the search warrants of Lazarus's home, cars and workspaces, according to Manella, since they were based on reasonable assumptions about possibly incriminating evidence that might still be in those places over two decades after the crime—again, supported by existing state and federal case law. And since none of the information in the search-warrant affidavit was known to be false or shown to have been stated with reckless disregard for its truth, the good-faith exception was validly applied. For the same reason, there was no basis for a "Franks" hearing.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: "Appellant appears to believe that "Garrity" applies to any statement made by a police officer during an interview conducted by fellow law enforcement officials", Manella wrote with regard to Lazarus's interview. "She is mistaken" since it applies only to information coerced under the threat of termination in explicitly criminal investigations, as opposed to statements given where an officer "had no objectively reasonable basis to believe she was compelled to answer the detectives' questions," as Perry had found, since she had not been ordered to submit to the interview nor were Stearns and Jamarillo in her usual chain of command, or working for the LAPD's internal affairs unit. "The fact that she remained in the room answering questions does not support that she felt compelled, but only that she wished to allay suspicion by avoiding behaving in a manner that suggested guilt."


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Manella called Lazarus's argument that, regardless of what did or did not happen in the interview, California law compelled her to answer truthfully or be disciplined, a "novel proposition" that relied heavily on a case decided in 1939, 30 years before "Garrity". The judge noted that while that decision was "still good law," it had been limited by "Garrity" and subsequent corresponding California statutory and case law. "Appellant, herself a former internal affairs officer, would have been aware that in the absence of a formal complaint or the explicit advisement required by [a state precedent], she was under no danger of termination if she refused to cooperate with the detectives." Nor did language in California's Public Safety Officers' Procedural Bill of Rights Act requiring officers to cooperate apply, since courts had previously held it applied only to administrative inquiries, not criminal investigations.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: On the issue of the admissibility of the MiniFiler DNA results, the panel agreed with Perry that the technology was not sufficiently different from previous DNA test kits to have required a separate hearing on that issue—or that if it were, the defense had not delivered on its offers to provide sufficient evidence that it was. "[Lazarus] quoted the manufacturer's Website representing that MiniFiler would obtain DNA results from compromised samples that previously would have yielded limited genetic data," Manella observed, "but the fact that the company's marketing material promised that its product was better than other comparable products does not establish that this was a new methodology." And since the defense had not requested either of two specific hearing types on whether the DNA had been handled properly, it could not raise those issues on appeal. Even if it had, the panel held that the DNA evidence was not so critical to the case that its exclusion would have made an acquittal more likely.


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Finally, the panel held, Perry properly limited the scope of Overland's cross-examination of Safarik, the FBI burglary expert. The differences between the later burglary nearby—the perpetrators of that crime had waited until the house was apparently empty, taken jewelry and then fled in their own car after being caught in the act—and the apparent one at the Ruetten home outweighed the similarities. "[T]he trial court was well within its discretion in concluding appellant had failed to raise a reasonable inference that the April burglary was in any way connected to Rasmussen's murder", Manella wrote. "Cross-examining Safarik about a specific burglary that occurred on a later date in a different location would have had little bearing on the validity of his opinions and conclusions concerning the Rasmussen crime scene."


title: Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

text: Lazarus sought review of the decision by the California Supreme Court, but it declined to hear her case.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: WrestleMania 17 (stylized as WrestleMania X-Seven) was the 17th annual WrestleMania professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE). It took place on April 1, 2001, at the Reliant Astrodome in Houston, Texas. It was the first WrestleMania held in the state of Texas. Twelve matches were contested at the event, including one broadcast exclusively on the "Sunday Night Heat" pre-show.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The main event was a No Disqualification match between Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock for the WWF Championship. The undercard included Triple H versus The Undertaker, the second Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match for the WWF Tag Team Championship and a Street Fight between Vince McMahon and Shane McMahon with Mick Foley as special guest referee.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: A record-breaking attendance for the Reliant Astrodome of 67,925 grossed US$3.5 million. In addition to its commercial success, the event has received universal acclaim from critics and fans, and is often regarded as the greatest WrestleMania of all time, and the greatest professional wrestling pay-per-view event ever produced.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: WrestleMania is considered the World Wrestling Federation's (WWF, now WWE) flagship pay-per-view (PPV) event, having first been held in 1985. It has become the longest-running professional wrestling event in history and is held annually between mid-March to mid-April. It was the first of the WWF's original four pay-per-views, which includes Royal Rumble, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series, which were dubbed the "Big Four", and was considered one of the "Big Five" PPVs, along with King of the Ring. WrestleMania 17, stylized as WrestleMania X-Seven, was scheduled to be held on April 1, 2001, at the Reliant Astrodome in Houston, Texas, the first WrestleMania held in the state of Texas.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The main feud leading into WrestleMania X-Seven involved Stone Cold Steve Austin challenging The Rock for the WWF Championship. The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin had fought for the WWF Championship at WrestleMania XV and in 1999. Stone Cold Steve Austin earned his opportunity to compete for the WWF Championship at WrestleMania X-Seven by winning the 2001 Royal Rumble match when he last eliminated Kane, while The Rock became the first ever six-time WWF Champion when he defeated Kurt Angle at No Way Out. During their feud, Austin's wife Debra, who was trying to get back into managing, was ordered by WWF chairman, Vince McMahon, to be The Rock's manager against her wishes as well as both Rock and Austin's. As a result, Austin would hold The Rock and McMahon responsible if any harm came to her. On the March 12 episode of "Raw is War", The Rock was placed in an overlong Ankle Lock hold during his rematch with Kurt Angle. When Debra went to check on The Rock, Angle also placed her into an Ankle Lock hold. Austin soon ran in to save her and knocked Angle out of the ring. Keeping to his word, he immediately gave The Rock a Stone Cold Stunner as punishment. The following week on Raw is War, during a handicap tag team match involving The Rock, Chris Jericho, Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, and William Regal, Austin made his way down to the ring and ended up getting a Rock Bottom from The Rock in response to the stunner from the previous week. On the March 29 episode of "SmackDown!", Debra was relieved from her managerial role by Mr. McMahon after failing to prevent a brawl between Rock and Austin.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The secondary feud leading into the event pitted The Brothers of Destruction (The Undertaker and Kane) against Triple H and The Big Show. After defeating Stone Cold Steve Austin in a Three Stages of Hell match at No Way Out, Triple H felt that he deserved to be in the WrestleMania main event having defeated everyone in the WWF, including The Rock and Austin. The Undertaker took exception to that and told him that Triple H had never defeated him. Before WrestleMania X-Seven, the two had never faced each other in a one-on-one match on a pay-per-view event. During his entrance for a Hardcore Championship match against The Big Show, Triple H ambushed Undertaker. Kane ran in and saved the Undertaker from a further attack but was met with his own ambush by The Big Show. On the following episode of "SmackDown!", Undertaker tried to break into the limousine of Triple H and his wife, Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley, on arrival but ended up being arrested by the police. As a result, Kane requested a match against Triple H later that night but lost when The Big Show interfered on behalf of Triple H. In retaliation, Kane interfered in The Big Show's Hardcore Championship match against Raven on "Raw is War", helping Raven pin Big Show to become the new Hardcore Champion. Undertaker's arrest led to a restraining order from Stephanie. To circumvent this, the Brothers of Destruction interfered in Triple H's match against Test, with Kane ordered to run after Stephanie. With Stephanie held at ransom by Kane on a balcony in the arena, WWF commissioner William Regal gave Undertaker and Kane matches at WrestleMania against Triple H and The Big Show respectively and the Undertaker told Kane to put her down. After being attacked during a Hardcore Championship title defense, Regal would later include Raven into Kane and Big Show's match, making it a Triple Threat Hardcore match for the Hardcore Championship.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: Another major feud that was built up in the lead to WrestleMania was the one involving Vince McMahon and his son Shane McMahon. The feud started with Vince's disapproval of Mick Foley's job as then-WWF commissioner as well as Foley's decision of holding a six-man Hell in a Cell match at Armageddon 2000, taking into consideration about the well-being of the wrestlers involved in the match. Despite his attempts Foley was given full support by Linda McMahon, Vince's wife and the WWF's CEO. Not pleased with this result, Vince immediately demanded a divorce from Linda. Shortly after Armageddon, secretly to Vince's delight, it was revealed Linda was rushed to hospital suffering with a nervous breakdown. With Linda hospitalized, the Board of Directors appointed Vince as the new CEO of the WWF, allowing him to fire Foley as commissioner. With Linda in a coma-like state, Vince started to have a public affair with Trish Stratus. Vince's daughter, Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley, was at first far from pleased about the turn of events. At No Way Out, Stephanie and Trish squared off, with Stephanie scoring the victory after a run-in by William Regal. On the February 26 episode of "Raw is War", however, during a match that placed Vince and Trish against Stephanie and William Regal, Stratus was turned on by the other participants in the match and had sewage dumped over her. In the following shows, Vince continued to demean Trish by having her do such actions as bark like a dog around the ring and stripping down to her lingerie. Despite this, Trish remained loyal to Vince and begged for his forgiveness. On the March 12 episode of "Raw is War", Shane McMahon made his return to the WWF. Angry with his father's actions, Shane started to throw punches at Vince only to be stopped by William Regal. Shane explained his actions on the following episode of "SmackDown!" as a result of frustrations over the manipulation of his sister, his mother's state and Vince's treatment of Trish. On March 23, World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. purchased the assets of their longtime rival promotion, World Championship Wrestling (WCW) from AOL Time Warner. With it, the purchase brought in an extra twist to the storyline. On the March 26 episode of "Raw is War" (which was held at Gund Arena in Cleveland, Ohio), Vince McMahon made a live speech that was also simulcast on the final episode of "WCW Monday Nitro" (which was held in Panama City Beach, Florida). In the speech, Vince announced that the signing was not final and that he wanted Ted Turner to come to WrestleMania to hand-deliver the contract for signing. He then promised that with the purchase he was going to bury his rival forever. However, Shane, who was at the venue for "Nitro", interrupted the speech and said:


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: To make matters worse for Vince, Mick Foley appeared shortly afterward that night and revealed that prior to his firing, Linda had made multiple contracts for him to sign, one of them was for Foley to referee a match of his choice at WrestleMania. Foley then chose the match between Vince and Shane, which was designated a street fight.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: At the Royal Rumble, Chyna (kayfabe) injured her neck during a match with Ivory, causing her to lose the match and fail to capture the Women's Championship. In order for Chyna to again challenge for the title, Ivory required the match contract to include a "hold harmless" clause, stating that if Ivory injures Chyna's neck again, there could be no legal recourse against Ivory. In doing so, the contract also included a provision to ban Ivory's Right To Censor stablemates from ringside.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: Before the event aired live on pay-per-view, a "Sunday Night Heat" match was aired with Steve Blackman and Grand Master Sexay squaring off against X-Factor members X-Pac and Justin Credible. Near the end of the match, fellow X-Factor member Albert interfered by pulling Sexay out of the ring, allowing X-Pac and Credible to hit their X Marks the Spot finisher on Blackman for the win.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The first match of the event was the Intercontinental Championship match between Chris Jericho and WWF commissioner William Regal. During the match, Regal exposed one of the top turnbuckles to throw Jericho's shoulder into it before giving him a double underhook superplex. Jericho attempted the Walls of Jericho submission hold but had it reversed into a Regal Stretch. After Jericho managed to grab a ring rope to break the hold, he retaliated with numerous chops before throwing Regal into the exposed turnbuckle and finishing him off with a Lionsault to retain the Intercontinental Championship.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: Tazz and The APA (Bradshaw and Faarooq) took on Right to Censor (The Goodfather, Val Venis, and Bull Buchanan) next in a short match that ended with Bradshaw pinning the Goodfather after a Clothesline from Hell.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The third match was the triple threat hardcore match between Raven, Kane and The Big Show for the Hardcore Championship. During the match, the three wrestlers fought their way out of the ring and through the crowd into the backstage area. Big Show tried to lock himself, Raven and the referee in a security cage but Kane broke the padlock and afterward threw Raven through a glass window. Big Show and Kane continued to brawl ending with the two throwing each other through a wall. Raven tried to escape by driving off in a golf cart, but Big Show stopped him and caused him to crash. Kane shortly followed with another golf cart, accompanied by the referee, and ran into Raven. The fight headed back into the stadium with Big Show attempting to press slam Raven off the entrance stage but both were kicked off it by Kane. Kane followed this with a diving leg drop off the stage onto Big Show, pinning him to become the new Hardcore Champion.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The fourth match was the European Championship match between Test and Eddie Guerrero. During the match, Test went over the top rope but got his foot caught between the top two ropes, forcing the referee and Guerrero to have to untangle him. With the help of his fellow Radicalz members Dean Malenko and Perry Saturn, Guerrero hit Test in the face with the European Championship belt while the referee was distracted and pinned him to become the new champion.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The fifth match pitted Kurt Angle against Chris Benoit. The match started with mat wrestling between the two but Angle soon punched Benoit out of frustration and threw him out of the ring, so he could throw him into the broadcast table and the steel steps. Back in the ring, both men tried to submit their opponent using the other's signature hold with Benoit using the ankle lock on Angle, and Angle using the Crippler Crossface on Benoit. Benoit eventually succeeded in forcing Angle to tap out to the Crippler Crossface but the referee was knocked down and didn't see it. Near the end of the match, Benoit tried to pin Angle after a diving headbutt but was met with a two-count. Angle then quickly rolled-up Benoit, using the tights for leverage to win the match.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The following match saw Chyna challenge the Women's Champion Ivory. After an early bit of offense from Ivory, Chyna performed a Chynabomb and looked to have the pinfall, but picked Ivory up after the 2-count. Chyna then performed a gorilla press drop and nonchalantly pinned Ivory to win the Women's Championship.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The seventh match was the street fight between Shane McMahon and Vince McMahon with Mick Foley as the special guest referee. Shane dominated his father during the earlier part of the match by attacking him with various weapons such as a kendo stick and monitors from the Spanish broadcast table. Shane laid Vince on said table and performed a diving elbow drop off the top rope but his sister, Stephanie, pulled Vince out of the way, causing Shane to crash through it. Trish Stratus came towards the ring, pushing Linda McMahon out in a wheelchair, and then slapped Vince, causing her and Stephanie to get into a fight that led them out of the stadium. As referee Foley tried to wheel Linda out to safety, Vince hit him with a steel chair, and then pulled Linda into the ring to make her watch as he beat down Shane with a garbage can. However, Linda stood up and low-blowed Vince, allowing Foley to recover and attack him. With Vince prone in the corner, Shane placed a garbage can in front of Vince's face and hit a Coast-to-Coast dropkick, pinning his father to win the match.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The eighth match, dubbed ""TLC II"", was the Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match for the Tag Team Championship between the Hardy Boyz, Edge and Christian and the Dudley Boyz, the defending champions. Respective associates of each tag team, Spike Dudley for the Dudley Boyz, Rhyno for Edge and Christian, and Lita for the Hardy Boyz, interfered during the match. With Spike (who had just taken a chair shot to the head from Lita) and Rhyno (who had already been dispatched by Jeff Hardy) both laying on two tables outside the ring, Jeff Hardy set up a huge ladder beside them and performed a Swanton Bomb onto them through the tables with most of his body landing on Spike, taking him out of the match. Lita was taken out of the match when Bubba Ray and D-Von Dudley performed a 3-D on her. When Jeff tried to unhook the belts but had the ladder beneath him pulled away by Bubba Ray, leaving him hanging in the air, and allowing Edge to jump off another ladder and spear Jeff to the ground at a height of 12 feet. Bubba Ray and Matt Hardy climbed the same ladder but Rhyno tipped the ladder over, sending Bubba Ray and Matt through four stacked tables at ringside and taking them out of the match. D-Von then set the ladder up again and attempted to grab the titles, but was held back by Edge. With Edge holding onto D-Von's legs, Christian sat on Rhyno's shoulders as he climbed up the ladder and unhooked the belts, making him and Edge the new Tag Team Champions. A total of 9 tables were destroyed in this match, and every performer involved except D-Von and Lita went through at least one table.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The ninth match was a gimmick battle royal, involving nineteen WWF alumni famous for their outlandish gimmicks. To further increase the nostalgia, former announcers "Mean Gene" Okerlund and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan handled commentary for the match. The Iron Sheik won the match by throwing Hillbilly Jim out of the ring. In revenge for being eliminated, Sgt. Slaughter reentered the ring and put him in the Cobra Clutch.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The penultimate match was between The Undertaker and Triple H. For his entrance, Triple H had British heavy metal band Motörhead perform his theme song, ""The Game"", live. The match started with the two fighting outside of the ring with Triple H quickly being put through the replacement Spanish announcers' table. Later on, referee Mike Chioda accidentally had Triple H catapulted into him and was then attacked by Undertaker due to his dissatisfaction over a two-count. With Chioda knocked out, the two brawled outside the ring, through the crowd, and into the technical area. On top of scaffolding, Triple H used a steel chair to attack Undertaker's legs, but Undertaker retaliated with a chokeslam off the scaffolding, followed by a diving elbow drop. Back in the ring, Undertaker hit Triple H with a Tombstone piledriver and went for the pin but Chioda was still unconscious. Later in the match, Triple H tried to pin Undertaker after hitting him in the head with a sledgehammer while in the Last Ride position but only gained a two-count. Triple H sent Undertaker into the corner and stood on the second rope to hit him with more punches, but Undertaker countered with a Last Ride, allowing him to pin Triple H and increase his WrestleMania winning streak to 9–0.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The final contest of the night was the WWF Championship match between The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin, which had a surprise no disqualification stipulation added just before the superstars were introduced. During the match, the two brawled inside and outside of the ring, with both men bleeding after hitting each other with the ring bell. The Rock attempted to place Austin in a Sharpshooter hold, but Austin reversed it into a Sharpshooter of his own. After Rock reached the ropes to force a break, Austin applied the Million Dollar Dream, a submission hold best known from his former gimmick, The Ringmaster. Shortly after, Rock used Austin's own finishing maneuver on Austin by executing a Stunner. Vince McMahon then came to ringside to observe the match. When Rock tried to pin Austin after the People's Elbow, McMahon seized Rock's leg and pulled him off Austin, breaking the pin attempt. After chasing McMahon around the ring, Austin responded by using Rock's signature move, the Rock Bottom. Later, Rock executed a Rock Bottom for a near fall. After Rock attacked McMahon, he was given a Stunner by Austin for a near fall. After Rock kicked out of the Stunner, McMahon handed Austin a steel chair to hit Rock with at Austin's request, revealing that Austin had sided with McMahon, a man he once considered his nemesis. With this, Austin turned heel. Austin attacked him with the steel chair, hitting him sixteen times, before pinning him and becoming the new WWF Champion. The show ended with Austin and McMahon shaking hands and sharing beers.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The event was met with universal acclaim from fans and critics alike. John Powell of Canadian Online Explorer's professional wrestling section rated the event a perfect 10 out of 10 stars, with the main event between The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin in a No Disqualification Match for the WWF Championship rated 10 out of 10 stars. The Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match for the WWF Tag Team Championship between The Hardy Boyz, Edge and Christian, and The Dudley Boyz also received a perfect 10 out of 10 stars, the Street Fight between Vince McMahon and Shane McMahon rated 7 out of 10 stars, the match between Triple H and The Undertaker rated 6 out of 10 stars and the match between Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit rated 8 out of 10 stars. This pay-per-view was also awarded Best Major Show for 2001 by Dave Meltzer's Wrestling Observer Newsletter. The Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match for the WWF Tag Team Championship between The Hardy Boys, Edge and Christian and The Dudley Boyz was also placed #5 on IGN's list of Top 20 Matches in WrestleMania History and noted that the match included "some of the most memorable bumps wrestling fans have ever witnessed." In 2013, WWE released a list of their "15 best pay-per-views ever", with WrestleMania X-Seven ranked at number one. In 2019, Troy L. Smith of "cleveland.com" released a list of the "50 greatest wrestling pay-per-views of all time" from every professional wrestling promotion in the world, with WrestleMania X-Seven again ranked at number one.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The following night on "Raw", Austin and The Rock faced each other in a rematch held in a steel cage which Triple H entered the cage and teased a fight with Austin before turning on The Rock. For several minutes Austin, Triple H, and Vince McMahon triple-teamed the outnumbered Rock forging an alliance with Triple H and Austin called The Two-Man Power Trip. The Rock was written out of the WWF's storylines with McMahon giving him a suspension. This allowed The Rock time off to begin filming "The Scorpion King". The Rock returned on the edition of July 30 of "Raw" and chose to fight for Team WWF over Team WCW/ECW. Three weeks later at SummerSlam, Rock won his first WCW Championship by defeating Booker T. Rock and Austin would face each other again at WrestleMania XIX in a rematch with Rock winning.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: Following The Rock's suspension, Triple H's feud with the Brothers of Destruction continued with Austin now on his side. On the edition of April 5, 2001, of "SmackDown!", Triple H challenged Intercontinental Champion Chris Jericho for his title and after interference from Commissioner William Regal and his wife Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley defeated Jericho to win his third Intercontinental Championship. The feud with Undertaker and Kane was temporarily put on hold after Triple H and Austin entered a brief rivalry with the Hardy Boyz, which resulted in Jeff Hardy beating Triple H for the Intercontinental Championship the following week and Triple H promptly regaining the title the next Monday on "Raw".


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: Meanwhile, the Brothers of Destruction defeated Edge and Christian to become the new WWF Tag Team Champions on the edition of April 19, 2001, of "SmackDown!" in a no-disqualification match. Austin and Triple H decided to challenge Undertaker and Kane for their newly won titles, but due to some wrangling by Linda McMahon the match between the teams signed for Backlash forced the two to put up their singles titles against the tag team titles in a "winner-take-all" match. Triple H scored the pin after attacking Kane with his sledgehammer and the Power Trip became the second team in WWF history to hold both major singles titles and the tag team titles at the same time. The feud came to a climax at Judgment Day when Austin defeated Undertaker to retain the WWF Championship while Kane defeated Triple H for the Intercontinental Championship. The next night Austin and Triple H lost the tag team titles to Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit; during the course of the match Triple H tore his quadriceps tendon and would miss the remainder of the year, leaving Austin to feud with the tag team champions alone. The feud culminated in a Triple Threat Match at King of the Ring, where Austin pinned Benoit to retain the WWF Championship. Ten years later in 2011, Undertaker and Triple H would once again renew their rivalry, went on to face each other in a rematch at WrestleMania XXVII with The Undertaker defeating HHH via submission, to set his WrestleMania winning streak to 19–0. A year later, they faced each other a third time at WrestleMania XXVIII in a Hell in a Cell match with Shawn Michaels as the special guest referee. The Undertaker once again won the match to extend his WrestleMania winning streak to 20–0.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: Due to the acquisition of WCW, Vince's feud with Shane would later spiral into The Invasion storyline that dominated the WWF in the latter half of the year. It consisted of WCW wrestlers "invading" the WWF's televised shows in an attempt to "take over" the WWF. The Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) promotion would also be involved with Stephanie as its new owner, merging WCW and ECW into The Alliance. Despite giving her own demands for a divorce shortly after WrestleMania, Linda would eventually reconcile with Vince in the wake of the Alliance's threat to the WWF.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: Shane McMahon's next feud would involve Kurt Angle as he would crash Angle's Olympic Gold Medal Ceremony reenactment on the May 21 edition of "Raw". Angle was celebrating the return of his Gold Medal from Chris Benoit which he won back the previous night at Judgment Day. Shane mocked him while declaring the return of WCW, and he got an Angle slam for his efforts. Shane would return the favor on the June 11 edition of "Raw" with an assist from The Undertaker. The two would eventually meet in a streetfight at King of the Ring, which was the third of three matches for Kurt Angle on the night.


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: The other two matches were the Semifinals and Final of the King of the Ring tournament which Angle was the defending champion. He would lose to Edge thanks to interference from Shane. Following King of the Ring, Edge let success go to his head and this led to Christian becoming jealous of Edge's success. They would break up on the September 3, 2001, edition of "Raw" following Christian's loss to The Rock in a WCW title match. After a brief feud for the WWF Intercontinental Championship, both would go on to become successful singles wrestlers in their own right with Edge being best known as the "Rated R Superstar."


title: WrestleMania X-Seven

text: This would be the only WrestleMania for Paul Heyman as a commentator. However he has served in a variety of roles for the WWE for the better part of the time since, including creative team member and manager of his longtime friend and client Brock Lesnar.


title: Walkman

text: Walkman, stylised as , is a brand of portable audio players manufactured and marketed by Japanese technology company Sony since 1979. The original Walkman was a portable cassette player and its popularity made "walkman" an unofficial term for personal stereos of any producer or brand. By 2010, when production stopped, Sony had built about 200 million cassette-based Walkmans.


title: Walkman

text: The Walkman brand was extended to serve most of Sony's portable audio devices, including DAT players, MiniDisc players/recorders, CD players (originally Discman then renamed the CD Walkman), transistor radios, mobile phones, and digital audio/media players. As of 2011, the Walkman range consists exclusively of digital players.


title: Walkman

text: The Compact Cassette was developed in 1963 by the Dutch electronics firm Philips. In the late 1960s, the introduction of prerecorded compact cassettes made it possible to listen to music on portable devices as well as on car stereos, though gramophone records remained the most popular format for home listening.


title: Walkman

text: Portable tape players of various designs were available, but none of them were intended to be operated by a person as they were walking. In the 1970s, Brazilian inventor Andreas Pavel devised a method for carrying a player of this type on a belt around the waist, listening via headphones, but his "Stereobelt" concept did not include the required engineering advancements to yield high-quality sound reproduction while the tape player was subject to mechanical shock as would be expected on a person walking. Pavel later lost his suit claiming the Walkman idea as his own.


title: Walkman

text: Sony cofounder Masaru Ibuka used Sony's bulky TC-D5 cassette recorder to listen to music while traveling for business. He asked executive deputy president Norio Ohga to design a playback-only stereo version optimized for headphone use. The metal-cased blue-and-silver Walkman TPS-L2, the world's first low-cost personal stereo, went on sale in Japan on July 1, 1979, and was sold for around ¥33,000 (or $150.00). Though Sony predicted it would sell about 5,000 units a month, it sold more than 30,000 in the first two months.


title: Walkman

text: The Walkman was followed by a series of international releases; as overseas sales companies objected to the "wasei-eigo" name, it was sold under several names, including "Sound-about" in the United States, "Freestyle" in Australia and Sweden, and "Stowaway" in the UK. Eventually, in the early 1980s, "Walkman" caught on globally and Sony used the name worldwide. The TPS-L2 was introduced in the US in June 1980.


title: Walkman

text: The 1980s was the decade of the intensive development of the Walkman lineup. In 1981 Sony released the second Walkman model, the WM-2, which was significantly smaller compared to the TPS-L2 thanks to "inverse" mounting of the power-operated magnetic head and soft-touch buttons. Sony applied the "Walkman" brand to some transistor radios starting with the matching blue SRF-40 FM Walkman in 1980, and added a radio to some Walkman cassette models starting with the model WM-F1 in 1982. The first model with Dolby noise-reduction system appeared in 1982.


title: Walkman

text: The first ultra-compact "cassette-size" Walkman was introduced in 1983, model WM-20, with a telescopic case. This allowed even easier carrying of a Walkman in bags or pockets. The first model with autoreverse was released in 1984.


title: Walkman

text: In October 1985, the WM-101 model was the first in its class with a "gum stick" rechargeable battery. In 1986 Sony presented the first model outfitted with remote control, as well as one with a solar battery (WM-F107).


title: Walkman

text: Two limited edition 10th anniversary models were released in 1989 (WM-701S/T) in Japan, made of brass and plated in sterling silver. Only a few hundred were built of each. A 15th anniversary model was also made on July 1, 1994, with vertical loading, and a 20th anniversary on July 1, 1999, with a prestige model.


title: Walkman

text: By 1989, 10 years after the launch of the first model, over Walkmans had been sold worldwide. units were manufactured by 1995. By 1999, 20 years after the introduction of the first model, Sony sold 186 million cassette Walkmans.


title: Walkman

text: Portable compact disc players led to the decline of the cassette Walkman, which was discontinued in Japan in 2010.<ref name="ABC_News_10/25/10_Walkman"></ref> The last cassette-based model available in the US was the WM-FX290W, which was first released in 2004.


title: Walkman

text: The marketing of the Walkman helped introduce the idea of "Japanese-ness" into global culture, synonymous with miniaturization and high-technology. The "Walk-men" and "Walk-women" in advertisements were created to be the ideal reflections of the viewing audience. Sony implemented a marketing strategy, hiring young adults to walk around in public wearing a Walkman, offering nearby people to test out the product. Sony also hired actors to pose with the Walkman around the streets of Tokyo as an additional form of promotion.


title: Walkman

text: A major component of the Walkman advertising campaign was overspecialization of the device. Prior to the Walkman, the common device for portable music was the portable radio, which could only offer listeners standard music broadcasts. Having the ability to customize a playlist was a new and exciting revolution in music consumption. Potential buyers had the opportunity to choose their perfect match in terms of mobile listening technology. The ability to play one's personal choice of music and listen privately was a huge selling point of the Walkman, especially amongst teens, who greatly contributed to its success. A diversity of features and styles suggested that there would be a product which was "the perfect choice" for each consumer. This method of marketing to an extremely expansive user-base while maintaining the idea that the product was made for each individual "[got] the best of all possible worlds—mass marketing and personal differentiation".


title: Walkman

text: Culturally the Walkman had a great effect and it became ubiquitous. According to "Time", the Walkman's "unprecedented combination of portability (it ran on two AA batteries) and privacy (it featured a headphone jack but no external speaker) made it the ideal product for thousands of consumers looking for a compact portable stereo that they could take with them anywhere". According to "The Verge", "the world changed" on the day the Walkman was released.


title: Walkman

text: The Walkman became an icon in 1980s culture. In 1986, the word "Walkman" entered the "Oxford English Dictionary". Millions used the Walkman during exercise, marking the beginning of the aerobics fad. Between 1987 and 1997, the height of the Walkman's popularity, the number of people who said they walked for exercise increased by 30%. Other firms, including Aiwa, Panasonic and Toshiba, produced similar products, and in 1983 cassettes outsold vinyl for the first time.


title: Walkman

text: The Walkman has been cited to not only change people's relationship to music but also technology, due to its "solitary" and "personal" nature, as users were listening to their own music of choice rather than through a radio. It has been seen as a precursor of personal mainstream tech possessions such as personal computers or mobile phones. Headphones also started to be worn in public. This caused safety controversies in the US, which in 1982 led to the mayor of Woodbridge, New Jersey banning Walkman to be worn in public due to pedestrian accidents.


title: Walkman

text: In the market, the Walkman's success also led to great adoption of the Compact Cassette format. Within a few years, cassettes were outselling vinyl records, and would continue to do so until the compact disc (CD) overtook cassette sales in 1991.


title: Walkman

text: In German-speaking countries, the use of "Walkman" became generic, meaning a personal stereo of any make, to a degree that the Austrian Supreme Court of Justice ruled in 2002 that Sony could not prevent others from using the term "Walkman" to describe similar goods. It is therefore an example of what marketing experts call the "genericide" of a brand.


title: Walkman

text: A large statue of a Sports Walkman FM was erected in Tokyo's Ginza district in 2019 in celebration of the 40th anniversary.


title: Walkman

text: In 1989, Sony released portable Video8 recorders marketed as "Video Walkman", extending the brand name. In 1990 Sony released portable Digital Audio Tape (DAT) players marketed as "DAT Walkman". It was extended further in 1992 for MiniDisc players with the "MD Walkman" brand. From 1997, Sony's Discman range of portable compact disc (CD) players started to rebrand as "CD Walkman". In 2000, the Walkman brand (the entire range) was unified, and a new small icon, "W.", was made for the branding.


title: Walkman

text: On December 21, 1999, Sony launched its first digital audio players (DAP), under the name "Network Walkman" (alongside players developed by the VAIO division). The first player, which used Memory Stick storage medium, was branded as "MS Walkman", shortly before the Walkman brand unification. Most future models would use built-in solid-state flash memory, although hard disk based players were also released from 2004 to 2007. They came with OpenMG copyright protection and, until 2004, exclusively supported Sony's in-house ATRAC format; there was no support for industry-standard MP3 as Sony wanted to protect its records division, Sony BMG, from piracy. Additionally, Walkman-branded mobile phones were also made by the Sony Ericsson joint venture.


title: Walkman

text: Sony could not, however, repeat the success of the cassette player in the 21st century digital audio player (DAP) market. Rival Apple's iPod range became a large success in the market, hindering Walkman sales internationally, though it fared better domestically. The Network Walkman for several years had paltry market share and had also been struggling against numerous other rivals such as Creative, Rio, Mpio and iRiver, although sales and share did eventually increase fivefold in 2005 and continued improving, but still remained small. Its pricing policy, SonicStage software and lack of MP3 support in earlier years have been suggested factors of its performance. Its U.S. market share in 2006 was 1.9%, placing it behind Apple, SanDisk, Creative and Samsung. In Japan its share in 2009–2010 was between 43 and 48%, slightly ahead of Apple.


title: Walkman

text: Meanwhile, Sony Computer Entertainment, a Sony division who are not involved in Walkman products, officially described their PlayStation Portable in 2004 as the "21st century Walkman".


title: Walkman

text: Walkman portable digital audio and media players are the only Walkman-branded products still being produced today – although the "Network" prefix is no longer being used, the model numbers still carry the "NW-" prefix. The current product range as of 2022 are:


title: Walkman

text: Since 2017, Sony also provide the Music Center for PC software on Microsoft Windows, designed for both content transfer and playback for Walkman and other audio products.


title: Space opera

text: Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it features technological and social advancements (or lack thereof) in faster-than-light travel, futuristic weapons, and sophisticated technology, on a backdrop of galactic empires and interstellar wars with fictional aliens, often in fictional galaxies. The term has no relation to opera music, but is instead a play on the terms "soap opera", a melodramatic television series, and "horse opera", which was coined during the 1930s to indicate a clichéd and formulaic Western film. Space operas emerged in the 1930s and continue to be produced in literature, film, comics, television, video games and board games.


title: Space opera

text: An early film which was based on space-opera comic strips was "Flash Gordon" (1936), created by Alex Raymond. "Perry Rhodan" (1961–) is the most successful space opera book series ever written. The "Star Trek" TV series (1966–) by Gene Roddenberry and the "Star Wars" films (1977–) by George Lucas brought a great deal of attention to the sub-genre. After the convention-breaking "new wave", followed by the enormous success of the franchises, space opera became once again a critically acceptable sub-genre. Throughout 1982–2002, the Hugo Award for Best Novel was often given to a space opera nominee.


title: Space opera

text: Space opera has been defined as "a television or radio drama or motion picture that is a science-fiction adventure story".


title: Space opera

text: Some critics distinguish between space opera and planetary romance. Both feature adventures in exotic settings, but space opera emphasizes space travel, while planetary romances focus on alien worlds. In this view, the Martian, Venusian, and lunar-setting stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs would be "planetary romances" (and among the earliest), as would be Leigh Brackett's Burroughs-influenced "Eric John Stark" stories.


title: Space opera

text: The term "space opera" was coined in 1941 by fan writer and author Wilson Tucker as a pejorative term in an article in "Le Zombie" (a science fiction fanzine). At the time, serial radio dramas in the United States had become popularly known as soap operas because many were sponsored by soap manufacturers. The term "horse opera" had also come into use to describe formulaic Western films. Tucker defined space opera as the science fiction equivalent: A "hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn, spaceship yarn". Fans and critics have noted that the plots of space operas have sometimes been taken from horse operas and simply translated into an outer space environment, as famously parodied on the back cover of the first issue of "Galaxy Science Fiction". During the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the stories were printed in science-fiction magazines, they were often referred to as "super-science epics".


title: Space opera

text: Beginning in the 1960s, and widely accepted by the 1970s, the space opera was redefined, following Brian Aldiss' definition in "Space Opera (1974)" as – paraphrased by Hartwell and Cramer – "the good old stuff". Yet soon after his redefinition, it began to be challenged, for example, by the editorial practice and marketing of Judy-Lynn del Rey and in the reviews of her husband and colleague Lester del Rey. In particular, they disputed the claims that space operas were obsolete, and Del Rey Books labeled reissues of earlier work of Leigh Brackett as space opera. By the early 1980s, space operas were again redefined, and the label was attached to major popular culture works such as "Star Wars". Only in the early 1990s did the term space opera begin to be recognized as a legitimate genre of science fiction.


title: Space opera

text: Space opera can be contrasted in outline with "hard science fiction", in which the emphasis is on the effects of technological progress and inventions, and where the settings are carefully worked out to obey the laws of physics, cosmology, mathematics, and biology. Examples are seen in the works of Alastair Reynolds or the movie "The Last Starfighter". At other times, space opera can concur with hard science fiction and differ from soft science fiction by instead focusing on scientific accuracy such as "The Risen Empire" by Scott Westerfeld. Other space opera works may be defined as a balance between both or simultaneously hard and soft science fiction such as the "Dune" prequel series by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert or the "Star Wars" series created by George Lucas.


title: Space opera

text: Early works which preceded the subgenre contained many elements of what would become space opera. They are today referred to as proto-space opera. Early proto-space opera was written by several 19th century French authors, for example, "Les Posthumes" (1802) by Nicolas-Edme Rétif, "Star ou Psi de Cassiopée: Histoire Merveilleuse de l’un des Mondes de l’Espace" (1854) by C. I. Defontenay and "Lumen" (1872) by Camille Flammarion.


title: Space opera

text: Not widely popular, proto-space operas were nevertheless occasionally written during the late Victorian and Edwardian science-fiction era. Examples may be found in the works of Percy Greg, Garrett P. Serviss, George Griffith, and Robert Cromie. One critic cites Robert William Cole's "" as the first space opera. The novel depicts an interstellar conflict between solar men of Earth and a fierce humanoid race headquartered on Sirius. However, the idea for the novel arises out of a nationalistic genre of fiction popular from 1880 to 1914 called future-war fiction.