The Murders of Arlis Perry, Leslie Perlov and Janet Taylor

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There were few places in Arlis Perry’s new home of Stanford, California, where she really felt at home. However, the Stanford Memorial Church (or MemChu as it is affectionately referred to by university students and faculty), located in the Stanford University’s Main Quad, was the exception.

Stanford Memorial Church (source: King of Hearts, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

The church offered Arlis a sanctuary of calm and tranquility whenever she needed it.

It was where she went on the night of Oct. 12, 1974, after she and her new husband, Bruce Perry, had gotten into a small argument while out for a walk on campus. The argument, which was over their car’s tire pressure, was by no means a terrible fight. But it upset Arlis enough that she wanted to go to church and pray, instead of going back to their apartment right away.

So Bruce returned home, while Arlis headed in the direction of the Quad.

If Bruce had known what horrors would be inflicted on his young wife after they parted ways, he never would have let her walk away.

Small Town Girl

Arlis Kay Dykema was the youngest child of Marvin and Jean Dykema’s three children. She was born on Feb. 22, 1955 in the tiny town of Linton, North Dakota, but grew up in Bismarck, the state capitol, located an hour north of Linton.

Arlis Perry (source: Family member. Likely Bruce D. Perry. 1974., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Arlis attended Bismarck High School, where she was a cheerleader and played basketball. She enjoyed baking, often making treats for the high school basketball team and her fellow cheerleaders.

She was an devout Christian, spending much of her time outside of school studying the Bible and attending events at her church. She was a member of Young Life, and the Fellowship for Christian Athletes. Her Christian faith, along with her family and friends, were what she cherished the most in life.

Those who knew Arlis described her as kind, compassionate and optimistic. Being from such a small city and living a very sheltered life did, however, mean she could be overly trusting and naive.

In her 19 years, Arlis had never left North Dakota, which in 1970 had a population of 617,761. As of 2020, North Dakota ranks 47 out of 50 in terms of population density (and the population has actually grown by about 150,000 since 1970!), just to give you an idea of how sparsely populated the state is.

Arlis and her boyfriend, Bruce Perry, were the quintessential high school sweethearts. Like Arlis, Bruce was deeply religious. He was also an excellent athlete. When he graduated from Bismarck High, he left North Dakota for Stanford University in California, where he had been accepted onto their pre-med program. Arlis and Bruce continued their relationship long distance while he was a college freshman and she attended community college. She also worked at Bruce's father's dental practice in Bismarck as a receptionist.

When Bruce returned to Bismarck in the summer of 1974, he and Arlis got married. At first, Arlis's parents were apprehensive about the couple's plan to marry so young, but they saw how happy they were together and came around, supporting the marriage wholeheartedly.

They also weren't thrilled about their youngest daughter moving so far away from home. But Bruce had to return for his sophomore year, and the plan was that Arlis would join him. After a big, happy wedding held at Bismarck Reformed Church, Arlis and Bruce honeymooned in a cabin owned by Arlis's parents. Then they left for California.

Little did Jean and Marvin know, they would never see their daughter alive again.

Stanford, California

On arriving in California, Arlis and Bruce moved into Quillen House in the Escondido Village on the Stanford University campus. With Bruce studying on an intense college course and working part time to support himself and his new wife, he was always busy. This meant Arlis spent much of her time on her own. Moving from conservative Bismarck to liberal, progressive Stanford was a huge change, and Arlis struggled to adjust at first. She spent her days taking long walks around campus and writing letters to her friends and family at home.

It didn’t take long for Arlis to find work as a receptionist at a local law firm, which she was excited about, as it would give her something to do during the day and she might make some friends.

Arlis’s favorite place in Stanford, as I previously mentioned, was without a doubt the Stanford Memorial Church. The church really is beautiful, with ornate architecture, intricate stained glass windows behind the altar and bright, cheerful murals adorning the walls.

The church, which was dedicated in 1903, was “built” by Jane Stanford, in memory of her late husband, Leland Stanford, the founder of Stanford University. I say “built” because while Jane obviously did not physically build it herself, she played a pivotal role in the planning and design. If not for her, there would be no Stanford Memorial Church as it is today.

Her hope was that the church, located in the Main Quad, which is the oldest part of the University, would be the focal point of the campus. It had been referred to as “the University’s architectural crown jewel”.

Faculty member Susan Christiansen described the church to student newspaper, The Stanford Daily, as follows:

“It serves as a core part of the University, and its location symbolizes that. The Stanfords felt very strongly that the spiritual component of your education was as important as the academic.”

October 12, 1974

On this particular October evening, Arlis wanted to take a walk and drop off some letters at the mailbox on campus. Bruce did not like her walking alone at night, so he joined her on the walk. As they walked, they got onto the subject of their car’s tire pressure and began arguing over it. Arlis told Bruce she was going to go to the church to pray and cool off after their argument. This was just before 11 p.m.

Bruce assumed that Arlis would not be gone for much longer than an hour, especially since it was late and the church would be closing soon. But the hours continued to pass and there was no sign of her. Bruce went to the church to look for her, but it was closed by the time he got there. He went back to their apartment, which was still empty. At 3:30 a.m., Bruce called the police to report Arlis missing. He explained to them the events of that evening - that they had been out for a walk, had gotten into an argument and Arlis had gone to the church on her own.

Police went to the church, but found it completely locked up, as expected. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary.

At around 5:40 a.m. however, they received a phone call from the night watchman at the church, Stephen Crawford. He had found a body in the church, he told them.

The Scene in the Church

WARNING: graphic description of murder scene to follow.

Investigators arrived at the church to find the body of 19-year-old Arlis Perry, nude from the waist down, lying near the altar in the church’s east transept.

She lay face up, looking towards the altar. She was not wearing her glasses; these were never found. Her legs were spread open, and her right arm pinned behind her waist. Her jeans lay on top of her legs, arranged in a sort of diamond shape. She had been sexually assaulted with a three foot long candlestick.

Her cause of death was a blow to the head with an ice pick, which was protruding from behind her left ear. Marks on her neck did, however, suggest that her assailant initially tried to strangle her. Under her blouse, another candlestick had been placed between her breasts.

The Aftershock

Investigators and the public were horrified by the brutal murder of Arlis Perry. What had to be going through the killer’s mind to commit such a heinous act against a kind and gentle young woman with no enemies, who had just moved to the area a mere two months ago?

The country, in particular the state of California, was still on edge after the murders committed by Charles Manson’s Family five years earlier in 1969. People were determined, with encouragement from the media, to place the blame on so-called “Satanists” or some kind of cult for the gruesome and bizarre killing. The way she was positioned, how her body was violated, the fact she was found in a church. It was hard for the public to fathom Satanism, or some sort of dark magic or occult activity, not being a factor.

As it would turn out, Arlis’s murder was not related to any sort of Satanic ritual, despite what people wanted to believe. But decades would go by before the killer would be formally identified, giving plenty of time for these rumors and unsubstantiated theories to spread.

"What they're spreading is the legend of the case, and then these cases carry on a life of their own," said retired FBI agent Kenneth Lanning, who had worked in the FBI’s behavioral science unit for 20 years.

On Tuesday, Oct. 15, 1974, a memorial service for Arlis was held at the Stanford Memorial Church; the area where her body was discovered was still inaccessible to the public. More than 180 people attended the service, which was led by Reverend Hamilton Kelly. Bruce Perry sat in the front row; he managed to stay composed until the end of the service, when he broke down in tears.

Back in Bismarck, Arlis’s funeral service was held on Oct. 18 at the Reformed Church, where she and Bruce had married just two short months earlier. It felt surreal to her friends and family, who had been there celebrating such a short time ago, to now be back, laying the young bride to rest.

The Investigation

Investigators went about collecting evidence from the crime scene. Included in the evidence was a kneeling pillow used for praying which has semen stains on it. One of the candlesticks used to assault Arlis had a palm print on it.

As is generally the case in murder investigations, the first individuals to be scrutinized by police are whoever found the victim (Stephen Crawford), and the victim’s partner (Bruce Perry).

Bruce Perry, who was clearly devastated, readily complied with investigators. Police were taken aback when they first went to question him; when he answered the door to the apartment, he was covered in blood. He explained that he was having a nosebleed brought on by stress (sounds outlandish, I know, but it was actually true).

Bruce answered all their questions and gave them a sample of his DNA. The palm print found on the candlestick was not a match to his. He easily passed a lie detector test. Bruce Perry was cleared as a suspect early on in the investigation.

Stephen Crawford told investigators that on the evening of the murder, he had been in the church and had called out around 11:35 p.m. that the church would be closing in about 15 minutes. He did not see or hear anyone in the church, so he locked up around 11:45 p.m. He added that he did a “security check” at 2 a.m., but he did not see Arlis’s body (this would turn out to be false - he never did a security check). Others who had been at the church and in the vicinity that night reported seeing Arlis arrive around 11 p.m. Some saw her inside at 11:35 p.m.

When he went to open the church at 5:30 a.m, Crawford said, he approached the west-side door, which he realized was partially open. It looked as though the lock had been broken from the inside. He thought there had been a robbery. When he entered, he found Arlis’s body, but did not see anyone else inside.

Crawford was less cooperative with investigators. He initially refused to give a sample of his DNA, and would not take a lie detector test. The officer who spoke to him on the phone when he called to report that he had found a body was surprised by his choice of words - specifically, he said:

"Hey, we've got a stiff here." (“stiff” meaning a dead body).

The palm print was not a match to Crawford either. As for the semen on the kneeling pillow, DNA analysis was not advanced enough at this point to identify who it came from. A method for carrying out DNA fingerprinting was not established until 1984 by British geneticist, Alec Jeffreys. Jeffreys’s method would not be commercialized until 1987, which was the year it was first used in the United States.

The Work of a Serial Killer?

Stanford was no stranger to brutal slayings of young women. Two other cases, those of Leslie Marie Perlov and Janet Ann Taylor, had occurred in the two years preceding Arlis’s murder. Neither had been solved, and leads were few and far between.

Leslie Marie Perlov

Leslie Marie Perlov, 21-years-old and a recent Stanford graduate, disappeared on Feb. 13, 1973 after leaving the North County Law Library in Palo Alto where she worked as a clerk. Witnesses reported seeing Leslie sitting in her car around 6 p.m., speaking to a man with long blond hair through the rolled-down window. The car, an orange 1972 Chevrolet Nova, was found abandoned later that day. The keys were missing.

Leslie lived with her widowed mother, Florence Perlov, in Los Altos Hills, and had two younger siblings, 20-year-old Diane and 18-year-old Craig. Highly intelligent and ambitious, Leslie planned to become a lawyer. She had been offered a place at the University of Pennsylvania, and would have started her degree in the fall of 1973.

On Feb. 16, three days after she was last seen, Leslie’s body was discovered under an oak tree in the Stanford foothills. She had been strangled with her scarf, which was still tied tightly around her neck. The coroner estimated that Leslie had died on the evening of Feb. 13. It looked as though her assailant had attempted to sexually assault her - her skirt had been pulled up around her waist - but she had fought back hard and he had been unsuccessful. Her pantyhose had been removed and stuffed in her mouth. Leslie’s purse, which was not in her car, was never found.

Initially, 15 detectives were working the investigation into Leslie’s murder full time. But after months, which turned into years of no progress being made, the number of detectives dwindled until only two were working the case part-time.

Janet Ann Taylor

21-year-old Janet Ann Taylor was last seen hitchhiking at approximately 7:05 p.m. on March 24, 1974. She had been visiting friends on the Stanford University campus and was attempting to get a ride home to La Honda, about a 35 minute drive away. The area where Janet was hitchhiking was less than a mile from where Leslie’s body had been found just over a year earlier.

Janet was not a Stanford graduate, but her father, Chuck Taylor, was the university’s athletic director. Janet had recently graduated from Cañada College, a community college in Redwood City, about 15 minutes from Stanford. She had just started working at a maritime information firm as a teletypist in Palo Alto.

On March 25, the day after she had been seen hitchhiking, her body was found in a ditch three miles from Stanford University on Sand Hill Road and Manzanita Way by a milk truck driver. Like Leslie, Janet had been strangled. She had not been sexually assaulted, and was mostly clothed, aside from her raincoat, shoes and belt, which were later recovered by detectives discarded on Sand Hill Road. She had been carrying a purse, which was never found.

Detectives were almost completely in the dark in this investigation. They believed there was a sexual motivation to the murder, even though Janet had not been sexually assaulted. Whoever had picked her up as she was hitchhiking had killed her, then discarded her belongings along Sand Hill Road as they drove away. Detectives had very few leads, and just as Leslie’s case had, it was not long before Janet’s also went cold.

The public were convinced that Leslie and Janet were killed by the same person, even though detectives said there was no solid evidence to suggest this; everything they had was circumstantial.

Who Killed Arlis Perry?

Initially, investigators explored the theory that Arlis was murdered by a random intruder who had wandered into the church. However, they scrapped this theory, in favor of it being someone who knew the church well - the layout, opening and closing times, etc.

The FBI came on board to assist in the investigation. They came up with a profile of the killer, in which they hypothesized that the he was between the ages of 17 and 22, a quiet loner who kept meticulous notes about the church and churchgoers. They also suspected that he took belongings from his victims as macabre trophies, which would explain the absence of Arlis’s glasses from the scene.

Attention Seeker: David Berkowtiz

David Berkowitz, commonly known as the serial killer “Son of Sam”, inserted himself into the Arlis Perry investigation in 1979, by which time five years had passed since the murder. Investigators were struggling at this point, as leads had turned to a slow trickle.

Berkowitz had written letters in which he suggested he knew who killed Arlis Perry. Investigators actually traveled across the country to interview Berkowitz at the Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York, where he was imprisoned at the time.

In August 1977, Berkowitz was apprehended and indicted for eight shootings which occurred between July 29, 1976 and July 31, 1977. He confessed to all of them, and was sentenced to six life sentences in prison.

Berkowitz was known for being somewhat of an attention seeker, initially telling the FBI that a demon disguised as his neighbor’s dog told him to kill. He eventually retracted this ridiculous tale, telling them he made it all up. He told court-appointed psychiatrist David Abrahamsen that his motivation for murder was “revenge on a world that he felt had rejected and hurt him.”

It was obvious that Berkowitz was bored in prison, and when he heard about the murder of Arlis Perry and the rumors that it may have been a ritual killing carried out by a Satanic cult, he wanted to get involved. Berkowitz enjoys feeling superior to authority figures, and pretending he had valuable information in this high-profile case was his way of achieving this.

Sgt. Ken Kahn, who was one of the first investigators to arrive at the crime scene in the church, went to New York to interview Berkowitz. He quickly realized that Berkowitz’s claims were bogus, and after about 30 minutes, he ended the interview. Kahn said:

“He claims he was in Queens in a cult meeting, and that a guy stood up and said he killed Arlis Perry. Then he said he couldn’t tell us who because someone would kill his father in Florida. We knew we were spinning our wheels.”

Kahn added that many of the leads in this case, like the one from Berkowitz, did nothing more than send them on a wild goose chase.

A Note on Satanism

I thought I’d briefly touch on the rumors that have linked this case with Satanism. I’m not going to get into it too deeply, as it was not a factor in Arlis’s murder, but it’s worth addressing.

"The Ultimate Evil" is a true crime book written by former New York Post columnist Maury Terry, which was published in 1988. It details the “Son of Sam” murders and suggests that Berkowitz did not act alone, but rather, he was a member of a Satanic cult known as the Process Church of the Final Judgment, and it was the cult that ordered him to murder eight people.

Terry makes the claim that the same cult was behind the murder of Arlis Perry, because she had supposedly tried to convert members of the cult to Christianity the year before she moved to California. According to Terry, “Satanists” traveled from North Dakota to Stanford to murder her.

The whole thing sounds wild but it actually became a very popular theory.

Retired FBI Agent Kenneth Lanning, who I mentioned previously, said that for a murder to be classified as satanic, “it would have to be committed by two or more people to have some kind of a spiritual or religious connotation, you have to have multiple people involved."

Lanning did not believe multiple people were involved, therefore was not convinced it was a satanic killing.

Santa Clara County Undersheriff Tom Rosa also rejected the Satanic theory. He told the Stanford Daily that the murder “seems to fit the typical pattern of a sexual psychopath”.

It seemed far more likely that the killer staged the murder scene in such a manner to distract and divert attention from himself. The church was not symbolic for him, but it certainly helped push the satanism theory and with that bring about hysteria in the media and the public.

A Cold Case

While Arlis's case did go cold, investigators never gave up their search for her killer. Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith spoke of how personal the case was for her and her colleagues.

The lead detective on the case, Sgt. Richard Alanis, spoke of keeping a picture of Arlis with him as a constant reminder that her life and case had value.

Matt Braker, who led the cold case unit at the DA's office, remarked how families, including Arlis's, never stop hoping for justice, therefore you never forget about these cases.

The cold case unit at the DA's office routinely reviewed the case over the years, bringing in new investigators for a fresh perspective.

The Sheriff's office continued to send evidence to the crime lab, in hopes that they might finally get the break in the case that they had been waiting for.

Fast Forward to 2018

It was 44 years later that this long awaited break finally came.

Over the years, the case against now 72-year-old Stephen Crawford (who had never actually been cleared of Arlis’s murder) had become stronger. Frustration was mounting for investigators as they just didn’t have enough evidence to charge him.

Crawford knew that he was a person of interest, even with the passing of more than 4 decades. He was still being interrogated as late as 2016. He continued to evade detectives, but his time was running out.

In 2018, DNA from a semen stain found on the jeans Arlis had been wearing when she was murdered was re-tested and came back as a match to none other than Stephen Crawford, whose DNA profile they had in their database. This was enough for investigators to obtain a warrant to search his home.

June 28, 2018

At 9:04 a.m. that Thursday, detectives from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department arrived at the Del Coronado Apartments at 5273 Camden Avenue, where Crawford lived. They made their presence known, knocking and calling out to him through the closed front door. They had a warrant to search his property, they told him. The door was unlocked, so they entered the apartment.

Crawford was sitting on the bed in the studio, holding a handgun. On seeing this, the detectives immediately retreated back out the door. Seconds later, they heard a single gunshot.

On re-entering, they saw Crawford, still on the bed, having shot himself in the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Later that day, Sheriff Laurie Smith held a press conference to announce that after 44 years, she and her colleagues believed they finally knew for sure who killed Arlis Perry, and her family could have closure at last.

"It's difficult for her family. It's difficult for the department. But we finally have closure on this case. We followed all the leads and unravelled the entanglement of the elements associated with the murder of Arlis Perry. This is a care that eludes us no longer.”

- Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith

Retired detective Randy Bynum, who had worked the case in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, told the San Jose Mercury News that he had always been suspicious of Crawford. “I always had an eye on him. He was always in the back of my mind,” Bynum said.

Bynum saw Crawford’s suicide as affirmation of his belief that Crawford was guilty of Arlis’s murder.

“I guess he didn’t want to face society. Even though he wasn’t brought to justice, justice was served,” he added.

Crawford’s Motive

Former Mercury News columnist Scott Herhold had been researching the case since the late 70’s. By 2018, he knew the case as well as any detective, and had come to be very familiar with the activities of Stephen Crawford over the years. While he wasn’t surprised that the evidence implicated Crawford, he was surprised that it all ended with Crawford’s suicide.

Crawford was a U.S. Air Force veteran. In 1971, he began working for the Stanford Department of Public Safety as a police officer. His favorite part of his job was that he got to carry a gun.

In 1972, however, a new police chief took over. One of the first things the new chief did was look into which officers were actually qualified to carry guns. In order to weed out those who were unqualified to carry guns, officers were told they needed to reapply for their positions.

Three quarters of the officers were turned out to be unqualified, and were offered positions as security guards. Included in this group was Stephen Crawford.

He complained constantly over the years about how unfair this was. In 1976, he left Stanford, but not without taking revenge for how he felt the university had wronged him.

Crawford stole a range of priceless items from the university, including many Native American artifacts, such as art and sculptures, and close to 200 rare books. He was also said to have stolen a cane belonging to the late Leland Stanford, the founder of the university.

According to Herhold, Crawford also printed himself a degree certificate from Stanford, using a blank diploma.

In 1992, Crawford was arrested on suspicion of multiple thefts which occurred back in the 1970’s. He was given a six month suspended sentence. During an interview with police, he told them he was upset with Stanford University and investigators on the Arlis Perry murder case for being treated as a suspect in her murder.

Herhold told Palo Alto Online that he did not believe that Arlis was the intended victim, but rather her murder was part of Crawford's revenge against Stanford.

"She paid a terrible price," Herhold said.

A Quiet Loner

Leticia Gonzales, who managed the apartment building where Crawford lived, spoke to the Mercury News on June 28. Residents had been startled by the loud bang, which turned out to be Crawford’s self-inflicted gunshot wound. She recalled him being a loner who lived off his social security. He usually wore a cowboy hat and walked with a cane. He kept to himself mostly.

Gonzales had been inside Crawford’s apartment several times over the years with maintenance workers. It was pretty bare, but she remembered the western artwork.

“He had nice bronze statues of horses with Indians on them,” she said. These were the same ones stolen from Stanford all those years ago. It’s not clear whether they were all returned to the university.

In the times she had been in the apartment, she never saw any Satanic symbols or objects in the apartment that would indicate Crawford was involved in any sort of cult. Police who searched the apartment did not find anything to suggest this either.

This points to the idea that Crawford wanted to throw the investigators off by staging the murder scene in a way that might suggest it was a ritual killing, as I mentioned earlier. However, we’ll never know for sure why he did what he did, as he died before investigators could question him again.

The sheriff’s department told the public that the cases of Leslie Perlov and Janet Taylor were not related to Stephen Crawford. It would not be long, however, before advancements in DNA analysis would help crack these cases also.

The Perry Family’s Reactions

Jean Dykema, who was 88-years-old in 2018, spoke to the Mercury News about how painful those 44 years of not knowing had been for her family. It had been especially hard on her husband, Marvin, who tragically died in March 2018, just three months before the news broke about Crawford. Jean was heartbroken that Crawford had not been captured sooner, so Marvin could have had closure before he died.

Leslie Perlov’s Murder is Solved

On Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018, the Santa Clara Sheriff’s Office made an arrest in the 1973 murder of Leslie Perlov.

As they did in Arlis’s case, cold case investigators had been regularly sending pieces of evidence from the Perlov murder scene to the crime lab for DNA analysis over the years. In 2018, the crime lab came back with a DNA profile from an unknown male.

In July 2018, the DNA sample was sent to Parabon NanoLabs, a DNA technology company in Virginia. A profile was developed based on the sample. The profile was then sent to a public genealogy database. It was matched to 74-year-old John Arthur Getreu of Hayward, California, based on the DNA of his relatives.

Investigators collected a DNA sample from Getreu from a discarded item (I couldn’t find precisely what, but something like a water bottle or a cigarette butt would do the trick) which was sent to the crime lab for further testing.

This new sample matched DNA evidence found at the crime scene. The conclusion of the lab report was: “The probability that a random, unrelated individual could be included as a possible contributor to this deduced profile was approximately 1 (in) 65 septillion.”

On Monday, Nov. 26, a wheelchair-bound Getreu, dressed in a red jail jumpsuit, appeared in court for his arraignment hearing. Leslie’s younger siblings, Diane and Craig, attended the hearing for the man who killed their sister.

“I was stunned. I still am. I am grateful to the dedicated heroes of law enforcement. I am relieved that this person will not hurt other women, and that perhaps there will be justice. But mainly, I still miss my sister,” Diane said, speaking to reporters in the courtroom.

- Diane Perlov

Retired Lt. John Johnson, who originally worked Leslie’s case, also attended the hearing. He expressed his shock that someone had finally been arrested for the decades-old murder:“It’s a relief. When you work these cases, they stay with you. I didn’t think we’d get anybody on this one. Science has made it so these cases will be solved,” Johnson said.

Janet Taylor’s Murder is Solved

On May 16, 2019, investigators charged Getreu in the 1974 murder case of Janet Taylor. Detectives on the case strongly believed that the Perlov and Taylor murders were linked. So when Getreu was identified as Leslie Perlov’s killer through DNA analysis, investigators sent more evidence from the Taylor murder scene, specifically Janet’s green corduroy pants she was wearing when she was killed, to the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office crime lab.

On Nov. 5, 2019, San Mateo County Deputy District Attorney Josh Stauffer put forward the evidence, which showed the probability that the DNA belonged to anyone other than Getreu was 1 in 102 billion.

Getreu pleaded not guilty to both murders.

He was due to stand trial in Sept. 2020 for Janet’s murder, but was hospitalized with a brain aneurysm right before his trial was set to begin.

November 2021

Just four months ago (I’m writing this update in Feb 2022) 77-year-old John Getreu was sentenced to life in prison by San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Robert Foiles. He has been charged, but is yet to be tried for Leslie’s murder.

Who is John Getreu?

John Getreu had been living in Palo Alto at the time of Leslie and Janet’s murders, working as a medical technician. He was married, and a Scout troop leader.

His criminal history suggested he definitely should not have been a free man in 1973/4 when he committed the murders, but it seems as though he managed to slip through the cracks.

In 1963, while living in Germany with his father, who was a U.S. Army officer, 18-year-old Getreu was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping and murdering a 15-year-old American girl on a U.S. Army base. The girl was the daughter of the chaplain of the Army's 8th Infantry Division.

"I am deeply sorry for her parents, and if I could do something to bring her back, I would do it," Getreu said while on trial for the girl’s murder.

As he was foreign and still considered a juvenile in Germany, the court allowed him to be released on parole after serving just two years, and he was allowed to return to the U.S. (honestly, it seems as though Germany just wanted him out, because being released after serving just two years for murder is obviously insane).

In 1975, he was charged with raping a 17-year old Girl Scout in Palo Alto. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of statutory rape, paid a fine of $200 and spent 6 months in prison.

Then, in 2020, the girl he raped all those years ago, now a 62-year-old woman, came to testify against him in a preliminary hearing for Leslie Perlov’s murder case. “Diane Doe” said at the hearing:

"This is the nightmare that has lasted for years. Not being able to scream out, not being able to breathe.”

Remembering Leslie and Janet

“Nobody ever forgot about Leslie Perlov. Not the sheriff’s department and their diligent investigators who worked that case tirelessly, not the District Attorney’s Office, and our prosecutors and crime lab. We restarted the cold-case unit in the DA’s office about eight years ago and the reason that we did that was for days like today,”

- District Attorney Jeff Rosen

While in court, Diane Perlov spoke of her mother, Florence, who died in 2014, and never saw Leslie’s killer brought to justice. She always stayed strong, however, not letting the pain break her, but rather used it to keep her daughter’s memory alive.

Diane addressed John Getreu directly, expressing him the profound pain her sister’s murder caused her and her family:

“I cannot walk alone in the woods. I will not walk to my car at night with a scarf around my neck. These things have become second nature to me, as they are with many women in this country.”
“I am telling you all this because I want you to know that murder does not just affect the deceased. It changes many lives. It takes many lives, and impacts a family forever. And while justice doesn’t heal all wounds, it is the least we can do.”

Tragically, both of Janet’s parents have died, so they were never able to see their daughter’s killer brought to justice. I could not find whether Janet had any siblings.

San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office released the following statement from Janet’s family on the news that her killer had finally been captured: “