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Editor’s note: This article contains graphic descriptions of violence.
A serial killer who murdered a law library clerk in the 1970s received a life sentence for her death, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge decided on Thursday, April 27.
John Arthur Getreu, 78, was sentenced after pleading guilty in January to the brutal strangulation murder of Leslie Marie Perlov on Feb. 13, 1973. Her body was found near what is now the Stanford Dish hiking area.
He will serve his term consecutively with another life sentence handed down in November 2021 in San Mateo County Superior Court for the March 25, 1974, murder of Janet Ann Taylor. Both women were 21 years old when they were found strangled in open areas on Stanford University land. Getreu was charged with first-degree murder and an attempted rape enhancement in the Perlov case.
This is the third case for which Getreu was convicted and sentenced related to strangling and sexually assaulting or attempting to assault young women. In 1963, he strangled and raped 15-year-old Margaret Williams, a U.S. Army chaplain’s daughter, outside of a dance in Germany. Their fathers served on a military base. Getreu, who was 18 at the time, was convicted of those crimes and spent about six years in a German prison out of a 10-year sentence.
Getreu eluded identification for 45 years until advanced DNA forensics led to his arrest. For the nearly half-decade while he freely lived his life, the families of both women were greatly anguished, waiting for justice for their daughters and siblings.
Justice came slowly. Getreu was first arrested on Nov. 20, 2018, in Perlov’s case and was charged in Taylor’s death in May 2019. The trial in Taylor’s case dragged through the courts until his September 2021 conviction, but Perlov’s family was spared the same ordeal after he changed his plea to guilty of all charges this past January.
Getreu remained devoid of emotion during his sentencing hearing on April 27, as he had throughout all other court proceedings. He looked down or stared ahead with the same dispassionate demeanor of someone waiting for a dental appointment.
Now he is old and bald with a white beard, glasses and hearing aids. His many court appearances were punctuated by continuations of his hearings due to bouts of poor health and hospitalization. No one from his family came to see him in the courtroom. He said nothing during his appearance, which he attended remotely through a jail video feed.
But the voice of his victim would not be silenced, Perlov’s sister, Diane Perlov, said in an eight-minute victim’s family statement that she read in front of the judge. It was the second time since Getreu’s arrest that she addressed the court.
“Leslie fought ferociously for her life. Leslie was stripped of her life and of her voice. But I am here,” Diane Perlov said, and Leslie’s voice was there too, she said.
“Feel our strength and feel our fury,” she said.
Leslie was the older sister by 14 months. People often mistook them for twins, Diane Perlov said.
“She was my protector, my role model and my hero. What I missed immediately and most were the times we would laugh so hard that no sound would come out,” she said.
At 21 years old, Leslie Perlov would say that “we had all the time in the world,” her sister said. She wanted to be an attorney who would help others. She wanted to be the first female president of the United States. Instead, Getreu strangled her with a scarf — one that belonged to Diane Perlov and that Leslie Perlov had borrowed that day.
The trauma still envelopes her.
“I cannot walk alone in the woods. After work, I will not walk through the deserted parking garage. I won’t let anyone touch my neck,” she said.
Their mother declined grief counseling, saying that her daughter’s death “has left an open wound that will never heal,” Diane Perlov said. Their mother died before her daughter’s killer was found.
Craig Perlov, Leslie Perlov’s younger brother, said that his eldest sister was “the brightest of the three of us,” graduating from Stanford University in three years.
“She was cruelly taken by this horrible, monstrous act. The only modicum of justice we could have would be in this court today,” he said.
Diane Perlov asked Judge Hanley Chew to sentence Getreu to life in prison without the possibility of parole and that he should serve his sentences consecutively. She argued that Getreu should be denied parole because of special circumstances: Getreu murdered three women and raped and threatened to kill a Palo Alto teenage girl in 1975 who was a member of his Explorer Scout troop.
Getreu’s crimes “were premeditated. They were brutal and they were painful,” Diane Perlov said.
‘She was cruelly taken by this horrible, monstrous act. The only modicum of justice we could have would be in this court today.’
Craig Perlov, brother of Leslie Perlov, on his sister’s murder
Deputy District Attorney Matt Braker told the court: “There is no reason for mercy or mitigation to the sentence. She was 21 years old when she was murdered. She was intelligent, ambitious, kind and compassionate. She was someone committed to make the world better.”
She went to the spot where she was killed — near what would be known as the Stanford Dish — to prepare a landscape painting she planned as a gift to her mother, he said.
Chew, in sentencing Getreu to life in prison, could not do so without the possibility of parole. By law, Getreu had to be sentenced under guidelines in place at the time of the crime.
“I know nothing will make up for the loss of your sister. I hope what the court has done here will bring some solace,” Chew said.
Outside of the courtroom, Diane Perlov said that she was satisfied that her sister’s killer is unlikely to be freed again, but even the possibility creates unease. She might have to testify during Getreu’s parole hearing.
“It just really pleases me that we finally got justice. I will follow this case to make sure he can’t get parole — to make sure he never gets to hurt another girl,” she said.
In a press release issued Thursday afternoon, District Attorney Jeff Rosen said:
“The long nightmare of John Getreu is over. I hope this brings some measure of peace to the loved ones of the people he preyed upon. And I hope that I never have to say his name again.”
Take a look back at Getreu’s criminal history with our timeline:
I was in HS at the time of the Taylor murder. I saw the picture of Taylor in a print dress on the front page of the PA Times and felt such bewilderment and distress. My father said he wanted to get his hands on the guy who did this. It’s so unbelievable that now—nearly a half century later I’m reading of his formal sentence. I feel anger that the German conviction seemed to count for so little.