He said, I have my hand around your neck, and if you scream, I'll do you in.
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation.
Discovery's True Conviction.
And this is Anatomy of Murder.
Palo Alto California, is an idyllic Northern California city, perhaps best known as the crown jewel of Silicon Valley, the birthplace of tech giants like Facebook, Apple and Google.
It's also home to Stanford University, whose gorgeous campus in the foothills of Santa Clara County has attracted some of the world's best and brightest young people for over a century.
But back in the 1970s this particular part of California became infamous for another reason serial murder.
The San Francisco Bay Area was an absolute hunting ground for prolific killers like Edward Kemper, who murdered 10, the still unidentified Zodiac killer, who killed at least five and, of course, Ted Bundy, who sexually assaulted and killed dozens of young women.
And, as it turns out, Palo Alto was the home to yet another predator who, until recently, had gone unidentified for more than 40 years.
Today's story begins back on February 13th 1973, when a recent Stanford graduate, 21-year-old Leslie Perloff, left the local law library where she worked.
Here's Sergeant Noe Cortez from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department, who has headed the Cold Case Division since 2016.
She was accepted to go to law school.
She had recently moved back to live with her mother in the city of Los Altos.
Her father had passed away six months prior.
So she had been living with her mother and she was also working in the law library at the Palo Alto Courthouse.
Along with being an aspiring lawyer, Leslie was also a passionate student of the arts and literature, and had the promise of a bright future.
In fact, it was art that led Leslie on a mission that day in February of 1972.
She talked to her supervisor and wanted to leave right at 3 pm, which was her normal time to leave work, because she wanted to go to the hills that were west of Stanford.
If you're not familiar with this area, Palo Alto and Santa Clara County it's just stunningly beautiful country.
And, according to friends, Leslie had the idea to commission a local artist to create a painting of the landscape as a gift for her mother.
Her plan after leaving work was to scout the perfect location, thinking she'd be up and back before sunset.
She drove to the intersection of Page Mill Road and Old Page Mill.
She parked her vehicle at the entrance of an old quarry.
And this would have been west of Stanford University, in the hills between Stanford University and Highway 280.
She parked her vehicle there sometime after 3 p.m.
It would probably have taken her at the most 10 minutes from her work to that location.
Hours later, at about 10pm that night, Leslie's car was spotted by local police, still parked at the entrance to the quarry, which was definitely unusual for the remote area.
A deputy on patrol saw her vehicle, which stood out.
It was an orange Chevrolet Nova.
He got out and checked the area around the vehicle, noticed that the vehicle was unlocked and there were a pair of women's shoes in the vehicle.
Nothing else.
Nobody was around the vehicle.
So he decided to...
Just come back later on to see if it was still there.
The deputy returned about midnight and Leslie's Chevy Orange Nova was still there.
He did another search of the area but found no one.
So he decided to contact the registered owner, who was Leslie's mom.
And it was a welcome phone call because Leslie's mom was beside herself with worry.
She explained to the officer that she had expected her daughter home hours before and for her not to check in was totally out of Leslie's character.
That Leslie typically had a routine and stuck to it.
She would go to work and be at work at 1030 in the morning.
After work at 3 pm she would go straight home, be home by 330 pm to make dinner for her mother.
If Leslie had something else to do after work, she would either call her mother or leave a note.
On this day, she did not leave a note.
She did not call her mother.
So this young woman who was very scheduled, very regimented, she hadn't called and she hadn't shown up at home.
Police had found her car, but no sign of Leslie anywhere except a pair of shoes in the backseat.
There must have been an overwhelming feeling that something was very wrong.
There wasn't anything specific that they could look into other than searching the hills and, And that's what they did.
By morning, the police were searching for Leslie, but there was no sign of her.
And while Leslie was technically an adult, there was enough troubling details about her disappearance that they treated this as a potential crime or missing persons case.
They did contact all the residents in the area to see if they saw or heard anything.
And the detectives put it out for the media, for any help, witnesses, for any leads.
And thankfully there was one person who called into the police with what could be some very valuable information.
He was a police officer that was driving his family to an arm nearby and reported seeing Leslie's vehicle which stood out the orange Nova.
And there was another beige or tan vehicle parked next to it with a male standing between the vehicles.
That stood out to him because of the area being remote and with the information that was provided to the media.
But despite the information coming from fellow law enforcement, the lead proved to be little help in finding Leslie.
Police had no license plate number and no other signs of the man or his car were reported or found.
Investigators next turned to Leslie's car and forensics, hoping for a lead.
They did take her vehicle for testing, for processing, for evidence.
And at the time, fingerprinting was the major way of collecting evidence.
They also collected any fibers that were inside the vehicle.
But nothing ever was connected to a specific person or a specific crime.
As far as investigators could tell, no other person had been inside the car with Leslie before she disappeared.
The search for her continued by air, and nearly 24 hours after she had gone missing, officers spotted something about a mile from Leslie's vehicle.
On February 14th, a San Mateo County Sheriff's deputy was flying in a helicopter assisting with the search and located a body in the old quarry up in those hills.
Officers then rushed to that specific location.
And when they arrived, they were shocked by what they found.
It was a body of a young man who had shot himself with a shotgun.
And so investigators focused on that individual as a possible suspect.
The coincidence of finding this victim of a recent self-inflicted gunshot wound during a search for a missing woman was too much to ignore.
Police had to consider that this unidentified man may have had something to do with Leslie's disappearance.
They contacted numerous individuals that lived in the area.
This young man was known to frequent the area to go hiking or just sit in his vehicle.
His girlfriend told investigators that they would frequently go up to that old quarry to drink alcohol.
And so he was very familiar with the area.
And given the remote nature of the location where Leslie had gone missing, it stood to reason that if she had indeed met with foul play, it would have been at the hands of someone equally familiar with the area.
But as investigators pieced together the man's movements on the day Leslie went missing, they realized that his death may not be connected at all.
During their investigation, they learned that at the time Leslie disappeared, he was at home.
He was not anywhere near that location and eventually ruled him out.
Investigators were back at square one.
They continued their search of the hills, adding officers on horseback to the team.
And as the critical first 48 hours passed, Leslie's family began to fear the worst.
It wasn't until Friday, February 16th, at approximately 10 40 in the morning that a sheriff's mounted deputy reported that he had discovered Leslie's body.
We do want to warn you that the description of the attack is graphic, disturbing and may be triggering for some.
She was found partially unclothed, with her skirt moved up past her waist so her lower body was exposed and she was face down underneath the oak tree.
Abrasions and severe trauma to her face and body suggested that Leslie was badly beaten and likely sexually assaulted.
One thing that stood out was that her pantyhose and her underwear were stuffed down her mouth.
And she had a scarf around her neck, which was eventually determined that it was the ligature used to strangle her.
So Scott, you know, even beyond the obvious horror here, like you do have to start to think about.
Well, what does this scene tell us about the person who did this to Leslie?
You know, and the one thing that stands out to me very clearly, while there's lots of question marks, is this like power control, possible misogyny or actually definite, I think misogyny, hatred of women.
Just by the way, he took what is normally a woman's piece of clothing, you know her, her pantyhose, her tights, whatever she was wearing, and used that to quiet her or subdue her.
The crime scene reads violence and control the positioning of the victim's body, the removal or deliberate arrangement of the clothing.
It all points to a crime with a deeply sexual undercurrent.
And that's not all.
The pantyhose placed in her mouth, Anastasia?
Was it meant to silence her cries or was it a twisted act of degradation?
Let's talk about the location.
The car was abandoned just a short distance from when the body was found.
And that tells us this wasn't a spur of the moment of attack.
It appears like he walked her into this remote site potentially, and that level of calculation suggests familiarity with the area.
It wasn't chosen at random, potentially.
So he knew the isolation that area offered.
In fact, it's one critical thread that I think you could use in building a potential suspect profile.
As investigators examined the crime scene for clues, another detail left them with more questions than answers.
One thing that did stand out was that her rain boots were taken off of her, and detectives at the time located the rain boots 75 feet away approximately, from her body.
At the time, detectives didn't know what to make of the removed rain boots, but there was still enough telltale clues at the scene to give police a pretty clear picture of what happened.
The assumption was there was an attempted sexual assault that Leslie fought for her life.
And during that fight for her life she sustained numerous blunt force trauma injuries and eventually was strangled to death by the perpetrator.
At autopsy, it was confirmed that Leslie had been severely beaten and that strangulation was the cause of her death.
The medical examiner also made another discovery during the exam.
Despite Leslie's state of undress when she was found, there was no actual physical evidence of a completed sexual assault, which led investigators to wonder whether it was that Leslie had managed to fight off her attacker or, or at least what became clear, died trying.
They collected pubic hair, scalp hair for evidence.
The coroner processed Leslie's body for any trace evidence that could be used to identify her attacker.
And knowing that Leslie had put up a fight, there was another critical source of potential evidence that could ID her killer.
They collected the fingernails for any signs of blood evidence or anything that could be tested.
Remember, this was the 1970s, and DNA testing was not an available technology at the time.
But investigators could use blood typing to at least narrow down a pool of suspects.
And so the fingernails were sent to the FBI lab for testing, but unfortunately the test detected only skin tissue but no blood.
Nonetheless, the fingernail evidence was bagged, tagged, and stored as evidence.
With no other identifying evidence and no witnesses to the crime...
Police were faced with an almost impossible task.
Leslie's killer could literally be anyone, even possibly someone she knew.
She had a boyfriend.
He was actually going to school in Utah.
So they looked at the end.
But when they did the follow-up investigation he was in Utah at school and during the time of this incident
But you know who was in the area?
Hundreds of possible suspects that saw Leslie regularly in and around the Stamford campus.
People that may have known her routine, someone who may have followed her to the hills and who had a dark desire to kill.
On February 13th, 1973, Stanford graduate Leslie Perlove disappeared after leaving work.
Three days later, police found her body beaten and battered in the hills near campus.
The 21-year-old's brutal murder sent shockwaves through the school and surrounding community.
Yet keep in mind that Charles Manson's cult had terrorized California just a couple of years before.
And starting in May of 1972, there had been a string of unsolved murders of young women in the Bay Area, including college students and hitchhikers from nearby Berkeley and Santa Cruz, murders that would later be connected and attributed to Ed Kemper, nicknamed the co-ed killer.
So you can only imagine the fear that the community must have been experiencing.
Faced with very little evidence and no leads but a growing sense of urgency, police investigating Leslie's murder turned to the public for help, asking anyone who saw anything unusual to contact police immediately.
There were numerous reported individuals by general public.
Anybody that seemed strange or out of place were reported to the sheriff's office and they did investigate or at least follow up with those tips.
At that point, no one was beyond suspicion.
But, one by one, the police were able to investigate each tip and eliminate them as connected to Leslie's case.
They weren't able to link any one person to being in the area at the time Leslie was up in the hills or any reason for anybody to hurt her.
And as a reminder, this was 1973.
There are no security cameras capturing every square inch of the city.
There are no cell phone records to trace or social media accounts that could provide clues to people who might have followed Leslie or wanted to do her harm.
Without an eyewitness or fingerprints at the scene or other incriminating evidence, police don't have a ton to work with to solve a murder just like this.
They continued to work it through the year, but as time went on, the tips just became lesser and lesser and the case became cold.
Tragically, it would be another murder with undeniable similarities to Leslie's death.
That would reignite the case and provide crucial clues to solving it.
March 24th of 1974, a young lady named Janet Taylor was visiting friends at Stanford University.
Janet was the daughter of Chuck Taylor, who was associated to Stanford as the football coach athletic director.
Later that night, when it came time to leave, Janet decided to hitchhike home.
Now today, hitchhiking may seem like an obvious bad choice, thanks in part to the publicity surrounding these very string of murders we've been talking about.
But in the early 1970s, especially in that area of Northern California, hitchhiking was not uncommon.
But for Janet Taylor, what felt like a routine ride soon turned tragic.
The following morning, on March 25th 1974, a driver located a body at about 1030 in the morning on the side of Sand Hill Road, which is actually San Mateo County.
It's about a couple exits north of Santa Clara County.
The body was that of Janet Taylor.
And there were immediate comparisons and similarities to Leslie Perloff's murder, which had also taken place in a desolate area just a few miles away.
Janet Taylor, it seemed that had similar sexual assault indications.
Her pants were ripped.
She also appeared that she struggled with the perpetrator.
And it was also determined that she was strangled to death.
Her shoes were also removed and they were a distance away from her body.
If we recall, Leslie's rain boots were removed and discarded some distance from her body.
Finding this same detail at both scenes was striking and could be looked at as a kind of killer's signature.
And you know honestly, I thought about you know, what could that really mean and what would investigators take from that?
You know, it's the beginning stages of undressing, and that's when the struggle begins.
Perhaps, or something more significant.
And just, as I said, thinking about it, maybe it was preventing the victim from getting away.
Being able to traverse through a wooded area, potentially rocky or muddy, without their shoes could slow them down.
And that could have been.
You know don't want to really read the mind of a killer, but that could have been on the mind of the killer.
And I think that's exactly it Scott, that it's either, in this crime sense, practical to slow down your victim from running away.
But also again, when we talk about signatures and things that are ritualistic, they don't necessarily make sense to most people.
It is just something in the mind of the attacker, right?
Why does someone pose someone's body?
Why do they do certain things with items of clothing?
Because that is a vision they have in their mind and it means something to them.
So again-
It could go either way, but it is certainly, I think, more than odd and would be an extremely unlikely coincidence that this happened so close in time with two women that had been found murdered.
I often talk about the term connective tissue.
What could connect these two cases?
And when the news broke of Janet Taylor's killing, law enforcement across two counties did believe the crimes could be related.
When the Santa Clara County detectives learned of this case, they immediately contacted the San Mateo County detectives and they both agreed that the cases were similar and they believed that it was the same perpetrator.
And they started to work on the case together.
Despite their cooperation, investigators were making little headway in either case.
Then, on October 12 1974, less than six months after Janet's murder, another young woman was killed on the Stanford campus.
Arliss Ferry was the wife of a student at Stanford.
She got in an argument with her husband late one evening and went to church.
She was very religious, went to the memorial church on the campus.
At some point in the night, Arliss was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death.
Ultimately, the next morning, the security guard found her deceased inside the church.
Three brutal murders, three young female victims.
The rash of unsolved killings became known as the Stamford murders.
But were the three murders all connected?
If so, it meant that police were facing the grim reality that there was a serial killer targeting women in the Palo Alto community, and it might be only a matter of time before they struck again.
But if they were not connected?
That prospect was just as frightening, because it meant that there was more than one killer on the loose.
By late 1974, police in the Bay Area were investigating a disturbing string of unsolved sexual attacks and murders.
Three women had been assaulted and killed, Leslie Perloff, Janet Taylor, and Arliss Perry.
The crimes came to be known as the Stanford Murders.
The three crimes had some glaring similarities, specifically the age and gender of the victims and method of death for Janet and Leslie.
But the evidence in each case was slim.
Leeds had dried up.
And after months of following up tips and canvassing for possible witnesses, the cases went cold.
In Leslie's case, evidence that had been collected from the crime scene was put into storage items that included the scarf that was used to strangle her, her rain boots and even the fingernails that were clipped and had been tested for blood.
The case file, filled with dead ends and unanswered questions, was put on a shelf.
Years went by.
Decades went by.
It was not until 2016, 43 years after Leslie's murder, that Sergeant Noe Cortez was assigned to the cold case unit.
He was just a youngster when the crime occurred, but he was a California kid born and raised in Santa Clara County.
He knew how much these unsolved murders had loomed like a dark cloud in the collective memory of this community.
And so he got to work.
When I opened up the case and started to read it, there was hundreds of pages of police reports, numerous pages of evidence.
While Noe saw no obvious gaps in the investigation, he also knew how much forensic science and technology had advanced since the 1970s.
When I...
Reviewed the reports and I looked at the evidence.
There was evidence that was collected from her person, from her body.
The pubic hair, fingernail clippings, scalp hair, the scarf.
Those items of evidence I determined could be tested for DNA, since the technology with DNA was much improved in 2016.
And so that's when I decided to send all those items to the Santa Clara County Crime Lab.
You know, Scott, I thought this was pretty impressive.
You know, you certainly hope that evidence is always going to remain.
But here we're talking about decades, and specifically at a time that they weren't really that advanced as far as forensics to have found this and for it to be preserved in a usable form.
That was a tip of the hat for me.
I agree.
This could mean everything in a decades-old investigation.
You know, you can collect the purest type of evidence 40 years ago and if it's not stored correctly and it's degraded by the time you open it for testing in today's world, it could leave you empty-handed because the DNA could just be gone.
That is exactly what happened with the case that I worked with the Miramar Police Department a 37-year-old murder mystery with a great amount of evidence collected, but it was not so well stored, not well preserved, and we ended up solving the murder the old-fashioned way, by finding new witnesses and re-interviewing old witnesses and connecting the crimes a whole, totally different way.
But you know, finding critical evidence doesn't necessarily mean it's going to pay off, even 40 years later.
There's a criminalist at the Santa Clara County Crime Lab, Kevin Kellogg, whose assignment is to work on evidence on cold cases.
So I met with him and we determined these items should be tested.
What remained to be seen was whether, A there was indeed foreign DNA present and, B whether it had degraded or was still in a condition that made it possible to create a DNA profile that could be used to potentially identify a suspect.
I believe it was in 2018 that he told me that we located an unknown DNA profile from the fingernail clippings.
In 1973, police had failed to find any blood evidence under those same fingernails.
But in 2018, a trace amount of skin tissue was enough to work up a DNA profile.
Given the violent struggle, as evidenced by Leslie's defensive wounds, it made sense that she may have scratched her attacker in self-defense.
Now armed with a DNA profile, Noe could go to work hoping to make an ID.
First stop CODIS, the combined DNA index system that can help match an unknown DNA profile with either a known offender already in the system or any other unidentified DNA from other crime scenes.
And so the DNA profile went into the CODIS database.
The purpose is to see if there was an individual who had ever been arrested where their DNA profile was collected from the CODIS database to see if there'd be a match.
You know, it's an incredible system when it works.
But in this case, Noe's hopes of a quick close were dashed.
There was no connection to any DNA profile in the CODIS database.
But that also meant that they could definitely rule out the possibility that Leslie was the victim of some other serial killers that, by 2018, had been caught and convicted and, in some cases, executed.
This included co-ed killer Ed Kemper, the Golden State killer Joey DeAngelo, and Ted Bundy.
Noe was also aware about the emerging forensic science field that it might hold the key to finding Leslie's killer, and that was genetic genealogy.
And obviously, we've talked about that before.
But basically, you know, people submit their own samples to various companies, whether it's to create family trees or find long-lost relatives.
And at some point police figured out that they could use those same databases to help solve cases too.
So in this case, while it wouldn't necessarily return the name of Leslie's killer, it might give you a brother or an uncle, and police could then take it from there.
It's a technique being used more and more by law enforcement to solve cases, especially cold cases, in which DNA testing was not previously available.
By 2018, Noe turned to a private lab for this service.
With Parabon Nanolabs.
They take the DNA evidence and they enter it into the ancestry databases that are available where the public.
They put their DNA into these databases to see if there's a connection with other individuals, to locate distant relatives and start a family tree.
And it didn't take long before GEDmatch returned the name of a possible second or third cousin of the person who left his DNA under Leslie Perloff's fingernails.
Police were then able to trace that family tree right back to Northern California.
That person actually lived in Palo Alto at the time of the murder of Leslie Perloff.
Not only that, he lived three and a half miles away from the crime scene.
His name was John Arthur Getrue.
After almost five decades, police finally had the name of a potential suspect in Leslie's murder.
The now 74-year-old Getrue would have been about 30 years old when he lived near the Stanford campus.
And a check of his criminal history revealed that Getrue actually had a history of violence against women.
They provided a lot of information about this person.
One of the things that they did provide in the report.
This person, John Getrue, was associated to a homicide in Germany in 1963.
The details of the report read like a death foretold.
His father was in the army.
They traveled a lot as a family in the army.
They ended up in Germany in 1963 where John Getrue was going to high school.
There, John Getrue met a classmate named Margaret Williams.
One evening, they went to a school function and Getrue offered to walk Margaret home.
They stopped at a baseball field where they became intimate.
But when Margaret Williams decided that she didn't want to continue, John Getrue sexually assaulted her and strangled her to death.
Police discovered Getrue was responsible because of an eyewitness that placed him and Margaret together.
There was witnesses.
Some of the other students that were at the same function said that they walked away together.
There was some other students that saw them near the baseball field.
They interviewed him and he eventually admitted to what he did.
So the German authorities conducted their investigation, along with a parallel investigation by the military police.
And so he was convicted of the murder, the sexual assault and murder of Margaret Williams.
And he was sentenced to 10 years in jail.
But as a juvenile offender, Getrie was released when he turned 18.
Shortly afterwards, he moved back to California.
And more evidence came to light that he was also a sexual predator.
I looked into his criminal record and what I found out was that in 1975, he was also arrested and convicted of a sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl in the city of Palo Alto.
They also figured out where to find him.
I found out that he was still alive and that he lived in the city of Newark California, which was located just a few miles from San Jose and Palo Alto.
But despite the genetic profile match, Getrue is just a suspect until police can collect his DNA for a direct comparison to the evidence.
The information that I received that he was possibly the person that the DNA was associated to underneath Leslie Perloff's funeral is just an investigative lead.
We have to confirm that.
This is the actual person.
That's actually his DNA.
And so a plan was formed to secretively obtain Getru's DNA.
We went to his house and set up surveillance on him.
Our goal was to hopefully follow him somewhere and obtain some surreptitious DNA, something that he would discard, something that we can collect and compare any DNA that he left behind in this evidence item that he discarded to the DNA located under Leslie's fingernail clippings.
And it was sometime around 12 o'clock in the afternoon that a female drove into the driveway.
That's when I first saw John Getrue walk out of his house and get into his vehicle.
We followed the female, which I later found out was his wife. and John Getrie to a doctor's office.
After he was done with his doctor's appointment, he walked to another part of this complex where there was stores, and I saw him buy a cup of coffee along with his wife, and eventually they walked into the pharmacy to get John Getrie's medication.
Police finally get their chance to obtain Getrue's DNA.
It has been nearly 50 years since the murder, and if Getrue was indeed Leslie's killer, it's inconceivable that he would be expecting police to be watching his every move, which was exactly what police were anticipating.
My partner, Sergeant Piazza, sat inside the pharmacy directly across from John Getrie as he consumed his coffee and he observed him throw away his cup in a garbage can.
As soon as John Getrie and his wife left, we collected both cups that were discarded and I later submitted those cups to the Santa Clara County Crime Lab.
Investigators strongly suspected that they had their man, but they now hope that they had the actual evidence to prove it.
I was notified by the crime lab that the DNA from the coffee cup that John Getru was drinking was the match to the DNA underneath Leslie Perloff's fingernails.
After decades in the shadows, Getru was finally taken into custody.
He was 74 at the time of his arrest.
In the interview room at the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office, Noe sat down with the person he believed had strangled and killed Leslie Perlov, a man that had been walking free for over 40 years.
We had him transported to my office, the Sheriff's Office headquarters in San Jose, and that's where I interviewed him for two to three hours.
Getrue had eluded police for years through skill or just plain luck.
But in Sergeant Noe Cortez, he now had a formidable adversary.
I asked him about had he ever been arrested.
He said no.
And when I told him, well, I found out that something happened in Germany.
And he said, well, looks like you did your homework.
Using forensic genealogy, police in Palo Alto California, had positively ID'd DNA recovered from the 1973 murder of Leslie Perloff.
On November 20th, 2018, 74-year-old John Getrue was arrested at his home for the murder.
What follows are excerpts from his interview with Sergeant Noe Cortez.
So I'm Sergeant Cortez.
I'll let you know what's going on and why you're here today.
Yeah, I'd like to know.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Thank you.
Just to let you know what's going on, I just want to get your personal information.
Just confirm your name.
Your full name is John Arthur.
Getru.
I started the interview with just the general information about himself.
And so I slowly talked to him about himself, about his family, about his family's history, about where he lived.
For the first 10 minutes or so, Getru said he had no idea why he'd been arrested and claimed to be suffering from memory loss.
He made statements about being older and his memory wasn't that good anymore that he couldn't remember certain details.
But he made his first mistake when he claims he had never been arrested.
His memory comes back, well, at least a little, when he was confronted with the truth.
Now you mentioned that he had never been arrested, and I found out that something happened in Germany.
Okay, I was arrested in Germany.
Okay, what happened with that?
Can you tell me about that?
I was accused of murder.
Okay.
I spent six years of a 10-year sentence in jail.
Oh, wow.
In a juvenile jail.
And so we continued the interview, and eventually I also brought up the 1975 rape, arrest and conviction of the 17-year-old female in Palo Alto.
He said something like, oh, that was so piddly.
They said I raped her, but he didn't want to go into details about that case.
And then at some point there was another accusation against you about a sexual assault from the Palo Alto Police Department.
Yeah, Palo Alto Police Department.
Okay.
That's when I was the leader of an explorer post.
Okay.
Can you tell me about what happened there?
Nothing.
Okay.
I was accused, interviewed, and that was it.
Okay.
Did you end up serving time for that?
Do you remember?
No, I didn't serve any time that I know of.
Okay.
It was so piddly that... Didn't go to trial or anything like that?
Okay.
I can't remember anything about it, so... Okay.
Yeah, it's a long time ago, right?
Like 1975, around there?
You got more information than I. Yeah, I know.
You got it written down.
You know, I did a little bit of research.
I tried to... Yeah, I don't blame you.
You did a lot of research.
Yeah, yeah.
I obtained the police reports from the Palo Alto Police Department about that rape, and...
Something that stood out about that was when he was sexually assaulting this young girl.
He said, I have my hand around your neck, and if you scream, I'll do you in.
So we talk a lot about the mindset of an investigator walking in to interview a potential suspect in a murder investigation.
And it's not a secret that our intention is always to get them to talk to us, right?
It's not necessarily a confession.
It's just a hunt or search for information.
And really, depending as an investigator, how much you have going in And how much you actually know from other interviews or evidence that you may have collected at the crime scene is how you really know what direction you're going to take your positioning.
But, of course, the most important thing is to gain information, your best source sitting right across from you.
And to your point, Scott, it really is like keeping them talking.
And again, like you can see how Noe's doing it.
He is starting very generally and he is almost tiptoeing down the road he wants to go in, as you can hear, as he keeps going forward with what he said next.
Eventually I told him when I got to the investigation for Leslie Perlov's murder.
I told him that I was investigating a death in the hills that west of Stanford University.
And I showed him a picture of Leslie Perloff.
And this picture was the picture that was used back in 1973 by the sheriff's office as a flyer for any tips and leads.
And he looked at the picture and he said, Stanford graduate.
Yeah.
But that's it.
I don't even recognize her.
Why do you say she's a Stanford graduate?
Well, just by the way she dresses and all in this area, you know.
But I didn't say graduate either.
I said she's a college kid.
Okay.
I never mentioned to him that Leslie Perloff had graduated from Stanford or that she even attended Stanford.
And at that point I realized that he recognized her because at the time it was on the media that she was a Stanford graduate and that she was associated to Stanford University University.
This apparent slip told Noe Cortez that John Getrue may remember far more than he was letting on to.
But he continued the interview, hoping more slips would come down the road or even a possible breakthrough.
He denied ever going up into the hills in that area.
He denied hiking those hills or ever going up there.
He was a Boy Scout leader and he said that he would Frequently hiking the hills in the Santa Cruz Hills, which would be further west of the location where Leslie was murdered.
Getrue, a man convicted of both murder and two sexual assaults of young women, was admitting that he was familiar with the crime scene area and that he'd even lived nearby.
And after two hours of denials, Noe went a bit deeper with his questioning.
When you were younger, did you ever fantasize about sexual assaults?
It's what it sounds like by looking at my records.
Yeah, yeah.
Or killing a young woman?
No.
In this investigation, if your DNA was on this young lady, why would you think your DNA was on her?
I haven't the slightest idea.
Were you involved in the murder of this young girl?
No.
But Noe doesn't let up.
He continues to press Getrue for the truth before dropping the big reveal.
Your DNA is on her.
Yeah.
I'm not trying to find out who did it.
What I'm trying to find out is why you did it.
And I think you know more than you're telling me.
I wish I knew.
I think you... What I remember, like I said before, about five years ago, I've lost it all.
And I'm going to ask you, I mean, did you hurt this young girl?
Didn't hurt her.
Did you kill her?
No, did not kill her.
Remember, Sergeant Cortez is on a fact-finding mission here, right?
So he's going to want to give Getro a final chance to tell the truth.
My job is merely to find the truth in every investigation.
And there's a lot of factors in that.
A lot of it now, of course, is evidence.
And the evidence that we have points to you.
And the reason I wanted to talk to you is to give you the opportunity to tell me what happened.
I wish I could.
Especially when my DNA is on her.
Yeah.
And I was hoping that you know, looking at these photographs, talking about your past, talking about the events of your past, learning I learned a lot about you.
Having a person you were growing up, becoming an adult, living your life.
You know, I was hoping that you could help me out.
Just giving closure to this family who lost this young lady.
Nope.
No?
Can you give me an explanation of why your DNA is on her?
No, sir.
No.
Okay.
In the end, Getru refused to admit to the crime.
Straight denied that he did not know her.
When I asked him, how would your DNA get there?
He's like, well, I don't know.
It's got to be a mistake.
My DNA wouldn't be there.
He just denied any connection to Leslie Provence.
In a last-ditch effort, Sergeant Cortez brings in another detective to question Getrue.
What would you do if you were us and you were investigating this case?
What would that look like to you?
There's a brick wall.
What do you mean there's a brick wall?
Well, I mean, you found out.
You couldn't find out.
What do you mean I found out and I couldn't find out?
Oh, nothing.
I'm just letting it go.
Well, you understand it's my job not to let things like that go, right?
I have nothing else to say about it.
It's got to be quite a burden, John.
Well, I'm going to put the questioning from here on, unless I'm represented by somebody in the courts.
What do you mean?
A lawyer.
You'd like a lawyer?
I'd like a lawyer.
Okay.
Thanks, John.
So let's talk about why bringing a second detective is a good idea.
Normally that comes in when you are an initial interviewer.
You're not making any real progress and it seems like it's going a bit downhill.
And the defendant is about to shut things down or put a pause or timeout in the interview.
You may want to bring in another personality, someone that may click with your defendant, or someone who's able to restart the conversation.
Getro, you know, he really was about to shut things down.
So bringing in another personality, so to speak, may have kept him talking.
And you know, there's a reason that this expression good cop, bad cop came about, because it's different interview styles, different personality styles that maybe if they don't connect with one, they'll connect with the other.
And I don't know Scott just made me think of.
Like a couple of years ago for AOM, we put this up on social media like saying who would be the good cop, who would be the bad cop if you and I were going back and forth?
So maybe a couple of years later, let's do it again for this episode.
So check out our social media pages and we'll see what you think.
Interview style-wise, how Scott and I would break it up.
But back to this case.
You know, at that point, Getrew asked for an attorney.
And so obviously the interview ended.
Ultimately, within that statement, although they spoke to him for a long time, he didn't confess.
And he did, though, decide to take his chances at trial.
And no, we will never forget calling the Perloff family to give them the news.
So after the interview concludes, we booked him into the jail for the murder of Leslie Perloff.
I immediately contact Leslie's brother and sister.
I think Leslie's brother, Craig, was shocked.
And Diane Perloff was ecstatic about the arrest.
And she wanted to know when the next court date was going to be, because she wasn't going to be there.
Leslie's sister had been a tireless advocate for all these years and she was going to see this through to the end.
After the arrest and family notification, Noe Cortez knew that another case required immediate attention.
The 1974 murder of Janet Taylor, which bore unquestionable similarities to Leslie's killing.
Both victims, there was an attempted sexual assault.
They were killed by strangulation and both of them had their shoes removed and the shoes were quite a bit away from their bodies.
And so I contacted the cold case detectives from San Mateo County and I informed them of the arrest.
I asked them.
You know, can you look at your evidence to see if there's any connection with John Getrue and the murder of Janet Taylor?
San Mateo County submitted their evidence for comparative DNA analysis.
Their criminalist was able to test Janet Taylor's pants.
She noticed that there was a rip in the crotch area of Janet Taylor's pants.
And she tested for DNA.
And sure enough, John Getrie's DNA was found on the crotch area of Janet Taylor's pants.
The rip in Janet's pants provided enough touch DNA for a match.
And touch DNA is exactly what it sounds like.
It is the DNA left behind when someone comes in contact with someone or something.
The investigators believed that John Getrie was trying to rip off Janet Taylor's pants during the struggle to sexual assault her.
It was believed that she fought back.
By all indications, she was trained as a brown belt and her family and friends believed she fought for her life as well.
John Getrie was subsequently arrested for the murder of Janet Taylor.
Both women, Leslie Perloff and Janet Taylor, fought so hard against the attacks that they each ultimately provided the evidence needed to identify their killer.
San Mateo County was ready for trial before Santa Clara, so Janet Taylor's trial was first.
He was found guilty less than an hour from when they received the case.
So when the closing arguments ended immediately, that same day they came back with a birth of guilty evidence.
John Getrue was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Then, in January 2023, nearly 50 years after Leslie Perlov's death, Getrue pleaded guilty to her murder.
Many questions remain unanswered, but authorities have some idea of what happened that fateful afternoon.
Based on the evidence, I believe Leslie Perlov went, drove up to the hills to look for that scenery, to look for a location to have a painting done for her mother, whether she was going to take a photograph of the scenery or somehow you get the artist to go up there and do a painting.
That was never answered, but she went up there looking for a location.
John Getrue either saw her getting out of the vehicle as he's passing by or was up in the area hiking on his own.
That was never going to be answered, but at some point he assaulted her.
And in fact for nearly 50 years he had lived as an unassuming husband, stepfather and even a Boy Scout leader.
But he was also a predator and a killer.
We later interviewed one of the Boy Scouts for him when he was a Boy Scout leader.
And he informed us that the area where Leslie Perloff was located was an area that they frequently went to to search for mistletoe, because part of them making money or raising funds for the Boy Scouts was to sell mistletoe.
He said that they frequented that area to collect mistletoe.
During his trial, Leslie's sister addressed the court and Getrue explaining what the loss had really done to their family.
Diane Perloff made the impact statement and said She went into great detail about how Leslie's life was taken away.
She had so much potential.
Smart was an advocate for justice and had her whole life ahead of her and was taken away by John Getrie.
And Diane talked about how she could never wear a scarf, because the scarf that was used to kill Leslie Perloff was actually Diane's scarf.
And that she was always afraid to walk alone because of what happened for Leslie.
While nothing could replace Leslie or ease the pain of losing her, getting the answers about her killer were important to her family.
Diane Perlon and Craig Perlon.
They were grateful they were able to get answers about who did this to their sister.
Diane Perlon told me that she missed her sister and was devastated because they were inseparable.
And getting the answers of who did it was satisfying for her, but her sister was never going to come back.
Getru was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
In total, Getru was convicted of raping four women, killing three of them.
But the true number of Getru's victims remains unknown.
I later learned, after his arrest, that he had been molesting his stepdaughter from the time she was approximately eight years old to about 13 years old.
The damage John Getru caused seemingly had no end.
Obviously, all cases deserve the best opportunity to be solved.
When a case offers even a glimmer of hope, like DNA evidence, you pour all your energy into that one shot, because without it a case may never be solved, only to be placed back onto the shelf indefinitely unresolved.
Decades of investigative dead ends and gradual loss of witnesses could have buried Leslie's case entirely.
However, the unwavering commitment to preserve critical evidence proved pivotal.
The painstaking process of leveraging genealogical databases and navigating privacy concerns.
This resolution not only closes one chapter, but also serves as a powerful beacon of hope for countless other cases once deemed unsolvable.
The lesson here is clear.
With determination and advancements in science, no case is truly cold forever.
We focused on Leslie Perla for this story and a bit on Janet Taylor and Arliss Perry, but Getru had multiple victims, some who survived and some who lost their lives due to his violence against them.
Rather than focus on him, let's leave today's case remembering Leslie Perla.
Janet and Arliss, young lives lost, young women that were loved by many.
Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder.
Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Fresetti Media.
Ashley Flowers is executive producer.
This episode was written and produced by Elizabeth Tyson, researched by Kate Cooper, edited by Ali Sirwa and Philjean Grande.
So, what do you think, Chuck?
Do you approve?
