John Arthur Getreu, image via Santa Clara DA’s Office

The cold case murder of Stanford Law librarian Leslie Marie Perlov has finally been solved. Perlov, a 21-year-old Stanford University alum and aspiring law student at the time of her death, was killed in 1973. Yesterday, John Arthur Getreu, a 78-year-old convicted serial killer, pleaded guilty to Perlov’s murder. Authorities first linked Getreu to Perlov’s death in 2018 based off of DNA evidence found underneath her fingernails.

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Law & Crime describes the process that identified Getreu:

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In a case evocative of how authorities captured the Golden State Killer, investigators submitted DNA recovered from under Perlov’s fingernail to Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia-based company that specializes in providing phenotyping services to law enforcement agencies, to start working up a genetic genealogy. The lab’s analysis resulted in a positive match for Getreu, who was then identified as a suspect in her murder.

Investigators then surreptitiously obtained a sample of Getreu’s DNA from a piece of discarded trash and compared it against the sample found under Perlov’s fingernail. The two came up a match, authorities said.

Perlov’s body was found on February 16, 1973, in the hills by Stanford University. She was strangled by a floral scarf, and authorities believe her attacker had been trying to rape her.

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Getreu has also been implicated in the “Stanford murders” from the 1970s, as detailed by the Santa Clara County Office of the District Attorney:

Getreu is believed to have committed a string of sexual assaults and at least three slayings, two part of a pattern in the 1970s commonly known as “The Stanford murders.” The man, who used to live near Stanford and once worked there, was found guilty in San Mateo of the March 1974 murder of 21-year-old Janet Taylor, the daughter of Chuck Taylor, the university’s football coach and athletic director.

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In 2021, Getreu was convicted of Taylor’s murder.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen said of Getreu’s plea, “Justice for Leslie Perlov and her loved ones took a very long time, but it is has arrived. This serial rapist and murderer will spend the rest of his life in prison.”

Getreu will be sentenced in the Perlov case on April 26, 2023.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].

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Crime, John Getreu, Law Librarians, Law Schools, Leslie Marie Perlov, Stanford Law School