Tales of True Crime, episode 21 — Coincidence Means Nothing: Serial Killer Caught in 45-Year-Old Cold Case

“There’s little hope that the murder of Leslie Perlov, 21 year old law library clerk, will ever be solved.”

That was the first line in a story published by the San Francisco Examiner on the 8th of April, 1973.

Leslie Perlov, a Stanford graduate, was discovered dead on university-owned land on February 15th of that year, in an area today known as The Dish. Investigators searching on horseback found her body in a cluster of bushes. She had been strangled–her scarf was tied tightly around her neck–and her skirt was raised. Her attacker had removed her pantyhose and stuffed them down her throat, and there was blood on her raincoat. Her orange Chevy Nova was found parked near the entrance to an old rock quarry not far away, her shoes still inside.

It was a sign of how confusing and frustrating the case would become that only five days later, the police were already asking for the public’s help. The Napa Valley Register reported the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s investigative unit was seeking any information on Perlov’s car parked on Old Page Mill road, and any potential tips on a man and woman seen walking up the hill from the former Page Mill Quarry. And, in truth, they needed some help, because there was a complicating factor, an enigma that likely played a large part in that pessimistic line from the San Francisco Examiner a few months later.

You see, while the authorities searched for Leslie Perlov, they found the body of Mark Rosvold just a half mile away. He was on probation for drug charges and had killed himself with a shotgun blast. Leslie Perlov worked in the Santa Clara County Law Library, in the same courthouse where Mark Rosvold regularly visited his probation officer.

Tales of True Crime, season 2, episode 1
Coincidence Means Nothing: Serial Killer Caught in  45-Year-Old Cold Case

Isaac Asimov once said “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny.’”

Absorb that for a moment.

The question as posed by former Reverend Graham Hess in M. Night Shyamalan’s film, Signs, is “Is it possible that there are no coincidences?”

You could argue we, as humans, are predisposed to see meaning in coincidence. In the field of investigation, coincidence often leads to discoveries. It goes without saying Police Detectives don’t believe in coincidence. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

So, nobody was surprised when investigators took a hard look at Mark Rosvold for the murder of Leslie Perlov near Stanford in 1973. His body was found a short distance from where Leslie had last been seen. He was on probation for drugs, and his probation officer’s office was in the same courthouse where Leslie Perlov worked. However, nobody had ever seen them together… not in the courthouse, not in the parking lot… nobody had ever seen them interact.

Within days, police were saying there was no connection between the death of Leslie Perlov and the suicide of Mark Rosvold, and instead were focused on an unidentified young man with long blonde hair. An eyewitness, an off-duty policeman, reported passing Leslie Perlov’s car on the night she was last seen, Tuesday, February 13th, and said a gray car had been parked alongside hers. The young man with the long blonde hair was standing between the vehicles, bent over, speaking to someone in Perlov’s car.

This might be a good place to note, killers crawled the Bay Area in the early 1970s. Serial killer Ed Kemper preyed on young women in the area. The Zodiac Killer was at work. Herbert Mullin killed 13 people in the Santa Cruz area and was captured after he shot a man in broad daylight, the very same day Leslie Perlov went missing near Stanford. According to a story published by Palo Alto Online in 2018, Sheriff’s investigators even considered Ted Bundy a suspect since he had taken a class at Stanford. San Francisco’s Mayor at the time suggested Leslie’s murder might have been perpetrated by the so-called Death Angels cult who were accused of San Francisco’s Zebra Street murders.

In the first days of the hunt for Leslie Perlov’s killer, investigators were finding coincidences everywhere, and they had to investigate every single one. We can only guess how much effort the police spent investigating leads that went nowhere, because it was not Ed Kemper that killed Leslie Perlov, or Ted Bundy, or the Zodiac, or any of the other supposed culprits. And it wasn’t Mark Rosvold, either. Investigators said it was simply a coincidence he committed suicide half a mile from where Leslie Perlov’s killer would drop her body, on the same day.

Janet Taylor

Thirteen months later, on March 24th, 1974, Janet Taylor visited old  friends at Stanford–Deborah Adams, daughter of a recently-retired Stanford Administrator, and Susan Ernst, a mutual acquaintance visiting from Utah. 

Janet was 21-years old, a pretty young woman and a free spirit, the daughter of former Stanford Athletic Director and Coach Chuck Taylor. It was a Sunday night, and her car had broken down. Although Janet’s friends urged her to bunk down on the sofa and spend the night, she insisted she had to get home to let her dogs out.

Janet decided to hitchhike home but never returned to her cabin in La Honda, a small unincorporated community nestled in the hills and nature preserves southwest of the Stanford Campus. Police believe someone picked her up, likely her killer. By Monday morning, her roommate, a Canadian student named Russell Bissonnett, had become worried and made a few calls asking if anyone had seen Janet. He said she had not returned home and hadn’t called to say where she would be.

That same Monday, a milkman found Taylor’s body on the side of the road in Woodside, not far from the Stanford Campus. She had been strangled, police theorized, with the collar of her gray turtleneck sweater.

When news of Janet’s murder broke, the story was front page, above-the-fold news in the San Mateo Times. “Chuck Taylor’s Daughter Found Slain.” Early-on in the investigation, based on information provided by law enforcement, local media including the Sacramento Bee reported that Miss Taylor was found fully-clothed and that she had not been sexually assaulted. Much of that was untrue, likely due in-part to a desire on the part of journalists to extend some measure of dignity to the victim and her family, who were locally revered. 

“Have you heard the horrible details of what they did to the Taylor girl?”

“Horrible. Terrible. I don’t know why they even publish those details.”

Despite those early media reports, we know today Janet Taylor was not fully clothed, and she had been sexually assaulted. And I assure you, the  details of Miss Taylor’s murder from Coroner Paul B. Jensen get dramatically more graphic, but I will spare you that. The point is, the killer left evidence behind if ya get me.

Investigators found Taylor’s body along the side of the road, but some of her clothing items had been scattered. Several items, including her shoes and belt, were found a half mile away on the opposite side of the road, leading investigators to wonder whether the perpetrator had dumped Taylor’s body, then made a u-turn a half mile down the road before tossing out the rest of her clothing items. Janet’s remains were found on Sand Hill Road, only two miles from where Leslie Perlov’s body had been found 13 months earlier. Both women had last been seen leaving campus.

Within 5 days, the local authorities were already speculating that Janet Taylor’s killer was the same person who killed Leslie Perlov. The similarity in the killer’s M.O. and close proximity to the scene where Leslie was found made a potential connection between the two likely as far as investigators were concerned. The public believed a serial predator was at work and locals who lived through that time would later say, at the time, most believed someone was on a killing spree. Both women had been wearing raincoats when attacked, but that might have been a coincidence of the weather. Both were found barefoot, and both carried purses which were nowhere to be found; perhaps kept as souvenirs by the killer.

Despite their close proximity to one another, the bodies of Leslie Perlov and Janet Taylor were found on opposing sides of the Santa Clara/San Mateo County line. Whether that was an intentional act to obstruct the investigation by the killer or just happenstance was unknown at the time, but the authorities in both counties met in Redwood City to compare notes and made sure to pursue a diligent, open line of communication to catch the killer.

This was the point in the investigation where you would expect a breakthrough, right? There had to be some common thread that would break the case right open.

Well, there was this one oddity. Despite the similarity between the murders of Leslie Perlov and Janet Taylor, there was a wrinkle that made investigators wonder whether they should be looking in another direction. East, to Utah.

A coincidence.

Actually, it was a whole series of coincidences that investigators would have to work through backwards. 

On March 30th, 1974, less than a week after the murder of Janet Taylor, Peter Thompson of Menlo Park, California was  found bloodied in his car on the side of a highway in San Mateo County at 4:20 in the morning. The car was a gory mess and there were broken beer bottles in the back seat which had apparently been used to mutilate his face.

Police questioned Thompson and he told them his last memories were of picking up a hitchhiker, and as surgeons at Sequoia Hospital tried to mend his face, investigators at the scene were finding more evidence. Three beer bottles were found a half mile away from where Thompson and his car had been found, presumably the other half of the six-pack that was found in the backseat. A Deputy Sheriff reported seeing a suspicious white man disa ppear into the bushes going up a roadside slope, but he was unable to catch and question the man.

But what does this have to do with the story I was just telling you? About Leslie Perlov and Janet Taylor at Stanford? Stay with me.

Investigators circled back around to Thompson and what he could remember… they asked him dozens of questions, and to one of those questions, he had a strange answer.

When asked for his phone number and address, Peter Thompson gave the number and address for someone else… Barbara Rocky. She was his girlfriend… or at least, she had been. Barbara Rocky had been murdered in Utah two weeks earlier.

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Barbara Rocky was 22 years old when her life ended, somewhere in Big Cottonwood Canyon above Salt Lake on March 11th, 1974. She had come to Utah to go to college. At the time, police speculated she likely went willingly with whomever killed her, to the spot where she would be found. She had been sexually assaulted then shot 5 times in the back; some said with her own .357 Magnum. It did not appear she had been assaulted. Her clothes were not torn, but found neatly folded next to her body. Utah investigators put out the word that they would like to speak to the driver of a two-tone green Mercury Cougar someone had reported, to no avail.

OK, Peter Thompson shows up at a hospital, mutilated, acting a little strange, with a story about an attack by a mysterious hitchhiker, and he claimed to be in a relationship with Barbara Rocky, who was murdered earlier that month. Again, you might be asking, what does that have to do with Leslie Perlov and Janet Tayor?

Just one thing… Barbara Rocky was friends with Janet Taylor. Not “friends” like the online, social media friends we have today. Barbara Rocky and Janet Taylor had known each other personally.

A Suspicious Series of Events

In the course of me researching and writing this and you listening to it, we learned a number of things in about the same manner as the police when they investigated it… kind of confusing, with events out of order, but a strong sense that something is wrong, here.

Let’s review…

• March 11th, 1974, Barbara Rocky, a Bay Area friend of Janet Taylor, was murdered near Salt Lake where she went to school.
• 14 days later, March 25th, 1974, Janet Taylor’s body was found along the road near the Stanford Campus in Northern California. She was good friends with Barbara Rocky.
• 5 days later, March 30th, 1974, Peter Thompson was admitted to the hospital after a mysterious attack by an unknown hitchhiker in San Mateo County. 
  • He was Barbara Rocky’s boyfriend until she died earlier that month. 
  • He accidentally gave his dead girlfriend Barbara’s phone number and address instead of his own when questioned by police. 
  • On the night he was attacked in his car, Thompson had been coming from Barbara Rocky’s parents’ house, where he had been invited for dinner.

If you’re a homicide investigator, you don’t believe in all that coincidence, right? Two girls who know each other, Janet Taylor and Barbara Rocky, are murdered with a thousand miles between them in a span of two weeks? Coincidence?

There has to be a connection there, right? That’s a suspicious series of events. No one would blame you for wondering, was there some kind of conspiracy, or some low-rent chucklehead who fancied himself a hitman and attacked Peter Thompson to keep him quiet about something… the murder of Barbara and/or Janet? We’ve seen it portrayed in countless episodes of TV true crime docs. It’s not a big leap.

And then immediately come the questions. If there is a connection there, how are Janet Taylor, Barbara Rocky, and Peter Thompson connected to Leslie Perlov? Are they connected to Leslie Perlov at all? Was there some story between Janet, Barbara, and Peter Thompson that had yet to be uncovered? A story which would reveal a motive?

Appearances can be deceiving.

Investigators waded into a slough of questions in Utah and California, but made no real progress. Peter Thompson had no motive and could not be placed in Salt Lake at the time of Barbara Rocky’s murder and had no apparent connection to Janet Taylor’s either. The evidence showed he was the victim of a crazed hitchhiker just as he had claimed. Utah detectives eventually cast their investigative gaze on a different man as the murderer of Barbara Rocky, Gerald Hicker, a former classmate at BYU.

One year later, in March of 1975, there was a potential development in the case of Janet Taylor. The San Rafael Daily Independent Journal reported San Mateo County Sheriff’s Deputies, acting on a tip, searched a room in Mill Valley related to a young man who had checked out several weeks’ prior. Investigators said the search turned up photos of a woman who resembled Janet Taylor and a newspaper clipping about her murder. 

The next day, The Daily Independent Journal’s headline was “Marin Man Probed as Slaying Suspect.” Sounds promising, right? 

Days later, hopes were dashed. The police clarified that the man had actually be en a personal acquaintance of Janet Taylor’s, confirmed by others, so his possession of her photos and the newspaper clipping were not suspicious. No arrests were made.

Then, in July 1975, The San Mateo Times reported a breakthrough under the headline “Double Murder May Be Solved.”

The Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office announced plans to proceed against a suspect in the murder of Barbara Rocky in a story that strongly implied an arrest was coming, and that it would lead to a resolution in the assaults on Rocky, her boyfriend Peter Thompson, and Janet Taylor.

It didn’t.

#####

It just occurred to me that we’re lost in all this, aren’t we?

Here are the questions. 

Are the murders of Leslie Perlov and Janet Taylor, 13 months apart near Stanford University, connected?

Are the murders of Janet Taylor and her friend Barbara Rocky in Salt Lake City connected? Perhaps through Peter Thompson?

Are all of these assaults connected?

People asked all of these questions for a year or two, in a steady stream of inquiries that went nowhere. The stream slowed to a trickle and the trickle to a drip. Every now and then, a story with Janet Taylor or Leslie Perlov’s name in it would pop up in the media. Like in 1989 when some wondered whether Ted Bundy had been involved in the slayings since he had once taken classes at Stanford. But none of it led to a resolution.

As it turned out, Barbara Rocky’s murder was unrelated to Janet Taylor and Leslie Perlov. 

Gerald Hicker

In 2006, cold case investigators took a new look at Gerald Hicker. In July of 1975, when they said they were on the verge of an arrest that never happened… they had been talking about Gerald Hicker. He had long been a suspect in the case and finally confessed in 2009 when a savvy cold case detective sent soil that was collected from under Barbara Rocky’s body to be tested for DNA. To be honest, the story of Barbara Rocky’s murder is an interesting case for another whole podcast, so maybe we’ll get to that in the future. The bottom line is, Barbara Rocky was murdered by Gerald Hicker in 1974, but he had nothing to do with the murder of her friend Janet Taylor two weeks later, or Leslie Perlov the previous year.

Ted Bundy and Dead Women at Stanford

The investigations into the murders of Leslie Perlov and Janet Taylor went cold despite the best efforts of investigators. Through the 1970s and 80s, theories were tested and thrown out. Other women occasionally turned up dead in the vicinity of Stanford University. In October of 1974, Arliss Perry was found dead in Stanford Memorial Church. In September of ‘78, Christine Anderson was murdered. Just like the murders of Leslie Perlov and Janet Taylor, there were no immediate answers in the Perry and Anderson murders and many people who lived, worked, or went to school at Stanford believed a serial killer was on the loose.

Into the 1980s, detectives continued to work the case, and while Ted Bundy sat on death row in Florida, he started talking to investigators and making confessions. He confessed to a killing in California but provided few details. Bundy was considered a suspect in the murders of all four women, but investigators were frustrated in their efforts to make the case against him.

Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Sergeant Ken Kahn said in 1989 that Bundy’s M.O. fit the Perlov case, but they were not able to link him to the murder. Likewise, Stanford University Police Chief Marvin Herrington, in reference to the murder of Arlis Perry, said “We looked at Bundy for a long time but we never could tie him in.”

Although Bundy eventually confessed to 23 murders he had not previously been connected to, and was believed linked to murders in Washington, Utah, Oregon, Idaho, Colorado, Florida, Vermont, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, he was executed in Florida in 1989 without any conclusive link to any homicides in California. By March, 1989, shortly after Bundy’s execution, San Mateo and Santa Clara County investigators said Bundy was no longer considered a suspect in any of their cases.

Coincidence Means Nothing

By this point you recognize there’s a common thread that runs through this entire case… coincidence. Much of the time, coincidence breaks the case. An investigator spots something odd, follows the trail, and makes the case against a guilty party. But too often in this case the universe flipped the script on investigators to make it seem like coincidence means nothing.

When Leslie Perlov and Mark Rosvold turned up dead within a half mile of each other, investigators ran it down, but it was only coincidence.

Serial killer Herbert Mullin, who killed 13 people, murdered his last victim in broad daylight on the very day Leslie Perlov disappeared, just miles away. Coincidence.

The fact that Janet Taylor and Barbara Rocky were friends, and murdered two weeks apart, was just a coincidence. Nothing more.

Someone attacked their mutual acquaintance Peter Thompson days later, but it was also a coincidence with no bearing on the crime.

Leslie Perlov was frequently described as matching the description of Ted Bundy’s victims… dark hair, parted in the middle. And Ted Bundy had history in the Stanford area. Just a coincidence.

Time and again, weird moments of happenstance had to be run down by investigators… you can’t just ignore those coincidences, you  follow them to the end, or until they break the case. Imagine the leg-work that went into chasing all those red herrings and false leads.

Personally, I commend these investigators. A lesser cop would have given up.

Zeroing in on a Suspect 

In 2016, investigators in Santa Clara County reopened Leslie Perlov’s case and sent their suspect’s DNA profile to Parabon Nanolabs for genealogical analysis.

Here’s Sheriff Laurie Smith on KCBS Radio:

[Soundclip :18 — Sheriff Laurie Smith]

We used an organization called Parabon. And they are a lab that will then look at familial ties, and provide us with basically a family tree and then the detectives will have to determine if any of these potential people were the suspect. In this case, that’s what we found.

 Just like the case of the Golden State Killer, and dozens of other cases since 2018, investigators built a family tree of the suspect’s DNA profile, and populated it backward until they found their suspect.

They staked him out, followed the now-74 year old man as he shopped with his wife… watched as he discarded a coffee cup, and quietly collected it from the trash as he drove away. 

They got their suspect’s DNA from the coffee cup, analyzed the sample and… it was a match for the DNA found on the body of Leslie Perlov in 1973. 

In late-2018, John Getreu of Hayward, California was arrested and charged with Leslie Perlov’s murder. Getreu told detectives he had worked as a Medical Tech at the Stanford heart transplant unit at the time of Leslie Perlov’s murder.

Investigators looked further into his background. From ABC7:

[Soundclip :16 — ABC7]

San Mateo detectives shared what else they now know about Getreu–that he was convicted of rape in Santa Clara County in 1975. He was also on trial for another rape that led tot the death of a 16-year-old in Germany. Getreu was 18 at the time.

Getreu was tried in Germany and convicted as a juvenile for the murder of Margaret Williams, served a couple years, and returned to the states upon his release.

His conviction for the rape of another woman in Santa Clara County in 1975 ended in a miscarriage of justice. Getreu raped an acquaintance he met through work as a Youth Scout Leader but was charged with statutory rape and sentenced to only six months.

Investigators in Santa Clara County were getting a pretty good idea of who their suspect was–a sadistic rapist and killer with a penchant for strangulation–and the authorities in San Mateo County, still searching for Janet Taylor’s killer, took notice. 

From Gregory Rothaus, Assistant Sheriff, San Mateo County:

[Soundclip :20 — Gregory Rothaus, Assistant Sheriff, San Mateo County]

After the identification of a suspect in the Santa Clara County case, our investigators in the San Mateo County Sheriff’s office combed through more evidence in the Janet Taylor case and submitted additional items to our crime lab. This time the crime lab was able to find a male DNA profile on clothing worn by Janet Taylor and that DNA profile was consistent with that of John Getreu. 

The implication is pretty clear. DNA says John Getreu killed Leslie Perlov and Janet Taylor.

At the time I wrote this, John Getreu stood accused of the murders of Leslie Perlov and Janet Taylor in 1973 and 1974 respectively. As of now, and assuming Getreu is convicted in both cases, which is likely but not guaranteed, Leslie and Janet’s murders would both be in the top 10 oldest cold cases solved with genetic genealogy.

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DNA evidence notwithstanding, if and until prosecutors are able to get a conviction of John Getreu, we have to include that word “alleged” in reference to the murders of Leslie Perlov and Janet Taylor. But we do know he was convicted of killing a girl in Germany when he was just 18. First he admitted meeting the girl and going for a walk, later to admit he strangled her. And we also know he raped a girl in 1975. He was convicted of that. Another California woman, Sharon Lucchese, has accused Getreu of raping her in 1970.

In the interest of clarity, I should say that someone else was eventually fingered as the killer in the case of Arlis Perry, a suspect who committed suicide before he could be arrested, but if I’m not mistaken, the murder of Christine Anderson is still unsolved.

Could John Getreu be responsible for more than we suspect? He indisputably exhibited the repeat behavior of a serial predator. Unfortunately, John Getreu lived in a number of other places, including Ohio and New Jersey, and investigators in those states are now exploring whether he might be responsible for unsolved murders in their jurisdictions as well.

If you’ve listened to this or  any other true crime podcast much, you know this is a familiar story. It’s playing out over and over again in the media, seemingly every d ay. But too often with cases of this age, killers go to the grave unidentified, never having faced justice… I had three episodes in a row on it–Jeffrey Lynn Hand in episode 14, Susan Galvin’s killer in episode 15, and Bruce Lindahl in episode 16–all named for murders after they had already died. And as nice as it is to have closure for those families, there’s an empty feeling in knowing that those killers escaped justice for some or all of the evil they did. 

In this case, we get the satisfaction that the alleged killer, John Getreu, who  likely assumed he had gotten away with murder–committed the perfect crime–has learned otherwise.

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Coming this season on Tales of True Crime:

• A dog brings home to its owner a severed human leg which spawns an investigation that nabs a serial killer.
• And a Halloween episode about a horror writer who had a real life horror strike too close to home.

If you enjoy Tales of True Crime, please review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And lock your doors. I’ll talk to you soon.

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For transcripts, sources, credits, and some occasional cat pictures, follow me on Twitter at True Crime Troy.

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[Photos by Ryanniel Masucol and Vojtech Okenka via Pexels.com]

[sources]

• Arrest in 1970s cold-case murder points to serial killer
• DNA, genetic genealogy helping to solve the coldest of cold cases
• DNA leads to arrest in 1973 Palo Alto cold case
• He was a married hospital technician and a Boy Scouts leader. Was former Palo Alto resident John Getreu also a serial killer?
• Santa Clara County sheriff’s detectives arrest suspect in 1973 cold case murder of Leslie Perlov
• Raped 45 years ago, woman returns to bring attacker to justice — for other woman’s murder
• Kilgore News Herald, January 25th 1989. “Bundy Still Suspect in Murders”
• Napa Valley Register, February 20th, 1973. “Killer Sought”
• San Francisco Examiner, April 8th, 1973. “Update”
• Remember When … Santa Cruz was nicknamed the “Murder Capital of the World?”
• Sacramento Bee, March 28th, 1974. “Strewn Clothing Puzzles Investigators in Taylor Girl’s Strangling Near Stanford”
• San Francisco Examiner, March 28th, 1974. “Janet Taylor’s Fight with Strangler Told”
• San Francisco Examiner, January 28th, 1989. “Bundy Eyed in Sonoma Killings”
• Salt Lake Tribune, March 27th, 1974. “Lawmen Continue Hunt for BYU Coed Killer”
• San Mateo Times, March 30th, 1974. “A Strange Twist to Taylor-Rocky Deaths”
• San Mateo Times, March 26th, 1974. “Chuck Taylor’s Daughter is Found Slain”
• San Mateo Times, July 19th, 1975. “Double Murder May be Solved.”
• San Rafael Daily Independent Journal, March 29th, 1975. “Marin Man Probed as Slaying Suspect”
• Provo Daily Herald, March 15, 1974. “More Findings in Girl’s Death”
• Provo Daily Herald, April 24th, 1975. “Governor Asks Extradition for Theft Case”
• Salt Lake Tribune, November 11th, 1974. “Who Killed Barbara”
• Salt Lake Tribune, September 11th, 2009. “Hicker admits killing BYU student in 1974”