John Arthur Getreu was a ruthless and clever serial killer. He was arrested in California and was convicted of Bay Area murders in 2021 after it had remained unsolved for decades.

Furthermore, he committed these murders after he was released from a German prison for a similar crime. In 1963, he was arrested in Germany for r*pe and strangulation of a 15-year-old. For this, he was sentenced to ten years in a German prison. However, he was released early and went on to marry a woman in Nevada.

They moved to California, and he worked as a laboratory technician at Mills Hospital in 1972. This was followed by the murder of Leslie Marie Perlov in 1973 in the Stanford University foothills. The following year, he killed Janet Ann Taylor, who was the daughter of Stanford’s football coach, Chuck Taylor. 

 

She was strangled to death, and the DNA evidence from her pants was linked to Getreu. He was sentenced to six months in prison for pleading guilty to statutory r*pe of a 17-year-old. But five months were suspended, and he was put on probation after paying a $200 fine.

With the advancement in DNA testing, he was finally linked to the murder of Leslie Marie Perlov in November 2018 and was charged with the murder of Janet Ann Taylor. At first, he pleaded not guilty to Taylor’s murder; however, he entered a plea deal in Perlov’s murder.

The bodycam arrest footage and his interview were equally chilling as the murders. Initially, he did not confess to the Stanford killings and was speaking to the officers about his previous crime for which he was convicted.

However, he did slip in some details about the victims that the officers had not revealed to him during the interrogation. But he could no longer lie due to the DNA evidence linking him to the crime with technologically advanced testing.

The investigator asked him about a victim, “You know her?” and he responded, “No.” The officer gave him more clues, but the killer maintained he wasn’t connected to her in any way. But he added, “That would be about She’d be about 18 years old, I guess. Okay. At Stanford.”

The California officer asked him, “Why do you? Why do you say that she’s a Stanford graduate?” He was also unsure of the two victims and claimed he only knew one. After Leslie’s remains were found, Taylor’s body was also discovered along the same Stanford hiking area a year later. With the evidence, the killer finally admitted to another investigator that he had left two girls in the hills and not just one.

He was surprised to find out all about the crimes he had been trying to get away from for decades. The investigation ended when he asked for a lawyer and refused to speak with officers.

He was sentenced to prison for the murder of 21-year-old Perlov in 2023. At that time, he was already serving a life sentence for Taylor’s murder. He died in prison at age 79 of natural causes in September 2023.

Disclaimer: Inquisitr individually could not independently confirm the facts of this incident and is reporting based on the information available within the public video record.