John Arthur Getreu: A Killer Hidden in Plain Sight

For decades, John Arthur Getreu lived an outwardly ordinary life in the United States, blending into communities, holding steady jobs, and even volunteering with youth organizations. To neighbors and acquaintances, he appeared unremarkable. What remained buried for years, however, was a violent past marked by rape and murder—a history that would only fully come to light through advances in forensic science long after his crimes were committed.

Getreu was born in 1944 and grew up in a military family, spending part of his youth overseas. In 1963, while living in West Germany as a teenager, he committed his first known murder. An 18-year-old Getreu assaulted and killed 15-year-old Margaret L. Williams, the daughter of a U.S. Army chaplain, after a social event near a military base. He was arrested, convicted under German law, and sentenced to ten years in prison. Despite the severity of the crime, he served only about six years before being released and returning to the United States. That early release would have devastating consequences.

 John Arthur Getreu

Back in America, Getreu settled into civilian life. He moved through California and Nevada, working various jobs and presenting himself as a stable adult. To the outside world, there was little indication that he had previously been convicted of s.a. and murder overseas. During the early 1970s, however, violence resurfaced.

In February 1973, 21-year-old Leslie Marie Perlov, a Stanford graduate working at a law library, disappeared in Palo Alto after leaving work. Days later, her body was found in nearby hills. She had been strangled with her own scarf. Just over a year later, in March 1974, another young woman was killed near Stanford University. Janet Ann Taylor, also 21 and the daughter of a Stanford football coach, was found beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled. The similarities between the cases alarmed investigators, but at the time there was not enough evidence to identify a suspect. Both murders went cold.

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Even after these killings, Getreu remained free. In 1975, he was convicted of s.a. involving a teenage girl he met through a youth organization where he volunteered. He served a brief jail sentence, yet once again avoided long-term imprisonment. For years afterward, the murders near Stanford remained unsolved, and the families of the victims were left without answers.

It was not until the late 2010s that technology caught up with the past. Advances in DNA testing and genetic genealogy allowed investigators to reexamine old evidence. DNA preserved from the 1973 crime scene was uploaded to a public genealogy database, producing leads that eventually pointed to Getreu. In November 2018, more than forty years after Leslie Perlov’s murder, he was arrested in California. Further DNA analysis also linked him to the 1974 killing of Janet Taylor.

Despite his advanced age, prosecutors moved forward. In 2021, a jury found Getreu guilty of murdering Janet Taylor, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In early 2023, he pleaded guilty to the murder of Leslie Perlov and received an additional sentence of seven years to life, to be served consecutively. Together, the convictions formally established him as a serial killer whose crimes had spanned continents and decades.

John Arthur Getreu died in a California prison medical facility in September 2023 while serving his sentences. His death closed the legal chapter of the case but did not erase the harm he caused. For the families of his victims, justice arrived painfully late, yet his convictions affirmed what they had long known—that their loved ones’ lives mattered and that the truth, even after decades, could still be uncovered.

Getreu’s story stands as a stark reminder of how offenders can hide in plain sight and how limitations in past investigative tools allowed violent crimes to go unsolved for years. At the same time, it highlights the power of modern forensic science to reopen cold cases and bring long-overdue accountability, even when justice comes generations later.