A SISTER’S FIGHT FOR JUSTICE

By Grace Kahng | April 26, 2023 | San Jose, CA

In Santa Clara Superior Court today, 78 year old John Getreu was expected to be sentenced to life in prison for first degree murder and rape — a crime he committed half a century ago.

But the murderer was a no show. Because of court error, Getreu was unable to appear.

“The court has had some difficulty in securing Mr. Getreu’s appearance,” admitted Judge TK Hanley, apologetically to 21 year old Stanford graduate Leslie Perlov’s surviving family who had traveled to San Jose to give a victim impact statement. “We will reconvene tomorrow morning at 9am.”

Unfiled paperwork meant the hearing would be postponed. Having waited 50 years for their day in court, the family would now have to wait one more day.

Getreu has confessed to murdering Leslie Perlov the day before Valentine’s Day in 1973. In her final moments of life although physically overpowered, the slightly built law librarian fought her attacker ferociously, clawing, biting and hitting him.

Perlov’s murder was so brutal that at trial the retired coroner’s voice quivered with anger as he described her broken and violated body. Even five decades later, he said, every excruciating detail is seared into his memory.

Getreu, a former Stanford lab technician, is a convicted serial killer, already serving a life sentence for the 1974 murder of 21 year old, Janet Taylor, the daughter of Stanford’s athletic director at the time. In 1963, when Getreu was a high school junior he was convicted for raping and strangling a classmate, 14 year old Margaret Williams on a U.S. air base in Germany.

Convicted as a juvenile, the 19 year old served just six years of a ten year sentence before being deported back to the U.S. Evan Williams, Margaret’s brother watched the court proceedings via zoom from Nebraska.

“John Getreu has skated too many times. the rape and molestation of his stepdaughter, the rape of a teenage girl. The justice system let him off. He murdered my sister and at least two others,” Williams says the sentencing in Perlov’s murder means that “ there will be at least some justice. Too many times people get out on technicalities. I don’t want any technicalities. That ought to seal the deal.”

60 years later, in a California courtroom another family victimized by the serial killer awaits to hear his fate. Flanked by the cold case detectives who eventually cracked the case, Diane Perlov and her younger brother Craig, were there to witness the proceedings.

“Leslie was my best friend and my protector. We were only 14 months apart and we did everything together, “ she said, describing their family of five as happy and close knit. In every childhood photograph the two sisters are holding hands or sharing loving looks or a laugh.

“Everyone thought we were twins,” recalled Diane. She was in Ghana studying abroad when she learned of her sister’s murder. An Embassy Marine read a telegraph that simply said, “Leslie is dead.”

“I thought what am I going to do? What am I going to do? My life is over,” she said. “Leslie fought with every inch of her life and that’s why were able to solve this case, “ says Sgt. Noe Cortez. The Perlov family credits the cold case detective with solving the case. He has faithfully attended every hearing since he arrested Getreu in 2018.

Cortez said it is likely that Getreu would have escaped justice without Diane Perlov’s passionate decades long pursuit to find her sister’s killer.

Year after year, the younger Perlov kept her sister’s investigation alive by befriending and staying in close contact with Sheriff’s detectives assigned to the case.

Diane visited the original detective Howard DeSart on his deathbed. He apologized to her for being unable to identify her sister’s killer.

But DeSart’s meticulous efforts to preserve evidence paid off when Cortez was later able to match Getreu’s DNA to DNA under each of Leslie Perlov’s nails. The technology needed to test DNA evidence didn’t exist back in 1973, but the coroner and criminologists assigned to Perlov’s case took great care to preserve and store the physical evidence.

Today’s sentencing hearing comes after a January 10, 2023 hearing in which Getreu changed his plea from not guilty to guilty. The killer had admitted to his son privately in a recorded prison phone call that he had killed Perlov. “But that’s it. It’s just those two,” claimed Getreu.

At that hearing, after hearing Gethreu’s verbal admission where he appeared via zoom, Diane Perlov read an emotional statement to the judge.

“It has been 50 years next month since my older sister was taken from us. From me, and my brother. 50 years in which this monster has been free and living his life.

“We have lived with this and it has affected our entire family. Our family my son, my brother’s daughter our friends, everybody. There is no peace for this. There is no resolution or peace or comfort. Justice is the least we can do and I want to credit the law enforcement that enabled us to get to this point to give us a modicum of justice for this horrendous crime.”

Asked if she was disappointed Getreu ultimately pled guilty rather than face another trial, Diane Perlov said, “I don’t need a trial. The Janet Taylor trial was very cathartic. I don’t need a trial.

“To me he pleaded guilty and that’s just as good. Now we have to keep him in jail for the rest of his life.”