International Serial Killer : The True Story of John Arthur Getreu

By Pete Bird

Does a killer ever feel that they have gotten away with their crimes? Or does the guilt, the fear, the dread of what they have done stay with them forever? Is every knock on their door something that sends a shiver of apprehension across their stomach?
Perhaps these are questions which might be put to John Getreu. If, that is, the convicted killer and rapist, who seemed to have made a new life for himself as an upstanding member of the community, is convicted of the murders of two young women nearly half a century ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jul 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201305567

Book preview

INTERNATIONAL SERIAL KILLER

THE TRUE STORY OF JOHN ARTHUR GETREU

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PETE DOVE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

JOHN ARTHUR GETREU

ROBINSON SISTERS

LEE ANN REIDEL

When the Past Catches Up

Does a killer ever feel that they have gotten away with their crimes?  Or does the guilt, the fear, the dread of what they have done stay with them forever?  Is every knock on their door something that sends a shiver of apprehension across their stomach?

Perhaps these are questions which might be put to John Getreu. If, that is, the convicted killer and rapist, who seemed to have made a new life for himself as an upstanding member of the community, is convicted of the murders of two young women nearly half a century ago.

John Arthur Getreu was born in Newark, Ohio on August 26th, 1944.  His childhood was unsettled.  Getreu’s family was a military one and after four years living in Ohio, he spent time in Japan and Germany while his father was stationed there. He also lived in Hawaii and North Carolina.

Then, in June 1963 the nineteen-year-old youth was arrested for the rape and murder of Margaret Williams, a fifteen-year-old girl, in Germany.  He had strangled the teenager after a dance held at a church in Bad Kreuznach.  Margaret, a freshman at the American High school which catered for the children of troops stationed at the American army base there, was the daughter of an American Colonel.  Robert Williams was the chaplain of the 8th Infantry Division, in which Getreu’s father was a Sergeant Major. 

‘I am deeply sorry for her parents,’ said John Getreu in court, ‘and if I could do something to bring her back I would do it.’

The High School senior had admitted to the attack but claimed that Margaret had gone for a walk with him willingly.  He accepted that he had raped the girl but stated that he had no intention of killing her.

‘I raped her,’ he admitted in court, ‘But it did not occur to me that I could have killed her.  I just wanted to knock her out.’

Getreu received a ten-year sentence from the German civilian juvenile court.  This was the maximum permitted under German law at the time.  As both a US citizen and a juvenile, Getreu could be released and returned to the US within two years of beginning his sentence (he had already served thirteen months of this period prior to going to trial).  While it is unclear exactly how long he spent behind bars in Germany, it was nothing like the full term to which he had been sentenced.

We can be sure of that because in 1970 Getreu married in Reno Nevada, before moving to Palo Alto, California. He took a job as a laboratory technician at the Mills Hospital in the city, before taking a post at the University and was still working there when firstly Leslie Marie Perlov, and then Janet Ann Taylor were murdered – strangled – in sexually motivated attacks.

Leslie was killed in February 1973, somewhere in the foothills surrounding Stanford University.  The following year, in March, Janet was killed nearby, in Sand Hill Road, Woodside, California.  Their murders would remain unsolved for more than forty years.

Getreu was arrested in November 2018 when DNA evidence linked him to the murder of 21-year-old Leslie.  The arrest represented a significant advance after forty years of suffering for Leslie’s brother, Craig.  The sixty-four-year-old still lives just a couple of miles from the Stanford University Campus where his sister was brutally murdered and sexually assaulted. 

‘I’m hoping he will serve a long sentence,’ he said, ‘but you never know what juries will do.