A new 20/20 will feature exclusive interviews with the family of convicted killer John Getreu in a nearly 50-year-old Stanford University cold case, and reports on “The Stanford Murders” and how DNA linked two former employees to the crimes.
What’s Happening:
- In 1973, shockwaves ripped across Stanford University when three promising young women – Arlis Perry, Leslie Perlov and Janet Ann Taylor – were murdered on campus within just 19 months of each other. For nearly five decades, authorities could not solve the mystery of who committed “The Stanford Murders” until DNA matching technology finally linked a former security guard, Stephen Blake Crawford, to Perry’s murder. Soon after, investigators revisited the other two unsolved cases, and new forensic testing revealed a DNA match to John Arthur Getreu, another former Stanford employee.
- On the heels of Getreu’s conviction yesterday for murdering Taylor, a new 20/20 features exclusive interviews with Getreu’s former step-daughter, Cathi Stone, who testified that Getreu sexually abused her; Susan, Getreu’s ex-wife, who was married to him at the time of the murders; Aaron Getreu, Getreu’s son from his second marriage, who expresses shock and disbelief at his father’s arrest and sordid past; and an exclusive television interview with Evan Williams, the brother of 15-year-old Margaret Williams, who Getreu killed in Germany in 1963.
- 20/20 features exclusive reporting and footage from the upcoming documentary series on the crimes by Emmy award-winning investigative journalist Grace Kahng, as well as interviews with Sheriff Laurie Smith and cold case investigators Sgt. Rick Alanis, Sgt. Noe Cortez, David Tresmontan and Rick Jackson from Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, who were working to solve the murders. Getreu is also facing charges for Perlov’s murder and is scheduled to go to trial next year. He has pleaded not guilty. 20/20 airs Friday, Sept. 17 (9:00–11:00 p.m. EDT), on ABC.