Criminology - Arlis Perry

Episode Date: November 30, 2019

In 1974, 19-year-old newlywed Arlis Perry was murdered inside the Memorial Church on the campus of Stanford University. Her murder was brutal and savage which led many to think it was connected to a satanic cult. Investigators worked the case but couldn't connect anyone to the murder. It took 44 years, and some amazing advances in DNA technology, to put together the pieces of this 44-year-old murder case. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the murder of Arlis Perry. There were suspects along the way and one person, in particular, that police believed knew more than they had said. But, as is often the case with these older unsolved cases, police could never put together enough evidence to move forward. As DNA technology has advanced, we are seeing more and more cold cases solved. The murderer of Arlis Perry couldn't escape the advances in science involving DNA. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 89 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you? How was your Thanksgiving holiday? Yeah, I ate a little bit too much turkey and watched some football and had fun with the family. How about you? Not about exactly the same. But isn't that what you're supposed to do, right? hang out with family, enjoy your family, eat too much. That's what most of us do. But that's

Thanksgiving. And now it's on to Christmas and the fun of going to the stores and dealing with all of that good stuff. Well, and that's the thing, right? It will be here before you know it. Time passes so quickly that, you know, it's a month away, but it'll feel like six days. More if we've been getting some really good feedback on some of our recent cases, which we love. We love. We love it when people like the cases we pick because, you know, it's not a science picking cases. You know, you can do some of the more well-known. You can pick some of the more obscure. Not everyone is going to like those choices. Some people like the ones they've already heard. Some people don't want to hear those and they want to hear something that is a little less well-known.

Yeah, I think one thing we've tried to do is mix it up and do some things. solved cases, some unsolved cases. And we've even had suggestions coming in in the Facebook group for different cases and some of them outside of the United States. So I think that's something we can look into doing more of two. Yeah, that is the one thing I want to do. I want to branch out a little bit and, you know, go into some other countries. So we'll work on that, especially for 2020. And I can't believe that's almost here. So we had some new Patreon supporters, Morf. So let's give some shout shoutouts before we jump into this case. We had Jeannie Robinson, Amanda Tuey Price, Shepard Fargo Steen, and Trudy Canner. And a couple of those names I recognized. I think they've been supporters in the

past. And you're going to have that, right? You're going to have people that support, jump off for a little while, come back. That's awesome. We appreciate all of it. Yeah, that support really goes a long way. I think we say it every week, but it's true. It really helps us. keep putting the show out. And if anyone listening would like to support the show on Patreon, they can do so by visiting patreon.com slash criminology. So more if we do have some pretty big news, something that we're very excited about. And it's that we will be on podcast row at CrimeCon this May in Orlando, Florida. You know, we talk about CrimeCon every year. This will be our third time on Podcast Row. I know you and I are both really stoked about it.

it. Yeah, and I don't know about you, but I'm mentally fast forwarding past winter and thinking of the warm Florida weather in May. And CrimeCon will take place May 1st through the 3rd, 2020, and it's going to be at the World Center Marriott. If you haven't been to CrimeCon, you have to go. It's a really great event every year. And if you're a true crime fanatic, like most of us are, it's the perfect vacation. So there's no reason not to go. And for those that have been there, I think you already know how cool it is. You can come out, hang out with us on Podcast Row, your other favorite true crime podcasters, and some of the true crime celebs that show up. And best of all, we can actually save you some money too to get there. You want to tell everyone about that, Mike? Yeah, it's definitely true.

If you head over to crimecon.com and register for the convention this may in Orlando, make sure when you go to the checkout, you use our promo code, Criminology 2020, when you purchase your standard badge at checkout, that will save you 10% on that standard badge purchase. And I know more if that people think that we're plugging CrimeCon. I mean, they're not paying us to say what we're saying. It's a fun time.

And I think we just want as many people, as many listeners as can make it to get out there. We want to meet you. We love it. It is just a very fun time. Yeah, it's really cool when people come up to you and talk about how the show is help them cope with different issues or maybe they had similar situations that we talked about in the show. So when you get to hear that from people in person, that's a pretty cool feeling. Well, because you and I do a lot of that through social media, messages, emails, things like that.

We talk to people, but it's different when they're standing in front of you and, you know, telling you what the show means. to them, I take a lot of pride in that. It really makes me feel good deep down inside to hear people say that not only that they like to show, but it helped them in this way or that way. I think it's really cool just to meet the people that are supporting us, whether they're sharing the show on social media or telling their friends about it to see those people face to face and get to shake their hand or give them a hug or whatever. That's just really cool. Yeah, very cool. Check it out. We'd love to see you All right, buddy, we've got to get into this episode. We're talking about the murder of Arles Perry.

It was in 1974 that 19-year-old Arles Perry was found murdered in Stanford Stanford University's Memorial Church. But there were some really twisted and ritualistic aspects of Perry's murder that spurred rumors that the killing was connected to a satanic cult. This is something that authorities would later look into but rule out. So they went through this exhaustive investigation, but the case went cold. Then in 2018, new DNA technology helped solve the 44-year-old murder. This case was infamous in the Palo Alto area, and it made for really big news in 2018 when it was solved.

Throughout this episode, you'll hear some different audio clips, all of which have been provided courtesy of Palo Alto Weekly and Palo Alto Online.com. Stanford, California is part of Silicon Valley, located near Palo Alto. It's the home of Stanford University. Leland Stanford Junior University, its official legal name, was founded in 1891 by Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford. It was created to promote the public welfare by exercising an influence in behalf of humanity, in civilization. The Stanford's also dedicated the university in memory of their son,

Leland Stanford Jr., who passed away up the age of 15 after contracting typhoid fever. More if I think most people are aware, right? Stanford University is pretty prestigious. It's not easy to get in. The academic standards are very high, and they have a lot of really famous alum's. The most impressive building at Stanford University is the Romanesque style memorial church. Jane Lathrop Stanford had it built as a memorial to her husband after his death in 1893. Construction on the church didn't begin until 1890 under the direction of Maurizio Camerino. Italian painter Antonio Pelletti created an original watercolor painting. And then another company took that to that.

painting and made the mosaic decorations for both the interior and the exterior of the church. The mosaic work on the stand for a memorial church began in 1900. And it took five years to complete at a cost of $97,000. Morph, that is a boatload of money in 1900. That's a ton of money today. Yeah, when you factor in the inflation, that's, this got to be huge. Yeah, I mean, a very high figure. The church was damaged in both the 1906 and the 1989 earthquakes, but later repaired.

Now, I do not remember the 1906 earthquake, obviously, but I do remember very well the 1989 earthquake. I think morph really the main reason that I remember it was because it happened during the World Series. I don't know if you're familiar with it. with this or if you remember that. Yeah, I do remember watching that game and seeing the camera just start violently, shaking and some of the players jumped up looking around as it was going on. Yeah, it was a scary thing to see it live happen. And then obviously they showed the aftermath.

I mean, bridges crumbled. It was just devastating. It was here in this beautiful and serene church where a killer brutally murder, a young bride more than four decades ago. Arles Perry was born in Linton, North Dakota, on February 22, 1955, to Marvin and Gene Dykema. She was the youngest of three children. Arles grew up in Bismarck and graduated from Bismarck High School in 1973, where she had been a cheerleader for three years. It was during high school that Arles met and fell in love with Bruce Perry.

Both Bruce and Arles were deeply religious and had been active in the fellowship of Christian athletes at Bismarck High. after high school, Arliss attended one year at Bismarck Junior College and in August 1974, she and Bruce got married in a large wedding in front of family and friends. Arliss's parents weren't all that happy about it initially because they thought the couple was too young for marriage. But that feeling didn't last long. It eventually changed and Marvin and Jean were happy for their daughter. after the wedding, Bruce and Arlis relocated to California, where Bruce enrolled as a sophomore in the pre-med program at Stanford University.

The couple moved into Quillen Hall in Escondido Village and Arles got a job in Palo Alto as a receptionist at a law firm, Spath, Blaze, Valentine, and Klein. More if the sky should have been the limit for this young couple. But after a few weeks, Arliss started feeling. lonely. You know, she was away from family and friends. She was a long way from family and friends. I mean, if you think about Bismarck, North Dakota to California, that's a pretty long ways. So I think, no doubt, her emotions were running high. There was a lot of things going on internally. She's a newlywed. She's made this major move with her new husband to California. you. That's a lot for anyone. Yeah, I think on one hand, a young couple like that's going to be

excited to start their life together. But on the other hand, when you're moving across the country and you don't have that family support system that you've been used to in the same set of friends, it's probably a little bit of a challenge for a young person like that. Yeah, and I can speak from experience. I mean, after my wife and I got married, it wasn't that long before I took a job in Detroit. It was really only about a three and a half hour drive from where we were from. But even that distance, being separated from, you know, family and friends and all of that, it took its toll a little bit. You know, my wife's one of those people that she wants to talk to her mother every day, which I think a lot of people do. And she was able to do that on the phone. But what she was

missing was that contact, you know, the personal contact, she couldn't just jump in the car and drive over and see her mom, meet her for lunch, anything like that, just because of the distance. At around 11.30 p.m. on Saturday, October 12th, 1974, Bruce and Arles got in a small argument. Bruce complained that Arles needed to check the air pressure in the car's tires on a regular basis. It seemed like such a small thing to get into a fight about, but all couples get into petty arguments about small things sometimes. Arles got upset and said she was going to walk to to Memorial Church to say a prayer. And Bruce, who was also pretty upset, let Arles have her space. Reports differ, by the way, regarding where this argument occurred. Some say it was in the

Perry apartment, and other reports indicate the argument started while the couple was walking to mail a letter. And Mike, I think we've all been there. Sometimes when a couple gets into an argument, it can spiral and sometimes it's best to separate, even if it's best to separate, even if if it's just for a few minutes or an hour, just to diffuse attention a little bit. Well, I've been there for sure. I've been married for, you know, 20 plus years. You're going to have these petty arguments. You just are.

You know, when you spend every day with someone, things are going to crop up. If you can't work it out right then, which sometimes happens, I do agree that it's best to separate, let things cool down. Because if not, if you're just going to stay in the, the same room, it's probably just going to escalate. So more if you mentioned it, Bruce gave Arles some space. And this was not unusual for Arles to head to church by herself to pray when she was stressed or when she was upset. Bruce wasn't worried. This was pretty normal. But when Arles hadn't returned home by 3 a.m., Bruce knew something wasn't right. He went to Memorial Church, but found that the doors were locked.

there was no sign of Arles anywhere at or around the church. This is when Bruce began to really worry. So Bruce has no idea where Arles is. He headed back to their campus residence, hoping maybe she was back there already. He also looked for her along the way, but didn't find her. At around 5.45 a.m. A. Stamford University Security Guard named Stephen Blake Crawford made his way into the church on patrol.

It was part of his duties to open the church up and get it ready for Sunday worship. What awaited him inside was unimaginable. He found the body of a 5'5-6 110-pound blonde woman in the church, partially hidden under a pew. So this Crawford guy immediately summoned police to the scene, telling them, quote, we have a stiff in here. which morph, I think, is a strange way to put it to police. I get it that maybe someone's in shock.

They found a dead body. Just the use of the word stiff, that sounds very cold to me. Yeah, that's ice cold. And sometimes I make too much of words that people use, but I just think of myself being in that situation, I call the police and say, hey, I need help. I found a dead body. Or I found someone that's injured. I think they're dead.

I can get all of that. I cannot see myself making a phone call to police and saying, hey, I found a stiff. That just seems like we said, so cold, callous, you know, whatever word you want to use. Especially a security guard, you would think that they have some kind of protocol or some kind of manner that they're supposed to report something like that and not, hey, we've got a stiff here that's. Very bizarre. I do think it's odd, and that's why I wanted to point it out, the body that he found was later identified as Arliss Perry. When police arrived at the crime scene, the door on the church's west side was ajar, suggesting the killer left the church through that exit. Crawford told police that at approximately 2 a.m., he had checked the church and found all the doors locked.

He also said that he had locked the church up a couple of hours earlier at around midnight. Fifteen minutes before he locked it, he told churchgoers that they had about 15 minutes to finish up before he locked up. Police found little evidence of a struggle. Arliss was lying on her back, spread eagle on the floor. She was nude from the waist down. Her right arm with a palm down was under her waist. Her underwear and wedge sandals were on the floor next to her legs. Arliss's dark brown double-breasted jacket was open and her light brown sweater was pushed several inches above her waist. Between her breasts was a 24-inch yellow beeswax candle. It had been shoved so hard between her breasts that the force of it broke both of her bra straps. Another candle was lodged

in her vagina. It had been snapped in two by the force. Bruises on her neck matched the pattern of her brown wood and glass-beated necklace. Arles had a stab wound to the back of the head, and And embedded deep within her brain was a five and a half inch ice pick. And this was only detectable during autopsy. This ice pick had been jammed into the base of her skull from the left side. And then it was pushed up at a 45 degree angle into the right side of her brain. The reason why it was only detectable during the autopsy was because the handle was missing. So essentially what you have.

was the ice pick minus the handle, the whole thing was lodged into her head. A bone-in, Arliss's neck had been broken as well. Arliss hadn't been raped by her killer, but near her body, investigators found a kneeling cushion. On this cushion, they found semen stains. Testing revealed that the man that left those stains had typo blood. A partial handprint was recovered from one of the candles, but there were over 100 other prints found around the church. So police had a little hope that the prince would help them ID the killer. This crime scene was shocking and brutal to investigators. What was done to Arles was the kind of thing that most cops will never see or never investigate in their careers.

They knew that they had a really disturbed individual that they were looking for. Six detectives were assigned to Arles' case. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the fourth. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do but had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Detectives were given descriptions of seven late night church visitors and they later identified six of them.

The seventh person's description was pretty vague, a man about five foot, 10 inches tall with a medium build and brownish hair. After learning of his wife's death, Bruce Perry was overcome with grief and shock. Natural. More if I mean, I don't know what other emotions you could be going through. This guy couldn't fathom who would do something so cruel and disgusting to his kind of. and gentle young wife. And then you had Stanford University. They were appalled that something like this could happen on the grounds of their school. They quickly offered a $10,000 reward for any information leading to the conviction of Arles Perry's killer.

Word of the sadistic and bizarre murder in the church spread like wildfire across campus. And you know more that this would happen. I mean, this is going to get out very quickly. You have a whole university campus full of students. It's not going to be received well. And it wasn't. Everyone immediately began taking extra precautions, extra safety measures. They were extremely worried that there was a maniac on the loose.

Arles Perry's memorial service took place in Memorial Church where she was killed. 180 friends and relatives, including her parents and husband, attended the service. When the organist began playing a song by Johann Sebastian Bach, Bruce lowered his head and quietly sobbed. His father put his arm around Bruce's shoulders to comfort him. His wife of only two months was gone forever. And how strange would that be to have your wife's memorial service

in the same exact church where she was murdered? And again, I mean, that's your church. I don't know where else you would have it. I just think it would be very tough. Yeah, to be in that same room and that same environment knowing what she went through, that couldn't have been easy on their family and friends. Investigators couldn't be sure if Arles was killed by someone she knew well,

a complete stranger, or someone perhaps connected to her job. But they intended to investigate all the possibilities. Guy Blaze, one of the lawyers that Arles worked for, told police that on Friday, October 11th, Arliss had a heated conversation with a man in the waiting room. Guy had never met Bruce Perry, and he thought it was Bruce that Arliss was arguing with. But later they found out that it wasn't Bruce.

But who it actually was remained a mystery to police. The man was described as having curly sandy blonde hair. He stood about 5'10 and had a medium build. One week after Arliss was murdered, a 29-year-old woman is driving on the Stanford campus. When she stopped her car, a man jumped into the past. passenger side and forced her to drive away to a secluded area. The man pulled her from the car and tied her up to a log for sexually assaulting her. Although the woman was in extreme shock, she managed to get away from her attacker and went for help. Police felt that this attacker

wasn't the man that killed Arles Perry, but they wanted to explore all possible angles. Investigators felt that the way in which Arlis was tortured and savagely killed, most likely indicated a crime of passion, and perhaps a person close to her was responsible, but police found no indication or evidence that Bruce Perry had anything at all to do with his wife's murder. They turned their attention to the security guard that reported finding Arles' body, Stephen Crawford. Both men were given polygraph tests, and each man passed. The partial handprint found on the candle wasn't a number. enough. They didn't have enough of the print to be matched to either Bruce or Stephen.

And while Bruce was cleared of any involvement in his wife's murder, Crawford remained a possible suspect for decades. There was just something about him, morph, his statements, his mannerisms, that rubbed some of the investigators the wrong way. And I think you have that from time to time, right? These are trained investigators. They know how to read body language. They know how to, you know, look at someone while they're talking and, and get a sense of, okay, is this person trying to snow me? You know, a lot of these people are really good at what they do. And I don't know everything it was about the security guard that rubbed investigators the wrong way, but this is the same guy that referred to Arles as a stiff

when you reported finding our body. Yeah, we don't have all the details of the, conversations that investigators had with Crawford, but there was something in the interviews that they just couldn't shake this feeling that he knew more than what he was saying, or even more to the point, that he was possibly involved in some way. Between February 1973 and Arles Perry's murder in October 1974, three other murders happened in the area around the campus, and police wondered if there was a connection. On February 13, 1973, Leslie Marie Perlov, a Palo Alto librarian and Stanford graduate, went missing after leaving her workplace at the North County Law Library.

Her car was found parked near the old quarry entrance off Old Page Mill Road. Three days later, her body was found in the foothills behind campus. Her blue scarf was wrapped tightly around her neck, and she was barefoot. cause of death was listed as strangulation. Like Arlis, she hadn't been raped, but her skirt was pulled up and her panty hose had been shoved into her mouth. In the early morning hours of September 11, 1973, a jogger found the body of 20-year-old Stanford physics student David Levine on a walkway just east of Meyer undergraduate library. David was last seen at 1 a.m. heading from the physics department to escrow.

Gundido village where Bruce and Arlis Perry later lived. David had been stabbed 12 to 15 times in the back inside. When police investigated this incident, they couldn't find any type of motive for David's murder. A few months after David Levine's murder, 21-year-old Janet Ann Taylor was strangled after hitchhiking back home to LaHonda after visiting a friend on the Stanford campus. her body was found on March 25, 1974, off the side of the road, in a ditch at Sandhill Road and Manzanita Way, near Woodside, California. Janet was the daughter of former Stanford Athletic Director Chuck Taylor.

As police continued to investigate the murder of Arles Perry, they were never able to link the three other murders to her case. In fact, it wouldn't be until November 2018 that DNA linked a 74-year-old. man named John Arthur Gertrowe of Hayward, California to Leslie Marie Perlob's murder. Later in June 2019, they also linked his DNA to Janet and Taylor's killing. There was a murder in December 1973 that occurred at the University of California, Berkeley, that closely resembled the murder of David Levine. That murder was linked to a group called the Death Angels. The Death Angels was a group of four black Muslim men who were convicted in the early 1970s of the zebra murders.

Pretty famous case. This was a string of racially motivated killings and attacks that left 15 dead and several people wounded. But even though there were some similarities, to date, no one has been arrested for David's case or the one in Berkeley. In the time following Arles' murder, some began to wonder if the young bride was killed. killed as part of a satanic ritual performed by a local satanic cult. And I don't think you can blame people for thinking that. You have this obscene and disgusting murder happening inside a church, and you have the candles and all of that. And then we have David Berkowitz, the son of Sam himself, that inserted himself into the case. In 1979, Berkowitz, who was in prison after being arrested

for the son of Sam crimes, mailed a satanic book to investigators in the Arles Perry case. This delivery from son of Sam caused investigators to delve off into an all-new direction in the Perry case. On the inside cover of this book, Berkowitz or someone else, wrote the following message. Arles Perry, hunted, stocked, and slain followed to California, Stanford University. Right before her murder, Arliss discovered that another Bruce Perry was listed in the telephone book, and she had made the comment, you know, how strange that. was because he also had the same middle name as her husband, Duncan. So she was intrigued by this and she did a little bit of digging, but found that the other

Bruce Perry had disappeared. And she contacted the telephone company and they had no information on him. This second Bruce Perry phone listing eventually became part of a theory. Linking David Berkowitz to Arles Perry's murder, many people continued to believe the cult theory for years after Arliss's murder. In 1988, a book came out titled The Ultimate Evil, An Investigation of America's Most Dangerous Satanic cult. This book was written by Mori Terry, who had previously authored a book about the Son of Sam murders. Morfew and I talked about Mori Terry a lot in our coverage of the son of Sam Cays. The book begins with Arles

Perry's murder and states that Arles attempted to convert satanic worshippers to Christianity back in North Dakota. And it contends that a certain cult targeted Arles because of this. This is the same cult that Mori Terry believes David Berkowitz belonged to. According to Terry, the satanic book with written reference to Arles Perry was found inside the same prison where Berkowitz was serving time and that the reference to Perry was already scrawled in it when it was found. As we mentioned in our Son of Sam episodes, Terry believed that Berkowitz did not act alone, but that he was part of a satanic cult. Terry linked this cult connection also to Charles Manson and his followers and the Tate La Bianca murders in 1969.

Mori Terry had a lot of supporters of the cult. theory in relation to Arles Perry's murder, including a professor at Bismarck State College, who said in 1988 that she had read about one or more of her student's participation in a satanic cult from their school journals. And it was during the 1980s, there was a widespread fear of satanic cults and rituals throughout the United States. Some refer to that time as satanic panic. This led to false allegations made against daycare centers around the country.

The most well known was California's McMarton preschool trial, where daycare teachers were falsely accused and charged with sexually abusing students in 1983 in relation to satanic activity. The trial went on for three years from 1987 to 1990 with no convictions, and all charges were dropped against all of the defendants. The satanic cult theory in Arles' murder was just that. It was a theory. And it eventually faded away. Despite the possible son of Sam connection to Arles' case, Santa Clara County under Sheriff Tom Rosa said that the Arles Perry murder fit the typical pattern of a sexual psychopath, but he didn't believe that it had any cult-like overtones.

According to him, it just happened to have occurred in a church. Police eventually brushed off any ties to Satanists or to David Berkowitz. But over the years, other theories were looked into. There were a lot of theories. They thought that Ted Bundy might have been one of the suspects. And I think he was interviewed, but they never could make the connection because he had been at Stanford during that, like in the late 60s. And then they also did interview David Berkowitz, the son of Sam murderer when he was at Attica prison because I believe that he was actually involved in the Arliss Perry case. But they could never make any kind of connection to that.

And then some people have tried to link the Zodiac killer as one of the suspects. So there had been people kind of following leads on that. Yeah, there's a lot of wild theories. I think because of the details of how her body was laid out, which we don't need to get into, I mean, there were some questions about whether or not this was the work of a satanic cult maybe. I remember there are some things that Scott Harehold said about possible ties, that people were wondering whether she had those back in Bismarck, North Dakota. and maybe somebody followed her out here.

Right that she'd been part of a cult or something like that. Yeah, all kinds of things. Yeah, but I don't think the police ever found that. And they haven't found, they don't believe that any of these other cases are linked. Police hit a roadblock in the investigation in the Arles Perry's murder, and the case went cold. But years after Arles was murdered, police revealed another clue from the crime scene that they hadn't revealed before. Arles normally wore either glasses or contacts at all times. Her glasses weren't found at the crime scene, and she wasn't wearing her contacts.

They felt that the killer may have kept the glasses as a souvenir. Years went by without an arrest, and the case went cold for four decades. It became one of the Bay Area's most infamous unsolved murder cases. Persons of interests and suspects came and went across police radar. Then in 2018, there was a break in the case. DNA evidence from the crime scene was tested using new DNA technology. Authorities have been pretty tight-lipped about what procedures and technology they used, but the results that came back were a match to Stephen Crawford,

the security guard who reported finding Arles' body. This is the same man who investigators early on had a gut feeling about, they just didn't have enough at the time to charge him. The suspect's name was Stephen Blake Crawford. What do we know about him? Well, what we know is that he had been in the Marines, I believe, or the Air Force. It was the Air Force. And then he started working at Stanford for the police department,

the Department of Public Safety. And at some point, this was, I think, about 1971. So he started out pretty early. but he eventually what happened was is that the new police chief that came in to Stanford basically said, you know, there's too many people running around with guns and we need to really see whether or not they have the training and they should be having them. And according to Scott Hurhold, who is the retired columnist for the Mercury News, who's been investigating this for some time. He said that the police force basically reduced by three quarters, they found three quarters of the force.

should not be carrying the guns. They didn't qualify. And one of them happened to be Mr. Crawford. Yeah. And so they were offered jobs basically doing security guards. And so he took that job, but he apparently had complained bitterly about it to people. Crawford quit his job and left Stanford two years after Arles Perry's murder. In 1992, he was charged with stealing Native American bronze statues, art objects, and about 200 rare books.

that went missing from Stanford University in the 1970s. And these were like things that you would think might give someone some kind of status, I guess. Like it was a cane that belonged to Leland Stanford that was given to him by, I don't know, it was a Chinese ambassador or something like that, a skull, you know, human skull, some rare books, things of that nature. Yeah, the status thing. You mentioned he actually created his own diploma from Stanford by taking a blank diploma form and having that written himself.

Yes, he took it to a book. print shop. In 1993, Crawford moved into a studio apartment at the Del Coronado Apartments off Highway 85 on Camden Avenue in San Jose, California. Neighbors reported that he walked with a cane and

often wore a cowboy hat. He kept to himself, but was friendly. On June 28, 2018, armed with a search warrant, police went to apartment number 185 to arrest Stephen Crawford for the 1974 murder of Arles Perry. After knocking on the door and identifying themselves,

Deputy spoke with Crawford through the front door. But when they entered the apartment, he pulled out a handgun. So they backed off and it was just a short time later. Authorities heard a gunshot and then they re-entered the apartment. Stephen Crawford had shot himself to death on his bed. He apparently was not willing to face justice for murdering Arlis Perry. Santa Clara County Sheriff Lori Smith described the aftermath in a press conference following Crawford's suicide. So I wanted to take this opportunity to fill you in on some more

details about yesterday's incident too. When our detectives first arrived at the scene, we were there to serve a search warrant and we knocked on the suspect's door. He asked to take a few minutes to get dressed and our detectives remained outside for a few minutes. They thought he was stalling so they had a key from the apartment manager and so they keyed their way in and they saw him sitting there on the bed with a gun in his hand and it was a studio apartment so it was very very small. The detectives retreated, just got out of the way of the of the door and they heard one gunshot wound and found that he had taken his life with one gunshot wound to the head. There were a couple of items of interest, nothing really linking the homicide, but a couple of interesting items.

One, there was a box in his closet with some important papers in it, and in it was a book called The Ultimate Evil. And it's a book about serial killers. And the second item, there was a suicide note. The suicide note was, appeared to be hastily written. It had the date 2016 on it. And we think that coincides probably with the time that Detective Sergeant Alain Nice interviewed him. And I don't think he'd been interviewed in quite some time prior to that. And we're still analyzing the note.

It did not reference anything about the murder. And it was garbled, difficult to read. And again, we're doing some more forensic evidence on that. A couple of factors led to us actually going to the house. We went there to serve a search warrant with the intent to arrest him. We had enough evidence at that time, even independent of the search warrant, to make the arrest, and that was our intent. The investigation, when we first discovered the DNA from when we sent some additional evidence items to an outside lab,

and found DNA on her items, his DNA on her items. And so after that, we had to do several things like re-interview people. But one of the things that was time-consuming was we contacted everybody that had been in the church that night, 43 years ago, and took their DNA and their fingerprints. We wanted to make sure that we ruled them out. And so everything was a culmination of all the investigation, that they had done since the time that we discovered the DNA. I cannot speculate on why he committed suicide,

but I think that he might have believed that his time was up. We look at this as closure, and we believe that we had solid evidence to arrest and even convict Stephen Crawford for the murder of Arles Perry. I haven't seen all the contents of the suicide note. I know it did not talk about the homicide, but it was just kind of rambling. So we'll have to do a little bit more work on that. As with the car and any other evidence that we have.

What do you hope to find in the car? You know, with a search warrant, you never know what you can find. We were hoping to find something that would link him directly to the crime. 43 years ago, sometimes that's not possible. Do you know if he had provided his DNA for testing willingly, or through another means? You know, this is my recollection. It seems like years ago we got his DNA off something that he had discarded.

And then I know that we have better DNA now. I don't know if we got a search warrant to get his DNA or we got it another way, but I know on two separate occasions we have gotten DNA from him. He's been a person of interest from the beginning that was just never enough evidence to make the arrest. And just to be clear, the detectives were there yesterday, not just to search, but to arrest. Yes, yes. Arliss Perry's mother was shocked when she learned the case had been solved. She said in a phone interview with Mercury News that her husband Marvin had been possessed with wanting to know who killed their daughter.

Sadly, Martin passed away just three months before the case was solved and never found out who murdered his daughter. Even though Crawford took his own life before he could be. be convicted in a court of law. Arliss's loved ones finally had a name, but that's all they had, unfortunately. They couldn't ask Stephen Crawford why he did what he did. He took his secrets to the grave. Authorities in the Arles period case now considered the case closed. Long before DNA provided answers in Arles' case, a profile of her killer was created that seemed to have missed the mark in some areas about the killer, but got other things right. One of the things that came up in reviewing this case was that the FBI at one point hired a profiler to look at the suspect

based on the evidence. And it doesn't seem like they got the age range right because the person thought the suspect was probably between 17 and 22 or so. But I found it interesting that the person assumed that the killer was someone who probably took things from the victim's items, possessions. I understand that Arles Perry's eyeglasses were missing. And she really needed the eyeglasses, so she would not have been there without them. I don't know how much you needed them, but they were missing. Yeah. And so that was one of the things that came out of it.

I guess the profile also said that they suspected the person was a loner, possibly had a military background. And I don't know. I can't remember with the other part. There was one other thing in there. I just don't remember right up there. Yeah, a loan or detailed diary. A detailed diary. Yeah, that was the other thing.

Despite the pain of losing his young bride, Bruce Perry finished medical school, and became a psychiatrist and is now a renowned child trauma expert in Houston. He's appeared on numerous television shows, including the Oprah Winfrey show. He's also the author of several books on child trauma. Bruce Perry hasn't commented on the outcome of his wife's case. But hopefully over the years and with the revelation about Stephen Crawford, he's found some type of closure. These are tough cases, Morve.

you know, obviously this young woman had a very bright future. She was struck down before she ever got to realize that future. And the way she was murdered was so incredibly brutal. Number one, it happened inside a church. This woman was extremely religious. And then number two, just the details, the aspects of the murder, very violent, very brutal, very sadistic. But I guess to me, the thing that really jumps out is the fact that technically Stephen Crawford was never found responsible

for her murder. Now, the case is closed. The authorities are not looking for anyone else, right? They have the DNA that they believe proves that Stephen Crawford killed Arles Perry. But at the end of the day, he was never convicted by a jury of his peers that always, bothers me for some reason, even knowing that there's all this evidence, very good evidence, connecting him to the murder, not having that finality, that, you know, 12 person jury weighing all the evidence and coming back and saying, yes, we find Stephen Crawford guilty of the murder of Arles Perry. That bugs me, that we don't have that. Yeah, and it bugs me that. Arles' family don't get that final, say, that final word that tells them, you know,

we have justice here. And that really, really bothers me personally. And one thing that really hits me from doing the research and reading the details is probably how scared Arles was to go through this torment and this torture and what she went through at the hands of this man. I can't even imagine what she was thinking or how scared she was. Well, you mentioned her family. You know, in a trial where a killer is convicted, at some point, the family is going to get a chance to read their impact statements. They're going to get a chance to vent, to express their frustration, to, you know, to do whatever they need to do. They don't get it here, right?

So they may believe in their heart that this man, killed their loved one. But is that enough? It has to be, right? There is nothing else that can be done. I just think it's not as complete when it comes to closure. Not that closure's ever complete, right? It doesn't help everything, but I feel like there's something missing probably. And the family probably feels that way as well. I don't want to put words in their mouth. But one thing I take away from this case is could this guy have other victims out there? Because this doesn't seem like it was a spur of the moment heat of the situation where things got out of control. It seems that he really went out of his way to do some horrific stuff to this woman and to dehumanize her. And I wonder

if somebody that could do these kinds of things would only do this once or if he might be the kind of person that would do it more than once. Well, you and I do. a lot of cases, man, and I'll tell you this, somebody that's capable of doing what this person did, hard to believe that they would just do it once and then stop, right? You know, we talk about what drives these killers. There's, you know, something inside them, a lot of them that is pushing them forward. They need something. And for many, it's this rush, whatever it is they need to satisfy.

can only be satisfied by doing these revolting sadistic things. I can't imagine this guy did it one time and said, yeah, okay, I did that and I'm never going to do it again. The good thing is they have his DNA. So in other cases where they have DNA, maybe it's not been processed, it wouldn't surprise me more for it to come out later that this guy is tied to many. more murders. Yeah, it'll be interesting to watch the headlines and see if anything comes out that he is connected to other crimes. Special thanks goes out to Jocelyn Dong at Palo Alto Weekly

and Palo Alto Online for letting us include some of the audio that they produced regarding Arles' case. Thanks also goes at Debbie Buck at TruecrimeDiva.com for writing and research assistance in this episode. As always, if you haven't done so, take a minute. Go out, give us a five-star rating if you love the show. Keep telling your friends about the podcast. That means so much for the show. If you'd like to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast. And you can join our Facebook discussion group, which is Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. So that's it for another episode of Criminology. We will be back with you next week with an all new episode.

So until then, for Mike and Morph. We'll see you next week. Take care of everyone.