John Arthur Getreu escaped justice for over 40 years before Santa Clara County Sheriff’s detectives used DNA evidence to track him down.

John Arthur Getreu, 78, admitted to the 1973 murder of Lesley Perlov, 16 months after he was convicted in the 1974 killing of another woman in what proxecutors called The Stanford Murders.

Santa Clara County cold case detectives partnered with the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit organization that helps identify unknown bodies, concluded that Patricia Skiple of Oregon was murdered by Keith Hunter Jesperson.