Accused serial killer’s trial put off following surgery

John Getreu

BY EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Staff Writer

The trial for suspected Stanford serial killer John Getreu, 76, was postponed yesterday because he underwent surgery last week, a prosecutor said today.

It was likely that court proceedings for Getreu’s trial would be postponed after his attorney told prosecutors last week that Getreu was in the hospital for a “significant medical conditions,” as District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe put it.

Getreu has since undergone surgery and will have to receive dialysis treatment three days a week, Wagstaffe said.

Getreu’s attorney and prosecutors will meet on Wednesday to try to figure out when to schedule the trial.

Getreu is facing trial for the March 25, 1974, strangulation murder of Janet Ann Taylor, 21, who was killed as she was leaving the Stanford campus. Her body was dumped on Sand Hill Road near Woodside in San Mateo County.

Taylor was the daughter of former Stanford athletic director Chuck Taylor. Her death was one of five murders on or near the Stanford campus between 1972 and 1976.

Getreu is later scheduled to go to trial in Santa Clara County for the Feb. 13, 1973 murder of Leslie Marie Perlov, a Stanford grad student and a law clerk, was found strangled in the hills west of campus.

Attorneys are set to meet on Nov. 4 to discuss Getreu’s case in Santa Clara County.

He was arrested in November 2018 by Santa Clara County deputies at his Hayward home after evidence from the Perlov case was re-tested for DNA, similar to how the Golden State Killer was found.