Murder of Arlis Perry

Arlis Kay Perry (née Dykema) was a 19-year-old newlywed murdered inside Stanford Memorial Church in Stanford, California (within the grounds of Stanford University) on October 12, 1974. The murder went unsolved for more than 40 years. Police named Stephen Blake Crawford as the perpetrator following DNA testing in 2018. Crawford, a security guard at Stanford who purportedly discovered the body, committed suicide before he could be arrested. Victim: Arlis Perry grew up in Bismarck, North Dakota, where she and Bruce D. Perry were high-school sweethearts. The pair married in August 1974, and Arlis moved to Stanford University with her husband, who was a sophomore pre-med student. At the time of her murder, she had been working as a receptionist at a local law firm. The couple had been living on campus in Quillen House in Escondido Village. Murder: Around 11:30 p.m. the night of October 12, 1974, the Perrys had an argument about their car's tire pressure. Arlis told her husband she wanted to pray alone inside the church, and they parted. Bruce became concerned when his wife hadn't returned home by 3 a.m. He called the Stanford Police and reported her missing. Officers from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office went to the church and reported all the outer doors were locked. Campus security guard Stephen Crawford, a former Stanford police officer, found Arlis's body around 5:45 a.m. October 13, in the church's east transept, near the altar. She was found face-up; an ice pick was sticking out of the back of her head, though the handle had broken off and was missing. There were also signs of strangulation. Police noted Perry was naked from the waist down. A three-foot-long altar candle was in her vagina, and another between her breasts. Investigation: Crawford told police he'd locked up the church a little after midnight. He'd rechecked the doors around 2 a.m. and found they were still locked. When Crawford visited the church at 5:45 a.m. to open it for the day, he said he found the west side door open. It had been forced from the inside. Investigators found semen on a kneeling pillow near Perry's body. They also found a palm print on a candle. Neither the semen nor the print matched Bruce Perry or Crawford. The Santa Clara County Sheriff also ruled out any links between Arlis's murder and three previous killings dating back to February 1973. Bruce was an initial suspect, but was eventually ruled out. At least seven people were in the church during the night of October 12 and the morning of October 13; among them were Arlis and Crawford. Four other people were identified; a seventh was not. A passerby noted this young man was about to enter the church around midnight. He had sandy-colored hair and wasn't wearing a watch; was of medium build; and stood about five-foot-ten. The case remained open and active for many years and was never officially closed nor treated as a cold case, according to the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department. In 2018, Crawford was definitively linked to the murder following a more advanced DNA test. On June 28, as police arrived at Crawford's residence with a search warrant, Crawford committed suicide by gunshot before he could be arrested. Alleged Son of Sam link: Serial killer David Berkowitz mentioned the Perry murder in a few letters, suggesting that he heard details of the crime from "Manson II", the alleged culprit. In the San Jose Mercury News, Jessie Seyfer noted that "investigators interviewed Berkowitz in prison and now believe he has nothing of value to offer" regarding the Perry case. However, investigative reporter Maury Terry noted that Berkowitz had volunteered information about the case without being prompted, writing in 1979: "ARLISS PERRY, HUNTED, STALKED AND SLAIN. FOLLOWED TO CALIFORNIA. STANFORD UNIV." Terry interviewed Perry's friends in Bismarck, discovering that someone on the Stanford campus had taken a telephone listing under Bruce Perry's name. The resultant confusion when Arlis's best friend and Bruce's mother attempted to reach the Perrys at the fraudulent Bruce's phone number apparently led Arlis to call the number herself and speak to someone in residence there. In a September 27, 1974 letter to her friend, Arlis wrote: "I had to laugh about your call to Bruce Perry. Mrs. Perry made the same mistake. She called them, too. But the strange part of it is that his name is not only Bruce Perry but it is Bruce D. Perry, and not only that but it is Bruce Duncan Perry and he attends Stanford University, and he just got married this summer. One thing, his wife's name is not Arlis. Anyway, next time you get the urge to call, the number is -------. This time I guarantee you'll get the right Bruce Perry." Bruce Perry: Arlis's widower, Bruce D. Perry, is a clinician and researcher in children's mental health and the neurosciences, and an internationally recognized authority on children in crisis.