Arlis Perry

On the night of October 12, 1974, Arlis Perry, a 19-year-old newlywed from Bismarck, North Dakota, entered Stanford Memorial Church on the campus of Stanford University to pray. Her husband Bruce had walked with her to the church around midnight but returned to their apartment nearby when she insisted on staying. When she did not return, he became concerned and reported her missing.

The next morning, a security guard discovered Arlis's body inside the church. The scene was deliberately staged in what appeared to be a ritualistic manner: she had been beaten, strangled, and stabbed with an ice pick behind her left ear. Her body was positioned between pews with religious items arranged around it. The staging led to theories about satanic ritual or cult involvement, generating significant media attention and speculation.

The case went cold for decades despite being periodically reinvestigated. Multiple suspects were considered and ruled out over the years. The breakthrough came through advances in DNA technology. In 2018, Santa Clara County investigators matched DNA from the crime scene to Stephen Blake Crawford, who had been the security guard on duty at Stanford Memorial Church the night of the murder and was the very person who had 'discovered' the body.

When sheriff's deputies arrived at Crawford's home in San Jose on June 28, 2018 to serve an arrest warrant, he fatally shot himself. The case was subsequently closed, with investigators stating they were confident Crawford had acted alone. The 44-year-long investigation highlighted both the limitations of early forensic technology and the eventual power of DNA evidence in solving cold cases.