Urlifestyle Magazine October 2016 October 2016 | Page 10

Arlis quickly found a job as a receptionist
at the law firm of Spaeth, Blase, Valentine
and Klein in Palo Alto and used the car to
drive to and from work.
The two had been in California just
six weeks when, late on the evening of Saturday, October 12, they went out for a walk
and to mail a letter. Around 11:50 p.m., Bruce
complained that Arlis needed to check the
air pressure in the tires on the car more
often because the air was low in one of them.
This prompted an angry retort from his wife,
who was likely feeling homesick. She walked
away indicating she was going to Stanford
Memorial Church to pray. This wasn’t unusual for Arlis and as she made her way to the
lovely Romanesque place of worship on Main
Quad, Bruce headed back to the dormitory to
study. Several people saw Arlis inside the
cruciform church that night and when Stephen Blake Crawford announced it was almost midnight and the church was closing,
she did not leave immediately. As the final
few visitors were making their way outside,
some of them recalled seeing a sandy-haired
man.
When his wife did not return, Bruce went
out and searched for her and around 3 a.m.,
called the Stanford police and reported her
missing. Officers reportedly were sent to the
church where she was last seen and found
the doors locked.
Bruce waited anxiously, but it was almost dawn when police knocked on his door.
By this time, he was a wreck and the officers
insisted he accompany them to the station
to complete a missing-person report. However,
once they arrived, Bruce wasn’t given a form
to complete, but instead was taken to an interrogation room where an officer began by
growling: "We know your wife was having an
affair and you found out!" They also insinuated: “She told you she was pregnant and you
got angry!"
At first, Bruce was perplexed, but as
the statements and questions continued, he
became terrified. When the police knocked
at his door, he was wearing shorts and a
tee-shirt and wasn’t allowed to pull on a
pair of pants or grab a sweater; they did not
even allow him to put on shoes. “You want a
cigarette?” a detective inquired again, even
though he had already told them he did not
smoke.
“Where’s my wife?” he asked over and over

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again, but the men declined to answer. Finally, after more than two hours of intense
grilling, a technician taking his fingerprints told him Arlis was dead. Later, Bruce
Perry was administered a polygraph test and
cleared of his wife’s murder.
At approximately 5:40 that morning, Crawford, the night watchman, discovered the body
of a young woman in the church. He immediately called police and they proceeded to
examine the body and the gruesome scene. She
was on her back with her legs spreadeagled,
partially concealed beneath a pew, where she
had, apparently, been praying a few hours
before. Her head lolled to the left and her
right arm was palm-down beneath her waist.
There were deep purple bruises on her neck
matching the pattern of her brown wood-andglass bead necklace. Her dark brown, double-

breasted jacket was open and the tan sweater she wore underneath was pushed several
inches above her waist and a 24-inch-long
yellow beeswax candle had been shoved upward between her breasts with such force
both straps of her brassiere had broken. Her
blue Levis and panties had been removed and
the jeans draped across her body. A second,
identical candle had been rammed into her
vagina so violently that it snapped in the
process.
Initially, it was assumed Arlis Perry
had been strangled to death, however, during
the autopsy, a 5½-inch icepick was discovered
jammed into the base of her skull, tearing
upward at a 45-degree angle into her right
brain. Police had not seen the icepick because the attack was so intense the wooden
handle of the instrument had broken off.
The wooden attachment was not found at the
scene, meaning the killer had taken it with
him. The medical examiner determined Perry
had not been raped, but there was a semen
deposit on a nearby kneeling cushion left
by a man who could have had type O blood.
A partial hand print was lifted from one
of the candles, but because 101 other prints
were found, it was virtually useless. Noteworthy is the fact Arlis Perry had terrible
eyesight and always wore glasses or contact
lenses, yet neither was found at the scene.
A door on the west side of the church
was ajar, suggesting the killer had broken
out after Steve Crawford locked the church
around midnight and after the doors were
checked by both Crawford and Bruce Perry.
Law enforcement officers received the descriptions of seven late visitors to the
church that night, one of whom was a man
described as approximately 5'10"-tall, of me-

dium buil d with sandy brown hair. No one
knew the man, or had seen him before, and he
was never found.
During the investigation, Guy Blase, an
attorney at the law firm where Arlis worked,
revealed he had seen Arlis engaged in an intense conversation with a man on the afternoon of Friday, October 11. Assuming the man
was her husband, he thought nothing of it.
His description of the white male was early
20s with curly, sandy blond hair, of medium build and approximately 5'10" in height.
Her co-workers said the visitor was wearing
jeans and a plaid shirt and recalled that
Arlis seemed upset following her confrontation with the person whom everyone thought
was Bruce Perry.
As soon as Arlis Perry's corpse was released by the medical examiner, her parents
had their daughter’s body shipped home to
Bismarck for burial. She was laid to rest
Friday, October 18, at Sunset Memorial Gardens. Less than two weeks later, on Halloween, her temporary grave marker was stolen
and there are those who believe it was taken
by local Satanists as a victory memento.
Three years later, in August 1977, David Berkowitz, a 24-year-old postal employee, was arrested and charged with the “Son
of Sam” murders which had begun in July
1976. Berkowitz confessed, but many – including Maury Terry – considered his confession
scripted and contradictory and Terry started
his own investigation. He finally convinced
the Queens district attorney and Yonkers police that Berkowitz had not acted alone and
Berkowitz himself claimed he committed just
two of the Son of Sam attacks while other
members of a Satanic cult, of which he was a
member, did the others.
During his 10-year investigation, Terry
discovered a link between the Son of Sam
killings and the murder of Arlis Perry and
that link was the Process Church of the Final Judgment, which was formed in England
in the 1960s by renegade Scientologists Robert and Mary Ann De Grimston. Shortly after
the De Grimston’s founded their church, they
were branded Satanists because their new

Bismarck native Arlis Perry was killed
in CA in 1974 as part of the Son of Sam cult
killings.

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