Ultimate Evil: The Truth about the Cult Murders: Son of Sam and Beyond

Introduction

As the clock inched past midnight into July 31, 1977, the great metropolis was in turmoil. A task force of three hundred cops - by itself larger than most American police departments - was hunting Son of Sam in one of the deadliest scenarios ever staged in the real-life theater of New York City. An expansive dragnet draped Queens and the Bronx, the preferred stalking grounds. They didn't think the menace would evade their porous net and invade Brooklyn. They were wrong.

In the predawn hours of July 31, a young man sprayed four shots from a.44 Bulldog into a car parked in a Brooklyn lovers' lane, fatally wounding Stacy Moskowitz and partially blinding her date. It was the eighth and final attack, and it happened as our seaside analysis of the case continued forty miles east in Davis Park. That irony would remain with me always.

Eleven nights later, a parking ticket he received near the Brooklyn scene finally led a befuddled NYPD to suburban Yonkers, New York, and the owner of that cited Ford Galaxie. His name was David Berkowitz, and he was a stocky, twenty-four-year-old postal employee and army veteran who had patrolled the frozen demilitarized zone in Korea before returning to his native Bronx in 1974.

Berkowitz, whom police never considered a suspect until a few hours before his fortuitous capture, went quietly. He eagerly confessed to being a lone marauder who had terrorized New York for thirteen agonizing months. The fact that his confession was fatally flawed was buried by the avalanche of euphoria and police promotions that followed. It mattered, too, that a New York City mayoral primary, in which the incumbent was lagging in the polls, was on the immediate horizon. It was time for the case to end and for the mayor's camp to garner credit.

From the outset, I was skeptical of Berkowitz's claim of sole culpability, and those suspicions marked the beginning of a perilous investigative odyssey destined to continue for many years. During that time, I traveled from completely outside the case to a point where I was able to uncover the many horrific secrets hidden within its very core. The trail led from the hushed silence of a church in Palo Alto, California, to the mansions of Beverly Hills, and from the golden wheat fields of North Dakota to the posh decadence of Long Island's Hamptons and the squalor of a half-dozen prisons.

This book, which chronicles that harrowing voyage deep inside one of America's most infamous cases, was first published in 1987. It was updated two years later and has now been brought into 1999 by virtue of this introduction and a comprehensive new epilogue.

However, this is not a Son of Sam story. On the surface is the enigmatic David Berkowitz, but far below is an infinitely more frightening specter - a highly motivated and well-organized cult group whose various criminal enterprises included the.44 homicides. While using the trappings of the occult, the group's main goals were power, greed and terrorism. It is the embodiment of organized evil, and it still stains America on the eve of the millennium. It has thrived because its tentacles ensnared a number of jaded allies whose influential positions enabled it to extend far beyond New York.

So, more than anything else, this book is an examination of a volatile consortium which evolved with the times, altered its face and constructed a facade which it burrowed into the 1990s American landscape. But beneath the contemporary veneer, it remains what it always was: a well-connected criminal cabal which some authorities today regard as "active and dangerous" because they believe it is presently aligned with a number of incendiary U.S. hate groups, radical movements and militias.

To understand why the Son of Sam and other related killings happened and how those ultimately the most responsible for them managed to continue their operations to the present day, it is perhaps beneficial to pose a few questions.

Did the government deceive the public about Vietnam, Watergate and Iran-Contra? It did. Did the government fatally fumble the 1993 standoff at the Branch-Davidian compound in Waco, Texas? It did. Was the FBI implicated in a cover-up in the 1992 shooting deaths of the wife and son of separatist Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho - and was it later blamed for also botching the 1996 bombing case at the Atlanta Olympics? It was.

In general terms, have so-called servants of the public misled that same public about a host of other misdeeds on national, state and local levels over the course of many decades? They have. And do deceptions, cover-ups and blatant bureaucratic ineffectiveness continue to incubate in various forms throughout the United States today? They certainly do.

In Son of Sam's New York City hunting grounds, the 1970s saw the noted Knapp Commission hearings into widespread police corruption. In the 1990s, the Mollen Commission undertook the same distasteful task, and a smattering of serious scandals continued to erupt in NYPD precincts into 1999.

In 1995, former NYPD officer Eugene O'donnell, a professor of police studies at Manhattan's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, wrote: "Cops believe the department is driven not by a commitment to public service, but by the desire to deceive the press and public into believing things that are not true."

Even in that context, I was still somewhat surprised when I uncovered irrefutable evidence of just how badly the Son of Sam case was mishandled by a select number of top police officials. Later, when I came to comprehend why that happened - for reasons that transcended simple incompetence - my surprise dissipated.

To be sure, hundreds of dedicated police officers worked feverishly on a tremendously draining.44 investigation in 1976 and 1977. They weren't the problem. In the pyramid structure of the system, information flowed upward, leaving field cops with knowledge of only isolated fragments of the case. But at the top, a small group of police brass, politicians and the office of the then-district attorney of Brooklyn, in particular, were privy to all the accumulated data.

And it was at those levels where some of the strongest evidence of conspiracy was suppressed. As Eugene O'donnell wrote of the NYPD, "I believe that what has developed over the past two decades is a department infested with a huge level of cynicism." In one example of that attitude, the NYPD held the largest promotions ceremony in its history before the ink was dry on Berkowitz's fingerprints. Careers were made, reputations enhanced. It was all constructed on a foundation of sand, and - quite frankly - on the graves of future victims.

Concurrently, New York Mayor Abraham Beame was up for reelection and was trailing badly in the polls as the Sam case heated up. He almost closed a cavernous gap in the wake of Berkowitz's arrest - with his highly visible portrayal as the man in charge whose police department just happened to end the reign of terror only a month before the primary. But despite his phoenixlike rise from the ashes, Beame narrowly lost that election and was out of office several months later.

To state the obvious: new mayors initiate high-level changes in large police departments. Thus, many in power had a vested interest in a timely, uncomplicated resolution of the Son of Sam case. But the evidence reveals more than that. It also shows that events were manipulated behind the scenes by a handful of influential individuals who, although not directly involved in the shootings themselves, were compromised because they had interacted with cult leaders at high-society drug parties that featured sex with children.

Jerry Moskowitz, father of.44 victim Stacy, told me his cousin was a judge in Brooklyn, where it was common courthouse gossip that the case was butchered. Likewise, Carl Denaro, a surviving victim, said in 1997: "By now, anybody who knows anything about this knows that Berkowitz had accomplices."

Mike Lauria, father of the first victim, Donna Lauria, also believes Berkowitz acted with others. "I know he killed my daughter - but he had help in all of it," Lauria stated. Robert Violante, who lost most of his vision in the attack that killed Stacy Moskowitz, is yet another who no longer accepts the official version put forth in 1977. "I tend to believe Berkowitz was part of a satanic cult," Violante stated in a 1995 interview.

Queens District Attorney John Santucci, in whose jurisdiction five Son of Sam attacks occurred, knew the case was muddled. He pushed for a trial, but was vilified for opposing the planned acceptance of Berkowitz's guilty pleas by the two other district attorneys in the case. Santucci was bucking the tide and was pressured into backing away - which he did for seventeen months until reopening the investigation when my newspaper articles about a Son of Sam conspiracy offered him the opportunity he'd wanted all along.

"When I moved on it, there was no cooperation from the police department and the other district attorneys, and that response was more than a little troubling," Santucci told me. In the early 1980s, Santucci was again angered when a few valued prison informants inexplicably were transferred away from Berkowitz. "I think there's big money and influence somewhere in this, and if I could prove it, I'd go public," he said.

That assessment is worth remembering, as evidence developed since 1996 has demonstrated the district attorney was a prophet.

Santucci, who eventually announced his investigation's conclusion that Berkowitz did not act alone, retired in the early 1990s. By then I had moved on to other cases and various TV projects. But the Son of Sam matter was never far from my mind. Television programs asked for updates; radio talk shows liked to explore it - and, of course, there was Berkowitz himself.

Unlike a number of other high-profile criminals, Berkowitz kept himself invisible. He ignored the regular interview requests he received from the press, which in itself said something. In all those years, he'd never spoken to the media about the true story of the case. In television terms, he was the biggest "get" out there, but he wouldn't talk to anyone.

In the early 1980s, he and I exchanged several letters during a time when he was quietly trying to aid the investigation. Then he fell silent, expressing concern for his family's safety and stating that whatever I or the district attorney's staff discovered was fine with him - but he wasn't going to participate clandestinely any longer. After that, we didn't communicate for ten years.

So, without Berkowitz or another accomplice who was willing to talk, there wasn't much more I could do to help the Queens district attorney's office move the case into a courtroom. Likewise, Santucci's staff felt stymied. As Assistant District Attorney Herb Leifer put it then, "We're confident David didn't act alone, but we need an insider - either Berkowitz or someone else - so we can put this entire package in front of a grand jury."

So, just as the door seemed closed for good, it opened again in 1993, when out of the blue Berkowitz agreed to tell me his story on national television - but only as much as he felt safe in doing. He wanted the interview to be done by me because he knew I was keenly aware of the case's complexities.

That interview, the first Berkowitz did about the Son of Sam shootings, was broadcast on Inside Edition in November 1993. The program devoted three entire shows to the story, and the case exploded into the headlines again. The investigation advanced further in 1997, when I questioned Berkowitz for New York's WABC-TV in an award-winning series that was expanded to a national one-hour special on the A&E network's Investigative Reports.

Concurrently, the police department in suburban Yonkers, where Berkowitz had lived, opened a probe in 1996 and developed important new leads. The entire case, which actually covered many years before and after Berkowitz's era, surged forward to the point that indictments are now within the realm of possibility - the direct result of evidence uncovered in the late 1990s.

In fact, at least in layman's terms, the case is now effectively "solved." Significantly, the major players have been identified, along with many who served other functions in the overall scenario. Still, several intangibles will eventually determine whether the evidence is destined for a courtroom.

No matter what the future holds, I hope that maybe - just maybe - the lessons learned from this investigation will help ensure that such horror and related official transgressions will not go unrecognized in the future. If the press is to be the government's watchdog, it might be mindful that its goal is to transcend simple reporting of what is often merely self-serving "spin" hidden under a wardrobe of purported truth.

Likewise, federal agencies such as the FBI might better serve the public if they remained awake at the wheel. The.44 shootings did not fit the Bureau's vaunted serial killings profile: they were "clean" executions which involved no physical or sexual contact with the victims. But no one focused on that and other anomalies, and major clues went by the board.

Similarly, the Bureau's inability to identify the domestic threat posed by the Sam cult's terrorist-minded allies is worthy of scrutiny. It is inconceivable that this subversive foreign group, unveiled in this book, was not thoroughly investigated, arrested or at the very least banished from the United States years before the Son of Sam killings.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service also figures into the equation. The INS did expel a number of these individuals from the United States in late 1968, but all of them soon returned to resume their activities unfettered - and they continue to operate today.

These unsettling thoughts peered over my shoulder in the darkness of July 31, 1998, when I once again stood on the dune stairs in Davis Park and listened to the crashing surf - an angry surf - unlike the placid pond the Atlantic had been on that anniversary weekend night in '77.

So much had changed since then. There was tragedy: one of my sources, a sensitive Yonkers teenager, hung himself; another died of a puzzling overdose of medication; and a reporter helping me - a friend - was killed in a car wreck after confronting a suspect. There was no overt evidence of murder, but the timing and circumstances remain troubling.

Sadly, others featured in this book have died since its original publication. Among them Cäcilia Davis, John Diel, Harry Lipsig, Jim Mitteager, Jerry Moskowitz, Nann Cassara, Carl Kelly, Sal D'Iorio, Joseph Strano, Veronica Lueken, Dave Spence and Craig Glassman - who succumbed on Halloween night 1991 when his car skidded into a tree. Also, Sam Carr, who was but one step removed from the crimes, died in 1996. Not surprisingly, his remaining family kept news of his death from the media.

Time and circumstance haven't smiled on some who were on the wrong side of the case, either. Although many remain alive, at least twenty-one of Berkowitz's associates, suspects at varying levels of culpability, have perished since his arrest. Many of them died by violent means, including murder. The most recent was a suicide in late 1998. It is a remarkable and telling total since most were still quite young in the late 1970s.

But there have been positive highlights, too. Along the way were dozens of articles for the Gannett newspapers, a handful of magazine stories and numerous television specials - one of which earned United Press International's annual Enterprise Award for investigative reporting. In 1997, the most recent television presentation received similar honors from the Associated Press.

I have also lectured on "major cases" and ritual crime at law enforcement seminars, and my work was incorporated into a training course for several police departments in the Midwest. In addition, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sought my counsel in the Atlanta child-murders probe, and I conducted a reinvestigation of California's celebrated unsolved Zodiac killings. These and other cases, including that of O. J. Simpson and New York's notorious Steinberg-Nussbaum child homicide probe, came my way as a result of my work on the "Ultimate Evil" investigation.

The names of all suspects and the details provided by all informants are in the hands of the authorities. If my safety or that of anyone close to me is ever jeopardized, several people whose names grace the top of a special list will come under rapid and intense scrutiny. Several of those individuals can't be named in this book, but all are at least referenced as to profession, place of residence and the like.

Finally, throughout the inquiry, the disdainful face of what intelligence operatives term "disinformation" leered over my shoulder. It emanated from a small, self-interested and highly deceptive platoon of NYPD apologists and from a smattering of others - all of whom were awash in factual ignorance of the case. For instance, a psychiatrist who knew nothing about the evidence suggested in print that there was no conspiracy. Why? Because Berkowitz had refused to answer his questions about it.

Over the years, I have been asked why I put any faith in Berkowitz. The answer to that question is simple. I didn't believe Berkowitz, per se, but I certainly believed in the clear-cut, conclusive quality of the evidence - evidence unearthed long before he ever uttered the words "conspiracy" or "cult." Only then, when information gathered from prison was buttressed by existing data or confirmed through follow-up investigation, did I acknowledge his credibility.

One author - who never met Berkowitz but wrote a book about him - proclaimed David was "terrifying." I have met Berkowitz many times, and I don't find him terrifying. Rather, the real terror lies in the national expanse of the Son of Sam and related cases, and in the knowledge that many of those involved, including masterminds, are still walking the streets today.

That is the bottom line. But the opening line - although no one knew it then - was written in blood more than two decades ago, on a serene university campus in California.













At 11 P.M. on October 12, 1974, the lush, sprawling campus of Stanford University was alive with the sounds of Saturday night. From scattered pockets of partying, exuberant bursts of harmony, laughter and the thump, thump, thump of reverberant bass guitars drifted from dormitory windows and doorways as the student population unwound from a week's worth of classes, study and football fever.

The love affair with big-time sports was enjoying a resurgence at the university, long known primarily as a bastion of academic excellence. But Jim Plunkett's Stanford Indians had ridden a dark horse out of nowhere to upset the world in the Rose Bowl game on New Year's Day of '71. Four seasons later, the pride still burned with the memory, and the fervor lingered yet on autumn Saturdays.

And although it was mid-October, Columbus Day - a time of smoldering dry leaves and ripening pumpkins in the northern reaches of the country - it was a clear, pleasant evening in Palo Alto. A light breeze gently rattled the gum trees and palms that studded the campus and bore the musical merriment from one distant corner of the sparkling complex to the other.

There were many such nights in the friendly climate of California's Silicon Valley, which nestled some forty miles to the south and east of San Francisco. The Valley's nickname, and the whole of Santa Clara County, which enveloped it, spoke of tomorrow, progress and affluence.

The general vicinity of Palo Alto, including nearby San Jose, was home to a considerable number of high-technology corporations - such as IBM - which had erected laboratories or development centers for the manufacture of advanced computer circuitry. Silicon is a nonmetallic element critical to the production of semiconductors: hence the Valley's label.

And since Stanford graduates were harvested annually by the area's corporate residents, the school functioned as an integral component of a community that was science- and academia-oriented, a domicile of the prosperous and an enclave of both the scholar and the pragmatic business executive. Although Stanford and other local institutions were regarded as hallmarks of philosophical liberalism, the Valley itself was considered a refuge of conservative mores and politics - especially when compared with its raucous northerly neighbor, San Francisco, or to that hissing viper vat located a more reassuring 350 miles to the south - Los Angeles.

To Valley citizens, nearby Frisco was the site of 1967's "Summer of Love" - and the haven of homosexuals, flower children, unwashed hippies, freaked-out bikers and Jefferson Airplane acid-drooling rock. It was a breeding ground of occult deviance and satanism, and the harborer of the notorious North Beach section, where Carol Doda and friends would shake their booties and other such things nightly on the sweaty stages of Big Al's and the Condor Club.



But to nineteen-year-old Bruce Perry, studying this October night away in a campus apartment at Stanford, those activities were as foreign as the Latin he'd soon have to master as a diligent second-year pre-med student.

Around him, out of doors, the sounds of Saturday were faint in the wind, and only remotely tempting. Bruce Perry was dedicated to his work, and a weekend with Hippocrates was as normal to him as was an evening with Led Zeppelin to some of his less industrious counterparts across the campus.

Not that Bruce was always serious. He did have his moments. But for the immediate future, they seemed as long ago and far away as his hometown of Bismarck, North Dakota.

By all accounts, Bruce Perry was an all-American boy from an all-American town whose family nurtured him with a Norman Rockwell Americana upbringing. The son of a comfortably set dentist, Dr. Duncan Perry, the handsome, curly-haired Bruce was a standout in both the classroom and sports in Bismarck. His days at Bismarck High School had been alive and full.

When he graduated in 1973, he was the honored holder of a smattering of track and field records in North Dakota - including the state mark for the quarter-mile. He was popular, deeply religious, and participated in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, both in school and at summer camps. In short, Bruce was a sure-shot pick to succeed in the world. And even more than that, since August 17, 1974, Bruce was a married man.

His young, blond bride, also nineteen, also from Bismarck, and also immersed in religious causes, was his high school sweetheart, the former Arlis Dykema. As Bruce labored over his assignments that October night, Arlis busied herself around the small but cozy corner apartment the couple shared on the second floor of the university's Quillen Hall, a residence for married students.

As it neared eleven-thirty, Arlis gathered up some letters to Bismarck family and friends and told Bruce she was going out to mail them. Bruce shrugged at his bride, then decided to pack up his work and get outside for a while himself. He realized Arlis was showing signs of restlessness and that he hadn't done very much to liven up her evening.



Bruce was still adapting to the idea of being married. Marriage was adjustment, his parents advised, and was subject to growing pains. Not that he didn't love Arlis. He was happy she was with him and they shared long hours of contentment and caring. In many respects, they complemented each other. But Bruce regretted that he'd seen so little of his fiancée the previous year. He had been alone at Stanford while Arlis remained in Bismarck, working with her religious friends, attending Bismarck Junior College and squirreling money away for their wedding.

During their months apart, the couple maintained regular contact, but it wasn't the same as being together. People can grow in any number of ways in the year after high school.

Bruce took the concept of traditional marriage to heart; his religious background wouldn't have permitted otherwise. Arlis, he was confident, felt the same as he did. Life would be good, Bruce believed, with children and a comfortable home. But first they had to survive Stanford and cope with the added demands that came with preparation for a career in medicine or dentistry. Bruce had a high hill to climb, and he knew it. But he was optimistic he'd make it, and Arlis would be there to help him.

Arlis herself was an Everyman's vision of Middle America. She was a studious young woman who'd also served as an enthusiastic cheerleader at Bismarck High for three years. Rounding out her life, she was a devout, practicing Christian who swelled with a religious ardor that was almost a quaint artifact of a simpler, more compassionate past in the U.S.A. of 1974.

A friend to many and confidante of some, Arlis was a pretty girl; tiny, almost fragile in stature. She had a quick smile, an inquisitive, probing nature and that overriding passion for the lections of the Lord.

Always in motion, she passed some of her idle hours at Stanford with frequent, long walks around the campus - sometimes jogging to release her pent-up energy. She had shoulder-length, wavy blond hair, wore glasses and - being fallible - was possessed of an occasional streak of self-righteousness that could grate on the nerves of those less enthralled with the Holy Word than she was. And more than anything else, religion seemed to dominate Arlis' life.

Like her future husband, Arlis belonged to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in Bismarck. She'd also joined Young Life, a student evangelical society whose members taught Sunday school, studied the Bible and strove to spread the Message to the masses. Included among those masses was the North Dakota drug culture.

And since Arlis didn't employ halfway measures when it came to her faith, she was an outgoing, insistent missionary of God.

Maybe it was there, in that consequential corner of her being, that she angered the devil.



There had been a boy in her life before Bruce, friends say, but they don't reveal much about him. Only that it was puppy love-hearts and flowers long consigned to a scrapbook by the time she and Bruce fell in love.

Their bond was their religion. Slowly at first, they were drawn together, and then the romance gathered steam. There was a period of dating and courtship; a year of long-distance engagement while Bruce scrambled through his freshman year at Stanford; and finally a picture-book wedding ceremony held at the Bismarck Reformed Church on August 17, 1974.

Then, after a week's honeymoon at a rustic cabin owned by Arlis' parents, it was back to business as the new Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Perry drove west and settled into their California home as September began.

Several weeks later, on October 1, one of the couple's major concerns evaporated when Arlis was hired as a receptionist at a Palo Alto law firm, where she listed her part-time experience at the Bismarck dental office of Duncan Perry as a reference.

The supplemental income would ease the financial strain, and Arlis also now had a way to fill her days while Bruce attended classes. In her free time, she continued to explore the expansive campus, often stopping to pray at the large, decorative Stanford Memorial Church in the quadrangle. Bruce, when his schedule allowed, would accompany her there.



Whether or not Arlis was slightly bored is impossible to determine. But she did miss her Bismarck family and friends. She was young, not accustomed to being away from home, and Bruce's responsibilities - which included tutoring freshmen in math - occupied much of his time.

In one letter to North Dakota she lamented: "Friends are hard to find here. Many times I've been tempted to go knock on doors asking if anybody needs a friend. But I guess we just have to appreciate each other and trust the Lord for new friends, too."

Arlis also discovered pronounced lifestyle differences between the Dakotas and California. "Nobody [here] is very personal at all," she wrote. "They don't even say hello when you ride up the elevator with them."

Arlis was indeed a long way from home.

The Dakotas are ruggedly beautiful in their simplicity and remoteness. Ironically, while that inaccessibility has helped maintain a low crime rate, it has also contributed to the lawbreaking that does exist. Young people everywhere tinker with drugs and liquor, but in North Dakota experimentation sometimes lingers on because the state, and others like it, are devoid of the diversions available in more populous areas with major metropolitan centers. In short, some people can become burdened by too many "wide open spaces" for too long a time.

On the other hand, the Dakotas have been spared the incredible amount of crime which bubbles in the big cities, where festering ghettos and teeming industrial districts provide a conducive backdrop for organized mayhem of every variation, major-league narcotics dealing, murder, rape and mugging.

This new and rapid-paced world was overwhelming to Arlis, who, like so many before her, suddenly found herself a small fish in a sizable pond. Bruce Perry empathized with his wife's adjustment phase, having endured it himself a year earlier. Sensing her mood that Saturday night, he decided to join her on the walk to the mailbox.



At about 11:30 P.M., apparently in good spirits, the young couple strolled from the high-rise campus apartment building. Engrossed in conversation, they ambled across the school grounds and suddenly began to argue. The reported subject was minor; ludicrous, in fact, unless other matters were occupying one's mind at the time. A tire on their car was slowly losing air, and each thought the other should have filled it.

The bickering continued as they strode in the direction of the Memorial Church, which loomed before them in the distance. It was about 11:40 P.M.

Ostensibly miffed at Bruce, Arlis halted abruptly, faced him and emphatically stated that she wanted to be alone. She told her husband she intended to visit the church and would see him later at the apartment, which was about a half mile away.

Equally annoyed, Bruce turned from his wife and hastened back across the campus, oblivious to the sounds of revelry wafting around him as he walked. He didn't notice whether anyone was watching him.

At approximately 11:50 P.M., Arlis Perry pulled open the massive outer doors of Stanford Memorial and entered the foyer, where another set of portals offered access to the main body of the church.

Stanford Memorial is ornate and somewhat imposing. It is a decorous, breathtaking edifice, and as Arlis stepped inside she saw a veritable rainbow of scarlet and gold. There were rich velvet tapestries of red and purple; and montages, sculptures and candelabra of immaculately polished, glistening gold. Above it all was a magnificent golden dome.

In front of Arlis, and elevated several steps from the floor of the church, was the main altar. To either side were rounded alcoves which contained additional pews, all angled to face the altar. In rough outline form, the building resembled a thick, three-leafed clover, with the altar alcove in the center.



The church, as always, would be shuttered at midnight by a campus security guard. And since it was nearly twelve, only two other worshippers sat in a silent vigil of prayer. These young people, who occupied a pew to the right of the center aisle in the rear of the church, noticed Arlis in the subdued perimeter lighting as she softly padded down the main aisle, eased her way into one of the front rows on the left and knelt to pray.

For her nocturnal visit, Arlis dispensed with formality. She wore a dark brown jacket, a blouse, blue jeans and a pair of beige wedge-heeled shoes.

Bruce Perry, having returned to Quillen Hall, was still fidgety about the altercation with his wife. He probably gave no thought to the futility of mailing letters late on a Saturday night - Arlis' stated reason for wanting to go out. With no Sunday mail collection at Stanford, the letters wouldn't be processed until Monday morning.

It is also unlikely he considered the possibility that Arlis might have wished to go out alone and used the letters as an excuse for doing so. And he probably didn't reflect on how their argument grew so out of proportion - resulting in Arlis' continuing to the church by herself. But there was no reason for Bruce Perry to have been analyzing such thoughts as he paced the apartment and worked out his irritation.

Back in the church, as Arlis meditated at midnight, the two worshippers behind her rose to leave. It was now closing time. Looking over their shoulders as they departed, they saw that Arlis hadn't moved from her pew. She was now alone in the cavernous house of worship.

Outside, a passerby spotted a young man who was about to enter the building. He was casually dressed, and had sandy-colored hair which was parted on the left. He was of medium build and wore a royal blue short-sleeved shirt. He appeared to be around twenty-three to twenty-five years of age. For some reason, the witness noted the man wasn't wearing a watch.



Security guard Steve Crawford was a few minutes behind schedule when, at 12:10 A.M., he stood in the rear of the church, looked for stragglers and saw none. There was no sign of Arlis or the sandy-haired stranger. Crawford then spoke aloud into the apparently empty, dimly lit church: "We're closing for the night. The church is being locked for the night now. If anyone is here, you'll have to leave."

He was answered by his echo rebounding off the muted statues and shadowed walls and rolling slowly back to him. Satisfied, Crawford shut the doors, locked them and walked away - leaving Arlis Perry alone with the devil. In the house of God.

Almost certainly, she was already in Satan's grasp when Crawford voiced his notification. From wherever she was being hidden, she would have heard him calling out, listened to the great portals clanging shut and heard her heart pounding in the deathly stillness that followed.

But she probably never believed she wouldn't leave the church alive.



At about that moment, Bruce Perry was nervous. He disdained arguing over trivia. He was unhappy that his bride was alone somewhere on the campus after midnight, and he didn't take to cooling his heels waiting for her in the apartment.

So he hurriedy set off to rendezvous with Arlis. If the church was closed, their paths would cross on the way. But they didn't - and Bruce found himself puzzled and slightly concerned. It was now 12:15 A.M., and he stared at the front of the darkened church. The doors were locked. And where was Arlis? He walked around to a side entrance, which was also secured, and then circled to the rear of the building. But she wasn't there either. Bruce then decided to comb the campus; and left.

At about this time, a passerby thought he discerned some noise inside the church, in the vicinity of the choir loft. But he was uncertain, and kept walking.

Bruce's tour of the campus was futile. Growing increasingly anxious, he abandoned his search and returned to Quillen Hall. But Arlis wasn't there. He didn't think his wife had been that upset. And since she didn't know anyone at Stanford yet, she couldn't have just dropped in on some party. No, Bruce reasoned, she must be walking it off, calming herself down before coming home. And so Bruce Perry waited and worried.

At 2 A.M., on his next series of rounds, security guard Steve Crawford again checked the church. He tried all the doors and assured himself they were locked; he said later that he also walked through the building - as he was supposed to - and saw and heard nothing.

Across the campus Bruce Perry was in a quandary. At 3 A.M., he finally had enough and reached for the telephone. He dialed the Stanford security police and reported his wife missing, telling the dispatcher Arlis might have fallen asleep in the church and been locked in at midnight.

Responding to the call, Stanford officers went to the church. They would later say they examined its outer doors and found them locked. Unfortunately, that action was irrelevant. The police didn't go inside, which was the only way to learn if someone was indeed asleep in one of the pews. If they had, and if their statements and Crawford's account are correct, they would have met the killer.

This is so because, when Crawford next returned to the church at 5:30 A.M., a door on the right side was open - forced from the inside. His discovery suggested that someone broke out of the church after the 3 A.M. visit by the Stanford officers, which is possible but unlikely.

What is more credible is that Crawford, despite his statement, never entered the building at 2 A.M. and that the Stanford police didn't check all the doors an hour later. The time of Arlis' death would be fixed at approximately midnight, and it is improbable the killer or killers loitered in the church for three hours afterwards.

But now, at five-thirty, alerted by the forced side door, Crawford cautiously entered the chapel. In the faint light, he quickly appraised the main altar to determine if anything valuable had been stolen. But nothing appeared to be disturbed, and so Crawford began a slow, wary walk around the perimeter aisle, peering apprehensively into the pews. It was then he discovered the missing Arlis Perry.

He wished he hadn't.