SOLVED AFTER 44 YEARS: The Case of Arlis Perry

Hi guys, I'm Bella and welcome back to my channel. I hope everyone is having an amazing day today. Welcome back to another episode of Mystery Monday, except today's

case

isn't a mystery at all. It was re

solved

after 44

years

before we get into today's

case

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Alice Perry was just 19

years

old when she was found murdered and half naked on the altar of Stamford Memorial Church. Her case remained un

solved

. for 44 years until DNA evidence was able to find her killer just two years ago in 2018. Alice Perry was born Alice K Daikoma on February 22, 1955 in Linton, North Dakota, she was the youngest of three children of Marvin and Jean devout Christians who raised their children to be closely involved with the Presbyterian Church. In 1963, the family moved to Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota, which was a small, quiet, isolated town on the eastern banks of the Missouri River. and it was surrounded by forests.

Marvin and Jean owned an automobile company called Diecamus Standard and helped found the Bismarck Reformed Church, later renamed Bismarck Community Church, where Marvin served as elder and Sunday school superintendent. Alice was described as a compassionate and very trusting person. I was a little naive about her. Because he always saw the best in people on the weekends, he taught Sunday school and worked for Young Life, which is a Christian youth organization dedicated to spreading the word of Jesus Christ to teens and young adults to help them develop their faith just as Alice did. a devout christian and her father marvin actually said that she lived a fairly sheltered life and had never left bismarck before attending bismarck high school where she met bruce

perry

, her high school sweetheart, bruce was the second of four children of mother donna and father duncan

perry

, their mother.

She was a housewife and her father was a dentist and she had a fairly comfortable childhood and was a very popular child growing up, both Alice and Bruce were born and raised in a quiet Midwestern town in the United States and by all accounts, two were actually as an all-American couple, Alice was a conservative religious cheerleader who was very kind and very bright and Bruce was an athlete who set many local records in track events and was also very intelligent and was very focused on his studies while planning to attend At Stanford University in 1973, Bruce and Alice graduated from high school and, based on Bruce's athletic performance, he was accepted into Stanford and moved 2,500 miles away to California to attend and enroll as a pre-school student. medicine with a specialization in humans biology alice remained in bismarck attending classes at bismarck junior college and the two decided to maintain a long distance relationship until alice could move to california as well and that year of long distance must have been crazy for them because in 1974 you couldn't just text them or chat with them, you had to contact them with letters and occasionally call the landline and meanwhile Bruce is going through this massive life change, not only has he just moved from his conservative hometown in North Dakota, that's all he's ever had.

He knew this very liberal tech-savvy guy from California, but he also had a lot of work ahead of him as a pre-med student. Alice spent the year keeping busy with classes. She had a job at Duncan Perry's dentist's office, which was owned by Bruce's father. In order to save some money for a big move to California, she was also focusing on a church, working with a group of Christian organizations like Young Life and Fellowship of Christian Athletics, and also spreading the word of the gospel. of christ to non-believers as a missionary in may 1974, when the couple was 19 years old, bruce returned to bismarck and asked alicia to marry him.

The wedding took place on August 17, 1974 at the Bismarck Reformed Church and the following week the two had a small honeymoon in a cabin that Alice's parents owned before leaving for California in September. They moved into Quillen Hall in the hidden town of Stanford, which was a dorm at Stanford University reserved exclusively for married couples. Bruce had a lot of work ahead of him as a sophomore pre-med student at the time, so he spent most of his time there. part of his time studying and in classes and also working because he also had a job to try to support him and his wife Alice.

She spent most of her time on campus as a housewife. In her free time she also went for walks and jogs around campus, which she really loved. She thought the place was very beautiful and she also often visited the Stanford Memorial Church, as I mentioned. Alice had never left Bismarck before, so she was having some trouble making friends in California. She would write to her friends and family in Bismarck and simply tell them that she felt very lonely, a little isolated and bored, especially since Bruce had been gone so often. Most of the time, in a letter, she wrote to a friend in Bismarck and said that it is difficult to find friends here.

Many times I've been tempted to go knock on doors and ask if anyone needs a friend, but I guess we just have to appreciate each other. others and also trusting in the Lord to have new friends, eventually Alice got a job as a receptionist at a law firm and I think this really helped with her loneliness and her boredom and her tone in her letters to her friends and family and to Bismarck really . He changed saying that he loved the weather in California and that after getting his job at the law firm everything seemed to be falling into place.

On the night of October 12, things on the Stampin campus were a little lively, there was a I think it was like a holiday, so there were a lot of small parties and from the main courtyard you could hear a lot of music from different small parties and gatherings in different student halls, it was really nice. That night, Alice had some letters and wanted to walk to the mailbox to send them to her friends and family in Bismarck, around 11:30 p.m. m. Bruce decided to go with her so they could have some quality time together and also because he doesn't really like her walking alone at night, which is fair because you know some men have just made simple, mundane tasks terrifying for women.

Finally, during their walk, the two had a small argument about who put air in one of the cross ties on her car. because it had deflated into a silly little argument that couples tend to get into, but Alice said she wanted to go to church so she could cool off and have some time to herself, so Bruce headed back to the apartment, which Stephen Crawford was the night security guard on duty at the church and said he saw Alice enter around 11:50 p.m. when she arrived there were two other silent worshipers there and they said they saw her enter and they walked to the front pews they entered on the left side of the altar and they knelt to pray, according to these two witnesses she was still deeply in prayer when they left at midnight , the church was supposed to close at midnight, but Crawford was a little late to lock it. she got up, so she got there around 12 10 a.m. m. and she looked in, she didn't see anyone, so she just called and said if there is anyone here, I'm looking, it's time for them to leave, she didn't hear anything.

He returned and closed the church around 12:15 to 12:30 a.m. When Alice still hadn't returned to the apartment, Bruce started to get a little worried, so he decided to head to the church to check on her and see if everything was okay. but when he got there all the doors to the church were closed he decided to go around campus to look for her because there really wasn't anywhere else he could have gone since I mentioned he was having trouble making friends so he didn't have to There was no one she was going to visit and she wasn't the type to just go and participate in some random party that was happening on campus, so he just walked around the main part of campus looking for her, but he saw her.

With no sign of her, he decided to double check her route to her house in hopes of meeting her and when he didn't, he headed back to her apartment to wait for her in hopes that he would return. home soon. He waited for her at the apartment until around 3 a.m., when he finally decided to call the police and report her missing. He told dispatchers that he thought she might have fallen asleep inside the church and then had been locked out since then. , so two police dispatchers went to the church when they got there every day. the doors were locked so they knocked, no one knocked again, nothing seemed suspicious and they just assumed that Bruce and Alice were having a little domestic dispute and she would eventually come home at 5:45am. m., Stephen Crawford, the night watched the security guard who had closed the church just after midnight.

He returned to open it for the day and discovered that one of the doors was already open and the police would later discover that she had actually been forced from inside. When Crawford entered the church he found Alice's body. She perry on the left side of the altar in the front pews where the two witnesses had seen her the night before. She was found naked from the waist down and the jeans she had been wearing were covered by the lower half of her body. She was also found with an ice pick protruding from behind her left ear and the handle of the ice pick was never recovered, so it is assumed that the killer took it, although a small bone in her neck had been broken, it was determined that the ice The election was the cause of his death, his arms were crossed over his chest and his legs were spread.

She had been sexually assaulted with one of the altar candles that was a meter long and was found still inside her. Her blouse had been torn and torn. Hers An ultra candle was pressed between her breasts with his arms crossed over her. It was also theorized, from the marks on her body, that she had been beaten and strangled, although there was no sign of a struggle, near her body was a pillow to kneel on that had semen on it. on it and there was also a latent palm print found on one of the candles almost immediately after the discovery, investigators headed to Bruce and Alice's apartment to inform Bruce what had happened and also to question him.

In most investigations, those closest to the victim are always questioned first and in this case, considering they had only moved to California just a few weeks ago, Bruce was actually the only person Alice knew when the police arrived. to the apartment, they were greeted at the door by Bruce who was covered in blood, so it was definitely not the best time for Bruce. Bruce claims that he gets chronic nose bleeds whenever he gets stressed and I'm sure the fact that his wife was Being out all night would be very stressful, but it definitely wasn't the best first impression when the police came to his house to inform him of her murder. wife and you are covered in blood, so because of this the investigators didn't actually tell him that alice had been murdered, they said they wanted him to come to the station and answer some questions and officially file amissing person report and when he got there they questioned him for two hours, they kept presenting him with different scenarios and he got very angry when they presented scenarios that suggested that Alice was cheating on him and he found out or that Alice was pregnant and he was not happy about it .

Bruce provided it to him voluntarily. his fingerprints and also voluntarily took a polygraph test and as I'm sure you all know polygraph tests are not reliable they should always be taken with a grain of salt blah blah blah take a shot every time I say that . of my videos, but back then, in 1974, they didn't have all the capabilities that we have now regarding DNA testing and investigations, so polygraphs were almost taken as a bible, the police passed, they trusted that He was no longer a suspect and was finally told that his wife had been murdered the next morning.

At 11 a.m., the Sunday service was still going on at Stanford Memorial Church, however, the congregation filled with grieving journalists and students. It was moved to the front yard so they could preserve the crime scene inside. Of the church, the dean of Stamford Chapel, the Reverend Hamilton Kelly, who was holding the Sunday service, had seen the crime scene beforehand and said he believed it was symbolic, as if it were part of a satanic ritual. , but said that he was not going to allow evil to triumph and that religious services would continue while normal investigations continued and the police decided to question anyone who may have been in the vicinity of the church on the night of the murder.

They questioned Bruce even though At this point they ruled him out as a suspect and he said that nothing on his walk seemed suspicious, there didn't seem to be anyone following them or anything. A passerby who had been outside the church around midnight said he had seen a sandy blonde man with his hair parted on the side enter the church around that time. The man was said to be around 25 years old and of a moderately robust build. The FBI profiled Alice's killer. They said he was probably a loner probably with a military background between 17 and 22 years old and that he probably kept a diary and possessions from the murders as trophies.

The police were able to determine that Alice had been murdered around midnight, but that she had then been sexually assaulted with the candles, this would mean that when Crawford returned around 12 10 to ask for the church to be closed, she was probably with her perpetrator. and that he had forced Alice to remain silent. This theory also aligned with what another witness said at some point between 12:15 and 12:30 one witness said that they had passed by the church and that they heard a strange sound coming from inside the church and stopped to listen. but they didn't hear anything else so they just thought they had imagined it and kept walking crawford said he did a sweep of the church around 2am and we know for sure that the police did a sweep of the outside of the church around 3am When Bruce called them to report her missing during both searches, all the doors to the church were reported locked, so the killer kept the body from 12 to 3 a.m. and somehow managed to hide the body at 2 a.m. when Crawford swept and then at 3 a.m.

They listened to the police and then after the police left. They broke in through the side door which was discovered to have been forced from the inside or Crawford was lying because I mean it just doesn't make sense or he was there torturing her for about three hours and somehow managed to hide and Alice when Crawford made a sweep at 2 am I don't know, I think it's more likely that Crawford was lying about his 2am raid just to hide his negligence due to his ability to gain access to the building. crawford was actually considered a suspect, whatever he was. ruled out because he passed a polygraph test and his hand did not match the latent palm print found on the candle.

The Rev. Robert Hamilton Kelly, dean of Stanford's chapel, raised suspicions since he also had access to the building but also passed a polygraph test and his handprint did not match the one on the candle. Police compared the handprint on the candle to more than a hundred suspects, but never found a match. It was determined that seven people had visited the church on the night of Alice's murder, including Alice herself. Six of these people were determined to have been the killer, all but one could not identify which one was the sandy blonde boss. A few days after the murder, on October 15, there was a memorial for Alicia at Stanford Memorial Church and I don't know anything about it.

You, but I feel like they probably could have chosen a better location for the memorial because those who knew Bruce and his family sat just a few feet from where her body was found. One of Alice's coworkers from the law firm also attended the memorial. and he said that when she got there and saw Bruce, he actually had no idea it was Bruce until the memorial service, he thought Bruce was someone completely different. Alice had only been working at the law firm for two weeks at the time she went. murdered and that's why she didn't really want Bruce to come visit her because she wanted to establish herself as a good worker and a valuable employee before she started bringing people and personal business into the company, so even though Bruce never visited her at work the day before his murder, another man actually did it, he was in his early 20s, had sandy blonde hair, was about 5'10 and had a more athletic build, so the coworker just assumed he was Bruce, the conversation said. between Alice and this man lasted about 15 minutes and she seemed pretty serious in nature and when Alice came back she seemed pretty upset so he didn't push and just assumed it was Bruce and never found out that it wasn't him now.

The description of the guy is pretty generic, esp. for the area he was in, like the athletically built 510 sandy blonde hair guy, like there wasn't much to go off of, but just the fact that the police didn't even try to find the guy, I mean. I feel like it's something you should try to look into a little more, especially considering there was a signing of a similar description in the church around the time Alice was murdered. There was very little follow up on this lead, but Bruce was asked. If he knew anything about this, he said no, he'd never heard of it, he has no idea who this guy was and it seems like something Alice probably wouldn't tell him because it seems like something she thought he might On October 18, the Alice's body was returned to Bismarck and another memorial was held for her at the Bismarck Reformed Church, where she and Bruce had been married just two months before she was buried in a local plot, but less than two weeks later.

Her temporary headstone at her burial site was stolen and was the only one in the cemetery that had been stolen. This definitely sparked some rumors. Many people thought that the murderer was from Bismarck and that perhaps they followed her to California to kill her. She returned to Bismarck and stole the tombstone as another of her trophies, especially considering that detectives had revealed information that two of her personal possessions had been stolen from her body when she was murdered. Bruce's parents actually fueled these rumors by saying that during the year that Bruce and Alice were making long distance calls that Alice and a friend had gone to Mandan, which is just a neighboring town to Bismarck in North Dakota and the Perrys.

They claimed that the two were trying to convert members of a local Satanic cult to Christianity as part of their work with Young Life. The cult was known as the Doomsday Church and were associated with Scientology and Satanism and were known that members carried out rituals in parks and caves in bismarck the police mostly dismissed this theory because it couldn't be confirmed that alice had ever visited this cult and the murder didn't really seem to have any satanic similarity to it, just the fact that it occurred in a church, even the Reverend Hamilton Kelly recanted his statements about the murder possibly having satanic or ritual connections, but despite all this, this theory or rumor actually stuck and grew as the time went by.

At the time, there were reports that when Alice's body was found, her knees were bent and her ankles were together in a diamond or pentagram shape, others have said that her jeans were sagging over her lower half in a way that symbolized the Freemasons. . Investigators disputed these claims and said that, in fact, her legs were straight. They were not diamond or pentagram shaped as so many people incorrectly believed in 1987, 13 years later. the murder a book titled the ultimate evil written by maury terry opened this theory once again murray spoke about the perry rumors and criticized investigators for dismissing links between alice and the church from the doomsday process claimed that the man with whom Alice was seen arguing with a co-worker the day before her murder; he was a cult member who had followed her to California.

She also claims that Alice may have gotten into an argument with Bruce the night of her murder so they could have some time alone. In his book he further points out a series of caves behind Bismarck University which he said were used by the Process Church for rituals and then a group of locals went to see these caves and the caves subsequently had to be closed due to the influx. of visitors, which all the visitors thought was very sketchy and meant that there were actually rituals inside these caves. The book exploded at this point and all local bookstores sold out of the book.

The library for years had a waiting list. of over 50 people and had to reduce the time people could check out this book due to the waiting list. Maury Terry himself traveled to Bismarck to discuss the book and sold out this 1000 seat venue and after it was sold out there was still like a line around the block of people wanting to see it so at the last minute they changed the venue to be able to accommodate all the people who were so interested in hearing about his theories in his book. Murray sheds light on a man named david berkowitz and berkowitz is infamously known as son of sam due to his murder spree that took place in new york city between 1976 and 77. he murdered six people, injured seven others and then, When he was arrested, he claimed that his neighbor's dog had given him orders to commit the crimes.

He was found to be mentally competent enough to stand trial and was sentenced to six life sentences for the crimes. After his arrest, he earned the attention for writing letters to authorities, and four years after Alice's murder in 1978, he sent one of these letters to Alice's home state of North Dakota, claiming that the Doomsday Church hired a hitman to kill her after that she tried to convert them to Christianity. He claimed that the cult that killed Alice was nationwide and that they had carried out multiple different murders across the country and he knew this because she was part of the cult.

He also tried to say that Charles Manson and Otis Tool were also part of the cult and on October 23, 1979 he sent an officer from North Dakota. a book on satanism in which alice perry had written hunted, stalked and murdered followed to the university of california stanford two detectives from the santa clara sheriff's department traveled to new york to question him about these claims, but after 30 minutes of the interview He interrupted her. He refused to talk to them anymore, saying he was afraid that people in prison would think he was a snitch. The police determined that he had nothing of value and that he was simply doing this as another publicity stunt to promote his 15 minutes of fame.

I guess you could say that some people speculated that the crime was not planned at all and was just an opportunistic murder. Some say that maybe there was someone there who was taking refuge or wanted to desecrate the church and was there acting sketchy, so Alice decided. to confront him, which was when they had a physical altercation, they speculate that when Crawford arrived at 12:10 to close, the killer had put her hand over Alice's mouth to keep her from making noise or had threatened her with the ice pick. Theorists also linked Alice's case to the murders of Leslie Purlove and Janet Taylor, as all three women were murdered in Stanford.

In the Alice and Leslie cases, witnesses came forward who testified that they had seen a blonde man at both crime scenes and that all three murders were believed to have been carried out by a sexual psychopath. However, the three crimes had notable differences, such as the fact that Alice was killed with a gun, while Janet and Leslie were killed by strangulation with theirown clothes or by the hands of the murderer. Janet and Leslie's crimes were also considered low risk as they occur in isolated areas without much chance of being caught. However, Alice's murder was much higher because it occurred in a church that was in the middle of a quadrant where many people were still walking with friends and having parties on campus.

There was also a night watchman who often did sweeps in the church. every two hours and it was around the time I was supposed to come and lock it, which is a very high risk. Ted Bundy was also interviewed in relation to Alice's murder and if you somehow don't know who Ted Bundy is, he is one of the most infamous sexual sadistic murderers and confessed to 30 murders, however it has always been believed that the number real was greater in several of Bundy's crimes. were committed on college campuses and he visited California frequently between 1973 and '74. In the end, although he was ruled out as a suspect since he had an airtight alibi for the night of Alice's murder in June 2016, the New York Post reported that a man from A 65 year old man named Brian McCracken had come forward claiming he was at Stanford Memorial Church the night of the murder.

He stated that he was walking through the church around midnight when he heard flute music coming from inside and decided to check it out and when he entered the church he saw a skinny young white man who was wearing a light colored afro wig and was playing the flute and He said he recognized that this man from the Stanford marching band accompanying him was a woman lying naked on the altar with candles around her and drew striking similarities to Alice apparently McCracken thought they were playing some kind of game and left without think a lot about it.

He actually didn't realize that he had seen this the same night of Alice's murder until 2011, so he never reported it. to the police until 2011. Then two detectives went and located the flautist and they wanted to interview him under the pretext of being reporters and they wanted to ask him about his music career in their interview, the man actually mentioned the light blonde afro wig, so that guy confirmed Brian's story that he had seen this guy and that he was wearing this afro wig, however, the Santa Clara sheriff's department came out and publicly stated that he was not being considered a person of interest as DNA testing progressed Over the years when police routinely went back and re-analyzed things in the case until they finally made their breakthrough in 2016, they located a DNA profile of an unknown man on Alice's jeans that she had been wearing the night she was murdered. for the next two years.

He checked and re-interviewed everyone who was in the vicinity of the church that night and took DNA samples from each one, eliminating everyone except former night security guard Stephen Crawford, who was now 72 years old and not He was in good health. -wise crawford was a veteran of the united states air force and began working for stanford in 1971 in the department of public safety. He worked there as a police officer for a year before a new police chief decided to reorganize the department and 75 of the officers were forced to leave their current positions and instead offered jobs as security guards.

Crawford was one of these officers. He was not happy with this transition and resented Stanford for it and two years later, in 1976, he left to work in security elsewhere. In 1992, he entered into some legal matters. trouble when his ex-wife reported him for forging a fake diploma with a blank certificate that he had stolen from Stanford, then his home was searched and he was charged and arrested for stealing hundreds of more than 300 valuable items from Stanford, including books dating back to In the 16th century, the items he stole amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars, so his theft was considered a serious crime.

He was sentenced to just a six-month suspended sentence with two years of probation. In 1993 he moved to San Jose in California, in an area. Just off Highway 85 he moved to the first floor of the Coronado apartment complex where he had lived in apartment 185 since he started working as an insurance adjuster and lived a quiet life with no more run-ins with the law now that Crawford was Never He was officially ruled out as a suspect even though his palm print did not match the palm print on the candle even though he passed a polygraph test. Detectives always thought there was something suspicious about him, but they never had anything. evidence to arrest him this was until 2018 when they compared his DNA with the DNA that was found on Alice's jeans the night of his murder and it coincided on the morning of Thursday, June 28, 2018, the detectives knocked on the door major. from Stephen Crawford's apartment at 9:05 a.m., Crawford called telling them to give him a minute because he was getting dressed and then after several minutes the detectives decided to come in because they were starting to get a little suspicious about what was going on.

They had a master key that the building manager gave them and when they entered, Crawford was sitting on the bed with a gun, so the detectives backed away moments later they heard a gunshot and when they re-entered the room they found Crawford lying down. on the ground with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, honestly the departure of a coward, how sad that there will never be any kind of justice for this case. He was 74 years old when they found him, so he was able to live a long and full life unlike Alice. and then he never had to suffer any consequences for his actions when they searched his apartment, they found a copy of Maury Terry's most evil book on his desk, they also found a handwritten suicide note that had been written two years earlier when The Detectives They started reinvestigating it, which means he had this planned for some time.

The note was handwritten and quite difficult to read, but it didn't mention Alice. Unfortunately, Alice's father, Marvin, passed away just three and a half months before her discovery without ever receiving closure. Her mother, Jean, was 88 years old at the time and was heartbroken by the fact that her husband would never receive the closure that she so desperately tried to find and that's the end of this case, that's all the information. What do I have for you, thank you. Please watch and I hope to see you in my next video. Good bye guys.