WESTFIELD – A Westfield man will be able to be seen on cable television tonight. Tom Tarpley will be featured on an episode of “The Perfect Murder” on Investigation Discovery. The show will profile the Bedroom Basher, a California serial killer from the 1970s.

Tarpley, who retired as a detective from Orange County, Calif., will explain his involvement in a case involving Dianna and Kevin Green and how it connects to the Bedroom Basher.

Tarpley was contacted by the show to be interviewed as he was the lead detective and recently traveled to New York City for the interview. He retired to Westfield in 2013 after working for Orange County for 20 years.

In 1979, Dianna – who was nine months pregnant – was attacked in her apartment while her husband, Kevin, went out for fast food. When Kevin returned he had found Dianna been attacked and contacted police. According to Tarpley, the Bedroom Basher crimes received “significant press coverage in California” and the rest of the country.

“They were able to save (Dianna), but the baby died so it became a murder case. She was in a coma for a number of weeks and she eventually came out of the coma. She was able, through therapy, to regain some speech; she ultimately identified her husband as the person who attacked her. He was arrested and he was ultimately convicted of the murder of the unborn child,” Tarpley said.

During the same time as Dianna’s attack, the Bedroom Basher serial killer would prey on ground-floor apartments of single, young women. There were several murders that were unsolved at the time when Kevin went to prison. According to Tarpley, about a mile away from where Dianna was attacked, Debora Kennedy was murdered by the Bedroom Basher. While working as a homicide detective, Tarpley was assigned to Kennedy’s cold case.

“You have to flash forward to about 1995, I was a homicide detective in Orange County and I was assigned the Debora Kennedy unsolved murder case. We had forensic evidence from that case and we submitted that to the crime lab and we got a hit. The reason it got a lot of attention, it was one of the first DNA hits in a murder case out there in Orange County,” Tarpley said.

The DNA came back belonging to Gerald Parker, who was scheduled to be released from prison in a few weeks on kidnapping and rape charges. Due to the DNA connection, Tarpley went to interview Parker in jail. While Parker was never a suspect in the Bedroom Basher cases, an Orange County district attorney had doubts about Kevin’s involvement with his wife’s attack.

“The district attorney in the case asked me to go after Parker in the Kevin Green case. I did interview him … and of course at that interview he admitted he was the real killer of Dianna Green’s baby. He felt bad about that because both he and Kevin Green were Marines. … He then admitted to the murders of the five other women as well,” Tarpley said.

Due to Parker’s confession, Kevin was released from prison after serving 16 years in 1996. Parker was charged with the murders as the Bedroom Basher and is currently on death row in California. The episode will air tonight at 10 p.m. Tarpley said the case was a “very complicated case” requiring a lot of hours. He said filming for the show was interesting to see the process of interviewing to the completed finished product. When the show airs, Tarpley has plans to watch the show with his wife, Beth.

“It obviously was a big part of my life for a number of years. I investigated a lot of murders out in California and this is obviously one case that defined my career and will be one that will follow me for a long time. Ultimately, what’s most important is that a man who was going to be released from prison, who killed six women, is never going to get out. That’s the most gratifying thing about the case, he won’t be able to hurt anybody again,” Tarpley said.

“It’s an interesting story and there’s a lot of lessons on there. I learned a lot on the case. Hopefully people will enjoy (the show). It’s a sad story, nothing is good when six people get murdered; it is ultimately a good resolution and the killer is put away. He won’t hurt anybody else again and a person who was wrongfully convicted has been freed. It really shows that the justice system works. It’s an interesting story and I’m certainly glad to be part of it,” Tarpley continued.

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