How Rodney Alcala evaded justice before incriminating evidence found
- Rodney Alcala escaped two death sentences before being nailed down in 2010
- He was linked to over 130 murders and assaults of women and children
- He was nicknamed the Dating Game Killer after appearing on the show in 1978
At the time of Rodney Alcala’s death in 2021, he had been linked to over 130 assaults of women and children – but how did he get away with his grisly crimes for so long?
The smooth-talking charismatic photographer was nicknamed the Dating Game Killer due to his appearance as a bachelor on the TV show of the same name in 1978.
However, unbeknownst to cast and crew of The Dating Game, he had already murdered two women and brutally raped an eight-year-old girl.
Alcala died of natural causes in June 2021 at aged 77 in a California hospital while awaiting a death sentence at Corcoran State Prison.
But how did he get way with the crimes for so long and how did police find him in the end? Here, FEMAIL reveals all ahead of an upcoming episode of Surviving a Serial Killer that covers the case.
Alcala, who got his haunting moniker after appearing on the game show in 1978, would later be convicted of killing seven women in the 1970s – with five murders in California and two in New York
In 1978, Alcala appeared on hit game show The Dating Game with his trademark long hair cascading onto his oversized disco shirt collar and his answers charming, funny and steeped in cheeky innuendo
Who was Rodney Alcala?
Rodney Alcala was born in 1943 in San Antonio, Texas, before moving to Los Angeles when he was 11.
When he was eight, he moved to Mexico with his family but his father abandoned the family three years later before his mother moved Alcala and his three sisters to suburban Los Angeles.
He joined the army when he was 17, but was discharged in 1964 after allegations of sexual misconduct and he suffered a nervous breakdown, as per CBS and ABC News.
He enrolled at California State University, and later transferred then graduated from UCLA with a fine arts degree in 1968.
Alcala went on to enroll in NYU to study film under Roman Polanski using the pseudonym ‘John Berger.’
Touting himself as a professional fashion photographer, Alcala, who is said to have an IQ above 160, convinced hundreds of young men and women to pose naked for him for his ‘portfolio.’
He would also often lure in his murder victims the same way, before strangling them until they passed out. When they would reawaken, he would begin torturing them by raping and beating them within an inch of their lives.
Alcala would then kill them, often by strangulation, then rearrange their limbs into explicit positions and photograph their naked bodies as well as biting at their flesh.
Alcala died of natural causes in June 2021 at aged 77 in a California hospital while he was awaiting a death sentence at Corcoran State Prison
Alcala would often lure in his murder victims the same way, before strangling them until they passed out. When they would reawaken, he would begin torturing them by raping and beating them within an inch of their lives
What were Rodney Alcala’s crimes and how did he evade capture?
Alcala would later be convicted of killing seven women in the 1970s – with five murders in California and two in New York.
In August 1968, Alcala brutally attacked 16-year-old Morgan Rowan his Hollywood home in LA, after locking the teen inside a bedroom by placing a metal bar across the doorframe.
In a documentary about the ordeal, called Surviving a Serial Killer, Morgan admitted she didn’t tell her parents about to attack or report it.
Morgan recalled: ‘He took his belt off and wrapped it around his fist. I tried to be brave and I said, “You know, you can’t keep me here,” and he just punched me between my eyes as hard as he could.’
Alcala then raped Morgan, who believes he was’ definitely’ going to kill her, until her friends started trying to get into the bedroom, eventually breaking a window.
‘There is no doubt in my mind that he was going to kill me,’ she said of the viscous attack.
Just months later Alcala was caught committing another depraved crime when an eyewitness called police after seeing him lure an eight-year-old girl named Tali Shapiro into the same Hollywood apartment where Morgan had been attacked.
When police arrived, they found Tali alive but she had been raped, brutally beaten with a steel bar and was laying in a pool of her own blood.
Morgan Rowan was just 16 years old when she was brutally beaten and raped by Alcala during a party at his Hollywood home in 1968 – before he tried to strangle her to death
Other of Alcala’s victims included 19-year-old Jill Barcomb (pictured) whose body was found at the side of a road in Los Angeles in 1977
The truth quickly caught up with him as Alcala was eventually detained for the final time in 1979 after murdering 12-year-old Robin Samsoe (pictured)
The truth quickly caught up with him as Alcala was eventually detained for the final time in 1979 after murdering 12-year-old Robin Samsoe (pictured)
In June 1971, 23-year-old TWA flight attendant Cornelia Michel Crilley was found raped and strangled in her Manhattan apartment. Her death would go unsolved until 2011 when DNA evidence linked Alcala to the killing.
Alcala was arrested within months of the murder after children at a New Hampshire arts camp where he was working as a counselor recognized his image on a wanted poster.
He was extradited back to California to face trial for attempted murder, but Tali’s parents refused to let the girl testify at trial and he later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of assault, securing parole after just 17 months in 1974.
But his spree would not stop and he continued following his release.
In 1980, Alcala was tried and convicted for kidnapping, raping and murdering Robin – before being sentenced to death.
He appealed his case and won a new trial. He was later tried and convicted again, receiving a death sentence for a second time.
Alcala launched a second successful appeal in 2001 and went for trial a third time.
In 2010, an Orange County jury convicted Alcala on five counts of first-degree murder, for which he was sentenced to death.
Alcala was given an another 25 years in 2013 after he pled guilty to two murders in New York, and was charged again in 2016 after DNA evidence connected him to the 1977 death of a 28-year-old woman.
According to the Associated Press, Alcala may have killed up to 130 people across the country.
Why was he called The Dating Game Killer?
In 1978, Alcala appeared on hit game show The Dating Game with his trademark long hair cascading onto his oversized disco shirt collar and his answers charming, funny and steeped in cheeky innuendo.
The handsome then 35-year-old made light work of convincing his fellow contestant behind the screen to pick him as a potential romantic partner.
The handsome then 35-year-old made light work of convincing his fellow contestant behind the screen to pick him as a potential romantic partner when he appeared on The Dating Game in 1978
But unbeknown to her, the show’s producers and the millions of viewers tuned in at home, the smiling photographer had already murdered two women, and would go on to rape and mutilate four more as well as a 12-year-old girl.
In a moment of spine-chilling foreboding, Alcala clinches the show by telling her: ‘We’re going to have a great time together, Cheryl.’
How was Rodney Alcala finally caught?
The FBI put Rodney Alcala on its Most Wanted List in 1969, but finding Alcala was not easy.
The truth quickly caught up with him as Alcala was eventually detained for the final time in 1979 after murdering 12-year-old Robin Samsoe.
Alcala reportedly encountered blonde-haired Samsoe on the beach in Los Angeles with her friend, Bridget Wilvurt, and approached them.
Bridget later explained: ‘He honed in on us, like a shark in the water… and he goes, “Can I take your girls’ pictures?”… And Robin goes, “Sure.”‘
Alcala initially left the girls alone but Robin later rode off on her bike to a ballet studio where she was due for practice.
She never turned up and no one ever saw her alive again. Just 12 days after she was abducted her ‘animal-ravaged’ body was found in the foothills of Sierra Madre with a knife laying next to her.
Police issued a sketch which helped to identify Alcala as the perpetrator before he was arrested at his mother’s house. He was tried and convicted for kidnapping, raping and murdering Robin – before being sentenced to death in 1980 – only to have it appealed.
During a search, officers found a receipt for a Seattle storage locker rented by Alcala where investigators ultimately found hundreds of pictures of young boys and girls
Alcala (pictured during his third trial in the early 2000s) appealed his murder charge in the death of 12-year-old Robin
During a search, officers found a receipt for a Seattle storage locker rented by Alcala where investigators ultimately found hundreds of pictures of young boys and girls.
Some were released by the Huntington Beach Police Department in 2010 amid fears those depicted may have been additional cold case victims from unsolved disappearances or murders.
Among the photographs were also a series of trophies from some of his victims, such as jewelry, including a pair of gold earrings that matched the description of those worn by Robin on the day she disappeared.
Police believe he could be connected up to 130 killings of women and children but the exact number of his victims is not known.
When prosecutor Matt Murphy took up the case in 2003, he reexamined the evidence found at Alcala’s storage locker for DNA.
Some of the DNA unearthed matched that of four other women who were either found dead or disappeared during the 1970s, confirming Alcala to be a serial killer.
One of the victims was 19-year-old Jill Barcomb, whose body was found at the side of a road in Los Angeles in 1977, having had her face mutilated and with ligatures around her neck.
Alcala was also found to have murdered 27-year-old nurse Georgia Wixted who was found naked an brutalized in Malibu in 1977; Charlotte Lamb, whose body was found strangled and raped in an apartment complex miles away from her home in June 1978; and Jill Parenteau, a 21-year-old college student who was found raped and murdered in her bedroom in June 1979.
As a result, he was convicted of all five murders in 2010, then 66, and sentenced to death.
He later pleaded guilty to two more murders in New York City in 1977 and 1978, and then later charged in 2016 with the murder of Christine Thornton in the summer of 1977. But he denied murdering Thornton.
In June 2021, Alcala died of natural causes aged 77 in a California hospital. He was awaiting a death sentence at Corcoran State Prison.
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