Rodney Alcala was a charming bachelor who competed on a dating show. He turned out to be a serial killer
In 1978, Rodney Alcala appeared on ‘The Dating Game’ where he competed for a date with an eligible bachelorette. It would be another year before anyone would learn that he was one of America’s notorious serial killers, writes Andrea Cavallier
The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday
Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US
Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US
Rodney Alcala was tall, charming and handsome – just what producers were looking for in a bachelor to compete on their dating game show.
His charm and witty banter with the show’s bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw resulted in him winning.
But there was something about his behavior that Bradshaw found unsettling, and she ultimately turned down the date – a decision that may have saved her life.
Alcala was 35 years old when he appeared on The Dating Game in 1978. By then he had already murdered at least five people, including a child and a pregnant woman.
Woman of the Hour, a film directed by and starring Anna Kendrick and inspired by Alcala’s dating show appearance, was released on Netflix on Friday.
Before Alcala’s arrest in 1979, the dating show producers had no idea about his chilling double life as a sadistic serial killer or that he’d served time in prison for sexually assaulting and beating an eight-year-old girl.
Between 1971 and 1979, Alcala killed eight women in New York, California, and Wyoming.
His exact death toll is unknown but investigators believe the man dubbed “The Dating Game Killer” may have killed at least 100 people.
Bradshaw was a drama school teacher when she was selected to be a contestant for The Dating Game in 1978, and chose Alcala.
She initially seemed charmed by Alcala, but after the show, she refused the date, telling contestant coordinator Ellen Metzger, “I can’t go out with this guy. There’s weird vibes that are coming off of him. He’s very strange. I am not comfortable.”
“Something about him,” Bradshaw later said in an interview. “I could tell there was something wrong.”
Who was Rodney Alcala?
Alcala was born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala-Buquor on August 23, 1943, and lived in Mexico before moving to Los Angeles with his family when he was eight years old.
He joined the Army at age 17, but was discharged in 1964 after a nervous breakdown and allegations of sexual misconduct, according to CBS News.
After graduating from the University of California, he attended film school at New York University in 1971.
On September 13, 1978, Alcala appeared on The Dating Game, a show that was heavy on innuendo, where three eligible bachelors compete for a date with a bachelorette.
The host introduced him as a “successful photographer who got his start when his father found him in the darkroom at the age of 13, fully developed.”
When asked by Bradshaw to describe what kind of meal he’d be, he answered, “I’m called ‘The Banana,’ and I look really good... Peel me.”
Before he even went on the show, Alcala had served 34 months in prison for sexually assaulting and beating eight-year-old Tali Shapiro.
But without standardized background checks, producers of the show were unaware of his crime that landed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List.
Alcala was finally arrested in July 1979 for the rape and murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe.
His DNA was found to match evidence in four other Orange County murders.
Victims and convictions
The list of women and girls killed by Alcala is long — and often included brutal violence, rape and stalking. Robin Samsoe, a 12-year-old girl, was walking to ballet class in Huntington Beach in 1979 when Alcala abducted her, according to Huntington Beach Police.
In 2010, Alcala was convicted on five counts of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to death for the killing of Samsoe as well as the 1977 deaths of 18-year-old Jill Barcomb and 27-year-old Georgia Wixted, the 1978 death of 32-year-old Charlotte Lamb, and the 1979 death of 21-year-old Jill Parenteau, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Barcomb was an 18-year-old New York transplant who moved to Los Angeles with aspirations to become a Hollywood actress when she was killed on November 10, 1977, former prosecutor Matt Murphy told A&E True Crime.
“She was found brutally assaulted with multiple ligatures,” he said. “Her face had been smashed in with a rock.”
The same year, Alcala sexually assaulted, tortured and strangled to death Georgia Wixted, a 27-year-old pediatric cancer nurse who had just moved into her own apartment in Los Angeles.
In New York, Alcala was sentenced to 25 years to life in 2012 for the 1970s murders of Cornelia Crilley and Ellen Jane Hover.
In June of 1971, Alcala raped, bit and strangled Cornelia Crilley, a 23-year-old TWA flight attendant, in her Manhattan apartment, according to New York media reports.
At the time, he was a film student at New York University studying under film director and producer Roman Polanski.
Investigators would later learn that Alcala’s job as a photographer gave him easy access to women and girls, including some who were later determined to be his victims.
In 1977, Alcala killed 23-year-old Ellen Jane Hover, an aspiring music conductor who had disappeared after leaving her Manhattan apartment on July 15 of that same year.
A year later, her remains were found on the grounds of the Rockefeller estate in Westchester County, near an area where Alcala often photographed women.
In 2016, Wyoming prosecutors charged Alcala with killing Christine Ruth Thornton, a 28-year-old woman who was six months pregnant when she went missing from her Wyoming ranch in 1977. Her remains were discovered four years later.
Alcala was ultimately sentenced to death in 2010 for the five slayings in California between 1977 and 1979, though authorities estimate he may have killed dozens more people across the country.
Prosecutors said Alcala stalked women like prey and took earrings as trophies from some of his victims.
“You’re talking about a guy who is hunting through Southern California looking for people to kill because he enjoys it,” Orange County, California, prosecutor Matt Murphy said during his trial.
A storage locker of horror
Following Alcala’s conviction, authorities released more than 100 photos of young women and girls that were found in the killer’s storage locker in Seattle in hopes of linking him to other unsolved murders around the country.
Some photos, which were not released, depicted women, men and children in sexually explicit positions, and were believed to have been kept as trophies of Alcala’s crimes.
The photos were uploaded to a Flickr album and Huntington Beach Police Department have asked for people to contact them if they recognize anyone.
On July 24, 2021, Alcala died of natural causes while on death row. He was 77 years old.
When Tali Shapiro, surviving victim, heard the news, she said “the planet is a better place without him, that’s for sure. I’ve moved on with my life, so this doesn’t really affect me. It’s a long time coming, but he’s got his karma.”