Rodney Alcala
Encyclopedia
Rodney James Alcala is a convicted rapist
and serial killer
. He was sentenced to death
in California
in 2010 for five murders committed in that state between 1977 and 1979, and is currently under indictment for two additional homicides in New York
. His true victim total remains unknown, and could be much higher. Alcala is also notable for exceptional demonstrations of cruelty: prosecutors say he "toyed" with his victims, strangling them until they lost consciousness, then waiting until they revived, sometimes repeating this process several times before finally killing them.
He is sometimes labeled the "Dating Game Killer" because of his 1978 appearance on the American television show The Dating Game
in the very midst of his murder spree. Police discovered a collection of more than one thousand photographs taken by Alcala, mostly of women and teenaged boys, most of them in sexually explicit poses. They speculate that some of his photographic subjects could be additional victims.
One police detective called him "a killing machine", and criminalists have compared him to Ted Bundy
. A homicide investigator familiar with the evidence speculated that Alcala could have murdered as many as 50 women, while other estimates have run as high as 130.
to Raoul Alcala Buquor and Anna Maria Gutierrez. His father abandoned the family; his mother moved Rodney and his sisters to suburban Los Angeles
when he was about 12.
He joined the United States Army
in 1960, at age 17, where he served as a clerk. In 1964, after what was described as a "nervous breakdown
", he was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder
by a military psychiatrist and discharged on medical grounds. (Other diagnoses later proposed by various psychiatric experts at his trials included narcissistic personality disorder
and borderline personality disorder
.)
-level" IQ, graduated from the UCLA
School of Fine Arts after his medical discharge from the Army, and later attended New York University
using the alias "John Berger", where he studied film under Roman Polanski
.
arts camp for children, using a slightly different alias, "John Burger."
In June 1971, Cornelia Michel Crilley, a 23-year-old Trans World Airlines
flight attendant, was found raped and strangled in her Manhattan
apartment. Her murder would remain unsolved for the next 40 years.
Later that summer, two children at the New Hampshire arts camp noticed Alcala's FBI wanted poster at the post office and notified camp directors. He was arrested and extradited back to California. By then, however, Tali Shapiro's parents had relocated her family to Mexico, and refused to allow her to testify at Alcala's trial. Unable to convict him of rape and attempted murder without their primary witness, prosecutors were forced to permit Alcala to plead guilty to a lesser charge of assault. He was parole
d after 34 months, in 1974, under the "indeterminate sentencing
" program popular at the time, which allowed parole boards to release offenders as soon as they demonstrated evidence of "rehabilitation." Less than two months later, he was arrested after assaulting a 13-year-old girl known in court records as "Julie J.", who had accepted what she thought would be a ride to school. Once again, he was paroled after serving two years of an "indeterminate sentence."
In 1977, after his second release from prison, Alcala's Los Angeles
parole officer permitted him to travel to New York City
. NYPD cold-case investigators now believe that one week after arriving in Manhattan, Alcala killed Ellen Jane Hover, 23, daughter of the owner of Ciro’s, a popular Hollywood nightclub, and goddaughter of Dean Martin
and Sammy Davis, Jr.
Her remains were found buried on the grounds of the Rockefeller Estate
in Westchester County.
In 1978 Alcala worked for a short time at the Los Angeles Times
as a typesetter, and was interviewed by members of the Hillside Strangler
task force as part of their investigation of known sex offenders. Although Alcala was ruled out as the Hillside Strangler, he was arrested and served a brief sentence for marijuana possession.
During this period Alcala also convinced hundreds of young men and women that he was a professional fashion photographer, and photographed them for his "portfolio." A Times co-worker later recalled that Alcala shared his photos with workmates. "I thought it was weird, but I was young, I didn’t know anything," she said. "When I asked why he took the photos, he said their moms asked him to. I remember the girls were naked.” Most of the photos are sexually explicit, and most remain unidentified. Police fear that some of the subjects may be additional cold-case victims.
class on June 20, 1979. Her decomposing body was found 12 days later in the foothills of Los Angeles
. Police subsequently found her earrings in a Seattle locker rented by Alcala.
In 1980 Alcala was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for Samsoe's murder, but his conviction was overturned by the California Supreme Court because jurors had been improperly informed of his prior sex crimes. In 1986, after a second trial virtually identical to the first except for omission of the prior criminal record testimony, he was convicted once again, and again sentenced to death. However, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel overthrew the second conviction, in part because a witness was not allowed to support Alcala's contention that the park ranger who found Samsoe's body had been "hypnotized by police investigators."
, sampled under a new state law (over his objections), matched semen
left at the rape-murder scenes of two women in Los Angeles. Another pair of earrings found in Alcala's storage locker matched the DNA of one of the two victims. Additional evidence, including another cold-case DNA match in 2004, led to Alcala's indictment for the murders of four additional women: Jill Barcomb, 18, a New York runaway found "rolled up like a ball" in a Los Angeles ravine in 1977, and originally thought to have been a victim of the Hillside Strangler; Georgia Wixted, 27, bludgeoned in her Malibu apartment in 1977; Charlotte Lamb, 31, raped and strangled in the laundry room of her El Segundo
apartment complex in 1978; and Jill Parenteau, 21, killed in her Burbank
apartment in 1979. All of the bodies were found "posed...in carefully chosen positions."
For the third trial Alcala elected to act as his own attorney. He took the stand in his own defense, and for five hours played the roles of both interrogator and witness, asking himself questions (addressing himself as "Mr. Alcala" in a deeper-than-normal voice), and then answering them. During this bizarre self-questioning and answering session he told jurors, often in a rambling monotone, that he was at Knott's Berry Farm
when Samsoe was kidnapped. He also claimed that the earrings found in his Seattle locker were his, not Samsoe's. As "proof" he showed the jury a portion of his 1978 appearance on The Dating Game, during which his earrings — if he wore any — were obscured by his shoulder-length hair. He made no significant effort to dispute the other four charges. As part of his closing argument, he played the portion of Arlo Guthrie
's song "Alice's Restaurant
" in which the protagonist tells a psychiatrist he wants to "kill."
After less than two days' deliberation the jury convicted Alcala on all five counts of first-degree murder. A surprise witness during the penalty phase of the trial was Tali Shapiro, Alcala's first known victim. In March 2010, he was sentenced to death for a third time.
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. Between takes you might find him skydiving or motorcycling."
Actor Jed Mills, who competed against Alcala as "Bachelor #2", later described him as a "very strange guy" with "bizarre opinions". He added that Alcala did not wear earrings on the show, as he claimed during his 2010 trial; earrings were not yet a socially acceptable accoutrement for men in 1978. "I had never seen a man with an earring in his ear," he said. "I would have noticed them on him." The third contestant, Armand Chiami, has not made any public comments.
Alcala won a date with "bachelorette" Cheryl Bradshaw, who subsequently refused to go out with him, according to published reports, because she found him "creepy". Criminal profiler
Pat Brown
, noting that Alcala killed Robin Samsoe and at least two other women after his Dating Game appearance, speculated that Bradshaw's rejection might have been an exacerbating factor. "One wonders what that did in his mind," Brown said. "That is something he would not take too well. [Serial killers] don't understand the rejection. They think that something is wrong with that girl: 'She played me. She played hard to get.'"
Alcala remains on death row at San Quentin State Prison
, as a long series of appeals slowly wends its way through the California court system.
indicted him for the murders of Ellen Hover, the Ciro's heiress, and Cornelia Crilley, the TWA flight attendant. Manhattan District Attorney
Cyrus Vance indicated that he intends to extradite Alcala and prosecute him for the two homicides in New York. New York's death penalty statute was ruled unconstitutional by the state's supreme court in 2004.
to meet a man who had offered to photograph her. Her battered, naked body was subsequently found in Marin County near a hiking trail. With no fingerprints or usable DNA, charges will not be filed, but police claim there is sufficient evidence to convince them that Alcala committed the crime.
As of March 2011 the original 120 photos remain posted online, and police continue to solicit the public's help with further identifications.
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
and serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
. He was sentenced to death
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in 2010 for five murders committed in that state between 1977 and 1979, and is currently under indictment for two additional homicides in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. His true victim total remains unknown, and could be much higher. Alcala is also notable for exceptional demonstrations of cruelty: prosecutors say he "toyed" with his victims, strangling them until they lost consciousness, then waiting until they revived, sometimes repeating this process several times before finally killing them.
He is sometimes labeled the "Dating Game Killer" because of his 1978 appearance on the American television show The Dating Game
The Dating Game
The Dating Game is an ABC television show that first aired on December 20, 1965 and was the first of many shows created and packaged by Chuck Barris from the 1960s through the 1980s...
in the very midst of his murder spree. Police discovered a collection of more than one thousand photographs taken by Alcala, mostly of women and teenaged boys, most of them in sexually explicit poses. They speculate that some of his photographic subjects could be additional victims.
One police detective called him "a killing machine", and criminalists have compared him to Ted Bundy
Ted Bundy
Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy was an American serial killer, rapist, kidnapper, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women during the 1970s, and possibly earlier...
. A homicide investigator familiar with the evidence speculated that Alcala could have murdered as many as 50 women, while other estimates have run as high as 130.
Early life
Alcala was born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor in San Antonio, TexasSan Antonio, Texas
San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...
to Raoul Alcala Buquor and Anna Maria Gutierrez. His father abandoned the family; his mother moved Rodney and his sisters to suburban Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
when he was about 12.
He joined the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
in 1960, at age 17, where he served as a clerk. In 1964, after what was described as a "nervous breakdown
Nervous breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
", he was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder
Antisocial personality disorder
Antisocial personality disorder is described by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fourth edition , as an Axis II personality disorder characterized by "...a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood...
by a military psychiatrist and discharged on medical grounds. (Other diagnoses later proposed by various psychiatric experts at his trials included narcissistic personality disorder
Narcissistic personality disorder
Narcissistic personality disorder is a personality disorder in which the individual is described as being excessively preoccupied with issues of personal adequacy, power, prestige and vanity...
and borderline personality disorder
Borderline personality disorder
Borderline personality disorder is a personality disorder described as a prolonged disturbance of personality function in a person , characterized by depth and variability of moods.The disorder typically involves unusual levels of instability in mood; black and white thinking, or splitting; the...
.)
Education
Alcala, who claims to have a "geniusGenius
Genius is something or someone embodying exceptional intellectual ability, creativity, or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of unprecedented insight....
-level" IQ, graduated from the UCLA
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
School of Fine Arts after his medical discharge from the Army, and later attended New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
using the alias "John Berger", where he studied film under Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...
.
Early criminal history
Alcala committed his first known crime in 1968: A motorist in Los Angeles witnessed him luring an eight-year-old girl named Tali Shapiro into his Hollywood apartment and called police. The girl was found in the apartment raped and beaten with a steel bar, but Alcala escaped. He fled to the east coast and enrolled in the NYU film school using the name "John Berger" or also known "John Burger". During the summer months he also obtained a counseling job at a New HampshireNew Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
arts camp for children, using a slightly different alias, "John Burger."
In June 1971, Cornelia Michel Crilley, a 23-year-old Trans World Airlines
Trans World Airlines
Trans World Airlines was an American airline that existed from 1925 until it was bought out by and merged with American Airlines in 2001. It was a major domestic airline in the United States and the main U.S.-based competitor of Pan American World Airways on intercontinental routes from 1946...
flight attendant, was found raped and strangled in her Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
apartment. Her murder would remain unsolved for the next 40 years.
Later that summer, two children at the New Hampshire arts camp noticed Alcala's FBI wanted poster at the post office and notified camp directors. He was arrested and extradited back to California. By then, however, Tali Shapiro's parents had relocated her family to Mexico, and refused to allow her to testify at Alcala's trial. Unable to convict him of rape and attempted murder without their primary witness, prosecutors were forced to permit Alcala to plead guilty to a lesser charge of assault. He was parole
Parole
Parole may have different meanings depending on the field and judiciary system. All of the meanings originated from the French parole . Following its use in late-resurrected Anglo-French chivalric practice, the term became associated with the release of prisoners based on prisoners giving their...
d after 34 months, in 1974, under the "indeterminate sentencing
Indefinite imprisonment
Indefinite imprisonment or indeterminate imprisonment is the imposition of a sentence by imprisonment with no definite period of time set during sentencing. Its length, rather, is determined during imprisonment based on the inmate's conduct...
" program popular at the time, which allowed parole boards to release offenders as soon as they demonstrated evidence of "rehabilitation." Less than two months later, he was arrested after assaulting a 13-year-old girl known in court records as "Julie J.", who had accepted what she thought would be a ride to school. Once again, he was paroled after serving two years of an "indeterminate sentence."
In 1977, after his second release from prison, Alcala's Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
parole officer permitted him to travel to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. NYPD cold-case investigators now believe that one week after arriving in Manhattan, Alcala killed Ellen Jane Hover, 23, daughter of the owner of Ciro’s, a popular Hollywood nightclub, and goddaughter of Dean Martin
Dean Martin
Dean Martin was an American singer, film actor, television star and comedian. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Sway", "Volare" and "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?"...
and Sammy Davis, Jr.
Sammy Davis, Jr.
Samuel George "Sammy" Davis Jr. was an American entertainer and was also known for his impersonations of actors and other celebrities....
Her remains were found buried on the grounds of the Rockefeller Estate
Kykuit
Kykuit , also known as John D. Rockefeller Estate, is a 40-room National Trust house in Westchester County, New York, built by the oil businessman, philanthropist and founder of the prominent Rockefeller family, John D. Rockefeller, and his son, John D...
in Westchester County.
In 1978 Alcala worked for a short time at the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
as a typesetter, and was interviewed by members of the Hillside Strangler
Hillside Strangler
The Hillside Strangler is the media epithet for two men, cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, who were convicted of kidnapping, raping, torturing, and killing girls and women ranging in age from 12 to 28 years old during a four-month period from late 1977 to early 1978...
task force as part of their investigation of known sex offenders. Although Alcala was ruled out as the Hillside Strangler, he was arrested and served a brief sentence for marijuana possession.
During this period Alcala also convinced hundreds of young men and women that he was a professional fashion photographer, and photographed them for his "portfolio." A Times co-worker later recalled that Alcala shared his photos with workmates. "I thought it was weird, but I was young, I didn’t know anything," she said. "When I asked why he took the photos, he said their moms asked him to. I remember the girls were naked.” Most of the photos are sexually explicit, and most remain unidentified. Police fear that some of the subjects may be additional cold-case victims.
Samsoe murder and first two trials
Robin Samsoe, a 12-year-old girl from Huntington Beach, California disappeared somewhere between the beach and her balletBallet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
class on June 20, 1979. Her decomposing body was found 12 days later in the foothills of Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. Police subsequently found her earrings in a Seattle locker rented by Alcala.
In 1980 Alcala was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for Samsoe's murder, but his conviction was overturned by the California Supreme Court because jurors had been improperly informed of his prior sex crimes. In 1986, after a second trial virtually identical to the first except for omission of the prior criminal record testimony, he was convicted once again, and again sentenced to death. However, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel overthrew the second conviction, in part because a witness was not allowed to support Alcala's contention that the park ranger who found Samsoe's body had been "hypnotized by police investigators."
Additional victims discovered
While preparing their third prosecution in 2003, Orange County investigators learned that Alcala's DNADNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
, sampled under a new state law (over his objections), matched semen
Semen
Semen is an organic fluid, also known as seminal fluid, that may contain spermatozoa. It is secreted by the gonads and other sexual organs of male or hermaphroditic animals and can fertilize female ova...
left at the rape-murder scenes of two women in Los Angeles. Another pair of earrings found in Alcala's storage locker matched the DNA of one of the two victims. Additional evidence, including another cold-case DNA match in 2004, led to Alcala's indictment for the murders of four additional women: Jill Barcomb, 18, a New York runaway found "rolled up like a ball" in a Los Angeles ravine in 1977, and originally thought to have been a victim of the Hillside Strangler; Georgia Wixted, 27, bludgeoned in her Malibu apartment in 1977; Charlotte Lamb, 31, raped and strangled in the laundry room of her El Segundo
El Segundo, California
El Segundo is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located on the Santa Monica Bay, it was incorporated on January 18, 1917, and is one of the Beach Cities of Los Angeles County and part of the South Bay Cities Council of Governments...
apartment complex in 1978; and Jill Parenteau, 21, killed in her Burbank
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340....
apartment in 1979. All of the bodies were found "posed...in carefully chosen positions."
Third (joined) trial
In 2003, prosecutors entered a motion to join the Samsoe charges with those of the four newly discovered victims. Alcala's attorneys contested it; as one of them explained, "If you’re a juror and you hear one murder case, you may be able to have reasonable doubt. But it’s very hard to say you have reasonable doubt on all five, especially when four of the five aren’t alleged by eyewitnesses but are proven by DNA matches." In 2006, the California Supreme Court ruled in the prosecution's favor, and in February 2010 Alcala stood trial on the five joined charges.For the third trial Alcala elected to act as his own attorney. He took the stand in his own defense, and for five hours played the roles of both interrogator and witness, asking himself questions (addressing himself as "Mr. Alcala" in a deeper-than-normal voice), and then answering them. During this bizarre self-questioning and answering session he told jurors, often in a rambling monotone, that he was at Knott's Berry Farm
Knott's Berry Farm
Knott's Berry Farm is a theme park in Buena Park, California, now owned by Cedar Fair Entertainment Company, and a line of jams, jellies, preserves, and other specialty food, now part of The J. M. Smucker Company based in Placentia, California....
when Samsoe was kidnapped. He also claimed that the earrings found in his Seattle locker were his, not Samsoe's. As "proof" he showed the jury a portion of his 1978 appearance on The Dating Game, during which his earrings — if he wore any — were obscured by his shoulder-length hair. He made no significant effort to dispute the other four charges. As part of his closing argument, he played the portion of Arlo Guthrie
Arlo Guthrie
Arlo Davy Guthrie is an American folk singer. Like his father, Woody Guthrie, Arlo often sings songs of protest against social injustice...
's song "Alice's Restaurant
Alice's Restaurant
"Alice's Restaurant Massacree" is a musical monologue by singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie released on his 1967 album Alice's Restaurant. The song is one of Guthrie's most prominent works, based on a true incident in his life that began on Thanksgiving Day 1965, and which inspired a 1969 movie of the...
" in which the protagonist tells a psychiatrist he wants to "kill."
After less than two days' deliberation the jury convicted Alcala on all five counts of first-degree murder. A surprise witness during the penalty phase of the trial was Tali Shapiro, Alcala's first known victim. In March 2010, he was sentenced to death for a third time.
Dating Game appearance
In 1978 Alcala, despite his status as a convicted rapist and registered sex offender, was accepted as a contestant on The Dating Game. By then he had already killed at least two women in California and probably two others in New York. Host Jim LangeJim Lange
Jim Lange is a former American game show host and disc jockey. He was particularly well known to listeners in the San Francisco and Los Angeles radio markets with stints at several stations in both markets, racking up over 45 years on the air...
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. Between takes you might find him skydiving or motorcycling."
Actor Jed Mills, who competed against Alcala as "Bachelor #2", later described him as a "very strange guy" with "bizarre opinions". He added that Alcala did not wear earrings on the show, as he claimed during his 2010 trial; earrings were not yet a socially acceptable accoutrement for men in 1978. "I had never seen a man with an earring in his ear," he said. "I would have noticed them on him." The third contestant, Armand Chiami, has not made any public comments.
Alcala won a date with "bachelorette" Cheryl Bradshaw, who subsequently refused to go out with him, according to published reports, because she found him "creepy". Criminal profiler
Offender profiling
Offender profiling, also known as criminal profiling, is a behavioral and investigative tool that is intended to help investigators to profile unknown criminal subjects or offenders. Offender profiling is also known as criminal profiling, criminal personality profiling, criminological profiling,...
Pat Brown
Pat Brown (criminal profiler)
-Biography:Brown was born in New Jersey and moved with her family to Virginia at age 9. She has lived in Maryland since 1982.-Education:In 1981, she graduated with a liberal arts degree from the University of the State of New York...
, noting that Alcala killed Robin Samsoe and at least two other women after his Dating Game appearance, speculated that Bradshaw's rejection might have been an exacerbating factor. "One wonders what that did in his mind," Brown said. "That is something he would not take too well. [Serial killers] don't understand the rejection. They think that something is wrong with that girl: 'She played me. She played hard to get.'"
Current status
Alcala has been incarcerated since his 1979 arrest for Samsoe's murder. In the period between his second and third trial he wrote You, the Jury, a self-published 1994 book in which he asserted his innocence in the Samsoe case and suggested a different suspect. He also filed two lawsuits against the California penal system for a slip-and-fall claim, and for failing to provide him a low-fat diet.Alcala remains on death row at San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin State Prison is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men in unincorporated San Quentin, Marin County, California, United States. Opened in July 1852, it is the oldest prison in the state. California's only death row for male inmates, the largest...
, as a long series of appeals slowly wends its way through the California court system.
New York
After his 2010 conviction, New York authorities announced that they would no longer pursue Alcala because of his status as a prisoner awaiting execution. Nevertheless, in January 2011 a Manhattan grand juryGrand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
indicted him for the murders of Ellen Hover, the Ciro's heiress, and Cornelia Crilley, the TWA flight attendant. Manhattan District Attorney
District attorney
In many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...
Cyrus Vance indicated that he intends to extradite Alcala and prosecute him for the two homicides in New York. New York's death penalty statute was ruled unconstitutional by the state's supreme court in 2004.
San Francisco
In March 2011, investigators in Marin County, north of San Francisco, announced that they were "confident" that Alcala was responsible for the 1977 murder of 19 year old Pamela Jean Lambson, who disappeared after making a trip to Fisherman's WharfFisherman's Wharf
Fisherman's Wharf may refer to:*Fisherman's Wharf, Monterey, California, a historic fishing wharf in Monterey, California*Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, a tourist destination and still-functioning wharf, in San Francisco, California...
to meet a man who had offered to photograph her. Her battered, naked body was subsequently found in Marin County near a hiking trail. With no fingerprints or usable DNA, charges will not be filed, but police claim there is sufficient evidence to convince them that Alcala committed the crime.
Unidentified photographs
In March 2010, the Huntington Beach and New York City Police Departments released 120 of Alcala's photographs and sought the public's help in identifying them, in the hope of determining if any of the women and children he photographed were additional victims. Approximately 900 additional photos could not be made public, police said, because they were too sexually explicit. In the first few weeks, police reported that approximately 21 women had come forward to identify themselves, and "at least 6 families" said they believed they recognized loved ones who "disappeared years ago and were never found." However, according to one published account, as of November 2010 none of the photos had been unequivocally connected to a missing person’s case or an unsolved murder.As of March 2011 the original 120 photos remain posted online, and police continue to solicit the public's help with further identifications.
Timeline
| year of event | Event, victim name indicates date of crime | Offense; offender status/Location | Alias/Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1961-64 | US Army | ||
| 1968 | Graduated from UCLA | ||
| 1968 | Tali Shapiro | Rape, attempted murder; Pled guilty to assault, 1971/California | |
| 1968-71 | Fugitive, student NYU Film School, camp counselor | New York, New Hampshire | John Berger, John Burger |
| 1971 | Cornelia Crilley | Murder; Indicted, 2011/New York | |
| 1971–74 | Incarcerated (Tali Shapiro conviction) | California | |
| 1974 | "Julie J." | Parole violation, providing marijuana to minor; Convicted, 1974/California | |
| 1974-78 | Ted Bundy Ted Bundy Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy was an American serial killer, rapist, kidnapper, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women during the 1970s, and possibly earlier... |
Colorado/Florida/Idaho/Oregon/Utah, etc. | for time line comparison |
| 1974-77 | Incarcerated ("Julie J." conviction) | California | |
| 1975-77 | Son of Sam aka David Berkowitz David Berkowitz David Richard Berkowitz , also known as Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer and arsonist whose crimes terrorized New York City from July 1976 until his arrest in August 1977.Shortly after his arrest in August 1977, Berkowitz confessed to killing six people and... |
New York City | for time line comparison |
| 1977 | Ellen Hover | Murder; Indicted, 2011/New York | John Berger |
| 1977 | Worked as Los Angeles Times typesetter | California | |
| 1977-78 | Hillside Strangler Hillside Strangler The Hillside Strangler is the media epithet for two men, cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, who were convicted of kidnapping, raping, torturing, and killing girls and women ranging in age from 12 to 28 years old during a four-month period from late 1977 to early 1978... |
California | for time line comparison |
| 1977 | Jill Barcomb | Murder; Convicted, 2010/California | |
| 1977 | Questioned by FBI regarding Hover | California | Rodney Alcala, John Berger |
| 1977 | Georgia Wixted | Murder; Convicted, 2010/California | |
| 1977 | Pamela Jean Lambson | Murder; Accused, 2011/California | |
| 1978 | interviewed by Hillside Strangler task force | California | |
| 1978 | Incarcerated (marijuana possession) | California | |
| 1978 | Contestant, The Dating Game | California | |
| 1978 | Charlotte Lamb | Murder; Convicted, 2010/California | |
| 1979 | Jill Parenteau | Murder; Convicted, 2010/California | |
| 1979 | Robin Samsoe | Murder; Convicted, 1980, 1986, 2010/California | |
| 1979 | Arrested on suspicion of Samsoe murder | California | |
| 1980 | Conviction #1, sentenced to death for Samsoe murder | California | |
| 1984 | Conviction #1 overturned by California Supreme Court | California | |
| 1986 | Conviction #2, sentenced to death for Samsoe murder | California | |
| 1994 | You, the Jury | self-published book asserting innocence in Samsoe case | |
| 2001 | Conviction #2 overturned by 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals | California | |
| 2003 | DNA collected, 4 additional murders discovered | California | |
| 2003 | Motion to join Samsoe case with 4 others proposed; contested by Alcala | California | |
| 2006 | Case join granted by California Supreme Court | California | |
| 2010 | Conviction #3, sentenced to death for murders of Samsoe, Parenteau, Lamb, Wixted, and Barcomb | California | |
| 2011 | Indicted for murders of Hover, Crilley | New York |
External links
- TruTV Case Profile
- LA Times: Federal Judge Overturns Alcala Conviction 2001
- Alcala v Orange County, Alcala's Objection to joining the 5 cases.
- Video of Alcala's appearance on the Dating Game, Sept. 13, 1978
- The Seattle Times: Photos from Rodney Alcala's storage locker 142 photographs
- CBS 48 Hours article on Alcala's murder spree, and more storage locker photographs.
- City of Huntington Beach, California - Rodney Alcala Photo Identification photographs, hi-res
- True Crime Book Reviews