Alcala, now 74, sits on death row in California, convicted of seven murders. His legal cases continue as authorities are actively investigating his connection to unsolved murders. The show speaks to several people involved in the case, many of whom rarely give interviews. Robin Samsoe was just 12 years old when Alcala saw her riding her bike to ballet class in By the next morning, they declared it a kidnapping.
Connelly recalls what happened when the authorities arrived at her house. How many little girls with long blonde hair disappear in California? Katie Stigell, left, sister of victim Cornelia Crilley and District Attorney Cyrus Vance, right, spoke in the court room after Alcala was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison on Monday.
Working as a professional photographer, Alcala, who is said to have an IQ above , lured his victims by offering to take their pictures, authorities say. While he has been incarcerated in New York, he has not had library privileges so he has not been able to conduct research and work on his case and he intimated in court on Friday that he is eager to resume work on trying to get himself off death row.
Decades of suspicion, an indictment last year and 18 months of legal maneuvering over extraditing him culminated last month when he arrived in New York City on a U. The convicted serial killer was placed in police custody. Alcala was indicted in January , after the Manhattan district attorney's cold-case unit re-examined the cases, looked at countless documents that emerged during the California trial and conducted their interviews with the dozens of witnesses.
California authorities had said they were exploring whether Alcala could be tied to cases in New York and other states. They had released more than photos, found in his storage locker, of young women and girls. Hover, a Manhattan socialite with a degree in biology, was seeking a job as a researcher, a private investigator for her family said at the time. A talented pianist, she was 'enamored of the counterculture of the late s,' her cousin Sheila Weller wrote in a Marie Claire magazine piece about Hover's death.
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Weller said last month she was gratified by Alcala's indictment in her cousin's death. Hover's disappearance and Crilley's death made headlines and spurred extensive searches in the early s. Hover's relatives papered walls and kiosks with posters. A note in Hover's calendar for the day she vanished showed she planned to have lunch with a photographer she had recently met, according to the family's private detective and news reports at the time.
Her lunch date's name, authorities later said, was an alias that Alcala used. Alcala had been a suspect in Crilley's death for several years.
New York Police Department detectives investigating her killing went to California in with a warrant to interview Alcala and get a dental impression from him. A forensic dentist later found that a bite mark on Crilley's body was consistent with Alcala's impression, a law enforcement official said in December. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Alcala, pictured in the late 70s around the age of 35, had over photos of unidentified young women and girls in his possession which police are still trying to use to identify more potential victims.
Alcala seen during his previous murder trail in pleaded guilty to killing the two young women in New York City in the s. Alcala has been behind bars since his arrest in one of the California killings -- the murder of Robin Samsoe, 12, of Huntington Beach. Before that arrest, he also served a prison sentence on convictions of giving marijuana to a minor and kidnapping and trying to kill an 8-year-old girl. Alcala had attended college and worked briefly as a typist at The Los Angeles Times, according to a story in the newspaper.
He made his way onto a episode of 'The Dating Game,' the matchmaking show that was a hit in its era. Introduced as a photographer with an affinity for motorcycling and skydiving, the long-haired, leisure-suited Alcala won the contest. But the woman who chose him over two other contestants ultimately chose not to go on a date with him, saying he was 'too creepy. Acting as his own lawyer, the convicted serial killer offered a rambling defense that included questioning the mother of one of his victims, showing a clip of his appearance on 'The Dating Game' and playing Arlo Guthrie's song 'Alice's Restaurant.
Alcala fought his extradition to New York, saying he needed to stay in California to attend court hearings and do other preparatory work on his appeal. Alcala, believed to have taken these two women's photographs, described himself as a photographer with a passion for motorcycling and skydiving when he made an appearance on a TV dating show he won.
The cold case unit of the Manhattan district attorney's office brought charges against Alcala last year after conducting new interviews with more than witnesses. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.
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Mother-of-two died from heart attack after all-night Shocking moment schoolgirl, 15, bullied over Traveller who unleashed sickening sex attack on Heart-breaking photos capture the raw grief of dog owners Walls around the world: Trump says 45 countries have In , at age 17, Alcala joined the U. Army and served as a clerk. In , after what was described as a nervous breakdown , during which he went AWOL and hitchhiked from Fort Bragg to his mother's house; he was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder [18] by a military psychiatrist and discharged on medical grounds.
Alcala committed his first known crime in The girl was found alive, raped and beaten with a steel bar, but Alcala had fled. In , he obtained a counseling job at a New Hampshire arts camp for children using a slightly different alias, "John Burger". Her murder went unsolved until it was connected to Alcala in Alcala was arrested and extradited to California. By then, Shapiro's parents had relocated their entire family to Mexico and refused to allow her to testify at Alcala's trial. Once again, he was paroled after serving two years of an "indeterminate sentence".
In , after Alcala's second release, his Los Angeles parole officer took the unusual step of permitting a repeat offender—and known flight risk —to travel to New York City. In , 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.
The Horrifying Story Of Rodney Alcala, 'The Dating Game Killer'
Although Alcala was ruled out as the Hillside Strangler, he was arrested and served a brief sentence for marijuana possession. During this period, Alcala convinced hundreds of young men and women that he was a professional fashion photographer, and photographed them for his "portfolio. I remember the girls were naked. The portfolio also included " Police fear that some of the subjects may be additional cold-case victims.
Host Jim Lange 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". They think that something is wrong with that girl: She played hard to get. Robin Samsoe, a year-old girl from Huntington Beach , disappeared somewhere between the beach and her ballet class on June 20, Her decomposing body was found 12 days later in the Los Angeles foothills.
Detectives circulated a sketch of the photographer, and Alcala's parole officer recognized him. Alcala was arrested in late and held without bail. In he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for Samsoe's murder, but the verdict was overturned by the California Supreme Court because jurors had been improperly informed of his prior sex crimes. A Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel nullified 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".
While preparing their third prosecution in , Orange County investigators learned that Alcala's DNA , sampled under a new state law [34] over his objections , matched semen left at the rape-murder scenes of two women in Los Angeles.
Jill Barcomb, 18, a New York runaway found "rolled up like a ball" in a Los Angeles ravine in , [35] and originally thought to have been a victim of the Hillside Strangler; Georgia Wixted, 27, bludgeoned in her Malibu apartment in ; Charlotte Lamb, 31, raped, strangled, and left in the laundry room of an El Segundo apartment complex in ; and Jill Parenteau, 21, killed in her Burbank apartment in During his incarceration between the second and third trials, Alcala wrote and self-published a book, You, the Jury , in which he claimed 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 incident and for refusing to provide him a low-fat diet.
The serial killer that won a TV dating show during his murder spree
In , 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. For the third trial Alcala elected to act as his own attorney.