Who was serial killer Rodney Alcala? Inside the true story of the Netflix thriller “Woman of the Hour”

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ROdney Alcala was tall, charming and good-looking – exactly what producers wanted in a bachelor to compete on their dating game show.

His charm and witty banter with Cheryl Bradshaw, the show's bachelorette, led to victory.

But something about his behavior bothered Bradshaw, and she ended up declining the date – a decision that might have saved her life.

Alcala was 35 years old when he appeared on the series The dating gamee 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 Anna Kendrick and inspired by Alcala's appearance on a dating show was released on Netflix on Friday.

Before Alcala's arrest in 1979, the dating show's producers had no idea of ​​his frightening double life as a sadistic serial killer or that he had served time in prison for sexually abusing 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 an acting teacher when she was selected as a contestant The dating game in 1978 and chose Alcala.

She initially seemed intrigued by Alcala, but after the show she declined the date, telling contestant coordinator Ellen Metzger, “I can't date this guy.” Strange vibrations are coming from him. He is very strange. I don’t feel well.”

“Something about him,” Bradshaw said later in an interview. “I could see something was wrong.”

Who was Rodney Alcala?

Born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala-Buquor on August 23, 1943, Alcala lived in Mexico before moving to Los Angeles with his family when he was eight years old.

According to CBS News, he joined the Army at age 17 but was discharged in 1964 after a nervous breakdown and allegations of sexual misconduct.

After graduating from the University of California, he attended New York University film school in 1971.

On September 13, 1978, Alcala performed The dating game, an innuendo-filled show in which three eligible bachelors compete for a date with a bachelorette.

The presenter introduced him as a “successful photographer who got his start when his father found him fully developed in the darkroom at the age of 13.”

When Bradshaw asked him what kind of meal he would eat, he replied: “My name is 'The Banana' and I'm really good looking…Peel me.”

Before he even appeared on the show, Alcala served 34 months in prison for sexually abusing and beating eight-year-old Tali Shapiro.

But without standardized background checks, the show's producers knew nothing about his crime, which 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 murders in Orange County.

Victims and Convictions

The list of women and girls killed by Alcala is long – and often included brutal violence, rape and stalking. According to Huntington Beach police, Robin Samsoe, a 12-year-old girl, was on her way to ballet class in Huntington Beach in 1979 when Alcala kidnapped her.

In 2010, Alcala was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the killing of Samsoe as well as the 1978 deaths of 18-year-old Jill Barcomb and 27-year-old Georgia Wixted, according to the California Department of Corrections and Corrections Rehabilitation, these are the death of 32-year-old Charlotte Lamb and the death of 21-year-old Jill Parenteau in 1979.

Barcomb was an 18-year-old New York transplant who moved to Los Angeles with aspirations of becoming a Hollywood actress when she was killed on Nov. 10, 1977, former prosecutor Matt Murphy told A&E True Crime.

“She was found brutalized with multiple ligatures,” he said. “Her face had been smashed in with a rock.”

That same year, Georgia Wixted, a 27-year-old pediatric cancer nurse who had just moved into her own apartment in Los Angeles, was sexually assaulted, tortured and strangled to death by Alcala.

In New York in 2012, Alcala was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the murders of Cornelia Crilley and Ellen Jane Hover in the 1970s.

According to New York media reports, in June 1971, Alcala raped, bit and strangled Cornelia Crilley, a 23-year-old TWA flight attendant, in her Manhattan apartment.

At the time, he was a film student at New York University, studying with film director and producer Roman Polanski.

Investigators later learned that Alcala's job as a photographer gave him easy access to women and girls, including some later identified as his victims.

In 1977, Alcala killed 23-year-old Ellen Jane Hover, an aspiring conductor who disappeared after leaving her Manhattan apartment on July 15 of that year.

A year later, her remains were found on the grounds of the Rockefeller estate in Westchester County, near an area where Alcala frequently photographed women.

In 2016, Wyoming prosecutors accused Alcala of 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 murders in California between 1977 and 1979, although authorities estimate he killed dozens more people across the country.

Prosecutors said Alcala stalked women like prey and took earrings from some of his victims as trophies.

“You're talking about a man who hunts around Southern California looking for people to kill because he enjoys it,” Orange County, California, prosecutor Matt Murphy said during his trial.

A storage cupboard of horror

After Alcala's conviction, authorities released more than 100 photos of young women and girls found in the killer's locker in Seattle, hoping to link him to other unsolved murders across the country.

Some photos that were not made public showed women, men and children in sexually explicit positions and were believed to have been kept as trophies for Alcala's crimes.

The photos were uploaded to a Flickr album and Huntington Beach police have asked people to contact them if they recognize anyone.

On July 24, 2021, Alcala died of natural causes on death row. He was 77 years old.

When Tali Shapiro, the 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 it doesn't really affect me. It will take a long time, but he has his karma.”