Rodney Alcala was tall, handsome and charming. So much so, in 1978, he was tapped to be an eligible bachelor on the popular US game show The Dating Game – and won it!
What viewers did not know though, as Alcala threw around banana innuendos and joked that night-time was when he “really gets good”, was that he was actually a seasoned serial killer.
During the ’70s, Alcala had gone on a horrifying murder spree that saw him placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Alcala evaded police by moving around a lot. His victims were women and girls (as young as eight).
Fortunately for The Dating Game’s female star, Cheryl Bradshaw, she did not become one of them.
Despite choosing Alcala over the two other men on offer, Cheryl later declined an actual date with him, deeming him “creepy”.
It was a decision that may have saved her life, and forms the basis of Netflix’s new movie, Woman of the Hour, starring and directed by Anna Kendrick.
According to criminal profiler Pat Brown, Cheryl’s rejection of Alcala could have spurred him on.
“That is something he would not take too well,” Brown said. “[Psychopaths] don’t understand the rejection. They think that something is wrong with that girl: ‘She played me. She played hard to get. She wanted to live.’”
Alcala’s murders became more brutal and a pattern emerged. He would beat or strangle his victims until they lost consciousness. When they woke up, he would repeat the process before finally killing them.
He would often pose the bodies into a carefully chosen position and, in what would become part of his downfall, he sometimes stole earrings from the women as a trophy.
It was one of these earrings, a gold ball stud from 12-year old Robin Samsoe found in Alcala’s storage locker, which helped put him on death row.
Robin’s mother testified that the earring belonged to her daughter. He hit back saying he’d worn it on The Dating Game, which aired a year before Robin was killed.
VICTIMS
Prosecutors said Alcala also took earrings from at least two of his adult victims. Another’s DNA was found on a rose-shaped earring in his possession.
After being found guilty and sentenced to death twice, Alcala kept getting the verdict overturned until his luck finally ran out in 2010.
He was convicted on five counts of first degree murder in California, and then another two in New York. He was also indicted for an eighth murder in 2016 after his DNA connected him to the crime, but he was too ill to face trial.
He eventually died of natural causes in a Californian hospital in 2021, aged 77.