KRS: 0000870180
He was born as Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor on August 23, 1943 in San Antonio, and died on July 24, 2021 in Corcoran. He joined the army at the end of high school, but was eventually discharged due to a nervous breakdown. It is likely that doctors had already diagnosed him with narcissistic personality and psychopathy.
He was an American serial killer and rapist who was sentenced to death in California in 2010 for five murders committed between 1977 and 1979. In 2013, Alcala's sentence was increased by 25 years as he pleaded guilty to committing two murders in New York in 1971 and 1977. According to the prosecutor's office, the man brutally abused his victims by, among other things, strangling them until they were unconscious, then waited for them to wake up and repeated these actions many times before finally killing the victims.
In 1978, Alcala participated in the TV show “The Dating Game”, which he managed to win. It is fair to say that one of the participants, Cheryl Bradshaw, fooled her fate. Rodney won a date with Cheryl, but she eventually gave it up since she claimed the man was very strange.
“He acted really creepy,” she assessed after time.
“He was quiet, but at the same time he would interrupt a sentence and impose his opinion whenever he wanted, as if he was trying to intimidate me. I found him rude and hard to like. Not only did I not like him... He turned out to be the nastiest monster I've ever met.”
Despite the fact that the man had a criminal conviction on his record for sexual assault and beating an eight-year-old girl, he was able to participate in the program. The reason for this was that the producers didn't routinely screen the participants.
On the show, when choosing a candidate, Cheryl asked Alcali, “ what is your favorite part of the day?”. The man answered without hesitation, “the best time of day is night.” It turned out that nighttime was the time when he would lure innocent women into his home, after which he would rape and strangle them. By September 13, 1978, he had managed to harm five people.
After Cheryl ignored Alcala's advances, he committed another crime.
Alcala's first victim was eight-year-old Tali Shapiro, whom the man kidnapped, raped and beat in 1969. Police officers found the girl in his Hollywood apartment. Alcala, however, escaped, which saved him from arrest in New York at the time, after which, under a false identity (John Berger), he got to study filmmaking with Roman Polanski at New York University.
Ultimately, the man was arrested by the FBI. He was deported to California. There he was sentenced to three years in prison for molesting minors. After more than a year, Alcala left the facility on parole. He committed another assault just two months later, this time on a 13-year-old girl.
After filming an episode of “The Dating Game” in 1979, Alcala raped Monique Hoyt, 15, during one of his photo shoots. Then in June, he brutally killed 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, whom he kidnapped from a ballet class. He was collecting relics of his victims at his premises. A souvenir taken from little Robin were her earrings.
A year after the tragic death of the teenager, Alcala was sentenced to death. Years passed, and the man's past crimes started to be exposed. In 2004, Rodney was charged with the murder of four more women: 18-year-old Jill Barcomb, 27-year-old Georgia Wixted, 31-year-old Charlotte Lamb and 21-year-old Jill Parenteau.
While in prison, Alcala claimed he was innocent. He tried to prove his innocence in a book written by himself. In 2003, prosecutors finally refuted his explanations, primarily through DNA analysis, which was crucial aid in the trial. The tests unequivocally confirmed that Alcala was responsible for the death of 12-year-old Samsoe, as well as four other murders.
Testimony of Tali Saphiro, Alcala's 8-year-old victim
During the trial, in an unexpected twist, Alcala's first victim, the now-adult Tali Saphiro, whom he raped in his Hollywood apartment, was called as a witness. The woman testified about the events there, and jurors were convinced of the man's guilt. In March 2010, Alcala was sentenced to death for the third time.
In 2010, police department in California and New York published more than a hundred photographs taken by Alcala in order to get help in identifying the women and children in the photos (about 900 of the images, couldn't be published).
Among Alcali's possible victims is Pamela Jean Lambson from San Francisco, who disappeared in 1977. The young girl, then 19 years old, disappeared after telling her friend that she was dating a photographer. According to witnesses accounts, the physical description of the man the woman was seen with at the time matches Alcala. However, there is no evidence in the form of DNA analysis to confirm the killer's guilt.
Rodney Alcala has gained status as a convict awaiting execution. In January 2011, he was brought to trial on charges of murdering two 23-year-old Manhattan women, Ellen Hover and Cornelia Crilley. The defendant denied that he was present in that area at the time. In 2012, he was transported to New York, where he continued to claim innocence until December, when, intending to return to California to appeal his death sentence, he pleaded guilty to both murders. On January 7, 2013, the court sentenced Rodney Alcala to an additional 25 years in prison. Since 2007, there have been laws in New York State that didn't permit the death penalty. Rodney Alcala was then incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison.
Rodney Alcala died on July 24, 2021 of natural causes at Corcoran State Prison in California. While serving his prison sentence, the man was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. Doctors assessed that the causes of his disturbed behavior may have included childhood abandonment by his father and expulsion from the military.
Sources:
Author: Magdalena Wychowska, volunteer at Fundacji Zaginieni (Missing People Foundation)
Photos: Wikipedia