In September 1978, one of the participants in the ABC hit “The Dating Game” was Rodney Alcala. How did it happen? Producer Michael Metzger recalls that in his notebook he wrote next to Alcali’s name “no chance” of appearing on the air, but his wife Ellen, in charge of coordinating contestants and bachelors, convinced him:
He was stunning, there was an audacity about him. I said are you kidding? It is very attractive, people will love it!
Bachelor No. 1 turned out to be a convicted serial killer
The formula of the program was simple: a woman asked three men whom she had not seen three questions. As the creators admit, they wanted the statements of all parties to be both funny and with sexual overtones. Therefore, it was not surprising then that Alcala, when asked about his favorite time of day, replied: night, and when asked what kind of fruit he would like to be, he said that it was a banana. After a series of responses, Cheryl Bradshaw decided that he was the successful photographer she wanted to meet.
“The next day she called me and said she was sorry but would it be a problem if she didn’t go on a date,” Ellen Metzger recalled on 20/20. When asked where this decision came from, she could only answer that something about the newly met man did not suit her, she did not feel comfortable with him because he was “strange”. Intuition probably saved her life, because as it turned out later, Rodney Alcala had already served several sentences and was also involved in many murders of young women and girls.
They did not know then that a serial killer was being placed behind the curtain as one of the three participants. Years later, Jed Mills, who took the middle seat in Blind Dates, recalls that he immediately had a bad feeling about Alcala:
I immediately noticed that it was strange. In the waiting room, he jumped up to me and said: I always get my girlfriend! I knew right away that I didn’t like him.
10 years passed from the first arrest attempt to being locked up in prison forever
“Being on a show about dating was a confirmation of the massive narcissism, ego and arrogance of a serial killer,” said ABC commentator Matt Murphy, who was the prosecutor in the Alcala case in the 2000s, on “20/20”. Alcala had already been sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting an eight-year-old girl. In 1969, he invited Talia Shapiro to the car under the pretext of giving her a ride to school (he convinced her that he was a friend of her parents). “I didn’t want to get in, but I was brought up to respect elders,” recalls Shapiro. Fortunately, the scene was observed by a random man who followed the car and notified the police. Then Alcala managed to escape from the policemen and save the girl from death at the last moment. To this day, the woman, fortunately, does not remember anything from the moment she entered Alcala’s house, but the policeman who found the raped and beaten girl, even after several decades, could not talk about it without tears.
This wasn’t Alcala’s first victim, but it was the first crime to identify him. However, it took the police several years to catch the fugitive, and after the sentence was passed, the man was released on parole after a year.
As a young man, he enlisted in the army, but was discharged due to a nervous breakdown. Even then, specialists spoke of a narcissistic personality and psychopathy, but his departure from the army was by mutual consent. Later, Alcala turned to photography and often used his new profession to lure victims – for example, in New York, also before his role in “Blind Date”, he got a job as a photographer for the Los Angeles Times. Unfortunately, after the TV appearance, the killer committed at least three more murders. He was captured in July 1979 after the body of the missing 12-year-old Robin Samsoe was found 12 days after his disappearance. Her friend mentioned that a man had approached them earlier and asked if he could take pictures of them roller-skating. After drawing a memory portrait, the curator of Alcala recognized him in the drawing. When the police entered his apartment (in his mother’s house, with a separate entrance), they found, among other things, earrings of a girl and over a thousand photos of young girls, boys and women, very often of an erotic nature.
Prison photos of Alcala from 1997 and 2015 public domain, Wikimedia.org
The “Blind Date Killer” could have killed over a hundred people
In 1980, Alcala was sentenced to death for the murder of Robin Samsoe, but a higher court overturned the sentence for failing to inform the judges about the man’s previous sexual offences. In a retrial, he was again given a death sentence – and again overturned. In 2003, using DNA tests, investigators were able to bring him back to court. During the last trial, many people were surprised that, representing himself, he questioned himself as a witness for five hours, changing his voice significantly. The only witness for the defense was a psychiatrist paid by him, and in 2010, Rodney Alcala was sentenced to death for the third time.
While serving his sentence, specialists diagnosed him with dissocial personality, or antisocial personality disorder. Rodney Alcala died of natural causes at the age of 77 in 2021 while on death row. Although the court proved him to be seven murders, police believe the number of victims could be even higher than 130.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
