1943-2021
Latest News: Rodney Alcala Inspires New Movie Woman of the Hour
The origin of Rodney Alcala’s identity as “The Dating Game Killer” is the subject of a new Netflix movie. Directed by and starring Anna Kendrick, Woman of the Hour began streaming October 18 and gives a dramatized account of Alcala’s infamous 1978 appearance on The Dating Game. Daniel Zovatto plays Alcala, while Kendrick is a fictionalized version of Cheryl Bradshaw, the contestant who selected the real-life killer for a date on national television.
Pitch Perfect star Kendrick, 39, makes her debut behind the camera and calls the movie the “most revealing thing I’ve ever done.” She told Rolling Stone she heavily researched the crimes of Alcala—officially linked to eight murders but potentially responsible for more than 100 before his arrest in 1979—to make sure she accurately portrayed his interactions with victims.
“He kept trophies, usually jewelry,” Kendrick explained. “The mental image of him, in the aftermath of violating and brutally killing a person, taking the time to remove a delicate piece of jewelry, haunts me. He preserved them for years. He treated an earring with more respect than a human being.”
Who Was Rodney Alcala?
Serial killer Rodney Alcala murdered at least eight women and girls and sexually assaulted at least two girls across the United States in the 1970s, though his true death toll could number more than 100. He spent nearly three years in prison for child molestation in the early 1970s but continued to rape and kill when he was free. In 1978, Alcala won a date as a contestant on the TV show The Dating Game, but the woman later backed out. The appearance earned him the nickname “The Dating Game Killer.” Alcala was arrested in July 1979 and sentenced to death in California but died of natural causes in 2021 at age 77.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Rodney James Alcala
BORN: August 23, 1943
DIED: July 24, 2021
BIRTHPLACE: San Antonio, Texas
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Virgo
Early Life
Rodney James Alcala was born as Rodrigo Jacques Alcala-Buquor in San Antonio on August 23, 1943. He moved to Mexico with his family when he was around 8 years old, and his father abandoned the family while they were in Mexico. Alcala, his siblings, and their mother later relocated to Los Angeles.
At age 17, Alcala joined the army. He was discharged in 1964, after suffering a breakdown and being diagnosed with an antisocial personality disorder.
He attended California State University, then transferred to University of California, Los Angeles. He graduated with a fine arts degree in 1968. After fleeing California that year following his first known assault, Alcala used an alias, John Berger, to enroll in New York University, where he took a class with Roman Polanski.
First Attack and Arrest
In 1968, a witness spotted Alcala driving off with a young girl. Concerned, he followed them to an apartment and called the police. The responding officer discovered 8-year-old Tali Shapiro still alive despite having been raped and beaten with a steel bar. The officer watched Alcala flee the scene, unable to catch him. (Editor’s note: Shapiro has since discussed the attack publicly, which is why Biography.com is naming her.)
Alcala then traveled to the East Coast. In 1971, he was included on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Some girls at an arts camp in New Hampshire recognized their counselor, who was using the name John Berger in an effort to hide from authorities, from this list. They told the camp’s dean, and Alcala was soon arrested that August. He was able to plead guilty to the lesser charge of child molestation and served just 34 months before being paroled in August 1974. Within weeks of his release, he was arrested again for marijuana possession while with a 13-year-old girl and returned to prison until 1977, according to The Washington Post.
Although he was a registered sex offender, Alcala managed to land a job with The Los Angeles Times as a typesetter in September 1977. His past conviction for molestation prompted California police to interview Alcala in March 1978 as a potential suspect in the Hillside Strangler killings, another set of serial murders that occurred in California in the 1970s. Alcala was cleared of those crimes, and police didn’t realize they had actually spoken with a different serial killer.
Appearance on The Dating Game
In September 1978, Alcala appeared as Bachelor No. 1 on The Dating Game, a TV show that had men and women cheekily interview prospective dates sight unseen. At the time, he was a convicted child molester, but the show didn’t run a background check, a process that has since become more thorough thanks to the creation of a national crime database and other advancements.
Alcala was introduced as “a successful photographer, who got his start when his father found him in the darkroom at the age of 13, fully developed.” When asked by Cheryl Bradshaw, his prospective date, to describe what kind of meal he’d be, he answered, “I’m called ‘The Banana,’ and I look really good... Peel me.”
Alcala’s use of charm and innuendo won him a date with Bradshaw. However, when they met face-to-face after the televised interview, she felt Alcala was “acting really creepy” and opted not to go out with him. Decades later, the incident inspired the 2024 movie Woman of the Hour.
Victims and Convictions
Alcala, a tall, good-looking man with flowing long hair, often told women he was a fashion photographer who wanted to take photos for a contest. His intelligence and charm could make him persuasive. A woman who missed a date with Alcala because he’d been arrested in 1979 later told People, “He was so easy to trust. He had a way of talking to people that really put them at ease.”
But once he had lured his victims, his evilness emerged. He sexually assaulted the women and girls he attacked before killing many of them. Autopsies of some Alcala victims revealed he would strangle women, then wait for them to regain consciousness before the final kill. Sometimes, he arranged the corpses of women he’d murdered in poses.
Between 1971 and 1979, Alcala killed eight women in New York, California, and Wyoming. Additionally, he sexually assaulted two girls, one in 1968 and another in 1979. Alcala is also connected to the murder of a California woman in 1977, though we wasn’t charged with the crime. Ultimately, Alcala’s exact death toll is unknown. Some authorities believe he murdered around 50 people, others think he might have taken as many as 130 lives.
The serial killer was caught for good in 1979 after 12-year-old Robin Samsoe disappeared in Huntington Beach, California, while biking to her ballet class. Her remains were soon discovered in the Angeles National Forest. A sketch of the suspect was issued, and Alcala’s parole officer saw it and recognized him. Police tracked down Alcala, who was arrested on July 24, 1979, and charged with Samsoe’s abduction and murder. Following his arrest, authorities found hundreds of Alcala’s photographs and other trophies he kept in a Seattle storage locker.
Alcala was convicted of Samsoe’s murder in 1980. Four years later, this conviction was overturned as the jury had improperly been told about Alcala’s criminal record. Another trial in 1986 resulted in a second guilty verdict, but in 2001, this was also overturned on a technicality. While in custody, Alcala wrote the book You, the Jury (1994), in which he argued he was innocent.
Before Alcala was tried in court a third time for Samsoe’s death, advances in the world of DNA and other crime scene analysis provided evidence tying him to more crimes (he had been forced to provide a DNA sample). At his 2010 retrial, Alcala was subsequently charged with killing Samsoe and additionally accused of assaulting and strangling four women in California in the late 1970s. These victims were: 18-year-old Jill Barcomb, who was killed in November 1977; 32-year-old Charlotte Lamb, who was murdered in June 1978; 27-year-old Georgia Wixted, who was raped, beaten, and strangled in December 1978; and 21-year-old Jill Parenteau, who was killed in June 1979.
Alcala opted to represent himself during the court proceedings. Part of the case against him was a pair of gold earrings linked to Samsoe that had been found in his Seattle storage locker. Alcala played clips from The Dating Game that he said proved he was already wearing gold earrings in 1978, but these didn’t convince the jury. In February 2010, he was found guilty of all five murders. He was sentenced to death in March 2010.
It was eventually discovered that, in the 1970s, Alcala killed Cornelia Crilley and Ellen Hover, both 23-year-old residents of New York City. Crilley was raped and strangled with her own stockings in her apartment in June 1971. Hover disappeared on July 15, 1977, leaving behind a calendar that stated she was meeting with “John Berger.” Her remains were discovered in New York’s Westchester County in 1978. Alcala pleaded guilty to these murders in 2012. He received a sentence of 25 years to life in prison, though he never served the time because he was in California custody.
In 2016, Alcala was charged with the 1977 killing of Christine Ruth Thornton in Wyoming, though prosecutors opted not to extradite him to stand trial. Authorities also believe he killed Pamela Lambson in the San Francisco Bay Area in the fall of 1977. However, DNA collected at that crime scene was too degraded to test, so he wasn’t charged with the crime.
Some Alcala victims survived his attacks. This includes 8-year-old Tali Shapiro, who Alcala assaulted in 1968. Another girl, then-15-year-old Monique Hoyt, managed to escape after Alcala raped her in February 1979. Both survivors testified in court against the murderer as adults. Other people came forward after authorities shared many of Alcala’s photos with the public in 2010 in the hopes of identifying the people pictured.
As Alcala awaited execution, California’s death penalty was the subject of several lawsuits, reforms, and ballot initiatives. Then in March 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a moratorium on planned executions. Alcala was spared, though his sentence wasn’t amended.
Death
Alcala died of unspecified natural causes while hospitalized on July 24, 2021, in California’s San Joaquin Valley. He was 77.
Upon hearing the news of Alcala’s death, his victim Tali Shapiro declared “the planet is a better place without him, that’s for sure.” She also said, “I’ve moved on with my life, so this doesn’t really affect me. It’s a long time coming, but he’s got his karma.”
Documentaries and Movies
Alcala’s crimes have been the subject of several documentaries and true-crime TV shows. In September 2010, the CBS investigative news program 48 Hours profiled Alcala in an episode titled “The Killing Game.” Additionally, the 2022 three-episode docuseries Dating Death examined Alcala’s complete criminal history.
In 2017, Guillermo Díaz portrayed Alcala in the Investigation Discovery made-for-TV movie The Dating Game Killer. Most recently, Daniel Zovatto portrays Alcala in the Netflix movie Woman of the Hour, about his infamous 1978 appearance on national television. Directed by and starring Anna Kendrick as a fictionalized version of prospective Dating Game date Cheryl Bradshaw, the film released on the streaming platform in mid-October 2024.
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Sara Kettler is a Connecticut-based freelance writer who has written for Biography.com, History, and the A&E True Crime blog. She’s a member of the Writers Guild of America and also pens mystery novels. Outside of writing, she likes dogs, Broadway shows, and studying foreign languages.
Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.
