Rodney Alcala
Rodney James Alcala (born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor; August 23, 1943) is a convicted rapist and serial killer. He was sentenced to death in California in 2010 for five murders committed in that state between 1977 and 1979. In 2013 he received an additional sentence of 25 years to life after pleading guilty to two homicides in New York in 1971 and 1977. His true victim count remains unknown, and could be much higher. One police detective called Alcala "a killing machine" and others have compared him with Ted Bundy. A homicide investigator familiar with the evidence speculates that he could have murdered as many as 50 women, while other estimates have run as high as 130. Prosecutors say that Alcala "toyed" with his victims, strangling them until they lost consciousness, then waiting until they revived, sometimes repeating this process several times before finally killing them. Police discovered a collection of more than 1,000 photographs taken by Alcala, mostly of women and teenaged boys, most of them in sexually explicit poses. They speculate that some of his photographic subjects could be additional victims. He is sometimes labeled the "Dating Game Killer" because of his 1978 appearance on the television show The Dating Game in the midst of his murder spree. Alcala was born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor in San Antonio, Texas, to Raoul Alcala Buquor and Anna Maria Gutierrez. His father abandoned the family and his mother moved Rodney and his sisters to suburban Los Angeles when he was about 12 years old. He joined the U.S. Army in 1960, at age 17, where he served as a clerk. In 1964, after what was described as a "nervous breakdown", he was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder by a military psychiatrist and discharged on medical grounds. Other diagnoses later proposed by various psychiatric experts at his trials included narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and (from homicide expert Vernon Geberth) malignant narcissistic personality disorder with psychopathy and sexual sadism comorbidities. After leaving the Army, Alcala graduated from the UCLA School of Fine Arts and later studied film under Roman Polanski at New York University. Alcala committed his first known crime in 1968: A motorist in Los Angeles called police after watching him lure an eight-year-old girl named Tali Shapiro into his Hollywood apartment. The girl was found raped and beaten with a steel bar, but Alcala had fled the scene. To evade the resulting arrest warrant he left the state and enrolled in the NYU film school, using the name "John Berger". In 1971 he obtained a counseling job at a New Hampshire arts camp for children, using a slightly different alias, "John Burger". In June 1971 Cornelia Michel Crilley, a 23-year-old Trans World Airlines flight attendant, was found raped and strangled in her Manhattan apartment. Her murder would remain unsolved for the next 40 years. Later that summer two children attending the arts camp noticed Alcala's FBI wanted poster at the post office and notified camp directors. He was arrested and extradited to California. By then Tali Shapiro's parents had relocated their entire family to Mexico and refused to allow her to testify at Alcala's trial. Unable to convict him of rape and attempted murder without their primary witness, prosecutors were forced to permit Alcala to plead guilty to a lesser charge of assault. He was paroled after 34 months, in 1974, under the "indeterminate sentencing" program popular at the time, which allowed parole boards to release offenders as soon as they demonstrated evidence of rehabilitation. Less than two months later he was arrested after assaulting a 13-year-old girl identified in court records as "Julie J.", who had accepted what she thought would be a ride to school. Once again he was paroled after serving two years of an "indeterminate sentence". In 1977, after his second release from prison, Alcala's Los Angeles parole officer took the unusual step of permitting a repeat offender—and known flight risk—to travel to New York City. NYPD cold-case investigators now believe that a week after arriving in Manhattan, Alcala killed Ellen Jane Hover, 23, daughter of the owner of Ciro’s, a popular Hollywood nightclub and goddaughter of Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. Her remains were found buried on the grounds of the Rockefeller Estate in Westchester County. In 1978 Alcala worked for a short time at the Los Angeles Times as a typesetter, and was interviewed by members of the Hillside Strangler task force as part of their investigation of known sex offenders. Although Alcala was ruled out as the Hillside Strangler, he was arrested and served a brief sentence for marijuana possession. During this period Alcala convinced hundreds of young men and women that he was a professional fashion photographer, and photographed them for his "portfolio." A Times co-worker later recalled that Alcala shared his photos with workmates. "I thought it was weird, but I was young, I didn’t know anything," she said. "When I asked why he took the photos, he said their moms asked him to. I remember the girls were naked.” "He said he was a professional, so in my mind I was being a model for him," said one of the women, who permitted Alcala to photograph her in 1979. The portfolio also included "...spread after spread of [naked] teenage boys," she said. Most of the photos are sexually explicit, and most remain unidentified. Police fear that some of the subjects may be additional cold-case victims. In 1978, despite his status as a convicted rapist and registered sex offender, Alcala was accepted as a contestant on The Dating Game. By then he had already killed at least two women in California and two others in New York. Host Jim Lange introduced him as a "successful photographer who got his start when his father found him in the darkroom at the age of 13, fully developed. Between takes you might find him skydiving or motorcycling". Actor Jed Mills, who competed against Alcala as "Bachelor #2", later described him as a "very strange guy" with "bizarre opinions". He asserted that Alcala did not wear earrings on the show, as he claimed during his 2010 trial; earrings were not yet a socially acceptable accoutrement for men in 1978. "I had never seen a man with an earring in his ear", he said. "I would have noticed them on him". Alcala won the contest, and a date with "bachelorette" Cheryl Bradshaw, who subsequently refused to go out with him, according to published reports, because she found him "creepy". Criminal profiler Pat Brown, noting that Alcala killed Robin Samsoe and at least two other women after his Dating Game appearance, speculated that Bradshaw's rejection might have been an exacerbating factor. "One wonders what that did in his mind", Brown said. "That is something he would not take too well. [Serial killers] don't understand the rejection. They think that something is wrong with that girl: 'She played me. She played hard to get.'" Robin Samsoe, a 12-year-old girl from Huntington Beach, California, disappeared somewhere between the beach and her ballet class on June 20, 1979. Her decomposing body was found 12 days later in the Los Angeles foothills. Police subsequently found Samsoe's earrings in a Seattle locker rented by Alcala. In 1980 Alcala was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for Samsoe's murder, but the verdict was overturned by the California Supreme Court because jurors had been improperly informed of his prior sex crimes. In 1986, after a second trial virtually identical to the first except for omission of the prior criminal record testimony, he was convicted again and sentenced to death, again. A Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel nullified the second conviction, in part because a witness was not allowed to support Alcala's contention that the park ranger who found Samsoe's body had been "hypnotized by police investigators". While preparing their third prosecution in 2003, Orange County investigators learned that Alcala's DNA, sampled under a new state law (over his objections), matched semen left at the rape-murder scenes of two women in Los Angeles. Another pair of earrings found in Alcala's storage locker matched the DNA of one of the two victims. Additional evidence, including another cold-case DNA match in 2004, led to Alcala's indictment for the murders of four additional women: Jill Barcomb, 18, a New York runaway found "rolled up like a ball" in a Los Angeles ravine in 1977, and originally thought to have been a victim of the Hillside Strangler; Georgia Wixted, 27, bludgeoned in her Malibu apartment in 1977; Charlotte Lamb, 31, raped and strangled in the laundry room of her El Segundo apartment complex in 1978; and Jill Parenteau, 21, killed in her Burbank apartment in 1979. All of the bodies were found "posed...in carefully chosen positions". In 2003 prosecutors entered a motion to join the Samsoe charges with those of the four newly discovered victims. Alcala's attorneys contested it; as one of them explained, "If you’re a juror and you hear one murder case, you may be able to have reasonable doubt. But it’s very hard to say you have reasonable doubt on all five, especially when four of the five aren’t alleged by eyewitnesses but are proven by DNA matches." In 2006, the California Supreme Court ruled in the prosecution's favor, and in February 2010 Alcala stood trial on the five joined charges. For the third trial Alcala elected to act as his own attorney. He took the stand in his own defense, and for five hours played the roles of both interrogator and witness, asking himself questions (addressing himself as "Mr. Alcala" in a deeper-than-normal voice), and then answering them. During this bizarre self-questioning and answering session he told jurors, often in a rambling monotone, that he was at Knott's Berry Farm when Samsoe was kidnapped. He showed the jury a portion of his 1978 appearance on The Dating Game in an attempt to prove that the earrings found in his Seattle locker were his, not Samsoe's; but any earrings he might have worn on the program were obscured by his shoulder-length hair. He made no significant effort to dispute the four added charges. As part of his closing argument, he played the portion of the Arlo Guthrie song "Alice's Restaurant" in which the protagonist tells a psychiatrist that he wants to "kill". After less than two days' deliberation the jury convicted Alcala on all five counts of first-degree murder. A surprise witness during the penalty phase of the trial was Tali Shapiro, Alcala's first known victim. In March 2010 he was sentenced to death for a third time. Alcala has been incarcerated since his 1979 arrest for Samsoe's murder. During the period between his second and third trial he wrote and self-published You, the Jury, in which he claimed innocence in the Samsoe case and suggested a different suspect. He also filed two lawsuits against the California penal system, for a slip-and-fall incident and for refusing to provide him a low-fat diet. After his 2010 conviction New York authorities announced that they would no longer pursue Alcala because of his status as a prisoner awaiting execution. Nevertheless, in January 2011 a Manhattan grand jury indicted him for the murders of Ellen Hover, the Ciro's heiress (murdered c. July 15, 1977), and Cornelia Crilley, the TWA flight attendant (murdered June 12, 1971). In June 2012 he was extradited to New York, where he initially pled not guilty to the Hover and Crilley homicides; but in December he changed his plea to guilty on both counts, citing a desire to return to California to pursue appeals of his death penalty conviction. On January 7, 2013 he received an additional 25-years-to-life sentence. (The death penalty has not been an option in New York State since 2007.) In March 2011 investigators in Marin County, north of San Francisco, announced that they were "confident" that Alcala was responsible for the 1977 murder of 19-year-old Pamela Jean Lambson, who disappeared after making a trip to Fisherman's Wharf to meet a man who had offered to photograph her. Her battered, naked body was subsequently found in Marin County near a hiking trail. With no fingerprints or usable DNA, charges are unlikely to be filed, but police claimed that there is sufficient evidence to convince them that Alcala committed the crime. An investigation is ongoing in Seattle regarding Alcala's possible connection with the murders of Antoinette Wittaker, 13, in July 1977, and Joyce Gaunt, 17, in February 1978. In 1979 Alcala rented the Seattle-area locker where investigators eventually found jewelry belonging to two of his California victims. In March 2010, the Huntington Beach and New York City Police Departments released 120 of Alcala's photographs and sought the public's help in identifying them, in the hope of determining if any of the women and children he photographed were additional victims. Approximately 900 additional photos could not be made public, police said, because they were too sexually explicit. In the first few weeks, police reported that approximately 21 women had come forward to identify themselves, and "at least 6 families" said they believed they recognized loved ones who "disappeared years ago and were never found". However, according to one published account, as of November 2010 none of the photos had been unequivocally connected to a missing person case or an unsolved murder. As of November, 2014, 110 of the original photos remain posted online, and police continue to solicit the public's help with further identifications. Rodney Alcala (legal name) Rod Alcala John Berger John Burger year of event Event, victim name indicates date of crime Offense; offender status/location Alias/note 1961-64 U.S. Army 1968 Graduated from UCLA 1968 Tali Shapiro Rape, attempted murder; Pled guilty to assault, 1971/California 1968-71 Fugitive, student NYU Film School, camp counselor New York, New Hampshire John Berger, John Burger 1971 Cornelia Crilley Murder; Indicted, 2011/New York 1971–74 Incarcerated (Tali Shapiro conviction) California 1974 "Julie J." Parole violation, providing marijuana to minor; Convicted, 1974/California 1974-77 Incarcerated ("Julie J." conviction) California 1977 Ellen Hover Murder; Indicted, 2011/New York John Berger 1977 Worked as Los Angeles Times typesetter California 1977 Antoinette Wittaker Murder; Suspect, Washington 1977 Jill Barcomb Murder; Convicted, 2010/California 1977 Questioned by FBI regarding Hover California Rodney Alcala, John Berger 1977 Georgia Wixted Murder; Convicted, 2010/California 1977 Pamela Jean Lambson Murder; Accused, 2011/California 1978 Joyce Gaunt Murder; Suspect/Washington 1978 Interviewed by Hillside Strangler task force California 1978 Incarcerated (marijuana possession) California 1978 Contestant, The Dating Game California 1978 Charlotte Lamb Murder; Convicted, 2010/California 1979 Jill Parenteau Murder; Convicted, 2010/California 1979 Robin Samsoe Murder; Convicted, 1980, 1986, 2010/California 1979 Arrested on suspicion of Samsoe murder California 1980 Conviction #1, sentenced to death for Samsoe murder California 1984 Conviction #1 overturned by California Supreme Court California 1986 Conviction #2, sentenced to death for Samsoe murder California 1994 You, the Jury Self-published book asserting innocence in Samsoe case 2001 Conviction #2 overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit California 2003 DNA collected, 4 additional murders discovered California 2003 Motion to join Samsoe case with 4 others proposed; contested by Alcala California 2006 Case join granted by California Supreme Court California 2010 Conviction #3, sentenced to death for murders of Samsoe, Parenteau, Lamb, Wixted, and Barcomb California 2011 Indicted for murders of Hover, Crilley New York 2013 Pled guilty; sentenced to 25 years to life for murders of Hover, Crilley New York Criminal sentencing in the United States List of United States death row inmates Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rodney Alcala. TruTV Case Profile LA Times: Federal Judge Overturns Alcala Conviction 2001 Rodney Alcala at the Internet Movie Database CBS 48 Hours article on Alcala's murder spree, and more storage locker photographs.
Rodney James Alcala (born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor), a.k.a. "The Dating Game Killer", is a convicted serial killer and rapist currently on trial for additional murders. Alcala was born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor in Texas in 1943. His father, Raoul Alcala Buquor, abandoned the family when he was young. When he was 12, he, his mother Anna Maria Gutierrez, and his sisters, Christine and Marie, had moved to suburban Los Angeles. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served four years as a clerk. After he suffered a nervous breakdown, he was medically discharged when the military psychiatrist diagnosed him with antisocial personality disorder. In 1968, he graduated from the UCLA School of Fine Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and later studied film under Roman Polanski at the New York University under the name "John Berger". In the summer, he worked as a counselor at a drama camp for children in New Hampshire. Alcala's first known victim was an eight-year-old girl named Tali Shapiro, whom he abducted as she was on her way to school. After he lured her into his car, a witness followed him back to his apartment on De Longpre Avenue and called the police. By the time they arrived, Alcala had struck Shapiro with a steel rod and raped her. When they knocked on the door, he escaped out the back and evaded arrest. He was placed on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted list. Though badly injured, Shapiro survived. He fled to the East Coast and enrolled in the NYU. In 1971, Alcala is believed to have raped and strangled Cornelia Crilley, a Trans World Airlines flight attendant, in her Manhattan apartment. The same year, two children at the camp saw the FBI's Wanted poster and told the camp's staff about it. They reported Alcala to the authorities, leading to him being extradited to California. Because Shapiro's family had moved to Mexico and wouldn't let their daughter testify, Alcala got off with a guilty plead for a lesser assault charge. He received indeterminate sentencing, which meant he would be released from incarceration when he proved himself rehabilitated (the system was popular in the 1970s when sex offenders were convicted). After 34 months, in 1974, he was released and kidnapped a 13-year-old girl named as "Julie J." in court records, forced her to smoke marijuana and kissed her. In spite of what he had done, he was only found guilty of giving marijuana to a minor and violating his parole and was released after two more years of indeterminate sentencing. In 1977, Alcala got permission from his parole officer to visit relatives in New York City. Shortly after arriving (coincidentally during the time that Son of Sam was active), he is believed to have killed Ellen Jane Hover, a 23-year-old socialite. Her datebook showed that she had a meeting with one "John Berger", Alcala's alias, on the date of her disappearance. Upon returning to L.A., Alcala got a job as a typesetter for the Los Angeles Times. When the FBI connected him to his old alias, they questioned him. He confessed to knowing Hover, but denied committing the murder. Since her body hadn't yet been found, he was let go. He was also questioned as a convicted sex offender in connection with the Hillside Strangler investigation. In 1978, in spite of his criminal record, Alcala was admitted as "Bachelor No. 1" to The Dating Game. The host introduced him as a successful professional photographer. Though Alcala won the contest, the female contestant wouldn't go on a date with him because she thought he was "creepy". Criminal profiler Pat Brown later suggested that this rejection angered Alcala further since he afterwards killed at least three more women within two years. His last known victim was 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, who was abducted on her way to ballet class in 1979 in Huntington Beach and her decomposing body found in the Sierra Madres 12 days later. Earlier on the day of Samsoe's disappearance, Alcala had been seen trying to get her and one of her friends to get into swimsuits so he could take pictures of them, but was chased away by a neighbor. The previous day, he had tried to convince two teenage girls to do so by offering them marijuana. A Los Angeles National Forest ranger later testified that a man matching Alcala's description and driving the same make and model of car as him leading a girl down a stream on June 20. On July 24, he was arrested for Samsoe's murder. When the investigators searched Alcala's mother's house, they found a receipt for a storage locker in Seattle which turned out to contain hundreds of photos, mostly of young girls. In many of the photos, the subjects are nude or dressed in swimwear. Alcala himself is present in a few. The locker also contained a pair of earrings which had belonged to Samsoe and another pair that was later found to have the DNA of Charlotte Lamb, a 31-year-old woman killed in her apartment building's laundry room in El Segundo in 1978, on them. Alcala went on trial for Samsoe's murder and was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1980. The sentence was overturned twice, first in 1984 because the jury was told about his previous convictions before the trial and then again in 1986 on the grounds that a witness had been hypnotized. While in prison, he published a book titled You, The Jury, in which he denied killing Samsoe and posited another suspect. He also tried to sue the California penal system twice; once for a slip-and-fall accident and once because the prison hadn't given him a low-fat diet. In 2003, while a third trial of Alcala was being planned, his DNA, which had been sampled during his time in prison, connected him to two other victims. In 2010, Alcala was tried for a total of five murders: Samsoe, Jill Barcomb, Georgia Wixted, Charlotte Lamb and Jill Parenteau. He was found guilty on all counts and is currently on death row in San Quentin State Prison. In 2011, he was indicted for the New York murders of Cornelia Crilley and Ellen Hover and may be extradited to the state in the future. In December of 2012, he plead guilty to both murders. On January 7 the following year, he was given another life sentence. He is also believed by investigators to be responsible for the 1977 murder of 19-year-old Pamela Jean Lambson in San Fransisco, but isn't charged with it since there are no fingerprints or DNA evidence that implicates him. 120 of the photos found in Alcala's locker have been publicly released with the hopes that the subjects will come forward and identify themselves. Approximately 900 other sexually-explicit photos still haven't been release including many photos where the women are nude which have been censored. Approximately 21 women have come forward and identified themselves, and six families have claimed that a photo contains a long-lost family member. One theory is that some people in the photos are unknown victims of Alcala. Alcala's known victims were women aged 8-31. Not many details about exactly how he approached his victims are publicly known, but they were often attacked in their residences and usually raped and strangled with pant legs, stockings or shoe laces or beaten with a blunt object. Alcala had a notable habit of torturing his victims by first strangling them to the point of unconsciousness and then resuscitating them at least once and then finishing them off. Police also believe the victims were posed "in carefully selected positions" post-mortem. He apparently took the earrings of his victims as trophies. September 25, 1968, Los Angeles, California: Tali Shapiro, 8 (attempted; raped and bludgeoned with a steel rod) June 12, 1971, New York City, New York: Cornelia Crilley, 23 (raped and strangled with her own nylon stockings) Unspecified date in 1974, Los Angeles, California: "J. Julie", 13 (full name unknown; molested, but not killed) 1977: July 15 (last seen), New York City, New York: Ellen Hover, 23 November 9, Los Angeles, California: Jill Barcomb, 18 (raped, strangled three times and killed with a rock) December 16 (found), Malibu, California: Georgia Wixted, 27 (raped, strangled with her nylon stockings, bashed with a hammer and her genitals mutilated) June 24, 1978 (found), El Segundo, California: Charlotte Lamb, 31 (raped and strangled) 1979: February, Riverside County, California: "Monique H.", 15 (abducted, raped and beaten; was left alive) June 14 (found), Burbank, California: Jill Parenteau, 21 (raped, beaten and strangled with a cord or a stocking) June 20, Huntington Beach, California: Robin Samsoe, 12 (killed, apparently with a knife) Murders for which Alcala is currently suspected of and/or on trial for Unspecified date in 1976, Waterville, Washington: Cherry Greenman, 19 1977: Unspecified dates, Seattle, Washington: Antionette Witaker, 13 Joyce Gaunt, 17 October 8, San Fransisco, California: Pamela Jean Lambson, 19 Note: Alcala is also suspected of as many as a total of 130 murders based on photos found in his possession. Alcala has been compared to Ted Bundy and has several similarities to him: Both targeted women, occasionally children Both are believed to have killed in multiple states (in Alcala's case, he hasn't yet been found guilty) Both killed their victims either by strangling them or with blunt force For both, the last known victim was a 12-year-old girl Alcala was mentioned by Reid in Epilogue when it is discovered that the unsub, a serial drowner, has a habit of resuscitating his victims, not unlike the way Alcala would revive his victims after strangling them to the point of unconsciousness and then revive them to torture them. Wikipedia's article about Alcala The Sun article about Alcala Huffington Post online article with Alcala's photos Los Angeles Times online article LA Weekly article about Alcala CNN article about Alcala's 2013 convictions Summary of Alcala's life by Radofrd University's Department of Psychology Categories: Real People Real Life Killers Real Serial Killers Real Life Rapists Real Pedophiles Real Ephebophiles Real Hebephiles','url':'http://criminalminds.wikia.com/wiki/Rodney_Alcala','og_descr':'Rodney James Alcala (born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor), a.k.a. \'The Dating Game Killer\', is a convicted serial killer and rapist currently on trial for additional murders. Alcala was born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor in Texas in 1943. His father, Raoul Alcala Buquor, abandoned the family when he was young. When he was 12, he, his mother Anna Maria Gutierrez, and his sisters, Christine and Marie, had moved to suburban Los Angeles. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served...
Serial Killer Rodney James Alcala on the Dating Game. Rodney Alcala s appearance on The Dating Game in 1978. In 1977, Alcala got permission from his parole officer to.
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Rodney Alcala ur. Jako Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor 23 sierpnia 1943 – amerykański seryjny morderca i gwałciciel, skazany na karę śmierci w Kalifornii w 2010.
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