Rodney Alcala
Why was Rodney Alcala called the “Dating Game Killer”?
What was Rodney Alcala convicted of?
What film is based on Rodney Alcala’s story?
Rodney Alcala (born August 23, 1943, San Antonio, Texas, U.S.—died July 24, 2021, Corcoran, California) was an American serial killer known as the “Dating Game Killer” because of his 1978 appearance on the popular TV show, whose producers were not aware of his multiple gruesome murders. His story was dramatized in the 2024 Netflix film Woman of the Hour, starring and directed by Anna Kendrick. Alcala was convicted in the murders of six women and one girl between 1971 and 1979, but the actual number of his victims has been estimated as high as 130.
Early years
Alcala was born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala-Buquor in San Antonio, Texas, and when he was eight the family relocated to Mexico. While there, his father left the family, and his mother moved him and his siblings to Los Angeles. Alcala joined the Army at age 17, but after a few years he was discharged after being allegations of sexual misconduct and suffering a breakdown. He earned a degree in fine arts from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1968. That same year he beat and sexually assaulted an eight-year-old girl named Tali Shapiro. The police officer who found the bloodied girl wasn’t able to apprehend Alcala. When Alcala died in 2021, Shapiro reflected on what he had done to her all those years earlier:
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.
Alcala moved to New York City and took an alias, John Berger, to enroll at New York University. By 1971 he was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, and while working as a camp counselor in New Hampshire, some girls recognized him from the Most Wanted poster in the post office, leading to his arrest. After authorities sent him back to Los Angeles, he was convicted of child molestation in the Shapiro case and served 34 months before he was paroled.
The Dating Game
In September 1977 Alcala was hired by the Los Angeles Times as a typesetter, and in March 1978 police interviewed him as a suspect in the Hillside Strangler killings but cleared him of involvement in that separate spate of serial murders. Then in September he was a contestant on The Dating Game, a quintessentially ’70s show that featured a single woman interviewing three bachelors on the other side of a partition and then deciding which one to go on a date with based on their answers. “Bachelor Number One” was Alcala, a handsome man with long hair, wearing a brown bell-bottom suit and a wide-collar shirt. The game show host described him as “a successful photographer.” In fact, Alcala used photography to lure his victims, offering to take their photos. TV viewers also learned that Alcala supposedly enjoyed motorcycling and skydiving in his spare time.
On the other side of the partition was Cheryl Bradshaw, an aspiring actress and drama teacher. In keeping with the style of the show, she and Alcala exchanged flirtatious questions and answers.
“What’s your best time?” she asked.
“The best time is at night—nighttime,” Alcala replied. Asked to elaborate, he said, “Nighttime is when it really gets good.”
In her last question, Bradshaw asked, “I am serving you for dinner. What are you called, and what do you look like?”
“I’m called ‘The banana,’ and I look really good,” Alcala answered.
After a commercial break, it was time for her choice.
“Well, I like bananas, so I’ll take [Bachelor] One,” she said. Alcala flashed a wide grin.
When he came out to meet her, the host told them the show was providing them with a trip to the Magic Mountain theme park, along with tennis lessons. But Bradshaw soon made a decision that might have saved her life.
“I started to feel ill. He was acting really creepy,” she told The Sunday Telegraph in 2012. “I turned down his offer. I didn’t want to see him again.”
Bradshaw called contestant coordinator Ellen Metzger the next day to tell her she wasn’t comfortable going on a date with Alcala because of the “weird vibes that are coming off him,” Metzger told the TV show 20/20.
Bachelor Number Two, an actor named Jed Mills, who went on to play the owner of an allegedly fat-free yogurt shop on the sitcom Seinfeld, had a similar impression, telling 20/20, “In the green room, he jumps in and he says, ‘I always get my girl.’…Really, really creepy.”
Matt Murphy, a former homicide prosecutor who worked on the Alcala case, said in a 2024 interview with The Guardian: “It speaks to the narcissism, the arrogance of psychopaths. He’s in the middle of a murder spree and he went on The Dating Game and he was selected.”
The victims
In 1980 Alcala received the death sentence for the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, who had disappeared the previous year while riding her bike. The California Supreme Court reversed his conviction in 1984 and ordered a new trial. He was convicted and sentenced to death again in 1986, only to have that sentence overturned in 2003.
DNA evidence ultimately linked Alcala to the deaths of four women in California during the 1970s. In 2010 a jury convicted him and sentenced him to death for the murder of Samsoe as well as the deaths of:
- Jill Barcomb, 18, in 1977
- Georgia Wixted, 27, in 1977
- Charlotte Lamb, 32, in 1978
- Jill Parenteau, 21, in 1979
In New York cold-case investigators reopened two cases, and in 2012 Alcala pleaded guilty to the murders of:
- Born:
- August 23, 1943, San Antonio, Texas, U.S.
- Died:
- July 24, 2021, Corcoran, California (aged 77)
- Cornelia M. Crilley, 23, in 1971
- Ellen Jane Hover, 23, believed to have been in 1977
The names of all his victims, however, may never be known as authorities have estimated that Alcala may have brutally attacked and killed as many as 130 women. Across the country police departments linked him to murders in Washington state, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Wyoming. Alcala died at age 77 in 2021 while on California’s death row.