POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Regarding Dating Game Killer Rodney Alcala

You may recall that a couple of months ago, I wrote about the spate of murders of young women by guys who'd become minor celebs by appearing on "reality shows." I tried to interest Dr. Helen in posting on the topic, since I'd be interested to know whether she's got any insight into what seems to me a high correlation.

One such is Rodney Alcala. He'd been in the Army in the early to mid-sixties, before getting a psychological discharge. Naturally, he went to UCLA, graduating in 1968 with a fine arts degree. He worked some in the movie industry, including, apparently, a short stint with Roman Polanski. In 1979, a 12-year-old girl, Robin Samsoe, disappeared in Huntington Beach while riding to a ballet class. Her body was discovered in a State Park some time later. It seems that people had previously noticed Alcala snapping photos the girl and a friend of hers on the beach, minutes before she disappeared. Police were able to get a drawing based on her description, and someone linked it to Alcala.

He's been convicted three times now for the murder of the girl, and had his conviction overturned twice. In this latest trial, he represented himself. Prior to his appearance on The Dating Game in 1978, he'd already been convicted of the brutal beating (and some sources say rape) of an 8-year-old girl. Those were in the days before background checks, I guess; he was the chosen bachelor on that occasion.

As he pressed his appeals, DNA technology caught up with him. He was linked to 4 other murders of young women. Police also located a storage locker full of photographs that Alcala had rented in Seattle, mostly of young women, that Alcala took. The story of their discovery is remarkable, and begs the question of just how much Alcala's sister knew. They've been posted online.

One of the people who identified herself in the photographs online has been able to pinpoint with high accuracy the time that the photo was taken, very shortly before Robin Samsoe's disappearance. She recalls being approached by Alcala and invited to his mother's house, where he lived, to view some of his work. This seems to have been his MO. She also recalls that he seemed obsessed with relating that he was in MENSA.

Leedom said many of the photos in that collection were of naked women and nude children that Alcala showed her in the presence of his mother.

It wasn't until years later that she understood the look of disgust on his mother's face.

Police suspect that he's involved in other disappearances during the 1970s. So, particularly if you lived in the Huntington Beach area, or in Seattle, or NYC during this period, please go look. Some of the photos also seem to have been taken abroad, though the styles seem later than one would expect from the period of his military service. One of the sources that I looked at states that some of the photos are sexually explicit, though the collection that I viewed are not. If you know of a young woman who disappeared during the seventies, I think it's worth your while to look. If you've got a photo of Alcala from those years, or if you knew or recall encountering him, that information might be useful to the police as well.

So far, friends and relatives of missing women from that decade have identified four more, according to police.

The women encompass a large swath racially and otherwise. Most of them appear to be in their late teens and twenties. He seems to have been quite attracted to the off-the-shoulder look which was in vogue back then. If you look at the photos, many appear to have been deliberately framed so as to create the impression that they might be naked. It's probably not accidental that according to investigators Alcala delighted in strangling his victims, allowing them to regain consciousness, then strangling them again repeatedly before they died.

Some people are unhappy that his death penalties have been overturned, but I think personally that if further investigation yields answers to questions that have haunted people for 30 or 40 years, it will be a good thing to know the dimensions of and as many of the particulars of his murders as possible.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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