Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor, better known as Rodney Alcala, was a serial murderer and rapist in the United States. After appearing on a US TV program, he became known as the “Dating Game Killer” and was convicted in 2010.
He was condemned to death in California for eight killings committed there between 1977 and 1979, and after pleading guilty to two crimes in New York in 1971 and 1977, he was given an extra term of 25 years to life. His real number of victims is unknown, although it is likely to be substantially higher. In 1961, at the age of 17, he enlisted in the United States Army as a clerk. In 1980, Alcala was sentenced to death in Orange County for the kidnapping and murder of Robin Samsoe, a 12-year-old girl, in Los Angeles the year before. He gathered over 1,000 images of ladies, young girls, and boys, many of them in sexually graphic situations. Furthermore, he was known to have abused one other photographic subject, and authorities have hypothesized that additional victims may have been raped or murdered.
Death Factors
Rodney Alcala died of unexplained “natural causes” on July 24, 2021, at the age of 77, in Corcoran, California, United States.
Rodney Alcala’s Bio
Rodney Alcala entered the world for the first time on August 23, 1943, in San Antonio, Texas, United States. He was born in a Christian religious household with the name Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor. His nationality was American, and his ethnicity was Mexican-American. Rodney became 77 years old in 2020, and his star sign was Virgo, according to his birthdate. As a result, his race was white. His father, Raoul Alcala Buquor, and mother, Anna Maria Gutierrez, were his parents. She has two sisters as well. In 1951, Alcala’s father relocated his family to Mexico, only to leave them three years later. His mother transferred him and his two brothers to suburban Los Angeles when he was about 11 years old, when he was about 11 years old. Rodney received his schooling at the UCLA School of Fine Arts and afterwards studied cinema at New York University under Roman Polanski. Rodney Alcala is a member of the Alcala family.
Criminal History Of Rodney Alcala
Rodney Alcala’s first known offense occurred in 1968: After seeing him luring an eight-year-old child named Tali Shapiro into his Hollywood flat, an eyewitness in Los Angeles notified the cops. The girl was discovered alive after being raped and beaten with a steel bar when police came, but Alcala had escaped. In 1971, he got a position as a counselor at a children’s arts camp in New Hampshire under the identity “John Burger.” In early 1971, the FBI added Alcala to its list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, and two youngsters attending an arts camp discovered his portrait on an FBI poster at the post office a few months later. He was apprehended and extradited to the state of California. Alcala was convicted of child molestation and sentenced to three years after prosecutors were unable to convict him of rape and attempted murder without their chief witness. After seventeen months in prison, he was released in 1974. He was re-arrested less than two months after his parole for attacking a 13-year-old girl named “Julie J.” in court papers, who had accepted what she believed would be a ride to school. He was paroled after another two-year sentence. His parole officer in Los Angeles made the unprecedented step of allowing a repeat offender and known flight risk to fly to New York City after his second release in 1977.
Ellen Jane Hover, 23, was the goddaughter of Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. and the daughter of the proprietor of the famed Hollywood nightclub Ciro’s. In 1978, he worked as a typesetter for the Los Angeles Times for a short time before being arrested and serving a brief term for marijuana possession. In 1979, he raped Monique Hoyt, a 15-year-old model, as she was posing for pictures. In 1978, he also appeared on the famous game program “The Dating Game.”
In July 1979, Alcala was arrested and imprisoned without bail for the murder of Robin Samsoe, a 12-year-old girl from Huntington Beach. Her corpse was discovered 12 days later in the Los Angeles mountains, rotting. In 1980, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for Samsoe’s murder, but in 1986, he was convicted and sentenced to death following a second trial that was almost similar to the first save for the exclusion of the past criminal record evidence. The second conviction was overturned by a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel, in part because a witness was not permitted to testify in support of Alcala’s claim that the park ranger who discovered Samsoe’s corpse had been “hypnotized by police investigators.”
While preparing their third case in 2003, Orange County, California police discovered that Alcala’s DNA, tested under a new state legislation, matched semen left at the rape-murder sites of two women in Los Angeles. In 2004, he was indicted with the killings of four more women, based on new evidence, including a cold case DNA match. Georgia Wixted, 27, bludgeoned in her Malibu apartment in 1977; Charlotte Lamb, 31, raped, strangled, and left in the laundry room of an El Segundo apartment complex in 1978; and Jill Parenteau, 21, raped, strangled, and left in the laundry room of an El Segundo apartment complex in 1979; and Jill Barcomb, 18, a New York runaway found “rolled up like a ball” in a Los Angeles ravine in during his detention between the second and third trials, Alcala created and self-published a book called “You, the Jury,” in which he claimed innocence in the Samsoe case and recommended a new candidate. He also sued the California state prison system for a slip-and-fall event and for refusing to supply him with a low-fat diet.
Prosecutors then filed a request in 2003 to combine the allegations against Samsoe with those against the four newly found victims. In 2006, the California Supreme Court decided in favor of the prosecution, and Alcala went on trial in February 2010 on the five counts.
For the third trial, he chose to represent himself and took the stand in his own defense, playing the roles of both interrogator and witness for five hours, asking himself questions and then answering them. He made no effort to refute the four more claims, other than to state that he had no recollection of murdering any of the ladies. The single defense witness, Richard Rappaport, a psychiatrist employed by Alcala, stated that borderline personality disorder may explain Alcala’s assertions that he had no recollection of the killings. Alcala was a “sexual predator,” according to the prosecutor, who “knew what he was doing was improper and didn’t care.” In March 2010, Alcala was condemned to death for the third time.
In March 2010, the Huntington Beach, California, and New York City Police Departments published 120 of Rodney’s images and asked the public for assistance in identifying them in the hopes of ascertaining if any of the women and children he captured were further victims.
Until 2013, when a family member identified the picture of Christine Thornton, 28, whose corpse was discovered in Wyoming in 1982, none of the photographs could be definitively linked to a missing person case or unsolved homicide.
As of July 2021, 110 of the original photographs are still up on the internet, and authorities are still asking for aid with further identifications.
Additional charges, convictions, and affiliations Following Alcala’s 2010 conviction, New York officials indicated that they would no longer pursue him due to his position as a convicted felon facing death. Despite this, a Manhattan grand jury charged him in January 2011 for the 1971 and 1977 murders of Cornelia Crilley, a TWA flight attendant, and Ellen Hover, the Ciro’s heiress. In June 2012, he was extradited to New York, where he first pleaded not guilty to both charges. He amended his pleas to guilty in both cases, claiming a wish to travel to California to seek appeals of his 2012 death sentence conviction. A Manhattan court sentenced Alcala to an extra 25 years in prison on January 7, 2013. Since 2007, the death penalty has not been an option in New York State.
Rodney was labeled a “person of interest” in the unsolved deaths of Antoinette Wittaker, 13, in July 1977, and Joyce Gaunt, 17, in February 1978 by Seattle police in 2010. Investigators in Marin County, California, north of San Francisco, said in March 2001 that they were “certain” that Alcala was responsible for the 1977 murder of Pamela Jean Lambson, a 19-year-old woman who vanished after going to Fisherman’s Wharf to meet a guy who promised to photograph her. Her bruised, nude corpse was later discovered along a hiking route in Marin County. Charges were never filed since there were no fingerprints or valid DNA, but police stated that there was enough evidence to convict Alcala.
In September 2016, he was accused with the murder of Christine Ruth Thornton, a 28-year-old woman who had been missing since 1977. A family member identified her as the subject of one of Alcala’s images that were made public by the Huntington Beach Police Department and the New York City Police Department in 2013. Thornton’s corpse was discovered in Sweetwater County, Wyoming, in 1982, but it wasn’t recognized until 2015, when DNA from her family matched tissue samples from her bones.
Rodney acknowledged to taking the photograph but not murdering the lady, who was six months pregnant at the time of her death. Thornton is the first accused murder victim to be connected to the 2010 Alcala pictures. Alcala, who is 73 years old, was apparently too unwell to travel from California to Wyoming to face the additional allegations. “Dating Game Killer,” a biographical film on Rodney’s life, was directed by Peter Medak and premiered on the American television network Investigation Discovery on December 3rd, 2017. Also in 2021, Netflix will release “Rodney and Sheryl,” a biographical film starring Anna Kendrick that tells the tale of Alcala’s debut on The Dating Game during his murder spree.
Rodney Alcala’s Personal Life
Rodney Alcala has never been married. He had no prospect of going through a divorce since he was still unmarried and single. He was straight when it came to his sexual orientation.
Rodney Alcala’s Net Worth
Rodney Alcala had a net worth of tens of thousands of dollars every year, but his specific income was not disclosed. His main source of income was from his serial murderer and rapist vocation, and he had amassed a sizable fortune from his trade. Until his death, Rodney had not done any endorsement work.
Rodney Alcala’s Body Measurement
Rodney Alcala had a healthy body weight of 68 kg and stood at an optimum height of 5 feet and 10 inches. He had long white hair and bright brown eyes as he grew older. Furthermore, his body type was ordinary.
Quick Facts
Rodney is a UCLA School of Fine Arts graduate. He got his moniker after appearing on “The Dating Game” around the time of his murders.
He was not married at the time of his conviction. At New York University, he studied cinema under famed filmmaker and sex criminal Roman Polanski. The real number of casualties in Alcala is unclear, although it might be significantly higher.