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‘Dating Game’ serial killer’s fame was key to downfall, detective reveals

Dating Game serial killers fame was key to downfall detective Dating Game serial killers fame was key to downfall detective

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The man who arrested serial killer Rodney Alcala, and whose case inspired the recent Netflix special Woman of the Hour, has detailed the true story behind the famous film and how Alcala’s appearance on a 1970s dating show led to his capture.

He called it Alkala “Deadly Dating Game” Because he appeared on the TV show “The Dating Game” as Bachelor No. 1 in 1978 during a killing spree.

“He had a very high IQ… but the problem with a guy like that, I think, is that most of his IQ isn’t focused on developing personal relationships… and things like that… it’s all focused on my next victim and how to exploit her.” “. “Women and girls,” Craig Robison, the lead investigator in the Alcala investigation with Huntington Beach police, told Fox News Digital in his first public interview on the case. “He’ll still be doing this if we don’t catch him.”

Robison is also a retired California prosecutor and judge. Because judges in the state are not allowed to speak in “pending” cases, he had not previously spoken publicly about the investigation and was even barred from testifying during the serial killer’s third trial. The case was considered “pending” from Alcala’s arrest until his death in prison in 2021, Robison said.

The “Dating Game Killer” kept the “trophies” that ultimately led to his downfall: the informant

Rodney Alcala was dubbed the “Dating Game Killer” because he appeared on the TV show “The Dating Game” as the No. 1 Bachelor in 1978 during his killing spree. (Prosecutor Matt Murphy)

While the Netflix film shows Alcala winning a competition on “The Dating Game” and going on a date with Bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw, many may not know the real story behind the exchange.

Robison revealed that Bradshaw never went on a date with Alcala.

“From the moment she met him, he kind of scared her,” he said, adding that her “intuition” may have saved her life.

The former detective revealed that he met Anna Kendrick, who played Bradshaw in the film, to help her research the serial killer case. Kendrick was interested in “what he made,” he said [Alcala] sign.”

DNA links a California man to a 1979 murder, years after he passed a polygraph

Rodney Alcala talks with his investigator before he was convicted in Santa Ana, California, on February 25, 2010, of murdering a 12-year-old girl and four women in the late 1970s (AP).

Rodney Alcala talks with his investigator before he was convicted in Santa Ana, California, on February 25, 2010, of murdering a 12-year-old girl and four women in the late 1970s. (Orange County Register)

Robison began investigating the Alcala case in June 1979 after the disappearance of 12-year-old Robin Samso, who was last seen riding a bicycle to her dance class.

“Missing children in her age group are sometimes runaways, so I think that was probably the initial suspicion,” he added. “I’m starting to feel… like something has happened to her.”

On the day of her disappearance, Samso went to the beach with her friend Bridget Wilfort before biking to class. Robison said a man “wearing plain clothes, not beach clothes” approached the girls with “Afro-style hair and a camera” and asked to take pictures of them.

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Alcala's victim, Ruben Samso

12-year-old Robin Samso. Alcala was sentenced to death in 2010 for five murders in California in the late 1970s, including those of Samso, 18-year-old Jill Barcomb, 21-year-old Jill Parenteau, 27-year-old Georgia Wickstead, and 27-year-old Georgia Wickstead. 32 years old. Old Charlotte Lamb after new DNA evidence linked him to the victims. (Prosecutor Matt Murphy)

The investigators brought Wilfort to sit down with their sketch artist, and released the composite drawing to the public. Authorities also set up a tip line, and they received an important call from a parole officer, who saw the drawing and believed the man police were looking for was Alcala — a convicted felon with a massive indictment, Robison said.

Investigators learned that in 1968, a witness spotted Alcala driving with a young girl in her car, followed them to an apartment and called police. Officers discovered 8-year-old Tali Shapiro nearly dead, having been raped and beaten with a steel bar. While Shapiro survived the attack, Alcala fled the scene but was later caught and arrested, pleading guilty to child molestation.

Serving only 34 months before being paroled in 1974, he was soon arrested again for marijuana possession while with a 13-year-old girl and was imprisoned again until 1977.

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Police drawing by Rodney Alcala

The investigators brought Bridget Wilfort, Robin Samso’s friend, to sit down with their sketch artist, and released this composite drawing to the public. (Prosecutor Matt Murphy)

Authorities learned that a few months before Samso’s disappearance, Alcala had been arrested for the rape of a 15-year-old hitchhiking girl in Pasadena in February 1979. The surviving teen convinced Alcala that she enjoyed time with him before she eventually retreated and alerted. Police when he stopped at a gas station.

“For some reason, he didn’t kill her or leave her there,” Robison said. “I played with him in a way that instead of panicking, screaming, fighting, resisting, killing and suffocating, I took a different approach.”

Alcala was arrested on rape charges, but released on bail. That case was still pending at the time of Samsoe’s disappearance in June 1979, Robison said.

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Serial killer Rodney Alcala

Serial killer Rodney Alcala, pictured in this booking photo, died of natural causes on July 24, 2021, while on death row in California. (Prosecutor Matt Murphy)

After learning of the hitchhiker’s case, Robison retrieved the booking photo from Alcala’s arrest. That same day, one of the other detectives returned home and noticed something central to the case being broadcast on television — an episode of “The Dating Game” from the previous year.

“He’s reading the newspaper, and you hear Jim Lange come in… He says, ‘Now let me tell you a little bit about your mate… He’s this, he’s that, he’s a photographer, he’s all these wonderful things… Meet your mate – Rodney Alcala…’ “There’s the guy we just identified as a possible suspect,” Robison said.

“If you believe in divine guidance…that would certainly be a good guide. God’s finger comes down and says, ‘Hey, you should look at this guy.'”

Detectives then brought Wilfort back to the police station, where they showed her the clip of Alcala on the dating show.

“When she saw the picture of this man, you could see a complete change in her demeanor,” Robison recalls. “It was as if her blood ran cold. ‘That’s the man on the beach,'” she said.

Police discovered Samsoy’s remains in early July 1979 in a remote mountain valley, and weeks later, Robison arrested Alcala for her murder.

“Craig Robison… is 27 years old… of all the good cops involved in this case… the youngest detective on the first murder is the one who found out and arrested Rodney Alcala,” Matt Murphy, lead prosecutor In the Alcala case, Fox News Digital said.

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Rodney Alcala

Rodney Alcala was arrested in 1979 for the murder of 12-year-old Ruben Samso.

Robison and his team soon discovered a storage locker that Alcala had opened in Seattle after Samso’s murder, where he stored many of the implicated items, including hundreds of photographs of the women and jewelry.

“He had boxes and boxes of stuff in there,” Robison said. “One of the things I saw while we were searching was a little bag… yellow and red with a zipper. … It’s full of jewelry… There was this set of earrings… It had a gold post and a little gold ball on them.”

His investigation team showed the earrings to Samso’s mother, who helped authorities confirm what they already suspected — that the earrings belonged to her daughter, even though they didn’t have the DNA to prove it at the time.

“He kept these little trinkets as mementos of the things he did, the murders he committed during his career,” Robison added.

Alcala "Awards" - Jewelry found in his store

Alcala’s “trophies” – jewelry found in his storage unit in Seattle. Robison described the yellow and red bag, in which he found a set of earrings that Robin Samsoe’s mother said belonged to her daughter. (Prosecutor Matt Murphy)

“He kept these little trinkets as mementos of the things he did, the murders he committed over the course of his career.”

-Craig Robison

Alcalá was sentenced to death for Samsoy’s murder twice – in 1980 and again in 1986 – but both convictions were overturned.

The “trophies” Robison and his team found in the storage locker linked Alcala to his crimes decades later. In the same red and yellow bag in which Samsui’s gold ball earrings were found, another set of rose-shaped earrings carried the DNA of another victim – Charlotte Lamb, who was murdered in 1978 in Los Angeles.

“We finally got the forensic connection that would have been missing before,” Murphy told Fox News Digital.

In 2010, Alcala was sentenced to death for five murders in California in the late 1970s, including the murder of 12-year-old Samsoy. He was charged with the additional murders of 18-year-old Jill Barcombe, 21-year-old Jill Parenteau, 27-year-old Georgia Wickstead and 32-year-old Charlotte Lamb after new DNA evidence linked him to the victims.

“I will remain convinced until the day I die that we have sufficient evidence in all three trials to convict him,” Robison said. “All we succeeded in doing in the third trial was proving that, yes, he is the serial killer we all knew before.”

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Rodney Alcala

Rodney Alcala died of natural causes on July 24, 2021, while awaiting execution in California. He was 77 years old at the time of his death. (AP Photo/David Handschuh, Paul, File)

In 2013, he was sentenced to an additional 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to two murders in New York, In 2016, he was charged again, this time with the murder of a 28-year-old pregnant woman after DNA evidence linked him to her 1977 death. In Wyoming.

“Once we had the DNA in the system, other agencies…the NYPD and police agencies around the country started investigating their own murders and the Jane Doe murders,” retired Detective Steven Mack, who began investigating the case in 2003. After the first two incidents. The convictions were overturned, Fox News Digital previously reported. “They were able to link Alcala to their crimes.”

Investigators suspected or linked Alcala to other murders in Los Angeles and Marin County, California; Seattle, Washington; New York; New Hampshire; and Arizona, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

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In this file photo taken on March 30, 2010, convicted serial killer Rodney Alcala listens as victim impact statements are read in Santa Ana, California.

In this file photo taken on March 30, 2010, convicted serial killer Rodney Alcala listens as victim impact statements are read in Santa Ana, California. (AP)

Alcala died of natural causes on July 24, 2021, while awaiting execution in California. He was 77 years old at the time of his death.

Although it took more than 30 years for Alcala to be sentenced for his crimes, he remained in custody from Robison’s arrest in 1979 until his death.

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“At the time, I think they probably had 150 police officers in Huntington Beach, but it was a small community and much smaller than it is today… The locals were able to catch this guy with all this intelligence and put him behind bars.” Robison said. “And that’s what started the complete undoing of him, which was his arrest, which we made in July of 1979.”



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2025-01-26 09:00:00


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