“I I’m serving you for dinner,” said Cheryl Bradshaw, “what’s your name and what do you look like?” Bachelor number one, Rodney Alcala, replied: “My name is the banana and I look really good… Peel me.” Bradshaw burst out laughing, as did the studio audience.

This was a seemingly innocent episode of the 1978 television show The Dating Game. Bradshaw, who could ask questions of three contestants but could not see them, chose Alcala, a long-haired photographer who enjoyed skydiving and motorcycle riding in his spare time. What she couldn’t have known was that she had booked a date with one of the most prolific serial killers in American history.

The story of their close encounter and how Bradshaw’s intuition saved her life is retold in Woman of the Hour, Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut now on Netflix.

The film shows how Alcala (played by Daniel Zovatto), armed with charm and a camera, lured young women by offering to take their photo (he was eventually convicted of five murders in Orange County, California, and two in New York, all in the 1970s). It also follows Bradshaw (Kendrick), an aspiring actor battling sexism in the industry and who sees The Dating Game as a way to get her big break.

Their paths cross on the show, a precursor to The Bachelor and other reality TV starring future Hollywood stars like Farrah Fawcett, Sally Field and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The producers had no idea that Alcala was already a registered sex offender and did little to vet participants.

Matt Murphy, a former homicide prosecutor who worked on the Alcala case and was a consultant for Woman of the Hour, says by phone from Manhattan Beach, California: “The Dating Game was a risqué, G-rated show that ran for over 10 years in Southern California. It was full of silly double entendres and reflected a much more innocent time before television became awash with smutty reality TV. And it reflected a more innocent time in America, especially when it comes to our collective understanding of sexual predators.”

Handsome, intelligent and courteous, Alcala seemed an ideal participant. But as he sat on stage in a brown suit with wide legs, he already had blood on his hands. Murphy continues: “It speaks to the narcissism, the arrogance of psychopaths. He’s in the middle of a killing spree and he went to The Dating Game and he got selected.

The moment he made his choice, Bradshaw announced, “Well, I like bananas, so I’ll take (bachelor number) one!” Alcala beamed as the audience applauded. The young couple received tennis lessons and a trip to Magic Mountain theme park. But almost immediately, Bradshaw had a feeling something was wrong.

Murphy adds: “If you watch the YouTube clips where he comes around the partition and Cheryl Bradshaw looks at him, there’s a moment in her eyes where you can see she’s being polite but she refused to go on a date with him to go and that probably saved her life.”

After filming, Bradshaw called The Dating Game production office and told contestant coordinator Ellen Metzger that she wanted to cancel. Metzger told an ABC News documentary: “She said, ‘Ellen, I can’t date this guy. Strange vibrations are coming from him. He’s very strange. I’m not at ease. Is that going to be a problem?’ And of course I said, ‘No.’

Bradshaw later related the experience to Alan Warren, author of The Killing Game: The True Story of Rodney Alcala. He recalls, “She liked him when she asked questions and he gave answers. His answers were very sexual with very strong innuendos – that was also part of the seventies and the style show, so it wasn’t far off.

“She loved that playfulness, but when she actually met him, when they were both backstage at intermission, she got chills and chills and thought there was something wrong with him. She thought this man was strange.”

Warren, based in Seattle, Washington, adds: “The word was creepy: it scared me; There was something about him that made me nervous. It wasn’t something he said that turned her away. It was just his presence, something about the way he looked and acted and the way he looked at her, and she panicked.

Bradshaw never saw Alcala again. She also did not realize her acting ambitions. She left California – and the public eye – to start a family. Warren, who interviewed her before her death from cancer, says she has never forgotten her brush with a mass murderer.

Warren says: “When I spoke to her a few years ago she was still disturbed by the whole thing. Even years later she acted like that, yes, good thing I didn’t and I felt it. She was very open that way. But I still felt like it was a little awkward because she was getting so close. It was still there.”

After his fleeting fame, Alcala returned to his killing spree. He murdered 12-year-old Robin Samsoe in 1979 and was subsequently arrested in a house he shared with his mother and tried. Despite a retrial and the verdict being overturned twice, he remained in prison for decades. By 2010, DNA technology had advanced to the point where it could link him to numerous murder cases.

He was ultimately sentenced to death for five murders in California between 1977 and 1979, although authorities estimate he may have killed as many as 130 people nationwide. He was given an additional 25 years to life in 2013 after pleading guilty to two murders in New York.

He was still awaiting execution when he died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2021 at the age of 77 at a hospital in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

Alcala is the focus of a chapter in Murphy’s new volume The Book of Murder. The prosecutor, who was assigned to the Orange County Prosecutor’s Office’s sexual assault and homicide divisions for more than two decades, says Alcala’s childhood offers little clue to his psychological motivations.

“He grew up in a home with people who loved him. He had successful brothers and sisters. His brother graduated from West Point and became a war hero in Vietnam. He had an aunt very much in the picture, who also loved him very much.

“We had some of the best criminal defense attorneys and investigators working on the defense in three separate trials and no one found a trace of child abuse. He was not sexually abused. He was not physically abused. He wasn’t bullied at school.”

He adds: “Perhaps the most disturbing comment from boys like Rodney Alcala is that, if there is a common thread in their childhood, it is much closer to being entitled and spoiled as children than to child abuse, and that for many problems. people uncomfortable. I can give you example after example of this.

“Rodney Alcala had a Mensa-level certified genius IQ. He was handsome, he was articulate, he had friends, he had girlfriends, he wasn’t a social outcast, he had family who loved him. And he liked to sadistically rape and kill people.”

Two of Alcala’s victims were posed nude after their deaths, while one was raped with a claw hammer. All were repeatedly strangled and resuscitated to prolong their suffering. After he was captured, investigators tracked down his storage unit and found about 1,700 photos of mostly women and girls — it was not known whether they were alive, missing or murdered — as well as dozens of pieces of jewelry belonging to his victims.

Alcala represented himself at his last trial. Murphy, the prosecutor, saw the “Dating Game Killer” up close every day in the courtroom. What were his impressions? “He was very charming, he was very charismatic, but of course I knew he was a monster,” he says. “He’s a true blue American boogeyman and it was fascinating to interact with him, to find out what made him tick.

“He was born with half a soul. He would commit the absolutely horribly sadistic rape murders of these poor women. Part of the job is dealing with the families and the multigenerational trauma that occurs as a result is difficult to describe. I went from interacting with family members to interacting directly with Rodney, and we did that every day for six months.”

Murphy, a legal analyst for ABC News, added: “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the moral compasses of these guys. They do it because they enjoy it and because they choose to do it. It makes them sexually aroused.”