close
close

first Drop

Com TW NOw News 2024

Who escaped Rodney Alcala? Where the survivors of the ‘Dating Game Killer’ are now
news

Who escaped Rodney Alcala? Where the survivors of the ‘Dating Game Killer’ are now

The one from Netflix Woman of the Hour is based on the true story of infamous serial killer and sex offender Rodney Alcala, which appeared on The dating game in 1978 during his murder spree. After watching the true crime drama, you may be curious about what happened to the women who escaped Alcala and where they are now.

Fortunately, Cheryl Bradshaw, the real-life woman (based on Anna Kendrick’s character) who chose Alcala as the winning bachelor on the dating show, did not continue their date. Alcala killed his first victim almost a decade before he was deployed The dating game and continued to commit murders until his arrest the following year.

Alcala was convicted of murdering seven women in the 1970s, although investigators believe the true number of his victims may never be known. He was charged in 1979 in the death of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, and Orange County prosecutors eventually uncovered evidence linking Alcala to the murders of four other women between 1977 and 1979: 18-year-old Jill Barcomb, 21 year-old…old Jill Parenteau, 27-year-old Georgia Wixted and 32-year-old Charlotte Lamb.

ForbesThe Chilling True Story Behind Netflix’s ‘Woman of the Hour’ Serial Killer Rodney Alcala

Decades later, Alcala collected more assassination charges in other states. In New York in 2012, he was sentenced to 25 years to life for the murders of 23-year-old Cornelia Crilley and Ellen Jane Hover, both of whom were killed in the 1970s. In 2016, Wyoming prosecutors charged him with the murder of 28-year-old Christine Ruth Thornton, who was six months pregnant at the time.

Alcala was sentenced to death for his murders in California, but died of natural causes in July 2021 while awaiting execution. One survivor, who managed to escape his brutal attack, played a crucial role by testifying against him during the 2010 trial.

Here’s what you need to know about the women who escaped Rodney Alcala and where they are now.

Who escaped Rodney Alcala?

Tali Shapiro and Morgan Rowan were lucky to escape Rodney Alcala’s vicious attacks. Shapiro was 8 years old and Rowan was 16 when Alcala raped and tried to kill them all.

What happened to Tali Shapiro?

Second-grader Tali Shapiro walked to school on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles from the Chateau Marmont Hotel, where her family was temporarily living, on September 25, 1968. Alcala stopped his car and asked if she wanted to ride. Although she initially said no, she said yes when he said he knew her parents.

Shapiro told me later PEOPLE Magazine Investigates: The Survival of a Serial Killer that “it was entirely possible” that Alcala knew her parents; her father worked in the music business with stars such as Mama Cass, Jim Morrison and Lenny Bruce. “There were always people walking in and out of my house. It was (like) Grand Central Station.”

Alcala said he was a professional photographer and wanted to show her a poster at his home. She followed him inside when they arrived at his house, and that’s all she remembers. “He obviously hit me in the head after that, and that was it.” He raped Shapiro and beat her with a metal bar.

How did Tali Shapiro escape?

A bystander named Donald Haines followed Alcala and called police after becoming concerned about the man’s behavior around the 8-year-old girl. “He was fixated on this little girl,” Haines continued PEOPLE Magazine investigates. “That worried me.”

When police arrived, they opened the door and found Alcala, who was naked and “had a rage in his eyes,” Officer Christopher Camacho said. People. Shapiro was found unresponsive in a pool of blood on the floor with a metal rod to her neck. They initially thought she was dead, but when Camacho removed the rod from Shapiro’s neck, they heard her breathing and she was sent to the hospital.

“(After the attack, I) needed over 27 stitches in the back of my head,” Shapiro revealed during a 2010 sentencing hearing for Alcala, according to ABC7. “He hit me right over the head, in the back of my head.”

Alcala escaped from police through the back door of his apartment, but he left his ID at the crime scene, allowing investigators to identify him. It took more than two years for authorities to arrest Alcala for this heinous crime. Shapiro’s parents did not let her testify, and because prosecutors had no key witness in the case, Alcala pleaded guilty to child abuse and served only 34 months in prison.

What happened to Morgan Rowan?

Morgan Rowan told it PEOPLE Magazine investigates that in 1965, when she was 13 years old, she first encountered Alcala in the parking lot of a teenage nightclub with her friends.

Rowan told the site that Alcala was “tall, attractive and charismatic,” and that she “never initially thought of that as dangerous.” She remembered that Alcala kept looking at them and smiling. She scratched his arm with her fingernails to get his attention, and when she didn’t stop, he pulled her into an alley behind the club.

“I think he hit my head against the wall because I was unconscious,” she said. Alcala had pushed against a large industrial waste container on her chest. She screamed for help and the club owner and his wife came to help her. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of her nightmare, as Rowan met Alcala again three years later in 1968.

Rowan and her family were getting ready to move to New York. Before she left, she had a farewell party on the Sunset Strip. Alcala was there, and Rowan said she felt “creeped out” when she saw him. Rowan was sitting in the backseat with her friends and was scared when Alcala got behind the wheel.

He drove Rowan and her friends to his house, where he gave them marijuana. But Alcala saw the distraction as an opportunity to grab Rowan and pull her into a bedroom.

“He took off his belt and wrapped it around his fist. “I tried to be brave and said, ‘No, you can’t keep me here,’ and he hit me between the eyes as hard as he could,” she said. Rowan added that her head hit the wall and she fell to her knees, but was still conscious. Alcala used a knife to cut the bow of her blouse around her neck.

“I felt the blood rushing down my chest,” she recalls, “and I remember thinking, ‘He’s cut my neck. I’m dying.” Rowan said he shoved his belt into her mouth, blocked her airway so she couldn’t breathe, and bound her wrists with a tie. He hit her in the stomach, then took his knife to cut off the rest of her clothes and raped her.

“His face was red and swollen, his eyes were glassy,” she recalled. “He was out of control, like an animal… I wanted it to be over. I didn’t pray to live. I prayed to die.”

How did Morgan Rowan escape?

Eventually, Rowan’s friends noticed that she and Alcala were missing, and they started banging on the bedroom door. Rowan’s friend Mike broke through the bedroom window when Alcala stood up with blood on his shirt and told Mike, “Take her with you,” according to reports. People.

“If my friend Mike hadn’t broken in through the window, I wouldn’t be here today,” Rowan told the publication. “I have no doubt he would kill me.”

Rowan said she ran out of the house and ran into the path of a moving car. Her friends joined her and the couple in the car took them to safety. Mike took Rowan to his beach apartment, where his nurse neighbor administered her first aid. She got back to her parents’ house just a few minutes before they left for New York.

She said she was traumatized and slept next to her parents’ bed after she moved, but never told them what happened. A friend later sent her a newspaper clipping about Alcala’s attempted murder of Shapiro, and Rowan said she felt guilty for never reporting his attack.

‘I should have stopped. I should have told my parents,” she said. “I should have gone back to that house and killed him myself… I completely felt that it was my fault, that I should have done something.”

Where are survivors Tali Shapiro and Morgan Rowan now?

Shapiro had been called to testify against Alcala several times, including in 2010 at his sentencing. “I had no feelings except duty and justice,” she said People. ‘I never looked his way. I consciously didn’t want to give him any energy. I didn’t look at him, I didn’t recognize him, I never spoke his name. I didn’t give him any satisfaction.”

Alcala, who acted as his own attorney during the trial, did not question Shapiro, but he did apologize for what he called his “despicable behavior.”

“He’s never apologized before, and for him to even bother, I mean, that sickened me,” Shapiro said at the time, according to ABC7.

After the hearing, Shapiro approached Haines, the man who had called 911 and saved her life decades earlier. “I said, ‘I’m so happy to see you,’” he recalled.

After Alcala died of natural causes in 2021, Shapiro said The New York Times“The planet is a better place without him, that’s for sure.”

Meanwhile, Rowan told her story in her 2023 book: Stolen at Sunset: A True Story of Surviving the Dating Game Killer. She later wrote a letter to Shapiro via Facebook to apologize for not reporting Alcala sooner.

Shapiro responded that there was nothing to forgive and that it wasn’t Rowan’s fault. “Tali said she forgave me and changed everything,” Rowan said People. “It was definitely a huge step in my recovery.”

Rowan and Shapiro eventually met and are now good friends. “It was just amazing. We spent a few days together. We were like sisters,” Rowan said.

“She cares about me very much. I love her. We have a bond,” Shapiro added.

Woman of the Hour is now streaming on Netflix. Watch the official trailer below.