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ROdney Alcala was tall, charming and handsome – exactly what producers were looking for in a bachelor to join their dating game show.

His charm and witty banter with the show’s bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw ensured he won.

But there was something about his behavior that Bradshaw found disturbing, and she ultimately turned down the date – a decision that may have saved her life.

Alcala was 35 years old when he performed The dating gamee in 1978. He had already murdered at least five people, including a child and a pregnant woman.

Woman of the Hour, a film directed by and starring Anna Kendrick and inspired by Alcala’s dating show, was released on Netflix on Friday.

Before Alcala’s arrest in 1979, dating show producers had no idea of ​​his chilling double life as a sadistic serial killer or that he had served a prison sentence for sexually assaulting and beating an eight-year-old girl.

Between 1971 and 1979, Alcala killed eight women in New York, California and Wyoming.

His exact death toll is unknown, but researchers believe the man dubbed “The Dating Game Killer” may have killed at least 100 people.

Bradshaw was a teacher at an acting school when she was selected as a contestant The dating game in 1978, and chose Alcala.

She initially seemed charmed by Alcala, but after the show she declined the date, telling contestant coordinator Ellen Metzger, “I can’t date this guy.” Strange vibrations are coming from him. He’s very strange. I don’t feel comfortable.”

“Something about him,” Bradshaw said later in an interview. “I could tell something was wrong.”

Who was Rodney Alcala?

Alcala was born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala-Buquor on August 23, 1943 and lived in Mexico before moving to Los Angeles with his family when he was eight years old.

He joined the Army at age 17 but was discharged in 1964 after a nervous breakdown and allegations of sexual misconduct, according to CBS News.

After graduating from the University of California, he attended film school at New York University in 1971.

Alcala was published on September 13, 1978 The dating game, a show full of innuendo, in which three eligible bachelors compete for a date with a bachelorette.

The host introduced him as a “successful photographer who started when his father found him in the darkroom at age 13, fully developed.”

When Bradshaw asked him to describe what kind of meal he would be, he replied: “My name is ‘The Banana’ and I look really good… Peel me.”

Before even joining the show, Alcala had spent 34 months in prison for sexually assaulting and beating eight-year-old Tali Shapiro.

But without a standardized background check, the show’s producers were unaware of his crime, which ended up on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List.

Alcala was eventually arrested in July 1979 for the rape and murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe.

His DNA matched evidence from four other murders in Orange County.

Victims and convictions

The list of women and girls murdered by Alcala is long – and often includes brutal violence, rape and stalking. Robin Samsoe, a 12-year-old girl, was walking to ballet class in Huntington Beach in 1979 when Alcala kidnapped her, Huntington Beach police said.

In 2010, Alcala was convicted on five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the murder of Samsoe and for the 1977 deaths of 18-year-old Jill Barcomb and 27-year-old Georgia Wixted, the 1978 according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation the death of 32-year-old Charlotte Lamb and the death of 21-year-old Jill Parenteau in 1979.

Barcomb was an 18-year-old New York transplant who moved to Los Angeles with aspirations of becoming a Hollywood actress when she was murdered on Nov. 10, 1977, former prosecutor Matt Murphy told A&E True Crime.

“She was found brutally assaulted with multiple ligatures,” he said. “Her face was smashed with a rock.”

The same year, Alcala assaulted, tortured and strangled Georgia Wixted, a 27-year-old pediatric cancer nurse who had just moved into her own apartment in Los Angeles.

In New York in 2012, Alcala was sentenced to 25 years to life for the murders of Cornelia Crilley and Ellen Jane Hover in the 1970s.

In June 1971, Alcala raped, bit and strangled Cornelia Crilley, a 23-year-old TWA flight attendant, in her Manhattan apartment, according to New York media reports.

At the time, he was a film student at New York University and studied under film director and producer Roman Polanski.

Investigators would later learn that Alcala’s job as a photographer gave him easy access to women and girls, including some who were later determined to be his victims.

In 1977, Alcala murdered 23-year-old Ellen Jane Hover, an aspiring conductor who had disappeared after leaving her Manhattan apartment on July 15 of that same year.

A year later, her remains were found on the grounds of the Rockefeller estate in Westchester County, near an area where Alcala often photographed women.

In 2016, Wyoming prosecutors charged Alcala with the murder of Christine Ruth Thornton, a 28-year-old woman who was six months pregnant when she went missing from her Wyoming ranch in 1977. Her remains were discovered four years later.

Alcala was ultimately sentenced to death in 2010 for the five slayings in California between 1977 and 1979, although authorities estimate he may have killed dozens more people across the country.

Prosecutors said Alcala stalked women as prey and took earrings as trophies from some of his victims.

“You’re talking about a man who hunts around Southern California looking for people to kill because he enjoys it,” Orange County, California, prosecutor Matt Murphy said during his trial.

A storage cupboard of horror

After Alcala’s conviction, authorities released more than 100 photos of young women and girls found in the killer’s Seattle storage unit, hoping to link him to other unsolved murders across the country.

Some of the photos, which were not released, depicted women, men and children in sexually explicit positions, and were believed to have been kept as trophies from Alcala’s crimes.

The photos were uploaded to a Flickr album and Huntington Beach police asked people to contact them if they recognize anyone.

On July 24, 2021, Alcala died of natural causes while on death row. He was 77 years old.

When Tali Shapiro, the surviving victim, heard the news, she said, “The planet is a better place without him, that’s for sure. I’ve moved on with my life, so this doesn’t really affect me. It will take a long time, but he has his karma.’