Serial killer Rodney James Alcala, who appeared as a contestant on television game show The Dating Game, has died at age 77.
Alcala was a contestant on the popular TV game show in 1978. At the time he had already murdered 5 females.
Alcala won the competition, but his ‘date’ Cheryl Bradshaw refused to go out with him, because she found him to be “creepy”.
Alcala was convicted of the 1979 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe and sent to Death Row in Orange County in 1980. But that conviction was overturned in 1984 by the California Supreme Court, and Alcala was granted a new trial.
In 1986, he was sentenced to death for the Samsoe murder, but later granted a third trial. He was indicted for the murders of Samsoe and four other women with the help of DNA technology.
By 2010, Alcala had been convicted on five counts of first-degree murder. In 2012, he was extradited to New York for the 1971 murder of Cornelia Crilley and the 1977 murder of Ellen Jane Hover. He pleaded guilty to those charges and in 2013 was sentenced in New York to 25 years to life.
In 2016, Wyoming prosecutors charged Alcala with the murder of pregnant Christine Ruth Thornton. He was also linked to other murders in Los Angeles and Marin County in California; Seattle, Washington; New York; New Hampshire, and Arizona.
