In 2016 Alcala was charged with the 1977 killing of Christine Ruth Thornton in Wyoming, though prosecutors opted not to extradite him to stand trial. In February 2010 he was found guilty of all five murders. Alcala opted to represent himself during the court proceedings. In addition, he faced charges for assaulting and strangling four women in California in the late 1970s: 18-year-old Jill Barcomb, who was killed in November 1977, 27-year-old Georgia Wixted, 27, who was raped, beaten and strangled in December 1978, 32-year-old Charlotte Lamb, who was killed in June 1978 and 21-year-old Jill Parenteau, who was killed in June 1979. Alcala played clips from The Dating Game that he said proved he was already wearing gold earrings in 1978, but these didn't convince the jury. At his next trial, which took place in 2010, Alcala was again charged with killing Samsoe. Part of the case against him was a pair of gold earrings linked to Samsoe that had been found in his Seattle storage locker. Alcala was sentenced to death in California but died of natural causes in 2021.īefore Alcala was re-tried a third time for Samsoe's death, advances in the world of DNA and other crime scene analysis provided evidence tying him to more crimes (he'd been forced to provide a DNA sample). He has been behind bars since his July 1979 arrest for the abduction and murder of a 12-year-old girl.

In 2010, photos taken by Alcala decades earlier were made public to try to identify other victims. Alcala also sometimes arranged the corpses of women he'd murdered in poses. Autopsies of some Alcala victims revealed that he would strangle women, then wait for them to regain consciousness before the final kill. He spent time in prison for sexual assault and other crimes in the 1970s but continued to rape and kill when he was free. Serial killer Rodney James Alcala murdered at least nine women and girls across the United States in the 1970s, though his true death toll could number more than 100. His 1978 appearance on the television show 'The Dating Game' resulted in his nickname of 'The Dating Game Killer.' Who Was Rodney Alcala? Rodney Alcala was an American serial killer whose good looks and high IQ helped him lure victims.

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