Rodney Alcala

Justice Bonnie G Wittner, the judge who sentenced him to 25 years of imprisonment, lost her composure after learning about his case. The judge cried while sentencing Rodney, considering the horrific and brutal things he had done to his victims.

Alcala has already been convicted and sentenced to death for five killings in California, back in 1970. Alcala, now 74, awaits pending appeals at the ‘California State Prison,’ Corcoran.

Rodney James Alcala was born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor, on August 23, 1943, in San Antonio, Texas. He moved to Mexico with his family in 1951. However, he and his mother moved to Los Angeles in 1954, after his father abandoned his family.

Rodney has two sisters and a brother. At the age of 17, he joined the ‘US Army’ and worked as a clerk. In 1964, he was diagnosed with antisocial personal disorder, after a nervous breakdown.

He was later diagnosed with various disorders, such as narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. He also showed traits of sexual sadism comorbidities and psychopathy. However, in spite of this, he attended the ‘UCLA School of Fine Arts’ and later studied film at ‘New York University’ (NYU), where he was mentored by director Roman Polanski.

He committed his first crime in 1968, before joining film school at ‘NYU.’ He lured an 8-year-old girl, Tali Shapiro, to his apartment in Hollywood. However, he was seen by a passerby who informed the police about the incident. The police reached his apartment and rescued the girl. Unfortunately, she was found beaten and raped. Rodney fled before the police arrived.

He then joined ‘NYU’ under the alias “John Berger.” His next known murder was committed in 1971. He brutally raped and murdered a flight attendant named Cornelia Michel Crilley in her apartment in Manhattan.

The murder could not be solved, and it was not before 2011 that his criminal involvement came to the surface. He soon became one of ‘Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.”

He was working as a counselor at a children’s art camp when two children spotted his photo on an ‘FBI’ poster, recognized him, and reported the same.

He was arrested an extradited to California but was not charged with rape or attempt to murder, since Tali’s family did not allow her to testify against Rodney. He was only charged for assault and was paroled after 17 months under a program named “indeterminate sentencing.”

Around 1978–1980, he disguised himself as a fashion photographer and clicked sexually explicit photos of young women and teenage boys. Alcala also raped an unconscious 15-year-old girl after clicking her photos.

In 1978, Rodney participated in the matchmaking TV show ‘The Dating Game’ and even won a date with the “bachelorette” Cheryl Bradshaw. However, Cheryl found him creepy. She trusted her intuition and refused to go out with him.

Rodney was on a killing spree during his time as a contestant on the show. It is believed that after Cheryl refused to go out with him, he killed two more women, perhaps, because he could not come to terms with Cheryl’s rejection.

One of his victims was Robin Samsoe, whose dead body was found 12 days after the announcement of her disappearance from Huntington Beach. Her friends told the police about a photographer approaching her before her disappearance and helped the police in drawing the sketch of the photographer.

The sketch was recognized by Alcala’s parole officer, and Alcala was arrested and held without bail in 1979. He got lucky when even after being tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, the ‘California Supreme Court’ changed its decision on the basis of the misinformation provided about his previous sex crimes.