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Long before The Bachelor, there was The Dating Game: A television game show where a woman of the hour might win a date with the man of her dreams… Or, as the case may be, the serial killer of her nightmares. It sounds like a Saturday Night Live sketch, but this terrifying scenario actually played out in real life.
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Long before The Bachelor, there was The Dating Game
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a television game show where a woman would question male contestants hidden from her view to find the man of her dreams
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or as the case may be, the serial killer of her nightmares
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It sounds like a Saturday Night Live sketch, but this terrifying scenario actually played out in real life
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So today, we're uncovering how a serial killer wound up on The Dating Game
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Time to get singled out. Rodney Alcala was born August 23, 1943, in San Antonio, Texas, and grew up in Los Angeles as a
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gifted student with an otherwise unremarkable youth. At 17, he joined the army, and it was
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during his service that his dark side first entered the record. Alcala's commanding officer
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found him insubordinate, manipulative, and vindictive, and his file showed he was disciplined
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on several occasions for physically attacking women. In 1964, he went AWOL in the midst of a nervous breakdown
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and was eventually diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. He would subsequently leave the army
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and managed to graduate from the UCLA School of Fine Arts. But in September of 1968, Alcala was seen luring 8-year-old Tally Shapiro
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into his Hollywood apartment. By the time police arrived, he had used a steel bar
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to beat her into a coma that would last over a month. The police managed to save Tali Shapiro
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but Alcala had fled both the scene and the state. He would head all the way across the country to New York City
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where he would enroll at NYU Film School under the alias of John Berger
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Ironically, while he was there, Alcala would take a class taught by Roman Polanski
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the famed director who would himself flee the country 10 years later to avoid being charged with sex crimes
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What are the odds? In 1971, Alcala got a job at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, where he worked alongside a guy named Richard Cottingham
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Soon to be better known to the public as the Torso Killer or the Times Square Ripper, Cottingham would eventually be convicted of 18 murders and claim responsibility for over 60 more
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There's no evidence they knew of each other's crimes or were even friends, but Blue Cross presumably changed their hiring policies after that
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1971 would also be the year of Alcala's first known murder, which occurred on June 12 when he strangled 23 TWA flight attendant Cornelia Crilly at her Manhattan apartment Unfortunately Alcala wouldn be connected with the crime until 2011 a full 40 years later
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But his brutal attack on 8-year-old Tali Shapiro got him added to the FBI's Most Wanted list
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which would plaster his face on wanted posters at the post office and get him recognized by two children
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He was arrested and extradited back to California to stand trial for his attack on Tali Shapiro
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But Talley's mother wouldn't allow her to testify, so Alcala could only be convicted of the lesser charge of child ****
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He was sentenced to three years in jail, but only served 17 months before being released
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Seems like maybe they should have kept him longer. Less than eight weeks later, Alcala was arrested for assaulting a 13-year-old girl
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Despite his status as a dangerous repeat offender, he was back on the street by 1976, just two short years later
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Given how easy the California penal system seemed to be taking it on Alcala
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it's not surprising that his parole officer inexplicably decided it would be cool for him to up and move to New York
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After all, what harm could he do there? Well, since you asked. According to the NYPD, a week after Alcala returned to the Big Apple
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he allegedly slew 23-year-old Ellen Jane Hover, who just happened to be the goddaughter of Rat Pack legends Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr
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Under interrogation, Alcala admitted to knowing her, and additional evidence tied him to her disappearance
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But his culpability in her murder was never conclusively proven. Not surprisingly, Alcala did not stick around in New York for long
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He headed back to Los Angeles in 1978 and worked a series of jobs, including a brief stint as a typesetter at the Los Angeles Times
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Around this point, Alcala would also be questioned in the hillside strangler killings
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due to his status as a sex offender. While he absolutely seems like a prime suspect
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the police ruled out Alcala as the strangler, and the culprit eventually turned out to be two men working together
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But Alcala wasn't exactly staying out of trouble either. He started fraudulently holding himself out as a professional fashion photographer
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a title he used to trick hundreds of men and women, including several minors
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into posing nude for him. He then shared those pictures with his co-workers
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And when questioned about the images of miners, Alcala insisted the model's parents had hired him
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to take the photos which is a bad excuse All that means is more people need to go to jail than just you Rodney Many of the people in his photograph collection remain unidentified to this day Investigators believe at least some of them were likely among his victims
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It was after all of that, in September of 1978, that Rodney Alcala was selected to appear in the all-new Dating Game
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For everyone who didn't grow up in the 70s, The Dating Game was a game show hosted by Jim Lang
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Contestants were single folks, usually women, who would ask getting-to-know-you questions of three other contestants of the opposite sex
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Like everything else on the show, the questions and answers were typically laced with racy innuendos
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The bachelorette could hear but not see the bachelors. And at the end of the show, she'd pick one of them
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and go on a date with him. In the episode in which he appeared, the contestant was Cheryl Bradshaw
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and Alcala was bachelor number one, introduced as a successful photographer who got a start when his father found him in the darkroom
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at the age of 13 fully developed. It was also noted that between takes you might find him skydiving
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or motorcycling. The description neglected to mention that by that point Alcala was an active
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serial killer having already taken the lives of 18-year-old Jill Terry Barkham and 27-year-old
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Georgia Marie Wickstead and possibly others. But since no one seemed to be aware of that
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Bradshaw cheerfully asked Alcala to describe what kind of meal he would be
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to which he answered, I'm called the banana, and I look really good
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Heal me. Bradshaw found it funny, and in what could have easily become the worst decision she ever made in her life
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she chose Alcala to be her date. Yeah, not only was a serial killer a contestant on the dating game
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but he actually won. I wonder how the guys who lost to Alcala felt. One of those other contestants talked to Alcala
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and would later describe him as a standout creepy guy in my life
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And he wasn't the only one who thought so. Despite the fact she picked him to be the winner
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Bradshaw immediately changed her mind after meeting Alcala face to face. Because she thought he was acting really creepy
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they did not end up going on that date. After snatching defeat from the jaws of victory on the dating game
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Alcala went on a rampage that would become notorious, racking up victims at a drastically increased rate
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In June of 78, he slew 31-year-old legal secretary Charlotte Lee Lamb
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And in February of 79 he kidnapped 15 hitchhiker Monique Hoyt Hoyt managed to escape and report the crime to police but Alcala mother was allowed to bail him out of jail The following June Alcala
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dispatched 21-year-old Jill Marie Parenteau after meeting her at a local bar several times. He did
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the same to 12-year-old Robin Christine Samso that same month, whom he abducted while she was
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returning home from her ballet class. Some have theorized that Alcala's rejection on the dating
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game may have exacerbated his bloodlust. Rodney Alcala was finally apprehended in June of 1979
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and convicted the following year. But the verdict against Alcala would ultimately
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be overturned by the California Supreme Court, who believed jurors had been improperly informed
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of his former crimes. He was convicted after a retrial in May of 1986
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But that conviction was overturned in federal court. Prosecutors were starting prep for round three when they made a chilling discovery
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Alcala's DNA, which had been collected during his imprisonment, connected him to the murders of four other women, Barcombe, Wickstead, Lamb, and Parenteau
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After some legal wrangling over whether the cases should be tried individually or together
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Alcala finally went on trial for all five slayings in February of 2010
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Despite the old saying that a man who represents himself has a fool for a client
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Alcala decided to represent himself. It went exactly the way you think
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During the trial, Alcala took the stand in his own defense, role-playing two different parts as if they were separate people
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the interrogator and the witness. When playing the former, he would ask himself questions in a comically deep voice
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while addressing himself as Mr. Alcala. He also made the jury watch clips of his appearance on the dating game
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and listened to Arlo Guthrie's classic anti-war novelty song, Alice's Restaurant. But ultimately, Alcala barely presented a defense
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He merely claimed he didn't remember harming any of the women and insisted he was applying for a job as a photographer at Knott's Berry Farm at the time of one of the crimes being committed
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Alcala was convicted for a third time, but not for the final time
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He was finally indicted for the slayings of Cornelia Crilly and Ellen Jane Hover in 2011
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After initially denying the charges, he pleaded guilty so he could return to California and continue appealing the death sentence he'd received for his previous conviction
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The dating game's worst contestant ever finally passed away in 2021 in a California prison at the age of 77