Rodney Alcala: The Dating Game Killer

Case No. 04

California reversed his first death sentence because the jury heard about his past. In 2010, one trial on five murders let a jury hear about all of them.

The Victims

Robin Samsoe was 12. She had studied ballet and gymnastics since she was four, was excited to be moving up to dancing on her toes, and had arranged to answer phones at her dance studio to pay for her classes. People v. Alcala, 36 Cal. 3d 604, 614-16 (1984). On the afternoon of June 20, 1979, she left a friend’s apartment in Huntington Beach to ride her bicycle to a ballet class, hurrying because she was excited at “moving up to toe.” Id. at 614-15.

The 2010 jury also convicted Alcala of murdering four women in Los Angeles County between 1977 and 1979: Jill Barcomb, 18, who had recently moved to California from New York; Georgia Wixted, 27, a nurse; Charlotte Lamb, a legal secretary reported as 32 by the Department of Corrections and as 33 by the district attorney; and Jill Parenteau, 21 (Orange County District Attorney).

In New York he pleaded guilty in December 2012 to the murders of Cornelia Crilley, a Trans World Airlines flight attendant, in 1971 and Ellen Jane Hover in 1977, and was sentenced to 25 years to life on top of the California death judgment. Both women were 23. “Rodney Alcala’s victims were never forgotten,” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said. “Tragically, neither of them lived past the age of 23.”

The Case

Before Huntington Beach

Alcala was a UCLA graduate (NBC News). According to the California Supreme Court, after a 1968 offense against an 8-year-old girl he became a fugitive (People v. Alcala, 36 Cal. 3d at 629-30). CBS’s 48 Hours reported that he was a UCLA graduate and a photographer, that he eluded the authorities for three years, and that after the FBI put him on its Most Wanted list he was found working as a counselor at a New Hampshire girls’ camp under an alias (CBS News). He was returned to California in 1972 and convicted of child molesting. He was paroled in August 1974, and after an October incident involving a 13-year-old girl waiting for a school bus his parole was revoked and he was returned to prison until 1977 (People v. Alcala, 36 Cal. 3d at 629-30). Back in Los Angeles, he took a job as a typesetter at the Los Angeles Times in September 1977, on a resume NBC Los Angeles reported was mostly falsified, according to NBC Los Angeles.

The Dating Game

In 1978 Alcala appeared as Bachelor No. 1 on The Dating Game. The host, Jim Lange, introduced him as “a successful photographer who got his start when his father found him in the dark room.” The bachelorette, Cheryl Bradshaw, chose him and then, according to published reports, refused to go out with him. Another contestant, actor Jed Mills, later called him “a standout creepy guy in my life” (CNN).

By then, three of the four Los Angeles women he would later be convicted of killing were already dead: Jill Barcomb and Georgia Wixted in late 1977, and Charlotte Lamb in June 1978 (Alcala v. Superior Court, 43 Cal. 4th 1205, 1213-14 (2008)). The appearance later surfaced as evidence of a different kind. Alcala showed the jury a segment of the 1978 episode and argued that it showed him already wearing the gold earrings the State said had been Robin’s, nearly a year before she died. The prosecutor answered that it was impossible for anyone to tell whether he was wearing those earrings in the video (AP).

Huntington Beach

On June 20, 1979, Robin and a friend were sitting on the cliffs above the beach in Huntington Beach when, the California Supreme Court later wrote, they “were approached by a man who stated he was taking photographs for a school contest.” The girls agreed and posed. When an adult neighbor walked toward them, the man “departed quickly, more than once looking over his shoulder.” People v. Alcala, 4 Cal. 4th 742, 756 (1992). Other teenagers testified that on June 19 a man said he was entered in a “bikini of the month” photography contest, and that on June 20 a man asked them to pose for “a class contest.” Id. at 757. Robin left to ride her bicycle to ballet class.

A forest service worker reported finding her remains on July 2, 1979, in “a remote mountain ravine above Sierra Madre.” People v. Alcala, 36 Cal. 3d at 614. A few days later Alcala told a girlfriend he was leaving for Dallas to set up a photography business. Instead, on July 11 he rented a storage locker in Seattle (Alcala v. Superior Court, 43 Cal. 4th at 1211). Police searching his Monterey Park home on July 24 found a receipt for the locker. Inside it, under a warrant, they found clothing, kitchenware, “quantities of photographs and film, and a pair of gold-coated earrings.” People v. Alcala, 36 Cal. 3d at 615.

Three Trials

Alcala was charged in Orange County, and in 1980 a jury convicted him of first-degree murder and kidnapping and returned a death verdict.

That jury also heard about three earlier offenses against girls aged 8, 13 and 15, including the 1968 offense that led to his 1972 conviction. The State offered them to prove identity, intent, a common plan and a motive to kill a witness. In 1984 the California Supreme Court held that “the prior acts were inadmissible on all of these theories” and that admitting them was “prejudicial error.” The decision was not unanimous: Justice Mosk dissented and would have admitted the prior conduct on identity. People v. Alcala, 36 Cal. 3d at 614, 630-36.

He was tried again in 1986, convicted again, and sentenced to death again. The California Supreme Court affirmed. People v. Alcala, 4 Cal. 4th 742 (1992). In 2001 a federal district judge conditionally granted relief, ordering California to release him or retry him, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed. It held that his lawyer had failed to adequately present alibi evidence placing him at Knott’s Berry Farm, that excluding a psychologist who would have testified the State’s key witness “had been hypnotically influenced” at police interviews “violated Alcala’s due process right to a fundamentally fair trial,” and that the combined prejudice of the errors was a separate and independent basis for relief. Alcala v. Woodford, 334 F.3d 862, 868-78, 883 (9th Cir. 2003). Drawing an analogy to another case, the Ninth Circuit said of this record that there was “no evidence linking Alcala to a murder weapon, no matching fingerprints or hair, no DNA.” Id. at 872.

By then, DNA testing had linked Alcala to three of the Los Angeles murders. An Orange County grand jury indicted him on all four, and prosecutors moved to join them with the Samsoe retrial. In 2008 the California Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal, which had ordered partial severance, and held that “A single trial on all five murder charges may proceed in Orange County.” The decision was unanimous, 7 to 0. Alcala v. Superior Court, 43 Cal. 4th 1205, 1209, 1230 (2008).

Alcala represented himself at the 2010 trial (ABC 7). On Feb. 25, 2010, the jury convicted him of all five murders and of kidnapping Robin, and on March 9 it returned a death verdict. He was sentenced on March 30, after friends and relatives of the victims addressed him and he never flinched (CBS News). He died on July 24, 2021, at 77, at a hospital in Kings County near Corcoran State Prison, before the California Supreme Court decided his automatic appeal, and the appeal was abated.

How the Case Was Built

The 2008 opinion describes the evidence the State expected to offer at the joint trial. Alcala v. Superior Court, 43 Cal. 4th at 1210-15.

• DNA in three Los Angeles cases. Profiles from the Barcomb, Wixted and Lamb cases matched Alcala, with random correspondence reported at once in 100 billion, once in one trillion and once in 403 trillion.
• A palm print and serology. A palm print in the Wixted case, and in the Parenteau case a combination of serological factors the court called rare, which would be present in only 3.5 percent of the population, along with a friend’s identification.
• The earring. A rose-shaped earring found in a pouch in a Seattle storage locker carried Charlotte Lamb’s DNA. Robin’s mother testified that gold earrings from the locker were hers and that Robin often wore them; Alcala claimed them as his own. Id. at 1212, 1214, 1228.
• The Samsoe witnesses. In 1984 the court said in one sentence that the other evidence “was fairly strong, but not overwhelming, and it was largely circumstantial,” which is why it found the improperly admitted offenses so damaging. People v. Alcala, 36 Cal. 3d at 635.

A random match figure measures how rare a profile is, not whether the sample was handled correctly or how it got where it was found. See What a DNA Match Does Not Tell You.

The Signature Question

The 1984 opinion is a textbook answer to the signature question. The State argued the earlier offenses showed a pattern. The court found the claimed similarities “common to a substantial portion of the population of child molesters,” and noted that Robin was killed while the earlier victims were not. People v. Alcala, 36 Cal. 3d at 633. That is the same line Texas draws in Segundo between distinctive details and generic ones.

The court was just as blunt about the other labels. Calling the evidence proof of intent “was but a euphemism for proving the identity of Robin’s killer,” and calling it a plan or scheme added nothing. Id. at 634. Quoting Wigmore, the court explained that propensity evidence is excluded not because it lacks probative value “but because it has too much.” Id. at 631.

The court also rejected the State’s attempt to make his camera the signature. Prosecutors argued that he used photography to approach his victims, but as to the three earlier offenses the court found that “[i]n none of the three cases was photography used as an introductory ploy.” Id. at 632. A habit or a hobby is not a signature unless the record shows it in each crime.

The 2008 joinder ruling did not overrule any of that. It held that California law lets murders be joined when they are “connected together in their commission,” with no common plan required, and that the Los Angeles evidence would be cross-admissible in the Samsoe case to prove intent and the mental states of premeditation and deliberation. Complete cross-admissibility in both directions is not required. Alcala v. Superior Court, 43 Cal. 4th at 1215-20, 1223-26. Alcala had the burden to make a clear showing of prejudice, and the court found he had not. It weighed that cross-admissibility, that the charges were not unusually likely to inflame a jury, that each case was strong, given the Lamb earring in the Samsoe case, and that every count was already a capital charge. Id. at 1220-29.

The result is the irony at the center of this case. By 2008 the earring had changed the Samsoe case, and the court said it doubted the Orange County evidence, “even as it existed at the time of the first two trials, ever properly could be described as weak.” Id. at 1227. The 2010 jury heard about other killings as charged crimes tried alongside Robin’s, most of them proved by DNA. According to the Orange County District Attorney, the jury also heard evidence of his 1972 conviction for kidnapping and molesting a child in 1968, and “the evidence of this conviction was presented and argued to the jury.” The irony is close but not exact. What the 1984 court held inadmissible was the prior conduct, including the 1968 conduct that conviction rested on, rather than the conviction itself. By 2010 that history came in and the State argued it. His death ended the appeal that would have tested it.

What the Defense Could Have Tested

• The beach identification. The Ninth Circuit noted that Robin’s friend never identified Alcala as the man at Huntington Beach, and that the adult neighbor could not pick him out of a photographic lineup “just one week after” Robin disappeared, though she identified him at trial seven years later. Alcala v. Woodford, 334 F.3d at 867, 873.
• Each claimed similarity. Separate what is distinctive from what is common to the type of crime, offense by offense.
• The stated purpose. Hold the State to a real non-character purpose, and object when “intent” or “plan” is a stand-in for identity.
• Weak case joined to strong. Press whether a joint trial lets strong DNA cases carry a weaker circumstantial one.
• The limiting instruction. Ask for one, word by word, and argue whether a jury can follow it across five murders.
• The DNA work. Request the laboratory files for each match, including how and when the old evidence was stored and retested.

How It Works in Texas

Other offenses. Rule 404(b)(1) bars other-acts evidence offered to show that a person acted in character, and Rule 404(b)(2) allows it for another purpose “such as” motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, absence of mistake, or lack of accident, so the list is illustrative rather than closed. On a timely request by the defendant the prosecutor must give reasonable notice before trial of such evidence it intends to offer in its case in chief, other than evidence arising in the same transaction. Texas has not followed the federal amendment that requires notice without a request (Texas Rules of Evidence). For identity, Segundo asks whether the similarities are distinctive rather than generic, with no rigid rule about how many it takes. And Rule 403 runs the other way from how it is usually described: the judge may exclude relevant evidence only if its probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay or needlessly presenting cumulative evidence. The tilt is toward admission.

A new comment. The rules as amended effective July 2, 2026, carry a 2026 comment to Rule 404 saying that “In certain cases, different procedures may be required by statute,” and pointing to Art. 38.37.

Joinder and severance. Under Penal Code ch. 3, the State may try offenses together if they arise from the same “criminal episode,” which includes the repeated commission of the same or similar offenses. The defendant then has a right to sever on request, and that right is absolute except for the offenses listed in Penal Code sections 3.03(b) and (c), chiefly intoxication assault and manslaughter, the listed child sex offenses, trafficking and compelling prostitution, gang-finding cases, first-degree injury to a child, elderly individual or disabled individual, and first-degree aggravated assault, for which severance requires a finding of unfair prejudice. Murder is on neither list. The Court of Criminal Appeals has described the severance right as “mandatory.” Warmowski v. State, 853 S.W.2d 575, 577 (Tex. Crim. App. 1993). Warmowski went further and held that denial could never be harmless, and the court disavowed that part of it in 2000. Denial of a proper and timely severance request is now reviewed under Rule of Appellate Procedure 44.2(b), asking whether the error had a substantial or injurious effect on the verdict. Llamas v. State, 12 S.W.3d 469 (Tex. Crim. App. 2000).

Capital murder of more than one person. Texas has another route. Under Penal Code sec. 19.03(a)(7), murdering more than one person is capital murder either “during the same criminal transaction” under subsection (A) or “during different criminal transactions but the murders are committed pursuant to the same scheme or course of conduct” under subsection (B). Either way the predicate is intentional or knowing murder under section 19.02(b)(1), which leaves out felony murder. That route can put several killings before one jury on a single capital count, though the extraneous-offense rules still govern what the State may prove about each one. See Capital Murder in Texas: How the Defense Works.

Propensity in child sex cases. In Texas today, Art. 38.37 section 2(b) of the Code of Criminal Procedure lets the State offer evidence that the defendant committed a separate listed offense “for any bearing the evidence has on relevant matters, including the character of the defendant and acts performed in conformity with the character of the defendant.” Note the words “on relevant matters,” which the short version of that quotation usually drops. Section 2-a conditions it on a hearing outside the jury’s presence at which the judge determines the evidence will be adequate to support a jury finding that the defendant committed the separate offense beyond a reasonable doubt, and section 3 requires the State to give notice of its intent no later than the 30th day before trial, whether or not the defense asks. The listed offenses are child sex offenses and related conduct. Murder is on none of the lists, so the article would not have reached the Samsoe trial, and a murder prosecution falls back on Rule 404(b). See Continuous Sexual Abuse of a Child in Texas.

Punishment. In a Texas capital case either side may present evidence “as to any matter that the court deems relevant to sentence,” which can include the defendant’s other offenses. Art. 37.071, sec. 2(a)(1). Three limits travel with it: the evidence is aimed at the special issues the jury answers, the State owes notice of extraneous conduct under Art. 37.07, sec. 3(g), and the State may not offer the defendant’s race or ethnicity to show future dangerousness. That is where a defense mitigation investigation matters most.

Where Things Stand Now

The Photographs

Investigators recovered more than 1,000 images from Alcala’s Seattle storage locker; about 900 were withheld from release as too sexually explicit (NBC News). In March 2010, the Orange County District Attorney and Huntington Beach police released more than 100 photographs, asking the public to help identify the people in them. The district attorney said the office had balanced the privacy of those depicted against the chance of solving cold cases, and cautioned that the women and children were unidentified and that it was unclear whether any of them had been victimized by Alcala. By mid-April, 21 women had been identified, and none was linked to a missing person case or an unsolved killing (KOMO). New York police then released more than 200 more. “It’s horrible, it’s absolutely horrible,” Huntington Beach police Capt. Chuck Thomas said of the collection (NBC News).

One photograph led somewhere. In 2013 a relative recognized Christine Ruth Thornton, 28, of San Antonio, who was killed in 1977. Her remains had been found in Wyoming in 1982, and in 2015 her siblings’ DNA confirmed who she was. The sheriff’s office said the photo had been taken a short distance from where her remains were found (CBS News). Wyoming charged Alcala in Sweetwater County with her murder in 2016, but he was never brought to trial, because prison officials said he was not ambulatory and could not leave California without medical support. After his death the county attorney said he would dismiss the charge. A case closed that way is never tested in court; see The Case That Will Never Be Tried.

When Alcala died, the Associated Press reported that authorities estimated he may have killed as many as 130 people, an estimate never tested in court, and other reporting has put the figure closer to 100 (AP). He was convicted of seven killings, five in California and two in New York. The Wyoming charge was dismissed, so that death is not among them. His Dating Game appearance became the subject of Woman of the Hour, Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023 and came to Netflix on Oct. 18, 2024. TheWrap’s review noted that “There’s a fair amount of fictionalizing that takes place” in it, including that the real Cheryl Bradshaw did not write her own questions (TheWrap; Netflix date per NBC Los Angeles).

Alcala was tried for Robin Samsoe’s murder three times over 30 years. For other cases where the State kept trying, see Curtis Flowers and Kerry Max Cook in our Years Lost series, and Wrongful Convictions and the Irreversible Death Penalty. For a Texas case in which the State used other deaths as evidence at trial, see Billy Chemirmir in this series.

Sources

This post describes Rodney Alcala’s convictions using court records and published reporting. Killings he was charged with but never tried, and estimates of additional victims, are not described as proven. His 2010 death judgment was never reviewed on appeal because he died while the appeal was pending. This post is offered for general information about Texas law, is not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship.