00:00:04
-In September 1978, one of the contestants on a U.S.
TV show called "The Dating Game"
00:00:12
was hiding a deadly secret. Nobody knew it, but the bachelor
in seat number one was responsible
for the death of four women.
00:00:21
-Please welcome Rodney Alcala. Rod, welcome.
[ Cheers and applause ] -When I found out he was
a serial killer,
00:00:27
it was like, "Bing." It just all came together
like a slap in the face. -By the time 35-year-old
Rodney Alcala
00:00:36
was finally arrested
10 months later, he had killed another two women
and a 12-year-old girl.
00:00:43
♪♪ Pictures of missing persons
found hidden away pointed towards there being
even more victims.
00:00:52
-I think the day he rots away
and finally dies will be a good day
for the whole world.
00:00:56
-After two convictions
were quashed, Alcala was given
the death sentence for a third time in 2010.
00:01:04
-I really hope that he's
suffering and that, one day, I get that phone call
that he is gone,
00:01:11
and nobody will ever have
to hear his name again. -Rodney Alcala
will go down in history
00:01:17
as one of the world's
most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It was a murder
that stunned a community.
00:01:45
When the remains
of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe were found
on July the 2nd, 1979, the schoolgirl had already
been missing for 12 days.
00:01:56
The police were certain
that the killer was a 35-year-old photographer
named Rodney Alcala.
00:02:03
After his arrest, hundreds
of pictures of young women were found in his possession,
but who were they?
00:02:11
It would take 34 years before Alcala was finally found
to be responsible for the death of at least
seven women across two states.
00:02:21
Orange County Deputy D.A.
Matt Murphy was the third prosecutor
to take Alcala to trial for the murder
of Robin Samsoe
00:02:30
after the first two
death-penalty sentences were overturned. -The tough part about that
and what nobody thinks about
00:02:37
is there's a victim's
family involved in this. And Robin Samsoe had
a mother who loved her,
00:02:42
and she had brothers
who loved her. She had friends who loved her. And every time
the case gets reversed,
00:02:48
you have to drag
the family through this, and they have to go through
the process again.
00:02:51
I don't think
it's a stretch to say this ruined the life of this girl's poor mother.
00:02:59
-At Alcala's third trial
in January 2010, the convicted killer
decided to defend himself.
00:03:07
District Attorney Matt
spent weeks sparring with the 67-year-old and had to treat him
with respect in the courtroom.
00:03:15
-After my closing argument,
that's when he realized -- After I pointed at him
and called him the devil,
00:03:19
he realized I wasn't his buddy. I think the day he rots away
and finally dies will be a good day
for the whole world.
00:03:25
-This killer's story began
over 70 years ago. Rodney Alcala was born
in San Antonio, Texas,
00:03:33
on the 23rd of August, 1943. -He was, on the surface,
a perfectly normal boy -- didn't kill small animals
00:03:43
or do any of those
other horrible things that serial killers
tend to on to do. But in 1951, when he was 8,
00:03:51
his grandmother, who was ill, decided that she wanted
to go back to die in Mexico.
00:03:57
And so the whole family
left Texas and went to Mexico. -But while living south
of the U.S. border,
00:04:06
Alcala's father
left the family home to start a new life. -The father abandons the family
at that point in time
00:04:13
and then goes back
to living in the U.S., and I think that's quite
a significant thing.
00:04:19
I think that Alcala's
relationship with his father was quite an important
one to him.
00:04:23
And I think that's something that stayed with Alcala
throughout his life, and I think it does feed
into his offending behavior.
00:04:30
-Age 12, Alcala's mother moved him and his three siblings
to Los Angeles to start a new life
back in the U.S.
00:04:39
-He's popular.
He's on the yearbook committee. He plays the piano. He runs for the school.
00:04:44
He has girlfriends. He's, on the surface,
an All-American, or All-Mexican-American boy.
00:04:51
-After graduating
from high school, Alcala joined the Army. But his time was cut short
00:04:58
after a death in the family
had a devastating effect on him. -Whilst he's in the Army,
he has a nervous breakdown,
00:05:06
and this is after
his father has died. And he's given a medical
discharge from the Army
00:05:13
because he has
this nervous breakdown, and then he kind of goes off
the radar for a while.
00:05:18
So I think this is the period in which he starts,
perhaps, fantasizing. His offending starts
to take shape in his mind,
00:05:26
if not in reality. -And in September 1968, Alcala committed
a horrific crime. He lured an 8-year-old girl
00:05:36
into his Hollywood home. -This is the worst nightmare
for any parent. Rodney Alcala and people
like him are the reason
00:05:44
why you can't send your kids
walking to school alone. He kidnaps her. He rapes her.
00:05:51
A good Samaritan sees her
get into his car, and it doesn't look right. And he follows the car
to the house,
00:05:57
and it doesn't look right.
Now, this is 1968, so it's long before cellphones. He finds a pay phone,
calls it in.
00:06:05
The police get there,
knock on the door. Rodney shows up naked and says,
"Hey. I'll be right with you."
00:06:11
-The 25-year-old Alcala wasn't planning on
getting caught red-handed. -He runs out
the back naked, okay,
00:06:20
and the police officer,
who's by himself, looks down, and it's one of those situations
00:06:25
where it's save this bleeding
little girl on the floor who's unconscious
and very close to death --
00:06:31
She was in a coma for 33 days
after this happened -- So it's save the little girl
or catch the bad guy
00:06:36
running out of the back,
and he did the right thing. He saved the little girl. But that meant Alcala got away.
00:06:43
-It was a horrifically depraved
and violent attack on a child that seemingly
came out of nowhere.
00:06:51
-Where was the motive for that? There was no sexual abuse that
we know of in his childhood.
00:06:56
There was no antipathy to women. It was an unexpected bolt
from the blue. -Alcala decided to run away
from his crimes --
00:07:10
3,000 miles across the U.S. -He does not hang around. He decides to leave Los Angeles
00:07:20
and turns up in New York, where he enlists
in the New York Film School under the name of John Berger.
00:07:29
-This is quite a cunning way
of both avoiding detection and of starting to build up
these new personas,
00:07:35
these knew characters, to present to the people
that he comes into contact with.
00:07:40
So he's somebody who can put on
and shed identities just like a snake, and that's how
I describe Alcala.
00:07:46
He's constantly shedding his
skin and reinventing himself. -Under the name John Berger,
Rodney Alcala
00:07:53
had begun teaching at
a summer camp in New Hampshire. But by July 1971, his time was running out.
00:08:01
Three years after the attack
on the 8-year-old girl in his own home, Alcala was still
the prime suspect,
00:08:09
and he was added to the FBI's
nationwide 10 most-wanted list. He was soon spotted
by two of his students.
00:08:17
-So two of these girls
go to the post office to mail a letter, and they see
Rodney Alcala's picture
00:08:24
under the name of,
you know, Rodney Alcala. They're like,
"Hey. That's Mr. Berger.
00:08:28
He works at the camp."
So that's how he got caught. They extradite him
back to California,
00:08:33
and they try him
for the kidnapping, and he received a life sentence. -But unbelievably,
in August 1975,
00:08:43
after serving
less than three years, Alcala was freed and soon found work
as a photographer.
00:08:50
-I have no idea what
the parole board was thinking. They're looking at this guy.
He kidnapped,
00:08:57
raped, and almost murdered
an 8-year-old little girl who was a stranger. Wasn't even somebody
that lived in his house.
00:09:02
This was a girl
walking down the street. That is as predatory,
pathological, and psychotic
00:09:07
as you can possibly get. And they released him
after 34 months. He had a life sentence.
00:09:13
They released him
after 34 months. -But his freedom
didn't last long. Just two months later,
Alcala was arrested once more,
00:09:23
this time for plying
a minor with drugs. -He leaves state custody
in August. In October, he kidnaps
a 13-year-old
00:09:32
and provides her with marijuana. And he's convicted
of breaking his parole and selling drugs to a minor.
00:09:40
He goes back to jail. -Again, Alcala's stay in prison was surprisingly brief. He was declared reformed
by authorities
00:09:51
after 2 1/2 years. In the summer of 1977, he was allowed,
by his parole officer,
00:09:58
to head back to New York. ♪♪ -There's a huge lesson here
on Rodney Alcala, because people are starting
to do this again.
00:10:07
In California,
the pendulum is swinging back towards early release, towards therapy for these guys,
all that sort of thing.
00:10:14
People like Rodney Alcala,
when they get out, they are going
to kill other people.
00:10:19
Sex offenders do not
get better, okay? All the treatment in the world
does not fix sex offenders.
00:10:24
So if you release violent sex
offenders like Rodney Alcala, at the very least, they're going
to commit additional rapes
00:10:30
or child molestations. -Alcala's stay
in New York was brief. In September 1977, he was back
in Southern California.
00:10:40
Two years later,
12-year-old Robin Samsoe would disappear after being
approached by a photographer
00:10:47
on Huntington Beach. ♪♪ By the summer of 1979, convicted child molester
Rodney Alcala
00:10:57
had been in prison twice and was flitting between
two separate lives -- one in California
00:11:04
and one in New York. The 35-year-old was unemployed but remained a keen
amateur photographer.
00:11:12
On June the 20th, 1979, 12-year-old Robin Samsoe
disappeared after speaking to a stranger
00:11:20
on Huntington Beach
in Orange County, California. -He approached Robin and her friend,
who was also 12 years old.
00:11:27
They were sunbathing
on Huntington Beach right before
Robin's ballet lesson, and he said, "Hey.
I'm in a photography contest.
00:11:35
Will you allow me
to take your picture?" This photographer
was a suspect right away,
00:11:39
because 45 minutes later, Robin disappeared
and was never seen again. -Robin had last been spotted
on her bicycle
00:11:47
heading to her ballet class. The following morning, police officer Steve Mack reported for duty.
00:11:56
-I'd only been with the City
of Huntington Beach for a year. We go to briefings
in the morning,
00:12:00
and they give us any crimes that
have occurred during the evening that we should be
on the lookout for.
00:12:04
And that morning, on the 21st, they told of us
Robin's disappearance and the description
of the bicycle
00:12:10
that she was riding at the time
of her disappearance. -The vanishing of Robin Samsoe
rocked Orange County.
00:12:17
-This was an extreme rarity
in Huntington Beach. It was a bedroom community,
quite quiet and peaceful.
00:12:23
We get literally hundreds
of thousands of people coming to our beach annually because of its serenity
and beauty.
00:12:31
They put out a press release, and they talked to one
of Robin's friends that she was with the day before
00:12:39
and obtained a composite
of a person that had been taking photographs
of them at the beach.
00:12:45
As patrol officers, we began
scouring the alleys and behind grocery stores
and shopping centers
00:12:51
looking to see if the bicycle
had been discarded. For probably the next two weeks,
00:12:56
the alleys and behind
shopping centers were probably some
of the safest places, because even though
they'd been checked
00:13:02
at 10:00 in the morning, somebody was probably driving by
at 2:00 in the afternoon.
00:13:07
Everybody wanted to find
that bicycle. -The description
of the potential kidnapper
00:13:13
given to a police sketch artist
by Robin's friend looked remarkably similar
to a known child molester.
00:13:21
-This was a big deal media-wise because we had a missing
12-year-old girl. And Alcala's parole officer
00:13:27
saw the composite on TV, and he called detectives
and said, "You guys need to check out
Rodney Alcala.
00:13:34
It looks like him.
It sounds like him. You got to look
at Rodney Alcala." And like 15 minutes after
they received that phone call,
00:13:44
one of the cops is home,
turns on the TV and sees Alcala
on "The Dating Game." -Bachelor number one
is a successful photographer.
00:13:52
Please welcome Rodney Alcala. Rod, welcome.
[ Cheers and applause ] -And the host introduced
the bachelors,
00:13:59
and bachelor number one
was Rodney Alcala. The detective frantically tried
to call the police department
00:14:06
and let other detectives know
that he was on television so that they could
turn it on and see him.
00:14:12
-Alcala's appearance
on the program, where women pick
eligible bachelors without seeing their faces,
00:14:19
was recorded 10 months earlier
in September 1978. On the show that day with Alcala
00:14:25
was actor Jed Mills. -The vibes I got from him,
while we were doing the show and backstage and even during
the actual filming
00:14:35
were not good vibes. There was something wrong
with this guy. -Jed had met Alcala backstage
00:14:41
before the recording. -Didn't talk much. We were guys, and he was this
rather good-looking,
00:14:48
creepy-looking guy, though. He had the weirdest
football haircut. You know, everything
was, like, perfect.
00:14:55
The other guy and I were
getting along very nicely, and we were talking
about this and that.
00:14:58
And every now and then, this
creepy guy would say something. Like, he had an attitude,
00:15:04
'cause he knew better
than everybody else. -When the cameras
began rolling, Alcala turned on the charm.
00:15:11
-I'm called "The Banana," and I look really good. [ Laughter ] -Can you be a little
more descriptive?
00:15:20
-Peel me.
[ Laughter ] -On "The Dating Game" show,
the woman questioner asks each of
the eligible bachelors...
00:15:30
"I'm going to eat you. What food are you?" So Alcala, when he gave
his answer, says,
00:15:37
"Well, I'm a banana. Unpeel me." -And I said, "Oh, my God. This guys is such a creep."
[ Laughs ]
00:15:43
-But it was enough
to win him the date. -Well, I like bananas,
so I'll take one.
00:15:49
-Number one,
bachelor number one. All right. -On the outside, Alcala appeared to be a charming,
good-looking man.
00:15:57
But deep inside, he was
hiding a dark history. What the viewing public
didn't know
00:16:02
was that contestant number one
was a serial killer. By the time he appeared
on the show in September 1978,
00:16:11
Alcala had already
killed five women. Over 35 years on, Jed Mills still feels anger
towards his fellow contestant.
00:16:21
-Thinking back on it,
it was very scary. It was spooky, you know, that
I was in a room with this guy.
00:16:28
Had I known, I'd have
killed him right there with my bare hands, you know -- that he's killing women.
00:16:35
Horrible, just horrible. -Prior to his national
TV appearance, Alcala had already murdered
23-year-old Cornelia Crilley
00:16:45
in June 1971 in New York. And then in July 1977, he killed another young woman
in the city --
00:16:54
23-year-old Ellen Hover. Over the following 12 months,
he struck again, this time
in Southern California.
00:17:03
Among his innocent victims, 18-year-old Jill Barcomb, 27-year-old Georgia Wixted,
00:17:12
and 32-year-old Charlotte Lamb. All were murdered
by the 34-year-old who was now hiding
in plain sight.
00:17:22
-Most serial killers
or killers in general want to avoid detection,
want to avoid publicity,
00:17:26
want to avoid the spotlight. And this guy was actually
seeking it out, which is, you know, an
indication of his personality.
00:17:33
-He really does love
being in the limelight, so I think he would've
really enjoyed a pairing
00:17:37
on that dating show in the 1970s because he's the center
of attention. He's the one
that this woman's picked,
00:17:43
and he really is
on top of the world. -Serial killer Alcala's joy,
however, would be short-lived.
00:17:51
-He's saying all of these
awfully cheesy things, and the audience
are laughing along,
00:17:55
but this is a man who's killed. This is a man
who is going to kill again. And I think that the lady
00:18:01
that was going to have
the date with him was lucky to escape
with her life, because she went
and chatted to him backstage
00:18:08
just before they were about
to go on the date, and picked up on the fact there was something
a little bit creepy about him
00:18:13
and decided not to go through
with that date. And I think that's probably
the best decision she ever made.
00:18:18
-She did not go out with him,
you know, 'cause he was too creepy. She did not keep the date.
00:18:23
So even though he won, she refused to go
on the date with him. -So that kind of gives you
an indication
00:18:30
of what kind of person
you're dealing with where, on the surface, when she
only could hear his voice
00:18:34
and then ultimately
see his face, it's okay. But then when she started
interacting with him
00:18:38
on a more human level,
she realizes, "There's something
wrong with this guy that just makes me
uncomfortable."
00:18:43
And as a female, she said no. -Now, whether Alcala took that
as a rejection, which I think is possible,
00:18:52
it was no doubt an accelerant to his later killings. If you have
this narcissistic character,
00:19:00
and suddenly, someone
turns him down, I think he takes his revenge
on women in general,
00:19:05
women as a group. So anyone becomes fair prey. You then get a run of killings. -Eight months after his TV
debut, Alcala killed again.
00:19:18
On the 14th of June, 1979, 21-year-old Jill Parenteau
was found dead in her Burbank apartment
in Los Angeles county.
00:19:28
And just six days later,
Rodney Alcala abducted 12-year-old
Robin Samsoe in Orange County.
00:19:35
Her body was found
in the Angeles National Forest on July the 2nd, 1979. -Robin's body was discovered
12 days after her disappearance
00:19:46
up in an area
called Chantry Flats. It was her remains.
He whole body wasn't found.
00:19:54
Oddly enough, a forest ranger had seen Alcala, who we refer to
as "The Monster" --
00:20:02
The family prefers
that his name never be used -- dragging a blonde little girl
into the woods.
00:20:10
And then it was 12 days later, they were doing
some fire prevention clean-out up in the area, and they came
across some human bones.
00:20:20
-It was heartbreaking news. The entire state of California wanted to see justice
for the murder of Robin Samsoe.
00:20:28
The police had
a number-one suspect, but he had a history
of absconding. They needed
to find Rodney Alcala,
00:20:37
and they needed to do it fast. ♪♪ In July 1979, detectives in
Orange County, California,
00:20:49
had begun to investigate the murder
of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe after her remains
had been discovered
00:20:55
in the Angeles National Forest. Having been seen on national TV and his face matched
to a sketch of a man
00:21:03
seen in the area
where Robin had disappeared, detectives honed in
on Rodney Alcala.
00:21:10
The convicted child molester
was now their prime suspect, and they were certain
he was culpable
00:21:16
in the murder
of the little girl. -It turns to a homicide
investigation immediately,
00:21:24
and the detectives ramp up their
investigation and work it hard. And ultimately,
Alcala is arrested
00:21:31
on July 24th. -Alcala had been found
staying with his parents 40 miles north of Huntington
Beach
00:21:40
in Monterrey Park. -As luck would have it,
on the day that Alcala was arrested, they did a search warrant
at his house,
00:21:48
and one of the detectives
saw a receipt for a storage facility in the Seattle area.
00:21:55
-This discovery
would be the first step in unearthing
the secret murderous history
00:22:01
of Rodney Alcala. -When we got into
his storage locker immediately after he was
identified and arrested,
00:22:10
there's thousands
of photographs of young women and young boys
and adult women, young girls,
00:22:16
that, to this day, we've been
unable to identify many of them. So being alone in the company
of Rodney Alcala,
00:22:23
knowing what he did
to Robin Samsoe, we always suspected
that there were more victims.
00:22:27
We just didn't know who they
were and couldn't prove it. -The photos
in the storage locker
00:22:33
were not only of young girls. There were pictures
of boys, too. -So he's targeting
prepubescent girls.
00:22:40
He's targeting women. Sometimes he taking pictures
of young boys. But I think we shouldn't look
00:22:46
at the differences
between his victims. We need to look at
what they've all got in common,
00:22:50
And they've all got in common
a particular vulnerability, something that he sees
as a weakness,
00:22:56
something that he can prey on.
So that's what he's looking for, and it doesn't really matter
to him who he sees that in.
00:23:03
-The photos suggested
that all the potential victims had willingly posed for Alcala.
00:23:10
-Alcala is one of those strange
but not uncommon serial killers who has a high I.Q.,
00:23:16
is fairly good-looking
by objective standards. And we've seen this before
with people like Ted Bundy
00:23:22
and others, where, you know,
they could probably, you know,
attract women themselves
00:23:26
and get into relationships with
women in a normal relationship. But for some reason,
00:23:31
there's something very wrong
in their minds, and that they then
get involved with women
00:23:36
and then have that
sexual relationship and then end up killing them. -In fact, Alcala
appears to be a person
00:23:42
who could have achieved
many of his sexual desires without committing a homicide,
00:23:49
and that makes him somewhat
mystifying as serial killers go. -The police did not know it yet,
00:23:55
but Alcala had killed
at least seven women over the previous eight years. 12-year-old Robin Samsoe
was his final victim.
00:24:05
Over time, he had perfected his pernicious pickup technique. -Essentially, the nature
of Alcala's crimes were
00:24:15
that he would present himself
to women, often through an alias,
as a photographer.
00:24:21
He would basically
convince people that he was doing a photo shoot, that they were a desirable part
of the photo shoot.
00:24:28
He would bring them
to the photo shoot, and then he would rape,
torture, and kill them.
00:24:34
-Alcala is somebody who knows
what his victims want to hear. When he comes across
young women,
00:24:40
he knows that he needs to appeal
to their better natures and to compliment them,
tell them how pretty they are,
00:24:46
that they could be models,
that he's a photographer who can make all of this
happen for them.
00:24:51
And he knows
how to sound genuine, so he's a very
accomplished predator. He sniffs out his prey,
00:24:57
identifies their
vulnerabilities, and moves in for the kill. -As well as finding photographs
of unknown victims
00:25:04
in the storage unit, detectives also uncovered a bag of jewelry. -On the serial killers,
especially the rapists,
00:25:14
they'll keep a little keepsake.
They'll keep a trophy. And we had a silk pouch with all kinds of unidentified
jewelry in there,
00:25:22
stuff that we still,
to this day, have no idea where it came from
or who the jewelry belonged to.
00:25:27
-They'll look at the trophy
that they kept, in this case, jewelry, and they can relive that crime
00:25:34
by looking at this
piece of jewelry. The Monster was a sexually
sadistic serial killer.
00:25:40
He literally fantasized
about these cases and relived them in his mind when he would look
at these items of jewelry,
00:25:48
these trophies. -And one particular item gave investigators
their biggest clue yet.
00:25:56
-One of the pairs
of earrings in there were gold-ball earrings that Robin's mother identified
00:26:02
as the ones Robin was wearing. -It was evidence
that helped convince a jury. On June the 20th, 1980,
00:26:12
Rodney Alcala
was sentenced to death for the murder of Samsoe. But his story
does not end there.
00:26:21
By 1984, the conviction
had been overturned. -I think for everyone involved
in law enforcement,
00:26:28
it's always frustrating
when a convicted murdered has his sentence overturned. But it was first overturned
based on the fact
00:26:35
that improper evidence was
introduced at the penalty phase. While we suspected that Robin
had been sexually assaulted,
00:26:42
there was no physical
evidence to it at all. -The Supreme Court ruled
that the jury
00:26:48
should not have been informed
of Alcala's conviction for molesting
the 8-year-old girl
00:26:53
in 1968. He remained on remand, and at a second trial
in June 1986, Alcala was again found guilty
of Robin Samsoe's murder
00:27:06
and sentenced to death
for a second time. But, once more,
the conviction was quashed
00:27:14
in April 2001. -The Ninth Circuit Court
of Appeals felt that the defense didn't give him
adequate protection
00:27:24
and that they should've
gone to the crime scene where the body was discovered, and, for that reason,
it was overturned.
00:27:30
-Once again, Alcala remained
on remand while authorities considered
whether to try him
00:27:37
for the murder of Robin Samsoe
for a third time. It was heartbreaking
for her family.
00:27:44
-The Samsoe family
was devastated each time it was overturned. I know this
after talking to them.
00:27:50
Through the years, I've become
friends with the family. I know their personal feelings
and their frustrations,
00:27:56
and it was devastating
to Robin's mother, as well as her siblings. -Next in line
to prosecute the 58-year-old
00:28:04
was Orange County Deputy D.A.
Matt Murphy. Since Alcala's arrest
in July 1979, technology had made
great advances.
00:28:16
And investigators
had begun to look into other possible victims. -I obtained court orders with
the assistance of Matt Murphy
00:28:25
from the District
Attorney's Office to get certain pieces of
evidence out of court evidence
00:28:30
to have resubmitted
for DNA testing. In the 1980s, when these trials
were taking place,
00:28:36
nobody had ever heard of DNA. Now there had been advancements
which, even since that time,
00:28:41
have been further advanced. -Revisiting postmortem reports, investigators found that Alcala
was likely to be responsible
00:28:51
for more deaths
than just Robin Samsoe's. -There were four unsolved
murders out of L.A. County.
00:28:57
There was Jill Barcomb,
who was found on a fire road up in the mountains
about Hollywood.
00:29:03
There was Georgia Wixted,
who was a young woman who'd just moved into
her own apartment in Malibu.
00:29:08
There was Charlotte Lamb,
who was another woman who'd moved here
from the Midwest.
00:29:12
She was found in a laundry room
in an apartment complex in the city of El Segundo.
00:29:16
And then we have Jill Parenteau,
who lived in Burbank. We had these four murders.
00:29:22
Now, three of them,
we had really good DNA, and one of the things
that was consistent
00:29:27
with all of Rodney Alcala's
rapes and murders is that his semen was located in virtually every inch
of the body of these poor women.
00:29:35
So they're --
These were long, ongoing, torturous murders and rapes. -Over the years, Alcala had
developed a familiar M.O.
00:29:47
-He would kill, very often,
by strangulation. But before ultimately
killing somebody,
00:29:52
he would strangle them
to the point of near death and then allow them
to be revived.
00:29:58
Strangle them
to the point of death, allow them to be
returned to life, and then finally,
at some point, kill them.
00:30:04
This is a man who got his
sexual excitement and arousal from being right there at
the precipice of life and death.
00:30:14
He needs to see the fire
of terror in the woman's eyes as he's on the verge
of snuffing out her soul
00:30:23
for him to be aroused. -As Matt Murphy
prepared to try Alcala with the four newly
discovered murders,
00:30:31
he was still intent on getting
a third guilty verdict for Robin Samsoe and her family.
00:30:38
-There's no free murders. If somebody kills 10 people, and there's an 11th out there
that's really hard,
00:30:44
we don't give them a freebie
and just go with the 10. We hold them accountable for
every single person they kill.
00:30:49
And it's more work
for the prosecution. It's more work for the police.
But to a man and woman,
00:30:56
the police who have worked
on this, they understand. People are happy to do the work
00:31:01
if we can bring justice
to the families, so it's -- Every one that we can get him
on, we're going to try him on.
00:31:07
-Rodney Alcala's latest trial was set
for January the 11th, 2010, but this time, he was ready
to employ a new tactic.
00:31:17
The 66-year-old believed there
was only one person in the world who could do a decent job
of defending him,
00:31:25
and that man was himself. He was accused of the murder
of four women and one child,
12-year-old Robin Samsoe.
00:31:35
-Alcala decides
to represent himself at trial. And there's an old saying
that says,
00:31:41
"Anyone who chooses
to represent themselves has a fool for a client," and
that's very true in this case.
00:31:46
And he's not just a fool. He's an absolute
narcissist, as well. -He wanted to be up there
in the spotlight,
00:31:53
and he wanted to tell
his side of the story, because he thought he was
the smartest guy in the room.
00:31:59
-Alcala was up against
the formidable prosecution team of Gina Satriano and Orange County Deputy D.A.
Matt Murphy.
00:32:09
-Matt Murphy is
a prosecutorial genius. He's got the charm and the wit to draw a jury in
00:32:19
and control them
in the palm of his hand. He knows what to say and when to
say it for its maximum effect.
00:32:26
I couldn't have asked for a
better prosecutor in this case. -It's kind of
this very surreal process,
00:32:31
but you actually kind of
get to know the guy. You know,
it's like you would a lawyer.
00:32:35
You spend hours together. You're
sitting next to each other. You're working out
complex evidentiary things
00:32:39
and figuring out
what the questionnaires are going to contain. And just like
you get to know a lawyer,
00:32:44
here was Rodney Alcala. It was very dark but also fascinating. Maybe I'm twisted,
but it was interesting.
00:32:53
-Murphy would have
to treat Alcala with the same respect he did with any other defense attorney
he may have come up against.
00:33:01
-As a professional,
you've got to deal with him, and you've got to
engage him in conversation,
00:33:04
and you got to talk to him. And what I saw
when I dealt with him is I could see how every one
of these young women
00:33:12
would get in the car,
because he was so intelligent. He was a handsome guy -- not by the time we got to him,
but back then.
00:33:18
You know, all that, you could
see how this very intelligent, very charming, very handsome guy
00:33:25
could lure these women
into positions of vulnerability where he would rape them
and murder them.
00:33:30
-During one of
their conversations, Alcala shared his experience of living on death row.
00:33:38
-He goes, "We have six yards."
He goes -- They have a softy yard,
basically. They call it the wienie yard.
00:33:44
And he goes, "Matt --"
He called me Matt -- "Matt, I'm not violent. I'm not a violent guy.
I'm in the wienie yard.
00:33:50
I'm not with those guys.
I'm not violent." This is a guy who raped
and bashed the skull in
00:33:56
of Georgia Wixted. This is a guy who smashed
the face in of Jill Barcomb with a rock,
and he's looking at me like,
00:34:02
"Hey, buddy, I'm not violent. I'm not on that yard
with those guys. I'm with the respectable guys
on death row."
00:34:10
You know, that was just -- That was a moment
I'll also never forget. -Alcala didn't seem
to offer any defense
00:34:17
to the four new murder charges
against him, but he defiantly fought
the Robin Samsoe one.
00:34:25
By 2010, Huntington Beach
detective Steve Mack had retired after spending
most of his career
00:34:32
fighting for justice
for Robin's family. -I sat with the family
through a lot of the trial,
00:34:40
and I would speak to them
before we went into court and afterwards. And every now and then,
I would talk to Matt Murphy
00:34:47
regarding the tactics
of the trial. But since I wasn't
actually participating, I tried to stay out
of that aspect of it.
00:34:55
-During the five-week trial at
Orange County Superior Court, Alcala continued
to mentally torture
00:35:03
Robin Samsoe's mother. -This woman has been --
Her credibility is questioned. And, you know, here,
the third time around,
00:35:11
Rodney Alcala is
representing himself, so she's getting cross-examined
by the murderer of her daughter,
00:35:18
who's calling her a liar. I mean, imagine that. -To watch him cross-examine
Robin's mother
00:35:23
and get within feet of her and ask her personal questions
really made me angry that he should be allowed
to be that close.
00:35:31
I think the court
should've ruled that if you want to talk to her,
you want to cross-examine her,
00:35:36
that you need to remain
in your chair and sitting
at the counsel table. It got real frustrating for me
that he was allowed to do that.
00:35:44
Again, in my mind, he's reliving that incident through his questions
of Robin's mother.
00:35:53
-This time around,
the prosecution were armed with new evidence in relation
to Robin's murder --
00:35:59
a pair of earrings found
in Alcala's storage locker back in 1979. The killer had always claimed
that they belonged to him,
00:36:08
but DNA testing proved that
to be a lie. They in fact belonged
to another of his victims.
00:36:16
-We got 0.06 nanograms of DNA
belonging to Charlotte Lamb, so when we're in that courtroom,
it's almost like Charlotte Lamb
00:36:23
is whispering
from the grave to our jury, "Robin's mother was right. Rodney Alcala keeps earrings."
00:36:30
It was the most powerful
evidence you could ever hope. And just this tiny,
little piece of DNA
00:36:36
that sat there for decades and, you know, technology
caught up to it, thank God.
00:36:42
And that was sort of
an emotional part of the trial, when the jury got to realize
that Robin's mother,
00:36:49
after all of these years and after all of these
cross-examinations, was conclusively
proven to be right
00:36:55
by the DNA of Charlotte Lamb
on another earring found in the exact same pouch as the ones that Robin
was wearing that day.
00:37:02
-Linking the murder
of Charlotte Lamb to the murder of Robin Samsoe looked to be the final nail
in the coffin for Rodney Alcala.
00:37:12
On February the 25th, 2010, the jury had reached a verdict on all five murder charges.
00:37:21
-Three of those cases,
we had very strong DNA, but on Jill Parenteau,
it was a tougher case.
00:37:27
But we had a -- Fortunately,
we had a great jury, and we had Francisco Briseno
as our judge.
00:37:31
So they did the right thing, and they convicted
on all of the murders -- on Robin, on Jill Barcomb,
00:37:37
on Georgia Wixted, all of them. So he was held accountable for
every one of those young women.
00:37:44
-On March the 30th, 2010, Rodney Alcala was sentenced
to death for a third time.
00:37:52
The tactic of representing
himself in court had backfired spectacularly. -This guy just thought,
you know,
00:37:59
nothing could touch him, and he was the smartest
guy in the room, and as long as he could talk,
he would get away with it.
00:38:06
Ultimately, he was proven wrong. -When the verdict came back, it came back
as I expected that it was,
00:38:11
but it's still
a feeling of elation that this guy lost his third attempt at freedom.
00:38:18
I'm just waiting for the day
to get the phone call that Mother Nature
and Father Time
00:38:23
did what the courts
would never do and that he's no longer
stealing oxygen from decent people.
00:38:29
-The following year, 2011, Alcala was charged
with two murders in New York -- 23-year-olds Cornelia Crilley
in 1971
00:38:40
and Ellen Hover in 1977. -Alcala is one of those killers who believed he was cleverer.
00:38:52
He could hide in plain sight. "I'm John Berger in New York." "I'm an ordinary,
humble man in Los Angeles.
00:38:59
I couldn't possibly
be dangerous." He is, in some respects, even more dangerous,
00:39:07
like a perfectly
camouflaged snake that you tread on by accident because you don't
realize it's there.
00:39:15
-To avoid another trial,
Alcala pled guilty to both New York murders, taking his total number
of victims to seven.
00:39:24
In 2010, over 100 pictures found in Alcala's
Seattle storage unit were released into
the public domain by detectives
00:39:35
in a bid to identify
potential victims. As a result,
Alcala has since been charged
00:39:42
with killing a 28-year-old woman in Wyoming in 1977. Many of the photographs
found in the locker
00:39:50
were too graphic to be released, meaning many of the women
remain unaccounted for.
00:39:58
-Alcala may be the most
dangerous of all the killers that have ever been caught because while
he was only charged
00:40:07
with a relatively small
number of murders, the number of pictures he had means that he may have killed
in excess of 100 people.
00:40:14
♪♪ -Given the volume
of the photographs, you know, we always knew
that we had other victims.
00:40:22
We just --
We didn't know who they were. -Alcala was forced to pay
for some of his crimes.
00:40:29
But for the families
of the deceased, the pain of losing a loved one is a punishment
that lasts forever.
00:40:37
-I don't think Robin's family
is ever going to be at peace. They had their 12-year-old
sister kidnapped
00:40:43
and brutally murdered in the mountains
of Los Angeles County. They live with that every day
00:40:49
when they look
at her photographs that they have on their shelves. It tormented them then, and
when people bring it up today,
00:40:56
it's further torment for them, so I don't think
they'll ever be at peace. They'll certainly be elated
the day he dies,
00:41:03
but at peace? I think they're just
dealing with it. ♪♪ -74-year-old Rodney Alcala
00:41:12
remains on death row in Corcoran State Prison
in California. He has never admitted
to any other murders.
00:41:21
-Well, if I was
to describe Alcala with three words,
it would be "me, me, me." This man is
an absolute narcissist.
00:41:29
And he doesn't care
about the rights or the feelings of other people, and all of his behavior
revolves around him.
00:41:35
So he's somebody who was only going to ever
pursue his own desires, and unfortunately,
00:41:41
this ended up in a lot of people
losing their lives. -For these psychopaths,
their main thing --
00:41:46
They want to control things.
They want to be in control. They want the attention on them.
That's kind of what drives them.
00:41:52
He went up.
He made his whole pitch, and they soundly rejected him. They rejected his defense.
00:41:58
They rejected everything
that he stood for and found that he deserved
to die for what he did.
00:42:04
-My feelings towards
The Monster. It's rage. It's anger, and I really hope
that he's suffering.
00:42:12
He's in poor physical health. He's being fed
through a feeding tube. It's reported
that he has Alzheimer's.
00:42:20
I hope all of this is true
and that, one day, I get that phone call
that he is gone,
00:42:26
and nobody will ever have
to hear his name again. -Rodney Alcala killed
at least six women
00:42:33
and a 12-year-old girl. He was a terrifying predator
hiding behind a charming persona
00:42:40
and attacked his victims for nothing other
than his own selfish pleasures. To this day, we still
do not know why he did it.
00:42:50
When he finally dies,
Alcala will be remembered as one of the most
dangerous men in America
00:42:57
and one of the world's
most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪