A prolific torturer named “The Dating Game Killer” died Saturday while awaiting execution in California, authorities said. Rodney James Alcala was 77 years old.
He died of natural causes in a hospital in California’s San Joaquin Valley, prison officials said in a statement.
Alcala was sentenced to death in 2010 for five murders in California between 1977 and 1979, including that of a 12-year-old girl, although authorities estimate he could have killed up to 130 people across the country.
Alcala was given another 25 years to live in 2013 after pleading guilty to two murders in New York.
He was charged again in 2016 after DNA evidence linked him to the 1977 death of a 28-year-old woman whose remains were found in a remote area of southwest Wyoming. However, a prosecutor said Alcala was too sick to stand on trial over the death of the woman who was six months pregnant.
California’s death row is in San Quentin State Prison near San Francisco, but Alcala was held in a Corcoran prison more than 300 miles away for years for 24-hour medical care.
“The Dating Game Killer”: Who Was Alcalacal
Prosecutors said Alcala pursued women like prey and took earrings as trophies from some of his victims.
“You’re talking about a guy who is hunting around Southern California looking for people to kill because he enjoys it,” said Orange County, California District Attorney Matt Murphy during his trial.
Investigators say his true casualty count may never be revealed.
Earrings helped put him on death row despite Governor Gavin Newsom’s moratorium on execution while he is governor.
The mother of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe testified at his murder trial that a pair of gold ball earrings found in a jewelry pouch in Alcala’s storage cabinet belonged to her daughter.
But Alcala claimed the earrings were his and that a video clip from his 1978 appearance on The Dating Game showed him wearing the earrings almost a year before Samsoe’s death. He denied the murders and cited inconsistencies in testimony and descriptions.
California prosecutors said Alcala also took earrings as trophies from at least two of his adult victims.
Two of the four women were portrayed naked after their deaths, one was raped with a claw hammer, and all were repeatedly strangled and resuscitated to prolong their agony, prosecutors said.
Investigators said a victim’s DNA was found on a rose-shaped earring in Alcala’s possession, and his DNA was found in her body.
He had previously been sentenced to death twice for the murder of Samsoe, but both convictions were overturned. He was charged with the murder of the four adult women more than two decades later, based on new DNA and other forensic evidence.
Following the ruling, authorities released more than 100 photos of young women and girls found in Alcala’s property in hopes of linking him to other unsolved murders across the country.
“There’s murder and rape and then there’s the unequivocal slaughter of Rodney Alcala-style murder,” said Bruce Barcomb, brother of 18-year-old victim Jill Barcomb, when Alcala was sentenced to death.
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