Accused serial killer, Rodney Alcala

[crimeshot1]

'Dating Game' killer's photos: More victims?

Calls pour in from across country after Calif. cops release murderer's stash

These are some of the hundreds of photos recovered during court-authorized searches of Rodney Alcala's Calif. home and a storage locker he rented in Seattle. Click below:

Images: Photos of some of the young women

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New Years 2010: the day model Paula Sladewski vanished. What happened? To watch the full Dateline NBC show click below.

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updated 6:04 p.m. CT, Fri., March. 19, 2010

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. - Police have been overwhelmed with calls since they released more than 100 photos found in a serial killer's storage locker, more than 30-year-old pictures of unidentified girls and women in bell bottoms, bikinis and Farrah Fawcett hair.

They look like long-lost sisters, mothers and daughters to bereaved callers across the country and from as far away as Denmark. Police have gotten more than 400 phone calls in a little more than a week.

The photos had been in the possession of Rodney Alcala, who has been in custody since 1979 and was recently convicted of murdering four young women and a 12-year-old girl. Jurors recommended the death penalty this month.

Prosecutors say Alcala used his camera to lure his victims, and he was seen taking pictures of the girl before she disappeared. They fear some of the unidentified people in the photos released last week may have fallen victim to Alcala as well.

"The first thing is, 'Oh, my God, I hope these girls are OK,' and the next thing is, 'I wonder if any of them are victims.' Everyone has that question," prosecutor Matt Murphy said. "I can't imagine for a million years that we've got him for the only murders he's done."

Alcala has been dubbed the "Dating Game killer" because he appeared on the television show “The Dating Game,” as Bachelor No. 1 in 1978.

Some images sexually explicit

Nine women have been identified through the photos so far, and all of them are alive. Huntington Beach police Capt. Chuck Thomas said one of them told authorities that Alcala molested her, but he added that the statute of limitations in that case has expired.

The photos, available on the Orange County District Attorney's Web site, are just a fraction of the more than 1,000 images investigators found in Alcala's storage locker when he was arrested for the 1979 murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe in Huntington Beach.

Prosecutors say Alcala used his camera to lure his victims.

They show leggy teenagers in bikinis and short-shorts on Southern California's sun-splashed beaches; young women in flowery blouses and hippie necklaces listening to music and smoking languidly; and girls wearing heavy makeup, apparently posing nude.

One photo shows a baby in a saggy diaper toddling near the shoreline, and another shows two young children in swimsuits washing off in an open-air shower on the beach.

Detectives have withheld about 900 pictures because they are too sexually explicit, while others have been cropped for release, said Huntington Beach police Capt. Chuck Thomas. He said he didn't know why his predecessors didn't release the photos years ago.

Releasing the pictures during Alcala's recent trial could have influenced the jury pool or could have jeopardized the verdict and death penalty recommendation on appeal.

Chasing leads

Alcala was previously convicted and sentenced to death twice for the murder of Samsoe, but both convictions were overturned on appeal. In 2006, investigators refiled the case and linked Alcala to four previously unsolved murders from Los Angeles County using DNA technology and other forensic evidence.

During the latest trial, prosecutors outlined Alcala's penchant for torturing his victims: One had been raped with a claw-toothed hammer, another had her skull smashed in with a 7-inch rock and one was strangled so fiercely the pressure broke bones. Several of the victims were posed nude in sexual positions after their deaths.

A jury convicted Alcala, a 66-year-old UCLA graduate, of five counts of first-degree murder last month and took just an hour to return a recommendation of death after the penalty phase earlier this month.

Alcala, who represented himself at trial, did not respond to a request for a jailhouse interview about the newly released photos.

Police are now chasing leads from Seattle to Phoenix to Orange County, Calif. Even before the photos were released, Alcala was a suspect in several cases in New York City, where he lived from 1968 to 1971, and in New Hampshire, Murphy said.

Dozens of police departments across the U.S. are also combing through cold cases, looking for similarities between their unsolved murders or missing persons reports and Alcala's victims.

'Absolutely horrible'

Detectives are fielding heart-wrenching calls from mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers of women who disappeared years ago, never to have their killer found.

One woman who called told police she thought one of the photos may have been her daughter, who went missing in 1982. Police had to tell her that it wasn't possible: By that point, Alcala had been behind bars for nearly three years.

"It's horrible, it's absolutely horrible, and our thoughts and prayers go out to these people," said Thomas, the police captain. "These people are grasping for straws, they want to hold onto anything they can hold onto to bring them closure."

But while some calls are full of anguish, others bring relief. Every so often, a woman will call to say she recognizes herself in one of the pictures.

Liane Leedom, a 48-year-old psychology professor and author, had insomnia earlier this week and was watching CNN at 2 a.m. when she saw herself at age 17 in Photo No. 123. In the picture, Leedom poses in a white, strapless summer dress with a gold cross around her neck, looking down and away from Alcala's camera with a faraway gaze.

Alcala lived down the street from Leedom with his mother and befriended her in June 1979 — the same month he killed Samsoe, who disappeared while riding a friend's bike to ballet class.

Leedom said Alcala gave her a ride to work once and invited her to his mother's home to look at dozens of pictures he'd taken of other teenagers before asking to photograph her at her parents' house.

"I was a 17-year-old girl and I said, 'Oh, a professional photographer wants to take my picture! Of course I'll do it,'" she recalled.

Grooming?

Alcala bragged about how he was a member of Mensa, the organization for people with a genius IQ, and always wore a medallion around his neck that he said signified his membership in the group, she said.

"I think he was grooming me. He showed me all these pictures he had taken. He showed me pictures of nude boys and some of them were so striking that they stick in my mind today," Leedom said.

A neighbor saw Leedom getting out of Alcala's car and told her parents, who ordered her not to see him again. The adults around the neighborhood knew he had already served prison time for an attack on an 8-year-old girl and was awaiting trial on charges of raping a 15-year-old.

"It was super lucky," Leedom said in a phone interview from her Connecticut home. "I'm determined to do good things with the life I've been blessed with."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35954720...me_and_courts/

[crimeshot1]

'Dating Game' Serial Killer Rodney Alcala Sentenced to Death

Alcala Given Death Penalty for Murders of 12-Year-Old, Four L.A. Women

By SARAH NETTER and SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
March 30, 2010

Rodney Alcala, one of California's most vicious serial killers, has been sentenced to death.

Former "Dating Game" contestant murdered at least five women.The man known as the "Dating Game" killer, for his appearance on the 1970s television game show, will die for murdering 12-year-old Robin Samsoe and four Los Angeles women, a jury decided today, according to ABC's Los Angeles affiliate KABC. The jury had seven men and five women.

In addition to Samsoe, Alcala was convicted in the murders of Charlotte Lamb, 32, Jill Barcomb, 18, Georgia Wixted, 27, and Jill Parenteau, 21.

Before upholding the jury's recommendation, the judge denied Alcala's request for a new trial.

Earlier this month, police released a stash of photos three decades old in hope of finding closure for the families of dozens of missing persons who may have been murder victims.

Police are also hoping more families of loved ones come forward so they can link more killings to Alcala.

And they may never know exactly how many woman Alcala may have killed. Police have nearly 2,000 photos of possible victims and a lengthy investigation ahead for investigators who say they will solve as many cases as they can.

"They want to go at 110 mph after every lead they get," said Huntington Beach Police Department Capt. Chuck Thomas. "That's what we're here for and we'll do everything we can for these potential victims."

Woman's Brush With Serial Killer Alcala

The recent release of the photos have caused a flurry of activity as the families of the women in the pictures, and in some cases the women themselves, flood police with phone calls.

"We've received hundreds, literally hundreds and hundreds, of calls from all over the United States as well as numerous calls from western Europe," Thomas said. "We've gotten a number of calls from families who are still despondent. Your heart really goes out to them."

Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said they already have six potential new cases they could pin on Alcala.

At the time of his appearance, where he was bachelor No. 1, he had already been convicted in the rape and brutal beating of an 8-year-old girl.

Alcala was convicted Feb. 25in the 1979 rape and murder of Samsoe, a Huntington Beach ballet student, and the strangulation of four other women between 1970 and 1979.

Seattle storage locker that had been rented by Alcala, but not released until recently because of legal concerns.

Phone calls came flooding into authorities almost immediately.

"The calls are basically along two lines," Huntington Beach Police Detective Patrick Ellis told ABC's Seattle affiliate KOMO. "No. 1: 'Yes, that's my photograph. I am alive and well,' and giving us details of Mr. Alcala way back when, 30 years ago.

"Or, the calls saying, 'Hey, my sister, mother ... was reported missing back then, and I think her photograph is on the Web site,' and they're providing us with information as far as the person's name, where they were last seen alive," he said. "Some people aren't positive, but they're pretty sure.

"Until we talk to the victims' families, get other photographs for comparison purposes and more details on where their bodies were recovered -- if they were recovered at all -- we can't really say at this point," Ellis said. "We just don't know."

Rackauckas said each possible match to one of the photos is investigated first by looking at the whereabouts of the victims at the time and that of Alcala. In some cases, he said, DNA evidence is available for further confirmation.

Police say Alcala thought of himself as a skilled photographer and may have used the camera to lure his victims.

Alcala had traveled across the country several times when he was studying film at New York University in the 1970s, even working briefly with director Roman Polanski.

Steve Hodel, a retired detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, told ABC's Nightline that Alcala could have killed many more victims between the East and West Coasts.

If you know who these women are, contact Huntington Beach Police Detective Patrick Ellis, at 714-375-5066, or e-mail him at pellis@hbpd.org.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/dating-gam...0242131&page=1