The man who arrested serial killer Rodney Alcala, whose case inspired recent events Netflix special “Woman Now” Details the true story behind the hit movie and how Alcala’s appearance on a 1970s dating show led authorities to arrest him.
Alcala is called “The Dating Game Killer” Because in 1978 he appeared on the TV show The Dating Game as a bachelor in the middle of his murderous spree.
“He has a very high IQ… but I think the problem with a guy like that is that most of his IQ is not focused on developing relationships… and things like that… it’s focused on my next victim And how to take advantage of “Women and Girls,” Craig Robison is the lead detective on the Alcala investigation. huntington beach policetold Fox News Digital in his first public interview about the case. “If we hadn’t caught him, he would still have done it.”
Robinson is also a retired player california prosecutor and judge. He has never spoken publicly about the investigation before and was even barred from testifying at the serial killer’s third trial because judges in the state are not allowed to comment on “pending” cases. Robinson said the case was considered “open” from the time Alcala was arrested until his death in prison in 2021.
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Rodney Alcala is known as the “Dating Game Killer” since he went on a killing spree as a bachelor on the 1978 TV show “The Dating Game.” (Prosecutor Matt Murphy)
While the Netflix movie shows Alcala winning a competition on the show “The Dating Game” and dating Bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw, many people may not know the real story behind their relationship.
Robinson revealed that Bradshaw never actually dated Alcala.
“He terrified her from the moment she met him,” he said, adding that her “gut instinct” may have saved her life.
The former detective revealed that he met with Anna Kendrick, who plays Bradshaw in the film, to help her research the serial killer’s case. He said Kendrick was interested in “what makes (Alcala) successful.”
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Rodney Alcala speaks with investigators after being found guilty of murdering a 12-year-old girl and four women in the late 1970s on February 25, 2010 in Santa Ana, California. chat. (Orange County Register)
Robinson began investigating the Alcala case in June 1979 missing Robin Samsoe, 12, was last seen riding her bike to dance class.
“Missing children her age, sometimes they are runaways, so I think that might be the first suspicion,” he said. “It feels…more like something happened to her.”
On the day she disappeared, Samso went to the beach with her friend Bridget Wilwalt and then rode her bike to class. Robinson said a man “dressed in street clothes, not beachwear” with an “Afro haircut and carrying a camera” approached the girls and asked to take their picture.
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12-year-old Robin Samso. Alcala was sentenced to death in 2010 for five murders he committed in California in the late 1970s, including Samso, 18-year-old Gil Barcomb, 21-year-old Gil Parenteau , 27-year-old Georgia Wickstead and 32-year-old Jill Barcombe. Charlotte Lamb Sr. after new DNA evidence linked him to his victim. (Prosecutor Matt Murphy)
Detectives brought Will Walter to sit with their sketch artist and released the composite to the public. Robinson said authorities also set up a tip line, and they received an important call from a parole officer who saw the sketch and believed the man police were looking for was Alcala — a convicted felon with a crime history. Serious criminal record.
Detectives learned that in 1968, a witness spotted Alcala fleeing in a car with a young girl, followed them to an apartment and called police. Police found 8-year-old Tali Shapiro near death, raped and beaten with a steel rod. Shapiro survived the attack and Alcala fled the scene but was later arrested and pleaded guilty to child molestation charges.
He served only 34 months before being paroled in 1974. He was soon rearrested for possession of marijuana with a 13-year-old girl and was imprisoned again until 1977.
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Detectives brought Robin Samso’s friend Bridget Wilwalt to their sketch artist and released the composite to the public. (Prosecutor Matt Murphy)
Authorities learned that just months before Samso disappeared, Alcala had been arrested for raping a 15-year-old girl while hitchhiking in Pasadena in February 1979. The surviving teen convinced Alcala that she enjoyed her time with him before eventually running away and calling police. police when he stopped at a gas station.
“For some reason, he didn’t kill her and left her there,” Robinson said. “She treated him in a different way and instead of panicking, screaming, fighting, resisting, being murdered and strangled, she took a different approach.”
Alcala arrested rape, But he has been released on bail. Robinson said the case was still open when Samso disappeared in June 1979.
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Serial killer Rodney Alcala, pictured in this booking photo, died of natural causes while awaiting execution in California on July 24, 2021. (Prosecutor Matt Murphy)
After learning of the hitchhiker’s case, Robinson retrieved Alcala’s booking photo from the time of his arrest. That same day, one of the other detectives came home and noticed that a key element of the case – an episode of the previous year’s “The Dating Game” – was playing on the television.
“He’s reading the newspaper and you hear Jim Lange come in… and he says, ‘Now let me tell you something about your date… He’s this, he’s that, he’s a photographer, he’s With all this great stuff…meet your date – Rodney Alcala…we just identified him as a potential suspect,” Robinson said.
“If you believe in divine guidance … that’s certainly a good clue. God’s finger is down and says, ‘Hey, you should check out this guy.'”
Detectives then took Willwalt back to the police station and showed her clips of Alcala from the dating show.
“When she saw the picture of this man, you could see her demeanor completely change,” Robinson recalled. “It was like her blood ran cold… ‘That’s the guy on the beach,’ she said.”
In July 1979, police discovered Samso’s body in a remote ravine, and a few weeks later Robinson arrested Alcala on murder charges.
“Craig Robinson…27 years old…out of all the really good police officers involved in this case…was the youngest detective to figure out the first homicide and arrest Rodney Alcala,” Alcala Matt Murphy, the lead prosecutor in the case, told Fox News Digital.
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Rodney Alcala was arrested in 1979 for the murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe.
Robinson and his team soon discovered a locker Alcala had opened in seattle After Samsso was murdered, he stored there many items implicated in the incident, including hundreds of photographs of women and jewelry.
“He had boxes and boxes of stuff in there,” Robinson said. “When we were searching, one of the things I saw was a little bag…yellow and red with a zipper on it. …It was full of jewelry…and this set of earrings…there was a gold post and A little golden ball on them.”
His investigative team showed the earrings to Samso’s mother, who helped authorities confirm what they already suspected – that the earrings belonged to her daughter, even though they had no DNA to prove it at the time.
Robinson added: “He kept these trinkets as trophies of the things he had done and the murders he had committed during his career.”
Alcala’s “loot” — jewelry found in his Seattle storage unit. Robinson described the yellow and red bag inside which he found a set of earrings that Robin Samso’s mother said belonged to her daughter. (Prosecutor Matt Murphy)
“He kept these trinkets as trophies of the things he did and the murders he committed during his career.”
Alcala was sentenced to death twice for Samsou’s murders – in 1980 and 1986 – but both convictions were overturned.
Decades later, the “loot” initially discovered by Robinson and his team in the locker linked Alcala to his crimes. In the same red and yellow bag where Samsoe’s gold ball earrings were found, another set of rose-shaped earrings carried DNA belonging to another victim, Charlotte Lamb. Murdered in the United States in 1978. Los Angeles.
“We finally have a forensic link that may have been missing before,” Murphy told Fox News Digital.
In 2010, Alcala was sentenced to death for five counts of murder. in california Among them was 12-year-old Samsoe in the late 1970s. He was charged in the separate killings of Jill Barcomb, 18, Jill Parenteau, 21, and Jill Parenteau, 27, after new DNA evidence linked him to the victims. Georgia Wixted and 32-year-old Charlotte Lamb.
“I will be convinced until the day I die that we have enough evidence three trials “What we managed to do in the third trial was establish that, yes, he was the serial killer we all knew he was,” Robinson said.
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Rodney Alcala died of natural causes on July 24, 2021, while awaiting execution in California. He died at the age of 77. (AP Photo/David Handschuh, Pool, File)
In 2013, he was sentenced to an additional 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to two murders. New York, In 2016, he was charged again with the murder of a 28-year-old pregnant woman after DNA evidence linked him to the 1977 death In Wyoming.
“Once we had DNA in the system, other agencies…the NYPD and police agencies across the country began investigating their homicides and Jane Doe’s homicide,” retired detective Steven Mack said in a previous The investigation into the case began in 2003 following two cases. The conviction was overturned, Previously told Fox News Digital. “They were able to link Alcala to their crimes.”
Investigators suspect Alcala is involved in or linked to other murders in Los Angeles and Marin County, California. Seattle, Washington; New York; New Hampshire; and Arizona, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
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In this March 30, 2010 file photo, convicted serial killer Rodney Alcala listens to a victim impact statement being read at a bar in Santa Ana, California. (Associated Press)
Alcala died of natural causes on July 24, 2021, while awaiting execution in California. He died at the age of 77.
Although it took more than 30 years for Alcala to be convicted of his crimes, he remained incarcerated from Robinson’s arrest in 1979 until his death.
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“Huntington Beach at the time, I think they had maybe 150 police officers, but it was a very small community, much smaller than it is now…the locals with all that intelligence were able to catch this guy and put him in jail, ” Robinson said. “We arrested him in July 1979 and that was the beginning of his total destruction.”