Serial Killer Rodney Alcala may be Tied to More Killings

by UNCENSORED NEWS | April 23, 2010 at 01:55 pm

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The Huntington Beach police seek the public's opinion on photographs found in an investigation of Rodney Alcala: a three-time convicted serial killer awarded a life sentence. In the summer of 1968, Rodney Alcala moved to New York because he was found in an apartment with a badly beaten, near-death 8 year-old girl who was forcibly raped. He was the only suspect in this crime against Tali S. He fled the state on these charges and moved to NYC. He was convicted of the brutal beating of this young child.

Alcala escaped to New York, using the alias John Berger, and soon became the suspect in another brutal attack; the rape and murder of Cornelia ‘Michael’ Crilley. Using the name John Berger, Alcala enrolled in NYU's film school as a promising, young student. He began working under the direction of Roman Polanski, a Hollywood film director/producer. On June 24, 1971 a young 23-year-old flight attendant for Trans World Airlines was found raped and murdered in her apartment. She had been strangled to death with her own stockings after moving into a brand new apartment on the second floor of 427 East 83rd St. Manhattan, NY. Police were called to the scene when Mr. Leon Borstein, a close friend of Cornelia "Michael" Crilley called to report that he was unable to reach her by phone. Police responded as a courtesy call and discovered the gruesome body of Crilley's.

Alcala left NY abruptly to work in a summer camp in New Hampshire in the summer of 1971 and thanks to the quick thinking of detectives working the case, Alcala was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. It was that decision that led to his 1971 arrest.

During the 1970's Alcala was arrested several times and sentenced to death twice; in both of those sentences Rodney Alcala’s convictions were overturned by the 1980's. During the past thirty years, Rodney Alcala has managed to stay out of the police's way and was not incarcerated or investigated. He has seemed to maintain a low profile, free from police punishment. The “death penalty” sentencing was announed to Alcala on Tuesday, March 30, 2010. He received the results after a trial was conducted for the murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe in 1979 and four other women: Charlotte Lamb, Georgia Wixted, Jill Barcomb, and Jill Paranteau.

The 66 year-old serial killer is the subject of several new investigations because of advanced DNA testing that was not available in prior years. Police have asked for help to identify women, children and men who appear in thousands of photos. The pictures were found in a storage locker in Seattle, WA. The storage space was rented by Alcala. The police suspect that this collection of pictures may be photographic evidence of other people who are missing and may have been killed by Rodney Alcala. Rodney Alcala represented himself in court during this murder trial and he told the jury that they will be “killers themselves” if they allow him to be put to death by the California State death penalty clause.

An Orange County judge on Tuesday sentenced serial killer Rodney Alcala to death for five killings in the 1970s, marking yet another turn in a three-decade-long legal drama. Judge Francisco Briseno's decision came several weeks after a jury recommended the death penalty for Alcala after convicting him on charges of slaying four women and a teenage girl. Briseno said photos of the women taken by Alcala show he had "sadistic sexual motives" and that "some of the victims were posed after death." The judge said Alcala had an "abnormal interest in young girls." It was the third time that Alcala, 66, had been convicted for the murder of Robin Samsoe, 12, last seen riding her bike to ballet class in June 1979. He had been condemned to death both times, but the convictions were overturned. He has been in custody since his 1979 arrest. Before the third trial began in January, he was linked through DNA, blood and fingerprint evidence to the deaths of Jill Barcomb, 18, whose body was found in the Hollywood Hills; Georgia Wixted, 27, of Malibu; Charlotte Lamb, 32, of Santa Monica; and Jill Parenteau, 21, of Burbank. During his closing arguments earlier this month, Alcala -- a onetime photographer and “Dating Game” contestant who acted as his own attorney in this trial -- asked jurors to spare him from the death penalty, saying they would become killers themselves if they sent him to death row and arguing that the sentence would lead to decades of appeals. sentence of life in prison without parole "would end this matter now," he said.

After killer Rodney Alcala was sentenced to death in 1980 for kidnapping and murdering a 12-year-old Huntington Beach girl a year earlier, then-Orange County Deputy District Attorney Richard Farnell predicted that Alcala would turn out to be a serial killer. "From what I know of Mr. Alcala, there are probably many more victims we don't know about," Farnell told a reporter in July of 1980. It took nearly 30 years for the truth to emerge, but Farnell was a prophet.