Martina Boothes
Heard of Woman of the hour? Of course, you did! It’s the number one film on Netflix and is trending on the web. The crime thriller is directed by and starring multi-talented, Anna Kendrick, and based on a true story that is somewhat altered from the real events. The film showcases a series of flashbacks of horrific murder events done by serial killer, Rodney Alcala, and it follows a hungry actress, Sheryl Bradshaw played by Anna Kendrick, who is hoping for her break to stardom when she suddenly gets a call from her agent about an opportunity for screen time and to be cast on a dating show where she quizzes, and picks one of the three bachelors to go on a date with. Surprisingly, one of the bachelors being Rodney Alcala who won a date with Bradshaw at the end. However, Bradshaw confesses to a crew member on set about her female instinct that warned her about him, she later opted out to go on a date with him. Here’s a statement by the real Sheryl Bradshaw,
“I can’t go out with this guy. There’s weird vibes that are coming off of him. He’s very strange. I am not comfortable.”
“Something about him,” Bradshaw later said in an interview. “I could tell there was something wrong.”
While I find the film very intriguing and a good recommendation to watch, instead of making it the main topic of this article along with discussing about the true events of, “The dating game show,” I’d like to dive deep into the real story behind the serial killer himself, his upbringing, and what triggered him to commit those heinous crimes.
Brief Bio of Rodney Alcala
Rodney Alcala, a Texas native, was born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala on August 23, 1943, to parents of Mexican descent, Raul Alcala Buquor and Anna Maria Gutierrez. Around 1951 at the age of 8, Alcala and his family moved to Mexico but three years later, he was abandoned by his father. At age of 11 years old, Alcala moved to Los Angeles with his single mother and 3 siblings where he attended various private schools during his youth and was known around as a “gifted student” and popular amongst his peers. He was also very athletic and took part of a few sport teams such as track and cross-country teams. After he graduated from Cantwell Sacred Heart of mary high school in 1961, he joined the Army at the age of 17 and served as a clerk. According to reports, during his time of service, he was frequently accused of assaulting women and was disciplined as a result to that. While on military leave, Alcala traveled aboard to California to visit his family back home and experienced a nervous breakdown. He was later diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder by the military psychiatrist upon his return to camp. In result to his behavior, he was discharged from the army on medical grounds and was diagnosed with other various mental illnesses such as narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and malignant narcissism with psychopathy sexual sadism comorbidties.
After being discharged from the army, Alcala decided to go to college and later graduated from the UCLA school of the arts and Architecture. He also, studied film under Roman Polanski at NYU, which would later make Polanski the catalyst, and an inspiration for his career as a photographer.
The beast and crimes
Upon further research on Alcala murders, I discovered that while he was still a student at NYU, he earned money as a freelance photographer and worked part time as a security guard. During his side hassle as a photographer, according to press, Alcala would use his photography as an easy access to lure his victims by randomly picking them in public places and introducing himself as a “successful photographer.” He would then, hypnotize his victims with his striking attractiveness and charm, and personal, friendly conversations along with never ending compliments, manipulating his victims to believe that he’s just a harmless, trustworthy guy who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
His first victim was an 8-year-old girl, Tali Shapiro, who he brutally raped and beat during his time in Los Angeles in 1968.
Here are statements from former detectives that I found from source,
Chris Camacho | Former detective, LAPD: I was out doing my patrols. We just started our shift that day. And I was driving down Sunset Boulevard. And I had received a call, a beige-colored car with no license plates following this little girl.
Steve Hodel | Former detective, LAPD: A Good Samaritan, a witness, sees the little girl, the little 8-year-old Tali get in the car. Thinks it’s suspicious, follows him, and puts a call into LAPD.
Former Los Angeles Police Officer Chris Camacho reached the location and knocked on the door.
Chris Camacho: I said, “Police officer. Open the door. I need to talk to you.” This male appeared at the door. I will always remember that face at that door, very evil face. And he says, “I’m – I’m in the shower. I got to get dressed.” And I told him, “OK, you got 10 seconds.” … Finally, I kicked the door in. The image will be with me forever. We could see in the kitchen that there was a body on the floor, lot of blood.
Matt Murphy | Orange County Deputy D.A.:They say a picture says a thousand words and that image of those little white Mary Janes on that floor with that metal bar that he used to strangle her with, and that puddle of blood, it just looks like too much blood to come out of a — a tiny little 8-year-old like that.
Chris Camacho: There was no breathing. …We all thought she was dead.
Camacho began frantically searching the house for her attacker. Moments later, he walked back into the kitchen and witnessed a miracle.
Chris Camacho: She was gagging and trying to breathe, and I thought one for the good guys. She’s going to make it.
Clinging to life, Tali was rushed to the hospital.
Matt Murphy: Had it not been for that police officer, Tali Shapiro would have died on Rodney Alcala’s kitchen floor.
Chris Camacho: We started searching the residence. There was a lot of photograph equipment and all of us were amazed at the number of photographs that he had there of young girls, very young girls. We found a lot of ID, picture ID of a Rodney Alcala. He was a student at UCLA.
The suspect, 25-year-old Rodney Alcala, had slipped through the officers’ fingers.
Chris Camacho: When I kicked in the front door … the suspect went out the back door.
With Alcala in the wind, former Detective Steve Hodel was grasping at thin air.
Steve Hodel: We kept coming up empty. Back then, you know, we didn’t have a lot of the forensics you have today.
Steve Hodel: He was a snake charmer. I went and talked to his professor at UCLA. … He says Rod Alcala wouldn’t hurt anybody. He’s a great guy.He truly believed that you know. And — and a lot of people did.
Later, Alcala was put on the Most Wanted list by the FBI in 1969 as a potential suspect but once again, charmed his way out of that, which made it impossible for detectives to use him as a suspect.
Matt Murphy: Rodney Alcala after raping and — and almost killing Tali Shapiro, he fled to New York. He made friends. He — he charmed people. He got into NYU film school.
None of his fellow students suspected that their popular classmate had a double life which had the makings of a film itself — a horror film.
Three years after his attack on Tali Shapiro, Alcala’s dark side once again emerged, according to press.
June 1971, Cornelia Crilley, age 23, a stewardess from New York, was found dead in her apartment. Before her death, her boyfriend, Leon Bornstein, told police that he was worried because he had not heard from her all day, so when he called her mother, she also said that she hadn’t heard from her neither, so he decided to stop by her apartment to check up on her, but when he knocked on the door, no one answered. Bornstein then, tried to open her window to climb through but was unable to open it because it was glued shut, so he decided to call the authorities. When they arrived and forced their way in by knocking down the front door, they found Crilley stripped naked, laying faced down on the floor in a certain pose, purposesly done by Alcala. A nylon stocking was tied around her neck, seemingly, as she had been strangled, along with deep bite marks on her breasts. According to reports, at the time of Crilley’s murder, the detectives couldn’t use Alcala as a suspect because he had supposedly, changed his name to John Berger and moved to New Hampshire, and landed a job as a counselor at an arts and drama camp for girls. Later, two students in the camp seen a photo of Alcala on the most wanted list and reported it to the dean. Shortly after, the authorities were called, and Alcala was arrested. During the time of his arrest, the authorities couldn’t charge Alcala for the 8-year-old girl’s rape case neither because there wasn’t enough main witness to back up on. While in court, as a result to Alcala’s rape case, the prosecutors offered him a lesser charge of child molestation and registered him as a sex offender. He was then sentenced to 34 months in prison and after served his time, he was a free man. In reports, it is said that even after he served his sentence, and holding the title of a register sex offender, he was still getting hired at prestigious, industry jobs and landed one at Los Angeles times newspaper, and was hired as a wedding photographer for events. Furthermore, also getting cast as a contestant on “The dating game show.”
Seriously, on a personal note, how horrendous does that sounds? I mean, after getting diagnosed with all of those dangerous mental illnesses, you would think that they would’ve put him in an asylum, and even though that happened decades ago, to be frank, the industry is still hiring sex offenders. Have you looked at the news lately? And here I am with no criminal background, lots of experience, and still, can’t land a job, like writing for the Los Angeles times. I guess it’s true that if you own a college degree, you can pretty much get hired anywhere in the industry, even if you are a register sex offender but all jokes aside, I wonder, were they not albe do background checks in the 1970’s?
Not long after Alcala’s brush with success as a photographer, the killing began again. On July 15, 1977, Alcala’s next victim, Ellen Jane Hover, age 23, an aspiring artist and musician, had reportedly gone missing after leaving her apartment in Manhattan. Within a year later, her remains were found in Westchester County near the Rockefeller estate where Alcala photographed women.
On November 10, 1977, Alcala next victim was Jill Barcomb, age 18, who moved to Los Angeles in hopes to becoming a Hollywood actress. It is reported that when authorities found her, she was brutally assaulted, and her face had been smashed in with a rock. A month after the killing of Barcomb, Alcala was on search for his next victim, and that victim was, Georgia Wixted, age 27, a nurse who had just moved to a new apartment in Los Angeles. According to reports, Wixted had also been sexually assaulted, tortured and strangled to death. In 1978, Alcala met his next victim, Charlotte Lamb, unknown age, at a bar Santa Monica, who was a secretary for a law firm and moved to California in hopes to becoming a star like most of his victims he had chosen.
According to reports after killing Hover, Law enforcements confirmed that Alcala was also involved in the murders of five women in California and Wyoming between 1977 and 1979 before the murder of Samsoe, a child from Huntington beach who he had abducted on her way to ballet class in 1979.
Allegedly, besides the confirmed 8 victims, the actual true number of victims is believed to be as high as 130. Furthermore, the authorities believes that there are many more victims Alcala had killed between 1977 and 1979 that have not yet been confirmed, according to press.
In July 1979, Alcala was arrested and held without bail. During trail for the murder of Samsoe, prosecutors compared Alcala to a mimic of Ted Bundy and argued that he, “Toyed” with his victims, strangling them until they lost consciousness, revived them, and repeat the process several times before killing them. Alcala was found guilty of the murder of Samsoe, along with the five murders that he committed and was sentenced to death in May 1980. It is also reported that aside from the sentence, Alcala pleaded guilty to the two other murders of, Cornelia Crilley and Ellen Jane Hover, that he committed while in New York and received an additional 25 years to life.
In March of 2010, authorities discovered a collection of more than 900 photographs of women and teenagers taken by Alcala during the time of murders and decided to release them in hopes of the public identifying the potential victims. The authorities said that some photos are unbelievably, sexually explicit that they refuse to release due to the respect of the potential victims and families of the missing unindentified victims. In 2016, Alcala was charged with the murder of a woman identified in one of the photos. Additionally, according to the Huntington police department, within the first week over 20 women came forward to identify themselves in the photos and a few family members, who had believed to have recognized loved ones in them who had gone missing decades ago but was never found.
There are still hundreds of photos that remained posted online that are still unidentified.
Here are a few series of photos of potential unidentified women taken by Alcala below posted online by the Huntington Beach police department. There are no photos or reports on the women who have been identified yet.
Do you recognize anyone? If you have any information, contact HBPD Sgt. Sam Shepherd at (714) 536-5947
Alcala’s Death
In 2021, while some DNA tests are being confirmed and additional charges are added, and more victims and families are coming forward to seek closure and Justice, Alcala died from natural causes at 77 while on death row in California. Here’s what Tali Shapiro had to say about his passing,
“The planet is a better place without him, that’s for sure. I know it’s awful what happened to me, but I’ve never identified with it. I’ve moved on with my life, so this doesn’t really affect me. It’s a long time coming, but he’s got his karma. “
