Serial killer Alcala’s guilty pleas may provide closure, D.A. says
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California serial killer Rodney Alcala’s guilty pleas Friday to the killings of two women during the 1970s in New York will hopefully bring closure to the families of the victims, Manhattan’s top prosecutor said.
‘Rodney Alcala’s victims were never forgotten,” New York County Dist. Atty. Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said. “Tragically, neither of them lived past the age of 23. Two families were robbed of daughters who never had a chance to have families of their own, grow old, and see the city change and become safer.
‘But, after more than 30 years, this defendant has admitted that he murdered these two innocent women,’ Vance said. ‘I hope today’s guilty plea provides some measure of closure for the victims’ families and loved ones.”
PHOTOS: California serial killers
Alcala, 69, admitted to the 1971 murder of Cornelia Crilley and the 1977 murder of Ellen Hover, two of a series of killings investigators suspect he committed as he traveled the country working in the photography business.
Alcala raped and strangled Crilley, a 23-year-old TWA flight attendant, inside her Upper East Side apartment in 1971. Six years later he killed Hover, also 23 and living in Manhattan. Her body was found in Westchester County, not far from her family’s estate.
Alcala, a self-styled playboy who once appeared on ‘The Dating Game,’ spent much of the 1970s eluding police by changing identities and locales. He has been behind bars since 1979, when he was arrested in the murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe of Huntington Beach.
Twice he was sent to Death Row for the girl’s murder, but both convictions were overturned on appeal. In February 2010, he was convicted again for Samsoe’s murder and for the murder of four women in Los Angeles County. He is now awaiting execution.
The extent of Alcala’s crimes were revealed as a task force formed by the Los Angeles Police Department and other agencies that was examining cold cases tied him to slayings across Southern California. New York police had long considered Alcala a suspect in the slayings of Crilley and Hover and had taken impressions of his teeth in 2003. Alcala had lived in New York periodically between 1968 and 1977. During that period, Crilley was found raped and strangled with her nylon stockings in her Manhattan apartment. Around that time, Alcala was working at a summer camp for girls in New Hampshire, authorities said.
Hover went missing in July 1977 and her body was discovered the following year. Before she disappeared, she had written the name ‘John Berger’ in a planner, a name police believe Alcala used as an alias while in New York.
The Southern California killings began just a few months later.
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THE ALCALA CASE: A TIMELINE
1972 — Alcala is convicted in the 1968 rape and beating of an 8-year-old girl.
Nov. 10, 1977 — The body of 18-year-old Jill Barcomb is found in the Hollywood Hills. She had been sexually assaulted, bludgeoned and strangled with a pair of blue pants.
Dec. 16, 1977 — Georgia Wixted, 27, is found beaten to death at her home in Malibu. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.
1978 — Alcala appears in an episode of “The Dating Game” as Bachelor No. 1.
June 24, 1978 — Charlotte Lamb, a 32-year-old legal secretary from Santa Monica, is found in the laundry room of an El Segundo apartment complex. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with a shoelace.
June 14, 1979 — Jill Parenteau, 21, of Burbank is found strangled on the floor of her Burbank apartment. June 20, 1979 – Robin Samsoe, 12, disappears near the Huntington Beach Pier. Her body is found 12 days later in the Sierra Madre foothills.
July 24, 1979 — Rodney James Alcala, an unemployed photographer, is arrested at his parents’ Monterey Park home.
September 1980 – Alcala is convicted of the 1978 rape of a 15-year-old Riverside girl and sentenced to nine years in state prison.
June 20, 1980 — Orange County Superior Court Judge Philip E. Schwab sentences Alcala to death after he is convicted of Samsoe’s murder.
July 11, 1980 — The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office files murder, burglary and sexual assault charges against Alcala in the slaying of Parenteau.
April 15, 1981 — The L.A. district attorney’s office tells a judge that prosecution of Alcala in the Parenteau case could not proceed because a key witness admitted that he had committed perjury in another case.
Aug. 23, 1984 — The state Supreme Court reversed Alcala’s murder conviction in connection with Samsoe, ruling that the jury was improperly told about Alcala’s prior sex crimes.
June 20, 1986 — For the second time, Alcala is convicted for Samsoe’s murder and sentenced to death in Orange County Superior Court.
Dec. 31, 1992 — The California Supreme Court unanimously upholds Alcala’s death sentence.
April 2, 2001 — A federal appellate court overturns Alcala’s death sentence in the Samsoe case, ruling that the Superior Court judge precluded the defense from presenting evidence “material to significant issues.”
June 5, 2003 — The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office files murder charges against Alcala alleging that he killed Wixted during a burglary and rape.
Sept. 19, 2005 — Additional murder charges are filed against Alcala in connection to the deaths of Barcomb, Wixted and Lamb.
Jan. 11, 2010 — Alcala’s trial for the five murders begins. He represents himself.
-- Kimi Yoshino
