Woman of the Hour: How was Rodney Alcala caught in real life?

Netflix’s Woman of the Hour studies the Dating Game Killer and his infamous TV appearance, but the story of how Rodney Alcala was caught is far more complicated in real life.

In 1978, serial killer Rodney Alcala managed to get on TV. Appearing as a contestant on the hit show The Dating Game, Alcala’s crimes would later come to light and earn him the name ‘The Dating Game Killer‘.

This is the focus of the new Netflix movie, Woman of the Hour. Woven throughout Alcala’s appearance on the show are a handful of his heinous crimes, including the one that got him caught.

But the reality isn’t as simple, and Alcala continued his spree long after his initial arrests. Here’s how Rodney Alcala was caught, as well as the details of his conviction.

Rodney Alcala’s arrest

Rodney Alcala was finally arrested in July 1979 after his parole officer had recognized him from a police sketch.

His final murder was that of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, who had been caught by Alcala after riding a bike to her ballet class in Huntington Beach, California. Alcala had beaten, raped, and stabbed Samsoe, leaving her remains in the Los Angeles foothills.

Police later found her body off Santa Anita Canyon Road. When Samsoe’s friends were able to describe Alcala’s features (he had approached them on the beach, asking if he could take their picture), authorities circulated a police sketch.

CBS

Rodney Alcala was arrested in 1979

Alcala’s parole office at the time made the connection between him and the sketch, and notified the police. They then searched Alcala’s mother’s home and found a receipt for a storage locker in Seattle.

Upon searching the locker, they found the earrings with DNA that belonged to an earlier victim, Charlotte Lamb.

Alcala was then arrested in July 1979 and held without bail. His first conviction was for the murder of Samsoe, for which he received the death penalty.

His trial would continually be overturned and redone, with more and more murders being added to his conviction. Ultimately, he was convicted of seven murders. He was sentenced to death, however, Alcala died of unspecified natural causes in prison at the age of 77.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been apprehended

Before his imprisonment, Alcala had previously been arrested three times before – in 1971, 1974, and 1979 – and had been released each time.

His first arrest came after kidnapping and assaulting 8-year-old Tali Shaprio on her way to school in 1968. A witness account of the encounter had led police to Alcala’s apartment, where she was found alive, though she would remain in a coma for 32 days.

Alcala fled California, hiding out in New York City. It was here that he committed at least one other murder; Cornelia Crilley, a 23-year-old Trans World Airlines flight attendant.

Netflix

Daniel Zovatto plays Rodney Alcala in Woman of the Hour

Alcala was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in 1971, and he was eventually arrested for Shapiro’s assault when two children at an arts camp noticed his picture at the post office.

Shapiro’s parents didn’t want their daughter to testify at the trial, and Alcala was sentenced to three years for child molestation. After seventeen months, he was paroled in 1974.

However, two months after, he was re-arrested and put back into prison after assaulting a 13-year-old girl. In 1976, after serving two years, he was released again.

In February 1979, a year after his Dating Game appearance, Alcala was arrested once again. He’d picked up 15-year-old hitchhiker Monique Hoyt in California, under the pretense of taking her pictures.

When they arrived at a secluded mountain area in Banning, he attacked her. Alcala then assaulted and sodomized Hoyt before hitting her in the head with a rock. For unknown reasons, Alcala then drove her back down the mountain, giving Hoyt a chance to escape when he stopped to use the bathroom at a gas station.

This is the same story chosen to end Woman of the Hour, with a young hitchhiker escaping Alcala using her intelligence and opportunity to talk him down. In the movie, his arrest happens almost instantaneously at the gas station.

Hoyt called the police and Alcala was apprehended once again, but his mother posted his bail shortly after. Once released, he would kill two more times before his final arrest in 1979: Jill Parenteau in Burbank, and Robin Samsoe in Huntington Beach.