Death row inmate ‘Dating Game Killer’ Rodney Alcala dies of natural causes in hospital
07/26/2021 12:42 pm PDT
CORCORAN, Calif. (TCD) --
A convicted murder on California’s death row known as the “Dating Game Killer” died of natural causes early Saturday morning.
Rodney James Alcala, 77, died in a hospital in Kings County, Calif., on Saturday, July 24, at about 1:43 a.m., the California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced. Further details of Alcala's death were not disclosed.
Alcala had been serving time on death row after multiple California trials.
Alcala had been sentenced to death in Orange County in 1980 for the 1979 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, the CDCR said.
That judgment was reversed in 1984 by the California Supreme Court and Alcala was granted a new trial. In 1986, Alcala was sentenced to death again for Samsoe’s murder.
A federal appeals court overturned the sentence in 2003, and Alcala was again given a new trial, the CDCR said.
In 2010, an Orange County jury convicted Alcala of five counts of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to death for the killing of Samsoe; and for the the 1977 deaths of Jill Barcomb, 18; Georgia Wixted, 27; the 1978 death of Charlotte Lamb, 32; and the 1979 death of 21-year-old Jill Parenteau.
In 2013, Alcala pleaded guilty to the 1971 murder of Cornelia Crilley and to the 1977 murder of Ellen Jane Hover; he was sentenced there to 25 years to life in prison.
Alcala was charged in Wyoming with the murder of 28-year-old Christine Ruth Thornton, whose body was found four years after she disappeared. Thornton was six months pregnant when she was found dead.
Alcala is suspected in other murders in Los Angeles and Marin County, California; Washington; New York; New Hampshire; and Arizona.
Alcala was a contestant on the television show “The Dating Game” in 1978.
No prisoners have been executed in California since 2006, the Orange County Register reports. A moratorium on the death penalty was declared in 2019 by Governor Gavin Newsom.
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