Here is the chilling story behind the photo of a smiling man who was seen smiling after he won a dating show in 1978.
When it comes to dating, you should never doubt your intuition, if something feels off, it's time to get yourself out of the situation. This is exactly what one woman did after meeting the man she'd chosen on a dating series - and it may have saved her life.
Back in 1978, a woman named Cheryl Bradshaw was looking for love on matchmaking series The Dating Game and for a moment it would seem like she'd found just that after selecting a man listed as 'bachelor number one' from the list of eligible men.
However, she would soon come to realise she'd made a grave mistake after meeting the man face-to-face.
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As the man she'd selected for a date was none of than serial killer Rodney Alcala, who has since been dubbed as 'The Dating Game Killer'.
By the time he appeared on the show, Alcala had already served two stints in prison for sexually assaulting and beating an eight-year-old girl, later attacking a 13-year-old girl as well.
"I started to feel ill," Bradshaw would later tell the Sydney Telegraph in 2012 of her meeting with Alcala. "He was acting really creepy. I turned down his offer. I didn’t want to see him again."
Fellow bachelor Jed Mills would also reveal that he felt creeped out by Alcala, telling LA Weekly: "Rodney was kind of quiet. I remember him because I told my brother about this one guy who was kind of good-looking but kind of creepy.
"He was always looking down and not making eye contact.”
However, the true extent of Alcala's crimes were yet to be revealed.
Who was Rodney Alcala?
Born in 1943 in San Antonio, Texas, Alcala was convicted of eight murders. Although it's possible that he would be linked to as many as 130 killings.
By the time Alcala appeared on The Dating Game in 1978, he'd not only assaulted two children but also murdered four women.
Alcala's spree of violence would finally come to an end in 1979 after he was apprehended for the killing of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe. The girl had been beaten, sexually assaulted, and murdered by Acala while cycling to a ballet class. He would later be connected to the murder after a pair of her earrings were found in a storage locker he owned in Seattle.
Alcala would be sentenced to death for the killing of Samsoe in 1980, with a subsequent retrial taking place in 1986. This would later be overturned in 2003.
However, prosecutors wouldn't uncover the true extent of Alcala's crimes until 2010 after DNA samples linked him to the killings of Jill Barcomb, 18, Georgia Wixted, 27, Charlotte Lamb, 32 and Jill Parenteau, 21, who were all killed between 1977 and 1979. He would be sentenced to death for the third time.
In 2011, Alcala was extradited to New York and convicted for the killings of 23-year-old Cornelia Crilley in 1971 and Ellen Hover, 23, in 1977. He received an additional life sentence for the killings.
Alcala would die in prison in 2021, aged 77, of natural causes, and he has since been linked to around 130 other cold cases as the main suspect.
Topics: True Crime, Crime
Brenna Cooper