“The Dating Game” Killer
April Smolkowicz
Dr. Ratchford
Georgia Gwinnett College
Rodney Alcala serial killer, born in San Antonio, Texas soon thereafter, his dad deserted the family so his native Mexican born mother moved the family to Southern California. In Alcala’s younger years he joined the Army, but soon thereafter discharged due to a personality disorder. At the young age of twenty-five Alcala studied Fine Arts from The University of Los Angeles (UCLA) and in 1968 he received his bachelor’s degree; also to include that Alcala studied film making under Roman Polanski (Tresniowski, A. & Breuer, H. 2010). Rodney Alcala was once known as a dashing ladies man, with a near genius IQ, as an amateur photographer or a professional fashion photographer, where he uses his persuasive smooth talking charm to abduct, raped and kill his victims that were women and girls. In 1978 this smooth talker was even selected to compete on the ABC prime-time show “The Dating Game” where bachelorette, Cheryl Bradshaw chose him as her date, only…show more content… In 1971, Rodney Alcala was captured, thanks to two girls at the camp who saw a picture of Alcala in the local post office; the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) extradited Alcala back to Los Angeles to stand trial for the crime committed against Tali Shapiro. Alcala pleaded to a lesser sentence of child molestation; the family moved to Mexico. Alcala only served thirty-four months before being paroled based on the indeterminate sentencing laws. Alcala served another thirty-four months in prison in 1974, for violation of parole and giving marijuana to a thirteen-year old girl (Pelisek, C.,
