Former 'Dating Game' contestant Rodney Alcala to die for murders in deaths of four women, a child
Former 'Dating Game' contestant to die for murders
- Rodney Alcala convicted last month in deaths of four women, child
- He was winning bachelor on television show in 1978
- At the time, he had been found guilty of raping 8-year-old
(CNN) -- A onetime contestant on "The Dating Game" was sentenced to die Tuesday for murdering four women and a child, Orange County, California, officials said.
Rodney Alcala, 66, was convicted in February of kidnapping and murdering a 12-year-old girl and raping and murdering four Los Angeles County women in the 1970s.
"Losing Robin, we lost so many things," said Marianne Connelly, the mother of Robin Samsoe, 12, whom authorities said Alcala murdered in 1979.
"We didn't get to watch her grow up. We didn't get to see her graduate high school or college, see her have a dance career, get married and/or have children," Connelly told the court Tuesday. "He took her life, her future and our joy."
Deidreann Parenteau, Jill Parenteau's sister, said she never understood why her sister had to die at Alcala's hands.
"If there is a hell, I hope Rodney Alcala burns eternally," she told the court. "I wish he would experience the terror that he put his victims through."
The crimes took place between November 1977 and June 1979, and covered a wide swath of suburban Los Angeles, California, from Burbank to El Segundo, authorities said.
A jury recommended this month that Alcala receive the death penalty.
He was found guilty February 25 of murder, kidnapping and an array of sexual offenses. He acted as his own attorney during the penalty phase of the trial.
In 1978, Alcala was a winning bachelor on the television show "The Dating Game." At the time, he had been convicted in the 1968 rape of an 8-year-old girl, authorities said. He served a 34-month sentence.
A year earlier, according to the Orange County district attorney, Alcala had raped, sodomized and killed two women: Jill Barcomb, an 18-year-old New Yorker who had recently moved to California, and Georgia Wixted, a 27-year-old nurse.
The district attorney said Alcala used a large rock to smash in Barcomb's face and then "strangled her to death by tying a belt and pant leg around her neck." Her body was left in a mountainous area in the foothills near Hollywood.
Wixted was beaten with the claw end of a hammer, the district attorney said. Alcala "strangled her to death using a nylon stocking and left her body in her Malibu apartment," according to the district attorney's Web site.
On "The Dating Game," Alcala -- who was introduced as a "successful photographer" who might also be found sky diving or motorcycling -- succeeded in charming bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw from behind a wall.
"Who will it be?" the host asked Bradshaw at the end.
"I'll take One," she said, and Alcala strode out.
Three more murders followed Alcala's appearance on the show, the district attorney said.
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- MADJGNLAW
on Mar. 31, 2010 at 6:30 PM