Imprisoned 'Dating Game Killer' Alcala dies in California

<p> Sacramento (US), Jul 25 (AP): A prolific serial torture-slayer dubbed “The Dating Game Killer” died Saturday while awaiting execution in California, authorities said. Rodney James Alcala was 77.</p><p>He died of natural causes at a hospital in San Joaquin Valley, California, prison officials said in a statement.</p><p>Alcala was sentenced to death in 2010 for five slayings in California between 1977 and 1979, including that of a 12-year-old girl, though authorities estimate he may have killed up to 130 people across the country.</p><p>Alcala received an additional 25 years to life in 2013 after pleading guilty to two homicides in New York.</p><p>He was charged again in 2016 after DNA evidence connected him to the 1977 death of a 28-year-old woman whose remains were found in a remote area of southwest Wyoming.</p><p> But a prosecutor said Alcala was too ill to face trial in the death of the woman, who was six months pregnant when she died.</p><p>California's death row is in San Quentin State Prison near San Francisco, but for years Alcala had been housed more than 200 miles away at a prison in Corcoran where he could receive medical care around the clock.</p><p>Prosecutors said Alcala stalked women like prey and took earrings as trophies from some of his victims.</p><p>“You're talking about a guy who is hunting through Southern California looking for people to kill because he enjoys it,” Orange County, California, prosecutor Matt Murphy said during his trial.</p><p>Investigators say his true victim count may never be known.</p><p>Earrings helped put him on death row, though Gov. Gavin Newsom has imposed a moratorium on executions so long as he is governor.</p><p>The mother of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe testified at his murder trial that a pair of gold ball earrings found in a jewelry pouch in Alcala's storage locker belonged to her daughter.</p><p>But Alcala claimed that the earrings were his and that a video clip from his 1978 appearance on “The Dating Game” shows him wearing the studs nearly a year before Samsoe died.</p><p> He denied the slayings and cited inconsistencies in witness' accounts and descriptions.</p><p>California prosecutors said Alcala also took earrings from at least two of his adult victims as trophies.</p><p>Two of the four women were posed nude after their deaths, one was raped with a claw hammer and all were repeatedly strangled and resuscitated to prolong their agony, prosecutors said.</p><p>Investigators said one victim's DNA was found on a rose-shaped earring in Alcala's possession, and his DNA was found in her body.</p><p>He had been sentenced to death twice before in Samsoe's murder, but both convictions were overturned.</p><p> He was charged in the slayings of the four adult women more than two decades later based on new DNA and other forensic evidence.</p><p>After the verdict, authorities released more than 100 photos of young women and girls found in Alcala's possession in hopes of linking him to other unsolved murders around the country.</p><p>“There is murder and rape and then there is the unequivocal carnage of a Rodney Alcala-style murder,” Bruce Barcomb, the brother of 18-year-old victim Jill Barcomb, said as Alcala was sentenced to death. (AP) IND</p><p><i>(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. No editing has been done in the headline or the body by ABP Live.)</i></p>