Sumith Prasad
Netflix’s crime film ‘Woman of the Hour’ ends with the arrest of the serial killer Rodney Alcala. The murderer gets captured by the police at a gas station after Amy, whom he rapes and injures in an isolated mountainous region, calls for help. The authorities fail to arrest and charge him for a long while despite Laura’s efforts to lead them to him. In reality, Rodney was caught differently from the thriller movie’s depiction. His encounter with the officers at the gas station, an intense development that concludes the film’s narrative, did not happen in real life, even though the movie is based on a true story.
Rodney Alcala Was Arrested Multiple Times Before His Appearance in The Dating Game
In ‘Woman of the Hour,’ Rodney Alcala’s first encounter with the law occurs after Amy calls for the police. In real life, that was not the case. He was arrested multiple times before he appeared in ‘The Dating Game’ and eventually met Monique Hoyt, the inspiration behind Amy. The photographer was selected for the show as one of the prospective dates for Cheryl Bradshaw after he served three years in prison for child molestation. The criminal was even added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. In September 1968, Rodney reportedly beat and raped the eight-year-old Tali Shapiro. He then flew from California to New York and eventually became a girls’ camp counselor in New Hampshire.
Rodney was arrested when two campers recognized him as a person on the FBI wanted list. He was extradited to California because of the Shapiro case, but he was not charged with rape and attempted murder because the survivor couldn’t testify against him. The criminal pleaded guilty to child molestation and served three years in prison. After his release, the serial killer appeared in ‘The Dating Game’ in 1978, and in the next year, raped Hoyt after taking her to Banning from Pasadena, California. After committing the crime, the teenage hitchhiker reportedly gained his trust by pretending he wanted to stay with him.
Woman of the Hour Fictionalizes Rodney Alcala’s Arrest
According to Stella Sands’ ‘The Dating Game Killer: The True Story of a TV Dating Show, a Violent Sociopath, and a Series of Brutal Murders,’ Monique Hoyt asked Rodney Alcala whether they could go to his house. On their way, he stopped at a gas station to go to the restroom, only for the teenage hitchhiker to run away, as the crime thriller depicts. In real life, she ran to a nearby motel and screamed before the guests staying at the establishment. She informed them that she was kidnapped and raped by a man. Even though one of the guests called 9-1-1 to report the incident, Rodney had already fled from the gas station before the officers came.
The officials then took Hoyt to their station and listened to what happened to her. Based on her descriptions, the police showed her a set of photographs, only for her to identify Rodney as her rapist. He was captured from his mother’s house, where he had been staying at the time. After the interrogation, he confessed to raping Hoyt. However, when he was presented before a judge, his bail was set at $10,000, which was paid by his mother. In March 1979, he walked away from the police custody as a free man awaiting trial in September.
Rodney Alcala Was Caught For Good After Murdering Robin Christine Samsoe
Around three months after Rodney Alcala was released from police custody, in June 1979, twelve-year-old Huntington Beach native Robin Christine Samsoe went missing. Her body was found beaten, raped, and stabbed nearly a fortnight later. The officers questioned the victim’s best friend, Bridget, who told the former about a man who took their photographs. Based on the descriptions she gave the police, a sketch was made and spread across Southern California to find the photographer. Rodney’s parole officer saw the portrait, called the officials investigating the case, and asked them to “take a look” at the criminal.
Based on the tip, the investigators went to Rodney’s mother’s house in Monterey Park, California, to arrest him in July 1979. The officers also conducted a search to find any pieces of evidence and discovered a receipt for a storage locker in Seattle, Washington. The items in the locker included a jewelry pouch that contained a pair of gold ball earrings. Robin’s mother identified them as the jewelry her daughter often borrowed. He was charged with kidnapping, lewd or lascivious act upon a child under fourteen, murder, and robbery. In May 1980, the jury found Rodney guilty of killing the twelve-year-old, and he was sentenced to death.
Rodney Alcala Was Found Guilty of Four More Murders After His 1980 Conviction
The case against Rodney Alcala was not done with the 1980 death sentence he received for murdering Robin Christine Samsoe. In 2002, California passed a state law that allowed the collection of DNA samples from prisoners to be added to the database. The authorities could use these samples to compare with the DNA evidence procured from crime scenes. Rodney’s sample linked him to four additional murder victims: eighteen-year-old Jill Barcomb, twenty-seven-year-old Georgia Wixted, thirty-one-year-old Charlotte Lamb, and twenty-one-year-old Jill Parenteau. In 2006, the California Supreme Court allowed the prosecution to try Rodney by raising the murder count to five.
Rodney was sentenced to death for killing five individuals in 2010. Considering his retrials, it was the third death sentence he received. Even at that stage, the case against the serial killer was far from over. His DNA sample linked him to the murders of Cornelia Crilley and Ellen Jane Hover in New York. In 2012, he pleaded guilty to these two killings and returned to California. The next year, Christine Ruth Thornton‘s sister identified her sibling in one of Rodney’s photographs. Thornton went missing in 1977, and her remains were found in Wyoming in 1982.
In September 2016, Rodney was charged with Thornton’s murder. However, he was considered too ill to be extradited to Wyoming from California and face the charge. Until his death in July 2021 due to natural causes at the age of 77, he was not tried in the case.
Read More: Woman of the Hour: Is Ed Burke Inspired by a Real TV Host? How Did He Die?
