The Twisted Trail of Death: Unmasking Rodney Alcala’s Confirmed Victims
In 2003, when Detective Steven Mack of the Huntington Beach Police Department took on the retrial of Rodney Alcala—a man whose conviction had already been overturned twice—he had no idea he was about to unearth one of the most prolific serial killers in American history.
Alcala, a charismatic former contestant on The Dating Game, was arrested for the third time and charged with the 1979 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe. Twice before, he had faced the death penalty for this crime, only to have his convictions nullified—first on a technicality regarding his prior sex crimes, then because he was denied a fair defense. But Mack was determined to put Alcala away for good.
What he found would shock the world.
The Game Show Killer’s Web of Deception
Prior detectives suspected Alcala was responsible for more than just Samsoe’s murder, but without concrete evidence, they had nothing to pin on him. Then Mack had a breakthrough. Sifting through a storage locker that once belonged to Alcala, he stumbled upon a small red satin pouch containing two rose-shaped earrings. Something about them seemed important. When tested for DNA, one of the earrings bore the genetic imprint of Charlotte Lamb—a woman who had been raped and strangled in 1978.
With this discovery, Alcala’s house of horrors began to unravel.
A Trail of Death from Coast to Coast
Before he was a killer, Alcala was a New York University film student under the mentorship of Roman Polanski. By 1971, however, he had already begun his reign of terror. That year, he raped and strangled 23-year-old Cornelia Crilley, a TWA flight attendant, in her Manhattan apartment.
Six years later, he lured Ellen Jane Hover, a 23-year-old aspiring music conductor, to the Rockefeller estate in Westchester County, New York. Her remains were discovered a year later. It wasn’t until years later that DNA evidence would confirm what investigators had long suspected: Alcala was her killer.
By 1977, Alcala had moved west, hunting for victims in California and beyond. In November of that year, he brutally assaulted and murdered 18-year-old Jill Barcomb in Los Angeles, smashing her face with a rock. Just weeks later, he strangled 27-year-old pediatric cancer nurse Georgia Wixted in her own home.
And the killings didn’t stop.
In Wyoming, authorities linked Alcala to the murder of 28-year-old Christine Ruth Thornton, who was pregnant at the time of her disappearance. Her remains were found four years later, but it would take decades before a photo of her—taken by Alcala himself—would ultimately lead to her identification.
Then came Charlotte Lamb, the woman whose DNA had been found on the earrings in Alcala’s storage locker. In June 1978, exactly one year before Samsoe was abducted, Lamb was found dead in the laundry room of an El Segundo apartment complex. She had been strangled, her arms tied behind her back, with bite marks left on her body—Alcala’s gruesome signature.
A year later, in 1979, Alcala raped and murdered 21-year-old computer programmer Jill Parenteau in Burbank, further cementing his legacy as a sadistic predator.
The Final, Unforgivable Crime
The murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe was Alcala’s undoing. She had been riding her bike to ballet class in Huntington Beach when Alcala abducted her. Her family was devastated. Samsoe’s remains were discovered 12 days later in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.
Alcala was finally arrested—but it would take three separate trials to convict him.
A Serial Killer’s Reckoning
In 2010, Alcala was convicted once more and sentenced to death. A year later, New York charged him with the murders of Crilley and Hover. Detectives had finally matched Alcala’s DNA to a preserved sample from Crilley’s body, and a dental mold confirmed his bite marks matched those on his victims. In 2012, he pled guilty to both murders.
Even in prison, Alcala remained under suspicion. Investigators believed he was responsible for as many as 130 murders, and his disturbing collection of photographs continued to generate leads. Seattle authorities began investigating him in connection to unsolved cases from the late 1970s, but Alcala took many of his secrets to the grave.
In 2021, he died of natural causes on death row.
Justice or Just an End?
Despite his conviction, Alcala’s trials put his victims’ families through hell. Detective Mack knew Alcala relished the legal process, convinced he was smarter than everyone else in the courtroom. But after decades of evading true justice, his time finally ran out.
“The families never got closure,” Mack admitted. “But at least they got to see him rot behind bars. And now, he’s burning in hell.”
