I haven't seen any posts about this yet so I add this.

Rodney Alcala died of natural causes at the ago of 77 at 1:43 a.m. PST Saturday morning.

He was sentenced to death in 2010 for the murders of Robin Samsoe (12 years old) , Jill Barcomb (18), Georgia Wixted (27), and Jill Parenteau (21) between 1977 and 1979.

He also pled guilty to the murders of Cornelia Crilley in 1971 and Ellen Jane Hover in 1977, both in New York.

Alcala was known as the "Dating Game Killer" because he appeared on a game called the Dating Game and competed with two other men for a date with a woman. Alcala was actually selected by the woman but after she met him (backstage just after the show I think) her instincts kicked in and she bailed on the date.

The local news just had this on and they said Law Enforcement (LE) believes he may have over 100 victims.

Alcala also liked to take pictures of women. Many of the women in the photographs have not been identified. After the release of the photos In 2010 120 photos taken by Alcala were released The vast majority could not be released because the were considered too sexually explicit by LE). 21 women came forward and said they recognized themselves in the photos and were fine, but at least 6 pictures were identified by relatives as perhaps being of women who went missing long ago.

Alcala, if he had information to share about the women in the photographs, apparently took that information with him to the grave.

This is just suppose to be an update. I personally don't have detailed information on this case at the the tip of my fingers and did not spend a lot of time doing research, so hopefully I wrote enough in my own words that this doesn't get deleted.

I think that it is important that people update the board about these cases when they show up on the local news. I live near Sacramento and I know that if a case like Amy Mihaljevic has a major update it won't be on my local news and I don't know if the national news will cover it (They barely covered the fact that the recent Zodiac cypher had been decoded but it was all over the local news.)

NBC News Report

Wikipedia entry on Alcala

Alcala on The Dating Game

Photos of unknown women taken by Alcala