Rodney Alcala, the former Orange County man known as The Dating Game Killer when he was convicted of murdering at least seven women, was charged Tuesday in the 39-year-old killing of a woman whose body was found buried near Granger, Wyo. in 1982. Above, photos of Rodney Alcala in the 1970s and 1980s.
Convicted serial killer Rodney Alcala was charged with murder Tuesday in Wyoming in the killing of a woman reported missing in 1977 – a charge authorities credited, in part, to information from the Huntington Beach Police Department.
Alcala, 73, a former child photographer convicted in Orange County for a string of murders in Southern California, remains at California’s Corcoran State Prison and is sentenced to death.
The man once nicknamed “The Dating Game Killer” because he appeared on that game show while in the midst of his killing rampage may have as many as 130 victims across the country, police in Wyoming said Tuesday, citing estimates by authorities. Some online news stories mention Alcala may have an estimated 50 to 130 victims, but the actual number is unknown.
Prosecutors in Rock Springs, Wyo., said Tuesday that one of those victims was Christine Ruth Thornton, 28, of San Antonio. They said Alcala met Thornton and killed her while on a road trip, then buried her on a ranch in Granger, Wyo.
Thornton was about six months pregnant at the time of her death, according to the warrant for Alcala’s arrest.
Though prosecutors said her body was uncovered by a rancher in Wyoming in 1982, Thornton’s alleged link to Alcala wasn’t known for decades.
In 2013, Thornton’s sister, Kathy Thornton, saw an online display of photos taken by Alcala decades earlier, and recognized the subject of one of those photos as her sister. After that, investigative work by police in Huntington Beach and Wyoming – and a link to a federal database, NamUS, which matches DNA evidence to remains of unidentified people – helped connect the alleged crime to the picture.
In all, about 200 Alcala photos were released to the public by Huntington Beach police in 2010, after Alcala was sentenced to death for five sexual assault slayings committed in the 1970s.
Detectives said Tuesday that they released the photos for that exact purpose – to be seen by people who might be connected to other possible victims.
“I had a gut feeling there were more out there,” said Huntington Beach police Detective Patrick Ellis, who said he played only a small role in the initial investigation but was part of the decision to make the photos public.
The pictures, Ellis added, came with an unspoken message: “Here it is, and here we are.”
One of those photos was of a pretty 20-something woman, wearing a yellow top and flip-flops and looking to be about six months pregnant, sitting atop a Kawasaki 500 motorcycle. After Kathy Thornton saw the picture, in 2013, she called the source – Huntington Beach police. From there, investigations and DNA testing of Thornton’s family eventually tracked the remains to a federal database that included information about a then-unidentified body in Wyoming.
When investigators in Wyoming saw the picture, they didn’t recognize the woman but they did notice the background looked like Wyoming. They eventually linked that background to a spot near where a woman’s body had been unearthed decades earlier about 6 miles north of I-80, according to the warrant.
That body was found with a yellow top and faded flip-flops, and was eventually identified by DNA evidence as Christine Thornton.
Huntington Beach police Chief Robert Handy says the Thornton case highlights strong work by his detectives, then and now.
“This wouldn't be solved if he didn't have a hunch,” Handy said of Ellis. “This is a case of a detective who was super passionate.”
The new murder charge against Alcala might not change his status.
It’s unclear if Alcala will be extradited to stand trial in Wyoming or what his plea might be if he is. After years of saying he was innocent of murder, Alcala pleaded guilty in 2013 to killing two young women in New York state.
When Wyoming investigators spoke with Alcala this month in Corcoran, they showed him an aerial photo of the location where Thornton’s body was found, according to the warrant.
When asked if the land looked familiar, Alcala said, “It’s part of my area.” And when presented with the photo of Thornton on the motorcycle, Alcala told investigators that he knew Thornton and took the picture.
When asked if she left the area with him, Alcala said no, according to the warrant. When investigators pressed him, asking if she was alive when he left her, he replied, “She was alive before I left her.”
The charge filed Tuesday is the latest step in Alcala’s complex, sometimes by zantine criminal history.
Though he’s been in jail or prison since 1979, Alcala has been tried, convicted and retried for five sexual assault murders in Southern California.
In 1980, he was convicted of murdering Robin Samsoe, a 12-year-old Huntington Beach girl who was raped and killed by Alcala after he lured her from the beach by promising to take her picture.
That conviction was overturned in 1986 on grounds that the jury had been improperly informed of previous sex crimes committed by Alcala. That year he was retried and again convicted in Orange County, but that conviction also was overturned, this time because a witness wasn’t allowed to substantiate Alcala’s contention that a park ranger who found Samsoe’s body had been hypnotized by investigators.
Over the decades, investigators linked Alcala to other homicides in Los Angeles, San Francisco, upstate New York, New Hampshire and Seattle.
In 2010, Alcala was convicted of sexually assaulting and killing Samsoe as well as Jill Barcomb, 18, of Los Angeles; Georgia Wixted, 27, of Malibu; Charlotte Lamb, 31, of El Segundo; and Jill Parenteau, 21, of Burbank.
In the years since the photos were released, Ellis said he and other detectives have taken hundreds of calls and emails from people looking for missing loved ones. The process has helped identify about 40 women in photos who are still alive and well, Ellis estimates.
Thornton is the first alleged slaying victim linked to those photos, but Ellis believes there are others.
“There are thousands out there that are unidentified,” he said. “Now, there’s one less.”