A California man who twice has had death sentences overturned for the 1979 murder of a 12-year-old girl has been indicted for strangling four Los Angeles area women in a serial killing spree, prosecutors said Monday.
Rodney James Alcala, who won new trials after both of his death sentences for the slaying of Robin Samsoe, was linked to four other unsolved murders from the 1970s through DNA and blood evidence, prosecutors said.
“Clearly the only punishment appropriate for Mr. Alcala is the death penalty, and we will pursue it again,” Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said at a joint press conference with Los Angeles prosecutors.
The indictment charges Alcala, a freelance photographer, with killing Jill Barcomb, 18, and Georgia Wixted, 27, in 1977, Charlotte Lamb, 32, in 1978 and Jill Parenteau, 21, in 1979. All four were beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled.
Joint prosecution planned
Prosecutors from both Los Angeles and Orange counties will work on the case and will try Alcala, 62, for all five murders together. He was in jail awaiting a retrial for Samsoe’s murder when the indictments came down.
Alcala, who has prior convictions for assault and served two years in prison for the 1968 kidnapping and rape of an 8-year-old girl, was in court briefly Monday for an arraignment but that hearing was postponed until Oct. 6.
Authorities believe Alcala used his above-average intelligence and charm in approaching girls to take their pictures. He once appeared on television’s “The Dating Game.”
Samsoe, an aspiring gymnast from Huntington Beach, Calif., vanished on June 20, 1979, while on her way to a ballet lesson. Her skeletal remains were found in a national forest some two weeks later.
Alcala, who was seen with a girl matching Samsoe’s description near the spot where her body was found, was convicted of her murder in 1980 and sentenced to die. The California Supreme Court later overturned the guilty verdict, saying jurors should not have been told about his prior convictions.
Although the forestry worker who saw Alcala near the scene of the crime developed amnesia and could not testify again, he was convicted a second time of murdering Samsoe. A federal judge overturned that conviction, citing concerns about his defense.