Rodney Alcala's Real Name: Rodney James Alcala

Quick answer: The convicted serial killer often called the Dating Game Killer was Rodney James Alcala. The Associated Press and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation both use that form. Neither of those accounts gives a birth date. He died on July 24, 2021, at age 77 (AP; CDCR).

Real name and early life

He was known publicly as Rodney Alcala and, CDCR notes, as the Dating Game Killer because he appeared as a contestant on the television show The Dating Game in 1978. The AP and CDCR identify him as Rodney James Alcala and as an Orange County, California, defendant later held on the state's death row. A fuller form sometimes seen in online databases is not used in these official and wire accounts, and is not repeated here.

Career highlights

Alcala's public record is a criminal case, not a conventional career.

Legal outcome

CDCR records that he was sentenced to death in Orange County in 1980 for the 1979 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe; that judgment was reversed in 1984 by the California Supreme Court. In 1986 he was sentenced to death a second time in the same case; a federal appeals court overturned that sentence in 2003. In 2010, CDCR says, an Orange County jury convicted him of five counts of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to death for the Samsoe killing and for four other California murders in the late 1970s. AP independently reports a 2010 death sentence for five California slayings between 1977 and 1979, including that of a 12-year-old Huntington Beach girl, and notes that he had twice been convicted in the 1979 case.

CDCR says he was extradited to New York in 2012, pleaded guilty, and in 2013 was sentenced there to 25 years to life for two murders. AP likewise records an additional sentence of 25 years to life after a guilty plea in two New York murders from the 1970s.

Death

CDCR says he died of natural causes at 1:43 a.m. on July 24, 2021, at a hospital in Kings County, at age 77, while on California's death row. AP reports the same date, age, and natural-cause finding, and places the hospital in California's San Joaquin Valley, which is consistent with Kings County.

Name notes for searchers

Rodney James Alcala is the documented name in AP and CDCR accounts. The Dating Game Killer is a later moniker tied to a 1978 television appearance. Searchers looking for the 2010 California convictions or the 2021 death-row death are usually aiming at the same person.