Case Profile: Rodney Alcala

If there were ever a killer able to hide in plain sight, it was Rodney Alcala. This man preyed on women, raping and killing many, while slipping through the cracks of the justice system and eluding authorities for several years. He was also the kind of guy your mother warned you about: the stranger who offers young girls rides, the wandering man with a camera telling women they'd make wonderful models for his photography, and even the bachelor with a dirty mind on The Dating Game. That's right — at the very same time that authorities were investigating his rapes and murders, he appeared as a contestant on the bawdy '70s game show, trying to snare his next victim in front of a TV audience.

Watch Video: Inside Rodney Alcala's Mind
Watch Video: Rodney Alcala's Shocking Release

Rodney Alcala was born in 1943 in Texas and later moved with his family to California. Although he joined the Army at 17 years old, he was discharged by the time he was 21 after having a nervous breakdown. Despite this breakdown and the diagnosis of an antisocial personality (a condition characterized by disregarding and violating the rights of others), he was able to successfully earn his college degree from UCLA. He even impressed his professors, who later described him as absolutely harmless.

But in 1968, he committed his first known crime. Alcala solicited an 8-year-old girl on her way to school and convinced her to climb into his car. He then drove her to his apartment where he raped her and hit her in the head with a metal bar. Luckily, a witness who saw Alcala suspiciously solicit the girl followed them after he picked her up and called the police when they arrived at his apartment. When the Los Angeles police officer knocked on the door, Alcala stalled and the officer soon burst in. He found the girl, known as "Tali S.," lying on the floor in a large pool of blood. Alcala escaped through the back door, but authorities saved the little girl, who was barely holding on to life.

With authorities looking for him, Alcala fled to New York City and took on the alias "John Berger." During his time there, he even took classes at NYU. Interestingly, Alcala's instructor for one film class there was Roman Polanski — the film director later linked with the rape of a minor and whose charges are still pending in the United States.

Although Alcala wasn't caught for the rape and assault of Tali S. until 1971, evidence later showed that he was likely responsible for at least one other death while living in New York at that time. Cornelia "Michael" Crilley was a flight attendant who was raped and killed in June of 1971. Authorities were busy suspecting Crilley's boyfriend, who was a Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney, but saliva found at the scene later implicated Alcala.

Alcala, still calling himself "John Berger," left New York for New Hampshire soon after that, taking a job — with perhaps horrifying intentions — as a camp counselor. Luckily, however, Alcala's 1968 rape of Tali S. had won him a spot on the FBI Most Wanted List, and a poster with his picture was up at a post office near the camp. Two girls at the camp happened to notice it one day and recognized their camp counselor in the picture. By August of 1971, Alcala was finally arrested — but this wouldn't mean the end of his rapes and killings.