The Dating Game Killer The True Story of a TV Dating Show, a Violent Sociopath, and a Series of Brutal Murders

by Sands, Stella

• ISBN13: 9780312535896
• ISBN10: 0312535899
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-10-04
• Publisher: St. Martin's True Crime

Summary

In 1978, Rodney Alcala was a contestant on the "The Dating Game," one of America's most popular television shows at the time. Handsome, successful, and romantic, he was embraced by the audienceand chosen as the winner by the beautiful bachelorette. To viewers across the country, Rodney seemed like the answer to every woman's dreams. Until they learned the truth about his once and future crimes... Ten years before his TV appearance, Rodney was charged with the sexual assault and attempted murder of an eight-year-old girl. In the decades that followed, he would be accused of seven murdersand, as new DNA evidence continues to be uncovered, the list may grow. The case is so disturbing that it's been documented in several news outlets, from Peoplemagazine and USA Todayto 48 Hours Mysteryand Dr. Phil. This is the shocking true story about the dark and twisted man

Author Biography

Stella Sands is Executive Editor of Kids Discover, an award-winning magazine with over 400,000 subscribers geared to children 7 to 12 years old. She is author of four crime books, The Good Son, Murder at Yale, Behind the Mask—all available from St. Martin’s Press True Crime Library—and Baby-faced Butchers, as well as other works including Odyssea and Natural Disasters. Her plays, Lou Passin’ Through, Black-eyed Peas, and E-me, have been produced in Off-Off Broadway theaters in New York City.

Table of Contents

The Dating Game Killer

PART I

Chapter One

Nineteen sixty-eight was one hell of a year.

Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Nearly seventeen thousand U.S. armed forces died fighting in the Vietnam War.

In the face of such real-life violence, dark currents began to flow through American culture. The horror movie Rosemary's Baby, directed by Roman Polanski, was a surprise success in Hollywood--both with critics and at the box office. It was about a group of Satanists who trick a young newlywed into carrying and giving birth to the devil's spawn. (In a disturbing real-life twist the following year, the sociopathic cult leader Charles Manson ordered the brutal slaying of Polanski's pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, and four others in the Los Angeles hills. Charles "Tex" Watson, who was the Manson Family disciple in charge of committing the murders, told one of the victims, "I'm the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's business.")

As images of carpet bombings and body bags from Vietnam dominated the airwaves, young Americans increasingly began to challenge authority and "the Man." As cars cruised up and down Hollywood Boulevard and the Sunset Strip, radios blared edgier, angrier rock and roll: "Masters of War" by Bob Dylan, "What's Going On?" by Marvin Gaye,"Eve of Destruction," by Barry McGuire. Musicians from bands like the Doors, the Byrds, Cream, and the Animals played the Whiskey-a-Go-Go on the Sunset Strip--and partied with abandon at the Chateau Marmont Hotel up the street. Los Angeles became a mecca for the most hedonistic aspects of this emerging counterculture: psychedelic drug use, sexual freedom and experimentation, smoking grass.

Amidst all this turmoil and social upheaval in 1968, an event occurred that is not well documented by the era's historians: "Tali S.," age eight, was abducted on her way to school.

Copyright © 2011 by Stella Sands.

Excerpts

The Dating Game Killer

PART I

Chapter One

Nineteen sixty-eight was one hell of a year.

Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Nearly seventeen thousand U.S. armed forces died fighting in the Vietnam War.

In the face of such real-life violence, dark currents began to flow through American culture. The horror movieRosemary's Baby, directed by Roman Polanski, was a surprise success in Hollywood--both with critics and at the box office. It was about a group of Satanists who trick a young newlywed into carrying and giving birth to the devil's spawn. (In a disturbing real-life twist the following year, the sociopathic cult leader Charles Manson ordered the brutal slaying of Polanski's pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, and four others in the Los Angeles hills. Charles "Tex" Watson, who was the Manson Family disciple in charge of committing the murders, told one of the victims, "I'm the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's business.")

As images of carpet bombings and body bags from Vietnam dominated the airwaves, young Americans increasingly began to challenge authority and "the Man." As cars cruised up and down Hollywood Boulevard and the Sunset Strip, radios blared edgier, angrier rock and roll: "Masters of War" by Bob Dylan, "What's Going On?" by Marvin Gaye,"Eve of Destruction," by Barry McGuire. Musicians from bands like the Doors, the Byrds, Cream, and the Animals played the Whiskey-a-Go-Go on the Sunset Strip--and partied with abandon at the Chateau Marmont Hotel up the street. Los Angeles became a mecca for the most hedonistic aspects of this emerging counterculture: psychedelic drug use, sexual freedom and experimentation, smoking grass.

Amidst all this turmoil and social upheaval in 1968, an event occurred that is not well documented by the era's historians: "Tali S.," age eight, was abducted on her way to school.

Copyright © 2011 by Stella Sands.