'Dating Game Killer' dies aged 77
The convicted serial killer Rodney Alcala, who was on California’s death row, died of natural causes
Rodney Alcala, who was known as the "Dating Game Killer" and was convicted in the murders of six women and one girl in the 1970s, died on Saturday at a hospital in Kings County, Calif. He was 77.
Alcala, who was on California's death row, died of natural causes, reports the New York Times citing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
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A longhaired photographer who lured women by offering to take their pictures, Alcala was convicted of killing a 12-year-old girl and four women in Orange County, California, and two women in New York, all between 1971 and 1979, the authorities said. Investigators had also suspected him of, or had linked him to, other murders in Los Angeles, Seattle, Arizona, New Hampshire and Marin County, California, the department said.
In 2016, prosecutors in Wyoming charged Alcala with the murder of Christine Ruth Thornton, 28, who disappeared in 1978 and whose body was found in 1982, the department said.
She had been six months pregnant. Prosecutors ultimately decided that Mr. Alcala was too ill to be extradited to Wyoming to face the charge.
Many of Alcala's victims were sexually assaulted and strangled or beaten to death.
