Dating Death (2022): Season 1, Episode 1 - Dating Death 1 - full transcript
Huntington
Beach, in those days,
was a small enclave
consisting of maybe the
two square miles downtown.
Old town Huntington Beach.
You
didn't have to worry
about all the things
that you have to worry about
nowadays for your kids.
Back then, we all looked
out for each other.
But, you know,
it was never really a concern
until this happened with Robin.
In
Huntington Beach today,
a memorial for a girl
kidnapped and murdered
by a serial killer 35 years ago.
It was
a 12-year-old girl
that was kidnapped off the beach
of the city that I
was sworn to protect.
It's just unbelievable
that a girl that age
would just vanish into thin air
and then be found later,
discarded like trash.
Who did this?
Who could do this
to a little girl?
The sketch artist
composed a sketch
of the suspect,
a male with long curly hair.
A parole officer out
of Los Angeles County
was reading the newspaper
and saw the sketch in the paper
and thought it looked
like one of his clients,
Rodney Alcala.
And that unlocks
the incredible murder spree
that had taken place
over the previous decade.
He would approach
these young women and girls,
and essentially say, "I'm a
professional photographer.
I would love for you
to model for me."
- Now, the spider just
pulls you into the web
and you're never
gonna get out of it.
He looked
for every opportunity
to take the life
of these people.
Each one
of these photographs
represents a possible victim.
How many more are out there?
All these murders,
all across the country,
and never get caught.
He's
out there hunting.
He tortured,
literally tortured his victims.
It's harrowing
to think what he
did to those women,
who really were in the
prime of their lives.
We have no way
of knowing how many people
he really killed.
He was
hiding in plain sight.
- The devil in disguise.
- We're dealing with
a sadistic maniac.
Please
welcome Rodney Alcala.
Rod, welcome.
LA was the
center of youthful culture
in the late '60s.
It was a gathering place
for a counterculture.
The Golden State,
where all the girls wore bikinis
and were gorgeous blondes,
and all the guys drove woodies
and carried surfboards
in the back of them.
This is
where people came,
packing their bikinis
and their dreams
at the same time,
because this was a
city of reinvention.
Everything about California
has been a place to come
to change yourself, to
change your identity,
to change your way of being.
This is kind
of the free love era,
where some of the more
stodgy social norms
of the '50s began giving way
to the free love of the
late '60s and early '70s.
Los Angeles,
at the time, specifically,
centered around Hollywood
and Sunset Boulevard,
was an amazingly
creative place and time.
The Whisky a Go
Go, the Hullabaloo Club,
the Hollywood Palladium.
It was a place that
you went to be seen
and to see what was going on,
because this is where
all the cool people went.
- To be really quite
frank, it was fun.
- But don't forget,
one of the primary motivations
of the hippie movement
was free love.
And with free love,
you can kind of talk your way
into almost anybody's pants.
And the bad souls took
advantage of that.
- Oh, there's Gardner Street.
I would go up that street.
That was where my school was,
right there on the corner.
I don't remember too much
of that morning in 1968.
We were living in
the Chateau Marmont
because there was a
fire at our house.
And while they
were repairing it,
we lived at one of the
bungalows at Chateau Marmont.
I would walk to school
down to Gardner Street
because I didn't like
taking the public bus.
I'd mentioned it to my parents.
Nothing was being done about it.
So I took matters
in my own hands.
My way of doing it
was I just got up early
and walked to school.
I vaguely remember being
stopped and talked to.
I said something corny like,
"Oh, I'm not supposed
to talk to strangers."
And he told me that
he knew my parents,
and that would've
made sense, but...
I do remember feeling
hesitant getting in the car.
And then he asked me what
time my school started.
And of course, I was way early.
He mentioned he wanted to take,
to show me a poster
at his house,
and I remember feeling
extremely uncomfortable,
but I wasn't gonna open
the door and jump out.
I received
a call to see a man
about a possible kidnapping.
I met this gentleman
called Donald Hines.
And he explained to me
that he was driving
down Sunset Boulevard
on his way to work.
And he saw this beige car
following this young girl,
and he didn't see any
license plates on the car.
The car stopped.
He said he saw the
driver get out,
go around to the passenger side,
and open the back door
and put the little
girl in the back seat.
It just didn't
seem right to him.
- And he followed the car
with Rodney Alcala in
it and Tali Shapiro.
He followed it
just a little bit
further into Hollywood,
where Alcala had an apartment.
And he watched Rodney
take the little girl
Tali into his apartment.
He just,
he just had a bad feeling.
Just had a really bad feeling.
- I don't remember
going into the house.
I vaguely remember
looking at the poster
and that's all I remember.
This is De Longpre,
where Donald Hines followed
Rodney Alcala's car.
This was the house at that time.
When I arrived at this location,
I walked around
to what would've been a
parking driveway here.
What immediately
rose my suspicion
was the no license plates.
I cannot emphasize that enough.
I had asked for backup.
Two other officers showed up.
So I asked one to cover
the side of the house
and one to go to the back,
and I went to the front door.
When I started
knocking on the door
and I said, "It's a
police officer. Open up.
I need to talk to you."
After a certain amount of time,
that's when he came
to the front door,
pushed the drape aside.
And I looked at him eye to eye,
and I said, you
know, "Open the door.
I need to speak with you."
His response was,
"I just got out of the shower.
Gimme a minute to
put some clothes on."
I said, "No. Open the door."
He's nude.
No towel.
His hair's not wet.
There's nothing
you would associate
with somebody getting
out of a shower.
So I put my ear to the door
and I heard what I
thought was moaning.
I said, "You need to
open this right now
or I'm gonna kick the door in."
So I gave it 15, 20 seconds
and I kicked the door in.
As soon as I entered
the residence,
there was poor Tali,
laying on the floor
with a pool of
blood all about her.
I can still see Tali.
I can just
still see that little
girl laying on the floor.
She was completely naked.
She was naked from head to toe.
Clothes strewn all
over the floor,
her shoes, her dress.
Heavy metal bar across her neck,
a gash on the side of her head,
just blood all over.
Blood...
And there was more blood
than you could ever think
would be in an eight-year-old.
- He, at that time,
had to make a decision
to chase after the suspect
or help the little girl.
- I couldn't leave her there
with that bar on her neck.
I got a towel and I took it off.
- He made the right choice.
He tried to help Tali,
and that's what saved her life.
And as he did that,
Rodney Alcala went
out the back door
and just into the wind.
- How he got away from us is...
But I'll live with that.
After Tali was
transported to the hospital,
where she was in a
coma for over 30 days,
they looked to see,
they wanted to ID this guy.
His wallet was there.
He was a student of
photography at UCLA.
They got his name,
Rodney Alcala.
They found a treasure
trove of photographs
of little boys, girls, women,
that he was a student
of photography.
I knew that he
was a danger to society.
So it was paramount in our mind
that we apprehend him.
- But what they didn't know
was that he left the state,
went to the East Coast
and changed his name.
- He became John Berger.
- It's still amazing
to think, for us, now,
that someone could
easily disappear,
could move across the country,
could change your name
and take up a new life.
Anybody
could go anywhere
and say you're anybody.
And even if you did have an ID,
nobody ever asked for it.
So he could go
anywhere he wanted.
What a great
place for a predator to live.
Look, 7 million people,
and there was three women
for every guy at that time.
It was a
dirty place, really.
You know, the trash pickups
weren't as regular
as they are now.
It wasn't sort of the
Disney feel that you have
around Manhattan now
in a lot of places.
It's so commercial.
The '70s
were a much looser,
less organized time
in New York City,
and also attracted some
folks on the periphery
who were
bad people.
When Alcala
arrived in New York,
newly minted as John Berger,
he would roam the
streets of New York
with his camera, his
35 millimeter camera,
taking pictures of
young ladies and boys.
- Nowadays, we take
it so for granted
that everyone has a
camera in his pocket,
that all you need to do
is pull out your cell phone
and take a photograph.
But think of, in the 1970s,
photographic equipment,
really high quality
equipment, was expensive.
You didn't see a
lot of it around.
Someone shows up with
expensive-looking cameras
around his neck,
good-looking,
professional-looking, and says,
"I'm a photographer.
I'd like to take your picture."
A lot of people would
still fall for that.
- I mean, what better way
to sort of make people trust you
than have this camera
around your neck?
"Oh, he's just a guy
out taking pictures."
It's a way to approach people.
He went to
New York film school.
Actually studied under famed
film director Roman Polanski.
- "Roman Polanski?"
People clamor to get
into his classes.
- We found some reference
letters from professors
who thought he was amazing,
charming, hardworking.
One of their best students.
Couldn't praise him enough.
He must have thought
that he had just
fooled everybody
and that everything
that he touched,
he could just go and
flimflam the world.
And you know what?
You know what? He was right.
- In the summer of 1971,
there was a beautiful young
woman named Cornelia Crilley,
who was a flight
attendant for TWA.
She was going
from city to city,
and she was having
a wonderful time.
She was gorgeous.
Had long, brown, beautiful hair,
Irish eyes that
knock your socks off.
Very, very funny
and very playful
and nice.
My friends all loved her.
We had been going out for years
and we were together.
She had just
moved into this apartment
and she was supposed to actually
have been flying that day.
But there was a malfunction
on one of the planes.
So they called her and
said, "No, don't come in."
That's the reason she was home.
She was a young woman with
everything to live for.
One day, I'm
at the DA's office.
I get a call from her mother,
trying to find out where she is.
And that day, as far as I knew,
she was doing something
with the new apartment,
but she wasn't staying there
'cause they didn't
have furniture.
So I said, "I don't
know where she is."
We didn't have cell
phones at the time.
So I said, "When I get
home, I'll check it out."
So I got home.
My door was not
locked. I went inside.
I figured she might
have been inside.
She was not.
I changed my clothes
and I went over,
I walked over to her new place,
and I couldn't get in.
I went downstairs, tried
to get in the back door,
but she was up on
the second floor
and I couldn't get up
to the second floor
from the garden in the back.
So then I called the police.
They came over,
they came into the
back, climbed up,
broke the window, and
went in and found her.
She had been
sexually assaulted.
She had blunt force
trauma to the head.
She had been strangled
with a ligature,
which was her pantyhose.
- She had been, looked
like tortured, almost,
as well as raped,
and then murdered.
- The autopsy suggested
that she died a slow death,
that she was strangled,
almost killed,
allowed to come back,
and then strangled again
and then allowed to revive
and then strangled
and killed again.
So that he was
toying with her life,
watching her die repeatedly,
in a very cruel way.
Almost all
the physical damage
was done before she was dead.
So he literally tortured her
and then he killed her
and he posed her.
- Sometimes criminals,
especially the
real sadistic ones,
to shock the normal person
like you or I or the police,
they will victimize a victim
even after they've died,
by facing their body
towards the door
so that the first
person that walks in,
the only thing they're
gonna see is that,
and putting their
body in such a way,
like in a sexual assault,
opening a woman's
legs, you know,
putting her feet behind
her and her body bent over.
So that basically all you see
is her genitals and her
in such a contorted way
that is not normal,
that basically she
didn't die that way.
You put her that way.
- I refused to go inside.
They asked me to go in
and identify the body,
and I refused.
I didn't wanna see it,
'cause if I see it,
I can't forget it.
- Initially, the
police really believed
the boyfriend was involved,
and they really
were focused on him.
They did canvas
the neighborhood.
They did talk to the landlord,
talked to a lot
of the neighbors,
the people that she knew,
the family.
They went through all
the motions correctly,
but their focus was
definitely the boyfriend.
- I went through, I don't know,
3, 4, 5 interviews
and fingerprints
and bite prints
'cause apparently,
she had a bite on
her left breast,
I think it was.
And it affected
me my whole life,
to be honest with you,
even up to now.
Back in the
early '70s, remember,
we are really in the
infancy of forensic science.
So once they eliminated
the boyfriend as a suspect,
at that point,
there isn't much for
the detectives to do
other than wait and hope
somebody calls with a tip
or, I mean, tragically,
there might be another
murder similar enough
that they can make a match
or an identification of
who the killer may be.
That would've sent shockwaves
through the community
that she lived in,
because you've got a
killer on the loose
who went in and murdered
this beautiful young woman,
and nobody knew who it was.
- I didn't think the cops would
ever find anybody who did it
to tell you the truth.
And I know they were trying.
Cops are good in New York.
Nobody really
focused on Rodney Alcala
at that time.
Nobody really knew he was there.
However, because
of the horrendous crime
that he was accused of,
and a fugitive from
in Los Angeles,
the brutal assault, kidnapping,
rape of Tali Shapiro,
he landed on the FBI's
10 Most Wanted list,
as Rodney Alcala.
As a patrol officer,
you can only do so much.
I would check in
periodically to see
how the investigation was going
and if they'd had any luck
capturing this person.
I went to that
residence several times
to just check,
and I ran into his mother
and his sister on one occasion.
And, of course,
they were in denial
as to what their son
was suspected of doing.
When I finally found out
that he had been apprehended,
of all places, he was
in a summer girls camp
at New Hampshire,
working as a counselor.
Living as
John Berger in New York,
because, of course,
Rodney Alcala was one
of the 10 Most Wanted
on the FBI list.
He got a job as, of all things,
a camp counselor
in New Hampshire.
He was at a
teenager club for kids.
- He's there for
a couple of years
in the summer,
as a camp counselor.
- We think that
bringing camp counselors
into the midst of children,
like inviting the fox
into the henhouse.
We were all just there
for his pickings.
And he went to the camp,
where there were girls
that he then preyed upon.
- Two of the girls at the
camp had to mail letters.
They wanted to
mail letters home.
So they went to the post office,
and back in those days
in the post office,
they used to always have
the Most Wanted pictures up
of criminals, FBI Most Wanted.
So they mailed the letters,
and there was a real
downpour of rain that came.
So they decided they would
wait out in the post office
until the showers stopped.
- They saw this one,
this one guy, this one poster.
And they, "Whoa, that looks
just like Mr. Berger!"
And they were confused,
'cause his name on the
poster was Rodney Alcala.
He was wanted by the FBI.
So the girls went back
and talked to a
different counselor,
one of the head
people at the camp,
and said, "We're not 100% sure,
but we saw this FBI
poster at the post office,
and it looks like Mr. Berger."
And he said, "Okay. Don't
say anything to anyone.
I'm gonna contact
the authorities,"
which is what he did.
- The next day,
the FBI showed up
and they took
fingerprints and confirmed
it was Rodney Alcala.
The detective at the
time was from LA Police,
and he was the one
sent to pick up Alcala
and extradite him
back to California.
During that trip,
he made quite a few
inquiries into Alcala,
like, "Why did you do this?"
And Alcala would respond,
"Well, that's Rodney Alcala.
I don't wanna talk about him."
He almost seemed
totally disassociated.
It was almost like it
was a different person.
It was really, I think,
the first real point
of understanding
that he sort of had a couple
of personalities going on
and there was a
separation between them.
- Prosecutors in Los
Angeles had a problem.
They wanted to throw the
book at Rodney Alcala.
He was a very dangerous person.
They knew it. They
could tell it.
But the problem was they
didn't have a witness.
They didn't have Tali Shapiro
because her parents had
moved out of Los Angeles
and into Mexico,
and they didn't want their
young traumatized child
brought back to Los
Angeles to testify in court
in this sensational case.
It would be too traumatic.
You had a young
girl, in her formative years,
who now is sexually
assaulted and almost killed.
I can just imagine what
is going on in her head.
So for her to leave the
country at that time
is totally understandable.
I mean, I would've
done the same thing.
I think any parent would.
The number one feature
is to protect your family
or your child.
Of course.
- Oz Janiger was a
psychiatrist in LA at the time,
good friends with my parents,
and he had told them to not
bring it up unless I did.
And I did bring it up
to my mother one morning
at the Chateau Marmont
in the kitchen.
She changed the
subject and said,
"I think there's a box of
chocolates in the refrigerator."
So that was kind of a
typical thing to say.
My family never spoke about it.
I remember years
later, with my brother,
and something came up
and I said, "How come no
one ever talked about it?"
And he said, "Well, no one knew
how you were gonna turn out."
It's something horrible
that happened to me.
But it's,
I've never allowed it
to be a part of me.
I try to be
a strong,
conscientious,
you know, try to be helpful
to those around me.
I don't trust very easily.
I don't...
Unfortunately,
I don't do well
with partnerships very well.
Never married, and that's okay.
I met,
early on, there was,
I had some good boyfriends,
but later on, after
my dad passed away,
it just wasn't...
I was just too independent,
and I was okay with that.
Since Tali
Shapiro's parents
ended up taking her to Mexico,
it's difficult for prosecutors.
You're caught in a position
where you understand
why a family wants to
protect their child
from the justice process.
But you also know
that you can't hold the
offender accountable
without the cooperation
of the witnesses.
- So the police were
literally hand tied,
unable to really
prosecute this case
the way they wanted to.
- I was very upset.
I believe that there
was a strong enough case
with myself, with Don Hines,
with the other officers,
that a case could've
been brought against him
very easily,
and he would've
been found guilty.
But they gave him a plea deal.
- A lesser charge,
child molestation,
which meant a lesser sentence.
In fact,
a sentence of between
one year and life.
It was an undetermined sentence,
that allowed the
Board of Parole to,
every year, assess the
inmate and ask the question,
"Has he been rehabilitated?"
And if so, they could
then let him go.
While Rodney Alcala
was in prison,
he was undergoing therapy
as a child molester,
convicted child molester.
He was being counseled
and given therapy to
rehabilitate himself.
So after less than three years,
the parole board decided
he had been rehabilitated,
that the counseling,
the therapy, had worked,
he can be free.
So after just 34 months
locked up for this
horrible crime,
he was allowed to go free.
- I have no problem
criticizing that decision
or the people that made it.
It's outrageous to me
that even back then,
that you would release somebody
of such a predatory nature,
somebody that kidnaps
an eight-year-old girl,
rapes her,
which means there's a
sexual component to that,
and attempts to kill her,
only prevented so by
the heroic actions
of Officer Camacho.
That's a man who is
going to be a danger
as long as he draws breath.
Like a lot of serial killers,
he is charming.
He's manipulative.
He has no empathy.
And he's freakishly intelligent,
which means for a guy
like Rodney Alcala,
it's not tough to figure out,
"What do they want
to hear from me?"
And to go in and, and say,
"Yeah, I've worked on my issues.
I've explored my,
you know, my inner demons,"
or whatever jargon of the day
would work as buzzwords.
Whoever signed off on Rodney
Alcala being released,
that decision resulted in
dozens of people being murdered.
- But they didn't really know
about all of his medical issues
in the military.
Early 1960s, back
when there was still a draft,
he joined the Army,
and there were some prophetic
writings about Rodney Alcala.
His commanding officer wrote
that he was highly manipulative.
He wouldn't take responsibility.
- He went AWOL a couple of times
and he would go
and he would spend time
drinking, stealing.
He attacked a few girls.
He exposed him himself
to other girls.
He did quite a few
smaller crimes,
not like what he
got known for later.
And all of a sudden, he showed
up at his mother's house.
She was cooking
dinner at the time.
And she was shocked,
almost like, "Wow,
what happened here?"
And she couldn't figure out
what he had done or
why he had done it.
And he just decided to go AWOL,
just leave and come home.
And after a couple of days,
she got him, or convinced him,
to go back in and
surrender himself,
'cause she didn't want
him being arrested.
And so he went into the
military and surrendered.
- The Army sent him to one
of their psychiatrists,
who correctly diagnosed him
with antisocial
personality disorder,
chronic and severe.
Not just a little bit,
but chronic and severe.
- But their answer to that,
the solution, was just
to get rid of him,
get him out of the Army.
But he was given an
honorable discharge.
An honorable discharge
after being accused
of a sexual assault,
after being AWOL, and
all this other behavior.
He was given an honorable
discharge from the military.
That meant he could still
use his GI Bill benefits
to go to college,
and he could go and get a job,
showing his honorable discharge.
No stigma related to
all of that activity
from when he was a young
private in the army.
He
had a great charm.
People really, really liked him
when he would meet them.
So he had no problem
getting jobs,
meeting people and
having them accept him.
So here's this
guy in the late '60s,
a handsome young man.
And he had a house in Hollywood
with, you know, this
breadth of experience,
and he began murdering people.
- As quick as that
happened for Tali Shapiro,
I have no doubt that
he'd done that before.
That is not a common action.
It's just the first
time he got caught
doing what he did.
- I was in my senior year, and
a couple weeks into school,
I got a letter,
and when I opened it,
a newspaper clipping fell out.
The newspaper clipping said
that he had raped
and tried to murder an
eight-year-old girl.
I just fell to my knees.
That felt like it was my fault
that I hadn't stopped him.
I was 13 or 14.
There was a teenage
nightclub in Hollywood.
It was an all age club.
People of all ages went there,
but they called it teenage
because you couldn't
get alcohol there.
We would go over there
to watch the bands
unload and come in,
because they got
The Doors, The Byrds, you know,
top name entertainment there.
And my friend and
I walked over there
and Rod was standing
in the parking lot
talking to someone else.
He was constantly picking
up young girls, you know,
13-, 14-, 15-year-old girls,
taking 'em back to his house,
taking their pictures,
having little make out
sessions with them.
He was attractive,
laughed easily.
He was obviously
flirting with us.
He would look over and wink
and, you know, smile,
and eventually, kind
of waved his hand,
called us over.
I wanted his attention.
So I reached over
and I lightly scratched
his arm with my nails
and he put his arm around me
and he pulled me close,
and I thought that
was pretty cool.
So I did it again,
and he wasn't quite as
happy the next time.
He grabbed my arm
and pulled me to the
back of the club.
My feet barely
touched the ground.
He just, you know,
I only weighed 80 pounds.
When we got to the
back of the club,
I'm not sure what he did.
If I had to guess,
I think he slammed my
head against the wall.
He knocked me out.
He put me behind a dumpster
and pushed it up against me.
So when I woke up,
I had this strong
pain in my chest
and pushed this
dumpster off of me.
I didn't want my parents to know
because they wouldn't
let me go back there.
When I was 16,
a few years later,
used to go up to Sunset Strip
and there would just
be hundreds of people
dancing, singing,
hanging out in
front of the clubs,
talking to each other.
Someone came up
and said, "Come on.
We're all going down to IHOP
to get a strawberry waffle."
You know, it was a
big thing at the time.
We jumped into a car,
the guy that invited us
got in the passenger seat.
I was in the back
between my two friends.
We were just
laughing and talking,
and Rod got in the driver's seat
and drove away quickly.
And I said, "I don't
wanna go. Let me out.
Please let me out."
And he just ignored me.
He didn't say no. He
didn't say anything.
He just ignored me.
He turned off of Sunset
and drove a couple blocks
and stopped in front of a house,
his house.
And he said, "Come on
in, guys. I've got pot."
And my friends thought
that was great.
They jumped outta the
car, ran in the house.
I didn't wanna go in.
And I didn't know what to do,
because now I didn't
really know where I was
and it was dark
and Hollywood's not
the safest place.
And I was like, "Do I walk away?
Will he follow me?
What do I do? Where do I go?"
We didn't have cell phones.
I didn't have anything.
And he was kind of
hiding around a corner
and he just grabbed me.
And he just threw me head
first into this room,
into his bedroom.
I staggered to my feet
and turned around,
and he was holding
this metal bar,
about five foot long,
heavy metal bar.
And he dropped it
into some brackets
on the back of his door so
you couldn't open the door.
And then I got really scared.
Soon as he dropped that bar,
he came across that
room so quickly,
and I was up against a wall.
He took a,
actually took a second
to brace himself,
and then just punched
me in the face.
He took his belt
and he pushed it into my throat.
He pushed it in my mouth
and kept pushing it until
it was deep in my throat
and I couldn't get a breath.
I just kept fighting
because I couldn't breathe.
So he just lifted me by my hair
and punched me in the
stomach as hard as he could,
quite a few times.
And I could feel
my ribs breaking.
He cut the rest of
my clothes off of me
and he raped me, of course.
And he just,
he looked like an animal.
I mean, he just looked
like a raging animal.
Then he put his
hands around my neck
and everything
kind of went black.
I felt like I was
falling down a dark well.
I heard glass breaking
and I felt a little cool air
and it woke me up.
You know, I just kind of
came back to the light,
and my friends had broken
the window in his room.
He got off me then,
pulled the belt outta my mouth.
And I choked,
tried to get a little air.
And he took the bar off the door
and my friends ran in
and his friends ran in
and he just stood there,
naked from the waist down,
with my blood all
over his shirt.
And he just said, "Take
her. Just take her."
Like he owned me,
"Just take her."
When I went home,
I told my parents that
we'd been in a car
and somebody hit the
brakes really fast,
and I just kind of went
flying into the dashboard.
All they could really see
was the black eye
and the cut lip
and they didn't
know about the rest.
Suddenly Rod's face was there.
And I took such a deep breath,
I couldn't breathe out.
I had a panic attack.
At night, I was having
these horrible nightmares
of him swinging that
bar into her head,
'cause I knew.
I knew he had used that bar
that was on the back of his door
because of the way
he had held it.
I know he considered doing that,
but he didn't have room
to swing it in that room.
I had these horrible nightmares
with him swinging that
bar into her head.
- She asked for my forgiveness,
and I don't think she
could have done anything.
I mean, look how
many times he got off
of what he did to me,
after the case.
- If the penal code was
followed in those days,
he would've spent
150 years in prison,
'cause he had rape, kidnapping,
child molestation,
assault with a deadly weapon,
fleeing authorities.
It just goes on and on and on.
And for him to be able
to navigate the system
and talk his way out of prison,
he should have never
gotten out of prison
after that incident with Tali.
- His walking out of prison
made him feel more powerful,
that, "If this is
all I have to pay
when I get caught,
well, then, it's not very
much of a price, is it?"
- He's out there hunting.
And he's looking for his prey.
One of the
first things he did
was pick up a 13-year-old girl
and take her to a bluffs
over in Huntington Beach
and make her smoke
dope with him.
And he tried to kiss her.
He did kiss her.
And a park ranger came up
and the girl said,
"I'm not here."
You know, "I don't
wanna be here.
I don't want this man with me.
I don't wanna be here."
And they were both arrested
for the possession charge,
but then it became clear
that it was it was Rodney,
and the little
girl was innocent.
- But Rodney Alcala, of course,
was on parole for kidnapping
in the near murder Tali Shapiro.
So when he was
arrested and processed,
they violated his parole,
and he got two and a
half additional years
for, essentially, providing
marijuana to a minor.
However, he was released
in less than two
and a half years.
They should have kept him
forever, at that point.
And he was released again.
So once again, this
predatory monster
has been caught.
To anybody with,
that's on the ball,
they should have realized
that he's a danger.
He's not changed his ways.
This is a man who
kidnapped, raped,
and almost murdered an
eight-year-old girl,
with another minor
that he's providing
marijuana to.
And there's absolutely
no doubt in my mind,
had they not been caught
by that park ranger,
he would've raped and murdered
that young girl, as well.
- Once he's out,
he convinces his parole officer
that he wants to go back
to New York for family,
or he gives him some nonsense,
or a vacation,
whatever nonsense he
feeds the parole officer.
The officer says,
"Go ahead, go."
- Not expecting that
he wouldn't come back
or that he would disappear
and then go and
commit other crimes.
Rodney Alcala then became
John Berger again in New York.
It was over that
next ten-year period
that he did all
of these killings,
maybe murdered more
than a hundred people.
Beach, in those days,
was a small enclave
consisting of maybe the
two square miles downtown.
Old town Huntington Beach.
You
didn't have to worry
about all the things
that you have to worry about
nowadays for your kids.
Back then, we all looked
out for each other.
But, you know,
it was never really a concern
until this happened with Robin.
In
Huntington Beach today,
a memorial for a girl
kidnapped and murdered
by a serial killer 35 years ago.
It was
a 12-year-old girl
that was kidnapped off the beach
of the city that I
was sworn to protect.
It's just unbelievable
that a girl that age
would just vanish into thin air
and then be found later,
discarded like trash.
Who did this?
Who could do this
to a little girl?
The sketch artist
composed a sketch
of the suspect,
a male with long curly hair.
A parole officer out
of Los Angeles County
was reading the newspaper
and saw the sketch in the paper
and thought it looked
like one of his clients,
Rodney Alcala.
And that unlocks
the incredible murder spree
that had taken place
over the previous decade.
He would approach
these young women and girls,
and essentially say, "I'm a
professional photographer.
I would love for you
to model for me."
- Now, the spider just
pulls you into the web
and you're never
gonna get out of it.
He looked
for every opportunity
to take the life
of these people.
Each one
of these photographs
represents a possible victim.
How many more are out there?
All these murders,
all across the country,
and never get caught.
He's
out there hunting.
He tortured,
literally tortured his victims.
It's harrowing
to think what he
did to those women,
who really were in the
prime of their lives.
We have no way
of knowing how many people
he really killed.
He was
hiding in plain sight.
- The devil in disguise.
- We're dealing with
a sadistic maniac.
Please
welcome Rodney Alcala.
Rod, welcome.
LA was the
center of youthful culture
in the late '60s.
It was a gathering place
for a counterculture.
The Golden State,
where all the girls wore bikinis
and were gorgeous blondes,
and all the guys drove woodies
and carried surfboards
in the back of them.
This is
where people came,
packing their bikinis
and their dreams
at the same time,
because this was a
city of reinvention.
Everything about California
has been a place to come
to change yourself, to
change your identity,
to change your way of being.
This is kind
of the free love era,
where some of the more
stodgy social norms
of the '50s began giving way
to the free love of the
late '60s and early '70s.
Los Angeles,
at the time, specifically,
centered around Hollywood
and Sunset Boulevard,
was an amazingly
creative place and time.
The Whisky a Go
Go, the Hullabaloo Club,
the Hollywood Palladium.
It was a place that
you went to be seen
and to see what was going on,
because this is where
all the cool people went.
- To be really quite
frank, it was fun.
- But don't forget,
one of the primary motivations
of the hippie movement
was free love.
And with free love,
you can kind of talk your way
into almost anybody's pants.
And the bad souls took
advantage of that.
- Oh, there's Gardner Street.
I would go up that street.
That was where my school was,
right there on the corner.
I don't remember too much
of that morning in 1968.
We were living in
the Chateau Marmont
because there was a
fire at our house.
And while they
were repairing it,
we lived at one of the
bungalows at Chateau Marmont.
I would walk to school
down to Gardner Street
because I didn't like
taking the public bus.
I'd mentioned it to my parents.
Nothing was being done about it.
So I took matters
in my own hands.
My way of doing it
was I just got up early
and walked to school.
I vaguely remember being
stopped and talked to.
I said something corny like,
"Oh, I'm not supposed
to talk to strangers."
And he told me that
he knew my parents,
and that would've
made sense, but...
I do remember feeling
hesitant getting in the car.
And then he asked me what
time my school started.
And of course, I was way early.
He mentioned he wanted to take,
to show me a poster
at his house,
and I remember feeling
extremely uncomfortable,
but I wasn't gonna open
the door and jump out.
I received
a call to see a man
about a possible kidnapping.
I met this gentleman
called Donald Hines.
And he explained to me
that he was driving
down Sunset Boulevard
on his way to work.
And he saw this beige car
following this young girl,
and he didn't see any
license plates on the car.
The car stopped.
He said he saw the
driver get out,
go around to the passenger side,
and open the back door
and put the little
girl in the back seat.
It just didn't
seem right to him.
- And he followed the car
with Rodney Alcala in
it and Tali Shapiro.
He followed it
just a little bit
further into Hollywood,
where Alcala had an apartment.
And he watched Rodney
take the little girl
Tali into his apartment.
He just,
he just had a bad feeling.
Just had a really bad feeling.
- I don't remember
going into the house.
I vaguely remember
looking at the poster
and that's all I remember.
This is De Longpre,
where Donald Hines followed
Rodney Alcala's car.
This was the house at that time.
When I arrived at this location,
I walked around
to what would've been a
parking driveway here.
What immediately
rose my suspicion
was the no license plates.
I cannot emphasize that enough.
I had asked for backup.
Two other officers showed up.
So I asked one to cover
the side of the house
and one to go to the back,
and I went to the front door.
When I started
knocking on the door
and I said, "It's a
police officer. Open up.
I need to talk to you."
After a certain amount of time,
that's when he came
to the front door,
pushed the drape aside.
And I looked at him eye to eye,
and I said, you
know, "Open the door.
I need to speak with you."
His response was,
"I just got out of the shower.
Gimme a minute to
put some clothes on."
I said, "No. Open the door."
He's nude.
No towel.
His hair's not wet.
There's nothing
you would associate
with somebody getting
out of a shower.
So I put my ear to the door
and I heard what I
thought was moaning.
I said, "You need to
open this right now
or I'm gonna kick the door in."
So I gave it 15, 20 seconds
and I kicked the door in.
As soon as I entered
the residence,
there was poor Tali,
laying on the floor
with a pool of
blood all about her.
I can still see Tali.
I can just
still see that little
girl laying on the floor.
She was completely naked.
She was naked from head to toe.
Clothes strewn all
over the floor,
her shoes, her dress.
Heavy metal bar across her neck,
a gash on the side of her head,
just blood all over.
Blood...
And there was more blood
than you could ever think
would be in an eight-year-old.
- He, at that time,
had to make a decision
to chase after the suspect
or help the little girl.
- I couldn't leave her there
with that bar on her neck.
I got a towel and I took it off.
- He made the right choice.
He tried to help Tali,
and that's what saved her life.
And as he did that,
Rodney Alcala went
out the back door
and just into the wind.
- How he got away from us is...
But I'll live with that.
After Tali was
transported to the hospital,
where she was in a
coma for over 30 days,
they looked to see,
they wanted to ID this guy.
His wallet was there.
He was a student of
photography at UCLA.
They got his name,
Rodney Alcala.
They found a treasure
trove of photographs
of little boys, girls, women,
that he was a student
of photography.
I knew that he
was a danger to society.
So it was paramount in our mind
that we apprehend him.
- But what they didn't know
was that he left the state,
went to the East Coast
and changed his name.
- He became John Berger.
- It's still amazing
to think, for us, now,
that someone could
easily disappear,
could move across the country,
could change your name
and take up a new life.
Anybody
could go anywhere
and say you're anybody.
And even if you did have an ID,
nobody ever asked for it.
So he could go
anywhere he wanted.
What a great
place for a predator to live.
Look, 7 million people,
and there was three women
for every guy at that time.
It was a
dirty place, really.
You know, the trash pickups
weren't as regular
as they are now.
It wasn't sort of the
Disney feel that you have
around Manhattan now
in a lot of places.
It's so commercial.
The '70s
were a much looser,
less organized time
in New York City,
and also attracted some
folks on the periphery
who were
bad people.
When Alcala
arrived in New York,
newly minted as John Berger,
he would roam the
streets of New York
with his camera, his
35 millimeter camera,
taking pictures of
young ladies and boys.
- Nowadays, we take
it so for granted
that everyone has a
camera in his pocket,
that all you need to do
is pull out your cell phone
and take a photograph.
But think of, in the 1970s,
photographic equipment,
really high quality
equipment, was expensive.
You didn't see a
lot of it around.
Someone shows up with
expensive-looking cameras
around his neck,
good-looking,
professional-looking, and says,
"I'm a photographer.
I'd like to take your picture."
A lot of people would
still fall for that.
- I mean, what better way
to sort of make people trust you
than have this camera
around your neck?
"Oh, he's just a guy
out taking pictures."
It's a way to approach people.
He went to
New York film school.
Actually studied under famed
film director Roman Polanski.
- "Roman Polanski?"
People clamor to get
into his classes.
- We found some reference
letters from professors
who thought he was amazing,
charming, hardworking.
One of their best students.
Couldn't praise him enough.
He must have thought
that he had just
fooled everybody
and that everything
that he touched,
he could just go and
flimflam the world.
And you know what?
You know what? He was right.
- In the summer of 1971,
there was a beautiful young
woman named Cornelia Crilley,
who was a flight
attendant for TWA.
She was going
from city to city,
and she was having
a wonderful time.
She was gorgeous.
Had long, brown, beautiful hair,
Irish eyes that
knock your socks off.
Very, very funny
and very playful
and nice.
My friends all loved her.
We had been going out for years
and we were together.
She had just
moved into this apartment
and she was supposed to actually
have been flying that day.
But there was a malfunction
on one of the planes.
So they called her and
said, "No, don't come in."
That's the reason she was home.
She was a young woman with
everything to live for.
One day, I'm
at the DA's office.
I get a call from her mother,
trying to find out where she is.
And that day, as far as I knew,
she was doing something
with the new apartment,
but she wasn't staying there
'cause they didn't
have furniture.
So I said, "I don't
know where she is."
We didn't have cell
phones at the time.
So I said, "When I get
home, I'll check it out."
So I got home.
My door was not
locked. I went inside.
I figured she might
have been inside.
She was not.
I changed my clothes
and I went over,
I walked over to her new place,
and I couldn't get in.
I went downstairs, tried
to get in the back door,
but she was up on
the second floor
and I couldn't get up
to the second floor
from the garden in the back.
So then I called the police.
They came over,
they came into the
back, climbed up,
broke the window, and
went in and found her.
She had been
sexually assaulted.
She had blunt force
trauma to the head.
She had been strangled
with a ligature,
which was her pantyhose.
- She had been, looked
like tortured, almost,
as well as raped,
and then murdered.
- The autopsy suggested
that she died a slow death,
that she was strangled,
almost killed,
allowed to come back,
and then strangled again
and then allowed to revive
and then strangled
and killed again.
So that he was
toying with her life,
watching her die repeatedly,
in a very cruel way.
Almost all
the physical damage
was done before she was dead.
So he literally tortured her
and then he killed her
and he posed her.
- Sometimes criminals,
especially the
real sadistic ones,
to shock the normal person
like you or I or the police,
they will victimize a victim
even after they've died,
by facing their body
towards the door
so that the first
person that walks in,
the only thing they're
gonna see is that,
and putting their
body in such a way,
like in a sexual assault,
opening a woman's
legs, you know,
putting her feet behind
her and her body bent over.
So that basically all you see
is her genitals and her
in such a contorted way
that is not normal,
that basically she
didn't die that way.
You put her that way.
- I refused to go inside.
They asked me to go in
and identify the body,
and I refused.
I didn't wanna see it,
'cause if I see it,
I can't forget it.
- Initially, the
police really believed
the boyfriend was involved,
and they really
were focused on him.
They did canvas
the neighborhood.
They did talk to the landlord,
talked to a lot
of the neighbors,
the people that she knew,
the family.
They went through all
the motions correctly,
but their focus was
definitely the boyfriend.
- I went through, I don't know,
3, 4, 5 interviews
and fingerprints
and bite prints
'cause apparently,
she had a bite on
her left breast,
I think it was.
And it affected
me my whole life,
to be honest with you,
even up to now.
Back in the
early '70s, remember,
we are really in the
infancy of forensic science.
So once they eliminated
the boyfriend as a suspect,
at that point,
there isn't much for
the detectives to do
other than wait and hope
somebody calls with a tip
or, I mean, tragically,
there might be another
murder similar enough
that they can make a match
or an identification of
who the killer may be.
That would've sent shockwaves
through the community
that she lived in,
because you've got a
killer on the loose
who went in and murdered
this beautiful young woman,
and nobody knew who it was.
- I didn't think the cops would
ever find anybody who did it
to tell you the truth.
And I know they were trying.
Cops are good in New York.
Nobody really
focused on Rodney Alcala
at that time.
Nobody really knew he was there.
However, because
of the horrendous crime
that he was accused of,
and a fugitive from
in Los Angeles,
the brutal assault, kidnapping,
rape of Tali Shapiro,
he landed on the FBI's
10 Most Wanted list,
as Rodney Alcala.
As a patrol officer,
you can only do so much.
I would check in
periodically to see
how the investigation was going
and if they'd had any luck
capturing this person.
I went to that
residence several times
to just check,
and I ran into his mother
and his sister on one occasion.
And, of course,
they were in denial
as to what their son
was suspected of doing.
When I finally found out
that he had been apprehended,
of all places, he was
in a summer girls camp
at New Hampshire,
working as a counselor.
Living as
John Berger in New York,
because, of course,
Rodney Alcala was one
of the 10 Most Wanted
on the FBI list.
He got a job as, of all things,
a camp counselor
in New Hampshire.
He was at a
teenager club for kids.
- He's there for
a couple of years
in the summer,
as a camp counselor.
- We think that
bringing camp counselors
into the midst of children,
like inviting the fox
into the henhouse.
We were all just there
for his pickings.
And he went to the camp,
where there were girls
that he then preyed upon.
- Two of the girls at the
camp had to mail letters.
They wanted to
mail letters home.
So they went to the post office,
and back in those days
in the post office,
they used to always have
the Most Wanted pictures up
of criminals, FBI Most Wanted.
So they mailed the letters,
and there was a real
downpour of rain that came.
So they decided they would
wait out in the post office
until the showers stopped.
- They saw this one,
this one guy, this one poster.
And they, "Whoa, that looks
just like Mr. Berger!"
And they were confused,
'cause his name on the
poster was Rodney Alcala.
He was wanted by the FBI.
So the girls went back
and talked to a
different counselor,
one of the head
people at the camp,
and said, "We're not 100% sure,
but we saw this FBI
poster at the post office,
and it looks like Mr. Berger."
And he said, "Okay. Don't
say anything to anyone.
I'm gonna contact
the authorities,"
which is what he did.
- The next day,
the FBI showed up
and they took
fingerprints and confirmed
it was Rodney Alcala.
The detective at the
time was from LA Police,
and he was the one
sent to pick up Alcala
and extradite him
back to California.
During that trip,
he made quite a few
inquiries into Alcala,
like, "Why did you do this?"
And Alcala would respond,
"Well, that's Rodney Alcala.
I don't wanna talk about him."
He almost seemed
totally disassociated.
It was almost like it
was a different person.
It was really, I think,
the first real point
of understanding
that he sort of had a couple
of personalities going on
and there was a
separation between them.
- Prosecutors in Los
Angeles had a problem.
They wanted to throw the
book at Rodney Alcala.
He was a very dangerous person.
They knew it. They
could tell it.
But the problem was they
didn't have a witness.
They didn't have Tali Shapiro
because her parents had
moved out of Los Angeles
and into Mexico,
and they didn't want their
young traumatized child
brought back to Los
Angeles to testify in court
in this sensational case.
It would be too traumatic.
You had a young
girl, in her formative years,
who now is sexually
assaulted and almost killed.
I can just imagine what
is going on in her head.
So for her to leave the
country at that time
is totally understandable.
I mean, I would've
done the same thing.
I think any parent would.
The number one feature
is to protect your family
or your child.
Of course.
- Oz Janiger was a
psychiatrist in LA at the time,
good friends with my parents,
and he had told them to not
bring it up unless I did.
And I did bring it up
to my mother one morning
at the Chateau Marmont
in the kitchen.
She changed the
subject and said,
"I think there's a box of
chocolates in the refrigerator."
So that was kind of a
typical thing to say.
My family never spoke about it.
I remember years
later, with my brother,
and something came up
and I said, "How come no
one ever talked about it?"
And he said, "Well, no one knew
how you were gonna turn out."
It's something horrible
that happened to me.
But it's,
I've never allowed it
to be a part of me.
I try to be
a strong,
conscientious,
you know, try to be helpful
to those around me.
I don't trust very easily.
I don't...
Unfortunately,
I don't do well
with partnerships very well.
Never married, and that's okay.
I met,
early on, there was,
I had some good boyfriends,
but later on, after
my dad passed away,
it just wasn't...
I was just too independent,
and I was okay with that.
Since Tali
Shapiro's parents
ended up taking her to Mexico,
it's difficult for prosecutors.
You're caught in a position
where you understand
why a family wants to
protect their child
from the justice process.
But you also know
that you can't hold the
offender accountable
without the cooperation
of the witnesses.
- So the police were
literally hand tied,
unable to really
prosecute this case
the way they wanted to.
- I was very upset.
I believe that there
was a strong enough case
with myself, with Don Hines,
with the other officers,
that a case could've
been brought against him
very easily,
and he would've
been found guilty.
But they gave him a plea deal.
- A lesser charge,
child molestation,
which meant a lesser sentence.
In fact,
a sentence of between
one year and life.
It was an undetermined sentence,
that allowed the
Board of Parole to,
every year, assess the
inmate and ask the question,
"Has he been rehabilitated?"
And if so, they could
then let him go.
While Rodney Alcala
was in prison,
he was undergoing therapy
as a child molester,
convicted child molester.
He was being counseled
and given therapy to
rehabilitate himself.
So after less than three years,
the parole board decided
he had been rehabilitated,
that the counseling,
the therapy, had worked,
he can be free.
So after just 34 months
locked up for this
horrible crime,
he was allowed to go free.
- I have no problem
criticizing that decision
or the people that made it.
It's outrageous to me
that even back then,
that you would release somebody
of such a predatory nature,
somebody that kidnaps
an eight-year-old girl,
rapes her,
which means there's a
sexual component to that,
and attempts to kill her,
only prevented so by
the heroic actions
of Officer Camacho.
That's a man who is
going to be a danger
as long as he draws breath.
Like a lot of serial killers,
he is charming.
He's manipulative.
He has no empathy.
And he's freakishly intelligent,
which means for a guy
like Rodney Alcala,
it's not tough to figure out,
"What do they want
to hear from me?"
And to go in and, and say,
"Yeah, I've worked on my issues.
I've explored my,
you know, my inner demons,"
or whatever jargon of the day
would work as buzzwords.
Whoever signed off on Rodney
Alcala being released,
that decision resulted in
dozens of people being murdered.
- But they didn't really know
about all of his medical issues
in the military.
Early 1960s, back
when there was still a draft,
he joined the Army,
and there were some prophetic
writings about Rodney Alcala.
His commanding officer wrote
that he was highly manipulative.
He wouldn't take responsibility.
- He went AWOL a couple of times
and he would go
and he would spend time
drinking, stealing.
He attacked a few girls.
He exposed him himself
to other girls.
He did quite a few
smaller crimes,
not like what he
got known for later.
And all of a sudden, he showed
up at his mother's house.
She was cooking
dinner at the time.
And she was shocked,
almost like, "Wow,
what happened here?"
And she couldn't figure out
what he had done or
why he had done it.
And he just decided to go AWOL,
just leave and come home.
And after a couple of days,
she got him, or convinced him,
to go back in and
surrender himself,
'cause she didn't want
him being arrested.
And so he went into the
military and surrendered.
- The Army sent him to one
of their psychiatrists,
who correctly diagnosed him
with antisocial
personality disorder,
chronic and severe.
Not just a little bit,
but chronic and severe.
- But their answer to that,
the solution, was just
to get rid of him,
get him out of the Army.
But he was given an
honorable discharge.
An honorable discharge
after being accused
of a sexual assault,
after being AWOL, and
all this other behavior.
He was given an honorable
discharge from the military.
That meant he could still
use his GI Bill benefits
to go to college,
and he could go and get a job,
showing his honorable discharge.
No stigma related to
all of that activity
from when he was a young
private in the army.
He
had a great charm.
People really, really liked him
when he would meet them.
So he had no problem
getting jobs,
meeting people and
having them accept him.
So here's this
guy in the late '60s,
a handsome young man.
And he had a house in Hollywood
with, you know, this
breadth of experience,
and he began murdering people.
- As quick as that
happened for Tali Shapiro,
I have no doubt that
he'd done that before.
That is not a common action.
It's just the first
time he got caught
doing what he did.
- I was in my senior year, and
a couple weeks into school,
I got a letter,
and when I opened it,
a newspaper clipping fell out.
The newspaper clipping said
that he had raped
and tried to murder an
eight-year-old girl.
I just fell to my knees.
That felt like it was my fault
that I hadn't stopped him.
I was 13 or 14.
There was a teenage
nightclub in Hollywood.
It was an all age club.
People of all ages went there,
but they called it teenage
because you couldn't
get alcohol there.
We would go over there
to watch the bands
unload and come in,
because they got
The Doors, The Byrds, you know,
top name entertainment there.
And my friend and
I walked over there
and Rod was standing
in the parking lot
talking to someone else.
He was constantly picking
up young girls, you know,
13-, 14-, 15-year-old girls,
taking 'em back to his house,
taking their pictures,
having little make out
sessions with them.
He was attractive,
laughed easily.
He was obviously
flirting with us.
He would look over and wink
and, you know, smile,
and eventually, kind
of waved his hand,
called us over.
I wanted his attention.
So I reached over
and I lightly scratched
his arm with my nails
and he put his arm around me
and he pulled me close,
and I thought that
was pretty cool.
So I did it again,
and he wasn't quite as
happy the next time.
He grabbed my arm
and pulled me to the
back of the club.
My feet barely
touched the ground.
He just, you know,
I only weighed 80 pounds.
When we got to the
back of the club,
I'm not sure what he did.
If I had to guess,
I think he slammed my
head against the wall.
He knocked me out.
He put me behind a dumpster
and pushed it up against me.
So when I woke up,
I had this strong
pain in my chest
and pushed this
dumpster off of me.
I didn't want my parents to know
because they wouldn't
let me go back there.
When I was 16,
a few years later,
used to go up to Sunset Strip
and there would just
be hundreds of people
dancing, singing,
hanging out in
front of the clubs,
talking to each other.
Someone came up
and said, "Come on.
We're all going down to IHOP
to get a strawberry waffle."
You know, it was a
big thing at the time.
We jumped into a car,
the guy that invited us
got in the passenger seat.
I was in the back
between my two friends.
We were just
laughing and talking,
and Rod got in the driver's seat
and drove away quickly.
And I said, "I don't
wanna go. Let me out.
Please let me out."
And he just ignored me.
He didn't say no. He
didn't say anything.
He just ignored me.
He turned off of Sunset
and drove a couple blocks
and stopped in front of a house,
his house.
And he said, "Come on
in, guys. I've got pot."
And my friends thought
that was great.
They jumped outta the
car, ran in the house.
I didn't wanna go in.
And I didn't know what to do,
because now I didn't
really know where I was
and it was dark
and Hollywood's not
the safest place.
And I was like, "Do I walk away?
Will he follow me?
What do I do? Where do I go?"
We didn't have cell phones.
I didn't have anything.
And he was kind of
hiding around a corner
and he just grabbed me.
And he just threw me head
first into this room,
into his bedroom.
I staggered to my feet
and turned around,
and he was holding
this metal bar,
about five foot long,
heavy metal bar.
And he dropped it
into some brackets
on the back of his door so
you couldn't open the door.
And then I got really scared.
Soon as he dropped that bar,
he came across that
room so quickly,
and I was up against a wall.
He took a,
actually took a second
to brace himself,
and then just punched
me in the face.
He took his belt
and he pushed it into my throat.
He pushed it in my mouth
and kept pushing it until
it was deep in my throat
and I couldn't get a breath.
I just kept fighting
because I couldn't breathe.
So he just lifted me by my hair
and punched me in the
stomach as hard as he could,
quite a few times.
And I could feel
my ribs breaking.
He cut the rest of
my clothes off of me
and he raped me, of course.
And he just,
he looked like an animal.
I mean, he just looked
like a raging animal.
Then he put his
hands around my neck
and everything
kind of went black.
I felt like I was
falling down a dark well.
I heard glass breaking
and I felt a little cool air
and it woke me up.
You know, I just kind of
came back to the light,
and my friends had broken
the window in his room.
He got off me then,
pulled the belt outta my mouth.
And I choked,
tried to get a little air.
And he took the bar off the door
and my friends ran in
and his friends ran in
and he just stood there,
naked from the waist down,
with my blood all
over his shirt.
And he just said, "Take
her. Just take her."
Like he owned me,
"Just take her."
When I went home,
I told my parents that
we'd been in a car
and somebody hit the
brakes really fast,
and I just kind of went
flying into the dashboard.
All they could really see
was the black eye
and the cut lip
and they didn't
know about the rest.
Suddenly Rod's face was there.
And I took such a deep breath,
I couldn't breathe out.
I had a panic attack.
At night, I was having
these horrible nightmares
of him swinging that
bar into her head,
'cause I knew.
I knew he had used that bar
that was on the back of his door
because of the way
he had held it.
I know he considered doing that,
but he didn't have room
to swing it in that room.
I had these horrible nightmares
with him swinging that
bar into her head.
- She asked for my forgiveness,
and I don't think she
could have done anything.
I mean, look how
many times he got off
of what he did to me,
after the case.
- If the penal code was
followed in those days,
he would've spent
150 years in prison,
'cause he had rape, kidnapping,
child molestation,
assault with a deadly weapon,
fleeing authorities.
It just goes on and on and on.
And for him to be able
to navigate the system
and talk his way out of prison,
he should have never
gotten out of prison
after that incident with Tali.
- His walking out of prison
made him feel more powerful,
that, "If this is
all I have to pay
when I get caught,
well, then, it's not very
much of a price, is it?"
- He's out there hunting.
And he's looking for his prey.
One of the
first things he did
was pick up a 13-year-old girl
and take her to a bluffs
over in Huntington Beach
and make her smoke
dope with him.
And he tried to kiss her.
He did kiss her.
And a park ranger came up
and the girl said,
"I'm not here."
You know, "I don't
wanna be here.
I don't want this man with me.
I don't wanna be here."
And they were both arrested
for the possession charge,
but then it became clear
that it was it was Rodney,
and the little
girl was innocent.
- But Rodney Alcala, of course,
was on parole for kidnapping
in the near murder Tali Shapiro.
So when he was
arrested and processed,
they violated his parole,
and he got two and a
half additional years
for, essentially, providing
marijuana to a minor.
However, he was released
in less than two
and a half years.
They should have kept him
forever, at that point.
And he was released again.
So once again, this
predatory monster
has been caught.
To anybody with,
that's on the ball,
they should have realized
that he's a danger.
He's not changed his ways.
This is a man who
kidnapped, raped,
and almost murdered an
eight-year-old girl,
with another minor
that he's providing
marijuana to.
And there's absolutely
no doubt in my mind,
had they not been caught
by that park ranger,
he would've raped and murdered
that young girl, as well.
- Once he's out,
he convinces his parole officer
that he wants to go back
to New York for family,
or he gives him some nonsense,
or a vacation,
whatever nonsense he
feeds the parole officer.
The officer says,
"Go ahead, go."
- Not expecting that
he wouldn't come back
or that he would disappear
and then go and
commit other crimes.
Rodney Alcala then became
John Berger again in New York.
It was over that
next ten-year period
that he did all
of these killings,
maybe murdered more
than a hundred people.