A judge on Tuesday sentenced
serial killer Rodney Alcala to death before
hearing emotional testimony from the families of four women and a
12-year-old girl he strangled in the 1970s.
The sentence was announced three weeks after a jury
recomended death for the 66-year-old Alcala, who was convicted last
month of five counts of first-degree murder after a bizarre and
sometimes surreal trial.
After the sentencing, Bruce Barcomb, the brother of
victim
Jill Barcomb,
begged Alcala to admit to the murders to help family members heal.
"There is murder and rape and then there is the
unequivicable carnage of a Rodney Alcala-style murder," he said. "Give
up your debt Rodney: all victims, all states, all occurences. Own your
truth."
Alcala acted as his own attorney during the trial and
unveiled a rambling defense that included questioning the mother of one
of his victims, playing an
Arlo Guthrie ballad and showing a clip from
the 1970s TV show "The Dating Game."
After the verdict, authorities released more than 100
photos of young women and girls found in Alcala's possession in hopes
of linking him to other unsolved murders around the country. Authorities
from New Hampshire to Washington are now trying to determine if the
UCLA graduate may have killed in their states.
Alcala has been sentenced to death twice before in
the 1979 murder of young Robin Samsoe, but those verdicts were
overturned on appeal. Prosecutors refiled charges in that case and added
the four other murders in 2006 after investigators linked them to
Alcala using DNA samples and other forensic evidence.
Those cases, which had gone unsolved for decades,
went on trial for the first time this year.
The 12-year-old Samsoe disappeared on June 20, 1979,
while riding a friend's bike to ballet class in Huntington Beach in
Orange County. Her body was found 12 days later in Angeles National
Forest, where it had been mutilated by wild animals.
Alcala was arrested a month after Samsoe's
disappearance when his parole agent recognized him from a police sketch
and called authorities. He has been in custody ever since.
He was first tried in Samsoe's murder in 1980.
Prosecutors added the murders of the four women in 2006 after
investigators discovered forensic evidence linking him to those crimes,
including DNA found on three of the women, a bloody handprint and marker
testing done on blood Alcala left on a towel in the fourth victim's
home.
Alcala was convicted on Feb. 25, and also found true
special-circumstance allegations of rape, torture and kidnapping, making
him eligible for the death penalty.
During the guilt phase of trial, Alcala played a
seconds-long clip of himself on a 1978 episode of "The Dating Game." He
said the grainy clip proved that he was wearing a gold-ball earring
almost a year before Samsoe was killed.
Prosecutors said the earring, found in a small pouch
with other earrings in a storage locker Alcala had rented, belonged to
Samsoe and that Alcala had taken it as a trophy. They also found the DNA
of another victim of Alcala on a rose-shaped earring in the same pouch.
During the penalty phase, the trial took another
bizarre twist when Alcala played
Arlo Guthrie's 1967 song "
Alice's Restaurant," in
which the narrator tries to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War by
trying to persuade a psychiatrist that he's unfit for the military
because of his supposed extreme desire to kill.
"I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my
teeth," the song's narrator sings. "Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean: kill,
kill, kill, kill."
The song prompted Samsoe's brother to stalk out of
the courtroom when it was played.
In addition to Samsoe, Alcala is charged with killing
Jill Barcomb, 18, who had just moved to Los Angeles from Oneida, N.Y.;
Georgia Wixted, 27, of Malibu; Charlotte Lamb, 32, of Santa Monica; and
Jill Parenteau, 21, of Burbank.
David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer
