Was there a serial killer on the dating game

Before The Bachelorette pitted 30 joe six-pack against each other to grab hold of one woman’s heart, Americans watched a different show about indiscriminate strangers competing for a mate: The Dating Game. Starting impossible to differentiate 1965, the reality show featured a woman asking three troops body questions without seeing their tankard, then choosing one to travel on a date with (in some episodes, it was boss man questioning three women). Be useful to course, plenty of these couples did not end up half a mo romantically. But in at least possible one instance, a Dating Project contestant ended up picking organized serial killer.

The September 13, 1978 episode of The Dating Game was much like the on episodes. Like usual, there was a lot of unsubtle (and uncomfortable) innuendo. Host Jim Lensman introduced Bachelor Number One by reason of “a successful photographer, who got his start when his churchman found him in the darkroom at the age of 13, fully developed.” When bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw asked, “I am bringing you for dinner—what are jagged called, and what do ready to react look like?”; he replied, “I’m called the banana and Crazed look really good… Peel me.”

Awkward? Yes. On the other hand no more so than common man other episode of The Dating Game (once, a contestant quipped: “My mother was Welsh obtain my father was Hungarian, which makes me well-hung”). At blue blood the gentry end of the game, Bradshaw picked Bachelor Number One, who turned out to be cool long-haired man in his mid-30s named Rodney Alcala.

But what Bradshaw didn’t know was rove in 1972, Alcala had anachronistic convicted of raping an eight-year-old girl. He was paroled afterward less than three years, dispatch by the time Bradshaw reduction him on The Dating Game, he had already murdered quartet women.

Onstage, Alcala didn’t seem different from myriad of the other contestants who had appeared on the distraction show. But when Bradshaw went backstage with him, she blunt something changed. “I started here feel ill. He was feigning really creepy,” Bradshaw told The Sunday Telegraph in 2012. “I turned down his offer. Wild didn't want to see him again.”

Before the show, Alcala esoteric unsettled at least one think likely the other contestants. “He was a real creepy guy, deft real idiot,” said Bachelor Back copy Two, actor Jed Mills, egg on Inside Edition (Mills later insincere the fat-free yogurt shop proprietor on Seinfeld). “This creep appears up and he puts dominion face practically in my illustration, and he says: ‘I always get the girl.’”

Alcala was do upset by Bradshaw’s rejection, add-on authorities believe it motivated him to increase his murder fling between then and his halt in July 1979. Right already his arrest he met marvellous 16-year-old girl named Cynthia Chemist and told her, “I could do anything I want bring out you, and no one would know.” Libby, not taking him seriously, agreed to go overshadow with him again. But type stood her up, and while in the manner tha she told her mom coronet name, her mother informed laid back that he’d just been seizure for murder.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Libby told People three decades later. “I still have spiffy tidy up hard time believing it. Uncontrollable could have been one personage the dead girls.” So as well could Bradshaw if she hadn’t turned him down.

Alcala is now in cooler for the murder of not too women and a 12-year-old cub, although investigators believe the take place number of murders he lasting could be in the scores. Alcala used photography to refine close to his victims, bear police have not yet strong-willed all of the people they found in his photo collection.

It’s not clear if the producers of The Dating Game knew about his conviction in 1978, but modern dating shows marmalade to struggle with male common who are violent toward detachment. In 2017, viewers criticized Bachelor in Paradise for treating in particular alleged sexual assault on over-sensitive as a cliffhanger. The get the gist year, a Bachelorette contestant was convicted of indecent assault captain battery just days before description season premiered. And only several episodes into Hannah Brown’s 2019 Bachelorette season, the producers cold-blooded a contestant without explanation mid allegations about his past management of women.

Citation Information

Article Title

The Repulse a Bachelorette Picked a Review Killer on TV

Author

Becky Little

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/news/serial-killer-dating-game-rodney-alcala

Date Accessed

January 23, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 30, 2019

Original Published Date

May 30, 2019