Police were certain that many of these photos contained Alcala's victims.ĭespite this, none of the photographs were definitively linked to any murders until 2013, when the family of Christine Thornton - whose body was found in 1982 - recognised her photo among the chilling collection. The Grim Sleeper, Lonnie Franklin Jr., 'had a penchant for prostitutes and pornography. Within weeks, 21 women came forward as the subject of photographs more tragically, six missing persons were also identified during this early stage. During his killing spree, accompanied by Henry Lee Lucas, he killed 108 people. Around 900 of the pictures were not made public as they were either too explicit or involved child pornography. In 2010, both the New York and Huntington Beach police departments released a cache of 120 of these photos to the public, in the hopes of identifying any of the people featured.
The subjects were always naked the majority of the photos were sexually explicit. The Dating Game clearly didn't vet its contestants thoroughly - if at all. Shockingly, at the time of the show's shoot, Alcala had already been charged with the 1968 assault of an eight-year-old girl, and had even briefly landed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives in 1971 after fleeing the state before arrest. "Oh yeah, I remember it quite clearly," Jed Mills, the contestant who sat next to Alcala on the show, told CNN some 38 years after the appearance. A year earlier he was one of three 'bachelors' vying for the heart of contestant Cheryl Bradshaw. Unfortunately, many of these proposed disorders came after Alcala was arrested in 1979. This would be the first in a laundry list of diagnoses levelled at Alcala over the years: borderline personality disorder sexual sadism comorbidity psychopathy narcissistic personality disorder.
Serial killer Rodney James Alcala on the TV show The Dating Game in 1978, where he was chosen by contestant Cheryl Bradshaw.