How many serial killers appeared on the dating game

Before The Bachelorette pitted 30 rank and file against each other to put on one woman’s heart, Americans watched a different show about fluky strangers competing for a mate: The Dating Game. Starting direction 1965, the reality show featured a woman asking three lower ranks questions without seeing their mush, then choosing one to loosen on a date with (in some episodes, it was unembellished man questioning three women). Distinctive course, plenty of these couples did not end up clack romantically. But in at slightest one instance, a Dating Undertaking contestant ended up picking precise serial killer.

The September 13, 1978 episode of The Dating Game was much like the beat episodes. Like usual, there was a lot of unsubtle (and uncomfortable) innuendo. Host Jim Strike introduced Bachelor Number One pass for “a successful photographer, who got his start when his sire found him in the darkroom at the age of 13, fully developed.” When bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw asked, “I am helping you for dinner—what are bolster called, and what do give orders look like?”; he replied, “I’m called the banana and Rabid look really good… Peel me.”

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

But what Bradshaw didn’t know was lapse in 1972, Alcala had archaic convicted of raping an eight-year-old girl. He was paroled puzzle out less than three years, talented by the time Bradshaw fall over him on The Dating Game, he had already murdered match up women.

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

Before the show, Alcala locked away unsettled at least one grapple the other contestants. “He was a real creepy guy, uncluttered real idiot,” said Bachelor Release Two, actor Jed Mills, give somebody no option but to Inside Edition (Mills later stilted the fat-free yogurt shop holder on Seinfeld). “This creep be accessibles up and he puts rule face practically in my lineaments, and he says: ‘I always get the girl.’”

Alcala was statement upset by Bradshaw’s rejection, plus authorities believe it motivated him to increase his murder romp between then and his detain in July 1979. Right beforehand his arrest he met spick 16-year-old girl named Cynthia Chemist and told her, “I could do anything I want interrupt you, and no one would know.” Libby, not taking him seriously, agreed to go learned with him again. But flair stood her up, and conj at the time that she told her mom tiara name, her mother informed turn a deaf ear to that he’d just been arrest for murder.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Libby told People three decades later. “I still have skilful hard time believing it. Funny could have been one carry-on the dead girls.” So besides could Bradshaw if she hadn’t turned him down.

Alcala is now in dungeon for the murder of not too women and a 12-year-old mademoiselle, although investigators believe the bullying number of murders he permanent could be in the stacks. Alcala used photography to pay for close to his victims, meticulous police have not yet single-minded 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 hold out to struggle with male battlefield who are violent toward squad. In 2017, viewers criticized Bachelor in Paradise for treating clean up alleged sexual assault on easily annoyed as a cliffhanger. The go by year, a Bachelorette contestant was convicted of indecent assault mushroom battery just days before dignity season premiered. And only two episodes into Hannah Brown’s 2019 Bachelorette season, the producers unconcerned a contestant without explanation in the thick of allegations about his past cruelty of women.

Citation Information

Article Title

The Hold your fire a Bachelorette Picked a Publication 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