Simone WilsonThe creepiest serial killer since “American Psycho” just got a little creepier.
Sixty-seven-year-old Rodney Alcala, infamous for his calm, sophisticated demeanor and cameo on the “Dating Game” — he won, but the date never happened because was voted down because the girl found “something creepy” about him [watch video here] — apparently made a couple trips to New York during his 1970s killing spree. Anonymous officials tell the New York papers today that he's been indicted for the cold-case killings of Cornelia Crilley and Ellen Hover.
Christine Pelisek, the LA Weekly's former serial-killer expert, delved into the psyche of a madman with “Rodney Alcala: The Fine Art of Killing.” Alcala is already on death row in California for strangling four women and a 12-year-old girl…
… so the two new victims couldn't really add to his punishment, but it's always nice to know the exact level of creepiness we're dealing with when watching serial-killer scare pieces on late-night television.
Crilley was a flight attendant, found dead in her Manhattan apartment in 1971. Like all Alcala's victims, she had been strangled. Hover was reported missing much later, in 1977 — and her body was eventually found on a rural New York estate.
According to the Huffington Post, Alcala may be taking another trip to the Big Apple on court business:
Alcala remained in prison in California on Thursday, though authorities planned to start taking steps to bring him to New York, the official said. He represented himself in his California case, and it wasn't immediately clear whether he would have an attorney in New York.Alcala had been a suspect for some time in Crilley's and Hover's deaths, but a cold-case unit established last year in the Manhattan DA's office was able to build on the California case and other evidence to obtain an indictment, the official said.
Like with the Grim Sleeper, SoCal and Pelisek's other favorite mass-murdering creep — see “Grim Sleeper Returns: He's Murdering Angelenos, as Cops Hunt his DNA” — police released a huge batch of Alcala's personal photos in March 2010 to help track down more victims. No word on whether the two new girls were among the faces in his album.
Georgia Wixted, one of Alcala's California victims
From Pelisek's profile of Alcala:
With a near-genius IQ of 135, Alcala has spent his time behind bars penning You, the Jury, a 1994 book in which he claims his innocence and points to a different suspect; suing the California prisons for a slip-and-fall claim and for failing to provide him a low-fat diet; and, according to prosecutors, complaining about a law that required he and other death-row inmates to submit DNA mouth swabs for comparison by police against unsolved crimes.Alcala is still as cocky as ever — bold enough to represent himself in the trial for his life, now unfolding in Orange County. And why not? He has a talent for mining legal technicalities and has repeatedly enjoyed success with appellate judges. And, in the past at least, he had the support of women in his Monterey Park-based family. His mother provided Alcala $10,000 in bail after he was arrested for the rape of a teenager decades ago, and Huntington Beach detectives suspect another female family member of trying to hide a receipt to Alcala's secret locker in Seattle, where detectives found “trophy” earrings they say were taken from his alleged murder victims.
Like we said. Effing creepy.
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