'Woman of the Hour': What Happened To Rodney Alcala?
Leah Gallo/NetflixToday, there’s no shortage of dating reality shows, but decades before roses, pods, and villas, there was The Dating Game. Created in 1965, the competition series featured many contestants who would become big names, like Steve Martin and Tom Selleck.However, one of its contestants made headlines for a sinister reason. In the new Netflix movie Woman of the Hour, Rodney Alcala competed on the show in 1978 — by which point he had murdered several women and would go on to kill again.Here’s what happened to Rodney Alcala (aka the “Dating Game Killer”) after the events of Woman of the Hour.A Harrowing EncounterAs seen in Woman of the Hour, Cheryl Bradshaw selected Alcala as her winner but quickly had second thoughts. While it’s unclear what their brief interaction was like in real life, Bradshaw was concerned enough to call off their winner’s date. “I started to feel ill. He was acting really creepy,” she would later tell The Sunday Telegraph in 2012. “I turned down his offer. I didn’t want to see him again.”Leah Gallo/NetflixWhile Bradshaw narrowly avoided becoming Alcala’s next victim, Anna Kendrick — who stars and makes her directorial debut in Woman of the Hour — told Today that she didn’t want to “do a disservice” to Alcala’s victims and imply her character outsmarted him in a way they failed to do.“Sometimes you have to trust your gut, and you just get blind luck on your side, and that’s how you kind of manage to come out of situations that other people couldn’t,” she said.Alcala was arrested following a final murder in 1979 and was convicted of killing seven women and girls throughout the decade. His youngest victim was 12 years old.In 2016, Alcala was also charged with the murder of a pregnant woman from the same period. But according to ABC News, his health was “failing” by this point, so he was not extradited for trial.Leah Gallo/NetflixThe serial killer was on death row when he died of natural causes in 2021, per the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. He was 77 years old.As noted at the end of Woman of the Hour, it’s possible that Alcala killed many more people. CDCR states that Alcala was suspected of or linked to additional murders in California, Washington, New York, New Hampshire, and Arizona.As for Bradshaw, Kendrick told Today that the woman who inspired her Woman of the Hour heroine has passed away.
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