Dating Game exec tried to stop serial killer Rodney Acala appearing
Serial killer Rodney Alcala’s infamous appearance on the legendary television show The Dating Game in 1978 was nearly up-ended by an executive who didn’t want him to appear on screen because he thought the bachelor had a ‘strange personality’.
Former executive producer of the show Mike Metzger revealed the backroom conflict over Alcala’s viability as a contestant on ABC’s brand new 20/20 documentary, The Dating Game Killer, which airs on Friday, January 8 at 9:00 pm ET.
Mike says Ellen Metzger, the show’s then-contestant coordinator who later became his wife, pushed him to allow Alcala to appear in an episode after his audition because she thought he was ‘handsome’.
‘I don’t know, he was just very striking,’ Ellen Metzger reflects in a clip obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com. ‘There was a boldness about him. He had long black hair – he was just a striking looking person.’
Alcala later appeared on the Dating Game in September 1978 when he was in the midst of a brutal murdering spree.
The now 77-year-old has since been convicted of killing seven women in the 1970s, with five murders in California and two in New York. His youngest murder victim was just 12-years-old, whom he abducted as she made her way to ballet practice in Los Angeles in 1979.
Alcala, who later earned the moniker ‘the Dating Game Killer’, was known for biting his dead victims’ naked bodies before photographing them in sexually-explicit poses. He has been linked to over 130 women and children’s deaths, although his exact number of victims remains unknown.
Scroll down for exclusive video:
Former executive producer of the show Mike Metzger (right) said he didn’t want Alcala on his show because he thought he had a ‘strange personality’
Alcala (left in 2010, right on the show in 1978) later appeared on the Dating Game in September 1978 when he was in the midst of a brutal murder spree
With his flowing dark hair, sharp features and with an avid interest in skydiving and photography, Alcala seemed to ideal candidate for The Dating Game, Ellen Metzger remembered.
However executive producer Mike Metzger was far from sold. During Alcala’s audition, Mike told ABC that he wrote ‘NW’ in bold letters on a piece of paper in front of him, ‘which was my symbol for “No Way”, he said.
‘No darn way was this guy going to be on my show,’ he laughed, ‘because I thought he had a strange personality.
‘He had a mystique about him that I found uncomfortable,’ Mike continued.
Ellen said she forcefully pushed back, telling Mike: ‘”Are you kidding me? He’s so attractive and women are going to love him.”’
After a back and forth, Mike said he finally relented to Ellen’s request to put him on the show, but only on the condition they ‘surround him two guys that have personalities and are respectful, decent and fun.’
At the time, technology didn’t exist for background checks or national databases, so neither Mike nor Ellen was aware of Alcala’s dark criminal history, which at that time included the rape and attempted murder of an eight-year-old girl.
Alcala would go on to appear as Bachelor Number One on the show in September 1978, winning the affections of bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw with more than a few sexual innuendos.
During the episode, Bradshaw had asked questions such as, ‘What’s your best time?’ and ‘I’m serving you for dinner. What are you called and what do you look like?’
Alcala responded to the last question by replying, ‘I’m called the banana and I look good.’
When asked by Bradshaw if he could be ‘a little bit more descriptive,’ Alcala responded: ‘Peel me,’ prompting laughter from the audience.
Ellen said she forcefully pushed back, telling Mike: ‘”Are you kidding me? He’s so attractive and women are going to love him”’
Alcala would go on to appear as Bachelor Number One on the show in September 1978, winning the affections of bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw
During Alcala’s audition, Mike told ABC that he wrote ‘NW’ in bold letters on a piece of paper in front of him, ‘what was my symbol for “No Way”, he said
The now 77-year-old has since been convicted of killing seven women in the 1970s, with five murders in California and two in New York
Bradshaw ended up choosing Alcala at the end of the show, but she later backed out of their scheduled date – tennis lessons and a trip to Magic Mountain – because she, like Mike, got an uneasy feeling from him.
‘I started to feel ill. He was acting really creepy,’ Bradshaw told the UK’s Sunday Telegraph in 2012. ‘I turned down his offer. I didn’t want to see him again.’
Ellen Metzger said she received a call from Bradshaw the day after filming, telling her: ‘”Ellen, I can’t go out with this guy. There’s weird vibes that are coming off of him. He’s very strange. I am not comfortable. Is that going to be a problem?” And of course, I said, “No”,’ she recalled.
Fellow contestant Jed Mills, who appeared as Bachelor Number Two, also described Alcala as ‘creepy’ to ABC.
While the two men were waiting in the green room to be called on stage, Alcala allegedly told him: ‘I always get my girl.’
Another producer, David Greenfield, told ABC that had Bradshaw have gone through with the date, she would have been provided a chaperone – as was customary for all guests who dated on the show.
‘When I watch the show now, it’s hard for me to watch it without looking behind his eyes and knowing what this guy had to be thinking,’ Greenfield said.
‘Just the evil behind the smile. There’s sometimes where I can see it but I think that’s my mind working overtime because again, I can’t imagine anybody that would commit a crime and then purposely go on television.’
Alcala pictured during his third trial in the early 2000s, after appealing his murder charge in the death of a 12-year-old girl
Billing himself as a professional fashion photographer, Alcala, who is said to have an IQ above 160, convinced hundreds of young men and women to pose naked for him for his ‘portfolio’.
During the episode, Bradshaw had asked questions such as, ‘What’s your best time?’ and ‘I’m serving you for dinner. What are you called and what do you look like?’ Alcala responded to the last question by replying, ‘I’m called the banana and I look good’
Bradshaw ended up choosing Alcala at the end of the show, but she later backed out of their scheduled date – tennis lessons and a trip to Magic Mountain – because she, like Mike, got an uneasy feeling from him
Alcala’s first known committed crime occurred in 1968, when an eye-witness called police after seeing him lure an eight-year-old girl named Tali Shapiro into his Hollywood apartment.
When police arrived, they found Talia alive but she had been raped brutally beaten with a steel bar and was laying in a pool of her own blood.
Alcala had fled the scene and later left the state, enrolling in NYU to study film under Roman Polanski, under the pseudonym ‘John Berger’.
In June 1971, 23-year-old TWA flight attendant Cornelia Michel Crilley was found raped and strangled in her Manhattan apartment. Her death would go unsolved until 2011 when DNA evidence linked Alcala to the killing.
In the meantime, Alcala was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list that same year. He was arrested within months after children at a New Hampshire arts camp where he was working as a counselor recognized his image on a wanted poster.
He was extradited back to California to face trial for attempted murder, but Shapiro’s parents refused to let the girl testify at trial and he later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of assault, securing parole after just 17 months in 1974.
Billing himself as a professional fashion photographer, Alcala, who is said to have an IQ above 160, convinced hundreds of young men and women to pose naked for him for his ‘portfolio’.
He would also often lure in his murder victims the same way, before strangling them until they passed out. When they’d reawaken, he’d begin torturing them by raping and beating them within an inch of their lives.
Alcala would then kill them, often by strangulation, then rearrange their limbs into explicit positions and photograph their naked bodies.
He was eventually detained for the final time in 1979, after murdering 12-year-old Robin Samsoe.
Alcala reportedly encountered blonde-haired Samsoe on the beach in Los Angeles with her friend Bridget Wilvurt and approached them.
Bridget later explained: ‘He honed in on us, like a shark in the water… and he goes, “Can I take your girls’ pictures?” … And Robin goes, “Sure.”’
Alcala later left the girls alone but Robin later rode off on her bike to a ballet studio where she was due for practice.
She never turned up and no one ever saw her alive again.
Alcala was eventually detained for the final time in 1979, after murdering 12-year-old Robin Samsoe in 1978 – the same year he appeared on the Dating Game
Georgia Wixted was a registered nurse who was killed at age 27 by serial killer Rodney James Alcala. Wixted’s bruised and battered body was found on the floor of her Malibu studio apartment near her brass bed on December 16, 1977
Another of the victims was 19-year-old Jill Barcomb (left), whose body was found at the side of a road in Los Angeles in 1977. Charlotte Lamb (right) was a legal secretary from Santa Monica who was killed at age 32. Her naked body was found on June 24, 1978, in the laundry room of a large apartment complex in El Segundo
As part of their probe, investigators found hundreds of pictures of young boys and girls in a Seattle storage locker rented by Alcala.
Some were released by the Huntington Beach Police Department in 2010 amid fears those depicted may have been additional cold case victims from unsolved disappearances or murders.
Among the photographs were also a series of trophies from some of his victims, such as jewelry, including a pair of gold earrings that matched the description of those worn by Robin on the day she disappeared.
Four years after he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, he appealed his case and won a new trial. He was later tried and convicted again, receiving the death sentence for a second time.
He launched a second successful appeal in 2001 and went for trial a third time.
When prosecutor Matt Murphy took up the case in 2003, he reexamined the evidence found at Alcala’s storage locker for DNA.
Some of the DNA unearthed matched that of four other woman who were either found dead or disappeared during the 1970s, confirming Alcala to be a serial killer.
Now 77, Alcala (in 2013) is currently incarcerated at Corcoran State Prison. His execution has been postponed indefinitely because of a moratorium on the death penalty instituted by California State in 2019
As part of their investigation, investigators found hundreds pictures of young boys and girls in a Seattle storage locker rented by Alcala. They were released by the Huntington Beach Police Department in 2010 amid fears some of those depicted may have been additional cold case victims (two are shown above)
One of the victims was 19-year-old Jill Barcomb, whose body was found at the side of a road in Los Angeles in 1977, having had her face mutilated and with ligatures around her neck.
Alcala was also found to have murdered 27-year-old nurse Georgia Wixted who was found naked an brutalized in Malibu in 1977; Charlotte Lamb, whose body was found strangled and raped in an apartment complex miles away from her home in June 1978; and Jill Parenteau, a 21-year-old college student who was found raped and murdered in her bedroom in June 1979.
Alcala was convicted of those women’s murders in 2010, then 66, and sentenced to death.
He later pleaded guilty to two more murders in New York City in 1977 and 1978, and then later charged in 2016 with the murder of Christine Thornton in the summer of 1977.
Now 77, Alcala is currently incarcerated at Corcoran State Prison. He denies murdering Thornton.
His execution has been postponed indefinitely because of a moratorium on the death penalty instituted by California State in 2019.
The two-hour 20/20 special The Dating Game Killer airs on Friday, January 8 at 9:00 p.m. ET on ABC.
