14 DAY TRIAL // Dating Game killer Rodney Alcala has been sentenced for a series of murders dating back to the 1970s.
69-year-old Alcala pleaded guilty and got 25 years to life for two murders he committed in New York, Sky News reports.
In California, he is facing the death penalty for five counts of felony murder. He planned to confess and plead guilty to the crimes in New York, so that he could appeal the guilty ruling in California.
The New York victims were 23-year-old Cornelia Crilley and Ellen Hover, both living in Manhattan. Crilley was killed in her apartment in 1971. She was found there, strangled with a stocking.
Hover went missing 6 years later, from the city. Her body was recovered in a wooded suburban area. The horrific details of the crime were enough to bring even the judge to the verge of an emotional outburst. She held her head in her hand after dishing out the sentence, and struggled to hold back her tears.
“This kind of case is something I've never experienced - hope to never again,” Judge Bonnie Whittner said.
Evidence for the New York case came to light as investigators researched the California murders. In 2010, Alcala was convicted of killing 5 people in the state, throughout the 1970s. The victims were all female, one being a 12-year-old girl.
Alcala got his infamous nickname from appearing in the show “The Dating Game,” in 1978. During his trial, he showed a clip of himself playing Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie on the program.
Following a California investigation, he was revisited by a detective in 2005 concerning the 2 murders. He had been a suspect in Hover's case for more than a decade.
When he met with the officer and found out he was from New York, he allegedly asked him, “What took you so long?”