Rodney Alcala was a popular figure in the West Village in the early 1970s, charming and handsome. A ladies’ man with a genius IQ, he was a photographer, and studied film under director Roman Polanski. He made his living selling pictures, or working part-time as a security guard and camp counselor.
He was also, New York investigators now believe, a coldblooded murderer – perhaps the most prolific serial killer in the city’s history.
Alcala, who has been on and off California’s death row for a murder there, was only recently linked to two killings in New York through DNA evidence. And cold-case detectives think he may be involved in many more.
“This guy is the devil,” said one investigator. “He’s very personable, good-looking. It’s easy to get in with this guy. He likes women with good shapes. He convinces them to let him take their photos.”
Alcala spent about three years here at different times, enrolling at NYU with a fake name when he arrived in 1968.
Detectives said that on June 12, 1971, he raped, bit and strangled Cornelia Crilley, a 23-year-old TWA flight attendant, in her apartment at 427 E. 83rd St. – in an area called the “girl belt” because it was favored by stewardesses and secretaries.
The killing matches the pattern of California murders to which Alcala has been linked. Many of the victims were bitten or strangled. Most were sexually assaulted.
“He likes to bash their faces in,” Orange County prosecutor Matt Murphy said. “And he was into ligature strangulation.”
Crilley was strangled with her own pantyhose, police said.
Cops are not sure how he allegedly killed heiress Ellen Jane Hover, 23, who disappeared after leaving her apartment at 686 Third Ave. near 44th Street in Manhattan on July 15, 1977.
Her murder made headlines nationwide.
Hover’s father, Herman, ran a famed Hollywood nightclub, Ciro’s, and her godfathers were Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. Her stepfather, Ruben Schwartz, a wealthy Garment District lawyer, offered a $100,000 reward.
A year later, her bones were found on the grounds of the Rockefeller estate in North Tarrytown, Westchester County – near where Alcala had photographed other women, according to police.
The death of Crilley “is still there; it lingers,” said her boyfriend from the time, Leon Borstein, now 69. “It had a profound influence on me. Her parents loved her so much. They were so distraught.”
Detectives said they aren’t sure how many people Alcala might have killed while in New York between 1968 and 1971 and again in 1977.
“I personally wouldn’t say it’s more than 50 total, including the ones we know about in California, but it’s hard to say,” said Steve Mack, a retired homicide investigator in Huntington Beach, Calif., who worked on the case for years. “He’s a sexually sadistic serial killer.”
Said Murphy, “He was active around the same time as Ted Bundy, and I think he’s probably got more victims.”
Bundy confessed to killing 30 people between 1974 and 1978.
Alcala, 65, has been on death row since 1980 for kidnapping and killing 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, who vanished near the Huntington Beach Pier as she rode her bicycle to a ballet lesson on June 20, 1979.
Her badly decomposed remains were found 12 days later.
Cops put together a composite sketch of a suspect from witnesses, which two patrol cops saw and concluded that Alcala, a local known to them, was their man.
But he wasn’t arrested until July 24, 1979, after an Orange County detective saw Alcala on TV – as a contestant on the old “Dating Game” show.
The killer had been selected to be Bachelor No. 1, and he won the date. The woman refused to go out with him.
Alcala is now facing his third trial in the Samsoe murder and new charges that he killed four women in the Los Angeles area between 1977 and 1979 – one of whom, Jill Barcomb, 18, was from Brooklyn.
Police are only now unraveling the extent of his crimes after Alcala was forced to provide a DNA sample in 2002.
Cops working the Crilley case in the 1970s had found saliva, and a new group of investigators did DNA testing on it and linked Alcala to the wound. They also matched a mold of Alcala’s teeth to the bite.
“We’re just holding back now; we have to wait for California,” said a local law-enforcement source, referring to Alcala’s upcoming trial.
In the Hover probe, Alcala became a suspect years ago.
She had written the name of an alias he used, John Berger, on her appointment calendar for the day she disappeared. But now Westchester cops have tied him to the body through forensic evidence, police said.
A cold-case cop from New York interviewed Alcala in California, and said he as much as admitted to the crimes.
“He made incriminating statements,” the detective said. “He ridiculed us for taking so long and coming out to talk to him 30 years later. He called us stupid.”
Evidence includes hundreds of photos he stashed at a Seattle storage facility that Huntington Beach cops found in July 1979.
The photos, including some from New York, show Alcala having sex with girls and women, some of whom could have been additional victims, detectives believe.
There was also a silk pouch with jewelry.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has been working on a case against him in the Crilley homicide, but the effort has been hampered by missing evidence, witnesses who died, and the California trial, according to a source at the office.
Los Angeles County prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty against Alcala on the four new cases if he is convicted – another possible roadblock to charging him in New York.
Alcala’s attorney, George Peters, did not return calls seeking comment.