Robin Samsoe

On June 20, 1979, twelve-year-old Robin Christine Samsoe was riding her bicycle from the beach to a ballet class in Huntington Beach, California. She never arrived. Earlier that day, a man had been taking photographs of Robin and her friend on the beach; the friend later identified him as Rodney Alcala.

Robin's body was found twelve days later in the foothills of the Angeles National Forest. She had been sexually assaulted and murdered. A pair of earrings found in Alcala's storage locker were identified by Robin's mother as belonging to her daughter, helping to link Alcala to the crime.

Rodney Alcala was a convicted sex offender who had appeared as a contestant on the television show 'The Dating Game' in 1978, earning him the nickname 'The Dating Game Killer.' He was a photographer who used his camera as a lure for potential victims. Alcala was tried three times for Robin's murder—his first two convictions were overturned on appeal—before being finally convicted in 2010.

During the 2010 trial, prosecutors also charged Alcala with four additional murders in Los Angeles County from the 1970s. He was convicted of all five counts and sentenced to death. DNA evidence later linked him to two additional murders in New York in the 1970s, for which he pleaded guilty. Investigators believe Alcala may have murdered dozens more, based on hundreds of unidentified photographs of women and children found in his possession. Alcala died on death row in 2021.