Nine Women ID'd in Serial Killer's Photos

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP)  -- Orange County police have identified nine of the women seen in more than 100 photos found in a storage locker rented by convicted serial killer Rodney Alcala. The women are all alive, and they called Huntington Beach detectives after seeing their images posted online by the Orange County Register.

Police fear there are still unknown victims of Alcala, who was convicted last month of murdering a 12-year-old girl and four women and is awaiting sentencing.

They still want to identify the women and children shown in the other 90 plus photos. Police found the photos when they searched Alcala's storage locker in Seattle. A jury has recommended he be executed.

Prosecutors say Alcala used his camera to lure his victims, and he was seen taking pictures of the girl before she disappeared. They fear some of the unidentified people in the photos released last week may have fallen victim to Alcala as well.

 

"The first thing is, 'Oh, my God, I hope these girls are OK,' and the next thing is, 'I wonder if any of them are victims.' Everyone has that question," prosecutor Matt Murphy said. "I can't imagine for a million years that we've got him for the only murders he's done."

The photos, available on the Orange County District Attorney's Web site, are just a fraction of the more than 1,000 images investigators found in Alcala's storage locker when he was arrested for the 1979 murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe in Huntington Beach.

They show leggy teenagers in bikinis and short-shorts on Southern California's sun-splashed beaches; young women in flowery blouses and hippie necklaces listening to music and smoking languidly; and girls wearing heavy makeup, apparently posing nude.

One photo shows a baby in a saggy diaper toddling near the shoreline, and another shows two young children in swimsuits washing off in an open-air shower on the beach.

Detectives have withheld about 900 pictures because they are too sexually explicit, while others have been cropped for release, said Huntington Beach police Capt. Chuck Thomas. He said he didn't know why his predecessors didn't release the photos years ago.

Releasing the pictures during Alcala's recent trial could have influenced the jury pool or could have jeopardized the verdict and death penalty recommendation on appeal.

Alcala, who represented himself at trial, did not respond to a request for a jailhouse interview about the newly released photos.