Dating Game Video Played in Murder Trial

Santa Ana - A suspected serial killer, who's acting as his own attorney, took the unusual step today of asking questions of himself in the third person as he tried to establish that he didn't know a 12-year-old Huntington Beach girl he's accused of killing in 1979.

In what was already an unorthodox trial, Orange County Superior Court Judge Francisco Briseno briefed jurors about the "tad awkward" situation in which Rodney Alcala would be on the witness stand instead of the defense table. 

Alcala, a former photographer, started his questioning by displaying photographs of himself during 1979 with various hair styles in an apparent attempt to create doubt about composite sketches based on accounts of witnesses who said they saw Alcala taking photos of Robin Samsoe shortly before she was abducted and killed on June 20, 1979.

"Rodney, will you please tell us about your hair?" said Alcala as he began questioning himself.

In great detail, he described for the jury his actions in the days leading up to the girl's slaying, from a trip to San Francisco on June 17, 1979, to babysitting his sister's children June 19, ending with a date in Pasadena to see a movie.

"OK, Mr. Alcala, what did you do on June 20?" the bespectacled Alcala, now sporting long curly gray hair, asked himself.

He said he had a "plan" to visit with a friend, Julie, in Seal Beach and then go to a store in Costa Mesa, where he wanted to buy custom-made frames for photographs.

Alcala said he left his Monterey Park home about noon and drove to Seal Beach. His friend Julie was not home, he said, so he decided to drive to the frame shop.

On the way there, he saw two teenagers roller-skating near 19th Street and Pacific Coast Highway.

Alcala testified that he asked the girls if he could take pictures of them and that one of the girls, who was in a bikini, agreed. He said he used his camera to take sequential photographs of the girl skating toward and away from him.

In his 1986 trial in the Samsoe killing -- he was convicted but the case was overturned on appeal -- he testified it was about 1 p.m. when he took the photographs. But in 1988, he said he realized he could get a more accurate time by calculating the angle of the sun from the girl's shadow.

Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy objected, arguing Alcala had not laid a foundation for his expertise at calculating the sun's angle. Alcala responded that any high school student who had taken geometry could have done the same thing.

When Briseno asked what Alcala was trying to establish with the evidence, he said he wanted to tell the jury he took the girl's pictures at 2:22 p.m.

Murphy immediately withdrew his objection, apparently because it put Alcala's location to Robin closer to the time she would have been reported missing.

She was abducted while riding a yellow Schwinn bike to a ballet class, which started about 3:20 p.m., her brothers Tim and Robert said outside the courtroom.

Alcala has been trying to show he was at Knott's Berry Farm about 3 p.m. that day. He said after he took the pictures, he went to the amusement park to try to get a job taking pictures of teenagers in a weekend disco contest.

But former Knott's workers who remember Alcala being there in 1979 have testified he came by the office at lunch time, Murphy said.

In tackling another part of his defense, Alcala told jurors he got his ears pierced in 1978. That point is aimed at showing that the gold ball earrings police found in Alcala's possession were his own, not Robin's as her mother has claimed.

To that end, Alcala this afternoon showed a portion of a video of himself as a contestant on "The Dating Game" in the summer of 1978. He showed the jury a still photograph from the video that he said proves he was wearing gold ball earrings.

At the end of the video, when Alcala and the others on the game show wave goodbye to the audience, he tilts his head back and the earrings show, Alcala testified.

The nearly 10-minute video of Alcala on the game show as victorious "Bachelor No. 1" surfaced Thursday on YouTube.

Briseno was skeptical about showing the video to the jury, but when Murphy did not object, he agreed to let Alcala have his way.

Alcala is on trial for a third time for the Samsoe slaying, but this time he's also defending himself against charges of killing four women in the late 1970s in Los Angeles County.

"The only good part about all this is it was Robin's case that took him off the streets," Tim Samsoe said outside the courtroom.

The girl's body was dumped in the foothills of Sierra Madre.

Alcala is also charged with the killings of Jill Barcomb, 18, in a remote area of the Hollywood Hills on Nov. 10, 1977; Georgia Wixted, 27, a registered nurse killed Dec. 16, 1978; Charlotte Lamb, 32, killed June 24, 1978; and Jill Parenteau, 21, who was slain on June 14, 1979.