Reflections on My 1972 Arrest of Rodney “Dating Game Killer” Alcala

May 20, 2026
Birch Bay, Washington

Reflections on My 1972 Arrest of Rodney “Dating Game Killer” Alcala

         1968-Victim Tali Shapiro                      Dets  Hodel/Fletcher  “FBI Most Wanted” Arrest Warrant

Back in 1972, after my partner Sgt. Audrey Fletcher and I helped bring Rodney Alcala into custody for the kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder of eight-year-old Tali Shapiro, I believed society was finally safe from him.

We had obtained an arrest warrant, and I personally extradited him from the East Coast, and sent him to prison for the Hollywood rape/attempted murder crime he committed against 8-year-old, Tali Shapiro.

At the time, California operated under what was known as an indeterminate sentencing system. Alcala received a sentence of “1 to 99 years.” To investigators like myself, that meant he would likely spend decades behind bars. Given the brutality of the crime and Alcala’s obvious predatory behavior, I fully expected he would remain incarcerated for at least twenty years, if not longer.

But under the system then in place, prison psychiatrists and parole boards had enormous influence over how long violent offenders actually served. Once prison evaluators declared an inmate rehabilitated, early release became possible.

In Alcala’s case, one prison psychiatrist reportedly concluded he was “good to go.”

Less than three years later, Rodney Alcala was back on the streets.

Years afterward, the public would come to know him as the “Dating Game Killer,” linked to the murders of multiple young women across several states. Many of those deaths occurred after his release.

That fact has stayed with me for over fifty years.

The tragedy here is not that law enforcement failed to identify Alcala as dangerous. Detectives working the case recognized early on that we were dealing with an extremely violent sexual predator. The tragedy is that the criminal justice and psychiatric systems of that era still believed certain offenders could simply be rehabilitated and safely returned to society.

History proved otherwise.

In recent years, renewed public attention through documentaries and television specials has brought the Alcala case back into focus. I participated in several interviews discussing the original investigation and arrest, including the Tali Shapiro case and Alcala’s later release.

For readers interested in additional background and interview footage, the news video can be viewed here:

— Steve Hodel
LAPD Detective III Hollywood Homicide (ret.)

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