‘Woman of the Hour’ True Story: What to Know About Rodney Alcala, the Dating Game Killer

Woman of the Hour, Netflix’s new based-on-true-story serial killer movie, will make you thankful you don’t live in the 1970s. Serial killers could really do whatever they wanted back then!

In her directorial debut, Anna Kendrick is taking viewers back to the year 1978, for a crime thriller based on the true story of serial killer Rodney Alcala (played by Daniel Zovatto), who made an appearance on a TV game show in the middle of his killing spree. In addition to directing, Kendrick also stars fellow contestant, Cheryl Bradshaw, the unlucky woman who ultimately chooses a serial killer as the winner of The Dating Game. 

Woman of the Hour was written by Ian McDonald, and also stars Tony Hale, Nicolette Robinson, Kathryn Gallagher, Pete Holmes, and Autumn Best. No doubt it’s going to have many viewers fascinated by this stranger-than-fiction true story of The Dating Game killer. Read on to learn more about the real Rodney Alcala and his victims.

Is Woman of the Hour based on a true story?

Woman of the Hour is based on the true story of serial killer Rodney Alcala (played by Daniel Zovatto), who made an appearance on the TV game show, The Dating Game, in the middle of his killing spree in 1978. Anna Kendrick stars as Cheryl Bradshaw, the real Dating Game contestant who was on the show with Alcala, and ultimately chose him as the winner. (Kendrick’s character is spelled “Sheryl” with an “S,” in a somewhat confusing attempt to differentiate the character from the real person.)

Who was Rodney Alcala, the Dating Game killer?

Rodney Alcala was a convicted serial killer and sex offender from Texas, who was found guilty of murdering five women in California between the years 1977 and 1979, two woman in New York City before that, and is suspected of killing many more—as many as 130 victims, according to some. According to a 2010 People profile, Alcala graduated from UCLA, and, as you hear him say in the film, took a film class there with convicted rapist and Rosemary’s Baby director Roman Polanski. After college, Alcala was an amateur photographer who lured his victims in by first asking them to model for him. In 2010, investigators into five of Alcala’s murders found “hundreds of pictures of women Alcala photographed,” which they made available to the public in an attempt to identify more victims.

In 1968, a motorist witness Alcala lure an 8-year-old girl into his Los Angeles apartment. When police arrived on the scene, the girl was found severely beaten with a steel bar—but Alcala manage to escape. He was arrested in 1971 for rape and assault of a young girl, and again in 1974 for breaking his parole. But managed to avoid significant prison time, and even got a job as a typesetter for the Los Angeles Times—even though he was a registered sex offender at the time.

In 1978, Alcala appeared as “Bachelor No. 1” on The Dating Game, where he was introduced by host Jim Lange as “a successful photographer who got his start when his father found him in the dark room at the age of 13, fully developed. Between takes you might find him skydiving or motor-cycling. Please welcome Rodney Alcala.” The full episode is no longer available, but you can still find clips of Alcala’s Dating Game episode on YouTube.

One of the other contestants that day, Jed Mills, later recounted his experience with Alcala years later in an interview with CNN. “He was creepy. Definitely creepy,” Mills said. “Something about him, I could not be near him. I am kind of bending toward the other guy to get away from him, and I don’t know if I did that consciously. But thinking back on that, I probably did.”

Mills also said, in an interview with Inside Edition, that Alcala told him, “I always get the girl,” which is a line featured in Woman of the Hour. Even though she chose Alcala as the winning bachelor, the real Bradshaw reportedly refused to go out with Alcala after the show.

Alcala was finally arrested for murder in 1979, for killing 12-year-old Robin Christine Samsoe, whose dumped body was found by authorities in Los Angeles. The girl’s friends told police that before her death she’d been approached by a strange man on the beach. The resulting police sketch was recognized by Alcala’s parole officer, and authorities found Samsoe’s earrings in a locker rented by Alcala.

Where is Rodney Alcala now?

Alcala went to prison after Samsoe’s murder, but thanks to a string of complicated legal technicalities, he was not properly sentenced until 2010, when he stood trial for five murder charges. In the trial, Alcala acted as his own attorney, and offered a rambled, disjointed, and ineffective defense. He was found guilty of all five counts, and sentenced to death—but his execution was put on hold after the state of California’s 2019 moratorium on the death penalty. A year later, he was charged with two more murders in New York by the Manhattan supreme court, and in 2013, sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. In 2021, Alcala died of natural causes at the age of 77, while he was incarcerated at Corcoran State Prison in California.

How accurate is Woman of the Hour to the true story of Rodney Alcala and Cheryl Bradshaw?

Alcala really did appear on The Dating Game, and a few moments of that Dating Game episode were recreated faithfully in the film—including the host’s condescending joke about contestant Cheryl Bradshaw quitting her job as a foot masseuse when her boss asked her to “work her way up.”

However, most of the other details surrounding Bradshaw in the movie, and her time on The Dating Game, were invented for the movie. The real Bradshaw was not an actor, she was a drama teacher. And she certainly did not start grilling the bachelors about philosophy and astronomy, as we see her do in the film.

In an interview for the Woman of the Hour press notes, Kendrick called her character “the most fictionalized piece of the movie.” She also explained that, because the full episode is no longer available, screenwriter Ian McDonald “used the opportunity to almost write the fantasy version of what we all wish we could have said in a pivotal moment, but usually only say to ourselves in the shower a week later.”

Kendrick added that while the real Alcala and Bradshaw did not go out for a drink after the show, as they do in the film, “We know that the real Rodney Alcala and Cheryl Bradshaw had a conversation after the show that made her decide to forgo the prize date that she won. We don’t know what went on in that conversation, so in the film we’re imagining what happened.”

Another character invented for the film was Laura, played by Nicolette Robinson, an audience member at The Dating Game who recognizes Alcala as the suspicious man seen with her best friend before she was killed. In reality, Alcala was not recognized by anyone on the game show—or, if he was, we don’t know about it.

In an interview for the film press notes, Robinson said, “Laura isn’t based on a real person, but her best friend, Allison, who’s killed by Rodney, is based on an actual victim.” Robinson didn’t specify which victim Allison is based on, but judging by the few details shown in the film—Allison’s dead body sprawled out in the bedroom of a beachside apartment—it seems she most closely resembles real-life victim Georgia Marie Wixted. Wixted’s body was found naked and strangled in the bedroom of her Malibu apartment, after a coworker reported her missing to the police. She was 27. It should be noted that in real-life, Alcala murdered Wixted after he appeared on The Dating Game, not before.

Another real-life victim depicted in the film is Cornelia Crilley, a 23-year-old flight attendant murdered by Alcala in her Upper Eastside Manhattan apartment in 1971, by strangling her. Her murder wasn’t linked to Alcala until 2009, when advances in DNA testing were able to link evidence found at the scene to Alcala. Cornelia Crilley was renamed “Charlie” in the movie, and played by actor Kathryn Gallagher.

In an interview for the press notes, Gallagher said, “I know we changed her name and other details in the film, but one of Alcala’s first victims was a flight attendant in New York City. It’s known that there was a window open. And she was likely one of 130 other women he reportedly killed, but this wasn’t determined until much later.”

The final real-life victim depicted in the film was 15-year-old Monique Hoyt, who is named “Amy” in the movie, and played by actor Autumn Best. According to an LA Weekly article covering Alcala’s 2010 trial—during which Hoyt testified as a victim—Hoyt was hitchhiking as a teenager, and was picked up by Alcala. According to her testimony, “Alcala brutally raped and strangled the girl but she cleverly convinced the psychopath that she wanted to continue their relationship.”

In an interview for the film press notes, Autumn Best said she researched the real Hoyt in preparation for the role. “I read about how she immediately left the US after she was attacked and didn’t really want to participate in the trial, but she ultimately did,” Best said. “To me, it felt like she was holding so much in, and in order to heal she had to completely remove herself from everything and that restraint is what ultimately saved her.”

So there you have it. Woman of the Hour is definitely based on a true story, and dramatizes Alcala’s real-life victims. However, liberties and assumptions were made, in order to fill in gaps and tell a more compelling story. That’s Hollywod for you!