Accused killer of Huntington Beach girl to represent himself in 3rd trial

Rodney James Alcala has been sentenced to death twice after being convicted of killing a 12-year-old Huntington Beach girl who was kidnapped as she rode her bicycle to ballet class. Twice those convictions were reversed on appeal.

Now Alcala, who has been behind bars for three decades, is on trial a third time and has chosen to represent himself.

This time he is charged not only in Robin Samsoe’s death but in the murders of four Los Angeles County women.

Starting in 2001, while Alcala’s second conviction was going through the appeals process, Los Angeles County investigators discovered DNA evidence they say links Alcala to the murders of women who were sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled in the two years before Samsoe’s murder.

Opening statements in the case are scheduled to begin today at Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana. A California Supreme Court decision allowed the case to go forward despite involving two counties. Prosecutors from Orange and Los Angeles counties will try the case.

Alcala has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Samsoe disappeared June 20, 1979. According to court records, she and a friend were playing at the beach when a man approached and asked to take their picture. The friend later identified the man as Alcala. Not long after the pictures were taken, Samsoe borrowed her friend’s bicycle to go to ballet class. She was never seen alive again. Her remains were discovered two weeks later in the Angeles National Forest.

A seasonal forestry worker testified in Alcala’s first trial that the day Samsoe was abducted, she came upon a man near a Datsun F-10 car -- like one Alcala drove -- who was pushing a blond girl toward a stream bed.

Twelve days later, Samsoe’s mutilated body was discovered nearby by another forestry worker, according to court records. The first worker did not report what she had seen until after the girl’s body was found.

Alcala was arrested soon after and was convicted in 1980, exactly one year after Samsoe disappeared. He was sentenced to die but won a new trial in 1984 after the state Supreme Court said evidence about his other crimes had been improperly allowed. He had been convicted in 1972 of raping and beating an 8-year-old girl. He has also admitted to molesting another child and raping and beating a 15-year-old girl.

At the second trial, the first forestry worker claimed amnesia and did not testify, but her previous testimony was read into the record. Alcala was again convicted and sentenced to death. But in 2001 that conviction was overturned on grounds that Alcala’s lawyers should have been allowed to introduce a psychologist’s testimony casting doubt on the amnesia claim. Alcala’s attorney was also faulted for not properly presenting evidence to support his client’s alibi.

The new charges against Alcala involve slayings that took place from 1977 to 1979:

* In November 1977, the body of Jill Barcomb, 18, was found on a remote dirt road in the Hollywood Hills. She had been sexually assaulted, bludgeoned and strangled.

* In December 1977, the nude body of nurse Georgia Wixted, 27, was found in her Malibu apartment. She had been beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled.

* In June 1978, legal secretary Charlotte Lamb, 32, of Santa Monica was found in the laundry room of an El Segundo apartment complex. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with a shoelace.

* In June 1979, just days before Samsoe was abducted, Jill Parenteau, 21, was found sexually assaulted and strangled in her Burbank apartment.

Special circumstances allegations in each case make Alcala again eligible for the death penalty.

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com