Serial murder suspect’s ‘Dating Game’ clip shown at trial

The 20-second video clip shown to an Orange County jury Tuesday was a brief moment out of time.

In it, serial murder suspect Rodney James Alcala, bachelor No. 1 in a 1978 episode of “The Dating Game,” and the young woman who chose him blow kisses to the audience and dance in place. His hair is shoulder-length, straightened and feathered. His brown suit has wide lapels and his white shirt has the top buttons undone.

“You have to watch really closely when it plays because it’s just a flash,” Alcala told the jury just before the video was projected on a large screen.

Alcala, who worked as a typesetter for the Los Angeles Times until a few months before his game show appearance, has twice been convicted of the murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe and sentenced to death. Each conviction was overturned. With the passage of time and the development of DNA testing, detectives said they tied Alcala to the slayings of four Los Angeles County women in Malibu, Santa Monica and Hollywood between 1977 and 1979.

The “it” Alcala was referring to Tuesday is an earring he contends he was wearing when the show was taped in 1978. Prosecutors say the earring was taken from Samsoe in 1979. But even Alcala conceded that the video did little to bolster his case. The resolution was low, he said, and it made it look as if he had on one long earring when he was wearing two.

Alcala, who is acting as his own attorney, was allowed to play the video Tuesday during his testimony. Over five hours, a packed courtroom watched as Alcala took the stand and answered his own questions.

In a soft-spoken tone that was at times inaudible, Alcala asked himself detailed questions meant to show that he was not the person who kidnapped Samsoe from the streets of Huntington Beach and killed her.

Alcala is also accused of raping and killing Jill Barcomb, 18, whose body was found in the Hollywood Hills; Georgia Wixted, 27, of Malibu; Charlotte Lamb, 32, of Santa Monica; and Jill Parenteau, 21, of Burbank.

During the monthlong trial, the defendant has repeatedly demonstrated that he is most concerned with proving his innocence in the Samsoe case. He has only occasionally attempted to mount a defense in the Los Angeles County cases. On Tuesday he ignored them almost entirely.

“I think the evidence speaks for itself,” said Bruce Barcomb, Jill Barcomb’s brother, speaking of Alcala’s decision to avoid the cases. “He’s had four years to plan and it’s just too irrefutable.”

Unlike the Los Angeles County cases, there is no DNA, blood or fingerprint evidence linking Alcala to Samsoe’s death.

In the first two hours of testimony, Alcala, dressed in a tan sports coat and jeans, asked himself a series of broad questions, such as “What was the next thing you did, Mr. Alcala?” and “After that, what did you do, Mr. Alcala?”

He told the jury that on June 20, 1979, the day Samsoe disappeared, he went to Seal Beach to visit a friend. He testified that the friend wasn’t there so he went to a picture frame store and then headed toward Sunset Beach and took photos of a young woman roller-skating. From there, he went to Knott’s Berry Farm, he said.

For nearly 20 minutes Alcala told jurors how, after several years in prison, he realized he could use the angle of shadows in the photos he took to estimate what time of day he snapped them and thus provide an alibi.

Prosecutor Matt Murphy initially objected to the testimony, saying that Alcala is hardly an expert in such matters. He withdrew his objections after Alcala told the judge that his calculations proved that he was at the beach at 2:22 p.m. that day.

The time is not inconsistent with what prosecutors say happened. According to the prosecution, Alcala approached Samsoe and a friend on the beach and took their photos after taking pictures of Lorraine Werts, the roller-skater.

Samsoe disappeared soon after as she rode her bike to ballet class. Her remains were found nearly two weeks later in the Angeles National Forest.

The prosecution’s cross-examination of Alcala is scheduled to begin Wednesday morning.

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com