Street Name Linked to Slaying Will Be Changed

Less than a mile from where a young girl was abducted 25 years ago, a Huntington Beach street was inadvertently given the same name as her accused killer by a developer looking for names to fit the new neighborhood’s Spanish theme.

But when a detective saw that a burglary was reported at a model in the townhouse community on Alcala Circle, he contacted the SeaCove homes developer and insisted that the name be changed.

The coincidence was almost too eerie for Det. Steve Mack to believe: Rodney James Alcala, 61, is awaiting his third trial on charges that he kidnapped and killed 12-year-old Robin Samsoe as she bicycled to a ballet lesson on June 20, 1979.

“It kind of offended my senses,” said Mack, who was a patrol officer when Robin vanished. “I didn’t want Robin’s mother to ever find out that street was named Alcala.”

The case has had a continued impact on the city, Mack said, because it has taken so long to be resolved. Alcala has twice been convicted and sentenced to death for murdering Robin, but the most recent conviction was overturned in April 2001 after justices on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Alcala’s lawyers should have been allowed more opportunity to prove their client’s alibi that he was applying for a photographer job at Knott’s Berry Farm when Robin was kidnapped. Alcala’s new trial is set to start in the spring.

The street in the Mediterranean seaside-style community near Pacific Coast Highway had originally been named Mesquita, or mosque. But police asked the developer to change the name because it would have confused dispatchers if they thought someone was phoning in about a mosque.

The second pick was Alcala, a university town near Madrid as well as a bustling thoroughfare in Spain’s capital. But it couldn’t have been less appropriate in Huntington Beach, Mack said.

A representative of the development, a high-end William Lyon Homes project behind the waterfront Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort and Spa, said company officials quickly saw the need for the name change upon learning about the issue.

“The name had just been a random name that seemed to fit the theme of the community,” said Carl Morabito, a project manager for SeaCove. “But we’re obviously in support of changing it just as soon as we can.”

Mack said he believes the name change, to Veleta Circle, will be finalized at the Jan. 3 City Council meeting.

Because no one is living on the street yet, altering its name is relatively simple, he said.

“That made it a lot easier, that none of them had been sold yet,” he said. “It was good timing for us to discover this.”