Disclaimer: This article contains mentions of murder and assault. Reader discretion is advised.
Rodney Alcala’s survivors, Morgan Rowan and Tali Shapiro, were young girls when the Dating Game Killer attacked them, per People Magazine. Investigation Discovery’s People Magazine Investigates: Surviving A Serial Killer recently looked into the survivors’ story. The six-part series premiered on Sunday, May 5, 2024. A press release states that the show “takes back the narrative of their lives by sharing the disturbing yet empowering accounts of how they escaped the clutches of a serial killer.”
Alcala, known as the Dating Game Killer, committed a series of murders in Orange County and New York. The serial killer reportedly preyed on women and girls between 1971 and 1979, per The New York Times. He stood trial for the murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe multiple times and received a death penalty each time. Eventually, investigators used DNA evidence to link him to several other murders. He was convicted of five murders in California in 2010. Later, the killer pleaded guilty to two other murder charges in New York.
People Magazine stated that there were two other girls Rodney Alcala had attacked, but these girls survived. One survivor, Tali Shapiro, was eight years old when Alcala beat her up and sexually assaulted her in 1968. The second Alcala survivor, Morgan Rowan, spoke for the first time. Rowan was 16 when the serial killer attacked her in 1968.
What did Rodney Alcala’s survivors, Morgan Rowan and Tali Shapiro, reveal about their experience?
Rodney Alcala survivors spoke about their harrowing experiences in an episode of People Magazine Investigates: Surviving A Serial Killer. Per the outlet, Morgan Rowan and Tali Shapiro detail Alcala’s attacks on them when they were girls in the 60s. Rowan talked about the incident for the first time decades after the serial killer attacked and raped her. She was only 16 when the Dating Game Killer sexually assaulted her. The incident occurred during a party at the latter’s home in Hollywood, California.
Rowan’s case first surfaced in 2021, proving that Alcala’s crimes began long before he attacked Tali Shapiro. Until then, authorities had believed that Shapiro was the serial killer’s first survivor in 1968. He reportedly kidnapped, beat, and raped the then-eight-year-old in Palm Springs. However, months before that, he had assaulted Rowan, who expressed her guilt for not reporting the incident to authorities sooner.
According to the Washington Examiner, Morgan Rowan first met Rodney Alcala on the Sunset Strip, where she often spent time partying. She and her friends reportedly got into Alcala’s car, who was then in his 20s. He then drove them to his apartment nearby and claimed he was having a party. There, while Rowan’s friends enjoyed the party, the serial killer beat and raped the 16-year-old in his barred room.
Rowan told the outlet that she believed she “was going to die” that night. The survivor went on to describe the incident, “He [Alcala] tied my hands and put a belt in my mouth and punched me in the stomach until I vomited blood, and it was filling my lungs. I was drowning, and his rage was so apparent I knew he would kill me.
The Dating Game Killer’s survivor claimed he then “started to strangle me, and then I just felt myself drifting.” However, her concerned friends began searching for her and saved her by breaking into the barred room using a window.
A few months later, in September 1968, Rodney Alcala attacked Tali Shapiro in Palm Springs, California, per The New York Times. Shapiro, then eight, was walking to school when Alcala kidnapped her and took the girl to his apartment, where he raped her. Authorities later found Shapiro brutally beaten, with blood all over herself and no clothes on.
Both Morgan Rowan and Tali Shapiro are survivors of Rodney Alcala and his violent crimes. His killing spree reportedly ended in 1979 and the following year marked the first of his many convictions. Alcala died of natural causes on July 24, 2021, while serving time on California’s death row. He was 77 at the time.
A new episode of People Magazine investigates: Surviving A Serial Killer airs every Sunday on Investigation Discovery.
