
Woman of the Hour: The chilling true story of Cheryl Bradshaw and serial killer Rodney Alcala
As Anna Kendrick directs Netflix’s hottest new crime film, we delve into the true story of how a young drama teacher from LA diced with death when she picked a serial killer for a date
Anyone familiar with the world of dating in 2024 will know the most common way to meet a love interest nowadays is via an app – but it wasn’t always this way. Step back in time to the post-war 1950s and courting began at dances and discos at your local community hall, or thanks to your mum or aunt setting you up with a similarly-aged “lovely young man” a few doors down. By the Eighties and Nineties, however, the romantic climate had become saturated, complicated, and difficult, leaving young people in their twenties with little luck of finding their happily ever after the old-fashioned way. That was until the bright sparks at television centres across the globe decided it would be a brilliant idea to put two strangers on live TV and call themselves cupid. Enter the dating show era.
It’s an era we’re still very familiar with – think Love Island and Married at First Sight – and proves the dating show has enduring appeal. Why? Because it harks back to a bygone era, because it eliminates the need to ‘put yourself out there’ in real life, and because it reaffirms the notion that love at first sight actually exists. And it was the latter that encouraged Cheryl Bradshaw to enter The Dating Game in 1978.

Now the subject of a new Netflix film starring Anna Kendrick, Bradshaw’s ordeal on The Dating Game – one of America’s most popular shows which aired on-and-off from 1965-2021 – hit the headlines when she unknowingly picked the witty and mysterious Rodney Alcala for a date, only to later discover he was harbouring a dangerous secret: he was both a convicted child predator and a serial killer.
Born and raised in California, Bradshaw was an aspiring actress and drama teacher who epitomised everything The Dating Game wanted from its ‘bachelorette’: an intelligent, shy, attractive woman who had suffered from a bit of hard luck in the world of dating. The show saw many notable faces pass through its Los Angeles set, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Farrah Fawcett, Tom Selleck, and Sally Field, but few made headlines quite like Rodney Alcala, who had been charged with rape, child molestation, sexual assault and attempted murder all before he even got onto the show.
The premise of the show was simple: a bachelorette would question three bachelors, who were hidden from view, before choosing one to accompany her on a date. Hosted by Jim Lange at the time, Bradshaw was tasked with asking her three prospective dates innocent questions to which Alcala answered, rather confidently, with creepy responses.
In one clip from the live show, Bradshaw asks “what’s your best time?”, to which Alcala replies “the best time is at night”. Later, she asked the bachelors to imagine themselves as a dish served for dinner, asking “what are you called and what do you look like?” Alcala replied: “I’m called the banana and I look good. Peel me.” Rather astoundingly, no one suspected a thing.
So how did such a dangerous man – someone who was on the FBI’s ten most wanted fugitives list for beating an eight-year-old girl in 1972, and who had previously served time for sexual assault – make his way onto one of America’s most popular shows? It, terrifyingly, came down to a lack of security checks.
Handsome, charming and funny, Alcala – who described himself as a successful photographer and amateur skydiver on The Dating Game – won several staff over at the initial audition, including talent coordinator Ellen Metzger who cast him. While her husband, executive producer Mike Metzger, admits retrospectively that Alcala “had a mystique about him that I found uncomfortable”, he not only got into the show’s hotseat, but bagged himself a tennis lesson date with the unassuming Bradshaw.
Post-show, Bradshaw called Metzger and, according to her interview with ABC’s 20/20, said “Ellen, I can’t go out with this guy. There’s weird vibes that are coming off of him. He’s very strange. I am not comfortable. Is that going to be a problem?” Metzger, of course, said no and the date never happened – but it’s this gut instinct that potentially saved Bradshaw’s life.

Rodney Alcala, circa 1979. Images: Alamy

Rodney Alcala circa 2012
Little is known about Bradshaw now, even with the furore surrounding Woman of the Hour, however Alcala’s heinous crimes were uncovered soon after the show aired. Although never proved in court, it’s believed Alcala’s dangerous streak began in 1968, when he lured eight-year-old Tali Shapiro into his Hollywood apartment before raping and beating her. When police found her, Alcala had fled and Shapiro spent 32 days in a coma and months in recovery. This kickstarted a spree of assaults and murders as Alcala moved to New York, was extradited to California and imprisoned before being released in 1976, and then moved to LA to work as a typesetter for the Los Angeles Times in 1978.
Unsurprisingly, Alcala abused this position to pose as a professional fashion photographer and compiled a collection of more than 1,000 explicit photographs of women, teenage girls and boys for his ‘portfolio’. An anonymous Los Angeles Times co-worker later told LA Weekly that Alcala shared these photos with colleagues. “I thought it was weird, but I was young; I didn't know anything,” she said. “When I asked why he took the photos, he said their moms asked him to. I remember the girls were naked.”
“He said he was a professional, so in my mind I was being a model for him,” an anonymous victim told People magazine of her encounter with Alcala in 1979. He showed her his portfolio which included “spread after spread of [naked] teenage boys”.
His crimes finally caught up with him in 1979, a year after The Dating Game aired, when he murdered 12-year-old Robin Samsoe. As investigations began and Alcala was named as a lead suspect, police searched his storage locker to discover countless keepsakes taken from his victims, including Samsoe’s earrings, as well as his horrific ‘portfolio’. He was arrested the same year and held without bail, with prosecutors who worked on the case comparing him to Ted Bundy, and with one describing him as a “killing machine” who "toyed" with his victims, strangling them until they lost consciousness, waiting for them to revive, and repeating the process before killing them.
Alcala was sentenced to death a total of three times from 1979-2010, but multiple trials, failed prosecutions and collapsed verdicts meant that, while Alcala was never released, he never faced death row. In 2021, he died of natural causes at California State Prison. While he was convicted of the murders of six women, it’s thought he had more than 100 victims and was responsible for many of the US’s cold cases – and Bradshaw could quite easily have been one of them had she gone on a date with him after The Dating Game. Her intuition may have saved her life, and her story reaffirms why it’s important to follow your gut.
Woman of the Hour is available to stream on Netflix now.
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