Police find serial killer's cache of pictures, want help identifying subjects
Prosecutor worries Alcala might have killed others | alcala, women, murphy - News - The Orange County Register
Alcala was caught, tried, and imprisoned in 1980, but even then the D.A. was sure he was a serial killer. Thirty years later police have found a trove of pictures Alcala took and worry that some of them may be unknown victims.
Just a few weeks ago, we posted a video of Alcala as a contestant on The Dating Game.
Alcala – a freelance photographer – approached some of his victims and asked them to pose for his camera as a way of getting them to lower their guard. Murphy also contended that Alcala positioned the bodies of his victims into horrific poses and may have shot pictures of them afterward.
Detectives recovered hundreds of photos of young women – apparently taken by Alcala before his 1979 arrest – during court-authorized searches of Alcala's Monterey Park home and a rented storage locker.
Some photos show women or young girls in the nude and engaging in sex acts. Some show women or young girls who appear to be unconscious. Others show women posing, staring into the lens of a camera held by a man who was a serial killer, in remote settings – similar to the locale where Robin Samsoe's body was found in 1979. A few are of young men in sexually suggestive poses.
And most of the subjects in the photos have never been identified.
Murphy said he can't help but wonder: are these people still alive?
"We know that he used his camera many times in the past to gain the trust of several of his victims," Murphy said in an interview. "And then we found dozens of photos of unidentified young women who posed for him.