We’ve all heard about the secret lives of game show hosts like Richard Dawson and Wink Martindale, but it’s the secret lives of game show contestants that might prove to be the most fascinating.  And the most dangerous, in the case of one former game show winner.  Rodney Alcala, a winner of The Dating Game in 1978, turned out to be a serial killer and sociopath who had already committed his first violent crime (a rape) in 1968, and who would go on to kill five people around the time he won The Dating Game in 1978.

According to Jed Mills, Bachelor #2 on that doomed episode of the program, there was something wrong with Alcala that was blatantly obvious even in passing.  Some 30 years later, Alcala still stands out in the mind of Mills:  “[H]e was very obnoxious and creepy–he became very unlikable and rude and imposing as though he was trying to intimidate.  I wound up not only not liking this guy … not wanting to be near him … he got creepier and more negative.  He was a standout creepy guy in my life.”

The bachelorette on the program, Cheryl Bradshaw, was wise enough to refuse her date with the winner.  Smart girl.  She might have made the wrong choice in the beginning, but she made the right choice at the end and might have just saved her life in the process.

Tags: serial killers, Rodney Alcala, serial killer was contestant on The Dating Game, The Dating Game, game show serial killer, Jed Mills, Cheryl Bradshaw, unusual criminals

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