Rodney Alcala, the real-life serial killer from Netflix’s Woman of the Hour, is shown in the film to be a photographer.
And in various cases as seen in the movie, this is actually how he lures the women he kills into spending time alone with him under the guise of taking photos of them in a remote and beautiful location.
This is one of the many details that director and star Anna Kendrick pulled from the real-life story that inspired the Netflix film.
Alcala appeared on The Dating Game, a dating show involving blind dates with three men on the other side of a curtain being asked questions by one woman.
Kendrick, making her directorial debut as well as starring, plays Cheryl Bradshaw, a woman who appeared on the show and picked Alcala for a date before being ‘creeped out’ by him and not following through to go out with him.
The show had not done a background check on Alcala, and if they did, they would’ve found a conviction for child molestation in 1971 after authorities tracked him down following his appearance on an FBI Most Wanted poster, spending nearly three years in prison.
After two years of searching for him, police arrested him on charges of first degree murder and rape, but prosecutors were unable to get these charges through due to the parents of the victim, a 12-year-old girl, requesting she not testify as not to re-traumatise her, PEOPLE reports.
Alcala’s photos were released in 2010 after evidence was found linking him to more murders (Allen J Schaben via Getty Images)
Alcala was a photographer, and his pictures played a role in his trials when he was eventually caught and charged with murder.
In 1980, he was sentenced to death for the killing of a 12-year-old girl, who’d disappeared on her way to her ballet class.
Whilst he would never face the death penalty and actually died in prison on death row, he was later found guilty of further crimes.
This ended up totalling eight murders, though he is thought by authorities to have killed well over 100 women.
A picture of Christine Ruth Thornton, one of his victims (Huntington Beach Police Department)
The last he was ever charged with occurred in 2016, prior to his death in 2021.
Christine Ruth Thornton was a cold case and following another set of murders he was rearrested for in 2010, and some of Alcala’s picture stash were released by local police.
A relative of Christine’s, who had been searching for her since her disappearance in 1977, recognised her in one of the photographs and contacted police, CBS reports.
The Huntington Beach Police Department released the nearly 50-year-old photos in 2010 with the hopes that victims may be identified.
Thornton died in 1977 (Huntington Beach Police Department)
The photos are unsettling to look through, knowing that any one could have been a potential victim, or even victim, of Alcala’s murder spree.
Below are a group of pictures from Alcala’s personal stash, found in a storage locker belonging to the serial killer.
If you recognise anyone from the below photos, please reach out to the Huntington Beach Police Department on (714) 536-5947.
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(Huntington Beach Police Department)
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(Huntington Beach Police Department)
(Huntington Beach Police Department)
The full set of photos are available here.