A TRAVELING salesman is finally sharing the story of how he saved a little girl from being murdered by a notorious serial killer after acting on a hunch.
Donald Haines was driving through Hollywood, California on a work trip in September 1968 when a strange interaction caught his eye.
6
6
6
6
He noticed a car blocking the intersection.
Inside the vehicle, a man was animatedly talking to a young girl standing on the street.
The child soon got into the backseat of the man’s car, he said, and the pair drove off.
But something did not seem right to Haines — a father himself — so he decided to follow the vehicle.
Read more about true crime
What unfolded next saved the girl’s life and eventually helped put serial killer Rodney Alcala behind bars.
Haines shared the harrowing details of his story in a new true crime documentary by People Magazine entitled Surviving a Serial Killer.
“All the warning signs were there,” Haines said about that fateful day.
SOMETHING IS OFF
Haines began paying attention to the scene because he could see a strange look in the man’s eyes.
“He was fixated on this little girl. That disturbed me,” he said.
The creepy look drove him to tail the man and the girl for a few blocks before he saw their car stop.
He watched as the two got out of the car and headed inside an apartment — which police later discovered was owned by the man.
At this point, Haines was unsure of how to proceed.
“And I thought, what the hell do I do now?” Haines recounted asking himself.
He figured it was not safe to approach the man, who might have a gun, so he searched for a pay phone to call 911.
ALMOST TOO LATE
When the police arrived to check the situation, they were shocked at what they discovered.
They came upon the man still in the process of beating and raping the young girl, who was already unconscious and on the floor in a pool of blood.
Police chose to save the child, now known to be 8-year-old Tali Shapiro, instead of pursuing the assailant, Shapiro said in a recent interview with People.
“They made a choice of saving me or chasing him,” she said, now 64 years old.
She was in a coma for over a month after the assault and said she has no recollection of that day.
WHO WAS RODNEY ALCALA?
Police soon linked the crime to Alcala, but not before he could escape to New York City where he would continue his bloody attacks.
He adopted an alias and enrolled at New York University, soon picking up a part-time gig at a summer camp for kids, according to People.
He was fixated on this little girl.
Donald Haines
During his time in New York, he killed Cornelia Crilley, a 23-year-old flight attendant.
By 1971, the FBI placed Alcala on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in hopes of receiving tips that could lead to his arrest.
It worked — two children at the camp recognized his face from the list and contacted authorities, leading to his arrest.
But because Shapiro’s family moved to Mexico shortly after her attack and refused to be involved in any legal proceedings, prosecutors only charged Alcala with child molestation instead of rape and attempted murder.
Alcala received a sentence of less than three years in prison and ultimately served less than a year and a half after getting out on parole.
6
THE DATING SHOW
By 1978, Alcala was back in California and masquerading as a professional photographer.
Police eventually recovered hundreds of photos in Alcala’s possession, many of them explicit, that they feared may contain the identities of more victims.
That year, he appeared on The Dating Show — a reality competition akin to today’s Bachelorette — where he went up against two other single men to win the affection of the show’s star, Cheryl Bradshaw.
And he won.
Luckily, Bradshaw reconsidered her decision before actually spending time with Alcala.
After the show concluded, she refused to go out with him because she had decided he was too “creepy.”
Investigators now believe that he had killed at least seven women by the time he appeared on the show.
FINALLY CAUGHT
Alcala would go on to attack, rape, and murder several more people before he was captured in 1979.
California police were able to track him down after he was identified by a witness sketch from the friends of his last victim.
He killed 12-year-old Robin Christine Samsoe after meeting her with her friends in Huntington Beach and abducting her on her way to ballet class.
Investigators later found a pair of Samsoe’s earrings in Alcala’s possession.
Alcala was eventually convicted of seven murders in total, including Samsoe’s.
He is believed to have killed dozens more young women and was sent to prison for life.
While he continuously appealed his verdicts and maintained his innocence for several of his crimes, Alcala died behind bars in 2021 at the age of 77.
6
Credit Gist New Today News in Newspaper Nigeria Headlines
