It’s difficult to happen upon a headline like “LA Weekly Found the Creepiest Thing Ever Put on the Internet” and decide to pass it by. I’m like you, I want to see the creepiest thing ever put on the Internet, right? That came into my inbox this afternoon courtesy of Tina Dupuy/Fishbowl LA and… you know, it is pretty fuckin’ creepy. What am I talking about? Try this on for size:

Rodney Alcala is a man stuck in a time warp, his flowing silver hair, granny glasses, beige blazer and jeans reminiscent of a creative-writing professor circa 1980, the year he began life behind bars. As he walked into an Orange County Superior Court room one recent day, news photographers snapped his lean, no-longer-handsome face. His handcuffs were removed, he picked up a pen with his left hand and waited for Orange County Superior Court Judge F.P. Briseno to bring in the 12 jurors who will decide if he should die or spend the rest of his life in prison or, though exceedingly unlikely, go free.

The once-dashing ladies’ man, UCLA fine-arts grad, former Los Angeles Times typesetter, amateur photographer and film student of Roman Polanski’s is believed to have used his smooth-talking charm and access to the creative communities in L.A. and Greenwich Village during the 1970s to entrap and murder seven women and girls, and to rape several others. So smooth was Alcala that he was selected to compete on the ABC prime-time show The Dating Game in 1978, where “bachelorette” Cheryl Bradshaw picked him as her date. Later, police say, she reportedly refused to go on the winning date, sensing that there was something creepy about Bachelor Number One.

Smart girl. A serial killer on The Dating Game! Here’s the footage. Yikes!

Rodney Alcala: The Fine Art of Killing by Christine Pelisek (LA Weekly)