Serial Killer Rodney Alcala Gets Death Sentence; Will it Stick This Time?
SANTA ANA, Calif. (CBS/AP) Serial killer Rodney Alcala has been sentenced to death for killing four women and a girl in the 1970s.
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The sentence on Tuesday comes three weeks after a jury recommended death for the 66-year-old amateur photographer.
The same jury convicted Alcala of five counts of first-degree murder last month for the slayings of four Los Angeles County women and a 12-year-old Orange County girl.
Alcala has been sentenced to death twice before in the 1979 murder of young Robin Samsoe, but those verdicts were overturned on appeal.
Prosecutors refiled charges in that case and added the four other murders in 2006 after investigators linked them to Alcala using DNA samples and other forensic evidence.
Alcala acted as his own attorney and unveiled a rambling defense
strategy that included questioning the mother of one of his victims,
playing an Arlo Guthrie ballad and showing a clip from the 1970s TV
show "The Dating Game."
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