California man convicted of 5 serial slayings

[February 26, 2010]  SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) -- Robin Samsoe was a passionate and thoughtful friend -- so much so that when she sang a duet of the 1970s hit "You Light Up My Life" at a drama club event, she dedicated the song to her singing partner.

The 12-year-old was murdered a short time later, but Samsoe's drama club sidekick honored her memory Thursday with a different kind of tribute. Ronnie Beauchamp, now 43, sat between Samsoe's brothers in the third row of an Orange County courtroom and watched as Rodney James Alcala was convicted of her murder for the third time in three decades.

"Everyone that was in Robin's life at that time has suffered emotionally in so many ways," said Beauchamp, her eyes red with tears. "I just feel like it's time for me to heal something that I've stuffed down for so many years."

The jury took less than two days to find Alcala, 66, guilty of five counts of first-degree murder for Samsoe's murder and the slayings of four Los Angeles County women whose stranglings went unsolved for decades until investigators discovered DNA and other evidence tying the cases together.

Alcala, a UCLA graduate with prior convictions for sexual molestation and rape, showed no emotion as the verdicts were read.

The jury also found true special circumstance allegations of rape, torture and kidnapping, making him eligible for the death penalty. Jurors return next week for the penalty phase.

Alcala, who represented himself, has been sentenced to death twice before for 12-year-old Robin Samsoe's murder, but both convictions were overturned. The four other cases were heard for the first time this year.

Minutes after the verdict, Samsoe's older brother stood in the hallway and called his mother as his relatives enveloped the two prosecutors in bear hugs.

Robert Samsoe, who was 15 when his sister was murdered, said he thinks daily about what his sister would be like if she were still alive. The blond-haired girl, who would have been 42, was passionate about drama and ballet and spent hours debating with friends which was better, ballet or gymnastics.

"Robin would have been a teacher, I think, and she would have been a great mom and a great aunt," he said, tearing up.

He added that the crime and the ensuing 30 years of litigation have taken a heavy toll.

"I would have probably had a childhood" without the murder, he said. "When this happened, our lives got turned upside down. It separated a family. There's more to it than just Robin."

Investigators arrested Alcala a month after Samsoe disappeared on June 20, 1979 while riding a friend's bike to a ballet class in Huntington Beach in Orange County. Her body was found 12 days later in the Angeles National Forest, where it had been mutilated by wild animals.

Alcala's parole agent quickly recognized him from a police sketch and called authorities.

Alcala, who at the time was awaiting trial for the rape of a 15-year-old girl, has been in custody ever since.

But prosecutors only added the murders of four Los Angeles County women in 2006 after investigators discovered forensic evidence linking him to those crimes, including DNA found on three of the women, a bloody handprint and marker testing done on blood Alcala left on a towel in the fourth victim's home.

Bruce Barcomb, the brother of Alcala's first known victim, 18-year-old Jill Barcomb, said he had almost given up hope that police would solve the case.

"DNA technology never entered my mind," he said. "There was a one-in-100 billion chance of a match -- and it was Jill."

The jury heard testimony that two of the four adult victims were posed nude and possibly photographed after their deaths; one was raped with a claw hammer; and all of them were repeatedly strangled and resuscitated during their deaths to prolong their agony.

Prosecutors also alleged Alcala took earrings from at least two of the victims as trophies.

The Samsoe case, which was first tried in 1980, presented more of a challenge for prosecutors.

No one saw her abduction and investigators were unable to recover forensic evidence from her mutiliated body.

The trial focused almost entirely on the Samsoe murder and Alcala chose not to address the four other cases when he testified in his own defense.

Prosecutors relied on witnesses who saw a curly-haired photographer taking pictures of Samsoe, her friend and other teenagers on the beach minutes before she disappeared. Photos of one of the girls were later found in his possession.

Also key to the trial was a pair of gold ball earrings that Samsoe's mother said belonged to her daughter.

The earrings were found in a jewelry pouch in a storage locker that Alcala had rented in Seattle.

Investigators found other earrings in the same pouch, including a small rose-shaped stud that contained a trace of DNA from another of Alcala's alleged victims, Charlotte Lamb.

Alcala maintained, however, that the gold ball earrings were his and introduced a video of himself as the winning contestant on a 1978 episode of "The Dating Game." He told jurors the grainy video clip showed him wearing the earrings under his long, feathered hair a year before Samsoe was killed.

He accused prosecutors of lumping the four Los Angeles women in with Samsoe to inflame the jury and pointed out lapses in witnesses' recollections of that day.

The other women murdered were Georgia Wixted, 27, a nurse from Malibu; Charlotte Lamb, 32, a legal secretary from Santa Monica; Jill Parenteau, 21, a key punch operator from Burbank; and Barcomb, a teen who had run away to Los Angeles from Oneida, N.Y. weeks before her murder.

Prosecutor Matt Murphy said Thursday he would call as witnesses in the penalty case two of Alcala's earlier victims, including the teenager whose rape case against Alcala was pending in 1979 when he murdered Samsoe. Alcala was convicted of sexually assaulting the other woman in 1968.

[Associated Press; By GILLIAN FLACCUS]

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