Alcala guilty on all counts

SANTA ANA — An Orange County jury on Thursday found Rodney James Alcala guilty of five counts of first-degree murder, kidnapping and multiple special-circumstances counts for torture, oral copulation and rape in the death of a 12-year-old Huntington Beach resident in 1979 and four Los Angeles women in the late 1970s.

It was Alcala’s third guilty conviction for killing Robin Samsoe of Huntington Beach. He has twice been convicted and sentenced to death, but the convictions were overturned on appeal. It wasn’t until after his second conviction that DNA evidence linked Alcala to one of the Los Angeles cases.

More than 30 years after his sister disappeared, Robert Samsoe said he is happy with the latest conviction, but he has already been through two trials.

“Until they execute him, or shoot him, or hang him, it’s not over,” Samsoe said.

Robin and a friend were approached by Alcala on the beach in Huntington on June 20, 1979. He used a line about a photo contest as an excuse to take their pictures and snapped photos of the girls together and then one of Robin alone.

A few minutes later, Robin borrowed her friend’s bike and took off for ballet class, but wasn’t seen again until her skeletal remains were found in the Sierra Madre woods.

During the nearly seven-week trial, Alcala, 66, maintained that he was at Knott’s Berry Farm applying for a freelance photography job for a high school disco contest when Robin disappeared.

The case has gained attention for its unusual circumstances — a serial killer with victims in two counties and his choice to defend himself, an abnormal move, said Susan Kang Schroeder, public affairs counsel for the Orange County district attorney.

But it is the brutality of the crimes that stood out in Schroeder’s mind — one of the reasons the district attorney is asking for the death penalty.

Gruesome killings

The four Los Angeles victims — Jill Parenteau, Jill Barcomb, Georgia Wixted and Charlotte Lamb — were similarly raped, tortured and killed with more brutality than Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Murphy said he had ever seen.

The women were choked unconscious and allowed to come to several times before they were finally killed.

“He gets off on the affliction of pain on other people,” Murphy said.

DNA evidence linked to Alcala was recovered from Barcomb, Wixted and Lamb, and a palm print was found at the scene of Wixted’s death.

Murphy also argued that Alcala took a pair of gold, rose earrings with diamonds from Lamb as a souvenir. Officials found the earrings in Alcala’s storage locker in Seattle with Wixted’s DNA.

“There is absolutely nothing to it. Modern science caught up to Rodney Alcala,” Murphy said.

Another appeal next

Death penalty cases go through an automatic appeals process, and Alcala will return to court at 10 a.m. Tuesday to begin opening arguments of the penalty portion of the case. That phase of the case is expected to last until about March 9.

Murphy said he will use the penalty phase to go into Alcala’s prior convictions and how the case affected the victims’ families. Alcala was convicted of child molestation in 1968 and rape in 1979, and those victims are expected to testify.

Alcala said he will call six witnesses, none of whom will be present. Their testimony will be read from the court records. Alcala told the judge he wasn’t sure if he would testify.

Although Alcala was convicted again, it is not over for him or Robin’s family. For Robert Samsoe, each time his family goes back to court is like burying his sister all over again, he said.

“Our lives got turned upside down. We weren’t a family anymore,” he said. “There’s more to it than just Robin.”