“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.
