16 March 2010 :

A Los Angeles County jury recommended the death penalty for serial killer Rodney James Alcala, 66, white. Alcala has been found guilty in killing 1 girl and 4 women between 1977 and 1979. The victims were: Robin Samsoe, 12, Jill Barcomb, 18, Georgia Wixted, 27, Charlotte Lamb, 32, and Jill Parenteau, 21. Alcala has been sentenced to death twice before in the June 20, 1979 murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, but those verdicts were overturned on appeal. Prosecutors refiled charges in that case and added Jill Barcomb's murder and three others in 2006 after investigators linked them to Alcala using DNA samples and other forensic evidence. Those cases, which had gone unsolved for decades, went on trial for the first time this year. He was first tried in Samsoe's murder in 1980. Prosecutors added the murders of the four women in 2006 after investigators discovered forensic evidence linking him to those crimes, including DNA found on three of the women, a bloody hand-print and marker testing done on blood Alcala left on a towel in the fourth victim's home. The jury convicted Alcala of the murders on Feb. 25.