A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

The extremely disturbing story of the serial killer Rodney Alcala. UCLA fine arts grad, former student of Roman Polanski, Dating Game Contestant. He has now been sentenced to death, and is believed to have committed as many as 125 murders.

When Alcala was caught hiding out under the assumed name Berger on the East Coast, a conviction for brutally raping a child in California was not a guarantee of a long prison sentence. California’s state government of that era had embraced a philosophy that the state could successfully treat rapists and murderers through education and psychotherapy.

He served as his own attorney, and has spent the last 30 years gleefully manipulating the justice system.

In September 1977, he got a job at the Los Angeles Times as a typesetter. “They hired him, with his name, having kidnapped and raped an 8-year-old,” says prosecutor Murphy. “How did he get a job there? He was using his name. It wasn’t like he was using an alias. He was a convicted child molester and registered sex offender.”