L.A. Times Story on Alleged Serial Murder Fails to Report that L.A. Times Could Have Stopped Alleged Serial Murderer
Column One in the February 24 L.A. Times discusses the trial of accused serial murderer Rodney James Alcala. It’s a thorough and interesting article . . .
But there’s just one little omission. People at the L.A. Times could have stopped him.
Leave it to Christine Pelisek at the L.A. Weekly to report that part of the story:
In one fantastic irony, even as the L.A. Times was publishing sensational articles in the late 1970s about the mysterious Hillside Strangler, who terrorized much of L.A. at that time, Alcala, who worked typesetting articles for that paper, was being questioned by the LAPD in relation to those very murders.
In an interview with the Weekly, Alcala’s former Times colleague Sharon Gonzalez remembers: “He would talk about going to parties in Hollywood. It seemed like he knew famous people. He kept his body in great shape. He was very open about his sexuality. It was all new to me.”
He brought his photography portfolio to show his Times workmates, she says, and the photos were “of young girls. I thought it was weird, but I was young, I didn’t know anything. When I asked why he took the photos, he said their moms asked him to. I remember the girls were naked.”
Gonzalez adds that she wasn’t “smart enough or mature enough to know” that she was looking at child porn. Yet incredibly, she describes how L.A. Times’ management in the 1970s had a golden opportunity to turn Alcala in, but did nothing: “There were other people in the department who were in their 40s and 50s. The [Times] supervisor at the time — she saw it.” Instead, the reaction at the newspaper was, “We thought he was a little different. Strange about sex.”
Weird how these tidbits didn’t make it into the L.A. Times version.
All the news that’s fit to print. Except for the stuff that makes us look bad, of course.
Thanks to Ben S.
such an oversight by the Time is unprecedented.
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 2/25/2010 @ 7:36 amDid Roman Polanski work at the time back then? Just a question.
quasimodo (4af144) — 2/25/2010 @ 7:41 amTimes not time
quasimodo (4af144) — 2/25/2010 @ 7:43 amSheesh
Hey, what’s a little child p*rn between friends? It’s like those Salvadoran child prostitutes that ACORN winks at. A big newspaper covers important stories and can’t worry itself with little peccadilloes like this.
Gesundheit (cfa313) — 2/25/2010 @ 7:49 amWhat, you thought the L.A. Times might be institutionally opposed to child pornography? Why, if they took that position, they might never get invited to all the coolest Hollywood parties!
PatHMV (c0c73a) — 2/25/2010 @ 7:57 amThirty-five year old recollections about a long-ago fellow employee? That’s kind of a reach, even for you, Patterico….
Steve Smith (9c72c6) — 2/25/2010 @ 8:51 amAfter 30 years or so all the serial killers I knew and worked with on a daily basis tend to run together unless there was something to set them apart from the crowd like a tattoo or a funny voice.
Machinist (9780ec) — 2/25/2010 @ 9:10 amNot to completely excuse it, but “child porn” has become much more of a real boogeyman than it was in the 1970s.
At that point in time, the idea of photographs of young girls naked might have been viewed as “art” without setting off major alarms… and he did say at that time that “their mothers said it was ok”, and I will guarantee you that parental rights of permission were taken much more seriously back then.
Not excusing, it, but the fact that things were viewed differently back then, in a lot of ways, should not be discounted.
I suspect it would be impossible to make and distribute Pretty Baby anytime in the last 25-odd years, for example. And if you actually watch the film (which is a mainstream film, mind you — a controversial film but hardly a porn), the difference depicted regarding overall attitudes between now and a bit under a century ago is stark.
I have less of an issue with Polanski’s overall attitude about “young girls” than I do with the flat out fact that the sonofabitching sack of s*** is a blatant, inarguable rapist of same (as opposed to a “statutory” rapist).
Again: doesn’t excuse the behavior, but there is a distinction which is hardly trivial or irrelevant. This isn’t to be taken as advocacy of the former attitude, but it is calling attention to the fact that, on this matter, there has been a radical shift in what is “socially acceptable” and what is not. What was once “odd seeming” is now blatantly illegal.
IgotBupkis (79d71d) — 2/25/2010 @ 9:36 amMaplethorp?
quasimodo (4af144) — 2/25/2010 @ 10:02 amNo wonder the Times backs releasing Polanski. Polanski didn’t do anything that many Times employeses wouldn’t do apparently.
PCD (1d8b6d) — 2/25/2010 @ 10:46 amThey were following their semi-religion: Must not be judgmental! Even for criminals/molesters/murderers. He probably had a bad childhood.
Patricia (e1047e) — 2/25/2010 @ 11:22 amComment by Patricia — 2/25/2010 @ 11:22 am
You forgot the major Times Moral Disqualifier:
AD - RtR/OS! (116c8a) — 2/25/2010 @ 11:32 amEverything is OK unless you used a G…U…N…!
They’re so ickey.
In 1978, Brooke Shields posed nude for a series of still photos taken by Gary Gross, with her mother’s consent, and Playboy published them. She was 13.
As a mother, I’m horrified. Shields already had a steady modeling career, and the fee wasn’t all that big. Later, she tried to annul the contract.
http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/brooke-shields-by-gary-gross/
Why didn’t the LAT mention that this clown worked as a typesetter in the story?
KateC (c7c0c6) — 2/25/2010 @ 11:38 amAlcala wasn’t an art photographer, he was a rapist and a sadistic murderer. If you read the police reports about the other four women he killed, it is pretty chilling. I don’t understand how a man can murder a child.
These crimes and the protracted legal battles really have a devastating effect on the families.
My cousin, Paul Franklin, his wife Judy and 10 year old son Paul Jr., were murdered in 1983. The man who killed him wasn’t executed until 2005! The NY law firms who filed appeal after appeal thought it was a game. The details are below. John Peoples is out of the human gene pool.
http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/peoples983.htm
Paul’s father, a successful stock broker stopped going to work and sat in a chair on his sun porch for days at a time without speaking. His mother was never right after either.
The families decided to use Paul & Judy’s estate to make certain John W. Peoples would see justice. They hired the best talent legal available to ensure the trial was fair and all the legal details were done to perfection. Most prosecutors do not see that kind of support.
arch (24f4f2) — 2/25/2010 @ 11:41 amWe as a society have been consumed by a frenzy reminiscent of the Salem witch trials. It is a necessary and laudable goal to eliminate child pornography, but there has been no solid definition. Because of court rulings on First Amendment grounds, large-format books on nudism, curiously concentrating on very young girls, are legal for bookstores to sell and customers to buy, because they are allegedly art. I don’t think any sane person doubts that these works are pandering to pedophiles. And yet, sweet old grandmothers are hauled off to jail because they snapped family photos including their granddaughters in wading pools with only swimsuit bottoms. One of our servicemen in Afghanistan is now in custody because his aunt sent him a collection of family photos that included such pictures of his younger female cousins without both swimsuit tops and the breast development that brings a need for the tops. Millions of ordinary citizens are technically criminals because of overzealous lawmakers and judges, with the naked baby on a bearskin photos that were classics for a couple of decades. Please, before we start the lynchings, let’s get some uniformity and sanity involved in the process.
mefolkes (98c516) — 2/25/2010 @ 2:53 pm[…] other day I posted about serial murderer Rodney James Alcala, who has since been convicted of five counts of murder. […]
Patterico's Pontifications » More on the Child Porn Guy at the L.A. Times Who Murdered Five Women — He Was Already a Convicted Child Rapist While Employed at the Paper (e4ab32) — 2/27/2010 @ 4:24 pm