'IT WAS SADISTIC'
Who was Rodney Alcala’s victim Jill Barcomb and how did the teen die?
Jill's brother opened up about the 'brutal' nature of her murder
JILL Barcombe's life was tragically cut short when she ran into homicidal maniac Rodney Alcala.
Here's everything we know about the young victim of 'The Dating Game Killer'.
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Who was Jill Barcomb?
Jill Barcomb was one of Rodney Alcala's earliest known victims.
Originally from Oneida, New York, she had just relocated to the Los Angeles area when she encountered the serial killer.
Jill had only been in Southern California for roughly three weeks when she was murdered.
Brutal murder
On November 9, 1977, Alcala brutally murdered Jill when she was just 18 years old.
Her body was discovered the following day on a dirt path near Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles.
Jill had been positioned after she was strangled to death and the crime scene revealed evidence of a horrific assault.
Initial investigation
Initially, authorities mistakenly believed Jill might have been a victim of the notorious Hillside Strangler, who was terrorizing Los Angeles at the time.
In a cruel twist of fate, Jill's 15-year-old friend Judith Lynn Miller was abducted and murdered by the actual Hillside Strangler just a month later.
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Jill's case went cold for decades until 2003 when advancements in DNA technology helped connect her murder to The Dating Game Killer.
Breakthrough
The breakthrough came while Orange County investigators were preparing their third prosecution against Alcala for a number of other murders.
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DNA evidence led to his indictment for the murders of Jill and four other women: Robin Samsoe, Georgia Wixted, Charlotte Lamb and Jill Parenteau.
The nature of Jill's murder left a lasting impact on her family.
Her brother Bruce Barcomb opened up about experiencing night terrors after his sister's body was discovered.
He said: "It wasn't just murder. It wasn't just rape. It was brutal.
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"It was sadistic and nobody could understand why the things happened to her."
Conviction
In 2010, more than three decades after Jill's life was cut short, Alcala was finally convicted of her murder.
An Orange County jury found him guilty of five counts of first-degree murder, including Jill's, and he was sentenced to death.
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His death sentence never came to pass, however, and the monster died of natural causes in 2021 aged 77 at a hospital near the Corcoran state prison in California.
Jill's case highlights the importance of advances in forensic technology, which ultimately helped bring her killer to justice after so many years.
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