Who escaped from Rodney Alcala? Where the survivors of the “Dating Game Killer” are now

Netflixs Woman of the hour is based on the true story of notorious serial killer and sexual predator Rodney Alcala, who appeared in ” The dating game in 1978 during his murder spree. After watching the true crime drama, you may be curious about what happened to the women who escaped from Alcala and where they are now.

Luckily, Cheryl Bradshaw, the real-life woman (based on Anna Kendrick's character) who chose Alcala to be the winning bachelor on the dating show, didn't keep her date. Alcala killed his first victim almost a decade before he was attacked The dating game and continued to commit murders until his arrest the following year.

Alcala was convicted of murdering seven women in the 1970s, although investigators believe the true number of his victims may never be known. He was charged in 1979 in the death of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, and Orange County prosecutors eventually uncovered evidence linking Alcala to the murders of four other women between 1977 and 1979: 18-year-old Jill Barcomb, the 21-year-old Jill Parenteau, 27-year-old Georgia Wixted and 32-year-old Charlotte Lamb.

ForbesThe chilling true story behind Netflix's Woman Of The Hour serial killer Rodney AlcalaFrom Monica Mercuri

Decades later, more murder charges mounted against Alcala in other states. In New York in 2012, he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the murders of 23-year-old Cornelia Crilley and Ellen Jane Hover, both of whom were killed in the 1970s. In 2016, prosecutors in Wyoming charged him with the murder of 28-year-old Christine Ruth Thornton, who was six months pregnant at the time.

Alcala was sentenced to death in California for his murders, but died of natural causes in July 2021 while awaiting execution. A survivor who managed to escape his brutal attack played a crucial role by testifying against him in the 2010 trial.

Here's what you need to know about the women who escaped from Rodney Alcala and where they are now.

Who escaped from Rodney Alcala?

Tali Shapiro and Morgan Rowan were lucky to escape Rodney Alcala's vicious attacks. Shapiro was 8 years old and Rowan was 16 when Alcala raped and attempted to murder both of them.

What happened to Tali Shapiro?

Second-grader Tali Shapiro walked to school on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles on September 25, 1968, from the Chateau Marmont Hotel, where her family was temporarily living. Alcala stopped his car and asked if she wanted a ride. Although she said no at first, she said yes when he said he knew her parents.

Shapiro recounted it later PEOPLE Magazine Investigates: The Survival of a Serial Killer that “it was entirely possible” that Alcala knew her parents; Her father worked in the music industry with stars like Mama Cass, Jim Morrison and Lenny Bruce. “People were always coming in and out of my house. It was (like) Grand Central Station.”

Alcala said he was a professional photographer and wanted to show her a poster at his home. She followed him in when they arrived at his house and that's all she remembers. “He obviously hit me in the head right after that and that was it.” He raped Shapiro and beat her with a metal rod.

How did it happen? Tali Shapiro escape?

A bystander named Donald Haines followed Alcala and called police because he was concerned about the man's behavior toward the 8-year-old girl. “He was fixated on this little girl,” Haines continued PEOPLE Magazine investigates. “That bothered me.”

When police arrived, they opened the door and found Alcala, who was naked and had “an anger in his eyes,” Officer Christopher Camacho said People. Shapiro lay motionless on the floor in a pool of blood and had a metal rod tied to his neck. At first they thought she was dead, but as Camacho removed the rod from Shapiro's neck, they heard her breathing and she was taken to the hospital.

“(After the attack, I had to) over 27 stabs in the back of my head,” Shapiro revealed at Alcala's sentencing hearing in 2010, according to ABC7. “He hit me right over the head, in the back of the head.”

Alcala escaped from police through the back door of his apartment, but left his identification at the scene, which helped investigators identify him. It took more than two years for authorities to arrest Alcala for the horrific crime. Shapiro's parents wouldn't let her testify, and because prosecutors didn't have a key witness in the case, Alcala pleaded guilty to child molestation and served only 34 months in prison.

What happened to Morgan Rowan?

Morgan Rowan told PEOPLE Magazine investigates that in 1965, when she was 13, she first met Alcala with her friends in the parking lot of a teen nightclub.

Rowan told the website that Alcala was “tall, attractive, charismatic” and she “never saw it as dangerous at first.” She remembered that Alcala kept looking over at them and smiling. She scratched her arm with her fingernails to get his attention, and when she didn't stop, he pulled her into an alley behind the club.

“I think he slammed my head against the wall because I was unconscious,” she said. Alcala had hit a large industrial dumpster on her chest. She screamed for help and the club owner and his wife came and helped her. Unfortunately, that didn't mean the end of her nightmare, as three years later, in 1968, Rowan encountered Alcala again.

Rowan and her family were preparing to move to New York. Before she left, she held a going-away party on the Sunset Strip. Alcala was there and Rowan said she “felt creepy” when she saw him. Rowan was in the backseat with her friends and was scared when Alcala took the driver's seat.

He drove Rowan and her friends to his house, where he gave them marijuana. But Alcala used the distraction as an opportunity to grab Rowan and drag her into a bedroom.

“He took off his belt and wrapped it around his fist. I tried to be brave and said, 'No, you can't keep me here,' and he just punched me between the eyes as hard as he could,” she said. Rowan added that her head hit the wall and fell to her knees, but was still conscious. Alcala used a knife to cut the tie on her blouse around her neck.

“I felt the blood start to flow down my chest,” she recalled, “and I remember thinking, 'He cut my neck.' I'm going to die.'” Rowan said he put his belt in her mouth, blocked her airway so she couldn't breathe, and bound her wrists with a tie. He punched her in the stomach, then used his knife to cut off the rest of her clothing and raped her.

“His face was red and swollen, his eyes were glassy,” she recalled. “He was out of control, like an animal… I wanted it to be over. I didn't pray to live. I prayed for death.”

How did Morgan escape Rowan?

Eventually, Rowan's friends noticed she and Alcala were missing and began banging on the bedroom door. Rowan's friend Mike broke the bedroom window, causing Alcala to stand up with blood on his shirt and say to Mike: “Take her with you,” it is said People.

“If my friend Mike hadn’t broken in through the window, I wouldn’t be here today,” Rowan told the publication. “I have no doubt he would kill me.”

Rowan said she ran out of the house and into the path of a moving car. Her friends joined her and the couple in the car took her to safety. Mike took Rowan to his beachfront apartment, where his neighbor, a nurse, gave her first aid. A few minutes before they left for New York, she arrived at her parents' house.

She said she was traumatized and slept next to her parents' bed after they moved away, but never told them what happened. A friend later sent her a newspaper clipping about Alcala's attempted murder of Shapiro, and Rowan said she felt guilty for never reporting his attack.

“I should have stopped that. “I should have told my parents,” she said. “I should have gone back to that house and killed him myself… I completely felt like it was my fault, that I should have done something.”

Where are survivors? Tali Shapiro and Morgan Rowan now?

Shapiro had been asked to testify against Alcala several times, including at his sentencing in 2010. “I had no feelings except duty and justice,” she said People. “I never looked in his direction. I consciously didn't want to give him any energy. I didn't look at him, I didn't acknowledge him, I never said his name. I didn’t give him any satisfaction.”

Alcala, who served as his own attorney in the trial, did not question Shapiro but apologized for what he called his “despicable behavior.”

“He's never apologized before, and the fact that he even cared made me sick,” Shapiro said at the time, according to ABC7.

After the hearing, Shapiro turned to Haines, the man who called 911 and saved her life decades earlier. “I said, 'I'm so happy to see you,'” he recalled.

After Alcala died of natural causes in 2021, Shapiro said The New York Times“The planet is a better place without him, that’s for sure.”

Meanwhile, Rowan told her story in her 2023 book: Stolen by the Sunset: A True Story of Surviving the Dating Game Killer. She later wrote a letter to Shapiro via Facebook apologizing for not reporting Alcala sooner.

Shapiro responded that there was nothing to forgive and that it wasn't Rowan's fault. “Tali saying she forgave me changed everything,” Rowan said People. “It was definitely a big step in my recovery.”

Rowan and Shapiro eventually met and are now close friends. “It was just wonderful. We spent a few days together. We were like sisters,” Rowan said.

“She cares about me a lot. I love her. We have a bond,” Shapiro added.

Woman of the hour is now streaming on Netflix. Check out the official trailer below.