One of psychopath Rodney Alcala’s first victims has slammed the US legal system for failing to keep him behind bars after she managed to escape his clutches as a young girl.
Furious Tali Shapiro says soft liberal laws allowed the serial killer to continue a decade-long murder spree even after police had caught him red-handed – covered in her blood – after he beat her unconscious with a steel bar when she was just eight years old.
The murderer’s rampage is now being dramatized in the new Netflix movie Woman of the Hour, which focuses on his real-life appearance on The Dating Game show in 1978. Tali has little memory of the attack on her a decade earlier in 1968.
But she knows she was only saved by the quick-thinking of a passerby who spotted her being lured back to the convicted sex offender’s Los Angeles apartment.
Despite raping her, Alcala – feared to have murdered 130 victims – was convicted of the lesser charge of child molestation and jailed for just three years.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, mother-of-one Tali, 64, said: ‘The anger I feel is for the people that were attacked after me because they didn’t need to suffer.
Tali Shapiro was only eight years old (pictured) when she became the victim of Rodney Alcala’s first recorded crimes in 1968 while she was walking to school in Los Angeles
Now 64, Tali has blamed the US legal system and its ‘liberal laws’ for Alacala’s decade-long reign of terror after it failed to keep him behind bars. He is pictured right in 2013
‘Why in the world was he not found guilty for what he did to me? ‘How was he allowed to keep killing people?
‘Why, when they found me at his house and he was covered in blood – and they had an eyewitness to testify that – did they give him a lighter sentence and let him out?
‘I’m really angry with the justice system because what more did they want?
‘But they had liberal laws back then and believed in giving people a second chance – and Alcala was a slippery snake who kept wriggling out. He was pure evil.’
Alcala was described as a ‘killing machine’ by prosecutors who said he enjoyed toying with his victims, strangling them until they lost consciousness and then reviving them before repeating the process.
Born in San Antonio, Texas, his reign of terror started after he was given an honorable discharge from the army on medical grounds in 1964 despite being disciplined on several occasions for assaulting young women.
Tali was targeted by him as she walked down Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles as she made her way to nearby Gardner Street school.
Alcala pulled up beside her in his car and offered her a ride, which she refused, but he was able to persuade her he knew her parents.
Tali’s father Danny Shapiro owned the Renaissance Jazz Club in LA while her mother Miki Shapiro was a swimmer who once acted as actress Jane Russell’s underwater body double.
Tali, who has little memory of the attack, was walking down Sunset Boulevard on her way to nearby Gardner Street school in Los Angeles when she was targeted by the serial killer
Alcala was finally arrested for attacking Tali in 1971, but her parents refused to let her testify in court and by 1974 he was a free man on parole. He went on to murder six young women before being arrested again in California in 1979 (pictured)
Weeks before Tali’s attack, Alcala had beaten and raped 16-year-old Morgan Rowan, now a fellow survivor and close friend (pictured together), in the same Hollywood apartment
Thankfully, a passing motorist called Donald Haines spotted Alcala pressuring the schoolgirl and – sensing something was amiss – he followed them back to the serial killer’s lair.
Speaking from her home in Palm Springs, train attendant Tali said: ‘My family home was on Kings Road off Sunset.
‘But we’d had a house fire while my parents were in Europe hanging out with the Rolling Stones, so we were living in a bungalow in the Chateau Marmont, the same one in which actor John Belushi died.
‘I couldn’t catch the school bus from the hotel, so I walked.
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‘My school was maybe 10 blocks away and I told my parents I was going to walk, but I don’t think they heard me.
‘I remember telling Alcala that I wasn’t allowed to talk to strangers and he said he knew my parents and he had a poster to show me.
‘My house was always full of people, to the point that I couldn’t sleep because there was always a party going on, so what he said made sense.
‘I can recall sitting in the backseat of his car, but I don’t remember much about the journey other than wanting to open the door and jump out, but I didn’t.
‘I don’t remember anything else after that.
‘I’ve been told the man that saved me had two daughters around my age and he could see something wasn’t right.
After fleeing to the east coast, Alcala (pictured in 1980) moved back to Los Angeles where he touted himself as a professional fashion photographer while secretly committing a string of gruesome murders
On September 13, 1978, Alcala appeared as a contestant on The Dating Game, a popular TV show that featured three eligible bachelors competing for a date with a bachelorette
Rodney evaded law enforcement and continued killing and assaulting women and children for years – and by the time he was sent to prison, it was believed that he had up to 130 victims
‘He followed us then found a phone and called the police, which is amazing.
‘That man was my Guardian Angel. If he hadn’t called the police, I would be dead, no doubt about it.
‘I was already on the floor with my head cut open and blood everywhere when the police burst in.’
Alcala fled before he could be arrested and Tali was left in a coma for 32 days, which is why she has no memory of the worst parts of her ordeal.
Weeks earlier, her attacker had beaten and raped 16-year-old Morgan Rowan in the same apartment, but police failed for take her claims seriously.
Alcala moved to New York, where he enrolled on a film course at NYU.
He was finally arrested for attacking Tali in 1971, but her parents refused to let her testify in court and by 1974 he was a free man on parole.
Two months later he was re-arrested for assaulting a 13-year-old girl and jailed for two years before being paroled again.
Alcala went on to work as a typesetter for the LA Times and during this period he convinced hundreds of men and women to pose for him by claiming to be a photographer.
Alcala managed to secure a date with bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw (pictured, left), who later refused to go out with the ‘creep’ despite being paired with him on the popular TV show
Alcala’s killing spree and appearance on The Dating Game is dramatized in Anna Kendrick’s (pictured, as Cheryl Bradshaw) chilling new Netflix film, Woman of the Hour, where he is played by actor Daniel Zovatto
His killing spree escalated when he was rejected by Dating Show contestant Cheryl Bradshaw, who refused to go out with the ‘creep’ despite being paired with him on the popular TV show.
Alcala was finally arrested and sentenced to death in 1979 after murdering at least six young women in California.
However, a series of appeals meant that his case was not completely settled until 2010, when he was sentenced to death a third time.
Tali bravely gave evidence against him in that trial and afterwards she became close friends with fellow survivor Morgan, 72, now a retired mother-of-two living in Glendale, California.
Alcala gave justice the slip a final time when he died of natural causes in prison aged 77 in 2021.
Tali – who never married but has a son called Brendan, 30 – has yet to watch the Netflix movie, but says: ‘I hope they do the story justice and I hope it highlights how badly the justice system let us all down.’
Her parents relocated to Mexico after she was raped and Tali added: ‘I was raised in paradise in a place next to the ocean about 50 miles from Puerto Vallarta and I had a fabulous childhood – my parents never talked about what happened.
In 2010, over three decades after his initial arrest, an Orange County jury convicted Alcala on five counts of first-degree murder, for which he was sentenced to death
Alcala died in 2021 at age 77 from unspecified natural causes while on death row (pictured right in 2018)
‘I always knew I’d been kidnapped and that a good Samaritan helped and that I had suffered a head injury, because they couldn’t hide that.
‘But I did not know I had been raped until I was 18, when the Alcala case was back in the news.
‘I didn’t feel anything. I remember thinking, bad things happen to good people.
‘Alcala was evil and I just happened to be one of the people that came into his path.
‘I have never considered myself a victim, I am a survivor.
‘But I do wonder if the attack left me with trust issues.
‘I had a really good boyfriend once and it just dissolved because I shut down.
‘I don’t know why because I did love him a lot. My one regret is that I didn’t make that relationship work because I was so in love with him and I am single now.
‘I think I have a fear of being vulnerable and you could take it back to that incident. ‘Because when Alcala picked me up I was vulnerable and I never want to be in that spot again.’
Tali’s story features in Morgan Rowan’s book about their ordeal called Stolen From Sunset, which is available to buy online.