A former reality TV star was sentenced to death Tuesday by a California court after being found guilty of killing four women and a 12-year-old girl in the late 1970s, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The sentence was handed down by a judge in Orange County, southern California, three weeks after a jury recommended a death sentence for Rodney Alcala, 66. Alcala had been a contestant on the 1970s TV show The Dating Game and had twice been sentenced to death for one of the five slayings in his current trial, dpa reported.
Alcala succeeded in having both earlier sentences overturned on appeal. But prosecutors filed new charges in 2006 after using DNA and other forensic evidence to link him to the five cases.
Alcala has been in custody since a month following the 1979 murder of Robin Samsoe, 12, after his parole officer recognized him from police sketches.