“Haunted by the Past: The Chilling Encounter Between a Survivor and ‘The Dating Game’ Killer That Unveiled Dark Secrets”
She said: “He approached me as I was pulling a copy of The Plague off the bookshelf. ‘Camus?’ He asked me and I turned around to see a tall man with a strong Adam’s apple. Handsome, though there was something chilling about the way his eyes didn’t reflect light. He scared me. I had wanted to spend time in the bookstore while I waited for my dad to get a haircut — but I ran downstairs to the register, paid, and left.
“He followed me out and wouldn’t stop talking about having just come from California, about NYU, about the baked apples at the restaurant we were passing. He then asked to photograph me.”
“‘You wanted to photograph me,'” I told the 70-year-old Alcala sitting across from me. He’d said something about my red hair, the black of my rain slicker. The colors against the gray day.”
“A storm was threatening and at the first dramatic jag of lightning up there, Alcala had turned demonic, yelling with violence to help him carry equipment down to the apartment. I still remember clearly the feeling of knowing something was wrong inside of that apartment. Terrifyingly wrong. It was a mess — women’s clothes everywhere. He pushed a packet of Polaroids into my hand and went to the bathroom. Women. Dead and posed. Alive and posed. Drugged and posed. Naked. Posed. The photos fell from my hands as I sprang for the door.
