Rodney Alcala's Head Examined on TV Tonight

I.D.

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It's all Rodney Alcala, all the time on tonight's True Crime with Aphrodite Jones, a weekly program on cable TV's I.D. (Investigation Discovery) channel.

The show will attempt to get inside the mind of the serial killer who was convicted in March 2010 and returned to Death Row for the murder of Huntington Beach 12-year-old Robin Samsoe and four Los Angeles County women. He is linked to several other working murders and feared to have killed many more.

• Click here for previous Weekly coverage on Rodney Alcala

The program will draw from this profile of Alcala by criminal profiler Candice Delong, who compares him to another infamous serial killer:

Where do I begin? Rodney Alcala, a thrice convicted rapist/kidnapper/serial killer, is a criminal profiler's dream--or nightmare--depending on your perspective. As I read several articles about Rodney and his many horrible crimes, it occurred to me that this guy, if nothing else, was at least guilty of channeling the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy. Both of these killers possess a rather high IQ, which sadly, they chose to squander on a life of self-indulgent, violent, sexual crimes. These men focused on attractive, (mostly) brunette young women and adolescent girls to unleash their unspeakable deeds, luring them to their deaths with disarming good looks and "charming ways." In the end, Alcala and Bundy both represented themselves at their own murder trials, and, thankfully, their representation was, to say the least, inadequate and they were both convicted by a jury and sentenced to death.

Both Bundy and Alcala had the brain power to do great and wonderful things with their lives, a gift most of us can only admire or envy. Yet they chose to go to the dark side, and between the two of them during their criminal careers, brutally killed many innocent women and children. What we all want to know is--WHY? My many years in clinical psychiatric nursing as well as an FBI profiler lead me to conclude that it's probably a result of two things: A combination of a bad DNA cocktail (85%) and bad parenting and childhood circumstances. In these two cases, it all came together to create a Personality Disorder only a mother could love: Narcissistic and Anti-social Personality Disorder. When these two "conditions" are seen in the same person it can be a lethal combination.

True Crime with Aphrodite Jones is shown at 10 p.m. on I.D., but check your particular delivery system's listings.