Cheryl Bradshaw trusted her gut when she refused to go on a date with Rodney Alcala, and that decision may have saved her life.
In 1978, Bradshaw appeared on “The Dating Game,” a show in which three eligible bachelors competed for the affections of a bachelorette.
Bradshaw ended up picking Bachelor No. 1, Rodney Alcala, who wooed her during the episode with suggestive jokes and innuendos.
However, when Bradshaw spent more time with Alcala after filming ended, she changed her mind about dating him.
“She said, ‘Ellen, I can’t go out with this guy. There’s weird vibes that are coming off of him. He’s very strange. I am not comfortable. Is that going to be a problem?’” the show’s former contestant coordinator Ellen Metzger said on “20/20” in 2021. “And of course, I said, ‘No.’”
It would later emerge that Alcala was a violent serial killer and sexual offender. He was linked to the murders of six women and one girl during the 1970s, and authorities believe he could have actually killed more than 100 people.
Bradshaw’s experiences on “The Dating Game” were the inspiration for the new Netflix thriller, “The Woman of the Hour,” starring and directed by Anna Kendrick.
Not much is known about Bradshaw in real life. On the show, she introduced herself as a drama teacher from Phoenix, Arizona.
Kendrick, who plays Bradshaw in the film, told TODAY that Bradshaw has since passed away.
The actor and director says there are “so many things” she wishes she could have asked Bradshaw.
“I would ask her what it felt like for her to trust herself,” she said.
Kendrick also said that while Bradshaw’s intuition was admirable, she does not want to suggest that Alcala’s murder victims were any less capable of sensing danger.
“I think that it’s tricky … because I do want it to give the message that one should listen to one’s gut. But at the same time, sometimes it’s not as simple as that,” Kendrick said.
“I think there was a point where one of the producers was asking if there should be some really clever way that my character outsmarts or outwits Rodney, and that’s why she survives,” she continued. “And I was like, ‘I think that that would do a disservice to the other women who were no less intelligent than her, and that sometimes it’s a combination of trusting your gut, but sometimes it’s too late for that.”
“Sometimes you have to trust your gut, and you just get blind luck on your side and, and that’s how you kind of manage to come out of situations that other people couldn’t,” Kendrick added.
In 2010, crime profiler Pat Brown suggested that Bradshaw’s rejection could have possibly angered Alcala and driven him to commit further crimes.
“One wonders what that did in his mind,” Brown told CNN. “That is something he would not take too well. They don’t understand the rejection. They think that something is wrong with that girl: ‘She played me. She played hard to get.’”
Kendrick said she thinks that “certainly could be true, looking at his pattern.”
“I will also say that there are certainly many murders that we don’t know about so it’s hard to know for sure,” she added.
Alcala committed two known murders following his time on “The Dating Game.” He was convicted of the 1979 murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, and was later convicted of murdering 21-year-old Jill Parenteau the same year.
It later emerged that Alcala had already committed several murders before his appearance on “The Dating Game.”
He was convicted of the 1971 murder of Cornelia Crilley, the 1977 killings of Jill Barcomb, Georgia Wixted and Ellen Jane Hover, and the 1978 murder of Charlotte Lamb.
While Alcala’s criminal history is chilling, Kendrick said that in making “Woman of the Hour,” she was more interested in the stories of his survivors and victims than in exploring Alcala’s psyche.
“I’m really not interested in why he is the way he is,” she said. “I don’t find him interesting or worthy of exploration.”
Alcala, who was sent to death row for his crimes, died in 2021 at the age of 77. He died of natural cause, according to California prison officials.
