Daniel Tate, Lewis Daynes and Other Killers Who Hunted for Victims Online
Although the majority of murders are committed by someone the victim knows personally, killers are taking advantage of the popularity of social media to seek out strangers on Facebook, Craigslist, Tinder, Grindr and various dating sites.
Daniel Tate wanted a car, and didn’t care if he had to kill to get one.
So on July 23, 2017, the 20-year-old Wisconsin man lured 17-year-old Olivia Mackay to a secluded Lake Michigan beach and strangled her.
At his murder trial, jurors learned that Tate had met Mackay through Facebook right before the murder. The young woman thought she was meeting her online love interest in person for the first time.
While the majority of murders are committed by someone the victim knows personally, killers like Tate take advantage of the popularity of social media to seek out strangers for killing. To date, killers have used Facebook, Craigslist, Tinder, Grindr and various dating sites to target their victims.
And although most murderers find their victims offline, the problem is so widespread that some states have passed laws to make online-dating websites safer.
Dr. Elizabeth Yardley, professor of criminology at Birmingham City University in the U.K., says that although killers using social media to hunt for their prey is a relatively new phenomenon, it’s not entirely surprising.
“Killers target vulnerable people—[including] sex workers and the elderly—and now they’re doing that online, too,” Yardley says. “Social media is just another tool they’re using to find their victims.”
Yardley, who co-authored a 2014 study on homicide and social media, says sites like Facebook and Tinder help people form connections easily.
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“The general culture around social media tends to be quite informal and chatty,” Yardley says. “We tend to be quick to establish relationships with people online and be friendly in a way we never would have before social media.”
What’s more, social media tends to lull people into a false sense of security.
“There is a lot of information about us on social media, and people tend to overshare. Even if [users] have an open Facebook profile, they don’t realize that literally anyone could see what they post, and that has enabled people who are predatory to find out quite a lot.”
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Another way social media makes us vulnerable is that it blinds us to important clues that may warn of danger ahead of time.
“When we interact with someone face-to-face, we have eye contact and we can read body language,” Yardley says. “There’s a lot of information going back and forth, and we’re not consciously aware of that, but it’s very useful in figuring out whether the other person is a threat.”
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Less than a year after Mackay’s murder, Tate and an accomplice were convicted of killing her and disposing of her body.
Here are three other examples of killers who found their victims online:
Lewis Daynes
In early 2014, 14-year-old Breck Bednar told his mother he was taking a cab to his friend’s house to build a computer server. Instead, Bednar, of Caterham, Surrey in England, met up with 19-year-old Lewis Daynes, who had spent months befriending and grooming the boy through an online gaming channel they both frequented.
For months, Bednar’s mother had grown steadily concerned with the amount of time her son spent online gaming with Daynes, and had even confiscated his computer in an attempt to keep Daynes away. But Bednar snuck out to meet him, and the results were fatal: Bednar was later discovered in Daynes’ apartment, bound, gagged and stabbed to death.
Daynes was convicted of Bednar’s rape and murder in 2015 and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Bailey Boswell and Aubrey Trail
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Sydney Loofe, a woman from Lincoln, Nebraska, thought she had found a kindred spirit in Bailey Boswell, a 24-year-old woman whom she had met and befriended on Tinder.
In November 2017, the two went on a date, and Loofe, 23, gushed to her friends about how well their evening had gone. Loofe was excited to meet up with Boswell for a second time, but after messaging Boswell through Tinder and going over to her house for a second date, Loofe vanished.
In early December, Loofe’s dismembered body was found in a field in rural Nebraska, and both Boswell and her 51-year-old male boyfriend Aubrey Trail were arrested in connection to her murder six months later.
Loofe’s death was particularly horrifying to her local community, as Loofe had always used caution when meeting up with people online, sending pictures and identifying information of her potential dates to her friends before meeting. Although the two have been charged with her murder, the case is ongoing. The state will be seeking the death penalty for Boswell.
Philip Markoff
A promising young medical student just months away from his wedding, Philip Markoff struck many as an unusual candidate for a murderer. But when he wasn’t attending classes at Boston University, authorities say, Markoff was busy trolling Craigslist for his victims.
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In April 2009, Markoff allegedly went on a weekend-long spree of armed robberies, meeting up with women he found through the popular classifieds site, offering escort or massage services, and leaving one of them—Julissa Brisman—dead in a Boston hotel. After Brisman’s body was found, Markoff was arrested and charged with her murder as well as two other armed robberies. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment.
Media widely labeled Markoff the “Craigslist Killer.” He committed suicide in his jail cell in August 2010 while awaiting trial.
The Disturbing True Serial Killer Story Behind Anna Kendrick’s Woman of the Hour
Anna Kendrick’s new movie Woman of the Hour takes on the true story of the teacher who went on The Dating Game to find romance and her winning suitor, Rodney Alcala, turned out to be a murderer.
By Natalie Finn Oct 19, 2024 7:00 PMTags
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Watch: Anna Kendrick Meets the ‘Dating Game’ Killer: Hear The True Story Behind the Chilling Trailer
In a world where shows like Love Is Blind, 90 Day Fiancé and Married at First Sight are the norm, let alone the cottage industry that is Bachelor Nation, The Dating Game sounds rather quaint.
As first conceived by game show impresario Chuck Barris in 1965, there was a simple premise: A woman looking for love asks three suitors who are hidden behind a screen a series of questions. At the end, she picks one to go out with.
But while charm, chemistry and double entendres ruled the hour, the vetting process left something to be desired. Because on the episode that aired Sept. 13, 1978, teacher Cheryl Bradshaw‘s winning suitor turned out to be a serial killer.
“Bachelor No. 1” Rodney Alcala would later be convicted of seven murders, including the killing of a 12-year-old girl, and authorities have speculated that his true victim count could be closer to 100 women.
Anna Kendrick plays inspired-by-this-true-story Sheryl in Woman of the Hour, which approaches the harrowing story from the bachelorette’s perspective and marks the Pitch Perfect star’s directorial debut.
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“I feel very emotionally connected to the material,” Kendrick told E! News correspondent Will Marfuggi ahead of the film’s Oct. 18 premiere on Netflix. “I obviously like making kind of lighthearted fare, but I really felt drawn to this story and the way in which it teased out these larger themes around the way that women, especially, have to move through the world in a constant survival mode.”
Leah Gallo/Netflix
Kendrick singled out a scene in which Rodney (played by Daniel Zavallo) is at a Tiki bar as one of her trickier balancing acts in the film, sharing that a previous version of the script had a splashier moment that showed him getting upset at a waitress after she knocks over a glass.
Instead, they forwent the obvious red flag in favor of subtler creepy vibes. Kendrick thought they “could make something really terrifying happen,” she explained, “without making it clear on paper what’s happening.”
And it’s all the more terrifying because Woman of the Hour is based on a grisly true story. Read on for all the details on how Bradshaw was set up on a TV-facilitated date with a murderer:
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How did Rodney Alcala end up on The Dating Game?
When Alcala showed up as Bachelor No. 1 on The Dating Game in an episode that aired Sept. 13, 1978, he was introduced by host Jim Lange as “a successful photographer who got his start when his father found him in the dark room at the age of 13, fully developed.”
“Between takes, you might find him skydiving or motorcycling,” Lange continued. “Please welcome Rodney Alcala.”
Bradshaw, a school teacher from Phoenix who’d previously worked as a foot masseuse, started by asking Bachelor No. 1 what his “best time” was.
Alcala’s response: “Nighttime.” Asked to explain further, he said, “Nighttime is when it really gets good. Then you’re really ready.”
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Bradshaw also asked her suitors, “I am serving you for dinner. What are you called and what do you look like?”
Alcala memorably replied, “I am called the banana and I look really good.” Pressed for more detail, he said, “Peel me!”
Reflecting on how bizarre the exchange was in hindsight, former Dating Game producer David Greenfield admitted on ABC News’ 20/20 in 2021 that it “sounds horrible.”
At the time, though, he explained, “that’s a good solid answer…We were looking for raunchy, sexy answers, and that was one. Take it in context now, it’s like, ‘Oh my God.'”
And after a commercial break, Bradshaw made her choice: “Well, I like bananas, so I’ll take number one.”
But she never actually went out with Alcala (the show proposed a tennis lesson date followed by a trip to the Magic Mountain amusement park), instead getting turned off quickly once she met him face to face.
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“I started to feel ill,” she told the Sunday Telegraph in 2012. “He was acting really creepy. I turned down his offer. I didn’t want to see him again.”
Ellen Metzger, who was The Dating Game‘s contestant coordinator, recalled Bradshaw asking for an out the day after the taping.
“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?’” Metzger said on 20/20. “And of course, I said, ‘No.'” (As in, no problem.)
Actor Jed Mills, Bachelor No. 2 on Bradshaw’s episode, remembered literally recoiling from Alcala during the taping.
“He was creepy,” Mills told CNN years later. “Definitely creepy. Something about him, I could not be near him. I am kind of bending toward the other guy to get away from him, and I don’t know if I did that consciously. But thinking back on that, I probably did.”
Who was the “Dating Game Killer”?
Alcala’s fateful appearance on The Dating Game in 1978 came four years after his release from prison, where he’d served 34 months for child molestation after kidnapping and sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl in 1968.
Between committing that crime and being arrested for it, however, he killed at least one woman—a murder he wouldn’t be prosecuted for until decades later once advancements in DNA testing linked him to a series of cold cases—and he murdered at least four more before he was Bachelor No. 1.
But thanks to a Good Samaritan who witnessed the 8-year-old getting into a car with a man she seemingly didn’t know, after which he tailed them to an apartment building and called police, officers found the child alive on the evening of Sept. 25, 1968.
They also found Alcala’s UCLA student ID at the scene, so they had a suspect immediately.
But Alcala—a 25-year-old Army veteran who’d gone AWOL and was diagnosed by a military psychiatrist with chronic and severe antisocial personality disorder before he went to college—was long gone, per Stella Sands‘ 2011 book about the case, The Dating Game Killer: The True Story of a TV Dating Show, a Violent Sociopath, and a Series of Brutal Murders.
Unbeknownst to authorities in California, Alcala had surfaced in New York going by the name of John Berger. Using that alias, according to Sands, he enrolled at NYU, graduated with his bachelor’s degree in 1971 at the age of 27, worked as a photographer and secured a job as a counselor at an arts and drama camp in New Hampshire.
Who were Rodney Alcala’s murder victims?
On the evening of June 24, 1971, Cornelia Crilley, a 23-year-old TWA flight attendant, was found dead in the Manhattan apartment she’d moved into that very day. Police (called by her boyfriend, per Sands, after Crilley’s mom couldn’t get her on the phone) discovered her body in a bedroom with a stocking tied around her neck. She was partially clothed and had bite marks on her chest—so investigators were able to collect DNA at the scene, only there was no way to match it to a suspect at the time.
“He kept trophies, usually jewelry,” Kendrick, who used real-life case details to depict the killer’s crimes in Woman of the Hour, told Rolling Stone. “The mental image of him, in the aftermath of violating and brutally killing a person, taking the time to remove a delicate piece of jewelry, haunts me. He preserved them for years. He treated an earring with more respect than a human being.”
Meanwhile, about a month after Crilley was killed, Los Angeles Police detectives who’d been searching for Alcala since connecting him to the aforementioned 1968 child assault contacted the FBI. The bureau subsequently added the suspect to its most-wanted list.
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In August 1971, a couple of the campers where “John Berger” was a counselor saw his picture in the local post office. Per Sands, they didn’t really think Berger could be Alcala, especially since the fugitive was accused of harming a little girl, but they told a camp director, who called the FBI.
Alcala was arrested at the camp the next day and flown back to L.A. to face charges in the 1968 assault.
However, his young victim and her family had left the country and were unavailable to testify. Alcala pleaded guilty to child molestation and on May 19, 1972, a judge sentenced him to a maximum of 10 years in prison with the possibility of parole.
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Alcala served time at the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, Calif., and the California Medical Facility (a state prison psychiatric hospital) in Vacaville. He was released in August 1974 after a state prison psychiatrist deemed him “considerably improved,” according to Sands’ book. He moved back in with his mother in Monterey Park and was required to register as a sex offender with the Monterey County Police Department.
On Oct. 13, 1974, he offered to give a 13-year-old girl who was waiting for her bus a ride to school but ended up taking her to Huntington Beach, where he gave her a joint. A park ranger, sensing something wasn’t right, called police. Alcala was arrested and charged that December with sale of marijuana, kidnapping and violating his parole.
He was convicted of the parole violation and giving drugs to a minor and sent back to prison. He was released on June 16, 1977.
Corey Sipkin/NY Daily News via Getty Images
On July 15, 1977, Ellen Jane Hover—who had recently moved to New York after graduating from college in Pennsylvania—disappeared.
Two days earlier, during the infamous city-wide blackout that swathed Manhattan in darkness and prompted far more people than usual to be congregating outside, a friend had noticed Hover talking to a tall, skinny man with a ponytail.
Asked who the “freaky-looking guy” was, per Sands, Hover told her friend he was “all right.” After the 23-year-old failed to show up for a dinner date on the 15th and her parents called police, investigators found that she had written “John Berger, photographer,” in her diary.
Police found Hover’s remains 11 months later in a shallow grave in North Tarrytown, Westchester County.
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While New York authorities were searching for Hover, the body of Jill Barcomb, 18, was found in the Hollywood Hills on Nov. 10, 1977, and Georgia Wixted, 27, was murdered in her Malibu apartment barely a month later, police finding her body on Dec. 16.
In September 1977, Alcala secured a job as a typesetter at the Los Angeles Times after presenting a mostly falsified resume. (He worked there until May 1979, according to Sands.)
That December he was questioned by the FBI at LAPD headquarters about Hover’s disappearance in New York—the bureau having connected the name Berger found in the woman’s diary to Alcala—and he admitted to knowing her. He told investigators he took her to a spot in Westchester to photograph her but then took her back to Manhattan and dropped her off at her apartment, alive and well.
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In March 1978, Alcala—since he was a registered sex offender—was interviewed by detectives from the LAPD’s Hillside Strangler task force (before they ultimately arrested cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr. in connection with the murders of 10 women between October 1977 and February 1978).
Meanwhile, he continued to work at the LA Times and take pictures on the side.
On June 24, 1978, 32-year-old Charlotte Lamb was found dead in the laundry room of an El Segundo, Calif., apartment complex—but because she didn’t live there, she wasn’t identified for several days.
Lamb told friends she was going to a nightclub on June 23 and her family called police three days later once they realized no one had seen her since. Authorities soon realized the missing woman was their Jane Doe.
Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images
Less than three months later, Alcala was the man of the hour on The Dating Game.
On June 14, 1979, Jill Parenteau, 21, was strangled to death in her Burbank apartment. Six days later, 12-year-old Robin Samsoe was reported missing after last being seen riding her bike to a ballet lesson. The child’s remains were found July 2 in the Sierra Madre foothills.
The Samsoe case was headline news. And, according to Sands’ book, it was ultimately the same Good Samaritan who called police in 1968 to report that he had seen a young girl get into a car with a suspicious man—leading authorities to where Alcala had taken his 8-year-old victim—who called again to suggest they should look at the perpetrator of that crime for this one.
Once police dug up Alcala’s mug shot, he looked a lot like the composite drawn up with the help of witnesses who told police they’d seen a man photographing Samsoe by the Huntington Beach Pier the day she disappeared.
He was arrested July 24, 1979.
Michael Goulding/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images
What happened to Rodney Alcala?
Alcala was found guilty of Samsoe’s murder in 1980 and given the death penalty.
His conviction was overturned four years later after the California Supreme Court ruled that introducing evidence of his previous crimes at trial had been prejudicial—but he was retried, re-convicted and re-sentenced to death in 1986.
A federal appeals court overturned his conviction yet again in 2003 and he was granted a new trial, but he remained locked up.
With the help of advances in DNA testing, Alcala, then 66, was convicted in Orange County, Calif., of the 1970s-era murders of Barcomb, Wixted, Parenteau and Lamb in 2010, bite marks containing traces of Alcala’s saliva and other bodily fluids from the killer connecting him to all four victims.
During the same proceedings, he was also found guilty of Samsoe’s murder for a third time.
Ted Soqui/Corbis via Getty Images
Alcala, who defended himself and maintained he had an alibi for Samsoe’s disappearance (but did not offer any defense regarding the other victims), was again sentenced to death.
“There are 36 people now that all agree that this man deserves to die,” Samsoe’s brother told the Los Angeles Times, referring to the three 12-person juries who’d arrived at the same conclusion.
In 2012, again linked by DNA, Alcala pleaded guilty to the New York murders of Crilley in 1971 and Hover in 1977. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
Michael Goulding/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images
Alcala spent the rest of his days behind bars at Corcoran State Prison before dying of natural causes at a nearby hospital in July 2021. He was 77.
“The planet is a better place without him, that’s for sure,” Tali Shapiro, the 8-year-old girl Alcala assaulted in 1968, told the New York Times after his death.
“I know it’s awful what happened to me, but I’ve never identified with it,” the 61-year-old added. “I’ve moved on with my life, so this doesn’t really affect me. It’s a long time coming, but he’s got his karma.”
