At the age of 17 in 1960, Alcala joined the Army with aspirations of becoming a paratrooper. He served for four years but held the position of a clerk throughout his entire military service. As his tenure approached its conclusion, Alcala's conduct raised concerns, ultimately leading to a diagnosis of severe and chronic anti-social personality disorder - also known as sociopathy.

Alcala graduated from the UCLA School of Fine Arts

Alcala managed to persuade numerous young men and women that he was a professional fashion photographer, and he photographed them for his "portfolio."

The portfolio contained photos of both young ladies as well as various naked teenage boys - the majority of these photographs are explicitly sexual in nature.

Alcala liked to use his bare hands to strangle his victims until they passed out. When they came to, he'd strangle them again with pantyhose or shoe laces. Once they had died, he'd pose their bodies and take pictures.

In December 1977, Alcala raped, sodomized, and murdered a 27-year-old nurse. He used the claw end of the hammer to beat and smash in her head. He strangled her to death using a nylon stocking and left her body posed in her Malibu apartment.

In 1951, Alcala's father relocated the family to Mexico but deserted them three years later. By 1954, when Alcala was just 11 years old, his mother decided to move him and his two sisters to suburban Los Angeles. Despite these challenges, Alcala displayed academic brilliance and enjoyed a reasonable level of popularity among his peers, receiving support from his family. He attended several private schools during his early years and eventually graduated from Montebello High School. During his high school years, he actively participated in extracurricular activities, serving on the yearbook planning committee and being a member of both the track and cross-country teams.

For some, moving to New York would be about just starting a new adventure, but for Alcala, it was a way to try to outrun the police and evade an arrest he had in California.

On September 25, 1968, a concerned passerby contacted the police after he observed Alcala enticing an 8-year-old girl. At the time, the child was staying at the Chateau Marmont with her family. Alcala approached her on her way to school, pulling up beside her in his car and offering her a ride. Initially, she declined, but when Alcala mentioned knowing her parents, she reluctantly got into his vehicle. Subsequently, Alcala transported her to his apartment, where he informed her that he wanted to show her a picture. The police arrived using informatoin from the concerned tipster, and found the little girl close to death, having been raped and beaten with a steel bar. Alcala fled.

When Alcala arrived in New York, he enrolled at NYU under the name "John Berger." He continued his crime spree under his assumed name, murdering a 23 year old flight attendant in her Manhattan apartment.

In early 1971, the FBI included Alcala on its list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. A few months later, while attending an arts camp, two children noticed Alcala's photo on an FBI poster displayed at the local post office. This led to Alcala's arrest and subsequent extradition to California. During this time, the parents of the 8 year old he had assulted had moved their entire family to Mexico and declined to allow her to testify at the trial. Since the authorities lacked their primary witness, Alcala was convicted of child molestation and sentenced to three years in prison.

Alcala was released on parole in 1974, serving just seventeen months. However, less than two months after his release, he was re-arrested for assaulting a 13-year-old girl who had accepted what she believed was a ride to school. Alcala was paroled once again in 1976 after serving two years behind bars.

On June 20, 1979, Alcala approached two 12-year-old girls at Huntington Beach and asked them to pose for pictures. After posing for a series of photographs, a neighbor intervened and asked if everything was alright. One of the girls took off. Later, the other girl got on a bike and headed to an afternoon dance class. Alcala then kidnapped and murdered the girl who walked away, and dumped her body near the Sierra Madre in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Investigators searched Alcala's storage locker and found women's earrings. A DNA test would conclusively match that of a victim in California.

On June 24, 1978, a 31-year-old legal secretary from Santa Monica, was found dead in the laundry room of her El Segundo apartment complex. She had been sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled with a shoelace, and was posed with her hands behind her back. DNA collected at the scene matched Alcala.

Although Alcala's confirmed kill count stands at eight, many invesitgators believe that the number is a lot greater and could be as high as 130, with victims all over the US including Washington, New Hampshire and Arizona. The bodies could be buried anywhere, and severly decomposed.

Alcala chose to represent himself for his death penalty trial, oddly questioning himself in the third person about his hair and his alibi. He adopted a deeper and authoritative tone to pose questions to himself, occasionally veering into tangential discussions about camera lenses.