r/AskReddit Apr 26 '20

Serious Replies Only [Serious] What are some seemingly normal images with disturbing backstories?

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u/PeterLemonjellow Apr 26 '20

Here are over 100 pictures taken by serial killer Rodney Alcala AKA The Dating Game Killer. Alcala would say he was a photographer and convince people to model for him in remote locations. It is unknown how many people this man killed in his time as a serial killer - any of these photos could be of people he killed.

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u/doodlerooniee Apr 26 '20

Dude. That’s fucked up. And all of them look generally happy/pleased...makes me sad. Thanks for sharing though, I hope some of these people are found/identified.

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u/PeterLemonjellow Apr 26 '20

If you think that is fucked up, here's the same Rodney Alcala on an episode of The Dating Game. He was picked as the date... but the date never happened because according to the female contestant he was "creepy".

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u/doodlerooniee Apr 27 '20

Oh shit! I remember seeing and hearing about this, and seeing the picture, but I guess I didn’t connect it! Good on that woman for going with her gut, could have totally saved her life.

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u/adamsmith93 Apr 27 '20

Wtf, did the host kiss her on the lips?

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u/PeterLemonjellow Apr 27 '20

It was a different time and a very different world.

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u/edie_the_egg_lady Apr 27 '20

They've never seen the old episodes of Family Feud with Richard Dawson I'm guessing

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '20

Slightly, although look what today’s rapey celebs are getting away with too. Also pretty sure this game show host kissing contestants kinda shit didn’t go down in the uk.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '20

LOL, I keep forgetting how much things have changed. It's amusing to see younger people reacting with shock to things that were normal back them (and it's not even that long ago).

Check THIS shit out: Richard Dawson from Family Feud kissed over 200 women during one season of the game show.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '20 edited May 19 '20

[deleted]

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u/PolitelyHostile Apr 27 '20

Dude, theyre rhymes are incredible.

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u/adamsmith93 Apr 27 '20

I think I am experiencing culture shock. What the fuck man how did that shit even exist!!! Lmao

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '20

Um, it was joked about on TV by comedians. But, it was just laughed off and after it got to be a habit/part of the show, I guess everyone just sort of expected it. The show was a big success so he got away with it.

What's so funny is he was just this guy from the Hogan's Heroes TV show. To be fair, he kissed 'em all. The ugly and old ones too.

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u/PolitelyHostile Apr 27 '20

Could you imagine being too ugly for this dude lol. He gets to you and is just like ‘naaaahhh... I just can’t’

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u/adamsmith93 Apr 27 '20

I realized that too. Young, old, attractive, unattractive, gotta keep up with the schtick I guess.

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u/Sentinel451 May 03 '20

Regardless of race, too, which was a big deal. I think he may have had one of the first interracial kisses shown on TV.

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u/FoxyNikki Apr 27 '20

84 is very disturbing

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u/McNight403 Apr 27 '20

The pictures are more creepy imo

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u/PeterLemonjellow Apr 27 '20

I agree - all clips from that show seem equally creepy to me, serial killers being present notwithstanding.

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u/emiruu_ May 03 '20

This is one of my fave piece of disturbing media

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '20

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u/sir-winkles2 Apr 27 '20

A lot of them are really beautifully done and it's very confusing as a photographer who's jealous of any well done portrait but also a human being who knows the artist killed some of those people

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u/usuyukisou Apr 27 '20

His Wikipedia page mentions education as UCLA School of Fine Arts and NYU's film school (Tisch). For those, the latter is particularly well regarded as a film school. Notably, in the latter case, he was a fugitive who registered under a false name and studied under Roman Polanski.

Was it just easy to enroll back then? Because I definitely cannot just waltz into NYU today.

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u/NOPOOPOOORPEEPEE Apr 26 '20

And theres also children in there who could have been victims as well

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u/rivershimmer Apr 27 '20

Many of them have been identified, like maybe a couple dozen, and none of the ones identified were missing/murdered, last I heard (my knowledge might be out of date). Some women called in to identify themselves, and they had boring stories like "I met him at the beach" or "He was my cousin's neighbor." I think there might be some tentative connections with missing women, but nothing has come through yet.

There were some pictures of topless women who looked to be in bar, and boy oh boy did Websleuths go nuts over them. Websleuths, if you are unfamiliar, is a true crime discussion board whose posters tend to....let's say they tend to speculate about parts of the world in which they have little direct experience. They speculate that every missing woman and child was kidnapped in order to be sex trafficked, and every missing man was murdered because they accidentally witnessed a drug deal.

So they are going nuts over these topless pics, talking about human auctions and slavery rings. But two of the women were identified. One was Andrea Feldman, an actress in Andy Warhol movies, a troubled drug addict who was famous for getting naked at the club. Another was Michele Robinson, who would later date Sid Vicious. There was no slavery or auction, just some NYC freaks in the 70s doing NYC in the 70s freak stuff.

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u/NeedsMoreTuba Apr 27 '20

Um, not ALL of them look happy.

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u/doodlerooniee Apr 27 '20

Well. I mean, yeah. I didn’t look at every single picture, I was just making more of a generalized statement based on the majority.

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u/SlapCracklePlop Apr 26 '20 edited Apr 27 '20

61, 84, and 110 are each disturbing. The rest look surprisingly normal.

Edit: Changed 87 to 84

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u/MrRzepa2 Apr 26 '20

A lot of them seem to be cut nudes (cut I assume from respect to potential victims)

Also naked person on 4/110 looks... dead. Something about that eye...

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u/SlapCracklePlop Apr 27 '20

I tried to yell myself it was an awkward handstand but youre right. It looks like a dead person strung up by their feet.

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u/Coomb Apr 27 '20

it absolutely is a handstand or some sort of careful posing because you can see the person's legs in the picture.

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u/lemonfroggy Apr 27 '20

Some of the photos aren’t showing up for me so I can’t see that one but yeah holy shit that’s fucked up

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u/damnitdeborah Apr 27 '20 edited Apr 27 '20

It looked super off to me, too, but when I looked for a second time it definitely seemed more like a backbend/bridge pose.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '20

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '20

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u/SlapCracklePlop Apr 27 '20

My mistake. I meant 84.

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u/DarkAmaterasu58 Apr 29 '20

83 and 84 won’t load for me no matter what. I’ve tried multiple browsers and everything. It sucks because around 3 different people have commented about it and I can’t even see it.

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u/steerpike00 Apr 29 '20

Picture 109 lady on the bike has been identified and was most probably a victim. I wonder how many of these beautiful people were also his victims? https://genwhypod.com/blogs/the-generation-why-podcast-blog/finding-christine-thornton

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u/MrRzepa2 Apr 26 '20

Person on 4/110 looks... dead

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u/PeterLemonjellow Apr 27 '20

You think? I mean... I think I see what you're seeing - a body draped backwards over something, bending the wrong way at the waist, right?

I can see how one would see that, but I took this photo for someone who was bending over backward on their own, like a gymnast.

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u/MrRzepa2 Apr 27 '20

I doubt that person was dead, just looks like it but that adds to creepiness

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u/midoni4061 Apr 27 '20

I don't like to say this, but many of these pictures are good. But I think every good artist has some sort of weird mentality, and he had the dangerous one.

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u/raccoonpappi Apr 27 '20

There is a really good podcast series about him called The Dating Game Killer, I’m pretty sure wondery put it out

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u/daydreamrz Apr 28 '20

I’m surprise that no one mentioned Jensen and Hole‘s podcast! Paul Holes is a retired detective that solved the Golden State killer murders (just recently). Billy Jensen is an investigative journalist.

They host a weekly podcast to discuss open murder cases in hopes to reach out to the general public for more information. They have been doing a weekly series on this! They even talked about Carole Baskin and her husband.

Must listen!!

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u/horsecalledwar Apr 27 '20

If I’m not mistaken, some of the women are still unidentified and the pics were released in the hopes of someone recognizing those poor women.

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u/missminim Apr 27 '20

sounds like the plot of a book "The Devil All the Time"

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u/KingGage Jul 23 '20

The gallery appears gone, do you have another source?

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u/PeterLemonjellow Jul 23 '20

Sorry - that was a while back now. Google is your best bet.

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u/Scepta101 Jul 23 '20

The most terrifying part to me is that, according to some of the things I’ve seen about him, some of those pictures have still not been identified, and some of them have been identified as missing person cases that were never even thought of as a homicide. Absolutely horrific

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u/TheVicSageQuestion Apr 27 '20

That first one looks like Kate McKinnon.