'Dating Game Killer' Rodney Alcala dies from natural causes in prison at 77

• Rodney Alcala was tried and convicted on seven counts of murder in his lifetime, although police suspect he killed many others.
• DNA evidence linked Alcala to the murders of four women in Orange County.
• Alcala was known as the "Dating Game Killer" because he was a contestant on the television show 'The Dating Game' in 1978.

Convicted serial killer Rodney James Alcala, 77, an Orange County man who was on California's death row, died of natural causes in the early hours of July 24 at a hospital in Kings County, according to a news release from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Alcala was known as the "Dating Game Killer" because he was a contestant on the television show "The Dating Game" in 1978. Host Jim Lange did not know that Alcala had already murdered at least five women and been charged with the attempted murder of a young girl when he introduced him as an eligible bachelor on the show, according to ABC News.

None of his victims were connected to the show.

In 2010, an Orange County jury convicted Alcala of five counts of first-degree murder, according to the news release.

He was sentenced to death for the killing of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, as well as the 1977 deaths of 18-year-old Jill Barcomb and 27-year-old Georgia Wixted; the 1978 death of 32-year-old Charlotte Lamb, and the 1979 death of 21-year-old Jill Parenteau, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said.

Following Alcala's conviction, authorities released more than 100 photos of unidentified women and children found in a storage unit that belonged to Alcala in an attempt to find out if there were further victims, CNN reported. Alcala lured women by offering to take their picture, according to The New York Times.

NBC News reported that three years later, Alcala was additionally sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the murders of two young women in New York in the 1970s: Cornelia Crilley, in 1971, and Ellen Jane Hover, in 1977.

In 2016, prosecutors in Wyoming charged Alcala with the murder of Christine Ruth Thornton, who was 28 years old and six months pregnant when she disappeared in 1978, according to the news release from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The department also said that investigators have either suspected Alcala of or linked him to other murders in Los Angeles and Marin County in California; Seattle, Washington; New York; New Hampshire; and Arizona.