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Manhattan Grand Jury Indicts Rodney Alcala in the 1970s Killings of Cornelia Crilley and Ellen Hover

Alcala, already on California's death row, faced his first charges outside the state. A new cold-case unit built the case, the Manhattan district attorney said.

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Rodney Alcala, with long gray hair and glasses, in an orange jail jumpsuit between court officers in Manhattan

Rodney Alcala had long been suspected in the killings of two young women in New York in the 1970s. On January 27, 2011, Manhattan prosecutors announced that a grand jury had indicted him in both.

District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said the cases had "haunted New York since the 1970s." According to prosecutors, Alcala killed Cornelia Crilley, 23, a flight attendant, in her Manhattan apartment in 1971, and Ellen Hover, 23, the daughter of a Hollywood nightclub owner, who disappeared from New York City in July 1977. Alcala, 67, was on California's death row after being convicted in 2010 of killing four women and a 12-year-old girl. A cold-case unit created in the district attorney's office the year before had built on that California case and other evidence. "Cold cases are never, ever forgotten cases," Vance said. "We do not ever give up." He declined to describe the evidence but said the case did not hinge on any single piece of physical evidence such as DNA.

In 2003, New York detectives had visited Alcala in California to take a dental impression. Police also found that he had used the alias John Berger in New York, a name that appeared in Hover's case file. Orange County prosecutor Matt Murphy said a New York trial would not affect Alcala's California death-penalty appeal and that he expected Alcala to be returned to California afterward.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Ellen Hover was found slain in 1977, but later in the same article said her body was discovered the year after she disappeared in July 1977.

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