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Manhattan Judge Sentences Rodney Alcala to 25 Years to Life for the 1970s Murders of Two New York Women

Justice Bonnie Wittner wept on the bench. Alcala, already condemned in California, was to return to death row at San Quentin.

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Rodney Alcala, gray-haired and in glasses, in a courtroom with his hand to his face

Two 23-year-old women were killed in New York in the 1970s, and their cases went unsolved for decades. On January 7, 2013, a Manhattan judge sentenced Rodney Alcala to 25 years to life for both.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Bonnie Wittner imposed the term, to run concurrently with Alcala's California death sentence, and broke down in tears on the bench. "This is the kind of case I've never experienced, and hope to never again," she said. "In 30 years, I've never had a case like this." Alcala had pleaded guilty in December to murdering Cornelia Crilley, a TWA flight attendant, in her Upper West Side apartment in 1971, and Ellen Hover, the daughter of a Hollywood nightclub owner, who disappeared in 1977. "Mr. Alcala, I want you to know that you broke my parents' hearts and they never really recovered," Crilley's sister, Katie Stigall, told him.

The cases became a priority after Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. took office in January 2010, and prosecutors in his Cold Case Unit worked with the NYPD's Cold Case Homicide Squad. Alcala, who appeared on "The Dating Game" in 1978, had been sentenced to death in California for murdering four women and a 12-year-old girl, and after the New York sentencing he was to return to death row at San Quentin.

The New York Post reported that Ellen Hover's remains were found in a wooded park in Westchester County, while the Associated Press said they were found in the woods on a suburban estate.

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