GUILTY NY - Cornelia Crilley & Ellen Hover, both 23, New York City, 1971 & 1977

I know they're talking about justice for the victims and closure for the families, but I can't believe they're doing this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_States


New York's death penalty statute was declared unconstitutional in 2004. A whole new law would have to pass to fix that. Apparently, death penalty bills have to catch that state in just the right mood to have any chance. They haven't been able to repair the situation in seven years.

California can only kill him once. New York can't kill him at all if it tries him now. What will this cost the taxpayers?

This isn't a political forum so I don't want to go far here. Maybe the Alcala trials and questions about the wisdom of them will get some momentum going for death penalty laws nationally. I was surprised at the size of the "never passed a death penalty in the first place" list. Knew my own state was on it, but I thought one or two of the others had more sense.

(Note: Sorry the Wikipedia link looks so messed up. It's something the forum software is doing. Various parts of it still work for going to the page.)
 
It had never occurred to me until now what it would mean if they tried RA for these other murders. It means he will probably die of old age. As his own attorney he will get special privileges, plane rides to New York, access to telephone and computer. And lots of attention! He must be so pleased. This absolutely enrages me when I think about it. I was looking at one of those last pictures of him in a courtroom and he reminds me very much Anthony Perkins in Psycho. So creepy and ugly.
 
Maybe they think this will destabilize him enough to get some other sort of info out of him?
 
Maybe somewhere in that body made entirely of tin he will find a tiny heart that make him reveal info about the pics.
 
I agree...it's just ridiculous! It seems as if a LOT has gone awry in these cases and we will probably see more. He could live another 20 years and I have absolutely no doubt that he will never be put to death. In fact, once he's done in NY, by then they will probably try him in New Hampshire or Washington after they identify more of the victims. He will spend his final years being a celebrity. Its what he craves...he's not a human being!
 
Mods, I apologize in advance, I don't know whether this should be a new thread or if this is the correct place to post, but I thought the community might be interested in this article I saw in the NY Times this morning. Please move the thread to a more appropriate place if it's in the wrong place, thanks.

Basically the story is that the detective who initially covered the rape and murder of 23-year old flight attendant Cornelia Crilley is being called before a grand jury that is investigating whether it may have been committed by Rodney Alcalala.

40 Years On, Detective Sees Light Shed on a Killing
 
They found a dead woman lying against an overturned bed, with a rope tied around her neck.

Most articles say it was her stockings. But this one has details the others don't mention. Who's right?

Then last month, almost 40 years after he was assigned to the case, Mr. Donnelly, now retired, heard for the first time the name of the man the authorities now believe killed Ms. Crilley: Rodney Alcala, a photographer and a one-time contestant on “The Dating Game” who is on death row in California for murdering five people in the late 1970s.

He certainly hasn't been following the Alcala case, as Crilley's name has been coming up in the news reports on it since early last year.

“I went to the grand jury and heard significant things about the case that I didn’t know,” Mr. Donnelly, 73, said in an interview this week.

So his recollections are fairly clean and uncontaminated.

“I worked on that case solely probably for a week,” he said. “I didn’t come up with a lot. And bear in mind, I’m catching other cases every day.” He had to move on, he said, speaking of an era when the annual homicide tallies in New York City were three times as high as they are today. But he still picked up the Crilley case file from time to time. He retired from the force in 1979, and now lives in Rhode Island.

Probably unintended by the NYT, but there's a tribute to the heartless Rudi Giuliani administration in there.

Despite his early work on the Crilley case, Mr. Donnelly does not plan to follow the trial. “It wasn’t that unique of a case to me,” he said. “I think they’re going to make a whole big thing out of this.”

Yup. And New York can't even impose the death sentence.
 
Thanks for the info cartercar. It looks like Ellen Hover and Cornelia Crilley's families are going to finally get some justice for the murders of their loved one....bittersweet as it may be.
 
I've heard of the odd one or two cases where garbage like Alcala get their death sentences commuted to life, or they get released on some fluke, or technicality years later in their state. Could it be that they want to make sure he stays locked up forever one way or the other in whatever state if he never gets executed.
 
This really makes me nuts - so who is this actually supposed to help? Certainly not the victims or the victims families..

But Im sure Alcala will enjoy getting to go to somewhere new for the first time in 30 years, nothing like a bit of a road trip across country to 'punish' someone whos been stuck in the same place forever.
 
This really makes me nuts - so who is this actually supposed to help? Certainly not the victims or the victims families..

But Im sure Alcala will enjoy getting to go to somewhere new for the first time in 30 years, nothing like a bit of a road trip across country to 'punish' someone whos been stuck in the same place forever.

There are remains attributed to him that have never been identified, and probably remains that have never been found. If a new trial allows for any possibility that questions could be answered, then yes I am happy to see a new trial.

Then Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. announced in January that Alcala had been indicted in the separate murders of two 23-year-old women here — the 1971 strangling of flight attendant Cornelia Crilley and the death of Ellen Hover, a onetime Hollywood nightclub owner’s daughter whose remains were found in 1978 after she disappeared the year before. Alcala had been eyed as a suspect in Hover’s death since at least 1979; prosecutors said new technology and information that emerged in the California trial helped them put together a case.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...rder-charges/2011/11/30/gIQANy7mDO_story.html

From the sounds of things info from the previous trial helped to lead to this one. Who knows where info from this trial might lead.

Besides that Alcala seems to be using the loopholes in the law to keep his case up in the air. If nothing else a new case in New York should at least keep him busy, maybe even cause a little confusion in his defense. Could help to ease things in the appeals process if he is busy elsewhere.
 
http://www.marinij.com/sausalito/ci_19914851

A five-time killer on death row at San Quentin can be extradited to New York state to stand trial in two other murder cases, a Marin judge ruled Tuesday.

Rodney Alcala, 68, was indicted in New York last year in the strangling deaths of two women in the 1970s. Prosecutors sought charges based on renewed investigations, technological advances and information derived from Alcala's trial in California.

Alcala, whose extradition lawyers are Marin public defenders David Brown and Peter Arian, fought the extradition request, saying he needs to be here to prepare his death penalty appeal. New York has no death penalty, the defense attorneys noted.

"Our goal is to protect his right to a meaningful appeal of his California death sentence," Brown and Arian said in a statement. "He cannot effectively fight against the death penalty in California if he is taken to New York at this time. Despite today's ruling, this is a significant constitutional issue that we plan to litigate in the appellate courts."

Judge Paul Haakenson, who ruled that Alcala can be extradited, stayed the ruling to give Alcala time to appeal it. The judge gave Alcala until March 9 to file his appeal, with extradition tentatively set for April 6 unless a higher court intervenes.
 
I can't remember, were either of these women UIDs in the huge stack of photos?
 
I can't remember, were either of these women UIDs in the huge stack of photos?

This answers Ms. Hover:

"However, the images – recovered by Huntington Beach detectives from a storage locker Alcala rented in Seattle – did not include a picture of Hover."

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/alcala-257815-hover-new.html


I don't see anything on Ms. Crilley except comments by the prosecution that all details have not been revealed in their case against him. So perhaps by omission, I'd think there might be.
 
Just for the record, official statements duly noted, I'm not buying them. I continue to suspect these two UIDs are in fact Hover.

Singer-FurCoat.jpg


I've never done a side-by-side for either that really fails. Here's a new one, for instance.

Hover-FurCoat--NewLook.jpg


The "Singing Girl" shot may or may not be from some years earlier than "Fur Coat Girl." She could be somewhat younger. Nothing in that picture dates later than about 1971. But all you'd really have to do to go from Singing Girl to Fur Coat Girl is apply some makeup, trim some eyebrow, and comb out the tucked-under front hair strands. (In some pictures, Hover herself is shown with such combing, with hair perfectly matching Fur Coat Girl.) I'm thinking now, could have been earlier in the same day.

We pretty much talked all this out on those other threads and not too many people are convinced. OK, nobody else is convinced. Nobody. But I call 'em like I see 'em.
 

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