Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: This Is Terror - Part I

Episode Date: February 24, 2024

Morgan Rowan describes how she was brutally attacked in 1968 by Rodney Alcala during a party at his Hollywood home. She never told her parents what happened and always wondered if he would go on to hurt someone else.Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. 

An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of sexual assault and violence. Listener discretion is advised. I just knew he was angry at me. I thought it was going to be an argument. I thought he might slap me or hurt me, but I certainly didn't expect what actually happened. Morgan Rowan was a teenager living in Los Angeles in the 1960s. The 60s were just an unusual time. It was a time where everybody tried to just love each other.

All we cared about was peace. We wanted to end the war. A lot of people took drugs to find greater meaning. I didn't really need that. I was never really into that. I was never really into that. I was much younger than most of the people that I hung out with. We would go up on Sunset Strip

and it was just hundreds of people walking around on the street and you would just talk to anybody. In those years I was, you know, 15, 16. Most people were 18 to 22. The music was incredible. Sunset Strip was just a strip of different nightclubs, and they all left the doors open.

So you would just be out in the street, you know, singing or dancing or whatever, because you could hear all the music coming from all the clubs. It was a fun time to be alive. Even with the bad things that happened at the end, I wouldn't trade it. It was a very exciting time to be alive. Even with the bad things that happened at the end, I wouldn't trade it.

It was a very exciting time to be alive. This is I Survived, the podcast where we talk to people who've lived through the worst things imaginable and all the tragic, messy, and wonderful things that happen after survival. I'm Caitlin VanMol. When I was 13, I probably looked 12 or 10. You know, I looked very small, and I was very small. We were outside of the nightclub, the teenage nightclub that we went to, and Rod and a friend were standing there talking.

One of my friends said to me, hey that's Rod Alcala. Nobody ever called him Rod, they called him Rod Alcala. Everybody knew him. He had a big presence. You know, he was a very good looking man. Well, to me he was a boy. I thought he was just an older boy, you know. He was, you know, to me he was a boy. I thought he was just an older boy, you know. He was, you know, very self-confident. He had a very nice smile. He laughed with his whole body. He was very animated. He was the kind of person you want to sit around and know. So, you know,

in the 60s, everybody talked to everybody. so I kind of wandered over to where they were, and everybody else disappeared, and it ended up just the two guys talking and me. And I scratched his arm very lightly with my fingernails, and he put his arm around me and hugged me close and laughed. And I liked that. I was 13, you know, so I kept doing it. But unfortunately, I did it until I aggravated him. When his friend walked away, he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to the back area of the club. And he just was a different person.

He was dark and ugly and frightening, and my feet didn't even touch the ground. And when we got back there, or when he got me to the back of the club, I honestly don't know what happened because he knocked me out. And I woke up against a wall with a pressure on my chest. And when I pushed the pressure off of my chest, it was a dumpster, and he had put me behind a dumpster and then shoved it up against the wall. If I had to guess, I think he slammed my head into the wall because I don't think he had anything in his hand. But I honestly don't know.

I ran into the club and told them what happened. They, you know, cleaned me up and, you know, asked me if I was okay, and I didn't want anybody to tell my parents I wouldn't be able to go there again, you know. So they banned him from the club. They didn't allow him in the club. Well, he was very angry at that because he couldn't come into this great nightclub. And so he told people constantly how much he hated me. And whenever I would see him, I would leave the area.

You know, I would just go, I would leave right away. I never wanted to be anywhere near him. I saw him quite often for over the next three years. But I always just kept my distance and went away. Over the next three years, Morgan successfully avoided Rod.

But one night in 1968, she decided she'd had enough. Then when I was 16, which was 1968, I found out that we were leaving California and moving to New York. That was about four days before we were moving. And I was up on Sunset Strip where everybody hung out, a lot of people. And Rod just kind of appeared in the crowd. And normally I would leave, but I only had four days left,

so I wasn't gonna go anywhere. And he came to me and said, you know, I hear you're leaving and I don't want you to leave until I get to say I'm sorry and you tell me you forgive me. And I said, so if that's what it takes, that's fine. I forgive you. Just go away. Just leave me alone. So he did. He left me alone. A while later, somebody said, you know, hey, we're all going to IHOP.

And I'm like, okay. So we went over to a car, and my two friends got in the back, and I was in the middle. The man who invited them was in the passenger seat. The driver finally got in the car. It was Rod Alcala. And I was, you know, wait, I don't want to go. Please, I don't want to go.

And my friends were saying, you know, you're fine. We're here with you. You forgave him. What's the big deal? You know, nothing happened. So I'm like, OK, IHOP's like six minutes away. I'll be OK. So we drove to IHOP and we got out of the car and I was calming a bit by then. And got in the restaurant, kind then. Got in the restaurant. Kind of ignored me in the restaurant, so I thought, okay, I'm just making all this up. He's fine, you know. And I went into the bathroom, and there was a pay phone

by the bathroom, and the park catch me. My father always taped a dime in my shoe so I could call home. And I took the dime out of my shoe and I stood there at the pay phone. I was going to call my dad and tell him to come and get me. And I just decided I wanted to stay with my friends, so I put the dime in my pocket. When I turned around, Rod was standing right there watching me. And he's like, we're ready to go. You know, it's only going to be a couple minutes like we're ready to go you know it's only going to be a couple minutes we're ready to go so like a fool I got back in the car and um so it should only have

been a couple minutes driving back to um Sunset Strip and uh he turned a corner and uh drove down to a house and pulled up in front of the house and said, come on in, guys, I've got pot. My friends all jumped out of the car and went in the house. And, of course, I didn't want to go in the house, but it was dark, and I wasn't really 100% sure where I was. And so I sat on the porch for a bit outside, and my friend Mike came out and said,

it's dark, and you're by yourself dark and you're by yourself and you're alone and I really wish you'd come in with us. So I went in the house and he had a few friends, older guys there already, and it was loud, loud music, people talking, smoking pot, and I didn't want to sit down, so I just kept pacing, so I'd pace to where they were and I'd go back into the living room. I'd go back and forth.

Morgan only wandered away from her friends for a moment when Alcala approached her and grabbed her by the arm. I did think, you know, it was very similar to when he had grabbed me by my arm the time before that and, you know, didn't even give me a chance to think, you know, and he just threw me headfirst into the room. And, you know, I wasn't terrified at that point. I just knew he was angry at me.

I thought it was going to be an argument. I turned around, kind of staggered to my feet, and he was holding a metal bar about five foot long, and he dropped that into some brackets on the back of his door so that you couldn't open his door, and I knew I was in trouble. So I just started backing up, and he kept coming towards me. And he took his belt off and wrapped it around his wrist, or I'm sorry, around his fist, and walked up in front of me. And he literally took a second to brace his stance and just punched me between my eyes. I felt my head crack against the wall behind me and stars started shooting and I fell to

my knees and he was just on me. He had a knife, I think it was just a steak knife or something, and I had a little tie around my neck and he cut the tie from my neck and tied my hands with it. He wrapped my hair around his his wrist so that I couldn't get away. And he took the belt and folded it up and he pushed it into my throat and he pushed it as far back as he could until it was kind of blocking my airway and I couldn't get it out and I couldn't breathe. I Survived is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Whether you love true crime or comedies, celebrity interviews, news, or even motivational speakers, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue, right? And guess what? Now you can call the shots on your auto insurance, too.

Enter the Name Your Price tool from Progressive. The Name Your Price tool puts you in charge of your auto insurance by working just the way it sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you a variety of coverages that fit within your budget, giving you options. Now that's something you'll want to press play on. It's easy to start a quote, and you'll be able to choose the best option for you, fast. It's just one of the many ways you can save with Progressive Insurance. Quote today at Progressive.com to try the Name Your Price tool for yourself and join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and

affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. But Morgan wasn't going down without a fight. It's hard to be out of control. And I think when he wrapped my hair around his wrist, of all the things he did, that tied me to him. And I really felt powerless and it made me angry. And I have an Irish temper. So it truly made me angry that he was trying to make that connection and not let me at least move my head or move around or have some power over my own body, and I was very angry.

My mother was a woman Marine. You know, my mother would not have let him do this. I mean, she wouldn't have had any choice, just like I didn't have any choice. But you know what I mean? My mother's spirit was there. I was going to fight. I was not going to let him just do what he wanted to do. I think even if he had threatened me with a knife, I don't think I would have backed down.

I'm not afraid of dying. I never have been. I just wasn't going to let him control me, but of course he did. I mean, you know, there was no way around that. But I'm proud of the fact that I fought. It was probably stupid, but I'm still proud of it. You know, I am proud of the fact that I fought. My feelings of survival were more about being able to breathe

than they were about anything he was doing. It was very frightening to not be able to pull a breath. And each time you can't get enough air into your lungs, you know that you're closer to death, whether it's from not being able to breathe or what he's going to do next. As she was fighting him, there were clear indications that he had done something like this before. He was definitely methodical. He definitely knew exactly what he wanted to do.

He knew exactly where that knife was to pick it up. He knew exactly what he wanted to do with the belt, with my hair, with, you know, everything he did. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. I think it felt, for lack of a better word, it felt practiced. He had done this. He had either fantasized it repeatedly or he had done it and I truly believe he had done this many times before. I really don't think that I was the first. So he just lifted me by my hair and punched me in the stomach 3 or 4 times as hard as he could, and I could feel my ribs breaking.

Blood came up from that and behind that belt and had nowhere else to go so it was leaking into my lungs and I was drowning. A very strange sensation. And he took the knife and cut the rest of my clothes off. He seemed to really enjoy punching me repeatedly against my broken ribs. I don't or can't remember much of the rape other than his face really close to mine and how animal he looked rather than human. I fixated on strange things. My hands were behind my back, and I thought if he pushes too hard against my hands,

I'll break my wrists and I'll be helpless. So that was bothering me. And I could see the knife laying next to me and I didn't want him to pick it up again. So I kept trying to move to where I was on top of the knife and I did manage to get on top of it. My friends realized that I was missing and started pounding on the door. And he just, you know, was yelling at them to go away and muttering to himself and getting more and more angry. And they managed to break the door in, but they couldn't get past the metal bar. So they just kept pushing the door against the metal bar yelling and that really angered him so he put his hands around my neck and everything got kind of black and felt like I was falling down a well I don't know how else to describe it, you know, praying.

And you know what, I think I was praying for it to be over. I don't think I had a whole lot to apologize for to God. I'd been a pretty good kid. I was praying because I knew it was over. I really knew that I was going to die. And it was strange because my friends were right there, you know, people right there. He had absolutely no bounds. He had absolutely no control over himself that he would actually kill me with people right in the next room. It's just crazy. And there was a whole lot of commotion and loud noises, and I could feel air, cool air, and glass breaking.

Her friend Michael had run outside of the house and was breaking back in through the window to try to get to her. Rod got up and went and lifted the bar off the door, and he was just standing there naked from the waist down with my blood all over his shirt. And he said, take her, just take her. And that's what I hear in my nightmares. Just take her, you know, like I own her, but you can have her now.

It was just hard to accept. But I had no fight left. I had nothing left. And, yes, I felt frozen in time. I felt like I couldn't move. I couldn't think. I couldn't put it all together. I couldn't wrap my mind around any of it.

And, you know, when they finally took the belt out of my mouth and I could finally get a breath, I just was vomiting blood. I mean, I still couldn't breathe because I was constantly vomiting blood. And I just needed to run. And I was wearing nothing but the pieces of a blouse, and I ran down the street. And my friends followed me, and when Michael caught up to me, he said, keep running, he's coming.

We went down an alleyway, and there was a dumpster with a fence around it, and we went into that fence and locked it and hid behind the dumpster with a fence around it and we went into that fence and locked it and hid behind the dumpster and my first thought was I can't believe I'm behind a dumpster again and I I was still throwing up blood and I was shaking so hard I broke a couple tees and I um he got in his car and he followed us so we were hiding and you could suddenly see these lights just kind of flicker across the alleyway and you knew he was there and they would cover my mouth so I couldn't hear me

coughing and you could see through the little slats in the fence, so for one quick second I could see his face as he was searching, you know. And he did that four or five times, and it was, the rest was survival. This was terror. That was pure terror. And finally it stopped, you know, he must have changed his mind or gotten out of his car and we just had to go.

So I need to stop for a minute. When they realized Rod wasn't coming after them anymore, they had to get away as quickly as possible. We were at the back of the stores on Sunset Boulevard, and I just walked out into the street, stood in the middle of the street, and a car hit the brakes, you know, screeched to halt. I ran over and said, you know, take me out of here.

Please just take me out of here. And the man didn't speak English. So he just started speaking Spanish to me. And I just put my head down on the window, and I just cried. And his wife got out of the car and she put a sweater around me and she brought me to the back seat of the car. My two friends got in the front with the driver and told him where they wanted to go. I really don't know where we went. I didn't care. The woman held me in the back seat of the car and she kept making the sign of the cross and she was praying she kept saying Madre Maria which that I could understand she was just

praying and we got to where we were going and Michael came to get me out of the car and she said Cohiba and he said I don't understand and she said Cohiba Coh. And he said, I don't understand. And she said, Cohiba, Cohiba. And the man in the front said, Blanket. She wants a blanket. So he went and got a blanket and she got out of the car

and she wrapped a blanket around me and the pain in her eyes. I knew I could never tell my mother, ever. I could not bring that home. I could not have my mother ever look at me like that, ever. I couldn't do it. So we went into the house and Evie got in the shower with me and washed all my iPhones.

And they wrapped me in a big Army blanket, and I sat on the couch. And I was just shivering and lost. I didn't know what to do next. And a police officer appeared. I'm not sure who called. And he looked at me and said, Wow, that's gonna be a shiner and kind of laughed and I really didn't want to talk to him

because I didn't want my parents to know and so my friends were kind of trying to tell him what happened and after they were done he said he said you know you went willingly into his car you went into his house and he said i don't see where this guy ever goes to jail for rape and he said but if you want me to talk to him you'll have to come with me and show me where And I couldn't do that. I, uh, no, I couldn't do that. So I wasn't cooperative. You know, they're good policemen. They're very good policemen.

But I wasn't cooperative at all. I'm sure he had a hard job, too. And so I refused to sign anything. I refused to do anything. And he left so Michael took me home with him to a little apartment on Venice Beach and his neighbor was a nurse and he came over and he helped me cough the blood out of my lungs and sent Michael to the store and then they taped my ribs for me. And I stayed there for a few days and Michael was warm and kind and took care of me.

And he made me sit on the beach every day and watch the sun come up and told me every day, it's a new day. It's a better day. But she couldn't avoid her parents forever. They were about to move across the country. Well, I called my parents on the last day, and they said, we have to go. The car's packed. The van's gone. We have to go we the car's packed the van's gone we have to go you have to come home and we're not leaving without you and when I got home they were literally standing in front of an empty house and so it was getting the car we're leaving you know so they were you

know my god what happened and I said well you know teenage drivers there's no seat belts in those days so I was like you know teenage drivers slammed on the brakes and I flew into the wind you know into the dashboard and I'm fine you know I'm fine but I didn't want you to see it that's why I didn't come home so they were like well okay get in the car we have you know so I crawled in the back seat of the car, and we drove for 10 days with my ribs taped in the back seat of the car. But, you know, I was sad and frightened and lonely and troubled, but we were leaving everything I loved. We, leaving all my friends and, you know,

everything, we're leaving everything behind. So they just thought that that's what, why, you know, I mean, they didn't think there was anything odd about me being depressed or sad or acting strange. Using the excuse of being sad about leaving California, she didn't have to pretend to be normal. But it was a lot to just keep to herself. And it was about to get worse. Yeah, I'd made a decision and I had to live with it. My mother was not emotionally stable and this would just crumble her. I just, I couldn't, I couldn't do it to them. And, and being young and naive, it never ever crossed my mind that he would hurt somebody else. He hated me. And I thought this was just him hating me. And looking back, that's not very

smart. I should have known that he was a predator and was going to do these things. But I was 16. I just, I didn't know that he would hurt somebody else. I honestly didn't. We were in New York for about a month. So this was about six weeks after this happened and I got a letter from the girl that had been with me that night and a newspaper clipping fell out and I picked it up and it said that Rod had raped and almost killed an eight-year-old girl. And that was more painful than anything. I just fell to my knees and begged her to forgive me. It was my fault I hadn't stopped him. And I can tell myself now there's nothing I could have done, but, yes, there is something I could have done. I could have gone back, and I could have killed him.

I could have saved all those women if I had gone back there and killed him. Morgan was desperate to help this little girl however she could. Still not wanting her parents to find out, she, at 16 years old, did the best she could with what she had. So I took, you know, hands full of quarters and dimes, I guess, at that time. And I went to a pay phone, trying to make long-distance phone calls on a pay phone. It's not easy in the 60s. And I called, I believe I called the LAPD.

And they said, you know, do you want to make a report? And I said, no, I just want to help if this has to go to trial, if you need a witness or whatever. And they said, well, let me see if there's a police report. And they looked and they couldn't find anything. They said, well, you know, I don't think it's LAPD. I think it's West Hollywood. So then I called West Hollywood and West Hollywood couldn't find a police report. And they said, they said, well try calling the DA's office. So I called the DA's office and the DA said,

the secretary in the DA's office said, well what's your police report? And I said, I don't have a police report. I just want to know if they need my help, you know, when I if I have to if this is what it's going to take to Convict him that I will testify and she said well, you can't do anything without a police report She said you need to do you need to? Call the police back and make the report. They'll send somebody out to make the report. I said I'm in Rochester, New York You know She said well she goes, you know, there's no report. There's no nothing. And, you know, she said, she goes, there's no,

there can't be any evidence at this point. And she said, I doubt that, you know, you have any kind of testimony that would help. And that was the end of it. But that wasn't the end of it. On the next episode of I Survived... When you talk to Morgan, what's even creepier is she remembers the pipe that she was assaulted with. Morgan's guilt was about me because he attacked me right after he had attacked her.

To speak to someone at the Rape Abuse Incest National Network, call 1-800-656-HOPE or 1-800-656-4673. You can also live chat with someone at RAINN.org. That's R-A-I-N-N dot O-R-G. I Survived is hosted and produced by Caitlin VanMol and Law and Crime Network. Audio editing by Brad Mabee. For A&E, our senior producer is John Thrasher and our supervising producer is McKamey Lynn. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz, Sean Gottlieb, and Shelley Tatro. This podcast is based on A&E's Emmy-winning TV series, I Survived.

For more I Survived, visit AETV.com. Copyright 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. All rights reserved. Sometime in the early 80s, REO Speedwagon's airplane made an unannounced middle-of-the-night landing. This is my friend Kyle McLaughlin, the star of Twin Peaks. And he's telling me about how he discovered a real-life Twin Peaks in rural North Carolina, not far from where he filmed Blue Velvet. What was on the plane was copious amounts of drugs coming in from South America. Supposedly Pablo Escobar went looking for other spots, quiet, out-of-the-way places to bring in his cocaine. My name is Joshua Davis,

and I'm an investigative reporter. Kyle and I talk all the time about the strange things we come across, but nothing was quite as strange as what we found in Varnumtown, North Carolina. There's crooked cops, brother against brother. Everyone's got a story to tell, but does the truth even exist?

Welcome to Varnumtown. Varnumtown is available wherever you listen to watch shows like Ghost, The Walking Dead, CSI, Star Trek, or The Price is Right, well, The Price is Right, it's free. Hit movies like Braveheart, Sonic the Hedgehog, Anchorman, The Legend of Ron Burgundy, or Mean Girls won't cost you a thing because everything is free. All you have to do is download the app, which, by the way, is also free. Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.