It was the morning of Sept. 25, 1968, and Donald Haines, a sales representative, had driven to Hollywood on a work trip.
As he prepared to make a turn near Wilshire Blvd., he noticed a car stopped in the crosswalk.
The driver — a man in his mid-twenties with curly brown hair — was deep in conversation with an 8-year-old girl dressed in a white dress and Mary Jane shoes on her way to school.
“He was fixed on this little girl,” Haines says in his first-ever interview. “That disturbed me.”
As a father, Haines was concerned for the little girl’s safety, he tells People Magazine Investigates: Surviving A Serial Killer, which premieres tonight, May 5, at 9/8c on ID and streams on Max. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)
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Then, the little girl climbed into the backseat of the car.
“All the warning signs were there,” Haines says.
So, Haines followed the man’s car to a Los Angeles home, and watched the man and little girl walk inside.
“And I thought what the hell do I do now?” Haines recalls.
He knew he could not safely approach the man, thinking the man might have a gun.
So, he drove to the nearest payphone and dialed 911.
Only later would he learn the full impact of his quick-thinking.
Orange County District Attorney’s Office
The man he had followed was Rodney Alcala, a prolific serial killer who is believed to have raped and killed dozens of women and little girls.
Dubbed “The Dating Game Killer” because he was Bachelor #1 on a popular television show of the same name, Alcala rapped the little girl before police arrived.
But Tali Shapiro was not yet dead.
Responding to Haines’s call, police officer Chris Camacho, Jr. arrived on the doorstep of Alcala’s Los Angeles home to the sound of groaning.
I have kicked the door in.
Tali was lying in a pool of her own blood, a metal bar laying across her neck.
When the officer removed the bar, she gasped for air.
Camacho provided medical aid to the child, who would grow up to testify against Alcala, helping keep him behind bars until his death in 2021.
Surviving the Dating Game Killer premieres tonight, May 5 at 9/8 C on People Magazine Investigates: Surviving a Serial Killer on ID and streams on Max.
