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Back in 1978, the dating game was still a popular TV show even after more than a decade on the air. It was fun, kinda cheesy. I watched it while I was living in California in the 60s and 70s, way before I became an FBI agent.

I remember the host signed off each episode with, this is Jim Lang saying bye bye, and we hope you always get the date you really want. I also remember he blew lots of kisses.

Anyway, the series format was simple and it hasn't really changed much, even with the recent reboot. But a September 1978 episode remains endlessly fascinating for true crime fans. It featured a bachelor at Name Cheryl.

She posed the requisite flirty provocative questions to three single men hidden from her view. She molded over their clever responses, then chose one lucky guy to take out on a date.

Since decisions were based only on the bachelor's witty answers, she relied on the banter between them to gauge any chemistry. No physical attraction, no visual cues.

To those of us watching at home, it all appeared so safe. It wasn't like meeting a complete stranger. You had a live studio audience and a casting director who vetted the contestants.

But all was not as it seemed, because bachelor number one, a guy with longish brown curly hair, laughing, smiling, trying very hard to charm the studio audience with provocative answers like, I'm called the banana and I look really good.

Was Rodney Alcala, a man with a very disturbing past. But in that moment, he seemed like a regular guy.

It was not until the next day when the bachelor at called the show's producers and told them she did not want to go out with their date because, according to her, he was too creepy.

And he was rude to everyone backstage. But what no one knew while watching that episode was that seven years before his national TV debut, Rodney Alcala was a top tenor.

That's FBI jargon for anyone on the top ten most wanted fugitives list. They were also not aware he'd served two prison terms for child molestation, or that he had raped and murdered many, many women and had almost killed an eight-year-old girl.

Even when I take into account the era when he committed many of his crimes and how tracking a felon has evolved since then, I still marvel at how Rodney Alcala moved through society with such ease and for so long.

And how he hid his true self so well from almost everyone.

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From Wondering and Tree Fort, I'm Candice DeLong and this is Killer Psychie.

I've spent five decades studying people's minds through my work as an FBI profiler and psychiatric nurse.

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