Where is Cheryl Bradshaw from ‘The Dating Game’ now?

Cheryl Bradshaw trusted her instincts when she refused to go on a date with Rodney Alcala, and that decision may have saved her life.

In 1978, Bradshaw appeared on “The Dating Game,” a show in which three eligible bachelors competed for the affections of a bachelorette.

Bradshaw ended up choosing Bachelor #1, Rodney Alcala, who wooed her during the episode with jokes and suggestive innuendos.

However, when Bradshaw spent more time with Alcala after filming ended, she changed her mind about dating him.

“She said, ‘Ellen, I can’t date this guy.’ There are strange vibrations coming from him. It’s very strange. I’m not comfortable. Is that going to be a problem?” the show’s former contestant coordinator Ellen Metzger said on “20/20” in 2021. “And of course I said, ‘No.'”

Alcalá would later be seen to be a violent serial killer and sex offender. He was linked to the murders of six women and a girl in the 1970s, and authorities believe he may have actually killed more than 100 people.

Bradshaw’s experiences on “The Dating Game” were the inspiration for Netflix’s new thriller, “The Woman of the Hour,” starring and directed by Anna Kendrick.

Not much is known about Bradshaw in real life. On the show, she introduced herself as a drama teacher from Phoenix, Arizona.

Kendrick, who plays Bradshaw in the film, told TODAY that Bradshaw has since died.

The actor and director says there are “so many things” he wishes he could have asked Bradshaw.

“I would ask her what it felt like for her to trust herself,” he said.

Kendrick also said that while Bradshaw’s intuition was admirable, he doesn’t mean to suggest that Alcalà’s murder victims were any less able to detect danger.

“I think it’s complicated … because I want it to give the message that you have to listen to your gut. But at the same time, sometimes it’s not as simple as that,” Kendrick said.

“I think there was a point where one of the producers was wondering if there should be some really clever way for my character to outdo or surpass Rodney, and that’s why he survives,” he continued. “And I said, ‘I think that would do a disservice to the other women who were no less intelligent than her, and that sometimes it’s a combination of trusting your gut, but sometimes it’s too late for that. .

“Sometimes you have to trust your gut and you just have blind luck on your side and that’s how you get out of situations that other people couldn’t,” Kendrick added.

In 2010, crime profiler Pat Brown suggested that Bradshaw’s rejection may have angered Alcalá and led him to commit more crimes.

“One wonders what that went through in his mind,” Brown told CNN. “That’s something I wouldn’t take too well. They don’t understand rejection. They think there’s something wrong with that girl: ‘She played me.’ She played really hard to get it.”

Kendrick said he thinks it “could certainly be true, looking at his pattern.”

“I will also say that there are definitely a lot of murders that we don’t know about, so it’s hard to know for sure,” he added.

Alcalá committed two known murders after his stint on “The Dating Game.” He was convicted of the 1979 slaying of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe and later convicted of the slaying of 21-year-old Jill Parenteau the same year.

It later emerged that Alcalá had already committed several murders prior to his appearance on “The Dating Game.”

He was convicted of the 1971 murder of Cornelia Crilley, the 1977 murders of Jill Barcomb, Georgia Wixted and Ellen Jane Hover and the 1978 murder of Charlotte Lamb.

Although Alcalà’s criminal history is chilling, Kendrick said that in making “Woman of the Hour,” she was more interested in the stories of her survivors and victims than exploring Alcalà’s psyche.

“I’m not really interested in why it is the way it is,” he said. “I don’t find it interesting or worth exploring.”

Alcalá, who was sent to death row for his crimes, died in 2021 at the age of 77. He died of natural causes, according to California prison officials.