A convicted serial killer sentenced to death in
five grisly stranglings in California is fighting to avoid being
brought to New York to face new charges in two 1970s murders here,
saying he needs to work on his appeal more than New York
authorities need to prosecute him.

   Rodney Alcala says he needs to stay on California's Death Row to
work on his appeal -- especially because he represented himself in a
sometimes surreal southern California trial last year.

   Extraditing Alcala to New York "pits his right to a meaningful
capital appeal against a non-death penalty case in another state
that is more than 30 years old," public defenders wrote on his
behalf in court papers filed last month in California's Marin
County. Authorities haven't yet responded, and a judge's decision
is months away.

   Alcala's move marks the latest turn in authorities' decades-long
legal joust with the former amateur photographer and TV dating-show
contestant, who's said to have an IQ that tops 160.

   Initially arrested in California in 1979, he was found guilty
twice in one of the California killings and had both verdicts
overturned before his latest conviction last year. It came after a
trial where prosecutors depicted him as a killer with a habit of
sexually abusing and torturing his victims, and Alcala offered a
diffuse defense that included questioning one victim's mother,
playing Arlo Guthrie's 1967 song "Alice's Restaurant" and showing
a TV clip of himself on a 1978 episode of "The Dating Game."

   Meanwhile, Alcala had been suspected in one of the New York
cases for more than 30 years before Manhattan prosecutors announced
in January that they had finally gotten an indictment in the two
cases here -- the 1971 strangling of a flight attendant and the
death of a Hollywood nightclub owner's daughter whose remains were
found in 1978 after she disappeared the year before.

   While Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. faced
questions about expense and point of prosecuting an out-of-state
prisoner already sentenced to die, he said the New York women's
cases deserved to be pursued and he was determined to bring Alcala
to New York.

   "The ends of justice require the arrest and return of Alcala to
this state," Vance wrote in an extradition request in May. New
York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and California Gov. Jerry Brown signed off
on the move in August.

   But Alcala and lawyers working with him say he needs to stay in
California to prepare for his appeal by reviewing the trial
transcript for accuracy and participating in any related hearings --
defense work only he can do because he chose not to have a lawyer
for the trial, he and his advocates say. They note that his life
may ultimately be at stake.

   "His ability to defend against . . . impending execution should
be given precedence over New York's wish to prosecute" him on
charges carrying a maximum of life in prison, Michael G. Millman,
who runs the nonprofit California Appellate Project, wrote to
accompany Alcala's Oct. 24 filing in Superior Court in Marin
County, where he's being held in San Quentin State Prison.

   The Marin County Public Defender's office, which filed Alcala's
bid to halt the extradition, didn't immediately return a call
Thursday. State Attorney General Kamala Harris's office has several
weeks to respond. The Manhattan DA's office declined to comment.

   Alcala, now 68, was convicted of strangling four women and a
12-year-old girl in California. He raped one victim with a
claw-toothed hammer and posed several victims nude in sexual
positions after their deaths, prosecutors said.

   After last year's conviction, authorities released more than 100
photos of young women and girls found in Alcala's storage locker,
and prosecutors said authorities were looking into whether Alcala
could be connected to cases in New York and other states.

   He's now charged in New York with killing Cornelia Crilley, a
Trans World Airlines flight attendant found raped and strangled
with a pair of stockings in her Manhattan apartment, and Ellen
Hover, whose remains were found in the woods on a suburban estate.
Hover, who had studied biology and music, was the daughter of
comedy writer Herman Hover, a former owner of the one-time
Hollywood hotspot Ciro's. Both women were 23.