Speaker 1: For more than four decades, a string of murders of
Speaker 1: vulnerable women across the United States when unsolved and for
Speaker 1: the most part, unnoticed too. Police in different states investigated
Speaker 1: these deaths in isolation, never realizing they were chasing a single,
Speaker 1: elusive killer. It wasn't until twenty twelve that a cold
Speaker 1: case DNA match finally put a name to the phantom responsible.
Speaker 1: The man would eventually confess to murdering a total of
Speaker 1: ninety three women between nineteen seventy and two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: making him the most prolific serial killer in the United
Speaker 1: States history by confirmed victim count. This is the true
Speaker 1: story of Samuel Little. My name's Ben, I'm.
Speaker 2: Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked and Grim, a true
Speaker 2: crime podcast.
Speaker 1: The following.
Speaker 2: Material in more material audience listener discretion. Well, I didn't
Speaker 2: get the memo to do it earlier here, Well, I.
Speaker 1: You weren't supposed to. I did mine, then you did yours.
Speaker 1: It's separated a little bit, you know.
Speaker 2: Happy American Thanksgiving?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Happy Thanksgiving for everyone down south. We got a all.
Speaker 2: Our friends, which is the majority of you.
Speaker 1: Really Well, I was going to say, we've got an
Speaker 1: interesting case to celebrate the occasion. Yeah, the most prolific
Speaker 1: us serial killer for your Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: I guess, well Thanksgiving was yesterday. Today's Black Friday. So
Speaker 2: I think it's okay. I think we're all right.
Speaker 1: I hope everyone's getting some good deals today.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Black Friday has changed a lot in the recent years.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed that with online shopping and everything and
Speaker 1: consumerism changing.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: There's not like stampedes for things anymore.
Speaker 2: No, my email inbox is just lit to be honest,
Speaker 2: but it's honestly been that way for at least a week.
Speaker 2: So it starts quite a bit earlier. And while we're
Speaker 2: in Canada and we still pretty much celebrate Black Friday,
Speaker 2: I guess just for the Black Friday part of it.
Speaker 1: Well know, it's more of a corporate thing, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to get the sales, the consumerism, all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. So it's spread beyond the United States, to
Speaker 1: say the least. And regardless, I hope you're getting some
Speaker 1: good deals, but be wary because of course companies are like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this item is only two hundred dollars
Speaker 1: right now, regular five hundred. Yeah, they just tack that
Speaker 1: five hundred on to make it look like they can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always been two hundred dollars. So be warry, be smart,
Speaker 1: and get the good deals, the good deals, not the
Speaker 1: fake one.
Speaker 2: My best deals were Lululemon. I got some smoke and deals.
Speaker 1: Well I'm glad.
Speaker 2: I think you thought I was in there working and
Speaker 2: you came to see what I was doing and I
Speaker 2: was like just shopping.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was an interesting little endeavor. But hey, you
Speaker 1: got deals. That's what matters, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well I needed it anyway, so it.
Speaker 1: Was perfect touche. All right, Well, I think we should
Speaker 1: get on with the show instead of talking about our
Speaker 1: shopping habits and everything. Yes, this is quite the.
Speaker 2: Case, it sounds. So.
Speaker 1: I really like to focus on victims when I talk
Speaker 1: about cases. Unfortunately, with a case this massive, it's pretty
Speaker 1: much impossible to focus solely on the victims. So this
Speaker 1: is unfortunately focused more on the killer in this one,
Speaker 1: So heads up on that. But I do talk about
Speaker 1: the victims as much as I can.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's fair enough.
Speaker 1: Okay, So with that, let's get going. Samuel Little was
Speaker 1: born on June seventh, nineteen forty, in Reynolds, Georgia. He
Speaker 1: was also known by his last name Samuel McDowell, which
Speaker 1: was his father's surname. Now, Samuel's childhood was troubled. He
Speaker 1: later claimed that his mother was a sex worker, but
Speaker 1: the nineteen forty census listed her occupation as a maid,
Speaker 1: so it's hard to really say for sure. She could
Speaker 1: have definitely been doing it on the side right now.
Speaker 1: As an infant, he was abandoned by his mother and
Speaker 1: was raised by his grandmother in Lorain, Ohio. By his
Speaker 1: teenage years, Samuel had started down a delinquent path, and
Speaker 1: he was soon sent to a reform school, the Boys
Speaker 1: Industrial School in Ohio. It was in nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: and he was sent there for stealing a bicycle. There,
Speaker 1: he also racked up a dozen or so of disciplinary infractions. Then,
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty six, at the age of sixteen, he
Speaker 1: was arrested for breaking and entering and ended up at
Speaker 1: a youth authority facility for burglary. Samuel's early adulthood was
Speaker 1: marked by frequent run ins with the law across multiple states.
Speaker 1: In fact, he drifted around the country doing odd jobs,
Speaker 1: at one point working as a cemetery caretaker and even
Speaker 1: as an ambulance attendant. But he mainly supported himself through
Speaker 1: his criminal endeavors. By nineteen seventy five, at the age
Speaker 1: of thirty five, he'd been arrested a total of twenty
Speaker 1: six times in eleven separate states, for charges ranging from
Speaker 1: theft to fraud, to assault and even attempted rape. Needless
Speaker 1: to say, he was a repeat offender. I was gonna
Speaker 1: say repeated offender, but I mean either way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's quite a rap sheet there, definitely for a
Speaker 2: pretty young age, oh for sure.
Speaker 1: Now, during one of his prison terms, he had a
Speaker 1: stint as a boxer, which honed a lot of powerful
Speaker 1: punches and techniques that he would eventually use on his victims.
Speaker 1: But despite this extensive criminal record, Samuel managed to avoid
Speaker 1: long term incarceration for decades. In fact, throughout his life
Speaker 1: he would be arrested over one hundred times, yet in total,
Speaker 1: spent less than ten years in jail before his final capture.
Speaker 2: That's such bullshit. How often do we hear that? Hey?
Speaker 1: All too often?
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, I just can't understand that.
Speaker 1: Now, authorities often treated his offenses as transient troubles. He'd
Speaker 1: serve short stints or skirt serious punishment, then move along
Speaker 1: to a new city. To go through it all again.
Speaker 1: This pattern of brief arrests and release, well, it allowed
Speaker 1: him to remain free and dangerous for an alarmingly long time.
Speaker 1: Right from the beginning, though, there were signs of the
Speaker 1: violent impulses that would later define Samuel's crimes. He would
Speaker 1: later confess that he had sexual fantasies about strangling women,
Speaker 1: starting all the way back to his childhood, an obsession
Speaker 1: that would grow as he got older. In nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: he was arrested in Cleveland for assaulting woman, hinting at
Speaker 1: his tendencies for violence against women even in his twenties. Now,
Speaker 1: Samuel himself described outright experiencing quote strong desires to choke women,
Speaker 1: and that it was a compulsion that he couldn't exactly control. Now,
Speaker 1: these dark fantasies, they went unchecked, and eventually they turned
Speaker 1: into real acts of violence as he moved from you know,
Speaker 1: the petty crimes into more serial ones, being more murder.
Speaker 2: What the fuck? We just have these people running around
Speaker 2: that are just envisioning strangling women. We do, okay, Well,
Speaker 2: that makes us, That makes me feel great.
Speaker 1: Now. Samuel's first known murder took place at the dawn
Speaker 1: of the nineteen seventies. On New Year's Eve nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: in the Miami area of Florida, he met a thirty
Speaker 1: three year old woman named Mary Brosly at a bar. Now.
Speaker 1: Mary was a mother of two from Massachusetts who had
Speaker 1: fallen on hard times and became a strange from her family.
Speaker 1: Samuel was drawn to her petite, vulnerable appearance. She was
Speaker 1: very small, in fact, kind of frail, where she was
Speaker 1: weighing barely eighty pounds in total at the time. She's
Speaker 1: very small, and perhaps he was also drawn to the
Speaker 1: fact that she was living on society's margins, you know,
Speaker 1: potentially unlike to be missed quickly, especially as if she disappeared.
Speaker 1: So after some time talking at the bar, he offered
Speaker 1: her a ride and she went along with them, probably
Speaker 1: expecting nothing more than a short drive or maybe an
Speaker 1: intimate encounter with someone she just met at a bar.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Instead, however, Samuel drove her to a secluded area near
Speaker 1: the Everglades. There his long harbored fantasy of strangulation. While
Speaker 1: it became a reality once they were alone in that
Speaker 1: remote stretch near the Everglades, he attacked. He easily overpowered
Speaker 1: her as his hands tightened around her neck and began
Speaker 1: squeezing until she stopped breathing and stopped moving. Now, after
Speaker 1: the killing, he dragged her body from the vehicle to
Speaker 1: a secluded patch of the woods and left her in
Speaker 1: a shallow grave concealed by branches and brush. There was
Speaker 1: no rush or panic, just cold calculation. Then he got
Speaker 1: back in his vehicle and drove away as if nothing
Speaker 1: had happened.
Speaker 2: Oh that's brutal.
Speaker 1: Now. Mary Brosely's remains were found on January twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, in the wooded area near Miami, but
Speaker 1: at the time she was not identified and her murder
Speaker 1: received very little attention. In fact, she remained a Jane
Speaker 1: Doe for decades. It wasn't until twenty seventeen that advances
Speaker 1: in forensic testings finally identified those nineteen seventy one skeletal
Speaker 1: remains that were Mary Broseley.
Speaker 2: That is so sad hey exactly.
Speaker 1: Now. By then, Samuel was in custody, and in twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen he would formally confess to killing her. Now authorities
Speaker 1: now recognize Mary as Samuel's first murder victim, But back
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one, However, there was no suspect and
Speaker 1: no connection made to a larger pattern. Her death, like
Speaker 1: so many of Samuel's early victim slipped through the cracks.
Speaker 2: Well, and that was his intention, right as you mentioned
Speaker 2: exactly now.
Speaker 1: After her murder, Samuel Little continued to roam the country
Speaker 1: throughout the nineteen seventies, leaving a trail of victims in
Speaker 1: his wake. Many of these crimes remain only partially documented
Speaker 1: because Samuel prayed on women who lived on the fringes,
Speaker 1: you know, sex workers, runaways, or women struggling with addiction,
Speaker 1: and in some cases, their deaths were not initially even
Speaker 1: recorded as homicides at all. Samuel later claimed that during
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies he even quote lost count of how
Speaker 1: many people he had killed. He specifically confessed to multiple
Speaker 1: murders in Florida and the Midwest during this period, Though
Speaker 1: many of the victim's names remain unknown, what is clear
Speaker 1: is that Samuel deliberately targeted those he believed the police
Speaker 1: and society were less likely to care about, something we
Speaker 1: see all too often when it comes to monsters like this.
Speaker 1: As one FBI analysis put it, Samuel thought uote no
Speaker 1: one was accounting for his victims end quote, which for
Speaker 1: many years he was sadly true. He chose women who
Speaker 1: might not have strong family support or media attention, so
Speaker 1: their disappearances, you know, they attracted very little scrutiny. And
Speaker 1: this strategy would ultimately let him operate in the shadows
Speaker 1: for an extremely long time. His EMMO was already established
Speaker 1: in this area. He's a former boxer who would often
Speaker 1: knock out his victims with a punch, stun or incapacitate them,
Speaker 1: and then strangle them to death with his large, powerful hands.
Speaker 1: He usually did not use weapons or leave obvious injuries
Speaker 1: like stab wounds or gunshot wounds. Now, this lack of
Speaker 1: visible trauma it meant that some of his victims' deaths
Speaker 1: were in fact even misclassified by authorities potential drug overdoses, accidents,
Speaker 1: or even natural causes. In some cases, the women's bodies
Speaker 1: were not even immediately found or ever found at all.
Speaker 1: All of these factors, the profile, the method of killing,
Speaker 1: the transient lifestyle, the mislabeling of deaths, it made it
Speaker 1: extraordinarily difficult for law enforcement to detect a serial killer
Speaker 1: at work, and with that, he simply kept under the
Speaker 1: radar in the nineteen seventies and honestly even today, which
Speaker 1: is sad to think about, some police departments might chalk
Speaker 1: up a lone woman's death to an unfortunate circumstance and
Speaker 1: never realized that a roaming killer could potentially be responsible.
Speaker 1: One early example of how Samuel slipped through the system
Speaker 1: can be seen in a nineteen seventy seven case in Miami, Florida.
Speaker 1: In that year, Samuel picked up a seventeen year old
Speaker 1: runaway girl named Dorothy Gibson near Miami bus Station. He
Speaker 1: later confessed that after agreeing to some sex, he attacked
Speaker 1: and strangled Dorothy, dumping her body in bushes behind a motel.
Speaker 1: At the time, however, police did not link the crime
Speaker 1: to Samuel. In fact, they pursued a different suspect, a
Speaker 1: mentally impaired man named Jerry Frank Townsend, who ended up
Speaker 1: falsely confessing to Dorothy's murder among others under police pressure.
Speaker 2: Oh man, Okay, so he's all like, let alone, going
Speaker 2: about killing all these people, but he's also putting other people,
Speaker 2: making other people seem responsible for their his crimes. Well,
Speaker 2: not him, but that you know, it's getting mixed up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's not out there framing people. I do want
Speaker 1: to clarify it. Yeah, but other people are being pinned
Speaker 1: on these murders.
Speaker 2: Yes, and they're just completely innocent. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: So Jerry he was convicted and spent twenty two years
Speaker 1: in prisons for crimes he did not commit, including the murder,
Speaker 1: the murder of Dorothy Gibson. Now decades later, Jerry was
Speaker 1: thankfully exonerated and the case was reopened.
Speaker 2: But still twenty two years, that is so long, and
Speaker 2: it would probably been like his prime year. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: middle aged kind of thing, right, like free.
Speaker 1: So with Samuel's later confessions in twenty eighteen, it it
Speaker 1: did become evident that Dorothy Gibson was actually a victim
Speaker 1: of Samuel. So it also it helped clear Jerry's name
Speaker 1: in that aspect too. Not only was he exonerated, but people,
Speaker 1: you know, still had speculation. So he's exonerated, he's out there,
Speaker 1: and then finally the reveal of here's the real killer.
Speaker 1: It helped finally clear that slate.
Speaker 2: But still I don't know, I don't even know. I
Speaker 2: would be so bitter. I don't even know how it
Speaker 2: could go on. That'd be to my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'd be really tough now. This tragic miscarriage of
Speaker 1: justice shows how in the nineteen seventies, even when authorities
Speaker 1: tried to solve a murder well in Samuel's wake, they
Speaker 1: caught the wrong person, allowing a true killer to remain free.
Speaker 1: And throughout the nineteen seventies, Samuel continued to evade serious consequences.
Speaker 1: In September of nineteen seventy six, he was arrested, though
Speaker 1: it was in Missouri for assaulting woman who survived a
Speaker 1: brutal attack at his hands. He had choked her with
Speaker 1: an electrical cord and raped her. Yet he served only
Speaker 1: three months in prison for this violent crime. Incidents like
Speaker 1: this reinforced Samuel's confidence massively. The fact that he could
Speaker 1: do this, get caught, then get away with it was huge.
Speaker 1: He must have felt like he could get away with
Speaker 1: almost anything at that point. By the early nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: Samuel Little had been killing for over a decade already,
Speaker 1: yet he was still not even on law enforcement's radar
Speaker 1: as a serial killer. However, this period did bring some
Speaker 1: close calls with the law that could have ended his
Speaker 1: deadly spree much sooner, if only they'd gone differently. In fact.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty two, Samuel found himself facing murder charges
Speaker 1: for the very first time, but he managed to slip
Speaker 1: away due to a lack of evidence and a shaky
Speaker 1: witness testimony. It was in November of nineteen eighty two
Speaker 1: Samuel was arrested for shoplifting in Pascagoula, Mississippi, But this
Speaker 1: routine arrest took an unexpected turn when local authorities realized
Speaker 1: he matched the description of a suspect in an unsolved homicide.
Speaker 1: The case was the recent murder of twenty two year
Speaker 1: old Melinda Rose Laprie, a young woman who'd gone missing
Speaker 1: in Pascagola in September of nineteen eighty two. So, with
Speaker 1: Samuel now in custody, police in Mississippi decided to charge
Speaker 1: him with Laprie's murder. It was a significant development, a
Speaker 1: potential break in a murder case, and possibly the first
Speaker 1: time Samuel was formally accused of one of his killings. However,
Speaker 1: the evidence they had didn't hold up, and by nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, a grand jury in Mississippi declined to indict
Speaker 1: Samuel Little from Melinda Laprize's murder, citing lack of concrete
Speaker 1: evidence tying him to the crime. The case then went
Speaker 1: cold yet again. Now years later, though after Samuel's confessions,
Speaker 1: Mississippi investigators did reopen the case, confirming that Samuel had
Speaker 1: indeed killed her. But in nineteen eighty two and eighty three,
Speaker 1: the conclusion was different.
Speaker 2: How do people like this? They some of them, they
Speaker 2: just seem like they get so lucky and they don't
Speaker 2: deserve that.
Speaker 1: Even in the least, there seems to be a lot
Speaker 1: of luck on his side. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It just makes you feel like, what
Speaker 2: the hell is karmauff? You know these people are getting
Speaker 2: luck like this?
Speaker 1: Well, just u eight because this story is just starting
Speaker 1: to unfold now. After this trial, although Mississippi had released Samuel,
Speaker 1: they did not set him free outright because while he
Speaker 1: was still a suspect in Laprize's murder, authorities discovered that
Speaker 1: Samuel was wanted in Florida for other charges relating to
Speaker 1: another woman's death. So once this trial ended and he
Speaker 1: was found not guilty because of lack of evidence, he
Speaker 1: was then extradited to Florida to stand trial for the
Speaker 1: murder of twenty six year old Patricia Ann Mount. Now,
Speaker 1: Patricia had been seen in Samuel's company on the night
Speaker 1: she disappeared in nineteen eighty two, and her beaten, partially
Speaker 1: nude body was found in a field in Alchuca County, Florida.
Speaker 1: It was in September of that year when she was found,
Speaker 1: and at trial, several prosecution witnesses testified they saw Samuel
Speaker 1: with Patricia on the evening before she was killed, and
Speaker 1: for a moment, it seemed like Samuel might finally be
Speaker 1: held accountable for murder. However, the Florida case against Samuel
Speaker 1: crumbled as well. In January of nineteen eighty four, after
Speaker 1: a short trial, a jury acquitted Samuel Little of Patricia
Speaker 1: Mount's murder. Jurors later said they distrusted the witness's credibility,
Speaker 1: and there was no physical evidence like DNA available in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, and the case wasn't strong enough to convict,
Speaker 1: so the verdict came swiftly. Reportedly, after less than thirty
Speaker 1: minutes of deliberation, the jury found that he was not
Speaker 1: guilty on all charges.
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, dang.
Speaker 1: So Samuel Little walked out of that Florida courtroom a
Speaker 1: free man. For him, it was another lucky break, but
Speaker 1: for law enforcement it was a huge missed opportunity. If
Speaker 1: he had been convicted in nineteen eighty four, dozens of
Speaker 1: subsequent murders might have been prevented. Instead, Samuel took the
Speaker 1: acquittal as affirmation that he could continue his violent ways
Speaker 1: without getting caught.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, he could literally just get away with anything
Speaker 2: at this point.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, convincible, as the saying goes can get
Speaker 1: away with murder. Yeah, literally, this is how it's applying.
Speaker 2: Oh, it makes me angry that they would have had
Speaker 2: that little evidence, I guess for the jury to only
Speaker 2: have deliberate, deliberate thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it speaks volumes on what sort of evidence they
Speaker 1: had at the trial.
Speaker 2: Not enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it makes sense that, of course he's going
Speaker 1: to walk free. Dang now. In later interviews, investigators reflected
Speaker 1: on those early nineteen eighties close calls with a lot
Speaker 1: of frustration. Samuel had literally been in their grasps, arrested
Speaker 1: for murder even but he managed to wriggle free due
Speaker 1: to insufficient evidence. And these failures to convict him meant
Speaker 1: Samuel was free to keep killing, and that's exactly what
Speaker 1: he did. Immediately after beating the Florida murder charge. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, Samuel Little left the South and moved
Speaker 1: out to the west coast of California, likely trial, trying
Speaker 1: to get out from under the eye of the law.
Speaker 1: He drifted onto San Diego in that area, and it
Speaker 1: didn't take him long to reoffend. In October of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, Samuel was arrested in San Diego after he kidnapped,
Speaker 1: beat and strangled a twenty two year old woman named
Speaker 1: Laurie Barros, who miraculously survived the attack. Now, just one
Speaker 1: month after that incident, in November of nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: San Diego police found Samuel in the back seat of
Speaker 1: his car with an unconscious, badly beaten woman who had
Speaker 1: also been strangled and left for dead. This victim miraculously
Speaker 1: survived as well, albeit barely.
Speaker 2: Why was he even had the opportunity to get her, Hey,
Speaker 2: exactly a month prior he had done something similar. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: So these back to back assaults led to some serious charges,
Speaker 1: including attempted murder, and Samuel was put on trial in California,
Speaker 1: and one might think that his luck had finally run
Speaker 1: out at this point, Yet once again fortune favored him
Speaker 1: for some reason, and the jury in San Diego, well,
Speaker 1: they deadlocked and could not unanimously convict him on the
Speaker 1: most serious charges, and rather than retry the case, prosecutors
Speaker 1: allowed Samuel to strike a plea deal, so he pled
Speaker 1: guilty to lesser charges of assault and false imprisonment with
Speaker 1: these two attacks. Now, this time, at the very least,
Speaker 1: there was some consequences, even if far too light. Samuel
Speaker 1: Little was sentenced to four years in prison for the
Speaker 1: San Diego assaults. However, even that consequence was still quite
Speaker 1: watered down by the system, as he ended up serving
Speaker 1: only about two and a half years behind bars. In
Speaker 1: February of nineteen eighty seven, he was released on parole
Speaker 1: and immediately left San Diego, heading north up to the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles area. Samuel had literally gotten away with murder
Speaker 1: up to this point, and even when caught for lesser
Speaker 1: violent crimes, he paid the bare minimal price for it.
Speaker 1: By now, he was in his late forties and far
Speaker 1: from being reformed by prison, he was eager to continue
Speaker 1: indulging in his violent desires. Unfortunately, his time in California
Speaker 1: was about to become the most deadly chapter of it all. Now,
Speaker 1: after his release, Samuel Little settled into la and almost
Speaker 1: immediately while he resumed killing. Los Angeles in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties was a city grappling with crime, drug epidemics,
Speaker 1: and a large population of transient or vulnerable individuals. In
Speaker 1: other words, the very kind of environment in which Samuel
Speaker 1: Little preferred because he could operate without drawing much attention.
Speaker 1: In fact, he later claimed that in nineteen eighty seven alone,
Speaker 1: he killed seven women in Los Angeles, seven in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven.
Speaker 2: And one year in one year span.
Speaker 1: Now, police at the time did not realize these were
Speaker 1: connected murders, or even all murders at all. One of
Speaker 1: Samuel's known Los Angeles victims that he would eventually be
Speaker 1: tied to was Carol Alford, a forty one year old
Speaker 1: woman who he killed in the summer of nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: On July thirteenth of that year, Carol all Fiford's body
Speaker 1: was discovered in an alley in south central LA She'd
Speaker 1: been strangled and left partially nude. Her killing bore the
Speaker 1: hallmarks of Samuel's method, though, of course, at the time
Speaker 1: her murderer was unknown. Right but later that year, in
Speaker 1: October of nineteen eighty seven. Well, Samuel he killed several
Speaker 1: other women in LA whose identities remain uncertain. They are
Speaker 1: simply left among the Jane Doe cold cases that remain
Speaker 1: open today's.
Speaker 2: It seems like he's just not even trying to hide
Speaker 2: this stuff either. No, it's just leaving the body like
Speaker 2: in the alley and stuff. It's so yeah. I mean
Speaker 2: we've already talked about it. He is just invincible.
Speaker 1: So that's how he feels. And honestly, at this time
Speaker 1: of you know, society, they don't have DNA, they don't
Speaker 1: have the forensics we have today. They couldn't tie the
Speaker 1: murders to him, So why hide it?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it was way easier to get away with
Speaker 2: stuff like this.
Speaker 1: It was so, hey, there we go, just leave the
Speaker 1: body there, continue to get away with it. That was
Speaker 1: his mindset. Now. Moving into the late nineteen eighties, Samuel
Speaker 1: continued stalking women in the seedier neighborhoods of LA. It
Speaker 1: was in August of that year he murdered Audrey Nelson Everett,
Speaker 1: a thirty five year old woman, and he dumped her
Speaker 1: body in a dumpster behind a Hollywood restaurant, as if
Speaker 1: she was nothing more than trash to him. A month later,
Speaker 1: in September of nineteen eighty nine, he killed Guadalupe Darda Apodaca,
Speaker 1: forty six and left her body inside an abandoned commercial
Speaker 1: garage in Los Angeles. Both women had been beaten and strangled.
Speaker 1: The corner's report noted Audrey Nelson had been severely hit
Speaker 1: and ahead in addition to being choked. At the time,
Speaker 1: these two murders in nineteen eighty nine were investigated by
Speaker 1: the LAPD. Like any other standalone homicide, detectives had no
Speaker 1: leads to Samuel, who had no obvious connection to the
Speaker 1: victims aside from encountering them randomly on the street. So
Speaker 1: with no physical evidence or very little of the cases
Speaker 1: while they just simply went cold. Samuel did not restrict
Speaker 1: himself to California, though. While Los Angeles was a base
Speaker 1: for him in nineteen eighty seven through the early years
Speaker 1: of nineteen nineties, he still traveled frequently and claimed victims
Speaker 1: elsewhere too. By his own later accounts, the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: were an extremely active period for his killing spree. He
Speaker 1: told the FBI that he murdered quote numerous women throughout
Speaker 1: the decade, not only in la but also across the
Speaker 1: American South and Midwest as well. It is impossible to
Speaker 1: detail every single one of the ninety plus murders that
Speaker 1: he claims, but a very few examples while they illustrate
Speaker 1: his broad geographic range during these years. In eighty seven
Speaker 1: to nineteen eighty eight, along with the La killings, Samuel
Speaker 1: reported killing women in places like Cleveland, Ohio, New Orleans, Louisiana,
Speaker 1: all while doing cross country drives. For example, in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, he murdered a twenty three year old woman
Speaker 1: named Brenda Alexander in Phoenix City, Alabama, dumping her body
Speaker 1: in a rural area. In nineteen eighty two, he strangled
Speaker 1: an eighteen year old named Forredonia Smith in Mark and Georgia.
Speaker 1: He targeted a fifty five year old woman, Dorothy Richards
Speaker 1: in Huma, Louisiana, in nineteen eighty two, and a forty
Speaker 1: year old woman, Daisy Maguire in the mid nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: in the same town. These are just a handful of
Speaker 1: instances of violent crimes that he committed from a very
Speaker 1: long list of confessions that he would eventually come out with.
Speaker 1: In each case, the story was similar. A vulnerable woman
Speaker 1: alone approached by Samuel, often offering a ride or some help,
Speaker 1: then beaten, strangled and left in a secluded spot. The
Speaker 1: local authorities would find a body with little to no
Speaker 1: evidence pointing to a killer and with no DNA database
Speaker 1: because the time it was, with that era, in everything,
Speaker 1: there was no connection between jurisdictions. The case is froze.
Speaker 1: Samuel Little simply moved on to rinse and repeat the cycle.
Speaker 1: Even when Samuel did come under suspicion for an assault
Speaker 1: in other crimes during these years, he managed to avoid
Speaker 1: major consequences. For example, in nineteen ninety one, back in
Speaker 1: his home state of Ohio, Samuel was arrested for stealing
Speaker 1: a carton of cigarettes in Lorraine and then assaulting women
Speaker 1: with this vehicle as he tried to flee the scene
Speaker 1: almos he's stealing, gets caught and then tries to drive
Speaker 1: away and hits people with it.
Speaker 2: He literally just does not give any.
Speaker 1: Shits, No, not a single fuck given by this guy.
Speaker 2: And I just had, like, the only thing going through
Speaker 2: my mind right now is he's taking victims who are
Speaker 2: as young as eighteen, and this fucker is probably living
Speaker 2: until he's at least like I'm not sure about eighty
Speaker 2: or something, which, how the hell is that fair?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not sure the age of his youngest victim,
Speaker 1: but we have talked about one being seventeen already even.
Speaker 2: Yet, Yeah, so what the actual shit? Hey?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now, this incident of this kind of hit and
Speaker 1: run situation from robbing cigarettes, it resulted in charges of
Speaker 1: aggravated robbery, and it took years for that case to resolve.
Speaker 1: He wasn't convicted until nineteen ninety eight, in fact, when
Speaker 1: he finally pled guilty and served about two years in prison. Now,
Speaker 1: those two years nineteen ninety eight nineteen ninety nine ish
Speaker 1: kind of behind bars for the relatively minor offense, I mean,
Speaker 1: speaking comparatively to what he would actually do, they appeared
Speaker 1: to be the longest continuous prison time Samuel served since
Speaker 1: that nineteen eighties incident, despite murdering several women in the meantime.
Speaker 2: Well, and that would have saved how many lives to
Speaker 2: him being away for just two years?
Speaker 1: Right, So, now, once he was released around the year
Speaker 1: two thousand, he was back in the streets and according
Speaker 1: to his later confessions, right back to murder.
Speaker 2: And he would have been like quite old, well not okay,
Speaker 2: like or something at that point. So that's wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was now into his sixties by early two.
Speaker 2: Thousand and he's still just going at it. He is
Speaker 2: holy shit.
Speaker 1: Yep, age did not it didn't stop him. Now he
Speaker 1: has confessed to a number of murders in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands. In total. Samuel claims his final victim was
Speaker 1: killed in two thousand and five. That victim is believed
Speaker 1: by investigators to have been Nancy Carol Stevens, a forty
Speaker 1: six year old woman from Tepelo, Mississippi, whose body was
Speaker 1: found near road in August of two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: Samuel Little described strangling a woman named Nancy in Tapello
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, and all the details matched
Speaker 1: the findings in the unsolved murder of Nancy Stevens. So,
Speaker 1: if this timeline is accurate, Samuel Little's killing spree spanned
Speaker 1: a ridiculous thirty five years from nineteen seventy to two
Speaker 1: thousand and five.
Speaker 2: Oh, that just hurts my head because that that is
Speaker 2: just that seems like that should be fucking impossible, But
Speaker 2: it wasn't.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. That's the scary part. He was never
Speaker 1: conclusively identified or stopped. The entire time, no one even
Speaker 1: pinned him down as a serial killer. The entire time,
Speaker 1: no one even noticed that he would that there was
Speaker 1: a serial killer on the fucking loose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's mind blowing that he could have gotten away
Speaker 2: with this. But then there was times where like he
Speaker 2: literally raped someone and was in jail for three months.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there is a lot in here too where I think,
Speaker 2: you know, he is very much just slipping through the
Speaker 2: cracks when he should not have.
Speaker 1: Oh thoroughly, yes, you're right. Yeah, No, there's like he
Speaker 1: raped and attempted to kill that person.
Speaker 2: And three months. Yeah, I don't get how that works.
Speaker 1: I don't either. Now. In two thousand and seven, Samuel,
Speaker 1: now in his late sixties, had another encounter with law
Speaker 1: enforcement in Los Angeles, of course, this time for a
Speaker 1: relatively minor offense. He was arrested on a charge of
Speaker 1: possession of cocaine. He actually pled guilty and was ordered
Speaker 1: to attend a drug rehabilitation program as part of his sentence,
Speaker 1: but in classic Samuel fashion, he did not stick around
Speaker 1: for the rehab. He decided to head to a different state,
Speaker 1: so he skipped out on the program and caused the
Speaker 1: court to issue a bench warrant for his arrest when
Speaker 1: he failed to appear. Now after that, Samuel essentially fled
Speaker 1: California and went into wherever the wind took him, staying
Speaker 1: one step ahead of the warrant. For several years, he
Speaker 1: lived a transient life, reportedly spending time in places like
Speaker 1: Kentucky or Nevada. He probably thought he would once again
Speaker 1: get away with it all, just a minor drug case
Speaker 1: to dodge, you know, nothing more. He's done much worse.
Speaker 1: But what he could not have known was that this
Speaker 1: skipped rehab stint would indirectly be his entire downfall.
Speaker 2: Okay, I was wondering how he was going to get caught,
Speaker 2: and this seriously the way he gets that is, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's good, but it's also like really yeah.
Speaker 1: So by twenty twelve, Samuel Little was now seventy two
Speaker 1: years old. He had slown down physically and was living
Speaker 1: a quiet, obscure life at a homeless shelter in Louisville, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: He probably assumed that whatever crimes he had committed were
Speaker 1: in his past and that he would live out the
Speaker 1: remaining years, you know, just as.
Speaker 2: Is doing cocaine and whatever the hell he wants.
Speaker 1: Doing whatever he's doing, but across the country in LA,
Speaker 1: cold case detectives and forensic analysis were breathing new life
Speaker 1: into old unsolved murders. Decades old evidence was being tested
Speaker 1: with modern DNA technology, and investigators were punching that genetic
Speaker 1: data all into the FBI's national database. In Samuel's case,
Speaker 1: this new wave of forensic science was about to finally
Speaker 1: catch up with him because culminating with Hey that bench warrant,
Speaker 1: it was a combination to bring him all down. On
Speaker 1: Septem number fifth, twenty twelve, Samuel Little was arrested at
Speaker 1: a homeless shelter in Louisville. The arrest was initially fairly routine.
Speaker 1: It was executed by authorities because of that outstanding narcotics
Speaker 1: warrant from LA about five years ago. Samuel was then
Speaker 1: extradited from Kentucky back to California to face that charge,
Speaker 1: which by itself was nothing major. However, once he was
Speaker 1: in custody in LA, the LAPD took a sample of
Speaker 1: his DNA and ran it through the system to see
Speaker 1: if it matched any crime scene evidence, just to see. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: this was standard procedure at the time for many felony
Speaker 1: arrests by twenty twelve, right, and in Samuel's case, it
Speaker 1: yielded some extraordinary results. So if he had gone through
Speaker 1: that process and gone through his sentencing of attending the
Speaker 1: drug rehab like he was supposed to, his DNA would
Speaker 1: never have been collected, and it would never have tied
Speaker 1: him to three unsolved murders in LA like the DNA
Speaker 1: matched in the system.
Speaker 2: That's crazy now.
Speaker 1: Specifically, the genetic profile from Samuel connected him to the
Speaker 1: killings of Carol Alford killed in July of nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: Audrey Nelson killed in August of nineteen eighty nine, and
Speaker 1: Guadalupe Appadoca killed in September of nineteen eighty nine. All
Speaker 1: three women have been strangled and left for dead on
Speaker 1: the streets of LA Their cases had since long gone cold.
Speaker 1: If he never ran out on that sentencing, this would
Speaker 1: never have been connected.
Speaker 2: From all the shit that he's done. Missing a rehab
Speaker 2: stint is what gets him caught, really correct, I mean,
Speaker 2: as long as well as leaving DNA at these scenes
Speaker 2: and stuff and not knowing that that would later catch
Speaker 2: up with him.
Speaker 1: But well, that's the thing though, if he would never
Speaker 1: if he did that, stint of going to rehab and
Speaker 1: then he just went on to live his transient life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they wouldn't have collected it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't have collected his DNA. They would have
Speaker 1: had DNA to tie all these crimes together, but they
Speaker 1: would never have DNA to say who's the perpetrator. So
Speaker 1: once they arrested him, they now had his DNA to
Speaker 1: compare to the database to say, oh shit, you're that guy.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm surprised there was just three. I was like,
Speaker 2: they're gonna put his DNA in there and that shit's
Speaker 2: going to light up and there's going to be like
Speaker 2: all of these freaking cases.
Speaker 1: Well they had three, that's a start for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's enough really to you know, put someone away.
Speaker 1: Right, So with one little DNA sample, they now had
Speaker 1: a single suspect time these three together. That's huge and
Speaker 1: it was a stunning breakthrough. For over two decades after
Speaker 1: the crimes occurred, right like they occurred quite a while ago,
Speaker 1: and just like that, you have someone for three crimes,
Speaker 1: and it seemed like Samuel's crimes finally have caught up
Speaker 1: with them, and in fact they did. The LA Police
Speaker 1: Department now realized they had in custody this individual responsible
Speaker 1: for them, and they quickly moved to charge Samuel with
Speaker 1: those three murders. In January of twenty thirteen, the LA
Speaker 1: County District Attorney's office formally indicted Samuel Little on three
Speaker 1: counts of murder with special circumstances for multiple homicide based
Speaker 1: on the DNA links to the three women. Now, the
Speaker 1: case was extremely strong. DNA evidence is a very powerful tool.
Speaker 1: Even though these samples were decades old. It placed Samuel
Speaker 1: at the scene of each one of the killings. As
Speaker 1: the news broke, it raised an alarming question, could this
Speaker 1: seventy two year old man have more victims? The LAPD
Speaker 1: and other agencies began digging deeper into Samuel's past, and
Speaker 1: they soon found plenty to be concerned about. During twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: while Samuel Little awaited trial in La, police departments around
Speaker 1: the country started re examining cold cases that fit his profile.
Speaker 1: The FBI's Violent Crime Apprehension Program Well it got involved
Speaker 1: to assist the LPD. Now that Apprehension program, I'll be
Speaker 1: referring to it as vi CAP from here on out.
Speaker 1: So vi CAP analysis compiled Samuel's criminal history and looked
Speaker 1: for patterns or unsolved cases that matched his movements and
Speaker 1: his methods. Almost immediately, they found an alarming pattern unsolved
Speaker 1: homicides of women in multiple states and decades that featured
Speaker 1: similar circumstances, you know, victims, strangled bodies, dump, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, all lining up with places Samuel Little had been.
Speaker 1: One of the first clearest connections outside California was in Texas.
Speaker 1: VI cap analysis. Christina Paloso spotted a case from Odessa, Texas,
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety four murder of Denise Christie Brothers. It
Speaker 1: sounded like it could be the work of Samuel, and
Speaker 1: they confirmed that he had indeed passed through the area
Speaker 1: at that time. So VISCAPT passed that lead to the
Speaker 1: Texas Rangers, who were eager to solve the long cold
Speaker 1: murder of Denise Brothers. This cooperation marked the beginning of
Speaker 1: a multi agency effort to piece together Samuel Little's grim
Speaker 1: tapestry of crimes. As one of FBI crime analysis later
Speaker 1: noted informing sharing was crucial because once agencies pooled their data,
Speaker 1: patterns emerged, patterns that any one jurisdiction alone might miss.
Speaker 1: In this case, though the pattern was a coast took
Speaker 1: Coast trail of violence. Meanwhile, in LA, detectives also uncovered
Speaker 1: Samuel's earlier brushes with homicide investigations. They learned about the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two Melinda La Prie case in Mississippi and
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighty four Patricia Mount acquittal in Florida. It
Speaker 1: became increasingly clear that they were dealing with a serial
Speaker 1: killer who managed to invade justice for a very long time.
Speaker 1: Samuel Little's trial for the three La murders began in
Speaker 1: September of twenty fourteen. By this time, he was seventy
Speaker 1: four years old, appearing in court as a grizzled old man,
Speaker 1: a far cry from the young drifter in mugshot pasts. However,
Speaker 1: the prosecution had no intention of letting the jurors be
Speaker 1: fooled by his elderly, grandfatherly appearance. They laid out the
Speaker 1: evidence of his brutal crimes in all the detail. The cornerstone,
Speaker 1: of course, was the DNA evidence. Forensic experts testified that
Speaker 1: that DNA collected from the victims, for example, seamen and
Speaker 1: skin cells under victim's fingernails or their clothes, while it
Speaker 1: definitively matched Samuel Little, prosecutors also took an extra step
Speaker 1: to bolster their case. They brought in witnesses who were
Speaker 1: survivors of Samuel's previous attacks. These women had survived harrowing
Speaker 1: encounters with this man before, and they could testify just
Speaker 1: exactly how violent his methods could be. Their stories of
Speaker 1: being beaten, choked, and left for dead, while it provided
Speaker 1: an extremely powerful corroboration of his past behaviors. Essentially, even
Speaker 1: though the trial was formally about three murders, the jury
Speaker 1: heard a broader narrative of a predatory man with a
Speaker 1: long history of attacking women.
Speaker 2: Okay, good, that's so good because the way you described that,
Speaker 2: like this elderly man sitting there, he probably looks so
Speaker 2: just pure and innocent at that point, right, yeah, mostly,
Speaker 2: so it's like you'd almost have to do more work
Speaker 2: to show just what kind of a monster he is.
Speaker 1: Well, I do want to say though, like, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: he's getting elderly, he's getting there up in the years.
Speaker 1: But even at his age, you look at this man,
Speaker 1: you you know he looks strong still.
Speaker 2: Oh really?
Speaker 1: Hey, yes, Like if he were to have someone in
Speaker 1: a situation where it's one on one and he chose
Speaker 1: his victim to be a smaller up at he woman who,
Speaker 1: you know what, might be down on her luck. I
Speaker 1: have no doubts that he could overpower her easily. Still
Speaker 1: still at that age, you look at this guy and
Speaker 1: you say, yeah, I believe he used to be a boxer.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well that's good then, because yeah, you want him
Speaker 2: to appear as much of a monster as he is exactly.
Speaker 1: You want that appearance to match what he actually really is.
Speaker 1: And he nailed that. Now. In September twenty fifth, twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: the la jury returned with a guilty verdict on all
Speaker 1: three counts of first degree murder. Finally, Samuel Little was
Speaker 1: convicted for the murders of Carol Alford, Audrey Nelson, and
Speaker 1: Guadaloupe Appodaca. Now, I really hope I'm saying Guadalupe's name right.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but I'm doing my best. Apologies if
Speaker 1: I'm not. Now, given the heinous nature of the three
Speaker 1: crimes and his extensive history, the judge sentenced Samuel Little
Speaker 1: to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 1: Samuel Little would spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Speaker 1: It was a huge victory for law enforcement. After so
Speaker 1: many years, they had at least solved and prosecuted some
Speaker 1: of his crimes. At his sentencing, however, Samuel remained very defiant.
Speaker 1: In fact, very famously, as a judge announced his life terms,
Speaker 1: he erupted shouting quote, I didn't do it into the courtroom.
Speaker 1: He did, That's what he was doing.
Speaker 2: Yet the shit gave buddy at this point, just shut
Speaker 2: your trap.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing, though, This denial was consistent with
Speaker 1: how he evaded everything for decades whenever he was accused.
Speaker 2: That's true, he was.
Speaker 1: Always I'm innocent, blame someone else, whatever, the you know what,
Speaker 1: there's not enough evidence and he gets to walk free.
Speaker 1: So I'm not surprised that's how he behaved. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: all honesty.
Speaker 2: But you almost think at that age you're like fine, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I did this shit kind of thing.
Speaker 1: You know, you'd think he and he.
Speaker 2: The thing that really is pissing me off is he's
Speaker 2: going to jail and he was living in a homeless
Speaker 2: shelter before, so he might even almost like be spending
Speaker 2: his last few years in like a better place, which
Speaker 2: I freaking hate that my mind went there, but it did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, in many cases. That is very unfortunate to say,
Speaker 1: but you're right. In many cases, convicts received much better
Speaker 1: living situations than even you know what, homeless dude.
Speaker 2: So it's a frickin' this guy just I don't know.
Speaker 2: My blood is boiling over here.
Speaker 1: Oh he pisses me off. To trust me now. At
Speaker 1: this point, of course, investigators still didn't know the full
Speaker 1: extent of his crimes. They only had suspicions of other murders,
Speaker 1: and Samuel Little, while he wasn't exactly talking. After the
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen conviction, he was transferred to the California State
Speaker 1: prison system two began serving his life sentences, and for
Speaker 1: a few years it seemed that that might be where
Speaker 1: the story ends, an old man in prison, convicted of
Speaker 1: a couple murders, likely to die behind bars, taking his
Speaker 1: secrets to the grave with him. However, the story was
Speaker 1: far from over. In truth, it was about to enter
Speaker 1: a remarkably new phase because the same person who once
Speaker 1: escaped justice would soon volunteer to reveal everything, and I
Speaker 1: mean everything. It just required the right approach, and it
Speaker 1: came in the form of a very skilled Texas ranger
Speaker 1: and some determined FBI analysis who saw an opportunity to
Speaker 1: close dozens of unsolved cases.
Speaker 2: Okay, well that person was very good at their job then,
Speaker 2: because even in the court he's like, it wasn't me.
Speaker 1: Definitely, they saw an opportunity and they pounced. Now, Samuel
Speaker 1: Little maintained his innocence at least for a while, but
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, the FBI's ViCAP team and detectives in
Speaker 1: multiple states kept working on connecting him to other cases,
Speaker 1: and a breakthrough in this effort came in May of
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, when Texas Ranger James Holland began a careful
Speaker 1: and clever campaign to elicit Samuel's cooperation. See. Ranger Holland
Speaker 1: had been investigating the nineteen ninety four Odessa, Texas murder
Speaker 1: of Denise Brothers, and he suspected Samuel as the culprit.
Speaker 1: Along with FBI crime analysis Christy Paloso and DOJ analysis
Speaker 1: Angelo Willielmson, Holland arranged a series of interviews with Samuel,
Speaker 1: who was still in custody in California.
Speaker 2: See.
Speaker 1: By twenty eighteen, Samuel was in his late seventies and
Speaker 1: in poor health. He was diabetic and used a wheelchair
Speaker 1: a lot of the time. He had little to lose
Speaker 1: at this point, and he had a few things he
Speaker 1: actually wanted, such as a prison transfer, so sensing and opening,
Speaker 1: the investigators offered Samuel a deal. If he cooperated and
Speaker 1: if he told them all about his crimes, they would
Speaker 1: arrange a move from La County Prison to another facility
Speaker 1: in exchange. Though for this relatively small comfort, Samuel Little
Speaker 1: would have to talk, and he agreed. It was the
Speaker 1: key that unlocked a horrific treasure trove of information. Once
Speaker 1: he started talking, it was as if the dam had
Speaker 1: broken open. In an initial interview in May of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: to everyone's astonishment, he began confessing to dozens of murders
Speaker 1: all across the country. Ranger Holland later said that well,
Speaker 1: he methodically went city by city, state by state, recounting
Speaker 1: how many people he'd killed in each and every place.
Speaker 1: Dang By the end of that session, he'd confessed to
Speaker 1: around ninety murders in total. The investigators listening were shook.
Speaker 2: That is so disturbing.
Speaker 1: They were in the presence of someone who might surpass
Speaker 1: even the worst known serial killers in all of American
Speaker 1: history just by sheer count alone. Now crucially, Samuel wasn't
Speaker 1: just throwing out numbers. He's not just saying, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I've killed ninety plus people. That's not what he was doing.
Speaker 1: Nothing like that. He began providing extensive details about each killing,
Speaker 1: about each city, walking them through all of it, one
Speaker 1: by one. He was describing each and they're keeping tally
Speaker 1: and the numbers are just growing.
Speaker 2: And he just has this in his mind, Hey, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: can like recall this information so clearly?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's exactly what he was doing. Now, the
Speaker 1: FBI spent countless hours cross checking many of his stories
Speaker 1: against cold case's files, all that sort of stuff death records,
Speaker 1: and they found that, well, Samuel had an astonishing memory
Speaker 1: for certain aspects of his crimes, just like you were
Speaker 1: alluding to. He could describe where he picked up a victim,
Speaker 1: what car he was driving at the time, the general
Speaker 1: location where he left the body, and even things like
Speaker 1: the victim's appearance or clothing. He remembered tiny visual details.
Speaker 1: For instance, he described one victim as having a limb
Speaker 1: or missing a finger, and decades later this matched a
Speaker 1: description of a long identified Jane Doe who had those attributes. Now,
Speaker 1: Samuel did, however, have a lesser reliability with dates, and
Speaker 1: even admitted it he might mix up whether something happened
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two or nineteen eighty four, for example,
Speaker 1: which given the span of time that everything unfolded, well,
Speaker 1: it's not too surprising that this was the case. But
Speaker 1: the core facts of each murder story they were solid,
Speaker 1: and bit by bit, cases that had stumped detectives for
Speaker 1: years were being solved. Over the next year and a half.
Speaker 1: From mid twenty eighteen through twenty nineteen, Samuel Little engaged
Speaker 1: in a marathon of confession sessions. Ranger, Holland and agent
Speaker 1: spent around six hundred and fifty hours interviewing him in total,
Speaker 1: an unprecedented amount of FaceTime with the serial killer. In fact,
Speaker 1: Samuel actually seemed to begin to relish the attention and
Speaker 1: the opportunity to relive his crimes. He would often draw
Speaker 1: sketches of his victims from memory while describing them. In fact,
Speaker 1: he even produced color drawings of twenty six different women
Speaker 1: that he said he killed. Now these portraits were hauntingly
Speaker 1: accurate too, and when released to the public, it allowed
Speaker 1: several victims to finally be identified by their loved ones.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is just listening to this is mind blowing
Speaker 2: that he can remember all this stuff. And I was
Speaker 2: honestly thinking, he probably likes the company, having these people
Speaker 2: like chat with him and relive his life, that this
Speaker 2: was like all the highlights of his life.
Speaker 1: Right well, definitely.
Speaker 2: Exactly, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: So he's enjoying this process very much so, but.
Speaker 2: We are getting something out of it as well.
Speaker 1: So exactly now. Samuel also candidly talked about his methods
Speaker 1: and his motives. He claimed he derived a sick sexual
Speaker 1: pleasure from strangling his victims, and he reiterated how he
Speaker 1: chose victims he thought, you know what, quote wouldn't be missed.
Speaker 1: He even made disturbing analogies, like calling his murders a
Speaker 1: fruit picking excursion. This was a serial killer who in
Speaker 1: his old age, just as you're saying, is reliving his
Speaker 1: kind of golden years and was proudly boasting about these
Speaker 1: achievements if you want to call him that, and showing
Speaker 1: very little remorse along the way. For investigators, though, these
Speaker 1: confessions were everything, even if he seemed to be relishing
Speaker 1: in it. They needed to let him do so so
Speaker 1: they could finally get the information they needed out of it.
Speaker 1: Law enforcement agencies from many states sent detectives to interview
Speaker 1: Samuel or to provide information to the Texas Rangers and
Speaker 1: FBI team to coordinate the effort. By November twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: the tally of confirmed and this is a very important word,
Speaker 1: confirmed connections was quickly rising. The FBI announced that they
Speaker 1: had already verified thirty four of Samuel's confessions with hard evidence,
Speaker 1: and they believed most of the rest were credible as well.
Speaker 1: Verified thirty four. Local police departments began closing cases that
Speaker 1: had been unsolved for decades. It was like a nationwide
Speaker 1: puzzle coming altogether piece by piece, with Samuel Little himself
Speaker 1: providing the details and each piece that was bringing the
Speaker 1: picture together. Throughout the fall of twenty eighteen, there were
Speaker 1: almost daily revelations from various jurisdictions. In Georgia, Macinscherfs confirmed
Speaker 1: Little's confession to a nineteen seventy seven murder of an
Speaker 1: unidentified woman and the nineteen eighty two murder of eighteen
Speaker 1: year old for Donia Smith, both long unsolved strangulation cases.
Speaker 1: In Mississippi, officials announced that his confession to a nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight murder of thirty six year old Julia Critchfield
Speaker 1: strangled and thrown off a cliff, and a two five
Speaker 1: murder of forty six year old Nancy Carol Stevens found
Speaker 1: in Tilapilo in Florida, His confessions to killing of twenty
Speaker 1: year old Rosy Hill in eighty two, among other victims,
Speaker 1: were confirmed. In Kentucky, prosecutors indicted Samuel Little for the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one murder of twenty three year old Linda
Speaker 1: Sue Boards, who had been found dead along a highway
Speaker 1: back with no suspects then up until now. In Alabama,
Speaker 1: he confessed to nineteen seventy nine murder of Brenda Alexander,
Speaker 1: finally explaining the fate of a young woman whose case
Speaker 1: had been closed or sorry cold for thirty nine years.
Speaker 1: In Ohio, police began linking him to a string of
Speaker 1: unsolved homicides of women in Cleveland and the area and elsewhere.
Speaker 1: As he provided names and recollections, the list went on.
Speaker 1: By early twenty nineteen, Samuel Little had effectively rewritten the
Speaker 1: history books of American serial murder. The FBI publicly confirmed
Speaker 1: in October of twenty nineteen that, with fifty cases matched
Speaker 1: and confirmed by evidence so far, Samuel Little was now
Speaker 1: considered the most prolific serial killer in the United States
Speaker 1: history in terms of proven victims.
Speaker 2: That the frick the sheer number there. It's insane, Like
Speaker 2: I love that all these are getting solved, and like
Speaker 2: these cases are being able to be closed, but it's
Speaker 2: just so daunting and kind of feels gross, just how
Speaker 2: it's like almost a checklist.
Speaker 1: I know, I really know what you mean, trust me now.
Speaker 1: They noted that he confessed to ninety three murders and
Speaker 1: that they had little reason to doubt any of them.
Speaker 1: Law enforcement while they're still busy trying to corroborate the
Speaker 1: remaining confessions and identify all of the victims, and the FBI,
Speaker 1: while they've even created a dedicated website with a timeline
Speaker 1: of Samuel's travels and crimes and clips of his video
Speaker 1: recorded confessions, hoping that members of the public might recognize
Speaker 1: a victim or provide additional clues. In the midst of
Speaker 1: all these confessions, legal proceedings continued for some specific cases.
Speaker 1: In December of twenty eighteen, Samuel was charged in Texas
Speaker 1: for the Odessa murder of Denise Christie Brothers from nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four. The case that Ranger Holland had first used
Speaker 1: to get him talking well. This was the case. Samuel
Speaker 1: pled guilty to the murder to avoid potential death penalty,
Speaker 1: and received another life sentence in Texas. In August of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, he was indicted and then pled guilty in
Speaker 1: Ohio for four murders, those of Anne Stewart from nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, Mary Joe Payton in nineteen eighty four, Rose
Speaker 1: Evans in nineteen ninety one in an unidentified Jane Doe
Speaker 1: from late seventies or eighties. He received four additional life
Speaker 1: sentences in Ohio now Notably, Anne Stuart's case was one
Speaker 1: where the body had been found back in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine but remained unsolved. Mary Joe Payton had been a
Speaker 1: Jane Doe victim for years until being identified and linked
Speaker 1: to Samuel. Rose Evans had been killed in Cleveland in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, and the Jane Doe was a victim
Speaker 1: he recalled but whose body was never recovered. In other states,
Speaker 1: prosecutors often decided not to prosecute Samuel on additional accounts
Speaker 1: simply because he was already destined to die in prison
Speaker 1: and was cooperating For instance, Florida officials concluded that he
Speaker 1: was responsible for at least two Miami area murders in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, including Dorothy Gibson and another woman named
Speaker 1: Karen o'donahue. But they chose not to bring him to
Speaker 1: Florida for trial given the extensed extensive life sentences that
Speaker 1: are already existing, and it would have been a waste
Speaker 1: of time, resources, and money to pursue them, so instead
Speaker 1: they officially closed those cases and attributed them to Samuel Little.
Speaker 1: One big outcome for all those confessions was the exoneration
Speaker 1: of wrongfully convicted individuals. We mentioned earlier the case of
Speaker 1: Jerry Townsend in Florida, who had been falsely convicted of
Speaker 1: the murder of Dorothy Gibson. Well, he had actually been
Speaker 1: exonerated in two thousand and one by DNA evidence unrelated
Speaker 1: to Samuel. But in other instances Samuel's confession, for example,
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty three, a murder in Mississippi that had
Speaker 1: been blamed on someone else, well, we now have a
Speaker 1: clear name. Each confession not only added Samuel's tally up,
Speaker 1: but in some cases righted a wrong, clearing people's names
Speaker 1: who had been unjustly suspected or even convicted. By the
Speaker 1: end of twenty nineteen, Samuel Little had effectively become an
Speaker 1: informant on himself, and investigators remarked on how surreal it
Speaker 1: was the killer was the one helping solve all these murders.
Speaker 1: Verifying one case after another, Many veteran detectives got long
Speaker 1: awaited answers to cases that haunted them. Families of victims
Speaker 1: who spent years not knowing what happened to their missing daughter,
Speaker 1: their sister, or friend finally learned the truth. However painful
Speaker 1: it was, you know that she had simply encountered a
Speaker 1: predator named Samuel Little. After twenty nineteen, there were fewer
Speaker 1: new revelations, simply because well, Samuel had already confessed to
Speaker 1: everything he could remember. He remained incarcerated, spending much of
Speaker 1: his time in Texas, where he'd been extradited during the
Speaker 1: confession process to remain closer to Ranger Holland for the interviews.
Speaker 1: In total, authorities definitively linked Samuel Little to at least
Speaker 1: sixty confirmed murders, a number that surpassed any other known
Speaker 1: US serial killer's body count in history. The FBI continued
Speaker 1: to work in the remaining unconfirmed cases. They believe all
Speaker 1: of his confessions were very credible, but they need to
Speaker 1: match them with evidence or unidentified remains, and this leaves
Speaker 1: roughly forty unsolved or unmatched confessions that are actively being investigated.
Speaker 1: Samuel Little eventually died on December thirtieth, in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: at a Los Angeles County area hospital. He was eighty
Speaker 1: years old. Now, the California Department of Corrections did not
Speaker 1: announce a specific cause of death, but it was known
Speaker 1: that he suffered from diabetes and heart problems in his
Speaker 1: final years, and he'd been in declining health. He passed
Speaker 1: away still officially convicted of only eight murders, the three
Speaker 1: in California, plus the additional ones in Ohio and Texas
Speaker 1: for which he had pled guilty in twenty eighteen and
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. However, his legacy, in the form of his
Speaker 1: own confessions and the mountain of cold cases he helped
Speaker 1: solve and leave open, it marks him indisputably as the
Speaker 1: most prolific serial killer ever identified in America. The case
Speaker 1: of Samuel Little is now studied heavily as a cautionary
Speaker 1: tale of how a predator can exploit the weakness in
Speaker 1: a system. For decades, he benefited from fragmented and indifferent
Speaker 1: criminal justice systems that failed to connect the dots. He
Speaker 1: deliberately chose victims who lived on the margins, women who
Speaker 1: weren't well off, women of color, which who were primarily
Speaker 1: his targets, women who might be involved in the sex
Speaker 1: trade or suffering from addiction. Their murders did not spark
Speaker 1: big investigations or headlines, allowing him to fly under the radar.
Speaker 1: As one criminologists observed, if his victims had been wealthy
Speaker 1: or prominent people, the public and police, while their response
Speaker 1: probably would have been very different, But because Samuel preyed
Speaker 1: on those less privileged and whose disappearance often weren't immediately reported,
Speaker 1: he was able to kill with impunity for a very
Speaker 1: long time. It's a sobering reflection, honestly on societal basis
Speaker 1: and the value placed on certain lives over others. But
Speaker 1: in the end, Samuel Little's story is one both of
Speaker 1: failure and success in law enforcement. It showcases the failure
Speaker 1: of the past, how traditional police work in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties, hampered by jurisdictional boundaries and limited forensic
Speaker 1: technology missed a killer who was hiding in plain sight.
Speaker 1: But it also highlights the modern advances in DNA technology,
Speaker 1: interagency cooperation, and cold case persistence that eventually did bring
Speaker 1: him down. It showcases both the worst and the best
Speaker 1: of law enforcement at the same time. It is clear
Speaker 1: though without the DNA match in twenty twelve and the
Speaker 1: collaboration work between the LAPD and the FBI and the
Speaker 1: Texas Rangers, Samuel Little might have died with all of this,
Speaker 1: and no one would have known, and many families would
Speaker 1: never have understood what happened to their loved ones. But instead,
Speaker 1: thanks to those efforts, dozens of cases have been solved
Speaker 1: and the victim's names have been spoken aloud with answers
Speaker 1: beside them. Finally, Samuel Little is gone now, but the
Speaker 1: work he inadvertently set in motion continues. The FBI and
Speaker 1: local investigators are still trying to seek justice for each
Speaker 1: and every one of his victims and to close every
Speaker 1: single case possible. His case led the FBI to urge
Speaker 1: all jurisdictions to contribute their unsolved case information to a
Speaker 1: national database so that patterns like this can be caught
Speaker 1: sooner and in a grim way, Samuel helped prove the
Speaker 1: value of that approach. The story of Samuel Little honestly
Speaker 1: reads like a fictional dark thriller novel, or something you
Speaker 1: pick off a shelf. It's a man who lurks in
Speaker 1: the shadows for decades, committing evil again and again until
Speaker 1: modern science and determined detectives unravel his identity. But unlike fiction,
Speaker 1: this is very much so a true story, with very
Speaker 1: real victims and very real heroes. It's a reminder that
Speaker 1: sometimes justice is delayed for far too long, but with persistence,
Speaker 1: the truth can surface even after years of darkness. The
Speaker 1: case of Samuel Little, America's most prolific serial killer, shows
Speaker 1: the importance of never giving up on an unsolved crime
Speaker 1: and to the hope that one day every victim story
Speaker 1: will be heard and acknowledged. And that's a story of
Speaker 1: Samuel Little.
Speaker 2: Gosh I that guy. Okay, I am a huge advocate
Speaker 2: for like, you know, the world needs you, right, yes,
Speaker 2: but the world did not fucking need this.
Speaker 1: Guy, No kidding, say the least, it could have been
Speaker 1: well better off without him.
Speaker 2: The world would have been a way way better off
Speaker 2: place without this man. Yes I can, I mean I
Speaker 2: have trouble even believing that someone could recall ninety three,
Speaker 2: you know, incidents, So I'm almost thinking there's probably ones
Speaker 2: that he's forgotten to most likely, and it could even
Speaker 2: be like you know, in the hundreds.
Speaker 1: It's very likely.
Speaker 2: So that is so fucking disturbing that someone just their
Speaker 2: life was to just take that many people's lives. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's so disgusting.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't know how to put into words
Speaker 1: the numbers, the audacity, the falling through the cracks. It
Speaker 1: is beyond mind boggling, to say the least. But it
Speaker 1: is promising to look at to say, okay, well, we
Speaker 1: now have some things in place, you know, the cooperation
Speaker 1: from different jurisdictions, we have databases of DNA and profiling,
Speaker 1: all these things that can help prevent this. Now, Yes,
Speaker 1: I just really hope that they continue that evolution, that
Speaker 1: they can continue finding new ways to really hammer down
Speaker 1: and stop people like this, because man, we do not
Speaker 1: need monsters like this in the world.
Speaker 2: No, not at all. And I honestly feel like I
Speaker 2: need to check myself too, like, how the hell have
Speaker 2: I not heard of this? Man? I don't know, I
Speaker 2: have no idea how I've not heard this name I
Speaker 2: must have because like this, it's huge.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the problem in true crime is there are
Speaker 1: so many stories. Yea, there's so many horrific tales. There's
Speaker 1: so many monsters and people that are capable of such
Speaker 1: wicked and grim things. It's so hard to keep up
Speaker 1: on it. And when you do hear names at times,
Speaker 1: it's almost easier to ignore it, to pretend it didn't happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if we do soak up all the bad things
Speaker 1: that happen in every single day, I I can't imagine
Speaker 1: how I'd feel. It's it's a coping mechanism to not
Speaker 1: try and remember that thing.
Speaker 2: True. Yeah, I mean yeah, I would be quite fine,
Speaker 2: probably carrying on my way, never knowing someone like this exists.
Speaker 2: But it is also important to know people like this exist.
Speaker 2: And I just wish this guy I don't know would
Speaker 2: have been stopped way earlier or not had the life
Speaker 2: that he had because he did not deserve, no to
Speaker 2: live his life for eighty years or whatever doing I
Speaker 2: guess what he loved to do, which is just so
Speaker 2: messed up.
Speaker 1: I agree, But there were so many times where he
Speaker 1: could have been stopped, but he wasn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I would I like to believe that if
Speaker 2: this was happening nowadays, that he would be stopped far earlier.
Speaker 2: I think he would I wouldn't be able to get
Speaker 2: away with that to that cheer number.
Speaker 1: I would hope so too. I think I'm with you there.
Speaker 1: I think that the resources and everything and the way
Speaker 1: things are done, procedures, technology advancements, I think we'd be
Speaker 1: able to capture him far sooner. Yes, so yeah, anyways,
Speaker 1: with that, thank you for being here. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to go through the end stuff today. You know the
Speaker 1: description it holds it all. You guys are amazing. Thank
Speaker 1: you for being here, and of course until next time, I.
Speaker 2: Just have to say say, well done, you did good
Speaker 2: job presenting this. It was it was very well presented.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Well. Now I need to get back on
Speaker 1: track all the description stuff, like I said, And of
Speaker 1: course until next time, stay wicked