Inside mind of ‘America’s worst serial killer’ Samuel Little who drowned & strangled 93 women for kicks & has died at 80
HE was thought to be the most prolific serial killer in America - with 93 possible victims to his name.
Now Samuel Little has taken his secrets to the grave - dying in jail at the age of 80 - but not before sketching a gallery of women he claims he killed.
Last October, the FBI published his drawings on its website, alongside his descriptions of where and when the murders took place, for the public to help match them to missing persons and unsolved cases.
The list of victims, if confirmed, would take his body count to more than double that of notorious killer Ted Bundy.
The total would mean he had 44 victims more than America’s worst murderer of recent times — Gary Ridgway, known as the Green River Killer.
For almost five decades Little thought he had got away with his killing spree, which began in 1970 and only ended in 2005 when he became too frail to overpower his victims.
But in 2014 he was convicted of murdering three women and jailed for life. It was then that Ranger Holland spotted similarities with cold cases and set about getting Little to open up.
Speaking from behind bars, Little boasted how he made the murders as “long and slow as possible” — sometimes letting the women slip in and out of consciousness — with him getting sexual pleasure from the death.
Softly spoken Texas Ranger Jim Holland was sitting across the table from convicted felon Samuel Little in a US jail.
'I WANTED THEIR HELPLESSNESS'
He told how he targeted vulnerable woman who were drug addicts or prostitutes.
Little would drive them to a quiet spot and, catching them unaware, knock them out with a single blow. Then he liked to put his huge hands around their necks to finish them off.
Recalling one victim, 38-year-old prostitute and heroin addicted Denise Brothers, he told how he said to her, “I own you, you’re mine for ever”, as she wept in the back of his Cadillac.
He then described kissing the tears from the mother of two’s face before ending her life. He said: “I wanted their helplessness. All I ever wanted was for them to cry in my arms.”
He claimed his first victim was a Miami woman with “strawberry-blonde hair” around New Year in 1970.
Talking about that first time, he said: “She was a prostitute. She was sitting at a restaurant booth, red leather, real nice.
"She crossed them big legs in her fishnet stockings and touched her neck. It was my sign. From God.” He added it was “like drugs. I came to like it”.
The last woman he claimed to have killed was 46-year-old Nancy Stevens, in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 2005.
How Little got away with so many murders for so long has shocked America. He deliberately selected victims he believed the police would care little about.
Little told New York journalist Jillian Lauren, who visited him multiple times in prison: “If I killed you, it’d be all over the news the next day. I stayed in the ghettos.”
Little also moved across the country, killing in 19 states. By knocking out the women first, there was little sign of a struggle and it was not always obviously a murder.
The FBI stated: “With no stab marks or bullet wounds, many of these deaths were not classified as homicides but attributed to drug overdoses, accidents or natural causes.”
Born in 1940 in a small town in the state of Georgia, Little claims his teenage mother was a prostitute who left him by the side of the road as a baby.
Looked after by his grandmother, he grew up in Ohio, where he started committing petty thefts in order to buy drink or drugs.
While at primary school he had a sexual fixation with the necks of females and dreamed of killing one of his classmates after she touched hers.
Little, whose real surname was McDowell, was sent to a juvenile detention centre for stealing a bicycle when he was a teenager.
'HE DOESN'T FEEL ANY REMORSE'
From there his rap sheet grew increasingly serious, with offences including armed robbery, assault on a police officer and rape.
Despite his string of violent crimes, his prison sentences never added up to more than ten years.
In 1982 he was arrested for the murder of 26-year-old Patricia Mount in Florida and 22-year-old Melinda LaPree in Mississippi.
Both women had died by strangulation and in both cases Little was identified as being around the victims in the same brown car. But a jury acquitted him in the first case and the charges were dismissed in the second.
He was free to continue killing at will. Three women who did not come to harm were two serious girlfriends and his one-time wife.
Little insists he never killed anyone he “loved” and made a conscious effort to not look at their necks. It was only in 2012 that police began to connect him with historic crimes.
After extraditing him from Kentucky to California on drugs charges, the Los Angeles Police Department noticed his DNA linked him to three unsolved murders in the city from the late 1990s.
Little had left semen on the shirt of murder victim Guadalupe Apodaca, 46, in September 1987. And his skin cells were found under the finger nails of Audrey Nelson, 35, in August 1989.
LIFE IMPRISONMENT
In September 2014 Little was found guilty of those two murders along with that of Carol Elford, 41. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Four years later federal agents noticed cold case reviews across the US bore a striking resemblance to the ones perpetrated in LA.
It was then that Ranger Holland had Little transferred from California to a better jail in Texas, so he could get him to open up.
Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman, who previously prosecuted Little for the three murders in LA, watched his chilling admissions. She told The Sun: “It was disgusting.
“It was very emotionless, but there were some areas where he seemed like he was getting excited talking about some of the victims.
“He seemed to be living the thrill of it through his confessions. I think he found it enjoyable. He was reciting it like you would talk about something you did yesterday. He does not feel any remorse.”
Silverman believes lives could have been saved if the opportunities to catch him had not been missed over the years.
In order to persuade Little — who was wheelchair-bound due to diabetes and a heart condition — to own up to his crimes now, Ranger Holland told him he would not get the death penalty.
As Little was destined to die behind bars anyway, the Ranger was not driven by a desire to increase his punishment.
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Instead he wanted to bring some form of relief to the victims’ relatives while Little was still alive to provide the details.
The Ranger said: “Samuel Little has given me a massive gift, a gift to bring closure to victims’ families who have gone years without knowing what really happened to their loved ones.”
The World's Most Prolific Serial Killers
- Erzebet Bathory (Hungary)- Tortured and murdered more than 600 victims from her family estate in Transylvania
- Harold Shipman (UK) - The doctor from Manchester killed over 215 people
- Luis Alfredo Gavarito (Colombia) - Confessed to the rape, torture and murder of 140 children
- Javed Iqbal (Pakistan) - Murdered and mutilated 100 children
- Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzales (Mexico) - The sisters owned a brothel and killed 91 prostitutes and clients
- Ted Bundy (US) - Admitted killing 36 young women it is thought he may have killed up to 100 girls and young women
- Andrei Chikatilo (Russia) - Mutilated some of his 53 women and child victims by gnawing on their flesh
- Jeffrey Dahmer (US) - Confessed to killing 17 young men and boys, slept with and ate some victims after killing them
- John Wayne Gacy (US) - Killed and raped 33 young men and boys
- Donald Henry Gaskins (US) - Confessed to murdering 15 people, but is thought to have killed over 100 people
