January 3, 2020 • 51 mins
Born in 1940, Samuel Little was known in multiple states as a drifter, petty criminal and man occasionally capable of violence. Like many people living on the fringe of society, he seemed to slip through the fingers of justice despite numerous arrests. Yet intrepid investigators and improvements in DNA testing eventually proved Little was more than an itinerant drug addict and shoplifter -- according to the FBI, he is the most prolific serial killer in US history.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt, they call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul, mission controlled dec and most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. This is a dark tale which
is somewhat of our wanton warrant here on the show. However,
(00:47):
this contains graphic descriptions of violence and abuse and as
such may not be suitable for all audiences. Yes, very
much so. This is a true crime episode and all
of those things are going to come along with it.
And you know, Matt, over the years, you and I
have investigated any number of serial murderers, from the well
(01:12):
known like Jack the Ripper esque stuff, to the obscure,
from the ancient to some that remain unapprehended the modern day.
I think we have a three part series on that right, Yes,
several unapprehended and even I think we've even speculated that
there are anywhere from tens to hundreds of uncaught unknown
(01:36):
serial killers that are operating. That's true. We pulled those
numbers from some fairly solid databases. That wasn't just us
choosing numbers. Of course, they are estimations, but it is
still a nice creepy fact, just to keep with you
when you tuck into bed at night. Right, and today's
episode focuses on a man you may have never heard
(02:00):
of before, unless you are someone who keeps up with
this grizzly aspect of the news. This is a man
named Samuel Little. Now, before we spoil everything, let's start
with just the nuts and bolts of Samuel A. Little.
(02:20):
So who is he? Here are the facts. The man
we know as Samuel Little was born Samuel McDowell. He
was born in nineteen June seven of that year. He
was born in Reynolds, Georgia. It's about two hours south
of Atlanta where we record this, uh this podcast and
(02:41):
uh his early life, like a lot of just regular people,
if you're not being written up in the media somewhere,
UM is pretty short on details. He did say something
to the effect that his mother was a sex worker,
and though not in those words, and the authorities believed
(03:01):
that he may have been born while his mother was
actually in prison or incarcerated in some way. Um, and
he ended up being raised by his grandmother in a
completely different place in Lorraine, Ohio. And his childhood just
from those circumstances alone, along with some other possible things
(03:22):
that may have happened to him, leads us to believe
he probably had a rather difficult childhood. Yeah, he was
from an impoverished family. We know he attended Hawthorne Junior High.
We know that at some point he dropped out of
high school due to both low grades and intense behavioral issues. Yes,
(03:46):
and I can't speak too much to this stuff, but
um my wife has experienced with children with behavioral issues, uh,
the severe ones, and it tends to be something occurring
within the home situation that is the biggest effect on
behavioral issues within a school environment. Just putting that out absolutely,
(04:08):
So we're just painting you this picture here. It makes
sense where his life is like, at least leading to
an extent, right absolutely. I mean, you know, luckily, education
and the study of psychology and sociology, these these disciplines
have all evolved to the point where we can we
can safely say that the majority of times when a
(04:31):
child is exhibiting behavioral issues of some sort, especially violent issues,
that it's it's coming from somewhere other than them, you know,
most of the time. Again, just most of the time
or many the times we we Yeah, you're right, Ben,
you're absolutely right. We cannot get into mass generalizations here. Um,
(04:52):
it's just it is. It is a somewhat trackable common
thing once you get down into the nitty gritty, And
that does not mean parents out there, that it is
your fault, just if you're if you're sure, yeah, yeah,
of course. Uh. The reason that I'm doing I'm speaking
in this way about it, met is that I want
(05:12):
to in the future do an episode that I'll just
pitch to you now on air. It's totally okay, So
you know, there's no right or wrong answer. What do
you think about the about a future episode called can
People Be Born Evil? Oh? That's great? Yeah? Or just
is evil real? Yeah, you're right, you're absolutely right. Evil
really is evil? Real is? I think? I don't know,
(05:35):
it's a little different because that goes into the realm
of philosophy, So it does. Both of them are right.
So just by labeling anything evil, maybe it should be
what what? We just need a different word for. Can
people be born I'm terrible? Okay, it's well, they're all
(05:56):
sorts of terrible people. You can beat arable and not
be evil. You could just be a borish person. But
but the reason I the reason I'm asking this first off? Yet,
maybe it's a little BuzzFeed to say can children be
born evil? But I'm interested in the in the psychology
and science behind that, because we have more data to
(06:18):
bring to bear. But when we ask about when we
ask whether evil exists, we quickly run into the comparison problem,
which is, of course, one person's evil is another person's heroism.
Right anyhow? Uh? Samuel Little disturbed childhood. His criminal career
begins early. He is arrested for burglary in Omaha, Nebraska,
(06:43):
on November nine, nineteen fifty six, So he's sixteen, and
he is sentenced to serve time in a program for
juvenile offenders in his twenties. After more run ins with
crime over those intervening four years in his twenties, he
relocates to Florida, where he reunites and lives with his mother.
(07:06):
During this time, he works a variety of jobs, including
stints at a cemetery. Also during this time, he doubles
down and quickly establishes his career as a prolific criminal.
And we're we're curating the way that we exhibit the
facts here. We want to build our build our case first.
(07:29):
So what do we know about What do we know
about him from his twenties on? Sure, So after sixteen,
he gets to seventeen, and then really for the next
eighteen or so years, from nineteen fifty seven until nineteen
seventy five, Little would end up getting arrested at least
twenty six times in eleven different states, everywhere from Ohio
(07:51):
and Maryland to Florida, Massachusetts, out to California and Oregon,
then to Philadelphia, New Jersey, Arizona, Illinois, and then Georgia again.
And that's not in the order in which he was arrested.
Those are just imagine traveling to all of those various
places and being arrested. He was on the road frequently.
He was a drifter, a transient. He was also arrested
(08:15):
for a variety of charges. It wasn't always the same thing.
He was arrested for shoplifting, for theft, for assault, for
sexual assault or rape. He was arrested for aggravated assault
on a police officer, d u i's fraud breaking and entering,
solicitation of a sex worker and more. So we're fast
(08:36):
forwarding to December of nineteen seventy six. He is convicted
of assaulting one Pamela case Smith in Sunset Hills, Missouri
with the intent this is the language of the law
here with the attempt to ravish dash rape. And he's
sentenced to three months in county jail. So he was
(08:58):
assaulting this person and he fully intended to sexually assault them.
So that was enough to lock him up for three months.
He gets out, there's something else, wanna we wanna put
imagine this, if this, if this were true detective or
crime show, imagine this is a vignette that occurs just
(09:22):
the left of the main story. So just we're imagining
little he's in trouble with the law. But let's go sideways.
Let's go to October. This is the month where the
skeletal remains of one Melinda Laprix were found in a
cemetery in Gautier, Mississippi. She had last been seen in
(09:43):
Pascagoula about a month earlier, getting into a brown station
wagon with a man that witnesses would later identify as Little.
During the investigation, two sex workers come forward and they
say that, you know, they recognized this guy and that
he also assaulted them in Pascagoula once in nineteen eighty
(10:07):
once in nineteen eighty one. So the next month, the
next month, Little is arrested for shoplifting in Pascagoula, and
police say, you know what, he matches the description of
our unidentified subject in the murder of Melinda Laprex. Yeah,
(10:28):
and he ends up getting charged with this murder of
for this woman, as well as the aggravated assaults on
the other two sex workers. But here's the thing. The
grand jury does not indict him because they doubt the
trustworthiness of the witnesses. Yes, exactly. And you can imagine
(10:53):
what's going into play there with a you know, a
quote jury of his peers, unquote of the grand jury,
like taking the word of a sex worker, which is
a terrible thing that it would be discounted in that way,
but it clearly, it clearly was because these witnesses were
(11:14):
involved in what would be seen as the seed Underbelly
of Pascagoula. It's true. It's true. Um, I understand why
an individual may take the word of someone from the
you know, CD underbelly. Maybe not its face value, but
it is. It's just terrible to read about it, I
(11:35):
guess from this end of history. So anyway, he he
gets extradited outside of the state to Florida, and he's
going to face charges for another murder. And this was
the murder of Patricia and Mount. She was found in
Forest Grove, Florida, in September of nineteen two, and the
(11:57):
authorities believed that, you know, per Halps Little is responsible.
So he gets sent to Florida to at least face
the charges, and he does go to trial. He goes
to trial for the murder of Patricia Anne Mount. He
is acquitted in January of night four. In October of
(12:17):
n four, San Diego police officers find Little with a
woman who has accused him of attacking her, so he
gets arrested. He's charged in that assault and one that
occurred a month or so earlier that was also in
San Diego. He gets tried for attempted murder. In these cases,
(12:42):
the jury deadlocks again, so Instead, he pleads guilty to
assault in false imprisonment. He sentenced to four years. He
serves about two and a half. On February one, seven,
he is on parole. He's back on the streets. He
moves to Los Angeles, US, and then from two thousand
(13:03):
and six he has run ins with the law in
seven different states. So we can just go ahead and
see here a pattern where Little seemed to be skirting
by getting getting out of a lot of the legal
troubles that he was facing, and in several situations where
you know, he's being arrested for a lot of misdemeanors
(13:24):
of smaller things, some felonies. Then he ends up, you know,
getting getting out, you know, not getting indicted for a
lot of these things. Then finally he only goes to
jail for two and a half years, and then, like
like Ben said, he's he's out. He's on the streets
for a long time. And then this begins to come
(13:44):
to a head. In two thousand seven, law enforcement in
Los Angeles arrests Samuel Little for possession of cocaine. He
is sentenced to what is called a drug diversion program
for anyone who is unaware the idea here is that
instead of ending up in the system, one may be
(14:06):
able to get their life back on track right. Maybe
they will be able to Maybe what they need is
support rather than punishment. So they have to, you know, uh,
submit to drug tests, they have to attend counseling things
of that nature. And some of these programs have great success. However,
as soon as he is able to leave, Samuel Little
(14:29):
is on the lamb. He doesn't attend this diversion stuff,
because of course he doesn't. He does not appear in court.
The judge issues a non extraditable warrant. He gets away.
The fact that it is non extraditable will come into
play soon. Yeah, extraditable to California from another state is
what we're talking about there. Um So, then from two
(14:52):
thousand seven to two thousand twelve, a lot of their
multiple law enforcement officers individual rules that let's say, I
don't know what twelve something like that, let's just put
a number to it. Uh, they come into some some
kind of contact with Little. His name continues getting out
there with police departments. His record is growing and growing.
(15:15):
There's a whole filing cabinet at this point of Samuel
Little and somebody or some several of these people discover
that he has this warrant, but because it's non extraditable,
they end up letting him go again, like he's just
kind of somehow just slipping through through people's grasps. Yeah,
(15:37):
we also have to think, if we, you know, exercise
the perspective of some law enforcement communities, we also have
to realize that this guy is nothing but trouble, and
so in many cases they just want to just get
out of here if he's shoplifting, you know what I mean.
In two thousand and twelve, a detective for the l
(15:58):
a p D named Mitzi Proper gets a match on
two cold murder cases from back in nine nine in
Los Angeles, and then she checks this against the statewide
offender database and she receives a match. Is some kind
of DNA sample, right, yes, And this DNA match identifies
(16:20):
the DNA of Samuel Little, linking him to the crimes.
On September five, two thousand twelve, Detective Roberts gets a
call from a sheriff in Louisiana. The deputy say they've
traced an a t M purchase by Samuel Little to
a Mini mart A convenience store in Louisville, Kentucky, And
(16:41):
there they find Samuel Little at a nearby Christian shelter.
He has arrested. He is extradited to California for that
drug charge this time, and then the pieces begin coming together. Yes,
the authorities there are able to at least link him
to three more or different murders that occurred between nineteen
(17:04):
seven and eighty nine over that two year period. There um,
and hear their names, Guadalupe Apodaca, Audrey Nelson, and Carol Alford,
and all of these people and here's that trigger warning
for you had been beaten and strangled in a very
similar fashion. And very soon after that, the police began
(17:26):
to suspect that, you know, Little has been out there
for a long time. This is early in his life.
Maybe he had more blood on his hands than just
these three people, much much more, that's right. They realized
they were looking at a genuine serial killer. Investigations were
resurrected across the country, and law enforcement in multiple states
(17:49):
began to look at other older cold cases. Think about
all the places he's traveled over all of those years,
and all the all the places he's opera rated, Um,
but the authorities even then, they didn't know that they
had just captured and begun unraveling the case of the
most prolific serial killer in u S history. Down the
(18:13):
rabbit hole. After a word from our sponsors, here's where
it gets crazy. Let's start with what we know. During
his initial trial for those first three murders, Samuel Little
(18:34):
staunchly proclaimed his innocence. Even after being convicted. Things don't
change until a while after he's convicted four those three
murders and sentenced to three consecutive life terms without parole.
He eventually begins to confess other crimes. Now it's interesting here,
we're gonna kind of get into it. But he doesn't
(18:57):
want to confess or talk about anything until he knows
he's not getting out of prison. Right when he knows
that there is no no appeal, no mistrial, no legal
loophole through which he can jump, there's a Texas ranger
named James Holland who enters the scene. Holland had started
flying to California in two thousand and eighteen. Just last
(19:20):
year to interview Little in connection to the nineteen murder
of a sex worker in Odessa, Texas. Samuel Little chooses
James Holland to be his confessor to this day, if
you ask Holland, he is not sure why Little chosen.
(19:40):
But if you ask other sources, like Christina Palazzolo from
the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program or v CAP, she will
say that Little was hoping for a transaction. He wanted
to move to a different prison now that he knew
this was his forever. So he agreed to come clean
in exchange for this relocation. Asian, if I confess, you
(20:01):
will move me. That was the devil's bargain that they made,
and confess he did. According to Palazelo quote, over the
course of that interview in May, he went through city
and state and gave Ranger Holland the number of people
he killed in each place. Jackson, Mississippi one, Cincinnati, Ohio one, Phoenix,
(20:23):
Arizona three, Las Vegas, Nevada one, and just it went
on and on and on and in May of eighteen,
Samuel Little confessed to the murder of Denise Christie Brothers
in Odessa. That's who Holland was looking for. Texas Ranger
Holland he pled guilty to the murder of Denise Christie
(20:46):
Brothers on December and boom, he received another life sentence,
so he's up to four. And then on November nine,
he confessed to the nine strangulation murder of Melissa Thomas.
And this goes on and on and on. As you said, Matt,
the Texas District Attorney and the Wise County Sheriff's office
(21:09):
also announced on November that Little had not just confessed
two murders in Texas, he had confessed to dozens of
murders and may have committed more than nine zero across
what they thought then was fourteen states between n and
two thousand five. That is um horrifying to right. And
(21:36):
the scary thing is we don't have to imagine all
in all, at this point, Samuel Little has been linked
to at least ninety three separate homicides. On October of
the FBI announced that Samuel Little is the most prolific
known serial killer in American history, full stop. His methods
(21:59):
world is always the same, strangling, beating, and assaulting vulnerable women,
people who were homeless, people who were working in the
sex industry, runaways, people surviving on the fringe of mainstream society.
And this may be one of the more disturbing aspects
of the case that you can encounter firsthand. Now, should
(22:21):
you choose to, you can go see video footage of
law enforcement interviewing Samuel Little, the FBI interviewing them as
he recounts in a grandfatherly warm tone with surprising clarity,
the appearance of each victim, their location, the names he
associated with them, and so on. He also drew sketches
(22:45):
of these victims based on his recollections. Yeah, that's one
of the most disturbing parts of this whole thing, are
the sketches, because he just apparently can see them in
his mind right, and he doesn't have an artistic inclination. No, no,
what I mean. You can tell it's it's it's childlike,
the way it's strong, you know what I mean. Certain
(23:07):
certain features that he remembers are emphasized. What he would
see a skin tone or hair color or eye color.
While his patterns of murder may not have changed, he
did travel widely, as you said, Matt, and this transient
lifestyle allowed him to live again on the fringes like
his victims. A detective in Mississippi familiar with Little routines
(23:32):
described it thus Lee his whole thing was shoplifting. He
would work at shoplifting in a city for three or
four days and then move on. He would take the
items to drug areas and then sell them. Once he
was done, he would go out early in the morning
hours and look for women. So he had this routine,
and you can see the prioritization of the routine, right.
(23:57):
It's roughly something along the lines of steal to get drugs,
to get drugs, do drugs, and then you're leaving town
satisfy that other compulsion. So how did he get away
(24:18):
for so long? It's the question will address after a
word from our sponsor we've returned. Let's start with why
little thought he would get away, first and foremost, and
(24:38):
we don't want to be to you know, like sixty
minutes TV special about this, But first and foremost, we
have to consider the psychological angle. He's like many other
serial killers. He's a malignant narcissist. So he's both not
very intelligent and extremely arrogant. I think some you know,
(24:59):
malignant nar cissists have no real use in society, but
they have wildly inaccurate beliefs about their own self perceived intelligence.
An art just like a narcissist can never forgive other
people for the great sin of not being them. They're
also incapable of seeing worth, ability or intelligence in other people.
So it's kind of the thing where it's like, I'm
the smartest person in any room, you know what I mean? Sure,
(25:22):
or the most uh, the most valuable. No one will
ever catch me. Yeah you know, I know that feeling.
You know that feel. Oh yeah, I'm giant narcissist. I
would say here the opposite. I'm always the smartest, most
self centered person in every room. That's all I know.
I can't say anything about you guys, especially Paul, but uh,
(25:45):
I'm the best. I think it's pretty great. I think
you're pretty pretty top. There's It's interesting his life experience, though,
kind of kind of speaks to why he would feel
that way. So like even and if he wasn't an
ingrained narcissist, I don't know how the psychology of it functions.
I don't know if he's just one is a narcissist.
(26:08):
But after all of his run ins with police, over
all these years, all the all the things against laws
and against Moray's and all that he'd been doing up
to this point outside of homicide. Um, he'd just gotten
away with it. So I can see why he would
lead go down that path or at least mentally believing
(26:28):
that he's not going to get caught. I see, yeah, yeah,
I can see that too. The second thing is, as
we mentioned, is victim choice. Like other would be predators,
he sought the vulnerable of the week, people who are
already in some form of compromise circumstance, people who, in
a way, we're living halfway off the grid already. And
(26:50):
like other abusers or serial murderers, he was he was
a coward and he was just too pathetic to prey
on anyone else. I mean, there's a common pattern because frankly,
it works. It's time tested, tried and true. If you
want to get away with something, you find the vulnerable
members of a society, and people who knew his victims,
(27:15):
who could have been witnesses, could have corroborated information, maybe
helped organize a search. They would also tend to be
less likely to go to the police. Police would be
less likely to follow up on the assault or death
of someone who had already been in and out of
the system on their own unrelated criminal charges, and even
(27:35):
if those people went to trial, as Samuel Little experienced,
perhaps a jury isn't going to believe them, right, right,
Like I can tell that person is druggie, right, And
so did they remember something or did someone offer them
drugs to say this? You know what I mean? And
(27:57):
still that's also prejudice acide. In many cases, juries might
feel that they are exercising critical thinking by doing that.
You know, don't we all think we're criticizing critical thinking.
We're all to some degree assured that we're the smartest
person in the room. That's that's me, is that you Yeah,
remember I'm I'm the one, So please don't I'm not
(28:20):
being serious at all in anything. So, uh, well, I
think your top notchment. I would vote for you. We
certainly don't and I would not. So there we go.
What's the opposite of a narcissist um human being? Sad guy?
That's me? So so in other cases, the bodies when
(28:46):
they you know, of course there was some sort of investigation,
but bodies could be unidentified. You might not find any
I d. You might not find a record of them
in terms of fingerprints or anything in the system. And
Little tended to stun or knock out his victims before
he strangled them. It was a strangler. And because of this,
(29:08):
there were no stab marks, there were no bullet wounds,
which meant that authorities could misidentify the cause of death.
If you see someone who hasn't been stabbed or shot,
there's no head trauma something like that. Then you you
also see perhaps narcotics of some sort, and you in
their system. You could say with reasonable validity that this
(29:32):
was a drug overdose, and then if you wanted, you
could explain away the bruises by saying life on the
streets is a is an ugly dangerous thing. Yeah, that's
a that's a hard truth there. Just what what hard
narcotics and a difficult life does to the body and
in appearance, um, and how that could be mistaken you're right, well,
(29:54):
And it's also the third thing here that we have
to mention is that many of his attack x and
homicides occurred before really DNA profiling was a thing where
there would be databases across each state, and there would
be a federal database where his if his DNA was
found on one scene, it could just be checked you know, throughout.
(30:17):
So a lot of times evidence wasn't available. They could,
they could provide really a clear link to him. Again,
you've got witnesses maybe that are in the area who
are saying he's somewhere. You think you may have got
a hit somewhere, or you do end up getting a
d N a hit like the previous occurrence that we
talked about at the top of the show, where it
just gets linked to this one thing in this one
(30:38):
case in this one state or maybe even county. Right. Absolutely,
and so again to be clear, we're not saying law
enforcement was doing a bad job. We're saying that these
tools were not available over the course of this long
and bloody career. Another factor, the fourth factor here, is
that little, as we said, shared the fringe the victims.
(31:00):
He was a known transient. He had a rap sheet
that was quickly becoming a novel, and it was for
largely petty crime violent assault aside a lot of his
the bulk of his charges were for things like shoplifting, fraud, theft,
So authorities were often glad to get him booted out
of to get out of here. He's out of here,
(31:21):
instead of digging further into his murky past. And it
is important, it's crucial to remember that he would have
been caught gears or even decades earlier had DNA testing
been available. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And there's another factor here.
We're talking about his transience and um, how he's sharing
(31:42):
the fringe with his victims. Remember that the people living
on fringes in local areas maybe are not so transient. Um,
who aren't just you know, traveling around as much as
little was where the people he's interacting with maybe just
don't know who he is. He's just knew in an area.
And let's say he attacks somebody pretty pretty soon after
(32:04):
arriving in an area and then just disappears to go
somewhere else. Um, every time, it's not just law enforcement
that he is presenting himself a new too, it's everybody
in every place that he's traveling to across the country. Yeah,
and let's consider also, you know, there's there's more than
a little bit of institutionalized racism, whether implicit, explicit, conscious
(32:30):
or subconscious that says, you know, beyond the lookout for
unidentified black mail. Did we mention that he's black at
any time in this episode? But no, I don't think
we did. No, Yeah, I think there's a I mean,
the statistics bear it out that serial killers in general,
(32:52):
and it's not always are a white male. Apprehended serial
killers are white males. Um. Yes, Um, I mean that's
just what we've seen from the statistics after studying it
over all these episodes here and speaking with professionals over
the course of several different podcasts. Um. Yeah, Samuel Little
(33:12):
certainly um stands out because of his the number of
people that he's attacked, because of who he is, and
I mean there's so many things, and because of the demographics. Yeah,
the demographics alone, Yeah, I believe. Um. Another example would
maybe be Lonnie David Franklin, also known as the Grim Sleeper,
(33:35):
but Franklin at this point is known for at least
ten murders. Note, well, yeah, we're like Wayne Williams or
Wayne Williams or the DC Snipers, which they're not serial
killers necessarily, they're killers. Well, and you know, you and
I may have slightly different opinions about the Wayne Williams case.
(33:55):
I don't think we do, um, but if you would
like to, is your opinion that he probably did kill
quite a number of them, But there are several on
the list that he almost certainly did not kill my opinion,
And the legal fact is they was convicted of two
murders that do not fit the demographics of the victims
(34:17):
of the rest of the Atlanta child murders. Okay, sounds good.
I mean that's just the fact, that's what he's convicted of, right,
I mean, yes, that's the truth. But yes, and I
know I'm not here to defend him in any way. No,
I get it. That's what the whole show was about.
So that's the whole point. I think, over time, after
(34:38):
enough interaction, like you know, second hand interaction with him directly.
Um m mmm mm hm. So if you want Douglas,
if you want to learn more about what we're talking about,
check out check out Matt's show that he could not collaboration. Yeah, yeah,
(34:59):
but it's not I show that's Paint Lindsay show much. Okay, Well,
check out the show Matt and Paine did called Atlanta Monster,
and check out the follow up, which is very much
Matt show. Uh. He does a lovely job on called Zodiac. Yeah,
and it's just because we're here and who knows when
this comes out. Okay, the third season will be available
(35:19):
in January. Any spoilers for the audience. We mentioned the
the subject that it's about previous to this moment within
this podcast. There we go. I like that spoiler a lot,
and I gotta say I love a good long form
true crime narrative. I'd love to work on one someday.
(35:40):
I think that if you are I hesitate to say,
a fan of true crime, but if you are interested
in this and you want to hear top notch research
and I'm just a masterfully done show, then check out
the Monster series. The first two seasons are already out.
Belief season two is ongoing to right, Yeah, the Little
(36:03):
Atlanta Monster and the Does Zodiac Killer both have bonus
content at some point coming out, and they always will.
They will have something, oh fantastic. Yes, do check them
out and let us know what you think. You mentioned
something you said a long form true crime, and now
I just want to see long form true crime improv.
I want to see that, like what is that? What
(36:25):
is a long form true crime improv? Comedic improv or
like long long form true improv crime? Oh well, for
people have been in some of my shows, they would
say any improv I do as a crime taste disagree.
While we're patting each other on the back. You're an
excellent improvisers, very kind, see you numerous times. We're we're
(36:49):
we're hoping to allay a little bit of the darkness
here because we're talking about some very uh some some
very troubling things, both with this system in which these
crimes occur and with the individual, and with what this
means for the future. Because the last factor and why
Little would get away for so long, why he thought
(37:11):
he would get away for so long, is simply this.
He seemed absolutely fine with going down for a drug possession, burglary, shoplifting,
d u I rap or something like that. But he
always fought murder charges and for a long time, as
you heard in our our recounting of this chronology, he
came away clean. In the nineteen eighties, as we said,
(37:34):
he was charged with killing women in two different states,
but he escaped indictment in Mississippi, and he escaped conviction
in Florida, And even after being convicted of three murders
in California that was in remember those nineteen eighties cold cases,
he refused to admit to the crimes that dated back
(37:54):
to the nineteen eighties. It was as you said, Matt,
only when he realized this would be his forever that
he decided to make these confessions and theolved right. And
this leads us to something that I like to call
the Lucas problem. So what makes Samuel little different from
(38:16):
these criminals? I mean, there's just come whatever, these people
who say that they have murdered a lot of other
Thinness and people. It's it's no secret that he's not
unique in this kind of confession. There's, of course, the
famous case of Henry Lee Lucas, for whom the Lucas
(38:38):
problem is named. Henry Lee Lucas would go on to
confess to over three murders. He said that he and
his compatriot oddist tool were in the service of something
called the Hand of Death, which we I think did
an episode. Yeah, the four pie idea did have a
little bit more sand to it. Yeah that that not
(39:00):
the same thing. It's yeah, yeah, I still think about
that one. He too. Well, Okay, So here's the Lucas problem.
Simply put, it's this, so, like most serial killers, again,
Lucas is of below average intelligence. He's also easily manipulated
(39:20):
by law enforcement, and he's going to be in jail
like little for the rest of his life. Nothing you
can do, game, set and match. This is this is
maybe not officially true. This is not admitted by a
lot of law enforcement, especially people involved directly with the
Lucas case. But the fact of the matter is that
(39:42):
evidence overwhelmingly suggests unscrupulous law officers used Henry Lee Lucas
to close out cold cases. And you know about this,
We talked about this, well, yeah, I mean that that's
the thing. He could and would straight up confessed to crimes,
even if it's not within the realm of possibility that
he could physically be in the location where a homicide occurred,
(40:07):
Like there's no way he could have been in that scene,
but he would do that in exchange for little things
here and there perks if you will within the prison system.
And so you know, Ali, sure, I'll confess to that
crime if you get me x right right, and you
know they're there are a thousand ways to message that
(40:27):
or speak about it, such that if a tape were
played back, someone in law enforcement could say, well, we
didn't tell him to say it. He wasn't coursed. He
just stated that. You know, like, so, what can you
tell me about you know, I'm just making this up,
but like, what can you tell me about Linda Alvarez
(40:51):
in you know, uh, Cape Canaveral, Florida in insert time here.
Sorry Linda for using your name, but we'll continue. Here's
just there's not a real Lenda. It is not based
on real Linda. Uh. But uh. And while they're saying it,
and maybe they're just recording audio, they slide across a
folder or the jacket with with the facts of the
(41:12):
case in there, and on top of that, there's like
a pack of cigarettes. It's that simple. It is that
simple for that kind of thing to occur. You should
have seen how Ben was slowly pushing this made up
folder towards me as he was explaining it to me
and maintaining eye contact. It was awesome. Well, I hope
that we are never in a situation like that where
(41:34):
we have to bribe or be bribed with cigarettes to
confess the murders we didn't commit. But that is okay.
So that's the Lucas problem. You cannot believe these untrustworthy people,
especially when they are incentivized to lie. But Little's case
is different. Why it really has to do with the
amount of information and detail that he was able to provide,
(41:56):
and he was doing it unprompted by law enforcement. He
was doing doing it for this individual Holland who showed
up at his prison looking for one specific or answers
to one specific case. UM. And just the number of
crime scenes that he can give details about, very specific stuff,
(42:16):
and a lot of this UM, A lot of these
details weren't a part of the public facing investigation right
where UM reporters didn't weren't privy to a lot of
the information that somehow Samuel Little knows. Yeah, and this
is this is a brilliant thing that law enforcement has
learned to do because it gives you a way to
(42:40):
understand the weird thing is that they're there our false
confessions all the time, especially if something reaches public panic level,
like during during the Sun of Sam murders. How many
people wrote in just because they UM mustook their ideas
for clever pranks. They would write in and say, I'm
(43:01):
it's on the Sam killing But they don't know anything
that hasn't been released through the papers yet. It's particularly
difficult when there's a lot of press or or leaks
have occurred exactly exactly, so he passes that test. He
knows stuff that has not been released to the public
or has not at the very least not been widely circulated,
(43:22):
and the information provided has been corroborated in multiple cases. Again,
the thing that this is just maybe one person's opinion,
But the thing that bothers me the most about this
is that you can go on YouTube. You can see
the FBI interviewing Samuel Little, and you can see his warm,
grandfatherly or avuncular I guess depend on how old you
(43:45):
are a his tone as he recalls the specifics of
these murders. He is never going to leave prison, not
while he's alive. He has nothing left to lose, and
likely that media attention is attractive to him, as well
as the opportunity to recount and therefore relive his crime.
(44:07):
There is one issue with Little's recollection. It is his
issue with chronology. As you said, Matt, he is um
incredibly lucid when it comes to remembering details of victims, locations,
you know, their appearances, the order of operations of these
atrocious acts. But he's bad at remembering specific dates. And
(44:33):
to be honest, I don't think that means he's making
it up, and I don't think it means it should
be dismissed. Like most people have a problem with specific dates,
and especially when you're traveling as much or traveled as
much as he has to all these varying places. Add
to that the years of heavy drug use. So this
(44:54):
leads us to some implications that we may have mentioned
at the top of the show. First, there is more
to come. This tale has not concluded. Of the ninety
plus murders Little as confessed to from five, the FBI
currently has solidly connected him to at least fifty that
(45:14):
we know of. That doesn't include murders that he may
not have confessed to yet, nor does it include other
connected murders the FBI may have yet to publicly confirm, right,
and there may be more cases like this on the way.
I don't know if you've heard about this. A crime
scene DNA company just acquired the database that was used
to apprehend the Golden State killer, which means that now
(45:38):
is that wait, are they using the jet match thing?
Is that what it's talking about? I believe so? Yeah,
whoa it is jed match. Oh my gosh. That is
a powerful tool. And now it's going to be used
specifically by this crime scene DNA forensics company or profiling company.
(45:59):
So there may be more on the way. But we're
also in a ticking clock situation because as we record this,
Samuel Little is seventy nine years old. He is in
bad health. He will stay in prison in Texas until
his death. So the goal becomes one of identifying his
victims and providing closure and justice in these unsolved cases
(46:22):
that we're formally going to be relegated to the Cold
Case Files v CAP, which we mentioned earlier. Palazzolo's organization
is hoping this case will serve as a reminder to
every jurisdiction of the importance of consistent crime reporting and
inter departmental interagency communication. Absolutely. So, um gosh, So what
(46:47):
what can we do? What can you do? Well, if
you have any information linking little to a place or time,
especially if it in corroboration in some way with the
confessions that he's made, you can actually you can call
the FBI. I know that sounds a little scary, maybe
(47:11):
just the concept of calling the FBI, but I assure
you you can do it. You can give your information. Uh,
this is the number here. It is one eight hundred
c a l L FBI or call FBI. You can also,
if you don't want to use the phone, submit a
tip online at their website tips dot FBI dot gov.
(47:35):
This has one last implication that we want to leave
everyone with, and it is not a happy implication, nor
should it be coupled with the recently apprehended Golden State
killer Joseph James D'Angelo Jr. Well, he hasn't been convicted,
but his DNA has been linked. Yeah, it's solid. Yeah,
(47:57):
and we're not in a court of law, so I'm
just gonna say he did it, he murdered those people.
But coupled with that, this apprehension, this understanding of Samuel Little,
raises the chilling possibility, I would argue, just my opinion plausibility,
that there are more criminals like this out there, people
(48:20):
who are maybe caught for unrelated crimes, people who retired
from their their bloody careers before they were caught, and
much more so, we have to ask ourselves who else
is out there? Still. It's a question that brings a
silence inside me, as as strange as that sounds, because
(48:42):
I'm not now I'm not trying to be alarmist and
say that there's fifteen people out there well to the FBI.
But but it's completely possible, um, that it's completely plausible
that there are a handful of people who read the
news about monsters like Samuel Little or the Golden State
(49:06):
killer and said who close call? Yikes, And we want
to know what you think. Are there more cases like
this on the way? Is Samuel Little someone who is
going to be in ten twenty years just recognized as
the second most prolific? Who will they catch next? Let
(49:30):
us know. You can find us on Facebook. You can
find us on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter.
We especially like to recommend our Facebook community page. Here's
where it gets crazy. To continue this conversation. Absolutely, go
hang out with your fellow listeners with all of us
over there, um, just chewing the fat on every one
of these episodes that we put out. If you want
(49:51):
to call us and give us some specific information, we
have a number. It's pretty easy. You can leave a message.
The number is one eight three three S T D
W y t K. Did you mention Instagram? I don't
think you did. We are conspiracy stuff show. I said
we were on Instagram, but I tell people you gotta
(50:12):
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hang out, friends, compatriots. We want to have the most
friends on Twitter. Co conspirators, co conspirators. There we go.
I don't know anything. And if none of that quite
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(50:38):
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(51:11):
Know is a production of I Heeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
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your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt, they call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul, mission controlled dec and most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. This is a dark tale which
is somewhat of our wanton warrant here on the show. However,
(00:47):
this contains graphic descriptions of violence and abuse and as
such may not be suitable for all audiences. Yes, very
much so. This is a true crime episode and all
of those things are going to come along with it.
And you know, Matt, over the years, you and I
have investigated any number of serial murderers, from the well
(01:12):
known like Jack the Ripper esque stuff, to the obscure,
from the ancient to some that remain unapprehended the modern day.
I think we have a three part series on that right, Yes,
several unapprehended and even I think we've even speculated that
there are anywhere from tens to hundreds of uncaught unknown
(01:36):
serial killers that are operating. That's true. We pulled those
numbers from some fairly solid databases. That wasn't just us
choosing numbers. Of course, they are estimations, but it is
still a nice creepy fact, just to keep with you
when you tuck into bed at night. Right, and today's
episode focuses on a man you may have never heard
(02:00):
of before, unless you are someone who keeps up with
this grizzly aspect of the news. This is a man
named Samuel Little. Now, before we spoil everything, let's start
with just the nuts and bolts of Samuel A. Little.
(02:20):
So who is he? Here are the facts. The man
we know as Samuel Little was born Samuel McDowell. He
was born in nineteen June seven of that year. He
was born in Reynolds, Georgia. It's about two hours south
of Atlanta where we record this, uh this podcast and
(02:41):
uh his early life, like a lot of just regular people,
if you're not being written up in the media somewhere,
UM is pretty short on details. He did say something
to the effect that his mother was a sex worker,
and though not in those words, and the authorities believed
(03:01):
that he may have been born while his mother was
actually in prison or incarcerated in some way. Um, and
he ended up being raised by his grandmother in a
completely different place in Lorraine, Ohio. And his childhood just
from those circumstances alone, along with some other possible things
(03:22):
that may have happened to him, leads us to believe
he probably had a rather difficult childhood. Yeah, he was
from an impoverished family. We know he attended Hawthorne Junior High.
We know that at some point he dropped out of
high school due to both low grades and intense behavioral issues. Yes,
(03:46):
and I can't speak too much to this stuff, but
um my wife has experienced with children with behavioral issues, uh,
the severe ones, and it tends to be something occurring
within the home situation that is the biggest effect on
behavioral issues within a school environment. Just putting that out absolutely,
(04:08):
So we're just painting you this picture here. It makes
sense where his life is like, at least leading to
an extent, right absolutely. I mean, you know, luckily, education
and the study of psychology and sociology, these these disciplines
have all evolved to the point where we can we
can safely say that the majority of times when a
(04:31):
child is exhibiting behavioral issues of some sort, especially violent issues,
that it's it's coming from somewhere other than them, you know,
most of the time. Again, just most of the time
or many the times we we Yeah, you're right, Ben,
you're absolutely right. We cannot get into mass generalizations here. Um,
(04:52):
it's just it is. It is a somewhat trackable common
thing once you get down into the nitty gritty, And
that does not mean parents out there, that it is
your fault, just if you're if you're sure, yeah, yeah,
of course. Uh. The reason that I'm doing I'm speaking
in this way about it, met is that I want
(05:12):
to in the future do an episode that I'll just
pitch to you now on air. It's totally okay, So
you know, there's no right or wrong answer. What do
you think about the about a future episode called can
People Be Born Evil? Oh? That's great? Yeah? Or just
is evil real? Yeah, you're right, you're absolutely right. Evil
really is evil? Real is? I think? I don't know,
(05:35):
it's a little different because that goes into the realm
of philosophy, So it does. Both of them are right.
So just by labeling anything evil, maybe it should be
what what? We just need a different word for. Can
people be born I'm terrible? Okay, it's well, they're all
(05:56):
sorts of terrible people. You can beat arable and not
be evil. You could just be a borish person. But
but the reason I the reason I'm asking this first off? Yet,
maybe it's a little BuzzFeed to say can children be
born evil? But I'm interested in the in the psychology
and science behind that, because we have more data to
(06:18):
bring to bear. But when we ask about when we
ask whether evil exists, we quickly run into the comparison problem,
which is, of course, one person's evil is another person's heroism.
Right anyhow? Uh? Samuel Little disturbed childhood. His criminal career
begins early. He is arrested for burglary in Omaha, Nebraska,
(06:43):
on November nine, nineteen fifty six, So he's sixteen, and
he is sentenced to serve time in a program for
juvenile offenders in his twenties. After more run ins with
crime over those intervening four years in his twenties, he
relocates to Florida, where he reunites and lives with his mother.
(07:06):
During this time, he works a variety of jobs, including
stints at a cemetery. Also during this time, he doubles
down and quickly establishes his career as a prolific criminal.
And we're we're curating the way that we exhibit the
facts here. We want to build our build our case first.
(07:29):
So what do we know about What do we know
about him from his twenties on? Sure, So after sixteen,
he gets to seventeen, and then really for the next
eighteen or so years, from nineteen fifty seven until nineteen
seventy five, Little would end up getting arrested at least
twenty six times in eleven different states, everywhere from Ohio
(07:51):
and Maryland to Florida, Massachusetts, out to California and Oregon,
then to Philadelphia, New Jersey, Arizona, Illinois, and then Georgia again.
And that's not in the order in which he was arrested.
Those are just imagine traveling to all of those various
places and being arrested. He was on the road frequently.
He was a drifter, a transient. He was also arrested
(08:15):
for a variety of charges. It wasn't always the same thing.
He was arrested for shoplifting, for theft, for assault, for
sexual assault or rape. He was arrested for aggravated assault
on a police officer, d u i's fraud breaking and entering,
solicitation of a sex worker and more. So we're fast
(08:36):
forwarding to December of nineteen seventy six. He is convicted
of assaulting one Pamela case Smith in Sunset Hills, Missouri
with the intent this is the language of the law
here with the attempt to ravish dash rape. And he's
sentenced to three months in county jail. So he was
(08:58):
assaulting this person and he fully intended to sexually assault them.
So that was enough to lock him up for three months.
He gets out, there's something else, wanna we wanna put
imagine this, if this, if this were true detective or
crime show, imagine this is a vignette that occurs just
(09:22):
the left of the main story. So just we're imagining
little he's in trouble with the law. But let's go sideways.
Let's go to October. This is the month where the
skeletal remains of one Melinda Laprix were found in a
cemetery in Gautier, Mississippi. She had last been seen in
(09:43):
Pascagoula about a month earlier, getting into a brown station
wagon with a man that witnesses would later identify as Little.
During the investigation, two sex workers come forward and they
say that, you know, they recognized this guy and that
he also assaulted them in Pascagoula once in nineteen eighty
(10:07):
once in nineteen eighty one. So the next month, the
next month, Little is arrested for shoplifting in Pascagoula, and
police say, you know what, he matches the description of
our unidentified subject in the murder of Melinda Laprex. Yeah,
(10:28):
and he ends up getting charged with this murder of
for this woman, as well as the aggravated assaults on
the other two sex workers. But here's the thing. The
grand jury does not indict him because they doubt the
trustworthiness of the witnesses. Yes, exactly. And you can imagine
(10:53):
what's going into play there with a you know, a
quote jury of his peers, unquote of the grand jury,
like taking the word of a sex worker, which is
a terrible thing that it would be discounted in that way,
but it clearly, it clearly was because these witnesses were
(11:14):
involved in what would be seen as the seed Underbelly
of Pascagoula. It's true. It's true. Um, I understand why
an individual may take the word of someone from the
you know, CD underbelly. Maybe not its face value, but
it is. It's just terrible to read about it, I
(11:35):
guess from this end of history. So anyway, he he
gets extradited outside of the state to Florida, and he's
going to face charges for another murder. And this was
the murder of Patricia and Mount. She was found in
Forest Grove, Florida, in September of nineteen two, and the
(11:57):
authorities believed that, you know, per Halps Little is responsible.
So he gets sent to Florida to at least face
the charges, and he does go to trial. He goes
to trial for the murder of Patricia Anne Mount. He
is acquitted in January of night four. In October of
(12:17):
n four, San Diego police officers find Little with a
woman who has accused him of attacking her, so he
gets arrested. He's charged in that assault and one that
occurred a month or so earlier that was also in
San Diego. He gets tried for attempted murder. In these cases,
(12:42):
the jury deadlocks again, so Instead, he pleads guilty to
assault in false imprisonment. He sentenced to four years. He
serves about two and a half. On February one, seven,
he is on parole. He's back on the streets. He
moves to Los Angeles, US, and then from two thousand
(13:03):
and six he has run ins with the law in
seven different states. So we can just go ahead and
see here a pattern where Little seemed to be skirting
by getting getting out of a lot of the legal
troubles that he was facing, and in several situations where
you know, he's being arrested for a lot of misdemeanors
(13:24):
of smaller things, some felonies. Then he ends up, you know,
getting getting out, you know, not getting indicted for a
lot of these things. Then finally he only goes to
jail for two and a half years, and then, like
like Ben said, he's he's out. He's on the streets
for a long time. And then this begins to come
(13:44):
to a head. In two thousand seven, law enforcement in
Los Angeles arrests Samuel Little for possession of cocaine. He
is sentenced to what is called a drug diversion program
for anyone who is unaware the idea here is that
instead of ending up in the system, one may be
(14:06):
able to get their life back on track right. Maybe
they will be able to Maybe what they need is
support rather than punishment. So they have to, you know, uh,
submit to drug tests, they have to attend counseling things
of that nature. And some of these programs have great success. However,
as soon as he is able to leave, Samuel Little
(14:29):
is on the lamb. He doesn't attend this diversion stuff,
because of course he doesn't. He does not appear in court.
The judge issues a non extraditable warrant. He gets away.
The fact that it is non extraditable will come into
play soon. Yeah, extraditable to California from another state is
what we're talking about there. Um So, then from two
(14:52):
thousand seven to two thousand twelve, a lot of their
multiple law enforcement officers individual rules that let's say, I
don't know what twelve something like that, let's just put
a number to it. Uh, they come into some some
kind of contact with Little. His name continues getting out
there with police departments. His record is growing and growing.
(15:15):
There's a whole filing cabinet at this point of Samuel
Little and somebody or some several of these people discover
that he has this warrant, but because it's non extraditable,
they end up letting him go again, like he's just
kind of somehow just slipping through through people's grasps. Yeah,
(15:37):
we also have to think, if we, you know, exercise
the perspective of some law enforcement communities, we also have
to realize that this guy is nothing but trouble, and
so in many cases they just want to just get
out of here if he's shoplifting, you know what I mean.
In two thousand and twelve, a detective for the l
(15:58):
a p D named Mitzi Proper gets a match on
two cold murder cases from back in nine nine in
Los Angeles, and then she checks this against the statewide
offender database and she receives a match. Is some kind
of DNA sample, right, yes, And this DNA match identifies
(16:20):
the DNA of Samuel Little, linking him to the crimes.
On September five, two thousand twelve, Detective Roberts gets a
call from a sheriff in Louisiana. The deputy say they've
traced an a t M purchase by Samuel Little to
a Mini mart A convenience store in Louisville, Kentucky, And
(16:41):
there they find Samuel Little at a nearby Christian shelter.
He has arrested. He is extradited to California for that
drug charge this time, and then the pieces begin coming together. Yes,
the authorities there are able to at least link him
to three more or different murders that occurred between nineteen
(17:04):
seven and eighty nine over that two year period. There um,
and hear their names, Guadalupe Apodaca, Audrey Nelson, and Carol Alford,
and all of these people and here's that trigger warning
for you had been beaten and strangled in a very
similar fashion. And very soon after that, the police began
(17:26):
to suspect that, you know, Little has been out there
for a long time. This is early in his life.
Maybe he had more blood on his hands than just
these three people, much much more, that's right. They realized
they were looking at a genuine serial killer. Investigations were
resurrected across the country, and law enforcement in multiple states
(17:49):
began to look at other older cold cases. Think about
all the places he's traveled over all of those years,
and all the all the places he's opera rated, Um,
but the authorities even then, they didn't know that they
had just captured and begun unraveling the case of the
most prolific serial killer in u S history. Down the
(18:13):
rabbit hole. After a word from our sponsors, here's where
it gets crazy. Let's start with what we know. During
his initial trial for those first three murders, Samuel Little
(18:34):
staunchly proclaimed his innocence. Even after being convicted. Things don't
change until a while after he's convicted four those three
murders and sentenced to three consecutive life terms without parole.
He eventually begins to confess other crimes. Now it's interesting here,
we're gonna kind of get into it. But he doesn't
(18:57):
want to confess or talk about anything until he knows
he's not getting out of prison. Right when he knows
that there is no no appeal, no mistrial, no legal
loophole through which he can jump, there's a Texas ranger
named James Holland who enters the scene. Holland had started
flying to California in two thousand and eighteen. Just last
(19:20):
year to interview Little in connection to the nineteen murder
of a sex worker in Odessa, Texas. Samuel Little chooses
James Holland to be his confessor to this day, if
you ask Holland, he is not sure why Little chosen.
(19:40):
But if you ask other sources, like Christina Palazzolo from
the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program or v CAP, she will
say that Little was hoping for a transaction. He wanted
to move to a different prison now that he knew
this was his forever. So he agreed to come clean
in exchange for this relocation. Asian, if I confess, you
(20:01):
will move me. That was the devil's bargain that they made,
and confess he did. According to Palazelo quote, over the
course of that interview in May, he went through city
and state and gave Ranger Holland the number of people
he killed in each place. Jackson, Mississippi one, Cincinnati, Ohio one, Phoenix,
(20:23):
Arizona three, Las Vegas, Nevada one, and just it went
on and on and on and in May of eighteen,
Samuel Little confessed to the murder of Denise Christie Brothers
in Odessa. That's who Holland was looking for. Texas Ranger
Holland he pled guilty to the murder of Denise Christie
(20:46):
Brothers on December and boom, he received another life sentence,
so he's up to four. And then on November nine,
he confessed to the nine strangulation murder of Melissa Thomas.
And this goes on and on and on. As you said, Matt,
the Texas District Attorney and the Wise County Sheriff's office
(21:09):
also announced on November that Little had not just confessed
two murders in Texas, he had confessed to dozens of
murders and may have committed more than nine zero across
what they thought then was fourteen states between n and
two thousand five. That is um horrifying to right. And
(21:36):
the scary thing is we don't have to imagine all
in all, at this point, Samuel Little has been linked
to at least ninety three separate homicides. On October of
the FBI announced that Samuel Little is the most prolific
known serial killer in American history, full stop. His methods
(21:59):
world is always the same, strangling, beating, and assaulting vulnerable women,
people who were homeless, people who were working in the
sex industry, runaways, people surviving on the fringe of mainstream society.
And this may be one of the more disturbing aspects
of the case that you can encounter firsthand. Now, should
(22:21):
you choose to, you can go see video footage of
law enforcement interviewing Samuel Little, the FBI interviewing them as
he recounts in a grandfatherly warm tone with surprising clarity,
the appearance of each victim, their location, the names he
associated with them, and so on. He also drew sketches
(22:45):
of these victims based on his recollections. Yeah, that's one
of the most disturbing parts of this whole thing, are
the sketches, because he just apparently can see them in
his mind right, and he doesn't have an artistic inclination. No, no,
what I mean. You can tell it's it's it's childlike,
the way it's strong, you know what I mean. Certain
(23:07):
certain features that he remembers are emphasized. What he would
see a skin tone or hair color or eye color.
While his patterns of murder may not have changed, he
did travel widely, as you said, Matt, and this transient
lifestyle allowed him to live again on the fringes like
his victims. A detective in Mississippi familiar with Little routines
(23:32):
described it thus Lee his whole thing was shoplifting. He
would work at shoplifting in a city for three or
four days and then move on. He would take the
items to drug areas and then sell them. Once he
was done, he would go out early in the morning
hours and look for women. So he had this routine,
and you can see the prioritization of the routine, right.
(23:57):
It's roughly something along the lines of steal to get drugs,
to get drugs, do drugs, and then you're leaving town
satisfy that other compulsion. So how did he get away
(24:18):
for so long? It's the question will address after a
word from our sponsor we've returned. Let's start with why
little thought he would get away, first and foremost, and
(24:38):
we don't want to be to you know, like sixty
minutes TV special about this, But first and foremost, we
have to consider the psychological angle. He's like many other
serial killers. He's a malignant narcissist. So he's both not
very intelligent and extremely arrogant. I think some you know,
(24:59):
malignant nar cissists have no real use in society, but
they have wildly inaccurate beliefs about their own self perceived intelligence.
An art just like a narcissist can never forgive other
people for the great sin of not being them. They're
also incapable of seeing worth, ability or intelligence in other people.
So it's kind of the thing where it's like, I'm
the smartest person in any room, you know what I mean? Sure,
(25:22):
or the most uh, the most valuable. No one will
ever catch me. Yeah you know, I know that feeling.
You know that feel. Oh yeah, I'm giant narcissist. I
would say here the opposite. I'm always the smartest, most
self centered person in every room. That's all I know.
I can't say anything about you guys, especially Paul, but uh,
(25:45):
I'm the best. I think it's pretty great. I think
you're pretty pretty top. There's It's interesting his life experience, though,
kind of kind of speaks to why he would feel
that way. So like even and if he wasn't an
ingrained narcissist, I don't know how the psychology of it functions.
I don't know if he's just one is a narcissist.
(26:08):
But after all of his run ins with police, over
all these years, all the all the things against laws
and against Moray's and all that he'd been doing up
to this point outside of homicide. Um, he'd just gotten
away with it. So I can see why he would
lead go down that path or at least mentally believing
(26:28):
that he's not going to get caught. I see, yeah, yeah,
I can see that too. The second thing is, as
we mentioned, is victim choice. Like other would be predators,
he sought the vulnerable of the week, people who are
already in some form of compromise circumstance, people who, in
a way, we're living halfway off the grid already. And
(26:50):
like other abusers or serial murderers, he was he was
a coward and he was just too pathetic to prey
on anyone else. I mean, there's a common pattern because frankly,
it works. It's time tested, tried and true. If you
want to get away with something, you find the vulnerable
members of a society, and people who knew his victims,
(27:15):
who could have been witnesses, could have corroborated information, maybe
helped organize a search. They would also tend to be
less likely to go to the police. Police would be
less likely to follow up on the assault or death
of someone who had already been in and out of
the system on their own unrelated criminal charges, and even
(27:35):
if those people went to trial, as Samuel Little experienced,
perhaps a jury isn't going to believe them, right, right,
Like I can tell that person is druggie, right, And
so did they remember something or did someone offer them
drugs to say this? You know what I mean? And
(27:57):
still that's also prejudice acide. In many cases, juries might
feel that they are exercising critical thinking by doing that.
You know, don't we all think we're criticizing critical thinking.
We're all to some degree assured that we're the smartest
person in the room. That's that's me, is that you Yeah,
remember I'm I'm the one, So please don't I'm not
(28:20):
being serious at all in anything. So, uh, well, I
think your top notchment. I would vote for you. We
certainly don't and I would not. So there we go.
What's the opposite of a narcissist um human being? Sad guy?
That's me? So so in other cases, the bodies when
(28:46):
they you know, of course there was some sort of investigation,
but bodies could be unidentified. You might not find any
I d. You might not find a record of them
in terms of fingerprints or anything in the system. And
Little tended to stun or knock out his victims before
he strangled them. It was a strangler. And because of this,
(29:08):
there were no stab marks, there were no bullet wounds,
which meant that authorities could misidentify the cause of death.
If you see someone who hasn't been stabbed or shot,
there's no head trauma something like that. Then you you
also see perhaps narcotics of some sort, and you in
their system. You could say with reasonable validity that this
(29:32):
was a drug overdose, and then if you wanted, you
could explain away the bruises by saying life on the
streets is a is an ugly dangerous thing. Yeah, that's
a that's a hard truth there. Just what what hard
narcotics and a difficult life does to the body and
in appearance, um, and how that could be mistaken you're right, well,
(29:54):
And it's also the third thing here that we have
to mention is that many of his attack x and
homicides occurred before really DNA profiling was a thing where
there would be databases across each state, and there would
be a federal database where his if his DNA was
found on one scene, it could just be checked you know, throughout.
(30:17):
So a lot of times evidence wasn't available. They could,
they could provide really a clear link to him. Again,
you've got witnesses maybe that are in the area who
are saying he's somewhere. You think you may have got
a hit somewhere, or you do end up getting a
d N a hit like the previous occurrence that we
talked about at the top of the show, where it
just gets linked to this one thing in this one
(30:38):
case in this one state or maybe even county. Right. Absolutely,
and so again to be clear, we're not saying law
enforcement was doing a bad job. We're saying that these
tools were not available over the course of this long
and bloody career. Another factor, the fourth factor here, is
that little, as we said, shared the fringe the victims.
(31:00):
He was a known transient. He had a rap sheet
that was quickly becoming a novel, and it was for
largely petty crime violent assault aside a lot of his
the bulk of his charges were for things like shoplifting, fraud, theft,
So authorities were often glad to get him booted out
of to get out of here. He's out of here,
(31:21):
instead of digging further into his murky past. And it
is important, it's crucial to remember that he would have
been caught gears or even decades earlier had DNA testing
been available. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And there's another factor here.
We're talking about his transience and um, how he's sharing
(31:42):
the fringe with his victims. Remember that the people living
on fringes in local areas maybe are not so transient. Um,
who aren't just you know, traveling around as much as
little was where the people he's interacting with maybe just
don't know who he is. He's just knew in an area.
And let's say he attacks somebody pretty pretty soon after
(32:04):
arriving in an area and then just disappears to go
somewhere else. Um, every time, it's not just law enforcement
that he is presenting himself a new too, it's everybody
in every place that he's traveling to across the country. Yeah,
and let's consider also, you know, there's there's more than
a little bit of institutionalized racism, whether implicit, explicit, conscious
(32:30):
or subconscious that says, you know, beyond the lookout for
unidentified black mail. Did we mention that he's black at
any time in this episode? But no, I don't think
we did. No, Yeah, I think there's a I mean,
the statistics bear it out that serial killers in general,
(32:52):
and it's not always are a white male. Apprehended serial
killers are white males. Um. Yes, Um, I mean that's
just what we've seen from the statistics after studying it
over all these episodes here and speaking with professionals over
the course of several different podcasts. Um. Yeah, Samuel Little
(33:12):
certainly um stands out because of his the number of
people that he's attacked, because of who he is, and
I mean there's so many things, and because of the demographics. Yeah,
the demographics alone, Yeah, I believe. Um. Another example would
maybe be Lonnie David Franklin, also known as the Grim Sleeper,
(33:35):
but Franklin at this point is known for at least
ten murders. Note, well, yeah, we're like Wayne Williams or
Wayne Williams or the DC Snipers, which they're not serial
killers necessarily, they're killers. Well, and you know, you and
I may have slightly different opinions about the Wayne Williams case.
(33:55):
I don't think we do, um, but if you would
like to, is your opinion that he probably did kill
quite a number of them, But there are several on
the list that he almost certainly did not kill my opinion,
And the legal fact is they was convicted of two
murders that do not fit the demographics of the victims
(34:17):
of the rest of the Atlanta child murders. Okay, sounds good.
I mean that's just the fact, that's what he's convicted of, right,
I mean, yes, that's the truth. But yes, and I
know I'm not here to defend him in any way. No,
I get it. That's what the whole show was about.
So that's the whole point. I think, over time, after
(34:38):
enough interaction, like you know, second hand interaction with him directly.
Um m mmm mm hm. So if you want Douglas,
if you want to learn more about what we're talking about,
check out check out Matt's show that he could not collaboration. Yeah, yeah,
(34:59):
but it's not I show that's Paint Lindsay show much. Okay, Well,
check out the show Matt and Paine did called Atlanta Monster,
and check out the follow up, which is very much
Matt show. Uh. He does a lovely job on called Zodiac. Yeah,
and it's just because we're here and who knows when
this comes out. Okay, the third season will be available
(35:19):
in January. Any spoilers for the audience. We mentioned the
the subject that it's about previous to this moment within
this podcast. There we go. I like that spoiler a lot,
and I gotta say I love a good long form
true crime narrative. I'd love to work on one someday.
(35:40):
I think that if you are I hesitate to say,
a fan of true crime, but if you are interested
in this and you want to hear top notch research
and I'm just a masterfully done show, then check out
the Monster series. The first two seasons are already out.
Belief season two is ongoing to right, Yeah, the Little
(36:03):
Atlanta Monster and the Does Zodiac Killer both have bonus
content at some point coming out, and they always will.
They will have something, oh fantastic. Yes, do check them
out and let us know what you think. You mentioned
something you said a long form true crime, and now
I just want to see long form true crime improv.
I want to see that, like what is that? What
(36:25):
is a long form true crime improv? Comedic improv or
like long long form true improv crime? Oh well, for
people have been in some of my shows, they would
say any improv I do as a crime taste disagree.
While we're patting each other on the back. You're an
excellent improvisers, very kind, see you numerous times. We're we're
(36:49):
we're hoping to allay a little bit of the darkness
here because we're talking about some very uh some some
very troubling things, both with this system in which these
crimes occur and with the individual, and with what this
means for the future. Because the last factor and why
Little would get away for so long, why he thought
(37:11):
he would get away for so long, is simply this.
He seemed absolutely fine with going down for a drug possession, burglary, shoplifting,
d u I rap or something like that. But he
always fought murder charges and for a long time, as
you heard in our our recounting of this chronology, he
came away clean. In the nineteen eighties, as we said,
(37:34):
he was charged with killing women in two different states,
but he escaped indictment in Mississippi, and he escaped conviction
in Florida, And even after being convicted of three murders
in California that was in remember those nineteen eighties cold cases,
he refused to admit to the crimes that dated back
(37:54):
to the nineteen eighties. It was as you said, Matt,
only when he realized this would be his forever that
he decided to make these confessions and theolved right. And
this leads us to something that I like to call
the Lucas problem. So what makes Samuel little different from
(38:16):
these criminals? I mean, there's just come whatever, these people
who say that they have murdered a lot of other
Thinness and people. It's it's no secret that he's not
unique in this kind of confession. There's, of course, the
famous case of Henry Lee Lucas, for whom the Lucas
(38:38):
problem is named. Henry Lee Lucas would go on to
confess to over three murders. He said that he and
his compatriot oddist tool were in the service of something
called the Hand of Death, which we I think did
an episode. Yeah, the four pie idea did have a
little bit more sand to it. Yeah that that not
(39:00):
the same thing. It's yeah, yeah, I still think about
that one. He too. Well, Okay, So here's the Lucas problem.
Simply put, it's this, so, like most serial killers, again,
Lucas is of below average intelligence. He's also easily manipulated
(39:20):
by law enforcement, and he's going to be in jail
like little for the rest of his life. Nothing you
can do, game, set and match. This is this is
maybe not officially true. This is not admitted by a
lot of law enforcement, especially people involved directly with the
Lucas case. But the fact of the matter is that
(39:42):
evidence overwhelmingly suggests unscrupulous law officers used Henry Lee Lucas
to close out cold cases. And you know about this,
We talked about this, well, yeah, I mean that that's
the thing. He could and would straight up confessed to crimes,
even if it's not within the realm of possibility that
he could physically be in the location where a homicide occurred,
(40:07):
Like there's no way he could have been in that scene,
but he would do that in exchange for little things
here and there perks if you will within the prison system.
And so you know, Ali, sure, I'll confess to that
crime if you get me x right right, and you
know they're there are a thousand ways to message that
(40:27):
or speak about it, such that if a tape were
played back, someone in law enforcement could say, well, we
didn't tell him to say it. He wasn't coursed. He
just stated that. You know, like, so, what can you
tell me about you know, I'm just making this up,
but like, what can you tell me about Linda Alvarez
(40:51):
in you know, uh, Cape Canaveral, Florida in insert time here.
Sorry Linda for using your name, but we'll continue. Here's
just there's not a real Lenda. It is not based
on real Linda. Uh. But uh. And while they're saying it,
and maybe they're just recording audio, they slide across a
folder or the jacket with with the facts of the
(41:12):
case in there, and on top of that, there's like
a pack of cigarettes. It's that simple. It is that
simple for that kind of thing to occur. You should
have seen how Ben was slowly pushing this made up
folder towards me as he was explaining it to me
and maintaining eye contact. It was awesome. Well, I hope
that we are never in a situation like that where
(41:34):
we have to bribe or be bribed with cigarettes to
confess the murders we didn't commit. But that is okay.
So that's the Lucas problem. You cannot believe these untrustworthy people,
especially when they are incentivized to lie. But Little's case
is different. Why it really has to do with the
amount of information and detail that he was able to provide,
(41:56):
and he was doing it unprompted by law enforcement. He
was doing doing it for this individual Holland who showed
up at his prison looking for one specific or answers
to one specific case. UM. And just the number of
crime scenes that he can give details about, very specific stuff,
(42:16):
and a lot of this UM, A lot of these
details weren't a part of the public facing investigation right
where UM reporters didn't weren't privy to a lot of
the information that somehow Samuel Little knows. Yeah, and this
is this is a brilliant thing that law enforcement has
learned to do because it gives you a way to
(42:40):
understand the weird thing is that they're there our false
confessions all the time, especially if something reaches public panic level,
like during during the Sun of Sam murders. How many
people wrote in just because they UM mustook their ideas
for clever pranks. They would write in and say, I'm
(43:01):
it's on the Sam killing But they don't know anything
that hasn't been released through the papers yet. It's particularly
difficult when there's a lot of press or or leaks
have occurred exactly exactly, so he passes that test. He
knows stuff that has not been released to the public
or has not at the very least not been widely circulated,
(43:22):
and the information provided has been corroborated in multiple cases. Again,
the thing that this is just maybe one person's opinion,
But the thing that bothers me the most about this
is that you can go on YouTube. You can see
the FBI interviewing Samuel Little, and you can see his warm,
grandfatherly or avuncular I guess depend on how old you
(43:45):
are a his tone as he recalls the specifics of
these murders. He is never going to leave prison, not
while he's alive. He has nothing left to lose, and
likely that media attention is attractive to him, as well
as the opportunity to recount and therefore relive his crime.
(44:07):
There is one issue with Little's recollection. It is his
issue with chronology. As you said, Matt, he is um
incredibly lucid when it comes to remembering details of victims, locations,
you know, their appearances, the order of operations of these
atrocious acts. But he's bad at remembering specific dates. And
(44:33):
to be honest, I don't think that means he's making
it up, and I don't think it means it should
be dismissed. Like most people have a problem with specific dates,
and especially when you're traveling as much or traveled as
much as he has to all these varying places. Add
to that the years of heavy drug use. So this
(44:54):
leads us to some implications that we may have mentioned
at the top of the show. First, there is more
to come. This tale has not concluded. Of the ninety
plus murders Little as confessed to from five, the FBI
currently has solidly connected him to at least fifty that
(45:14):
we know of. That doesn't include murders that he may
not have confessed to yet, nor does it include other
connected murders the FBI may have yet to publicly confirm, right,
and there may be more cases like this on the way.
I don't know if you've heard about this. A crime
scene DNA company just acquired the database that was used
to apprehend the Golden State killer, which means that now
(45:38):
is that wait, are they using the jet match thing?
Is that what it's talking about? I believe so? Yeah,
whoa it is jed match. Oh my gosh. That is
a powerful tool. And now it's going to be used
specifically by this crime scene DNA forensics company or profiling company.
(45:59):
So there may be more on the way. But we're
also in a ticking clock situation because as we record this,
Samuel Little is seventy nine years old. He is in
bad health. He will stay in prison in Texas until
his death. So the goal becomes one of identifying his
victims and providing closure and justice in these unsolved cases
(46:22):
that we're formally going to be relegated to the Cold
Case Files v CAP, which we mentioned earlier. Palazzolo's organization
is hoping this case will serve as a reminder to
every jurisdiction of the importance of consistent crime reporting and
inter departmental interagency communication. Absolutely. So, um gosh, So what
(46:47):
what can we do? What can you do? Well, if
you have any information linking little to a place or time,
especially if it in corroboration in some way with the
confessions that he's made, you can actually you can call
the FBI. I know that sounds a little scary, maybe
(47:11):
just the concept of calling the FBI, but I assure
you you can do it. You can give your information. Uh,
this is the number here. It is one eight hundred
c a l L FBI or call FBI. You can also,
if you don't want to use the phone, submit a
tip online at their website tips dot FBI dot gov.
(47:35):
This has one last implication that we want to leave
everyone with, and it is not a happy implication, nor
should it be coupled with the recently apprehended Golden State
killer Joseph James D'Angelo Jr. Well, he hasn't been convicted,
but his DNA has been linked. Yeah, it's solid. Yeah,
(47:57):
and we're not in a court of law, so I'm
just gonna say he did it, he murdered those people.
But coupled with that, this apprehension, this understanding of Samuel Little,
raises the chilling possibility, I would argue, just my opinion plausibility,
that there are more criminals like this out there, people
(48:20):
who are maybe caught for unrelated crimes, people who retired
from their their bloody careers before they were caught, and
much more so, we have to ask ourselves who else
is out there? Still. It's a question that brings a
silence inside me, as as strange as that sounds, because
(48:42):
I'm not now I'm not trying to be alarmist and
say that there's fifteen people out there well to the FBI.
But but it's completely possible, um, that it's completely plausible
that there are a handful of people who read the
news about monsters like Samuel Little or the Golden State
(49:06):
killer and said who close call? Yikes, And we want
to know what you think. Are there more cases like
this on the way? Is Samuel Little someone who is
going to be in ten twenty years just recognized as
the second most prolific? Who will they catch next? Let
(49:30):
us know. You can find us on Facebook. You can
find us on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter.
We especially like to recommend our Facebook community page. Here's
where it gets crazy. To continue this conversation. Absolutely, go
hang out with your fellow listeners with all of us
over there, um, just chewing the fat on every one
of these episodes that we put out. If you want
(49:51):
to call us and give us some specific information, we
have a number. It's pretty easy. You can leave a message.
The number is one eight three three S T D
W y t K. Did you mention Instagram? I don't
think you did. We are conspiracy stuff show. I said
we were on Instagram, but I tell people you gotta
(50:12):
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is it followers on Instagram? Sure? Yeah, fans, people who
hang out, friends, compatriots. We want to have the most
friends on Twitter. Co conspirators, co conspirators. There we go.
I don't know anything. And if none of that quite
bags your badgers. If our various unfortunately accurate episodes on
(50:38):
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(51:11):
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