Samuel Little - The Choke And Stroke Killer - Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
For more than four decades, a string of murders of
vulnerable women across the United States when unsolved and for
the most part, unnoticed too. Police in different states investigated
these deaths in isolation, never realizing they were chasing a single,
elusive killer. It wasn't until twenty twelve that a cold

(00:28):
case DNA match finally put a name to the phantom responsible.
The man would eventually confess to murdering a total of
ninety three women between nineteen seventy and two thousand and five,
making him the most prolific serial killer in the United
States history by confirmed victim count. This is the true

(00:53):
story of Samuel Little. My name's Ben, I'm.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked and Grim, a true
crime podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
The following.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Material in more material audience listener discretion. Well, I didn't

(01:35):
get the memo to do it earlier here, Well, I.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
You weren't supposed to. I did mine, then you did yours.
It's separated a little bit, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Happy American Thanksgiving?

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah, Happy Thanksgiving for everyone down south. We got a all.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Our friends, which is the majority of you.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Really Well, I was going to say, we've got an
interesting case to celebrate the occasion. Yeah, the most prolific
us serial killer for your Thanksgiving.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
I guess, well Thanksgiving was yesterday. Today's Black Friday. So
I think it's okay. I think we're all right.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
I hope everyone's getting some good deals today.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Black Friday has changed a lot in the recent years.
Have you noticed that with online shopping and everything and
consumerism changing.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
There's not like stampedes for things anymore.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
No, my email inbox is just lit to be honest,
but it's honestly been that way for at least a week.
So it starts quite a bit earlier. And while we're
in Canada and we still pretty much celebrate Black Friday,
I guess just for the Black Friday part of it.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Well know, it's more of a corporate thing, you know,
trying to get the sales, the consumerism, all that sort
of stuff. So it's spread beyond the United States, to
say the least. And regardless, I hope you're getting some
good deals, but be wary because of course companies are like,
oh my gosh, this item is only two hundred dollars
right now, regular five hundred. Yeah, they just tack that

(02:56):
five hundred on to make it look like they can. Yeah,
it's always been two hundred dollars. So be warry, be smart,
and get the good deals, the good deals, not the
fake one.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
My best deals were Lululemon. I got some smoke and deals.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Well I'm glad.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
I think you thought I was in there working and
you came to see what I was doing and I
was like just shopping.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, that was an interesting little endeavor. But hey, you
got deals. That's what matters, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Well I needed it anyway, so it.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Was perfect touche. All right, Well, I think we should
get on with the show instead of talking about our
shopping habits and everything. Yes, this is quite the.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Case, it sounds. So.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
I really like to focus on victims when I talk
about cases. Unfortunately, with a case this massive, it's pretty
much impossible to focus solely on the victims. So this
is unfortunately focused more on the killer in this one,
So heads up on that. But I do talk about
the victims as much as I can.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Well, yeah, that's fair enough.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Okay, So with that, let's get going. Samuel Little was
born on June seventh, nineteen forty, in Reynolds, Georgia. He
was also known by his last name Samuel McDowell, which
was his father's surname. Now, Samuel's childhood was troubled. He
later claimed that his mother was a sex worker, but
the nineteen forty census listed her occupation as a maid,

(04:17):
so it's hard to really say for sure. She could
have definitely been doing it on the side right now.
As an infant, he was abandoned by his mother and
was raised by his grandmother in Lorain, Ohio. By his
teenage years, Samuel had started down a delinquent path, and
he was soon sent to a reform school, the Boys
Industrial School in Ohio. It was in nineteen fifty four,

(04:39):
and he was sent there for stealing a bicycle. There,
he also racked up a dozen or so of disciplinary infractions. Then,
in nineteen fifty six, at the age of sixteen, he
was arrested for breaking and entering and ended up at
a youth authority facility for burglary. Samuel's early adulthood was
marked by frequent run ins with the law across multiple states.

(05:02):
In fact, he drifted around the country doing odd jobs,
at one point working as a cemetery caretaker and even
as an ambulance attendant. But he mainly supported himself through
his criminal endeavors. By nineteen seventy five, at the age
of thirty five, he'd been arrested a total of twenty
six times in eleven separate states, for charges ranging from

(05:24):
theft to fraud, to assault and even attempted rape. Needless
to say, he was a repeat offender. I was gonna
say repeated offender, but I mean either way.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, that's quite a rap sheet there, definitely for a
pretty young age, oh for sure.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Now, during one of his prison terms, he had a
stint as a boxer, which honed a lot of powerful
punches and techniques that he would eventually use on his victims.
But despite this extensive criminal record, Samuel managed to avoid
long term incarceration for decades. In fact, throughout his life
he would be arrested over one hundred times, yet in total,

(06:04):
spent less than ten years in jail before his final capture.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
That's such bullshit. How often do we hear that? Hey?

Speaker 1 (06:12):
All too often?

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Unfortunately, I just can't understand that.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Now, authorities often treated his offenses as transient troubles. He'd
serve short stints or skirt serious punishment, then move along
to a new city. To go through it all again.
This pattern of brief arrests and release, well, it allowed
him to remain free and dangerous for an alarmingly long time.
Right from the beginning, though, there were signs of the

(06:38):
violent impulses that would later define Samuel's crimes. He would
later confess that he had sexual fantasies about strangling women,
starting all the way back to his childhood, an obsession
that would grow as he got older. In nineteen sixty six,
he was arrested in Cleveland for assaulting woman, hinting at
his tendencies for violence against women even in his twenties. Now,

(07:01):
Samuel himself described outright experiencing quote strong desires to choke women,
and that it was a compulsion that he couldn't exactly control. Now,
these dark fantasies, they went unchecked, and eventually they turned
into real acts of violence as he moved from you know,
the petty crimes into more serial ones, being more murder.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
What the fuck? We just have these people running around
that are just envisioning strangling women. We do, okay, Well,
that makes us, That makes me feel great.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Now. Samuel's first known murder took place at the dawn
of the nineteen seventies. On New Year's Eve nineteen seventy,
in the Miami area of Florida, he met a thirty
three year old woman named Mary Brosly at a bar. Now.
Mary was a mother of two from Massachusetts who had
fallen on hard times and became a strange from her family.

(07:54):
Samuel was drawn to her petite, vulnerable appearance. She was
very small, in fact, kind of frail, where she was
weighing barely eighty pounds in total at the time. She's
very small, and perhaps he was also drawn to the
fact that she was living on society's margins, you know,
potentially unlike to be missed quickly, especially as if she disappeared.

(08:15):
So after some time talking at the bar, he offered
her a ride and she went along with them, probably
expecting nothing more than a short drive or maybe an
intimate encounter with someone she just met at a bar.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Instead, however, Samuel drove her to a secluded area near
the Everglades. There his long harbored fantasy of strangulation. While
it became a reality once they were alone in that
remote stretch near the Everglades, he attacked. He easily overpowered
her as his hands tightened around her neck and began
squeezing until she stopped breathing and stopped moving. Now, after

(08:52):
the killing, he dragged her body from the vehicle to
a secluded patch of the woods and left her in
a shallow grave concealed by branches and brush. There was
no rush or panic, just cold calculation. Then he got
back in his vehicle and drove away as if nothing
had happened.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Oh that's brutal.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
Now. Mary Brosely's remains were found on January twenty fourth,
nineteen seventy one, in the wooded area near Miami, but
at the time she was not identified and her murder
received very little attention. In fact, she remained a Jane
Doe for decades. It wasn't until twenty seventeen that advances
in forensic testings finally identified those nineteen seventy one skeletal

(09:33):
remains that were Mary Broseley.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
That is so sad hey exactly.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Now. By then, Samuel was in custody, and in twenty
eighteen he would formally confess to killing her. Now authorities
now recognize Mary as Samuel's first murder victim, But back
in nineteen seventy one, However, there was no suspect and
no connection made to a larger pattern. Her death, like
so many of Samuel's early victim slipped through the cracks.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
Well, and that was his intention, right as you mentioned
exactly now.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
After her murder, Samuel Little continued to roam the country
throughout the nineteen seventies, leaving a trail of victims in
his wake. Many of these crimes remain only partially documented
because Samuel prayed on women who lived on the fringes,
you know, sex workers, runaways, or women struggling with addiction,
and in some cases, their deaths were not initially even

(10:26):
recorded as homicides at all. Samuel later claimed that during
the nineteen seventies he even quote lost count of how
many people he had killed. He specifically confessed to multiple
murders in Florida and the Midwest during this period, Though
many of the victim's names remain unknown, what is clear
is that Samuel deliberately targeted those he believed the police

(10:48):
and society were less likely to care about, something we
see all too often when it comes to monsters like this.
As one FBI analysis put it, Samuel thought uote no
one was accounting for his victims end quote, which for
many years he was sadly true. He chose women who

(11:09):
might not have strong family support or media attention, so
their disappearances, you know, they attracted very little scrutiny. And
this strategy would ultimately let him operate in the shadows
for an extremely long time. His EMMO was already established
in this area. He's a former boxer who would often
knock out his victims with a punch, stun or incapacitate them,

(11:32):
and then strangle them to death with his large, powerful hands.
He usually did not use weapons or leave obvious injuries
like stab wounds or gunshot wounds. Now, this lack of
visible trauma it meant that some of his victims' deaths
were in fact even misclassified by authorities potential drug overdoses, accidents,
or even natural causes. In some cases, the women's bodies

(11:56):
were not even immediately found or ever found at all.
All of these factors, the profile, the method of killing,
the transient lifestyle, the mislabeling of deaths, it made it
extraordinarily difficult for law enforcement to detect a serial killer
at work, and with that, he simply kept under the
radar in the nineteen seventies and honestly even today, which

(12:20):
is sad to think about, some police departments might chalk
up a lone woman's death to an unfortunate circumstance and
never realized that a roaming killer could potentially be responsible.
One early example of how Samuel slipped through the system
can be seen in a nineteen seventy seven case in Miami, Florida.
In that year, Samuel picked up a seventeen year old

(12:42):
runaway girl named Dorothy Gibson near Miami bus Station. He
later confessed that after agreeing to some sex, he attacked
and strangled Dorothy, dumping her body in bushes behind a motel.
At the time, however, police did not link the crime
to Samuel. In fact, they pursued a different suspect, a
mentally impaired man named Jerry Frank Townsend, who ended up

(13:06):
falsely confessing to Dorothy's murder among others under police pressure.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Oh man, Okay, so he's all like, let alone, going
about killing all these people, but he's also putting other people,
making other people seem responsible for their his crimes. Well,
not him, but that you know, it's getting mixed up.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, he's not out there framing people. I do want
to clarify it. Yeah, but other people are being pinned
on these murders.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yes, and they're just completely innocent. Oh my goodness.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
So Jerry he was convicted and spent twenty two years
in prisons for crimes he did not commit, including the murder,
the murder of Dorothy Gibson. Now decades later, Jerry was
thankfully exonerated and the case was reopened.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
But still twenty two years, that is so long, and
it would probably been like his prime year. Yeah, exactly,
middle aged kind of thing, right, like free.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
So with Samuel's later confessions in twenty eighteen, it it
did become evident that Dorothy Gibson was actually a victim
of Samuel. So it also it helped clear Jerry's name
in that aspect too. Not only was he exonerated, but people,
you know, still had speculation. So he's exonerated, he's out there,
and then finally the reveal of here's the real killer.

(14:25):
It helped finally clear that slate.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
But still I don't know, I don't even know. I
would be so bitter. I don't even know how it
could go on. That'd be to my life.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, it'd be really tough now. This tragic miscarriage of
justice shows how in the nineteen seventies, even when authorities
tried to solve a murder well in Samuel's wake, they
caught the wrong person, allowing a true killer to remain free.
And throughout the nineteen seventies, Samuel continued to evade serious consequences.
In September of nineteen seventy six, he was arrested, though

(14:57):
it was in Missouri for assaulting woman who survived a
brutal attack at his hands. He had choked her with
an electrical cord and raped her. Yet he served only
three months in prison for this violent crime. Incidents like
this reinforced Samuel's confidence massively. The fact that he could

(15:19):
do this, get caught, then get away with it was huge.
He must have felt like he could get away with
almost anything at that point. By the early nineteen eighty
Samuel Little had been killing for over a decade already,
yet he was still not even on law enforcement's radar
as a serial killer. However, this period did bring some

(15:39):
close calls with the law that could have ended his
deadly spree much sooner, if only they'd gone differently. In fact.
In nineteen eighty two, Samuel found himself facing murder charges
for the very first time, but he managed to slip
away due to a lack of evidence and a shaky
witness testimony. It was in November of nineteen eighty two

(16:03):
Samuel was arrested for shoplifting in Pascagoula, Mississippi, But this
routine arrest took an unexpected turn when local authorities realized
he matched the description of a suspect in an unsolved homicide.
The case was the recent murder of twenty two year
old Melinda Rose Laprie, a young woman who'd gone missing

(16:23):
in Pascagola in September of nineteen eighty two. So, with
Samuel now in custody, police in Mississippi decided to charge
him with Laprie's murder. It was a significant development, a
potential break in a murder case, and possibly the first
time Samuel was formally accused of one of his killings. However,

(16:45):
the evidence they had didn't hold up, and by nineteen
eighty three, a grand jury in Mississippi declined to indict
Samuel Little from Melinda Laprize's murder, citing lack of concrete
evidence tying him to the crime. The case then went
cold yet again. Now years later, though after Samuel's confessions,
Mississippi investigators did reopen the case, confirming that Samuel had

(17:10):
indeed killed her. But in nineteen eighty two and eighty three,
the conclusion was different.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
How do people like this? They some of them, they
just seem like they get so lucky and they don't
deserve that.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Even in the least, there seems to be a lot
of luck on his side. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
I don't know. It just makes you feel like, what
the hell is karmauff? You know these people are getting
luck like this?

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Well, just u eight because this story is just starting
to unfold now. After this trial, although Mississippi had released Samuel,
they did not set him free outright because while he
was still a suspect in Laprize's murder, authorities discovered that
Samuel was wanted in Florida for other charges relating to
another woman's death. So once this trial ended and he

(17:57):
was found not guilty because of lack of evidence, he
was then extradited to Florida to stand trial for the
murder of twenty six year old Patricia Ann Mount. Now,
Patricia had been seen in Samuel's company on the night
she disappeared in nineteen eighty two, and her beaten, partially
nude body was found in a field in Alchuca County, Florida.

(18:18):
It was in September of that year when she was found,
and at trial, several prosecution witnesses testified they saw Samuel
with Patricia on the evening before she was killed, and
for a moment, it seemed like Samuel might finally be
held accountable for murder. However, the Florida case against Samuel

(18:39):
crumbled as well. In January of nineteen eighty four, after
a short trial, a jury acquitted Samuel Little of Patricia
Mount's murder. Jurors later said they distrusted the witness's credibility,
and there was no physical evidence like DNA available in
nineteen eighty four, and the case wasn't strong enough to convict,

(19:01):
so the verdict came swiftly. Reportedly, after less than thirty
minutes of deliberation, the jury found that he was not
guilty on all charges.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Really, yeah, dang.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
So Samuel Little walked out of that Florida courtroom a
free man. For him, it was another lucky break, but
for law enforcement it was a huge missed opportunity. If
he had been convicted in nineteen eighty four, dozens of
subsequent murders might have been prevented. Instead, Samuel took the

(19:39):
acquittal as affirmation that he could continue his violent ways
without getting caught.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Well, yeah, he could literally just get away with anything
at this point.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
Well, you know, convincible, as the saying goes can get
away with murder. Yeah, literally, this is how it's applying.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Oh, it makes me angry that they would have had
that little evidence, I guess for the jury to only
have deliberate, deliberate thirty minutes.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, it speaks volumes on what sort of evidence they
had at the trial.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Not enough.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah, so it makes sense that, of course he's going
to walk free. Dang now. In later interviews, investigators reflected
on those early nineteen eighties close calls with a lot
of frustration. Samuel had literally been in their grasps, arrested
for murder even but he managed to wriggle free due
to insufficient evidence. And these failures to convict him meant

(20:32):
Samuel was free to keep killing, and that's exactly what
he did. Immediately after beating the Florida murder charge. In
nineteen eighty four, Samuel Little left the South and moved
out to the west coast of California, likely trial, trying
to get out from under the eye of the law.
He drifted onto San Diego in that area, and it
didn't take him long to reoffend. In October of nineteen

(20:55):
eighty four, Samuel was arrested in San Diego after he kidnapped,
beat and strangled a twenty two year old woman named
Laurie Barros, who miraculously survived the attack. Now, just one
month after that incident, in November of nineteen eighty four,
San Diego police found Samuel in the back seat of
his car with an unconscious, badly beaten woman who had

(21:16):
also been strangled and left for dead. This victim miraculously
survived as well, albeit barely.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Why was he even had the opportunity to get her, Hey,
exactly a month prior he had done something similar. Yeah,
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
So these back to back assaults led to some serious charges,
including attempted murder, and Samuel was put on trial in California,
and one might think that his luck had finally run
out at this point, Yet once again fortune favored him
for some reason, and the jury in San Diego, well,
they deadlocked and could not unanimously convict him on the

(21:53):
most serious charges, and rather than retry the case, prosecutors
allowed Samuel to strike a plea deal, so he pled
guilty to lesser charges of assault and false imprisonment with
these two attacks. Now, this time, at the very least,
there was some consequences, even if far too light. Samuel

(22:15):
Little was sentenced to four years in prison for the
San Diego assaults. However, even that consequence was still quite
watered down by the system, as he ended up serving
only about two and a half years behind bars. In
February of nineteen eighty seven, he was released on parole
and immediately left San Diego, heading north up to the

(22:37):
Los Angeles area. Samuel had literally gotten away with murder
up to this point, and even when caught for lesser
violent crimes, he paid the bare minimal price for it.
By now, he was in his late forties and far
from being reformed by prison, he was eager to continue
indulging in his violent desires. Unfortunately, his time in California

(22:59):
was about to become the most deadly chapter of it all. Now,
after his release, Samuel Little settled into la and almost
immediately while he resumed killing. Los Angeles in the late
nineteen eighties was a city grappling with crime, drug epidemics,
and a large population of transient or vulnerable individuals. In

(23:21):
other words, the very kind of environment in which Samuel
Little preferred because he could operate without drawing much attention.
In fact, he later claimed that in nineteen eighty seven alone,
he killed seven women in Los Angeles, seven in nineteen
eighty seven.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
And one year in one year span.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
Now, police at the time did not realize these were
connected murders, or even all murders at all. One of
Samuel's known Los Angeles victims that he would eventually be
tied to was Carol Alford, a forty one year old
woman who he killed in the summer of nineteen eighty seven.
On July thirteenth of that year, Carol all Fiford's body

(24:00):
was discovered in an alley in south central LA She'd
been strangled and left partially nude. Her killing bore the
hallmarks of Samuel's method, though, of course, at the time
her murderer was unknown. Right but later that year, in
October of nineteen eighty seven. Well, Samuel he killed several
other women in LA whose identities remain uncertain. They are

(24:23):
simply left among the Jane Doe cold cases that remain
open today's.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
It seems like he's just not even trying to hide
this stuff either. No, it's just leaving the body like
in the alley and stuff. It's so yeah. I mean
we've already talked about it. He is just invincible.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
So that's how he feels. And honestly, at this time
of you know, society, they don't have DNA, they don't
have the forensics we have today. They couldn't tie the
murders to him, So why hide it?

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Well, yeah, it was way easier to get away with
stuff like this.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
It was so, hey, there we go, just leave the
body there, continue to get away with it. That was
his mindset. Now. Moving into the late nineteen eighties, Samuel
continued stalking women in the seedier neighborhoods of LA. It
was in August of that year he murdered Audrey Nelson Everett,
a thirty five year old woman, and he dumped her
body in a dumpster behind a Hollywood restaurant, as if

(25:18):
she was nothing more than trash to him. A month later,
in September of nineteen eighty nine, he killed Guadalupe Darda Apodaca,
forty six and left her body inside an abandoned commercial
garage in Los Angeles. Both women had been beaten and strangled.
The corner's report noted Audrey Nelson had been severely hit

(25:39):
and ahead in addition to being choked. At the time,
these two murders in nineteen eighty nine were investigated by
the LAPD. Like any other standalone homicide, detectives had no
leads to Samuel, who had no obvious connection to the
victims aside from encountering them randomly on the street. So
with no physical evidence or very little of the cases

(26:01):
while they just simply went cold. Samuel did not restrict
himself to California, though. While Los Angeles was a base
for him in nineteen eighty seven through the early years
of nineteen nineties, he still traveled frequently and claimed victims
elsewhere too. By his own later accounts, the nineteen nineties
were an extremely active period for his killing spree. He

(26:24):
told the FBI that he murdered quote numerous women throughout
the decade, not only in la but also across the
American South and Midwest as well. It is impossible to
detail every single one of the ninety plus murders that
he claims, but a very few examples while they illustrate
his broad geographic range during these years. In eighty seven

(26:49):
to nineteen eighty eight, along with the La killings, Samuel
reported killing women in places like Cleveland, Ohio, New Orleans, Louisiana,
all while doing cross country drives. For example, in nineteen
seventy nine, he murdered a twenty three year old woman
named Brenda Alexander in Phoenix City, Alabama, dumping her body
in a rural area. In nineteen eighty two, he strangled

(27:12):
an eighteen year old named Forredonia Smith in Mark and Georgia.
He targeted a fifty five year old woman, Dorothy Richards
in Huma, Louisiana, in nineteen eighty two, and a forty
year old woman, Daisy Maguire in the mid nineteen nineties
in the same town. These are just a handful of
instances of violent crimes that he committed from a very

(27:32):
long list of confessions that he would eventually come out with.
In each case, the story was similar. A vulnerable woman
alone approached by Samuel, often offering a ride or some help,
then beaten, strangled and left in a secluded spot. The
local authorities would find a body with little to no
evidence pointing to a killer and with no DNA database

(27:55):
because the time it was, with that era, in everything,
there was no connection between jurisdictions. The case is froze.
Samuel Little simply moved on to rinse and repeat the cycle.
Even when Samuel did come under suspicion for an assault
in other crimes during these years, he managed to avoid
major consequences. For example, in nineteen ninety one, back in

(28:19):
his home state of Ohio, Samuel was arrested for stealing
a carton of cigarettes in Lorraine and then assaulting women
with this vehicle as he tried to flee the scene
almos he's stealing, gets caught and then tries to drive
away and hits people with it.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
He literally just does not give any.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
Shits, No, not a single fuck given by this guy.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
And I just had, like, the only thing going through
my mind right now is he's taking victims who are
as young as eighteen, and this fucker is probably living
until he's at least like I'm not sure about eighty
or something, which, how the hell is that fair?

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Well, I'm not sure the age of his youngest victim,
but we have talked about one being seventeen already even.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yet, Yeah, so what the actual shit? Hey?

Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yeah, Now, this incident of this kind of hit and
run situation from robbing cigarettes, it resulted in charges of
aggravated robbery, and it took years for that case to resolve.
He wasn't convicted until nineteen ninety eight, in fact, when
he finally pled guilty and served about two years in prison. Now,
those two years nineteen ninety eight nineteen ninety nine ish

(29:26):
kind of behind bars for the relatively minor offense, I mean,
speaking comparatively to what he would actually do, they appeared
to be the longest continuous prison time Samuel served since
that nineteen eighties incident, despite murdering several women in the meantime.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Well, and that would have saved how many lives to
him being away for just two years?

Speaker 1 (29:47):
Right, So, now, once he was released around the year
two thousand, he was back in the streets and according
to his later confessions, right back to murder.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
And he would have been like quite old, well not okay,
like or something at that point. So that's wild.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah, he was now into his sixties by early two.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Thousand and he's still just going at it. He is
holy shit.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yep, age did not it didn't stop him. Now he
has confessed to a number of murders in the early
two thousands. In total. Samuel claims his final victim was
killed in two thousand and five. That victim is believed
by investigators to have been Nancy Carol Stevens, a forty
six year old woman from Tepelo, Mississippi, whose body was

(30:29):
found near road in August of two thousand and five.
Samuel Little described strangling a woman named Nancy in Tapello
in two thousand and five, and all the details matched
the findings in the unsolved murder of Nancy Stevens. So,
if this timeline is accurate, Samuel Little's killing spree spanned
a ridiculous thirty five years from nineteen seventy to two

(30:54):
thousand and five.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Oh, that just hurts my head because that that is
just that seems like that should be fucking impossible, But
it wasn't.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
That's the thing. That's the scary part. He was never
conclusively identified or stopped. The entire time, no one even
pinned him down as a serial killer. The entire time,
no one even noticed that he would that there was
a serial killer on the fucking loose.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah, it's mind blowing that he could have gotten away
with this. But then there was times where like he
literally raped someone and was in jail for three months.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
So there is a lot in here too where I think,
you know, he is very much just slipping through the
cracks when he should not have.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Oh thoroughly, yes, you're right. Yeah, No, there's like he
raped and attempted to kill that person.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
And three months. Yeah, I don't get how that works.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
I don't either. Now. In two thousand and seven, Samuel,
now in his late sixties, had another encounter with law
enforcement in Los Angeles, of course, this time for a
relatively minor offense. He was arrested on a charge of
possession of cocaine. He actually pled guilty and was ordered
to attend a drug rehabilitation program as part of his sentence,

(32:07):
but in classic Samuel fashion, he did not stick around
for the rehab. He decided to head to a different state,
so he skipped out on the program and caused the
court to issue a bench warrant for his arrest when
he failed to appear. Now after that, Samuel essentially fled
California and went into wherever the wind took him, staying

(32:28):
one step ahead of the warrant. For several years, he
lived a transient life, reportedly spending time in places like
Kentucky or Nevada. He probably thought he would once again
get away with it all, just a minor drug case
to dodge, you know, nothing more. He's done much worse.
But what he could not have known was that this
skipped rehab stint would indirectly be his entire downfall.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Okay, I was wondering how he was going to get caught,
and this seriously the way he gets that is, I mean,
it's good, but it's also like really yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
So by twenty twelve, Samuel Little was now seventy two
years old. He had slown down physically and was living
a quiet, obscure life at a homeless shelter in Louisville, Kentucky.
He probably assumed that whatever crimes he had committed were
in his past and that he would live out the
remaining years, you know, just as.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
Is doing cocaine and whatever the hell he wants.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
Doing whatever he's doing, but across the country in LA,
cold case detectives and forensic analysis were breathing new life
into old unsolved murders. Decades old evidence was being tested
with modern DNA technology, and investigators were punching that genetic
data all into the FBI's national database. In Samuel's case,

(33:48):
this new wave of forensic science was about to finally
catch up with him because culminating with Hey that bench warrant,
it was a combination to bring him all down. On
Septem number fifth, twenty twelve, Samuel Little was arrested at
a homeless shelter in Louisville. The arrest was initially fairly routine.
It was executed by authorities because of that outstanding narcotics

(34:11):
warrant from LA about five years ago. Samuel was then
extradited from Kentucky back to California to face that charge,
which by itself was nothing major. However, once he was
in custody in LA, the LAPD took a sample of
his DNA and ran it through the system to see
if it matched any crime scene evidence, just to see. Yeah. Now,

(34:33):
this was standard procedure at the time for many felony
arrests by twenty twelve, right, and in Samuel's case, it
yielded some extraordinary results. So if he had gone through
that process and gone through his sentencing of attending the
drug rehab like he was supposed to, his DNA would
never have been collected, and it would never have tied

(34:56):
him to three unsolved murders in LA like the DNA
matched in the system.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
That's crazy now.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
Specifically, the genetic profile from Samuel connected him to the
killings of Carol Alford killed in July of nineteen eighty seven,
Audrey Nelson killed in August of nineteen eighty nine, and
Guadalupe Appadoca killed in September of nineteen eighty nine. All
three women have been strangled and left for dead on

(35:26):
the streets of LA Their cases had since long gone cold.
If he never ran out on that sentencing, this would
never have been connected.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
From all the shit that he's done. Missing a rehab
stint is what gets him caught, really correct, I mean,
as long as well as leaving DNA at these scenes
and stuff and not knowing that that would later catch
up with him.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
But well, that's the thing though, if he would never
if he did that, stint of going to rehab and
then he just went on to live his transient life.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, they wouldn't have collected it.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
Yeah, I wouldn't have collected his DNA. They would have
had DNA to tie all these crimes together, but they
would never have DNA to say who's the perpetrator. So
once they arrested him, they now had his DNA to
compare to the database to say, oh shit, you're that guy.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Okay, I'm surprised there was just three. I was like,
they're gonna put his DNA in there and that shit's
going to light up and there's going to be like
all of these freaking cases.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
Well they had three, that's a start for sure.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, well that's enough really to you know, put someone away.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Right, So with one little DNA sample, they now had
a single suspect time these three together. That's huge and
it was a stunning breakthrough. For over two decades after
the crimes occurred, right like they occurred quite a while ago,
and just like that, you have someone for three crimes,
and it seemed like Samuel's crimes finally have caught up
with them, and in fact they did. The LA Police

(36:51):
Department now realized they had in custody this individual responsible
for them, and they quickly moved to charge Samuel with
those three murders. In January of twenty thirteen, the LA
County District Attorney's office formally indicted Samuel Little on three
counts of murder with special circumstances for multiple homicide based

(37:11):
on the DNA links to the three women. Now, the
case was extremely strong. DNA evidence is a very powerful tool.
Even though these samples were decades old. It placed Samuel
at the scene of each one of the killings. As
the news broke, it raised an alarming question, could this

(37:33):
seventy two year old man have more victims? The LAPD
and other agencies began digging deeper into Samuel's past, and
they soon found plenty to be concerned about. During twenty thirteen,
while Samuel Little awaited trial in La, police departments around
the country started re examining cold cases that fit his profile.

(37:56):
The FBI's Violent Crime Apprehension Program Well it got involved
to assist the LPD. Now that Apprehension program, I'll be
referring to it as vi CAP from here on out.
So vi CAP analysis compiled Samuel's criminal history and looked
for patterns or unsolved cases that matched his movements and

(38:17):
his methods. Almost immediately, they found an alarming pattern unsolved
homicides of women in multiple states and decades that featured
similar circumstances, you know, victims, strangled bodies, dump, that sort
of thing, all lining up with places Samuel Little had been.

(38:38):
One of the first clearest connections outside California was in Texas.
VI cap analysis. Christina Paloso spotted a case from Odessa, Texas,
the nineteen ninety four murder of Denise Christie Brothers. It
sounded like it could be the work of Samuel, and
they confirmed that he had indeed passed through the area

(38:59):
at that time. So VISCAPT passed that lead to the
Texas Rangers, who were eager to solve the long cold
murder of Denise Brothers. This cooperation marked the beginning of
a multi agency effort to piece together Samuel Little's grim
tapestry of crimes. As one of FBI crime analysis later
noted informing sharing was crucial because once agencies pooled their data,

(39:24):
patterns emerged, patterns that any one jurisdiction alone might miss.
In this case, though the pattern was a coast took
Coast trail of violence. Meanwhile, in LA, detectives also uncovered
Samuel's earlier brushes with homicide investigations. They learned about the

(39:46):
nineteen eighty two Melinda La Prie case in Mississippi and
the nineteen eighty four Patricia Mount acquittal in Florida. It
became increasingly clear that they were dealing with a serial
killer who managed to invade justice for a very long time.
Samuel Little's trial for the three La murders began in
September of twenty fourteen. By this time, he was seventy

(40:10):
four years old, appearing in court as a grizzled old man,
a far cry from the young drifter in mugshot pasts. However,
the prosecution had no intention of letting the jurors be
fooled by his elderly, grandfatherly appearance. They laid out the
evidence of his brutal crimes in all the detail. The cornerstone,

(40:32):
of course, was the DNA evidence. Forensic experts testified that
that DNA collected from the victims, for example, seamen and
skin cells under victim's fingernails or their clothes, while it
definitively matched Samuel Little, prosecutors also took an extra step
to bolster their case. They brought in witnesses who were

(40:52):
survivors of Samuel's previous attacks. These women had survived harrowing
encounters with this man before, and they could testify just
exactly how violent his methods could be. Their stories of
being beaten, choked, and left for dead, while it provided
an extremely powerful corroboration of his past behaviors. Essentially, even

(41:15):
though the trial was formally about three murders, the jury
heard a broader narrative of a predatory man with a
long history of attacking women.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Okay, good, that's so good because the way you described that,
like this elderly man sitting there, he probably looks so
just pure and innocent at that point, right, yeah, mostly,
so it's like you'd almost have to do more work
to show just what kind of a monster he is.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Well, I do want to say though, like, yeah, he's
he's getting elderly, he's getting there up in the years.
But even at his age, you look at this man,
you you know he looks strong still.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
Oh really?

Speaker 1 (41:51):
Hey, yes, Like if he were to have someone in
a situation where it's one on one and he chose
his victim to be a smaller up at he woman who,
you know what, might be down on her luck. I
have no doubts that he could overpower her easily. Still
still at that age, you look at this guy and
you say, yeah, I believe he used to be a boxer.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Okay, Well that's good then, because yeah, you want him
to appear as much of a monster as he is exactly.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
You want that appearance to match what he actually really is.
And he nailed that. Now. In September twenty fifth, twenty fourteen,
the la jury returned with a guilty verdict on all
three counts of first degree murder. Finally, Samuel Little was
convicted for the murders of Carol Alford, Audrey Nelson, and
Guadaloupe Appodaca. Now, I really hope I'm saying Guadalupe's name right.

(42:41):
I'm not sure, but I'm doing my best. Apologies if
I'm not. Now, given the heinous nature of the three
crimes and his extensive history, the judge sentenced Samuel Little
to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Samuel Little would spend the rest of his life behind bars.

(43:02):
It was a huge victory for law enforcement. After so
many years, they had at least solved and prosecuted some
of his crimes. At his sentencing, however, Samuel remained very defiant.
In fact, very famously, as a judge announced his life terms,
he erupted shouting quote, I didn't do it into the courtroom.

(43:24):
He did, That's what he was doing.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Yet the shit gave buddy at this point, just shut
your trap.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Well, here's the thing, though, This denial was consistent with
how he evaded everything for decades whenever he was accused.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
That's true, he was.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Always I'm innocent, blame someone else, whatever, the you know what,
there's not enough evidence and he gets to walk free.
So I'm not surprised that's how he behaved. Yeah, in
all honesty.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
But you almost think at that age you're like fine, like, yeah,
I did this shit kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
You know, you'd think he and he.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
The thing that really is pissing me off is he's
going to jail and he was living in a homeless
shelter before, so he might even almost like be spending
his last few years in like a better place, which
I freaking hate that my mind went there, but it did.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
Yeah, Well, in many cases. That is very unfortunate to say,
but you're right. In many cases, convicts received much better
living situations than even you know what, homeless dude.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
So it's a frickin' this guy just I don't know.
My blood is boiling over here.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
Oh he pisses me off. To trust me now. At
this point, of course, investigators still didn't know the full
extent of his crimes. They only had suspicions of other murders,
and Samuel Little, while he wasn't exactly talking. After the
twenty fourteen conviction, he was transferred to the California State
prison system two began serving his life sentences, and for

(44:49):
a few years it seemed that that might be where
the story ends, an old man in prison, convicted of
a couple murders, likely to die behind bars, taking his
secrets to the grave with him. However, the story was
far from over. In truth, it was about to enter
a remarkably new phase because the same person who once

(45:10):
escaped justice would soon volunteer to reveal everything, and I
mean everything. It just required the right approach, and it
came in the form of a very skilled Texas ranger
and some determined FBI analysis who saw an opportunity to
close dozens of unsolved cases.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
Okay, well that person was very good at their job then,
because even in the court he's like, it wasn't me.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Definitely, they saw an opportunity and they pounced. Now, Samuel
Little maintained his innocence at least for a while, but
behind the scenes, the FBI's ViCAP team and detectives in
multiple states kept working on connecting him to other cases,
and a breakthrough in this effort came in May of
twenty eighteen, when Texas Ranger James Holland began a careful

(46:02):
and clever campaign to elicit Samuel's cooperation. See. Ranger Holland
had been investigating the nineteen ninety four Odessa, Texas murder
of Denise Brothers, and he suspected Samuel as the culprit.
Along with FBI crime analysis Christy Paloso and DOJ analysis
Angelo Willielmson, Holland arranged a series of interviews with Samuel,

(46:26):
who was still in custody in California.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
See.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
By twenty eighteen, Samuel was in his late seventies and
in poor health. He was diabetic and used a wheelchair
a lot of the time. He had little to lose
at this point, and he had a few things he
actually wanted, such as a prison transfer, so sensing and opening,
the investigators offered Samuel a deal. If he cooperated and

(46:51):
if he told them all about his crimes, they would
arrange a move from La County Prison to another facility
in exchange. Though for this relatively small comfort, Samuel Little
would have to talk, and he agreed. It was the
key that unlocked a horrific treasure trove of information. Once

(47:16):
he started talking, it was as if the dam had
broken open. In an initial interview in May of twenty eighteen,
to everyone's astonishment, he began confessing to dozens of murders
all across the country. Ranger Holland later said that well,
he methodically went city by city, state by state, recounting

(47:39):
how many people he'd killed in each and every place.
Dang By the end of that session, he'd confessed to
around ninety murders in total. The investigators listening were shook.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
That is so disturbing.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
They were in the presence of someone who might surpass
even the worst known serial killers in all of American
history just by sheer count alone. Now crucially, Samuel wasn't
just throwing out numbers. He's not just saying, oh, you know,
I've killed ninety plus people. That's not what he was doing.
Nothing like that. He began providing extensive details about each killing,

(48:16):
about each city, walking them through all of it, one
by one. He was describing each and they're keeping tally
and the numbers are just growing.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
And he just has this in his mind, Hey, oh yeah, yeah,
can like recall this information so clearly?

Speaker 1 (48:33):
Well, yeah, that's exactly what he was doing. Now, the
FBI spent countless hours cross checking many of his stories
against cold case's files, all that sort of stuff death records,
and they found that, well, Samuel had an astonishing memory
for certain aspects of his crimes, just like you were
alluding to. He could describe where he picked up a victim,
what car he was driving at the time, the general

(48:55):
location where he left the body, and even things like
the victim's appearance or clothing. He remembered tiny visual details.
For instance, he described one victim as having a limb
or missing a finger, and decades later this matched a
description of a long identified Jane Doe who had those attributes. Now,
Samuel did, however, have a lesser reliability with dates, and

(49:18):
even admitted it he might mix up whether something happened
in nineteen eighty two or nineteen eighty four, for example,
which given the span of time that everything unfolded, well,
it's not too surprising that this was the case. But
the core facts of each murder story they were solid,
and bit by bit, cases that had stumped detectives for
years were being solved. Over the next year and a half.

(49:42):
From mid twenty eighteen through twenty nineteen, Samuel Little engaged
in a marathon of confession sessions. Ranger, Holland and agent
spent around six hundred and fifty hours interviewing him in total,
an unprecedented amount of FaceTime with the serial killer. In fact,
Samuel actually seemed to begin to relish the attention and

(50:04):
the opportunity to relive his crimes. He would often draw
sketches of his victims from memory while describing them. In fact,
he even produced color drawings of twenty six different women
that he said he killed. Now these portraits were hauntingly
accurate too, and when released to the public, it allowed
several victims to finally be identified by their loved ones.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
Oh, this is just listening to this is mind blowing
that he can remember all this stuff. And I was
honestly thinking, he probably likes the company, having these people
like chat with him and relive his life, that this
was like all the highlights of his life.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
Right well, definitely.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Exactly, Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
So he's enjoying this process very much so, but.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
We are getting something out of it as well.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
So exactly now. Samuel also candidly talked about his methods
and his motives. He claimed he derived a sick sexual
pleasure from strangling his victims, and he reiterated how he
chose victims he thought, you know what, quote wouldn't be missed.
He even made disturbing analogies, like calling his murders a
fruit picking excursion. This was a serial killer who in

(51:14):
his old age, just as you're saying, is reliving his
kind of golden years and was proudly boasting about these
achievements if you want to call him that, and showing
very little remorse along the way. For investigators, though, these
confessions were everything, even if he seemed to be relishing
in it. They needed to let him do so so
they could finally get the information they needed out of it.

(51:37):
Law enforcement agencies from many states sent detectives to interview
Samuel or to provide information to the Texas Rangers and
FBI team to coordinate the effort. By November twenty eighteen,
the tally of confirmed and this is a very important word,
confirmed connections was quickly rising. The FBI announced that they
had already verified thirty four of Samuel's confessions with hard evidence,

(52:03):
and they believed most of the rest were credible as well.
Verified thirty four. Local police departments began closing cases that
had been unsolved for decades. It was like a nationwide
puzzle coming altogether piece by piece, with Samuel Little himself
providing the details and each piece that was bringing the

(52:26):
picture together. Throughout the fall of twenty eighteen, there were
almost daily revelations from various jurisdictions. In Georgia, Macinscherfs confirmed
Little's confession to a nineteen seventy seven murder of an
unidentified woman and the nineteen eighty two murder of eighteen
year old for Donia Smith, both long unsolved strangulation cases.

(52:49):
In Mississippi, officials announced that his confession to a nineteen
seventy eight murder of thirty six year old Julia Critchfield
strangled and thrown off a cliff, and a two five
murder of forty six year old Nancy Carol Stevens found
in Tilapilo in Florida, His confessions to killing of twenty
year old Rosy Hill in eighty two, among other victims,

(53:11):
were confirmed. In Kentucky, prosecutors indicted Samuel Little for the
nineteen eighty one murder of twenty three year old Linda
Sue Boards, who had been found dead along a highway
back with no suspects then up until now. In Alabama,
he confessed to nineteen seventy nine murder of Brenda Alexander,
finally explaining the fate of a young woman whose case

(53:33):
had been closed or sorry cold for thirty nine years.
In Ohio, police began linking him to a string of
unsolved homicides of women in Cleveland and the area and elsewhere.
As he provided names and recollections, the list went on.
By early twenty nineteen, Samuel Little had effectively rewritten the

(53:55):
history books of American serial murder. The FBI publicly confirmed
in October of twenty nineteen that, with fifty cases matched
and confirmed by evidence so far, Samuel Little was now
considered the most prolific serial killer in the United States
history in terms of proven victims.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
That the frick the sheer number there. It's insane, Like
I love that all these are getting solved, and like
these cases are being able to be closed, but it's
just so daunting and kind of feels gross, just how
it's like almost a checklist.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
I know, I really know what you mean, trust me now.
They noted that he confessed to ninety three murders and
that they had little reason to doubt any of them.
Law enforcement while they're still busy trying to corroborate the
remaining confessions and identify all of the victims, and the FBI,
while they've even created a dedicated website with a timeline
of Samuel's travels and crimes and clips of his video

(54:56):
recorded confessions, hoping that members of the public might recognize
a victim or provide additional clues. In the midst of
all these confessions, legal proceedings continued for some specific cases.
In December of twenty eighteen, Samuel was charged in Texas
for the Odessa murder of Denise Christie Brothers from nineteen
ninety four. The case that Ranger Holland had first used

(55:18):
to get him talking well. This was the case. Samuel
pled guilty to the murder to avoid potential death penalty,
and received another life sentence in Texas. In August of
twenty nineteen, he was indicted and then pled guilty in
Ohio for four murders, those of Anne Stewart from nineteen
eighty one, Mary Joe Payton in nineteen eighty four, Rose

(55:40):
Evans in nineteen ninety one in an unidentified Jane Doe
from late seventies or eighties. He received four additional life
sentences in Ohio now Notably, Anne Stuart's case was one
where the body had been found back in nineteen eighty
nine but remained unsolved. Mary Joe Payton had been a
Jane Doe victim for years until being identified and linked

(56:02):
to Samuel. Rose Evans had been killed in Cleveland in
nineteen ninety one, and the Jane Doe was a victim
he recalled but whose body was never recovered. In other states,
prosecutors often decided not to prosecute Samuel on additional accounts
simply because he was already destined to die in prison

(56:23):
and was cooperating For instance, Florida officials concluded that he
was responsible for at least two Miami area murders in
the nineteen seventies, including Dorothy Gibson and another woman named
Karen o'donahue. But they chose not to bring him to
Florida for trial given the extensed extensive life sentences that
are already existing, and it would have been a waste
of time, resources, and money to pursue them, so instead

(56:47):
they officially closed those cases and attributed them to Samuel Little.
One big outcome for all those confessions was the exoneration
of wrongfully convicted individuals. We mentioned earlier the case of
Jerry Townsend in Florida, who had been falsely convicted of
the murder of Dorothy Gibson. Well, he had actually been

(57:07):
exonerated in two thousand and one by DNA evidence unrelated
to Samuel. But in other instances Samuel's confession, for example,
in nineteen eighty three, a murder in Mississippi that had
been blamed on someone else, well, we now have a
clear name. Each confession not only added Samuel's tally up,
but in some cases righted a wrong, clearing people's names

(57:29):
who had been unjustly suspected or even convicted. By the
end of twenty nineteen, Samuel Little had effectively become an
informant on himself, and investigators remarked on how surreal it
was the killer was the one helping solve all these murders.
Verifying one case after another, Many veteran detectives got long

(57:52):
awaited answers to cases that haunted them. Families of victims
who spent years not knowing what happened to their missing daughter,
their sister, or friend finally learned the truth. However painful
it was, you know that she had simply encountered a
predator named Samuel Little. After twenty nineteen, there were fewer

(58:13):
new revelations, simply because well, Samuel had already confessed to
everything he could remember. He remained incarcerated, spending much of
his time in Texas, where he'd been extradited during the
confession process to remain closer to Ranger Holland for the interviews.
In total, authorities definitively linked Samuel Little to at least

(58:33):
sixty confirmed murders, a number that surpassed any other known
US serial killer's body count in history. The FBI continued
to work in the remaining unconfirmed cases. They believe all
of his confessions were very credible, but they need to
match them with evidence or unidentified remains, and this leaves

(58:53):
roughly forty unsolved or unmatched confessions that are actively being investigated.
Samuel Little eventually died on December thirtieth, in twenty twenty,
at a Los Angeles County area hospital. He was eighty
years old. Now, the California Department of Corrections did not
announce a specific cause of death, but it was known

(59:16):
that he suffered from diabetes and heart problems in his
final years, and he'd been in declining health. He passed
away still officially convicted of only eight murders, the three
in California, plus the additional ones in Ohio and Texas
for which he had pled guilty in twenty eighteen and
twenty nineteen. However, his legacy, in the form of his

(59:38):
own confessions and the mountain of cold cases he helped
solve and leave open, it marks him indisputably as the
most prolific serial killer ever identified in America. The case
of Samuel Little is now studied heavily as a cautionary
tale of how a predator can exploit the weakness in

(59:58):
a system. For decades, he benefited from fragmented and indifferent
criminal justice systems that failed to connect the dots. He
deliberately chose victims who lived on the margins, women who
weren't well off, women of color, which who were primarily
his targets, women who might be involved in the sex

(01:00:19):
trade or suffering from addiction. Their murders did not spark
big investigations or headlines, allowing him to fly under the radar.
As one criminologists observed, if his victims had been wealthy
or prominent people, the public and police, while their response
probably would have been very different, But because Samuel preyed

(01:00:40):
on those less privileged and whose disappearance often weren't immediately reported,
he was able to kill with impunity for a very
long time. It's a sobering reflection, honestly on societal basis
and the value placed on certain lives over others. But
in the end, Samuel Little's story is one both of
failure and success in law enforcement. It showcases the failure

(01:01:03):
of the past, how traditional police work in the nineteen
seventies and eighties, hampered by jurisdictional boundaries and limited forensic
technology missed a killer who was hiding in plain sight.
But it also highlights the modern advances in DNA technology,
interagency cooperation, and cold case persistence that eventually did bring

(01:01:25):
him down. It showcases both the worst and the best
of law enforcement at the same time. It is clear
though without the DNA match in twenty twelve and the
collaboration work between the LAPD and the FBI and the
Texas Rangers, Samuel Little might have died with all of this,

(01:01:47):
and no one would have known, and many families would
never have understood what happened to their loved ones. But instead,
thanks to those efforts, dozens of cases have been solved
and the victim's names have been spoken aloud with answers
beside them. Finally, Samuel Little is gone now, but the
work he inadvertently set in motion continues. The FBI and

(01:02:11):
local investigators are still trying to seek justice for each
and every one of his victims and to close every
single case possible. His case led the FBI to urge
all jurisdictions to contribute their unsolved case information to a
national database so that patterns like this can be caught
sooner and in a grim way, Samuel helped prove the

(01:02:32):
value of that approach. The story of Samuel Little honestly
reads like a fictional dark thriller novel, or something you
pick off a shelf. It's a man who lurks in
the shadows for decades, committing evil again and again until
modern science and determined detectives unravel his identity. But unlike fiction,

(01:02:53):
this is very much so a true story, with very
real victims and very real heroes. It's a reminder that
sometimes justice is delayed for far too long, but with persistence,
the truth can surface even after years of darkness. The
case of Samuel Little, America's most prolific serial killer, shows

(01:03:18):
the importance of never giving up on an unsolved crime
and to the hope that one day every victim story
will be heard and acknowledged. And that's a story of
Samuel Little.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
Gosh I that guy. Okay, I am a huge advocate
for like, you know, the world needs you, right, yes,
but the world did not fucking need this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
Guy, No kidding, say the least, it could have been
well better off without him.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
The world would have been a way way better off
place without this man. Yes I can, I mean I
have trouble even believing that someone could recall ninety three,
you know, incidents, So I'm almost thinking there's probably ones
that he's forgotten to most likely, and it could even
be like you know, in the hundreds.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
It's very likely.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
So that is so fucking disturbing that someone just their
life was to just take that many people's lives. Yeah,
that's so disgusting.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
So yeah, I don't know how to put into words
the numbers, the audacity, the falling through the cracks. It
is beyond mind boggling, to say the least. But it
is promising to look at to say, okay, well, we
now have some things in place, you know, the cooperation

(01:04:43):
from different jurisdictions, we have databases of DNA and profiling,
all these things that can help prevent this. Now, Yes,
I just really hope that they continue that evolution, that
they can continue finding new ways to really hammer down
and stop people like this, because man, we do not
need monsters like this in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
No, not at all. And I honestly feel like I
need to check myself too, like, how the hell have
I not heard of this? Man? I don't know, I
have no idea how I've not heard this name I
must have because like this, it's huge.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Well, that's the problem in true crime is there are
so many stories. Yea, there's so many horrific tales. There's
so many monsters and people that are capable of such
wicked and grim things. It's so hard to keep up
on it. And when you do hear names at times,
it's almost easier to ignore it, to pretend it didn't happen. Yeah,

(01:05:42):
because if we do soak up all the bad things
that happen in every single day, I I can't imagine
how I'd feel. It's it's a coping mechanism to not
try and remember that thing.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
True. Yeah, I mean yeah, I would be quite fine,
probably carrying on my way, never knowing someone like this exists.
But it is also important to know people like this exist.
And I just wish this guy I don't know would
have been stopped way earlier or not had the life
that he had because he did not deserve, no to
live his life for eighty years or whatever doing I

(01:06:16):
guess what he loved to do, which is just so
messed up.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
I agree, But there were so many times where he
could have been stopped, but he wasn't.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
Yeah, but I would I like to believe that if
this was happening nowadays, that he would be stopped far earlier.
I think he would I wouldn't be able to get
away with that to that cheer number.

Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
I would hope so too. I think I'm with you there.
I think that the resources and everything and the way
things are done, procedures, technology advancements, I think we'd be
able to capture him far sooner. Yes, so yeah, anyways,
with that, thank you for being here. I'm not going
to go through the end stuff today. You know the
description it holds it all. You guys are amazing. Thank

(01:06:56):
you for being here, and of course until next time, I.

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
Just have to say say, well done, you did good
job presenting this. It was it was very well presented.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
Thank you. Well. Now I need to get back on
track all the description stuff, like I said, And of
course until next time, stay wicked

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Samuel Little - The Choke And Stroke Killer

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Samuel Little - The Choke And Stroke Killer