How Samuel Little Was Caught: Revisiting Serial Killer's Downfall After His Death

Samuel Little, who is considered to be the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history with 93 confessed murders, died early Wednesday at the age of 80. What led to his downfall may surprise you.

Little had a criminal record dating back to the mid-1960s, though by the FBI’s account, his killing spree didn’t begin until the early 1970s. His crime spree is believed to have come to a halt in 2005.

It wasn't until over 40 years later that Little was connected to the murders. In 2012, he was picked up on narcotics charges and extradited to California. At the time, Los Angeles police then linked Little to three unsolved murders in the late 1980s through DNA evidence.

The FBI recounted that Los Angeles police notified the agency’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) in 2013 of the DNA evidence. Through a subsequent background investigation, the program “found an alarming pattern that linked Little to many more murders.”

He made his first murder confessions in 2018.

One of his first victims was Marianne and Mary Ann, described as a transgender black female in her late teens. Little said he met her at a local bar in Miami and the two became acquaintances. He went on to kill her and dump her body in the Florida Everglades. He believes the body was never found.

One of his later confessions was to a murder in the autumn of 1982. An unnamed woman, possibly in her 30s, was killed after Little met her in a club in New Orleans. She had been celebrating a birthday with friends at the time. He later dumped her body near a canal and returned to a hotel he was staying at in neighboring Mississippi.

Little said he strangled his victims to death, though many of the deaths were originally attributed to overdoses or other accidental causes. He is said to have knocked many of his victims unconscious before strangulation to avoid evidence of a struggle.

Little’s murder spree was limited largely to the U.S. south and into the Great Lakes region. At least 10 victims, however, were in the Los Angeles area. Little made several sketches of his victims by memory, which the FBI used to help identify some of them.

Some of the bodies have never been found.

“For many years, Samuel Little believed he would not be caught because he thought no one was accounting for his victims,” ViCAP Crime Analyst Christie Palazzolo said in a statement last year. “Even though he is already in prison, the FBI believes it is important to seek justice for each victim—to close every case possible.”

As recently as October 2019, the FBI was still seeking information about his possible victims. While investigators have yet to verify Little's total death count, last year, he was named by the FBI as "the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history."

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced that Little was pronounced dead at 4:35 a.m. local time on Wednesday. He had been serving three consecutive life-without-parole sentences for the deaths of three women in the 1980s. An official cause of death has yet to be determined.