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Samuel Little (June 7th, 1940 - ) is an African American serial killer who was convicted of the murders of three women in California between 1987 and 1989 and one woman in Texas in 1994. He claims to have killed as many as 93 people, and investigators have linked him to over 60 murders. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has confirmed his involvement in at least 50 murders, which makes Little the most prolific serial killer in United States history; he allegedly murdered women across 19 states over a quarter of a century ending around 2005.
Biography
Samuel Little was born on June 7th, 1940, in Reynolds, Georgia, to a mother he claimed was a prostitute. Soon after his birth, Little's family moved to Lorain, Ohio, where he was brought up mainly by his grandmother. He attended Hawthorne Junior High School, where he had problems with discipline and achievement. In 1956, after being convicted for breaking and entering into property in Omaha, Nebraska, Little was held in an institution for juvenile offenders.
Little moved to Florida to live with his mother in his late 20s, working at various times as a cemetery worker, and an ambulance attendant (by his own account). As Tami Abdollah reported in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser (based on a 75-minute interview with Los Angeles detectives), Little has said he then "began traveling more widely and had more run-ins with the law”; Abdollah said he had been arrested in eight states for crimes that included driving under the influence, fraud, shoplifting, solicitation, armed robbery, aggravated assault, and rape. By Little's description to these interviewers, he took up boxing during his stints in prison, referring to himself as a former prizefighter.
In 1961, Little was sentenced to three years in prison for breaking into a furniture store in Lorain; he was released in 1964. By 1975, he had been arrested 26 times in eleven states for crimes including theft, assault, attempted rape, fraud and attacks on government officials.
In 1982, Little was arrested in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and charged with the murder of a 22-year-old woman named Melinda LaPree, who had gone missing in September of that year. A grand jury declined to indict Little for the murder of LaPree. However, while under investigation, Little was transferred to Florida to be brought to trial for the murder of 26-year-old Patricia Mount, whose body was found in September 1982. Prosecution witnesses identified Little in court as a person who spent time with Mount on the night before her disappearance. Due to mistrust of witness testimonies, Little was acquitted in January 1984.
Little moved to California, where he stayed in the vicinity of San Diego. In October 1984, he was arrested for kidnapping, beating and strangling Laurie Barros, 22 years old, who survived. One month later, he was found by police in the backseat of his car with an unconscious woman, also beaten and strangled, in the same location as the attempted murder of Barros. Little served 2 1⁄2 years in prison for both crimes. Upon his release in February 1987, he immediately moved to Los Angeles and committed more than ten additional murders.
Little was arrested on September 5th, 2012, at a homeless shelter in Louisville, Kentucky, after authorities used DNA testing to establish that he was involved in the murder of Carol Elford, killed on July 13th, 1987; Guadalupe Apodaca, killed on September 3rd, 1987; and Audrey Nelson, killed on August 14th, 1989. All three women were killed and later found on the streets of Los Angeles. He was extradited to Los Angeles, where he was charged on January 7th, 2013. A few months later, the police said that Little was being investigated for involvement in dozens of murders committed in the 1980s, which until then had been undisclosed. In connection with the new circumstances in Mississippi, the LaPree murder case was reopened. In total, Little was tested for involvement in 60 murders of women committed in the territory of many US states.