ATLANTA — Convicted serial killer Samuel Little, who has confessed to 90 murders across the country, has sketched a picture of an Atlanta woman he claims to have killed in the 1980s. The 78-year-old man, who is currently held at a Texas prison, claims to be the most prolific serial killer in American history.
FBI Atlanta said Little has confessed to seven murders in Georgia – two of which have been confirmed. Investigators have released more details about one of his latest sketches in hopes that she might be identified.
Little told police that he met the woman he sketched at a strip club in Atlanta, where she worked as a topless dancer or prostitute in 1983 or 1984, according to police. He told investigators that she was about 28 years old at the time of the murder, was from Griffin and had a son. She is described as a white female, about 260 pounds and 5 feet 8 inches tall. Little said he recalled her wearing tight black pants.
Little said he was driving a black Thunderbird at the time of the killing. He told investigators he took her to a “big island” not far from the strip club, where both sides of the island were wooded. According to police, Little started choking her and she pleaded for him to give a message to her son before he killed her. He told police that he pulled the woman into the wooded island and left her naked, but may have left her clothes with her body.
Drawings of some of Samuel Little's victims
This is just the latest in a series of victim sketches created by Samuel Little that have been released to the public. FBI Atlanta released 16 of the hand-drawn portraits earlier this month. Police said Little drew the portraits in Texas, where he is waiting to stand trial for the death of another woman.
Atlanta Police told 11Alive that investigators have not been able to corroborate any of Little’s alleged local victims – but the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program hopes that these specific details about the woman from the strip club might jog someone’s memory.
Little was arrested at a homeless shelter in Kentucky in 2012 and extradited to California, where authorities said he was wanted on a narcotics charged.
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Once they had him in custody, detectives with the Los Angeles Police Department were able to use a DNA match to tie Little to three victims from unsolved homicides from 1987 and 1989 -- allowing them to charge him with three counts of murder.
Little was convicted and sentenced in 2014 to three consecutive life terms with no possibility of parole.
The FBI says that in each of the three cases, the women had been beaten and strangled, their bodies dumped in an alley, a dumpster and a garage.
Little insisted he was innocent during his trial, even though prosecutors brought forth a number of women who said they had barely survived their own encounters with Little.
In the early 1980s, Little had been charged with killing women in Mississippi and Florida but escaped indictment in Mississippi and conviction in Florida. He did serve time for assaulting a woman in Missouri and the assault and false imprisonment of another woman in San Diego.
The LAPD asked the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program -- ViCAP -- to work up a full background check on Little. ViCAP found an alarming pattern and links to many other murders.
The FBI defines a serial killer as "a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone."
The very idea of a serial killer brings up images of people like Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, or Charles Manson. But while Bundy and Gacy, long considered among the most notorious serial killers of all, killed between 30 and 35 people, Little's 90 victims dwarfs those numbers.
According to the FBI, Little remembers his victims and the murders in great detail. They said while he draws pictures of the women he killed, he is far less reliable with recalling exact dates and timelines.
The FBI says Little's method of killing did not always leave obvious signs that the death was a homicide. At one point, he was a competitive boxer. Many times, they said, he would stun or knock out victims with powerful punches before strangling them.
Since there were no bullet wounds or stab marks, many times, the deaths may have been classified as drug overdoses, accidents or natural causes as opposed to homicides. In addition, DNA profiling was not always available in the 1970s and early 1980s, when many of the deaths occurred.
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The FBI says that after he was interviewed and confessed to a homicide in Odessa, Texas, Little was extradited there, where he remains in custody today.
According to the FBI, Little is currently in poor health, and is expected to remain in Texas, likely until his death.
FBI agents are hopeful that they can help identify his victims and provide closure and justice in many unsolved cases.
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