Prolific Killer's Sketches Of Unidentified Victims Released

LORAIN, OH — Samuel Little, one of America's most prolific serial killers, has drawn 16 eerie portraits of his unidentified victims. The FBI is releasing the drawings, hoping someone may be able to identify the murdered people.

Little — hailing from Lorain County in Ohio — has confessed to 90 murders. His proclaimed killing spree lasted for decades, beginning in the 1970s and continuing through 2005, the FBI said. Investigators from across the nation have been trying to link Little's confessed killings to women that were found dead in their states.

The FBI believes Little murdered women in every state he stayed in: from California to Florida. Law enforcement is desperately trying to untangle the web of killings connected to Little before the ailing 78-year-old dies.

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A History of Violence

Little dropped out of high school in the 1950s and began a nomadic lifestyle, roaming around the nation. The now 78-year-old started to break the law in 1956, when he faced charges for shoplifting, fraud, breaking and entering, solicitation, and more.

The FBI believes he may have started his killing spree in the 1970s. He has confessed to killings in Florida, Illinois, and Georgia during that decade.

In the early part of the 1980s, Little was charged for killings in Mississippi and Florida. The FBI said he escaped indictment in Mississippi and was not convicted in Florida. However, he did serve time for assaulting a woman in Missouri and another woman in San Diego.

Little went west and then murdered three women near Los Angeles between 1987 and 1989. The killings were all similar: the women had been beaten and then strangled to death. Their bodies were dumped in an alley, a dumpster, and a garage.

It wasn't until 2012 that Little was arrested for the murders though.

While staying at a homeless shelter in Kentucky, in 2012, Little was arrested and extradited to California on a narcotics charge. Police then obtained his DNA and linked him to the three unsolved homicides from the late 1980s. He was charged with three counts of murder and later convicted. He was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences with no possibility of parole.

After Little's DNA was obtained, Los Angeles Police asked the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) for help. The ViCAP team quickly found a disturbing pattern of crimes, apparently linked to Little.

“We found a case out of Odessa, Texas, that sounded very much like him, and we could place him passing through the area around the same time,” said ViCAP Crime Analyst Christina Palazzolo. “We sent that lead out to the Texas Rangers, who were eager to follow up on the long-cold case.”

When Palazzolo interviewed Little, he was eager to trade information for a transfer to a different prison. As the agents talked to Little, he confessed to 90 murders, Palazzolo said: "he went through city and state and gave Texas Ranger James Holland the number of people he killed in each place. Jackson, Mississippi—one; Cincinnati, Ohio—one; Phoenix, Arizona—three; Las Vegas, Nevada—one.”

While the majority of Little's confessions have not yet been confirmed, the FBI said it has corroborated at least 34 of his claimed murders.

Part of the problem with confirming his claims is his timeline. While the 78-year-old can recall a number of details about his victims — enough details, in fact, to draw them — he has trouble recalling when he committed each murder.

On top of that, Little's victims were usually marginalized women, namely prostitutes and women battling drug addiction. Their bodies would frequently go unidentified and their deaths uninvestigated, the FBI noted.

In at least a few cases, Little's victims may have not even been considered homicides. The FBI believes that some of the murdered women may have been classified as drug overdoses or deaths by natural causes because of their history with narcotics.

The list of ummatched confessions can be found on the FBI's website, along with a map of where each claimed murder took place.

The cases that were entered into the ViCAP database were easier to confirm and corroborate, according to Palazzolo.

“The biggest lesson in this case is the power of information sharing,” said Kevin Fitzsimmons, ViCAP’s Supervisory Crime Analyst. “These connections all started in our database of violent crime.”

The investigators on the case have obtained Little's sketches of his victims and are hoping someone out there may be able to identify the drawn women.

The Drawings

Below are 16 sketches from Little, with what few details the FBI was able to provide. Anyone with information on the pictured women should contact ViCAP at 800-634-4097.

Sketches from the FBI