Man in Texas prison says he killed two metro-east women in the 1970s
A 78-year-old man imprisoned in Texas who says he’s killed around 90 people confessed this week to the killing of two metro-east woman in the 1970s.
Samuel Little said he killed a woman who may have been called “Jo” in Granite City sometime between 1976 and 1979 and another woman from St. Louis in East St. Louis at about the same time.
The FBI says both deaths are “unmatched confessions,” in that they have not been corroborated by law enforcement.
Little has most recently been in custody since 2012, according to the FBI, when he was wanted on a narcotics charge.
Police linked his DNA to three unsolved homicides and he was then convicted of those three California homicides and sentenced to consecutive life sentences.
He started talking this year about about more victims in hopes of a prison transfer, USA Today reports.
Little told the FBI and Texas Rangers about his victims and the killings but does not remember dates. He moved frequently around the country, leaving Ohio in the late 1950s and admitting to killing women in 35 states from Florida to California and as far north as Cleveland, Ohio.
“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.”
East St. Louis police and Granite City police did not immediately respond to calls for comment.
This story was originally published November 30, 2018 at 2:03 PM.
