78-year-old Samuel Little, who is serving life in prison for three murders, wanted to move prisons earlier this year.

His request caught the attention of the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (or ViCAP), as Little was listed as a possible suspect in a number of unsolved murder cases, and two FBI crime analysts and James Holland of the Texas Rangers popped by for a talk.

They were not expecting him to open up about 90 or so murders, spread across the country from Los Angeles to Miami, Houston to Cleveland, between 1970 and 2005.

CNN reports:

Investigators have confirmed 34 of the confessed killings, authorities said. Many more are pending confirmation and a number remain uncorroborated.

Still, the stunning confessions could make Little the most prolific serial killer in US history if convicted…

According to the FBI, they’re inclined to believe Little, who recalled the killings “in great detail”, including “where he was, what car he was driving and could even draw pictures of the women he killed”.

He was arrested in 2012 for charges related to narcotics, but then his DNA linked him to three unsolved homicides from 1987 and 1989.

They were all female victims who were beaten and strangled before their bodies were dumped, and Little was convicted in 2014.

More details below via the Economic Times:

Day by day, authorities say, he has recounted details of long-ago murders: faces, places, the layouts of small towns. He has described how he picked up vulnerable women from bars, nightclubs and along streets and strangled them to death in the back seat of his car…

“By the time we are done, we anticipate that Samuel Little will be confirmed as one of the most prolific serial killers in American history,” said Bobby Bland, district attorney of Ector County, Texas, where Little is being held after a grand jury indicted him this summer for a 1994 killing.

As it stands, the most prolific serial killer is Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, who was convicted of 49 murders in Washington state during the 1980s and 1990s.

Pure evil:

“Believe it or not, you only see evil a few times in your career,” said Tim Marcia, a cold case detective with the Los Angeles Police Department who dealt with Little on the three killings he was convicted of there. “Looking into his eyes, I would say that was pure evil.”

…Little, detectives say, is a charismatic psychopath who would brutally beat his victims before strangling them. A former boxer, he punched with such force that when he struck one of his victims in the abdomen he broke her spine, according to the autopsy report.

[Sgt. Michael Mongeluzzo, a detective in Marion County, Florida] said he had wondered aloud during the interrogation how Little had managed to avoid arrest for so long. Little, he said, had an answer.

“I can go into my world and do what I want to do,” Little said, according to Mongeluzzo, describing neighbourhoods around the nation where poverty, drug addiction and unsolved murders are common. “I won’t go into your world.”

When somebody who is locked up for three murders spills the beans about another 80-plus that they got away with, law enforcement needs to take a long, hard look at itself.

You can read the rest of that chilling look at Little’s life here.

[sources:cnn&economictimes]