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Samuel Little: The confessions of the "worst US serial killer"

2019-11-02T07:58:45.935Z


Samuel Little has committed more than 90 murders in the US. Many cases are far behind and there is no evidence - just the word of a felon. Investigators tell how they are now following the statements.



Detective Bernie Nelson had two and a half hours to solve a murder more than 46 years ago. The investigator from Prince George County, a community east of Washington DC, was the first visitor to hit Samuel Little in Texas prison on a November morning in 2018. Investigators from at least three other authorities were waiting that day to question the convicted murderer.

Little has committed 93 murders since last year. In early October, the FBI described him as the worst serial killer in US history. According to FBI, 50 confessions could be attributed to real cases - including the crime that investigates Detective Nelson.

Nevertheless, the investigation remains difficult: many cases are decades back, often lack evidence, there is only the confession and the alleged memories of Samuel Littles, which now have to be compared with the conditions at tens of crime scenes. And it would not be the first time that a detainee boasts of killings that he has not actually committed.

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Bernie Nelson asked Little about a murder case in 1972: In a wood near Laurel, a hunter found a woman's remains. The body was too decayed to establish her identity. The forensic scientist estimated the dead to be about 20, between 1.60 and 1.70 meters tall, causing death to be strangled. There was no evidence of the culprit, no usable traces. The case went unresolved in the archive - until Samuel Little began to talk.

Confession after more than four decades

Little said he met the woman at the bus station in Washington DC, where she worked as a prostitute. According to Nelson, one entry in the file shows that Little was actually at the Bus Station in the capital in 1972 at the time in question - he was briefly arrested there for unauthorized possession of firearms. He had talked to the woman for several days, Little said. Finally, he had come out with her from DC and have kept in a forest. He had choked her, but she had regained consciousness and stumbled away. When he caught up with her, he strangled. "It excited him to talk about his actions," Nelson told SPIEGEL. He had found Little's amicable tone strange. "You have to joke and laugh with him, so he does not close down."

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Little had described to him the way he traveled with his victim. "He spoke of an old, rundown house in the immediate vicinity of the body site." The detective had aerial photographs of the year of the murder. Little provided detailed descriptions of the environment and the house before the investigator presented him with the photos.

The case of Laurel was apparently one of Littles first murders. According to the investigators, he killed between 1970 and 2005 in at least 15 US states. He selected women whom he believed would not miss anyone, prostitutes or drug addicts. He lured her to remote places, strangled her and masturbated. Nationwide, he was arrested more than a dozen times for robbery, assault, rape. He was always free again. In 1984, he stood trial for the murder of a 26-year-old in Florida, but was acquitted for lack of evidence.

"Tell me what the woman looked like"

"He was so good at what he did," says Texas Ranger James Holland. Little has made his confessions to him since May 2018. The Texas authorities rejected an interview with Holland with reference to his ongoing investigation. The CBS format "60 Minutes" he told in early October of his work. The reporter asked him why Little had just put him into his confidence: "In the end ...", Holland teetered a bit in his chair, "... maybe Sammy just liked me."

Samuel Little seems to reminisce when questioned about his actions. The FBI has posted videos of him to identify previously unidentified victims. The excerpts show the 79-year-old with the spotty gray beard during his talks with Texas Ranger Holland. He wears a gray woolen hat and blue prison clothes. Holland, out of the picture, asks him questions: "North Little Rock, tell me what the woman looked like."

Little closes his eyes. "Oh, I loved that!" He smiles. "I forgot her name, oh wait ... I think it was Ruth! She had hare teeth, no, a tooth gap, that was it." He laughs and points to his front teeth.

Little's statements are not always accurate, his memories fade

According to Holland, there are clear signs and gestures when Little remembers. "When he thinks about a crime scene, he starts stroking his face, and while he remembers his victim, he looks up and into the distance," the investigator told CBS. It seems as if Little has a merry-go-round of his victims in mind, waiting for the person to stop talking about him.

Little has an almost photographic memory for details, says Holland. Since he got the killer paper and pencils, Little draws his victims. Holland hung the drawings in his office and the FBI released them in the hope that relatives would recognize someone.

But not always are Littles information correct. "His memory of data is not always accurate, and sometimes he has trouble remembering the clothes of a victim," the FBI writes on his website. Therefore, possible connections should not be abandoned due to these incorrect factors.

According to Texas Ranger Holland, 79-year-old Little sometimes goes bankrupt for a decade at the dates of his killings. But Holland also said, "Nothing he has ever told us turned out to be wrong afterwards."

The case of Henry Lee Lucas

How problematic it can be to rely solely on confessions, the case shows Henry Lee Lucas. From 1983, he confessed initially about 300 murders over a period of 18 months, later, the number even amounted to about 600. Like Little, Lucas moved from coast to coast, with odd jobs and no permanent residence. Lucas wanted to have his victims stabbed, shot and strangled. In return for his never-ending confessions of guilt, he enjoyed special treatments in prison such as cable television and special meals. Towards the end of his confession marathon, he also claimed to have killed Jimmy Hoffa, a trade unionist with mafia links, as well as claiming he had delivered sect leader Jim Jones the poison for mass suicide in Jonestown.

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Only a journalist of the "Dallas Times Herald" determined on the basis of a meticulously researched timeline that Lucas could not have committed several of the established murders because he was at the time of the crime in another state. Lucas had been sentenced to death for one of these cases. The then Governor George W. Bush pardoned him in 1998 because of the obviously wrong confession. Lucas served a life sentence and died in prison in 2001. An internal investigation was embarrassing for the investigators: they had read Lucas case files and showed him photos that he used to make his confessions.

"It was not me!" In 2014 Little affirmed his innocence

Samuel Little had declared his innocence in 2014. After he was arrested at a homeless shelter in Kentucky, the investigators made him because of DNA traces as perpetrators in three unexplained murders from 1987 to 1989 in California from. After his conviction he shouted: "I was not that!".

Because the Los Angeles Police Department officials suspected a pattern behind Little's killings, they turned on the FBI. There began more in-depth investigations. In 2017, Littles DNA appeared in connection with a murder case in Odessa, Texas. James Holland was called in and traveled to California, where Little served his sentence.

The ranger says he cracked Little with a statement that he saw as a compliment: Little is not a rapist. He is a killer. "That's what he liked, that's how he defines himself," said Holland in an interview with CBS. Little negotiated a deal: He would openly talk about the murder and more cases if he did not get a death sentence. Holland arranged a deal with the Texas attorney and transferred Little to a Texas jail. Since then, investigators from numerous states go in and out to match cases.

Because Little was able to describe the crime scene so detailed in the murder case of 1972 and his stay in the region can be proven, his confession is considered plausible. For Detective Nelson, however, the case is still not resolved: "The most important thing now is to find out the identity of the dead." A thigh bone of the unknown was sent to a DNA lab. The result Nelson expects in a few weeks.

Also read: How serial killers proceed - an interview with US forensic expert Louis Schlesinger

Source: spiegel

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