By Wilson Wong -
NBC News
Authorities on Tuesday identified the
skeletal remains found nearly 44 years ago
at a Mississippi construction site as those of Clara Birdlong, a woman they believe was the victim of the deadliest killer in US history, the late Samuel Little.
Hunters found remains in December 1977 near a highway in Jackson County, according to the local sheriff's office.
The body of Birdlong, a short black woman with
a distinctive gold tooth
long referred to by investigators as
Escatawpa Jane Doe
, was discovered three to four months after she was killed, according to police.
Facial reconstruction of Clara Birdlong, identified as the victim of the late Samuel Little, the deadliest serial killer in US history. Jackson County Sheriff's Office
Since it was found, "various
facial reconstructions and computer compositions
have been created
in an effort to help identify it," authorities said.
But progress was made only after Mississippi authorities hired a Texas DNA research center, which was able to connect Birdlong with a cousin in Mississippi, who in turn connected with his 93-year-old grandmother.
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A cousin of the woman told authorities in January that Birdlong, from Leflore County, had been born in 1933 and had disappeared around the 1970s. And in August, a woman who remembered Birdlong told authorities that the victim "She left Leflore County in the 1970s with an African man who claimed to be passing through Mississippi on his way to Florida."
"
Clara was never seen
or heard from again," the sheriff's office said.
Samuel Little during a 2013 Los Angeles Supreme Court hearing Damian Dovarganes / AP
Little, who was serving multiple life sentences in prison before dying in late December at the age of 80,
confessed to killing 93 women across the country between 1970 and 2005
, including an "unknown person from Escatawpa," whose name he said. not knowing, according to authorities.
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Investigators confirmed that Samuel Little was in Jackson County in 1977, during the approximate time period of the woman's death.
They later learned that he had been arrested in Pascagoula in August 1977 for a petty theft.
Although he has already died, Samuel Little is considered the main suspect in the death of Clara Birdlong, say the authorities, who have not clarified how the woman lost her life.