FBI say Samuel Little is America’s most prolific serial killer with up to 93 victims: ID investigates

Investigation Discovery is airing a one-off special looking at Samuel Little, who the FBI has described as America’s most prolific serial killer.

The now 80-year-old Little claims he has committed a shocking 93 murders; he says he strangled them between 1970 and 2005. So far, the FBI has confirmed 50 of these murders, but analysts believe that “all of his confessions are credible.”

Little committed these murders in numerous locations and multiple states across the country, but most of the murders happened in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 90s. It is thought he got away with it for so long because the victims were mostly marginalized women who had fallen through the social cracks.

The victims were mostly African-American women who were engaged in sex work and suffered from drug addiction. Many of the deaths were classed as drug overdoses or as accidental deaths at the time they occurred. The victims were often homeless, and their bodies were unidentified; tragically, for the most part, no one reported these women as missing.

DNA evidence led to Stuart Little’s downfall

Little was arrested in 2012 at a homeless shelter in Louisville, Kentucky, and extradited to California to face a narcotics charge in Los Angeles. When the authorities in LA ran his DNA through a database, they discovered he was linked to three murders in the city from the late 1980s.

In September 2014, Little was finally found guilty in the murders of Carol Elford, Guadalupe Duarte Apodaca, and Audrey Everett. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

However, it was after these convictions that officers and agents began linking Little to numerous other deaths. When the Texas Rangers questioned him about a murder in their state, they found him willing to confess.

Since then, he made the astonishing claim of being responsible for up to 93 murders. The FBI has vowed to continue investigating each one of Little’s confessions so they can identify victims and “provide closure and justice for the victims’ families in the remaining unsolved cases.”

Apart from the murders, Little had a long and varied criminal record, including breaking and entering, shoplifting, attempted rape, and assault. By the time he was 35, he’d been arrested 26 times in eleven states.

More from Investigation Discovery

Follow the links to read about more serial killers profiled on ID.

Jeffrey Dahmer, aka The Milwaukee Cannibal, murdered and dismembered at least seventeen young men between 1978 and 1991. He would strangle them before having sex with their corpses and would keep body parts as souvenirs.

Ted Bundy murdered somewhere between 30 and 100 people in multiple states across the country. He would use his charm and charisma to lure young women to their deaths. Just like Dahmer, he would also keep body parts as souvenirs and liked to have sex with his victim’s corpses.

The 93 Victims of Samuel Little airs at 9/8c on Investigation Discovery.