A 78-year-old murderer who claims to have killed 90 people was found guilty in a 1994 Texas murder cold case Thursday.
From Daily Caller:
Samuel Little has been in prison for life since 2014 for three murders in the Los Angeles area. He was given another life sentence for the murder of Denise Christie Brothers in Odessa, Texas, Thursday.
Little surprised investigators when he started talking in the spring of 2018 and confessed a multitude of murders, which would rank him among the deadliest serial killers in U.S. history. He’s in poor health and wanted to use the confessions to move prisons.
Little pleaded guilty to Brothers’ murder to avoid the death penalty, reported CBS 7.
Brothers’s family issued the following statement after Little’s guilty plea according to CBS 7:
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all Law Enforcement agencies involved in bringing closure to the death of Denise. Not knowing what happened to our mother for over 24 years has certainly created a void in our lives. It is a shame that our grandparents, her parents, did not live to get the same closure and to see justice served. I hope the other victims’ families finally get the answers they deserve. We appreciate the efforts of everyone working on this case and for respecting our privacy
Brothers was 38 when she was strangled. Her body wasn’t found for a month after her disappearance, according to the Dallas Morning News.
The Texas case was the breakthrough that brought Little’s avalanche of murder confessions, some of which dated back to 1970, he said. The FBI tied him to Brothers’ murder using DNA, and Texas Ranger James Holland traveled to California to interview Little. Representatives from the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP), which connected Little to the Texas case, assisted Holland.
“Over the course of that interview in May,” ViCAP analyst Christina Palazzolo said. according to the FBI. “[Little] went through city and state and gave Ranger Holland the number of people he killed in each place. Jackson, Mississippi — one; Cincinnati, Ohio — one; Phoenix, Arizona — three; Las Vegas, Nevada — one.”
The FBI published an online map with details of all of the murders Little claims to be responsible for, from southern California to northeast Ohio. More than 40 of the murders have been confirmed as of Thursday, reported CBS 7.
Little was convicted of the three murders that landed him in jail years after he committed them. Los Angeles Police Department detectives traced him via DNA evidence to the murders of three women between 1987 and 1989 in that area.
Little’s modus operandi was the same in all three cases. A former competitive boxer, Little beat and strangled the women and left their bodies in an alley, a dumpster and a garage, according to the FBI. The crimes were likely sexual in nature.
