LOS ANGELES — Samuel Little, America’s most prolific serial killer with nearly 60 confirmed victims, has died. He was 80.
Little, who had diabetes, heart trouble and other ailments, died Wednesday at a California hospital.
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Vicky Waters said there is no sign of foul play, and his cause of death will be determined by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Little was pronounced deceased at 4:53 a.m. at an outside hospital, the California corrections agency said in a news release.
A career criminal who had been in and out jail for decades, Little denied for years he’d ever killed anyone.
Then, in 2018, he opened up to Texas Ranger James Holland, who had been asked to question him about a killing it turned out Little didn’t commit. During approximately 700 hours of interviews, however, Little provided details of scores of slayings only the killer would know.
Authorities, who continue to investigate his claims, said they have confirmed nearly 60 killings and have no reason to doubt the others.
“Nothing he’s ever said has been proven to be wrong or false,” Holland told the CBS news magazine “60 Minutes” in 2019.
Little confessed to over 93 murders across the country, and the FBI confirmed him to be the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history, CDCR said in its news release. Most of the slayings took place in Florida and Southern California.
Little’s confirmed count of victims exceeded those of Green River killer Gary Ridgeway (49), John Gacy (33) and Ted Bundy (36).
In 2014 he was sentenced in Los Angeles to three life terms for strangling three women in the 1980s.
They were:
- Carol Alford, 41, whose body was found July 13, 1987, in an alley off East 27th Street
- Audrey Nelson, 35, whose body was discovered in a dumpster behind East Seventh Street on Aug. 14, 1989
- Guadalupe Apodaca, 46, whose body was found inside a South Los Angeles commercial garage on Sept. 3, 1989
Local authorities in states across the country initially classified many of the deaths as accidents, drug overdoses or the result of unknown causes. Little strangled most of his victims, usually soon after meeting them during chance encounters. He drowned one, a woman he met at a nightclub in 1982.
A transient who traveled the country when he wasn’t in jail for larceny, assault, drugs or other crimes, Little said he started killing in Miami on New Year’s Eve 1970.
“It was like drugs,” he told Holland. “I came to like it.”
His last killing was in 2005, he said, in Tupelo, Mississippi. He also killed people in Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Kentucky, Nevada, Arkansas and other states.
Kentucky authorities finally caught up with him in 2012 after he was arrested on drug charges and his DNA linked him to three California killings.
Daily News staff writer Quinn Wilson contributed to this story.
