The Drifter’s Darkness: Samuel Little's Reign of Terror (Part 1)

Step into the chilling depths of the true crime world with Heather, Bree, and Mike, your Partners in Crime (PICs). In this gripping Season 2 premiere, we unravel the haunting life of Samuel Little, America's most prolific serial killer. From a childhood steeped in poverty and abandonment to a four-decade killing spree that left nearly 100 victims in his wake, this episode delves into the chilling psychology and twisted path of a man who evaded justice for decades.

Uncover the overlooked stories of his victims, explore the broken systems that allowed him to operate undetected, and hear the confessions that left FBI agents horrified and astounded. Join us for a deep dive into the life, crimes, and legacy of a predator like no other—this is just the beginning of the story.

Prepare yourself for the unsettling, the unbelievable, and the tragic. Subscribe now to never miss an episode of The P.I.C. Chronicles!

Transcript

Sam Little 1 (00:00)
Hello listeners, we hope that you've all had a wonderful and safe holiday. We want to say welcome to Season 2, Episode 1, Sam Little.

When police arrested the elderly man in the assisted living facility for the murder of four women in the 1980s, no one knew that this frail man was in fact America's most prolific serial killer. Samuel Little didn't just kill four women, no. By the time they caught up with him, he'd retired from a 35-year-long killing spree that left behind 60 proven murders. Or 93 deaths, if you believe Little's own confessions.

The FBI believes that Little's telling the truth of that number. Because Little, besides having a photographic memory, also never gave authorities any reason to believe that he had lied at all. One after another, Little admitted to killing women missing for decades. He recalled their names and ages, told them about birthmarks and injuries that were never released to the public. And he pointed out graves that no one knew existed.

Little was the real deal, and the more he spoke, the more horrified they became. How it was possible that Little was operating for nearly four decades, killing almost a hundred people, and no one even knew that there was a serial killer on the loose. And to make matters worse, Little could have been caught dozens of times, yet the system, broken and easy to manipulate, seemed to let this vagrant drifter fall through the cracks.

every single time. Welcome back to the PIC True Crime Podcast. I'm Heather. I'm Bree

And I'm Mike, strap in for a long one, folks. Heather's got a stack of papers in front of us that I haven't seen the likes of before.

Yeah, this is next level, Mom. What gives?

Well, I've been aware of Samuel Little for a while, but I could never really seem to get my hands on a podcast, documentary, or book or anything that really covers his life from beginning to end. And it bugged me. Little's quite literally the most prolific serial killer in all of the United States.

And for a country that produces serial killers like it's a branded product, we sure like to do deep dives into the most vicious killers to come out of the country. But not little. He's mentioned a lot, but not with great detail. His early life, with 35 years he operated, it's all kind of blank. So people just skate over it and skip over to his arrest and his confessions.

Now, you know, I always like to start at the beginning, looking for early trauma, injuries, abandonment, something to explain why a killer would go on to do what they did. And the more I dug, the worse it got. It's incredibly difficult to piece his life together because he virtually lived in his car. Little was a hobo who lived on the road, making money by selling stolen goods out of his trunk.

I've never had to research a person who traveled as much as he did. He traveled more in his lifetime than most truck drivers did. No wonder authorities took so long to figure out he was as dangerous as he was. No matter how many arrests and close shaves he got, he was never arrested in the same state or county twice. There were no databases run by computers to raise any alarm.

and the prostitutes and addicts that he targeted certainly weren't given a second look that they deserved. Back then, everybody that was found was just another streetwalker who didn't deserve their resources. I just had to do this justice, not just for us crime junkies who like the whole story. I needed to do it for the 93 victims, most of whom don't even have names, who are still forgotten today.

Samuel Little's been living rent-free in my head for the last several weeks, and I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm really glad to finally get this story out from beginning to end. He's a different kind of monster, let me tell you that. Yeah, I know what you mean. I haven't been as creeped out in a while. Watching the interviews with this guy is jarring, just bizarre. He's this chipper old guy who could be my grandfather. Happily chatting away about killing countless women.

like he's reminiscing about the good old days.

yeah, with killers like Ted Bundy, Chickatillo, or Gacy, there's no doubt that there's a mad animal beneath the surface.

Bundy and Gacy bounced around with their stories, actively trying to push their own narrative with their interviews with lies and larger than life tales. They had this, I don't know, just an air about them that gave you the creeps, like they could snap at any minute.

But Little is just this relaxed dude, almost cheerful. I had

trouble connecting that old timer character to a murderer. Very strange.

And the research was just as unusual. For a guy who single-handedly killed more people in his lifetime than anyone else in the United States, there's very little information about him out there. You'd think that a killer that nearly tops 100 murders would have psychiatrists, researchers, and detectives combing through his life like they would go over a crime scene. But his formative years are extremely vague and barely any experts took the time to study him.

It's a real shame though. There could have really been a lot to learn about a man like this. Back to Ted Bundy, he's been analyzed more than any other killer in history probably, and it's changed the way we view psychopaths, childhood trauma, and how unreformable these kinds of killers really are. But at least what little we do know can be looked at now. Shall we start at the beginning?

Don't we always? Heather wouldn't have it any other way, that's for sure. Stickler for the timeline, aren't you? Hey, the devil's in the details, and you can't find the devil if you take it from the middle. But you guys at home are going to have to bear with us here. Not only are you going to notice a lot of dates that can't be pinned down and long stretches where there's just no information at all, but there's also the fact that Samuel Little was a late bloomer.

His first known killing happened when he was around 30 or slightly older. So like I said, just bear with us here.

The beginning starts with Bessie Mae Little, Samuel Little's mother. All we know about her is that she was a teenager when her son was born on June 7th, 1940. It's unclear how old she was exactly, but she most likely would've been older than 16 at the very least because her occupation was listed as being a maid.

The 50s weren't exactly great about adhering to child labor laws, especially not when it came to the African American community in the United States.

The end of segregation was still 14 years away, so Bessie wouldn't have had the easiest childhood or the clearest one. As was common among Black Americans of the day,

There was no birth certificate, or much of a record about her life really. From what little has been stitched together, the occupation she listed wasn't how she was really making a living. Bessie was a sex worker and it's suggested that she was arrested sometime at the end of her pregnancy and gave birth to Samuel in prison.

There's no paperwork to prove this, but that's unfortunately the reality of the 50s.

She must have been allowed to keep her son with her because when she was released she had custody of her newborn baby. wow, that's unusual. He wasn't taken in by social services? There's no record of that either, but she definitely had her son with her because she abandoned him on the side of the road and completely disappeared off the face of the earth. Or the remainder of his childhood.

just left him there. Police at least had his birth records to go off of and from them they learned that Bessie had stated that Samuel's father was a 19 year old by the name of

Paul McDowel Neither parent bothered to collect their son so Samuel McDowel went to live with his maternal grandmother in Lorain, Ohio and his last name from that point on was referred to as Little. We know nothing about his grandmother except that they were terribly poor. We don't even know her name.

Luckily though Lorain was a small place so we at least got some idea of what kind of kid Little was. His problem started early on.

According to him, the kids made fun of him for his old, ill-fitting clothes and how poor they were, especially the girls. Samuel would later say that even though he hated them for their incessant teasing, he also wanted them.

Even in kindergarten, the line between hate and sexual attraction blurred together. Samuel didn't just want them in the broad sense, he wanted their necks.

He was fascinated by his teacher's and classmates' throats. He was fixated on that specific body part since he was five years old.

His earliest memory was of his school teacher rubbing the back of her neck, like you would if you'd been hunching over a bunch of toddlers all day. Soon, he wasn't just staring at women and girls' necks, he was fantasizing about putting his tiny hands around them too.

He was convinced that the girls on the playground were intentionally touching their throats to taunt him, like they were teasing him to give in to his desires.

How is this kid at the age of five already fixated on a body part, developing an MO if you will? That is a very early age to start with obsessive fantasies.

Ted Bundy started ranging knives around his aunt's bed while she slept at the same age. I guess it's one of those cases where the true nature of the beast comes out early. But there were no mentions of head trauma or abuse from the grandmother. Anything that could have triggered this? Instability during childhood comes up a lot when you research him, but nothing specific to indicate what exactly. He was too young to remember his mother, though

I'd assume the sting of her abandonment would have haunted him. Then there's the fact that Samuel grew up in difficult circumstances.

Their financial hardships, they moved around a lot and they didn't always have enough to provide food, housing, heat. Things were tough. Maybe that explains what he would later become.

Unfortunately, outside of some reports of his behavior at school and what Samuel himself later confessed to, there isn't much more than theories to go off of.

Besides the fantasies and imagined tauntings around the women's neck you mean?

Samuel struggled in school academically, but as we'll later learn, he was no dummy.

Intelligence or a learning disability definitely wasn't the reason for his poor grades. He just couldn't focus and he didn't see the point of putting in any effort. He was an avid reader though, just not if the material came in the form of textbook.

time he started his formal education, grades 1 and up, his obsession with just looking at girls necks had graduated to fantasies about strangling them to death. By the time he was 8 or 9, his fantasies already had a mixture of sex and physical violence to it. How and why he put those two things together at such a young age is anyone's guess. When he reached his teens, he developed another obsession.

reading crime magazines. He practically devoured as many as he could get his hands on. He specifically sought out stories that included strangulation, and this is also where, according to him, his resentment of his mother's abandonment turned into a hatred of women, especially those in sex work. Outwardly, however, Samuel seemed pretty average during his formative years.

Besides barely scraping by academically, are no signs of violence towards others, fights or any other obvious unusual behavior. Except what's going on in his head, of course.

Keeping his demons hidden from the world kind of became his superpower. Most serial killers are in many ways incapable of controlling their urges, but Samuel had learned early on that his inner thoughts were not like others, and he made an art of hiding his true self from the rest of the world. He started avoiding looking at people's faces and necks, especially those that belonged to his family and friends.

Later Little stated that he loved them and did not want that urge to strangle them to overcome him and cause them any harm. Here two interesting distinctions come into play. For one, he was starting to separate certain women out of this fear of being human beings. Like prostitutes? Prostitutes, drug addicts. These women just weren't quite as tangible as real as others.

They didn't matter much. They were lesser and therefore deserving of his rage. The second thing was that he started to fine tune his preferences around necks. It was a full blown fetish. He only got excited around women who sported graceful necks, thin with smooth, unblemished skin. and listen to this. Remember, I'm quoting Little's later interviews here. So these are his words. She couldn't be fat.

because the fat one's next is just too much.

good god, it's like he's referring to a pig at an auction. But I guess it's like any fetish. If you don't get it, you just don't get it. Liking a good looking foot or a smooth neck is a fetish. Wanting to snap that neck is something else completely different.

Whatever it was, he was keeping secret in that sick little head of his. He wasn't completely keeping his nose clean.

In his teens, Samuel began to commit petty crimes more frequently, and he upgraded from reading murder magazines to masturbating to illustrations of corpses, especially if they were women who had been strangled. What the hell kind of magazines were they selling back then? Illustrations of dead people?

They were super popular at the time. Writers and illustrators used these magazines as their platform to get published. I came across a lot of them when we were researching the Black Dolly Motor. They were pretty gruesome and not all of it was drawn. Every other page you'd get a photograph of models acting out the poses of being stabbed, strangled, a couple fighting, sort of like a more human way to write a comic. Very visually violent.

People love them. The Mills and Boon of the crime junkie world?

That's a very accurate way to explain it. There was even an element of eroticism to them. Back to Little though, when he was 14, he was caught stealing a bicycle, charged with the crime, and sent to reform school for 18 months in 1954. When I heard that the first time, I just about fell out of my chair. A year and a half just for stealing a bike? That's pretty rough.

Bicycles aren't a big deal today, but back then it was still a major form of transportation. There was more value to it. And he'd been committing petty thefts for a while by that time. So it was probably just the final straw to a lot of smaller crimes culminating in a bigger sentence. Unfortunately, the boys industrial school was an even darker place than any corner of Samuel's mind ever was. The boys grew their own food.

sewed their own clothes, and learned skills that would hopefully mold them into skilled adults who would be able to contribute to society. Sounds like the perfect place to send troubled kids, right? Well, I mean, this was the 50s. I'm guessing it was a pretty grim place.

Putting the horror of that place into words is rough. The children were segregated by race because, well, it was the 50s. They were beaten by the staff for infractions and there were bizarre degrading punishments cooked up for them.

Even the most minor offenses were treated like a crime with a full court appearance complete with judge and witnesses. They could add days, months, or even years to your sentence if the children tried to escape. They were forced periods of silence

And every instance of paddling was witnessed by no less than three adults at a time. This place was set up and run like a prison in every way, just with some manual labor sprinkled in there. So much so that when it closed down in 1980, it was converted to a medium security prison at minimal cost. The more senior boys were put in charge of the younger kids in the new recruits. Here's where it gets really grim.

There were so many cases of sodomy against children by children that it was just automatically added to their so-called court system. If a perpetrator was found guilty of the rape, he'd be charged with six extra months. I need to ask, did Samuel commit those offenses or was he the victim of them? He admitted to being a victim of those crimes, not committing them against others.

The reform school is where he learned to rely on his colossal size to stand up for himself. At 14, he was already as tall as most adult men, broad shoulders and very sturdy. If he bothered with high school, there's no doubt that he would have been on the football field bulldozing through every one.

In the system, he was the top dog, big muscles and big brains.

He might not have been really great at maths,

But he sure had street smarts and he used his natural talents to assert his dominance over all of the other budding little criminals. And we do need to remember, this was 54, reform school was as bad as adult prison. There were no psychiatrists and barely any supervision.

They just threw a bunch of kids into a concrete and iron cage and made sure that not too many of them killed each other. Samuel was tough before, but it was nothing compared to what he was when he walked out a year and a half later. Whatever assault Samuel suffered, he didn't have to suffer them for long. Though we can't say if he turned around to do the same thing to other children as was done to him, but it doesn't look like he did.

He never bothered to go back to school when he got out. When he was released at the age of 15, Samuel's family didn't bother to come pick him up. Instead, he rode the bus to his hometown alone at the age of 15. His grandparents had begun to beat him for his misbehavior.

Or should we say that they called Paul McDowel, Samuel's biological father, to administer the beatings? Samuel was always told that Paul was his half sibling, but another half sibling told Samuel the truth about who Paul was. Samuel lost his mind when he heard the news and stormed at his grandparents. His grandfather hit him with a poker, a few punches were thrown,

And the fight ended when Samuel put his grandfather into a headlock, nearly killing him. The grandmother begged and cried for Samuel to let go before her husband died. And luckily, Samuel did let go just in time, but the damage was done. This facade that he'd been living behind was too much of a betrayal for him to get over.

And here, Samuel started spending the rest of his life as a transient traveler, never staying in one place longer than a few months and only stopping by his grandparents' house for a quick, unannounced visit. Unless the law caught up to him, that is. Just six months after his release, he was arrested in Omaha, Nebraska for breaking and entering. Now, aged 16 and with a record already behind him, he was sentenced to juvie again, this time for four years.

He was released at the age of 20, returned home to Lorain only to be arrested again shortly after his 21st birthday for breaking into a furniture store. Since he was legally an adult, it was time for Samuel to serve his time in big boy prison. And a big boy he was. Samuel had grown into a six foot tall giant with a face out of a Western movie. Chiseled, handsome and dark, Samuel could catch any girl's eye.

You'd never guess that he was the hardened criminal when you look at his pictures.

He served his three years behind bars, learned some new tricks to evade capture and more brutal tactics to get his way before stepping out into the world again. A seasoned career criminal when he was released at the age of 24. While he was locked up, Samuel took up boxing. He later referred to himself as a prize fighter and this wasn't just a big ego talking. His natural strength and quick reflexes were very impressive.

Seriously, this guy was strong. He had hands the size of dinner plates and a grip that could break your fingers in a handshake if he wanted to.

Violence was the way of hardened criminals and at 21 Samuel knew better than most men twice his age. Several important things happened in this prison that would shape Samuel into a very unusual and frightening character. First, he had a prison boyfriend during his three years there. Boyfriend is a strong word though. He called the man Betty and commanded everyone else to call him Betty too.

We'll get back to Samuel's sexuality a little later, but keep in mind this liaison with Betty proves that Samuel wasn't too strict about his gender preferences. According to Samuel, when he was released at the age of 24, he was still a virgin. When it came to women, at least. His sexual experience had always been with men.

The earlier experiences were the assaults against him as a young teen, and the later ones were assaults he'd committed against others, though there were a few consensual relationships behind bars too. Here, Samuel learned to draw from another fellow inmate, a hobby he kept up with until his death. Samuel also received a letter from his biological mother, who was then living in Miami, and the two wrote to each other every now and then from this point.

But it's not like they ever got close or spent a lot of time together. Samuel was put into contact with a few boxing clubs and he genuinely had a shot of training under the professionals for a second there. Maybe his life would have turned out differently if he could have just had an outlet for his rage.

I highly doubt that, but we can hope though. Anyway, my turn.

on

to Little's first years as an adult on the outside. Upon that release he tried working in a factory and even got married for two years, two receptionists that worked at the same factory. Little says that his wedding night was the first time he was intimate with a woman. In the brief two year marriage, Little could only reach a climax if he imagined choking his wife, and since he couldn't act on that compulsion, only imagine it.

He soon lost interest in sharing a bed with her at all.

The first official instance of assault against a woman came during his first year of marriage.

He attacked a barmaid who'd invited Little to her house around Christmas time. Mind you, he did not sexually assault or kill her. But he did punch her and choke her before fleeing the scene. Before the police could catch up with him, he loaded his wife and dog into the car and fled to Miami where he met up with his mother for the first time since he was a baby.

Unfortunately, Bessie Little had become a very deranged and unstable woman and raging alcoholic on top of that.

Take a sip of water, this is about to get dark guys. Initially, Bessie welcomed her son into the boarding house that she ran, gave him and her daughter-in-law a room and bragged about what a big and strapping young man he'd become. A few weeks into their stay, Samuel discovered that his mother had drilled a spy hole through the wall to watch the couple.

Bessie invited him to her room and attempted to seduce her own son. What kind of hillbilly hell is this?

They didn't have intercourse, but let's just say they did engage in incestuous... activities.

Eww. Eww doesn't do it justice. I had to read that statement. It was just a hideous thing to read. Little likes to paint a picture. He really doesn't hold back on the details.

I don't even want to know. Rather you than me. Thank you very much.

Luckily Samuel was out of there less than two months after arriving.

He'd attacked one of his mother's drunk friends when the woman insulted his wife's looks. He beat and choked the woman right there in the kitchen. When he saw her terrified face and realized how much it roused him, Samuel let her go, packed his wife and dog into the car again and fled the scene. Samuel later said that he was afraid of what he wanted to do and that

The fear in the woman's eyes combined with the strangulation was the most erotic thing he'd ever experienced in his 25 years on this earth.

Shortly after that, the police arrested Little for the assault on the barmaid, but since she'd willingly invited him into her house and lied to police that he'd broken into assault her, the case was thrown out and Little walked free. It was too late to save his marriage though,

In the time that he was awaiting trial, his wife had filed for divorce and left the state. Little was on the loose again. Between the years of 57 and 75, Little was arrested 26 times in 11 different states. His charges ranged from theft to assault, fraud, attacks on government officials, and shoplifting.

He served time here and there, usually not longer than a few months at a time. And he even had a charge of attempted rape against him somewhere during those years. So he was definitely escalating. How is he not getting more than a few months though? I mean, back when he was a kid, he was put away for three years for breaking into a furniture store. But now it's like he's just getting a slap on the wrist and turned loose again. Attacking a government official isn't a small crime either.

That should be getting some serious time. How's he getting away with all of it?

He's hopping states, that's why. Little was known for selling stolen goods out of the back of his car to get by. His home and transport revolved around what he was driving at the time. Nothing was permanent. If he wasn't sleeping in his car, he hung out at crack houses, cheap motels, or he'd sleep over at temporary girlfriends' They were usually involved in drugs or the sex trade, so they didn't exactly have the most stable lives or living arrangements either.

Little was a pretty pleasant guy on the outside. Talking himself into a temporary living arrangement with people who lived a lot like him wasn't hard. As you can probably tell, Little was practically a ghost as far as records went. So every time he got arrested and released, he'd skip to the next place where he'd fall in with others like him and just rinse and repeat it all over again.

We're talking about a time where records weren't electronic, so courts and stations only had their own files to go off of. Since Little spent as much time in jail as he did outside, the sequence of events is very hard to piece together. His mugshots are wild, let me tell you. He had more booking pictures of him than...

any other photos of his regular life. In one he's wearing a nice suit with a combed and well-kept mustache and in another he's not even wearing a shirt and looking like he was on a four-day bender with a bunch of frat boys. Most people who met him described him as charming and well, nice. But he definitely had a temper on him. When he did get angry he went

right back to his prison boxing days. And a guy that size? Well, let's just say that there weren't a lot of people willing to even try to take on a guy that big.

In 66, he tried to rob a liquor store, but the owner shot him five times. Samuel survived and spent a few weeks in the hospital, only to be whisked away to serve another four-year sentence to armed robbery. The state of Virginia wasn't aware of his previous charges. Otherwise, he definitely would have gotten life for attempting to rob a store with a weapon.

slipped through the cracks again, Yep, another Princeton sentence came and went without anyone putting the pieces together for what an enormous record Samuel Little already had. He even got out early for good behavior. When Samuel was 28, he walked out into the world again and right back to the boarding house where his mother and her madness awaited to welcome him into her world of insanity.

For two years, he worked as a garbage man and kept a relatively low profile, but he never really let go of that fixation on women's necks.

Wait a minute, he's living with Bessie? What was that like for two years? About as insane as you'd imagine. His mother tried incessantly to break into his bedroom, and on the occasions that she succeeded, she'd undress and get into bed next to him.

Sorry. Never mind, forget I even asked. Samuel insists that they never slept together, not that Bessie didn't try. She gave him booze in an attempt to get him too drunk to resist and tried to guilt him into it if seduction didn't work, but he swears he never caved. I'm not going to take a serial killer's word for that. Why else would he put up with this sick relationship for two whole years?

Police and the FBI believe that Little is telling the truth or told the truth. In all of his confessions, every single one of them, he didn't seem to lie. He was truthful about being assaulted by the other boys in juvie and prison. He was honest about his inadequacies in the bedroom with his wife and subsequent girlfriends. He had more reason to keep his reputation in check by lying, given the masculine driven prison system. Yet he didn't.

I think the experts were right. Little's accounts of his life were accurate, or at least as accurate as he could recall. And his memory was second to none, as we'll find out later. But we're getting a bit off track. Bree, will you take Little from the age of 30?

In 1970, when Little was 30 years old, all those fantasies about choking someone to death were about to crawl out from the dark little box he tried to bury them in.

Little met 33 year old Mary Jo Brosley in a bar in Miami at New Year's party on December 31st, 1970. Together the two disappeared into the night, presumably because Little paid for her, shall we say, services. Little drove deep into the Everglades until Mary fell asleep. When she woke up, Little had his hands around her neck.

Little went deep into the details during his confessions.

and I'm going to go over some of them now to avoid doing it again and again later. They all almost play out in exactly the same way. Little did not sexually assault Mary, but he did put his mouth against hers as she died from asphyxiation. When Mary breathed her last breath,

Little was sure that she was a part of him now, that he possessed her inside of him. He spoke to her corpse professing his love for her and even kissed her. Little returned the next day with a shovel and buried the body, but he did a terrible job of it. Mary's foot was still exposed and an alligator came by in the days after and bit it off. Which was actually a good thing for Mary.

brutally murdered, creeped on after death, and now desecrated by a wild animal. How is that good for Mary? Well, the alligator discarded her leg and a hiker found it. If it weren't for that, she probably never would have been found out there. It took searchers weeks to find the body,

But at least she got to have a proper burial. Sadly, Mary was a long time alcoholic and estranged from her family. She hadn't seen her seven year old son in years. There was no one who would have reported her missing and no one seemed to care. Mary just became another addict who got what was coming to her. If Little didn't admit to the murders years later of his own accord,

There would have never been any justice for Mary's murder, and she still would just be another unmarked grave destined to stay that way forever.

The floodgates were open. Little finally found the thing that satisfied the cravings that he had.

The floodgates were open. Little finally found the thing that satisfied the cravings that had haunted him since he was five years old. And there was no stopping him now. In 1971, he killed five more people in Miami.

Some of them included an unidentified woman who was of Cuban descent, two women of African descent, neither of whom have been identified or found, and he ended the year by killing a transgender woman who went by the name Marianne.

All of them were driven away from the city and into the swamps with the agreement of exchanging sexual favors for money. Littlewood punched them out with a single strike, strangled them to death, and spent a few minutes talking to their corpses.

After that, he dragged them into the closest body of water for the alligators to finish them off for him. Besides Mary, his first murder the other five, have never been found or identified.

These are purely from Little's later confessions. At the beginning of 72, Little was arrested for robbing a gas station with his on-again-off-again girlfriend at the time, a woman named Lucy Madero. They were caught and placed in holding to await their trial. So, to set the scene, the prison that Lucy and Little were being held in was a hellhole that I can't even put into words.

It was supposed to be a temporary holding place for criminals awaiting trial,

So men and women were kept on the same premises, but still segregated from one another.

The place was in such a deplorable condition, the prisoners communicated with each other through holes in the walls because the place was falling apart so much. There were roaches and rats and the toilets were in a constant state of overflowing. Lucy kind of got forgotten about in the midst of that mess. She was stuck inside the cell for s-

She was stuck inside the same cell for six months awaiting a trial that seemed like it was never going to come. Her offenses were minor in comparison to Little's so she was probably just not as much of an emergent case.

At one point, Lucy shared her cell with another woman named orelia Jean Dorsey, whom everyone just called Jean. Jean had a history of shoplifting, robbery, and other petty crimes, but it's not clear what crimes she was in for while she bunked with Lucy.

The two became friends and Lucy told Jean about her plans to testify against her boyfriend, Samuel Little, hoping to get released early or, at the very least, that her time served would be shaved off her sentence. Lucy was probably desperate to get out and afraid that the system would just forget about her for a few months more. Jean Dorsey was the wrong person to open up to though.

She sent messages to Little through the walls and the other prisoners about Lucy's plans and this allowed him and his lawyer to prepare counter arguments to Lucy's claims. Thanks to Jean's information, Little was able to get away with the assault charge and only served three years for the robbery. Why exactly Jean felt drawn to a man she only knew about through a secondary source is anyone's guess, but that would be the start.

of the only serious relationship outside of his grandmother that little ever took seriously.

Jean was much older than Little, by 30 years. She was already 60 years old when they started dating and they stayed together until her death. That's a huge gap. mean, was he in older women as well as sexy neck flesh?

Or he was replacing his creepy mother, because Jean didn't fit his victim profile at all. She was overweight, a senior citizen, and not a prostitute. But that's probably why he could love her, if you can call it love. She didn't have the physical attributes that the predator inside was drawn to, so he couldn't objectify her into prey. Whatever his true feelings were for her,

Jean, at least, was completely and utterly devoted to him. Their favorite pastime was to shoplift together and Little would later say that she was better at it than anyone he'd ever known. It wasn't all sunshine and daisies though. Little definitely liked to panel beat his girlfriends before and Jean was no different. She suffered the brunt of his anger frequently, but still she stayed

and she was usually an accomplice during his various petty crimes. Jean was the only person the little ever really admired, respected even. In every interview, you'll notice he skates over his other family members and acquaintances, not really paying their poets in his life much mind,

But Jean, well he spoke about her as if he's reminiscing about his time with her. If Samuel ever loved anyone, it was Jean.

Many speculate that she was a sort of surrogate mother to him, just like we did. Some of their accomplices during that time,

Temporary liaisons with other criminals and petty thieves said that Little frequented prostitutes a lot,

But he was always careful to keep his downlances on the downlow because Jean was the jealous type.

Their travels around the country, stealing electronics and cigarettes and odds and ends to sell out of their car, is also where Little fine tuned his M.O. He was already a vagrant traveler who didn't spend more than a few weeks in a place before he met Jean but together they traveled farther than he'd ever traveled before.

They went as far north as Ohio, all the way down to Florida and Texas and whatever lay in between. Before we move on, there is one instance in 71 that needs to be mentioned.

Little was arrested late that year for attempted rape again in Miami. We don't know about what transpired or who the victim was, but he was found guilty and served time for the crime. He was out in less than a year. What? Just a couple months for attempted rape? Hold on, let's refresh. How old was Little in 1971 when the assault took place? 31.

And just like you're thinking, he was expecting to get caught any time. Little was of the same mind as us that there was no way that he was going to be able to continue getting away with crimes and now murders for much longer. I mean, he wasn't doing a whole lot to cover up his crimes besides discarding of some of the women in alligator infested waters. All of the other bodies were left where the assault took place without any effort to clean up the body or the scene.

He didn't even bother cleaning up his car afterwards. He was going to ride this train as fast and as hard as luck would allow him to.

So, he started the year of 1972 with a slew of killings that he didn't even bother covering up at all. Even though he hunted and killed in new and unfamiliar places every time, he had an uncanny recall of where each murder took place when he was interviewed decades later.

He remembered locations, names of victims, and faces.

Especially the faces, but stitching he and Jean's travels together was difficult, even for investigators. Since he focused on prostitutes and addicts, most of his victims weren't noticed by their families or the authorities as being missing at all. The first murder that we know of in 1972 was an unidentified white woman that was killed in the same vicinity that he had killed Mary Jo Brosley.

After that, he killed two more women that he claimed were called Linda and Sarah. Then another African-American woman, presumed to be in her late 20s. None of them have been found or identified. The only victim of 72 that was reported missing was a young nurse named Karen O'Donoghue. She was institutionalized in Florida for mental disorder that was never specified.

After she was discharged, lured her out of a bar and killed her and left her in the swamps. Her body was never found either, but police were able to stitch Little's timeline and whereabouts to her disappearance. This confession was also the one that alerted FBI all those years later to the fact that Little wasn't just full of tall tales. There was a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest

that he did lure O'Donoghue away like he said he did. After that confession, every single other admittance from Little was taken very seriously.

There was a cool down period where between late 72 and early 73, there's one source that claimed that Little and Jean went back to Bessie Little and opened up an eating establishment. Apparently Bessie did not appreciate her son bringing home a woman that was even older than she was. And

By the end of the year that they lived with her, Bessie's drinking finally caught up with her and she died of liver failure in April of 1973.

Why keep going back to that hellhole? Little's life jumps from one insane occurrence to the next.

You'd think that now that he'd found Jean that he'd get away from abusive grandparents and his crazy incestuous mother and carve out some sense of normalcy for a change. Except that he's killed about a dozen women by now. I mean, there's no coming back from that, And that's true. He's gone too far by this point to know what normal looks like anymore. I'm not sure that he ever experienced it in his entire life.

And for all of that, their relationship was complicated.

That's the understatement of the year. He took it pretty hard. When he got back from the hospital where she'd died, wasn't sad enough for Little's taste. Not surprising since the two women hated each other anyway. This led to a massive fight and Little completely lost his mind. He beat Jean so badly that he broke two of her ribs, busted her lip and nose,

And it took half the neighborhood to get him off of her before he killed her. Little jumped in his car and drove off before police could get there. He drove for 12 hours, finally coming to a stop in New Orleans. He decided to pick up his killings long before he arrived. Less than an hour after he got there, Little spotted a 39-year-old, Sarah Brown, a waitress waiting at

at a bus stop after her shift had ended and tried to lure her into his car. When Sarah refused, Little got out and forcibly kidnapped her. He drove them out of the city, but this time he didn't just strangle his victim to death in fit of rage, he wanted to extend her suffering for as long as possible.

Little would strangle Sarah until she came to the brink of unconsciousness before letting go, only to allow her to catch her breath and do it all over again. He kept this up for nearly an hour until Sarah convinced him to let her out of the car and leave herself outside.

The moment she got out, Sarah, only wearing a shirt, tried to run, but Little caught up to her and finally killed her in the field. He drove away without bothering to hide the body. The only thing ever found of Sarah Brown was her purse. That was found next to the bus stop where she was inducted from. Was any of his victims ever found? Surely he can't have this much luck. And what's his victim count by now?

From Little's later confessions, we know that he killed between 15 and 20 women by the end of 74. And yes, most of them were never found or even reported missing. Sarah Brown and Karen O'Donohue were the only ones that were actively looked for. The others all had histories of disappearing for long periods of time, addiction, and they generally lived dangerous lives already.

There is something unique about Little's killing style that's going to become apparent when police eventually start actually finding bodies. But we're not there yet. Back to the years of 73 and 74. After killing Sarah Brown, Little drove for a few days until he reached Georgia. In Macon, a small town, he met a woman named Nina. Nina was mentally disabled and very timid.

Instead of killing her like he planned on doing, Little began to date Nina instead. what, I mean he's done with Jean altogether? Sort of. We really need the theme song to play when she says that, you know? Oh please, you're making it worse. Go ahead, Miss Sort of. What fresh hell did Little put poor Nina through? Well, hell is good description of what Nina endured.

She was submissive and easy to control. Someone Little could dominate and degrade without any resistance. He physically abused Nina often and eventually started turning her out onto the street to earn money for them. So Little added the title of pimp to his list of offenses against humanity. At least this torment of a mentally challenged woman kept him occupied for the rest of the year and he took another hiatus from killing.

They traveled across no less than six states in six months, and probably more, until they reached Nebraska in November of 73. Nina went out to walk the streets as Little commanded her to, and while she worked, if you can call it that, Little waited for her at a local bar. There he met 34-year-old mother of seven, Agatha White.

Buffalo. Agatha was new in town, having recently fled from her abusive husband. Her children were in the care of relatives while she looked for work in the city, and two of her girlfriends took her out for drinks to cheer her up. Unfortunately, little could sniff out vulnerable women better than the detectives who'd failed to find the bodies of his victims. He convinced Agatha to come home with him. Her friends begged her not to go.

because their spidey senses were telling them that this guy was very bad news. Agatha, however, didn't listen and got into Little's car anyway. Little drove out of town and into the woods.

later said that Agatha never fought back, feeding into his new delusion that the woman he chose wanted to die, that they were drawn to him because they had a death wish.

And he was just the vessel through which they could be relieved of their misery.

Okay, at least this victim had to have been noted, right? The mother of seven goes off with a stranger? I mean, come on! Yes, Agatha was reported missing, and her body was discovered inside an old oil drum two weeks later behind a closed-down distillery on the outskirts of town. Her case went cold, but the description of little given by her two friends remained in the file until it was unearthed years later. A few months later, the couple

arrived in Harlem, New York. Nina went out to the corners again and Little hungered down in a bar while he waited for her to return. One evening, he got to talking with a soldier who was off duty from the naval base. Apparently, Little found the guy to his liking, and this time he was the one to agree to be taken home. When they got to the soldier's apartment, the two started getting intimate.

But Little's instinct to combine sex with violence and death was now such a natural thing to do that he immediately tried to strangle the man. Which was a big mistake. This was a soldier, trained in combat and at the height of his fitness. A fight broke out and at one point the soldier bit down on Little's index finger, taking the top clean off.

Good. Please tell me this guy beat the living daylights out of him. He sure did. Little was not used to someone getting the upper hand in an altercation with him. Even with his size and background in boxing, he was no match for this military man. Especially not when he was as drunk as a skunk, too. Little got the finger stitched up at the ER drove away from New York

with Nina in tow that very night. This incident is noteworthy for three reasons. First, Little was not limited to women. Exactly. The transgender victim, Mary Ann, could have counted as a mistake. She was very feminine and extremely pretty. So the assumption is made that Little just assumed she was a biological woman and acted in a fit of rage when he found out that that was not the case. But the soldier was

clearly a man and a masculine one at that. Secondly, this would be the last time that Little attempted to attack a biological male that presented as a male.

There are more cases of transgender women crossing Little's path, but he never took the chance of taking a guy who could possibly get the upper hand after that incident. And thirdly, we'd never have known about this if Little didn't confess to it years later. They were able to confirm this incident those emergency room records. Again, this is the kind of

thing hanging over little's head that was not something a guy who knew prison and prison politics as well as he did would have wanted to get out.

So he had more to lose by admitting to it than he would have if he just kept quiet. More proof that he's not a liar. Precisely. Little wasn't great always about dates or names, but he had an excellent recall about the events and where they took place, particularly when it came to his victims' faces. During his later interviews, he drew them with a scary amount of accuracy. He was no Da Vinci, but

Even with his almost abstract style, there's still no mistaking how scarily accurate his sketches were when you compare them to the actual victim. I had a look at the drawings side by side with the victim's photos. It's wild how he captured them, down to the beauty spots and scars. When you look at the sketch on its own, it's like a talented middle schooler made it in art class.

but when you put it by the actual photo, it kind of blows your mind at how good he really was at portraits, even after all those years he didn't miss a detail. It's more than the small details though,

He captured the essence of the women he killed. They didn't look like doodles, they felt real. Human. This isn't something that can be put into words. You guys at home really need to look up his drawings and compare them to the real victims. It's actually kind of amazing how well he drew them. But we're getting off topic again. Back to 74.

Little and Nina drove to Maine where Little was arrested for punching an officer when they caught the two engaging in some carnal activities in Little's car. Instead of taking this case to court, Little was sent to work in a prison house for a few weeks. Another slap on the wrist. Barely a flick if you ask me. Little completely...

Little completed his mock sentence and called up Jean.

The two had been in contact with each other every now and then after he nearly killed her a year or two before. She let him know that she'd moved to Los Angeles and invited him to come visit her. After he nearly kills you? I mean that's very concerning. More concerning than the fact that he took Nina with him? On their way to California, they drove through Ohio where Little picked up another prostitute.

All we know about her is that she was of African American descent and that he killed her and left her body in an open field.

We've been going by the assumption that the women in Little's life, the ones he dated, I mean, weren't aware that he was a serial killer. But Nina was with him on this road trip. Did she know what was going on?

Little did state that he thought she suspected him, but he was very assertive that she was never involved in any of the murders. But if the description of her is anything to go by, even if Nina knew what was going on, it's unlikely that she'd have tried to stop him or go to the police. And before you judge Nina too harshly, she was mentally disabled and lived a life of abuse and exploitation. Nina was probably as much of a victim as the murder victims were.

Unfortunately, as we're about to find out, Nina almost certainly saw something during her time with no matter what he'd convinced himself of. The road trip to see Jean in Los Angeles was an odd one. Little went from Maine to Ohio, then they went through Nevada and kept going until they reached Arizona.

It's like Little was intentionally trying to take as long of a route as possible. When they stopped in Arizona, he killed a single mother, 22 year old Linda Belcher. Little did not dispose of Linda in his usual fashion. Instead, he dumped her body in the middle of the city where she was found on the side of the road just hours later.

At the time, her death was attributed to an accidental fall. How the hell do you go from an obvious strangulation to a fall?

Well, it wasn't obvious. Remember when I said that Little had an unusual way of killing his victims? Uh-huh.

yeah, what's he doing we don't know about yet. He didn't even know what he was doing was something unusual. Little's hands were huge, like the size of dinner plates. When he wrapped his fingers around someone's neck, it enveloped them completely. Think about the difference in the width between a rubber band and a pillowcase. If you or I tried to strangle someone... I'd rather not imagine it, but go on.

Well, our thumbs would meet in the front of the throat, crossing over each other.

This places a lot of focused pressure on the hyoid bone, the thin little bone just beneath the chin.

It doesn't take a lot to break it, and that's usually how strangulation is proven during autopsies when there isn't bruising around the neck. Now, Little's hands were so big and wide that his dispersion of pressure prevented bruising from forming. And he was tall. He'd be towering over these women, strangling them from an angle where he's probably looking down at them, meaning that the pressure he applied went in the downward direction too.

So his hands were not under the chin, but instead it bore down on the victim's shoulders.

So he didn't break that bone and left little to no bruising? Bingo. Leaving no indication of strangulation on the body.

It still makes me mad that coroners are writing off a cause of death based on a theory instead of evidence.

Luckily you can't legally do that anymore these days. But at least we have an idea of why he got away with so many murders.

It's not like he sexually assaulted them, so seminal fluid wouldn't have been left behind to hint at some other altercation before death. That's not strictly true. Little did masturbate during these attacks, and he left plenty of DNA behind. Lots of the women were prostitutes, and quite frankly, they could have picked it up during the night's work. The 70s had no DNA databases or the technology to run any samples outside of blood type matching.

But I'm still glad it came up because it is what eventually leads to his arrest. For now, we're still at the tail end of 74 and Little is on his way to see his old girlfriend, who'd apparently forgiven him for nearly beating her to death. But we'll have to hear the rest next week. Little is just getting started and I'm afraid that we've run out of time today. I'm kind of relieved to be honest. This has been a wild ride so far.

I can't imagine hearing a few decades more of this madness. I need an antacid and a good few days to process it all. have a feeling we're going to need to decompress before diving into this pile again. He's a different kind of monster of that, I'm sure.

Thank you for joining me and my PICs, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and we will see you next time with more True Crime.