Samuel Little

Samuel Little (né McDowell; June 7, 1940 – December 30, 2020) was an American serial killer who confessed to murdering 93 women between 1970 and 2005. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) has confirmed Little's involvement in at least 60 of the 93 confessed murders, the largest number of confirmed victims for any serial killer in United States history. Early life Samuel Little was born as Samuel McDowell on June 7, 1940, in Reynolds, Georgia. Little claimed that his mother, Bessie Mae Little, was a teenage prostitute who had abandoned him; authorities believe that she might have given birth to him while she was in jail. The census from the year Little was born said Bessie Mae worked as a maid and that his father was 19-year-old Paul McDowell. Soon after his birth, Little's family moved to Lorain, Ohio, where he was brought up mainly by his grandmother. He attended Hawthorne Junior High School, where he had problems with discipline and achievement. By his own account, he began having sexual fantasies about strangling women as a child, starting when he saw his kindergarten teacher touch her neck; as a teenager, he collected true crime magazines depicting the choking of women. In 1956, after being convicted of breaking and entering into property in Omaha, Nebraska, Little was held in an institution for juvenile offenders. His mother was listed on the booking card as "whereabouts unknown." Little moved to Florida to live with his mother in the late 1960s, and, by his own account, he was working at various times as a cemetery worker and an ambulance attendant. He said he then "began traveling more widely and had more run-ins with the law," being arrested in eight states for crimes that included driving under the influence, fraud, shoplifting, solicitation, armed robbery, aggravated assault, and rape. Little claimed that he took up boxing during his time in prison, referring to himself as a former prizefighter. Crimes In 1961, Little was sentenced to three years in prison for breaking into a furniture store in Lorain; he was released in 1964. By 1975, he had been arrested 26 times in eleven states for crimes including theft, assault, attempted rape, fraud, and attacks on government officials.