Ep. 98-Samuel Little: The Most Prolific Serial Killer You've Never Heard Of

Link of Samuel Littles FBI Confessions:

https://youtu.be/LxDWPik6IZ0?si=C9r6Jo7H6YyrB_vy

A low roll of thunder, a quiet cup of tea, and a chilling truth: the most prolific serial killer recognized by the FBI isn’t a household name. We dig into the life and crimes of Samuel Little, tracing how four decades of disappearances went unconnected while a predator learned to move, adapt, and hide in plain sight. It’s a story about mobility, bias, and the devastating cost of being ignored.

We walk through Little’s unstable early years, the drift from state to state, and a rap sheet packed with violent arrests that somehow never stopped him. Then we follow the break: a 2012 drug arrest in Kentucky that triggered a DNA match to cold cases in Los Angeles, leading to a life sentence and a new phase of investigation. The turning point comes with Texas Ranger James Holland, whose low-pressure conversations unlocked more than 650 hours of confessions. Little described 93 murders across 19 states with granular detail—locations, earrings, hairstyles—and sketched portraits from memory that helped identify Jane Does who had been nameless for decades.

Beyond the facts, we wrestle with the larger question: was Little invisible, or were his victims unseen? We examine how strangulation left few traces, how jurisdictional silos and cultural bias hid patterns, and how modern tools like DNA databases and VICAP coordination can finally align evidence with accountability. You’ll hear about survivors, confirmed cases, and the painstaking work of returning names to the lost, reminding us that justice is also about memory.

If this story challenges how you think about safety, policing, and who gets believed, you’re in the right place. Listen, share with a friend who follows true crime with a critical eye, and tell us what you think. Subscribe for more deep dives, leave a review to help others find the show, and email your thoughts or case suggestions—let’s keep this conversation going.

Sources:

FBI Press Release — “FBI Confirms Samuel Little Is Most Prolific Serial Killer in U.S. History”
• Author: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Critical Incident Response Group
• Date Published: October 6, 2019
🔗 https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-confirms-samuel-little-is-most-prolific-serial-killer-in-us-history 

FBI Story/Profile — “Samuel Little: Confessions of a Killer”
• Author: Federal Bureau of Investigation (ViCAP story)
• Date Published: October 6, 2019 (updated story)
🔗 https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/samuel-little-most-prolific-serial-killer-in-us-history-100619 

FBI Report (2019) — “Confessions of a Killer” (PDF from DOJ/FBI)
• Author: FBI / U.S. Department of Justice
• Date Updated: 2019 (recently archived or published documents continue referencing it)
• Details: National overview of confirmed vs. unconfirmed confessions, timeline, public call for help identifying victims.
🔗 https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/the-fbi-story-2019-web.pdf/view 

Transcript

Setting The Scene In A Storm

SPEAKER_01 0:00

There are killers who want attention. And then there are killers who just keep going. For nearly forty years, women disappeared across the United States, different cities, different decades, and no one connected the dots. This is Hold My Sweet Tea. And I'm Pearl. And it's sprinkling. It it is. And it's it's thundering a little bit, and we have some ambiance this morning.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Yeah. So if you hear it, oops. That's okay. It just adds to the to the aesthetic. Right. What's a true crime podcast without rain?

unknown 1:21

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

All of the the nature soundtrack.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Um it's gotta be better than the leaf blower. Yeah. So you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

The day we kept having to stop and go.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Yeah, just so I could cut it.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Can you go away? Right. Quit getting so close to this to this room. Yeah. It's been winter and warm, and today it's storming, and tomorrow it's gonna be frigid. Finally, again.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

It's been like a couple weeks. It's been like since Christmas. Welcome to the south. This is our weather. Stupid. Right. It doesn't know what it wants to do.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Not at all. But you know, we're gonna turn your ears with some some knowledge here.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

And you just said like last on my episode that we were gonna go all over the United States. We are.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

So we're gonna hit a lot of weather all over the place with this one. It does end in Kentucky. Okay. Starts in Georgia. Oh, so it starts and ends over here. But you know, he was he was everywhere.

unknown 2:35

Okay.

Introducing Samuel Little

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Even New Orleans, but uh I'm not gonna touch on all of them because there's 93. Oh, yeah. Dang, 93. So we okay, so if you think about the FBI, and they said this is the most, and and this is straight from the FBI, the most prolific serial killer in United States history. What pops in your head?

SPEAKER_02 3:03

All the popular ones because they say it all the time.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Everybody's the most prolific. Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

And you're like, oh, but maybe it was this one, maybe it was that one. No, it's someone you probably haven't heard of. His name is Samuel Little. Yep. Nope. Can't say that. Doesn't ring a bell. Not ringing any bells. So we're gonna we're gonna kind of set the scene with um, I wanted to play some audio clip, but I just there were so many of them, I couldn't pinpoint one down. So I'm just gonna read this part, you know, and once he was arrested and things progressed, they started just talking to him and just sitting across from him, no handcuffs, no raised voices, no interrogation, just a casual conversation. Yeah, and he started telling things. They made him comfortable. He would say, I remember her smile, not a smile, but her smile. And that's when you realize it wasn't about the people he killed, it was about how long he carried them with him. He never let it go. So it was all like he would think back to it and he would relive it in his mind.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

So basically, his his brain kind of works like mine. Yeah. If I forget something, I will literally sit there and close my eyes and go, okay, I did this and this and this. And then I can start like it plays like a movie in my head. Yeah. And then I'll remember exactly what something looked like, exactly what it smelled like, exactly what I heard during that moment. Pretty much weird. Pretty much I'm weird. Sorry, guys.

Early Life And Drift Across States

SPEAKER_01 5:00

No, you could be a serial killer, it's fine. I am a cancer. But you know, today's episode's a little different from the the regular serial killers you you hear of. It isn't one crime scene, it isn't one city, it isn't one decade. It spreads out quietly over decades. And the longer you sit with it, the heavier it gets. Like it's it's crazy when I tell you some of the stuff. So let's start in the beginning. Samuel Little. He was born in 1940 in Reynolds, Georgia. His mother was still a teenager. She was also a sex worker. She, you know, didn't want to give up that life, but she also didn't want this baby. So she, you know, early on, she abandoned him. Um he went around for a few family members here and there. And then eventually he um his grandmother took him and raised him in Ohio. No consistent care, like in his early, early years, though. But then you're thinking, like, oh, here we go, another mommy issue, like type thing. But I don't think trauma doesn't really create a serial killer. I think it's the conditions where the violence takes root. Because you have a lot of people that have been traumatized in their childhood, but they're not out here killing people. Killing people. Yeah. So I think it it really depends on the situation. Because I mean, they they pop that in there with every serial killer. Oh, mommy issues. This thing, this thing happened. He was sad, this, yeah. He was created to be a serial killer, but I think, you know, he struggled in school, he dropped out early, and by his late teens, like violence had already rooted in his his story, in his growing up.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

Well, I'm sure a lot of like survival on his part. Right. Because he wasn't really being taught. Yeah. He's not being properly raised. Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

So he was just doing his own.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

He's just being kind of passed around.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

And by the time he, you know, hit adulthood, still, you know, pretty much a child, but hit adulthood, he started drifting from city to city, state to state, because mobility makes patterns disappear. So if you're just going drifting from here to here, they're not connecting.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

Yeah, especially like back in the day. Right. When there wasn't like any technology stuff, yeah. Like there wasn't no sharing of any of this stuff, not at all. Which made it so much easier to do something wrong one place and move somewhere else and do it again, and nobody know the wiser.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Right. And this is pretty much how he lived his life. So by the 1960s and 70s, Samuel Little had already been arrested multiple times. And not for minor things like violent assaults, battery, rape, over 25 arrests. Not for minor stuff. And he's still free. Twenty-five. Like let that sink in. And he's still free. Right. Crazy. But charges were dropped, sentences were short, victims weren't believed because back then a woman was asking for it. It was her fault. Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:02

She I mean, sometimes they still say that.

Targets On The Margins

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Oh, and it still says, Yeah, they still say that. But like back then they just dismissed it. It wasn't a felony charge. So like they had so many chances to interrupt the stuff that was coming. And it just didn't happen. So Samuel Little primarily targeted women already living on the margins, sex workers. Which you can see, that's where the mommy thing comes in because he was mad. Women struggling with addiction, women without stable housing. So he he preyed on those.

SPEAKER_02 9:50

Um the easy targets basically because they're vulnerable. They're easy to manipulate.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

And like one of the victims was Mary Brosley. She was killed in Los Angeles in 1985. Another, Carol Alford, found dead in Houston. And many were discovered years later, but were never identified. They were just Jane Doe's because they really couldn't figure out who did it. And DNA wasn't a thing. And their deaths were just kind of dismissed as oh, it was an overdose, it was an accident, unknown cause. I mean, she's a sex worker, it's not worth it to even check. And they weren't in the headlines because they weren't, it's like, oh, they don't matter. They're less lesser of a person. Right. But they have people that care about them. They have lives, they have routines that they do.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Unless their families were pushing it, there was like really nothing done.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

And a lot of times nobody was. Nobody even knew. Right. Like they've been missing. So things took a turn. In 2012, Samuel Little was arrested in Kentucky on a drug charge. He had been arrested on drug charges before. He was released before, you know, 25 damn times. Yeah. Just a routine. At least. Whatever. Here's another drug charge, whatever. But this time in 2012, the state of Kentucky started taking DNA from prisoner or for people that were processed in. Right. Yeah, like dun dun dun. This DNA links him to three unsolved murders in Los Angeles from the 1980s.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Just Los Angeles.

System Failures And Missed Chances

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Just Los Angeles. Okay. Just because they ran it through a database, those were those were pinged and hit. Three women. All three were cold cases. You know, they they had no evidence, nothing. They had collected DNA, but nothing.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

That they held on to, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Right. And suddenly, like all of these decades of him doing stuff just started collapsing. You know, it's like dominoes. Right. It just started falling. So in 2014, Samuel Little was sentenced to life without parole, three counts, um, consecutive counts of murder. So he gets three charges in a row. So most people would think, okay, that's the end. They're, you know, they're not going to do anything, whatever. When you say that's the end, yeah. I get Janet Jackson in my head. Right. That's the end. That's the end. But after his conviction, the FBI's VICAP program steps in. And one man becomes like central to his story. And this kind of reminds me of Mindhunter, you know, okay a little bit. Because they they just kind of go in and have conversations. And this they're like, why'd you do it? Trying to understand what makes a killer. Yes. And you know, this man, his name is James Holland. He's a Texas Ranger. You know, he went in and had some Texas Ranger. He went in and had some conversations with Samuel Little. He figured out how to talk to him. No pressure, no threats. Um, he appealed to Samuel Little's ego. And I I say that because Samuel Little was a Gemini. Oh. And we all know some Geminis and their egos.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

Well, and I'm gonna say Geminis. I feel like there's so many tight-lipped serial killers. Yeah. But if you find a way to connect, right. You find that little point. You find that way to just get them to let you in. Yeah. And the floodgates open because they want to tell you. Oh, they want to tell someone. And just maybe not you, but they want to tell someone.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

They want to say they want their story to be heard. And James Holland also would get letters from Samuel Little. He would write him letters and write things down that he would remember and you know, to his house. He was sending him letters. So he he was like, I need to get out as much as I can from him. So, like I said, he and no hate to Gemini's. I was almost won by I missed it by two days. Bullet dodged. Bullet dodged. He had a desire to be heard, though. So they offered him something small but meaningful. Um, they told him they would transfer him closer to medical care because he had some issues and things like that. In exchange, he talked. Over 650 hours worth of interviews. Ooh, we and I'm going to link the FBI's files on him to this episode. There is video after video after video of him. And when you listen to some of them, it's insane because he talks very matter-of-factly. Um like lack of emotion? Yeah, kind of, and but his confessions like stretched across 19 different states in a span of four decades. 93 confessions, and you're thinking, you're killing people. How do you keep up with that many people? But like you said, you go into this place where you can see that. He had that. He also liked to draw, so they gave him some paper, some colored pencils, and things like that. He drew pictures of his victims from memory, their faces, their hair, their expressions, earrings, little details about them. And when they started combing through these databases of Jane Doe's and and it's not like and like comparing, right? They're going, oh you're looking at this woman and you're looking at this drawing going, holy crap. Yeah, this is how does he remember this? Yeah, like it's exact. Like he took a photograph of that in his mind at the moment. Like, this is not a dumb man, he's very smart. But those those drawings helped identify a lot of women that had been nameless for like decades. And it's not like he was out there going, Oh, well, I did this, this, and this. He knew little details so they could go back and confirm.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

Which I feel like is what causes so much frustration when they're interviewing other ones because they're like, Come on, you remember.

2012 DNA Link And Arrest

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Right. And they're like, No, I don't remember anything. This man literally remembered 93 in detail. So the FBI has confirmed at least 50 of those murders, making Samuel Little one of the FBI's most prolific serial killers in U.S. history. Not because he was brilliant, which he was, because he wasn't challenged, because his victims weren't protected. And that realization is like the real horror. So they they worked with him, they did lots and lots of interviews, like I said, and in 2020, in December 30th of 2020, um, Samuel Little died in prison. His official cause of death, um, I don't think they released it, but I think it was just due to he was 80 years old. Okay. And he had some issues. And like prior to his terms in state prison, um, like I said, he had been arrested all these times. He never opened up, he never said anything to anybody, even when somebody tried to talk to him, because they went about it the wrong way.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

But there's still victims without names, there's families without answers, there's stories that are still unfinished in his case. There's a lot, and I I didn't want to go digging because I didn't want this to be a super long episode, but again, um I'll try to I'll go through and link a bunch of the names and a bunch of the videos. So you, you know, if you're interested in this case and you want to know more about him, you can go in and listen. So what I want to like put out there, do you think because of his situation and how he lived, do you think that made him invisible? Maybe so.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

Right. Or make him less suspicious somehow? Or were the victims he chose made him invisible? Yeah, I think it maybe it's a combo.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

I think so too.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Because yeah, I mean, like like we said, they they weren't important when it when they died, cops were just like, and a lot of these women he would pick up in a bar here and there.

Life Sentence And VICAP Steps In

SPEAKER_01 19:35

And they were just like, Oh, and they would see he drove a Lincoln and they were like, Oh, you have a nice car. Look at that Lincoln. And he would they take a ride with him. So he he was six foot two, six foot three, something like that. He was a big man, um, like solid big man. He had large hands, and I told you, he kind of reminded me of John Coff. From the Green Mile, a little bit. And maybe just not as simple and sweet. Right. He was smart and, you know, cunning. But most of his victims, he drowned one. He said there was only one that he drowned, and that was here in Louisiana. It was actually, he picked her up in a bar in New Orleans, and they drove through Slidell, and he drowned her. He left her upper body in the bayou and her legs sticking out on the sh on the bank. Like, but she was still submerged. Yeah. Like he laid her in there. But he like held her under and drowned her. But his mode of like killing, it didn't leave marks. He wasn't beating, he wasn't stabbing, he wasn't doing anything. I think because he preyed mostly on smaller women, like petite women, smaller women, he would strangle them. And because his hands were so big, he would put his hands around their throat, not really crushing their throat, but just cutting off their wind. And he would tell them to swallow because he liked to feel the way their muscles contracted and how their like their trachea and stuff moved while he was squeezing their neck. Oh wow. So yeah, like he had this whole and he he would notice about these women he always said he had this um fascination with their necks. When he was in school, his teacher had a nice neck, and he said that it would sexually arouse him in class because of her neck. And I'm like, he didn't have a foot fetish, he had a neck, neck fetish. So he would strangle these women, but he loved the feel of it. He loved the struggle and then like the way their necks would contract, and he would just hold it until they just passed out and died. Um, there is one woman that did get away from him. Her story is also out there, and I'll link her as well. But but what?

SPEAKER_02 22:18

Did no one believe her? Was she not able to describe him?

SPEAKER_01 22:22

What the heck? It was it was after the fact, so it was um once she saw the story that had come out. She realized she realized that is him because she reported it, but they never found this man, so they never knew who he was. Gotcha. Because again, he drifted to another state, but um she did get away, so it was crazy. Wow. Yeah. So one survivor. Yep. So if you've ever heard of Samuel Little, or you know, let us know. And like I said, do you think it he was invisible or was it the victims that are invisible or a combo of both?

SPEAKER_02 23:03

Well, I can tell you who isn't invisible. Who's that? Patty Salzetta. Absolutely not invisible. She is out there, she's out there living life, living La Vita Loca. And made our theme music. Absolutely. And we love her for it. Yeah. And you can send us emails answering Holly's questions. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Homework assignment again.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

Right. Hold my sweet tea podcast at gmail.com. And you can also message us on social media Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. Yep. We are still sitting at that 101 subscribers.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

I know. It's so exciting though. But I'm glad to be over a hundred. So yay! Yay, yay. So if you're thinking about it and you're like, you know what, they made it to 100, let's make that 200. Just go do it. Yeah. You can you could be your own goal maker. Absolutely help us out. And we hope you enjoyed this episode. If there's anything that you want to hear, or if you have any stories of your own that are not even true crime, creepy, whatever, or you want us to research and you want us to put out there, let us know.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

You want to come hang out and be on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

We'll let you. If it's if you got something cool, we're like, come on. Let's do it. So all those options. Yep. Balls in your court. The balls on the wall. Or the window. Or the window.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

And as always, hold my sweet tea as a drunken bee productions. You guys remember to stay safe out there. Don't get into anybody's Lincoln Town car. And just because we're dipping doesn't mean you can't keep sipping. Bye.