The FBI says that Samuel Little is the most prolific serial killer in America, having confessed to 93 murders—all of them credible, according to the bureau.
The New York Times reported that the FBI is looking for help matching murders to several of his remaining unconfirmed confessions. Little killed women all over America, from Ohio to Miami and from Los Angeles to Mississippi, over the course of 45 years; local authorities have closed long-standing cold cases all over the country not through their relentless detective work, but because he was ready to talk. The why of his astonishingly high number of victims is chillingly simple: Little picked vulnerable, marginalized women that just weren’t a priority for the authorities. Via the Times:
Over 45 years, he targeted marginalized women, including prostitutes and drug users, the authorities say. Most of them were African-American. He often knew only their first names, or nicknames. The F.B.I. noted that many of the deaths of Mr. Little’s victims had originally been ruled as overdoses or from accidental or unknown causes. In other cases, the women went missing and their bodies were never found, but their cases drew little attention.
“For many years, Samuel Little believed he would not be caught because he thought no one was accounting for his victims,” said ViCAP Crime Analyst Christie Palazzolo. In many cases, their deaths weren’t even recorded as murders and instead were basically written off: “Many of his victims’ deaths, however, were originally ruled overdoses or attributed to accidental or undetermined causes,” the FBI announcement said. And it’s not like Little managed to wholly elude the cops all that time, either—he was arrested “dozens of times for crimes including armed robbery, rape and kidnapping,” but he was never convicted of murder, nor did he served more than ten years in prison until 2014.