WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.459 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I have to be honest 00:00:02.459 --> 00:00:05.200 with you, looking at the stack of documents we 00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:08.179 have on the desk today, the FBI VICAP reports, 00:00:08.500 --> 00:00:11.980 the court transcripts from the early 80s, the 00:00:11.980 --> 00:00:14.300 biography, I'm having a hard time reconciling 00:00:14.300 --> 00:00:16.780 two things. Which two things? The sheer volume 00:00:16.780 --> 00:00:19.620 of the violence we are about to discuss and the 00:00:19.620 --> 00:00:22.780 silence, the total silence that surrounded it 00:00:22.780 --> 00:00:25.679 for so long. We are looking at a subject today. 00:00:26.250 --> 00:00:32.189 Who confessed to 93 murders. 93. 93. It's a number 00:00:32.189 --> 00:00:34.390 that doesn't even feel real. It doesn't. And 00:00:34.390 --> 00:00:36.509 usually when you hear a number like that or even 00:00:36.509 --> 00:00:38.689 like a fraction of that number, you associate 00:00:38.689 --> 00:00:41.250 it with immediate infamy. You think of Ted Bundy. 00:00:41.250 --> 00:00:42.929 You think of Jeffrey Dahmer. Right. They take 00:00:42.929 --> 00:00:44.890 up all the oxygen in the room. They do. They 00:00:44.890 --> 00:00:47.229 become these like cultural caricatures almost 00:00:47.229 --> 00:00:49.770 immediately. Yeah. Instantly recognizable. Exactly. 00:00:49.810 --> 00:00:52.649 But the man we are talking about today, Samuel 00:00:52.649 --> 00:00:57.189 Little, operated for 35 years. From 1970 all 00:00:57.189 --> 00:00:59.850 the way to 2005. And for the vast majority of 00:00:59.850 --> 00:01:02.090 that time, he was essentially invisible. To the 00:01:02.090 --> 00:01:05.489 public, yeah. So the mission for this deep dive 00:01:05.489 --> 00:01:07.890 isn't just to stare at the number 93 and be shocked. 00:01:08.030 --> 00:01:10.989 It's to figure out the mechanism. The mechanism 00:01:10.989 --> 00:01:13.170 is the right word. Yeah. Because this isn't a 00:01:13.170 --> 00:01:18.530 ghost story. It's a mechanical failure. A failure 00:01:18.530 --> 00:01:21.230 of the justice system. Right. How does a guy 00:01:21.230 --> 00:01:24.340 drive across America? Killing essentially at 00:01:24.340 --> 00:01:26.700 will, getting arrested repeatedly, and we're 00:01:26.700 --> 00:01:28.980 talking arrests in nearly every region of the 00:01:28.980 --> 00:01:31.480 country. Again and again. And yet never gets 00:01:31.480 --> 00:01:33.819 stopped. How does he manage to slip through the 00:01:33.819 --> 00:01:36.459 cracks time and time again? It's a valid question, 00:01:36.599 --> 00:01:39.079 and I think the answer is it's really uncomfortable. 00:01:39.850 --> 00:01:41.909 It's not that Samuel Little was some kind of 00:01:41.909 --> 00:01:44.469 criminal mastermind. No. He wasn't digging tunnels. 00:01:44.549 --> 00:01:46.730 He wasn't wearing elaborate disguises. And he 00:01:46.730 --> 00:01:48.909 wasn't taunting the police with cryptic letters 00:01:48.909 --> 00:01:51.390 like the Zodiac. He was actually quite brazen. 00:01:51.469 --> 00:01:53.670 So the reason he succeeded for so long, it says 00:01:53.670 --> 00:01:56.290 less about his genius. And more about the blind 00:01:56.290 --> 00:01:59.129 spots in our society, in our systems. That's 00:01:59.129 --> 00:02:01.590 the angle I want to really drill down into, the 00:02:01.590 --> 00:02:04.189 systemic failure angle. Because when you look 00:02:04.189 --> 00:02:06.469 at the sources, he wasn't hiding in a cabin in 00:02:06.469 --> 00:02:09.340 the woods. He was in the system. He was. And 00:02:09.340 --> 00:02:12.479 he even had aliases. He was known as the choke 00:02:12.479 --> 00:02:15.460 and stroke killer in certain circles. Horrifying 00:02:15.460 --> 00:02:18.780 name. Or on the other hand, simply Mr. Sam. Mr. 00:02:18.919 --> 00:02:22.039 Sam. It sounds so deceptively neighborly, doesn't 00:02:22.039 --> 00:02:23.580 it? It does. It sounds like the guy who runs 00:02:23.580 --> 00:02:25.560 the corner store. Yeah. But then you have the 00:02:25.560 --> 00:02:28.240 choke and stroke, which is just about as graphic 00:02:28.240 --> 00:02:30.580 and disturbing an alias as I've ever heard. It's 00:02:30.580 --> 00:02:33.800 descriptive, to say the least. It is. And understanding 00:02:33.800 --> 00:02:35.960 the duality of those names, the brutality of 00:02:35.960 --> 00:02:38.280 the act versus the, you know, the banality of 00:02:38.280 --> 00:02:40.960 the man is really key to understanding this whole 00:02:40.960 --> 00:02:43.300 case. So we have a lot to get through. We're 00:02:43.300 --> 00:02:45.280 going to look at his biography, the specific 00:02:45.280 --> 00:02:48.219 timeline of his crimes, the media coverage by 00:02:48.219 --> 00:02:49.919 journalists like Jillian Lauren, who actually 00:02:49.919 --> 00:02:52.400 sat down with him, and the eventual involvement 00:02:52.400 --> 00:02:55.280 of the Texas Rangers. It's a huge timeline. It 00:02:55.280 --> 00:02:57.460 is. But before we get to the arrest, we have 00:02:57.460 --> 00:03:00.090 to start with the man himself. We have to understand 00:03:00.090 --> 00:03:02.729 the hardware we're dealing with. So let's wind 00:03:02.729 --> 00:03:05.270 the clock back to the very beginning. It starts 00:03:05.270 --> 00:03:08.750 in Reynolds, Georgia, in 1940. Samuel Little 00:03:08.750 --> 00:03:12.210 was born Samuel McDowell on June 7th. And right 00:03:12.210 --> 00:03:14.469 from the jump, the stability just isn't there. 00:03:14.669 --> 00:03:18.530 No. His mother, Bessie May, was very young. The 00:03:18.530 --> 00:03:21.009 census records list her as a maid, but Little 00:03:21.009 --> 00:03:23.490 himself, he later described her as a lady of 00:03:23.490 --> 00:03:25.669 the night. Right. And there's this story he told 00:03:25.669 --> 00:03:29.099 about his birth, or, uh... more accurately, the 00:03:29.099 --> 00:03:31.199 days shortly after. This is the one that's hard 00:03:31.199 --> 00:03:33.780 to verify. It is. He claims she abandoned him 00:03:33.780 --> 00:03:36.020 on the side of a dirt road. Just left him there. 00:03:36.120 --> 00:03:38.460 Wow. Now, we have to be careful with Little's 00:03:38.460 --> 00:03:40.780 narration of his own life because serial killers 00:03:40.780 --> 00:03:43.280 are notoriously unreliable narrators. Of course. 00:03:43.599 --> 00:03:45.819 So whether that specific roadside detail is true 00:03:45.819 --> 00:03:49.280 or a memory he invented to justify his anger 00:03:49.280 --> 00:03:51.900 later on, the feeling of abandonment was real. 00:03:52.060 --> 00:03:54.159 That trauma was the foundation. And he ends up 00:03:54.159 --> 00:03:56.500 in Lorain, Ohio, right? Raised mainly by his 00:03:56.500 --> 00:03:58.729 grandmother. Correct. And looking at the school 00:03:58.729 --> 00:04:04.189 records on paper, he looks, well, regular. He 00:04:04.189 --> 00:04:06.530 attends Hawthorne Junior High School. He's not 00:04:06.530 --> 00:04:08.629 living in a cave. He's interacting with other 00:04:08.629 --> 00:04:10.789 kids. He's functioning. He's functioning. He 00:04:10.789 --> 00:04:12.710 has an exterior life that looks somewhat average. 00:04:13.449 --> 00:04:17.629 But his interior life, that was already taking 00:04:17.629 --> 00:04:20.149 a very dark turn. And this is where we see the 00:04:20.149 --> 00:04:23.089 seed of the crimes, as psychologists might call 00:04:23.089 --> 00:04:25.949 it. Exactly. Little gave an account of a specific 00:04:25.949 --> 00:04:28.240 incident in kindergarten. This part stood out 00:04:28.240 --> 00:04:31.819 to me as being so specific and yet so, so strange. 00:04:31.879 --> 00:04:33.639 He's what, five or six years old? Right around 00:04:33.639 --> 00:04:36.019 that age. Maybe even younger. And he talks about 00:04:36.019 --> 00:04:40.220 a teacher touching her neck. Yes. For most children, 00:04:40.339 --> 00:04:43.519 that is a non -event. A teacher adjusting her 00:04:43.519 --> 00:04:45.939 collar, maybe checking her pulse, or just resting 00:04:45.939 --> 00:04:48.019 her hand there in thought. A gesture you wouldn't 00:04:48.019 --> 00:04:50.319 even notice. You wouldn't think twice. But for 00:04:50.319 --> 00:04:53.100 Little, that visual, a woman's hand on her neck. 00:04:53.629 --> 00:04:55.829 It triggered something. It wasn't just a memory. 00:04:55.949 --> 00:04:58.569 It was a trigger. It triggered a sexual fantasy. 00:04:59.170 --> 00:05:02.110 And it wasn't a benign fantasy. It was a fantasy 00:05:02.110 --> 00:05:05.470 specifically about strangulation. Psychologists 00:05:05.470 --> 00:05:08.449 call this imprinting. It's when a specific image 00:05:08.449 --> 00:05:11.269 or action gets locked into the brain's arousal 00:05:11.269 --> 00:05:13.629 center at a critical developmental stage. At 00:05:13.629 --> 00:05:15.550 five years old, I mean, that seems incredibly 00:05:15.550 --> 00:05:18.509 early for that kind of specific violent association. 00:05:19.209 --> 00:05:22.129 It is early. But that's what makes him so dangerous 00:05:22.129 --> 00:05:24.110 later on. Yeah. This wasn't a learned behavior 00:05:24.110 --> 00:05:26.250 from a movie or something he saw on the street. 00:05:26.290 --> 00:05:29.050 Not initially. It felt innate to him. It was 00:05:29.050 --> 00:05:31.430 just there. It was there. And by the time he's 00:05:31.430 --> 00:05:33.649 a teenager, the wiring is set. He's looking at 00:05:33.649 --> 00:05:35.709 normal magazines. He's hunting down detective 00:05:35.709 --> 00:05:38.350 magazines. Crime magazines. Yes. But he's not 00:05:38.350 --> 00:05:40.550 reading the articles to solve the mystery. He 00:05:40.550 --> 00:05:43.509 was specifically hunting for stories and illustrations 00:05:43.509 --> 00:05:46.470 that depicted the strangulation of women. He 00:05:46.470 --> 00:05:49.149 was feeding the fixation. He was curating a mental 00:05:49.149 --> 00:05:51.629 library of violence long before he ever laid 00:05:51.629 --> 00:05:53.569 a hand on a victim. So he's just reinforcing 00:05:53.569 --> 00:05:55.850 those neural pathways. Every time he looks at 00:05:55.850 --> 00:05:58.509 those images, he's strengthening the connection 00:05:58.509 --> 00:06:01.649 between strangulation and gratification. Exactly. 00:06:01.810 --> 00:06:04.769 And then he adds the physical component, the 00:06:04.769 --> 00:06:07.329 boxing. This was the part that clicked for me 00:06:07.329 --> 00:06:09.670 regarding how he got away with it for so long. 00:06:09.790 --> 00:06:12.149 He wasn't just a brawler. He actually trained, 00:06:12.310 --> 00:06:15.480 right? He did. In 1956, he's convicted of breaking 00:06:15.480 --> 00:06:18.199 and entering in Omaha, Nebraska and sent to a 00:06:18.199 --> 00:06:21.220 juvenile institution. It's in these institutions 00:06:21.220 --> 00:06:23.860 and later in prisons that he takes up boxing. 00:06:24.019 --> 00:06:26.220 He even called himself a former prize fighter 00:06:26.220 --> 00:06:28.540 later in life. He did. He was part of his persona. 00:06:28.800 --> 00:06:31.139 Was he actually a professional or was that just 00:06:31.139 --> 00:06:33.600 talk? That's debatable. I think it's mostly talk. 00:06:33.839 --> 00:06:36.220 But whether he was fighting for titles is totally 00:06:36.220 --> 00:06:38.660 irrelevant. What matters is that he learned the 00:06:38.660 --> 00:06:41.120 mechanics of the punch. He learned how to throw 00:06:41.120 --> 00:06:43.220 a punch with enough leverage and accuracy to 00:06:43.220 --> 00:06:45.720 knock someone out cold. And that detail, the 00:06:45.720 --> 00:06:47.819 ability to knock someone out cold, is going to 00:06:47.819 --> 00:06:50.040 explain so much about the crime scenes later. 00:06:50.240 --> 00:06:52.680 Because if I get into a fight with someone and 00:06:52.680 --> 00:06:55.040 we are struggling, there is going to be evidence. 00:06:55.399 --> 00:06:57.779 There will be DNA under fingernails from scratching. 00:06:58.079 --> 00:07:00.100 There will be defensive wounds on the arms. There 00:07:00.100 --> 00:07:02.019 will be noise screaming, furniture breaking, 00:07:02.279 --> 00:07:04.949 a whole mess. But if he walks up to someone and 00:07:04.949 --> 00:07:07.470 knocks them unconscious with one clean shot? 00:07:07.709 --> 00:07:10.209 They are dead weight. There is no struggle. No 00:07:10.209 --> 00:07:13.290 defensive wounds. No screaming. And this brings 00:07:13.290 --> 00:07:16.029 us right to the modus operandi. This specific 00:07:16.029 --> 00:07:19.250 skill set allowed him to control the entire interaction 00:07:19.250 --> 00:07:22.360 from the very first second. So we have the predator 00:07:22.360 --> 00:07:25.100 built. We have the fantasy strangulation. We 00:07:25.100 --> 00:07:27.360 have the skill set, the knockout punch. And we 00:07:27.360 --> 00:07:30.259 have the lifestyle. He's transient. Moving from 00:07:30.259 --> 00:07:33.360 Florida to Ohio to California. He's all over 00:07:33.360 --> 00:07:35.379 the map. Now we have to look at the victims. 00:07:35.399 --> 00:07:37.420 You mentioned earlier that he wasn't a genius, 00:07:37.500 --> 00:07:41.420 but he was selective. He was ruthless in his 00:07:41.420 --> 00:07:45.000 selection. Yeah. And deeply cynical. Little targeted 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:47.379 women who he believed society wouldn't miss. 00:07:47.579 --> 00:07:50.420 He targeted sex workers, women struggling with 00:07:50.420 --> 00:07:53.079 severe substance abuse, and homeless individuals. 00:07:53.459 --> 00:07:55.519 He actually said that, didn't he? I recall reading 00:07:55.519 --> 00:07:57.279 a quote where he said he thought they would leave 00:07:57.279 --> 00:07:59.860 fewer clues. He did. He was very candid about 00:07:59.860 --> 00:08:01.899 it after his confession. He said he believed 00:08:01.899 --> 00:08:04.040 that because of their lifestyles, fewer people 00:08:04.040 --> 00:08:06.160 would search for them and police wouldn't invest 00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:09.180 the same resources. And this is the hardest pill 00:08:09.180 --> 00:08:12.660 to swallow. He was technically correct. He was. 00:08:12.699 --> 00:08:15.500 It's... Horrible, but he was right. That is the 00:08:15.500 --> 00:08:18.139 tragedy of what criminologists call the less 00:08:18.139 --> 00:08:21.300 dead. It's a horrible term, but it describes 00:08:21.300 --> 00:08:23.540 how law enforcement and the media prioritize 00:08:23.540 --> 00:08:27.199 victims. If a suburban mom goes missing or a 00:08:27.199 --> 00:08:29.699 college student. It's a massive manhunt. It's 00:08:29.699 --> 00:08:32.100 on the nightly news. Precisely. We see missing 00:08:32.100 --> 00:08:34.860 posters everywhere. But if a sex worker goes 00:08:34.860 --> 00:08:38.080 missing in 1982 in a rough part of town. It's 00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:40.169 often written off. Police might assume she just 00:08:40.169 --> 00:08:42.129 moved to another city or that she's laying low. 00:08:42.250 --> 00:08:44.590 It becomes a file on a dusty desk rather than 00:08:44.590 --> 00:08:46.549 a task force. And Little understood that bias 00:08:46.549 --> 00:08:48.850 implicitly. He operated within that blind spot. 00:08:49.009 --> 00:08:51.090 He did. And this brings us to the actual method. 00:08:51.629 --> 00:08:53.730 The choke and stroke. We have to talk about the 00:08:53.730 --> 00:08:56.090 physicality of it because it explains the lack 00:08:56.090 --> 00:08:58.710 of forensic evidence that often baffled coroners. 00:08:58.830 --> 00:09:01.509 Right. So step one is the punch. He would use 00:09:01.509 --> 00:09:04.090 his size and his boxing skills to punch his victims, 00:09:04.190 --> 00:09:06.629 usually in the jaw or temple. He would stun them 00:09:06.629 --> 00:09:08.610 or knock them completely unconscious. So they 00:09:08.610 --> 00:09:10.649 are incapacitated from the start. Instantly. 00:09:10.730 --> 00:09:12.850 Once they were down, he would strangle them. 00:09:12.970 --> 00:09:15.049 And the source material is very graphic here. 00:09:15.149 --> 00:09:17.370 He would strangle them to death, sometimes letting 00:09:17.370 --> 00:09:19.649 them regain consciousness only to strangle them 00:09:19.649 --> 00:09:22.269 again. He described playing with their lives. 00:09:22.529 --> 00:09:25.429 Yes. And the moniker choke and stroke implies 00:09:25.429 --> 00:09:27.669 that he was engaging in sexual gratification, 00:09:27.929 --> 00:09:31.149 likely masturbation, during the act of strangulation. 00:09:31.330 --> 00:09:33.990 It's purely sadistic. It's about total control 00:09:33.990 --> 00:09:37.409 over life and death. It is. But here is the forensic 00:09:37.409 --> 00:09:40.389 problem. Because the method was strangulation, 00:09:40.549 --> 00:09:43.169 often without a struggle, and the victims were 00:09:43.169 --> 00:09:45.889 often people with high -risk lifestyles, coroners 00:09:45.889 --> 00:09:48.480 would sometimes misclassify the deaths. How does 00:09:48.480 --> 00:09:50.799 a coroner miss a murder? I mean, surely there 00:09:50.799 --> 00:09:53.799 are marks on the neck. Not always. If he uses 00:09:53.799 --> 00:09:56.639 a broad surface, like a forearm rather than fingers, 00:09:56.860 --> 00:09:59.200 the bruising can be minimal. Or if the body is 00:09:59.200 --> 00:10:01.860 found days later in a warm climate, decomposition 00:10:01.860 --> 00:10:04.440 can hide the patitial hemorrhaging in the eyes. 00:10:04.679 --> 00:10:06.980 So if they find the body with no bullet holes, 00:10:07.259 --> 00:10:09.720 no stab wounds, and the person has a history 00:10:09.720 --> 00:10:11.879 of drug use... They might just assume overdose. 00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:15.399 Or natural causes heart failure brought on by 00:10:15.399 --> 00:10:18.240 lifestyle. A lot of these were initially ruled 00:10:18.240 --> 00:10:20.980 undetermined. So he knew that if he didn't use 00:10:20.980 --> 00:10:23.559 a weapon, he wasn't leaving a murder weapon behind. 00:10:23.600 --> 00:10:25.960 His hands were the weapon. And he dumped the 00:10:25.960 --> 00:10:29.100 bodies in alleys, dumpsters, wooded areas, even 00:10:29.100 --> 00:10:31.419 rivers like the Mississippi. He treated them 00:10:31.419 --> 00:10:35.100 like refuse. He didn't bury them? No. He didn't 00:10:35.100 --> 00:10:37.440 try to hide them meticulously because he didn't 00:10:37.440 --> 00:10:39.100 think anyone would look close enough to catch 00:10:39.100 --> 00:10:42.080 him. But he wasn't invisible. And this is the 00:10:42.080 --> 00:10:43.679 part that makes you want to scream at the history 00:10:43.679 --> 00:10:47.129 books. There were near misses. The 1980s. I mean, 00:10:47.129 --> 00:10:49.389 looking at this timeline, the 1980s should have 00:10:49.389 --> 00:10:51.850 been the end of Samuel Little's story. He was 00:10:51.850 --> 00:10:54.830 caught. Multiple times. This is where the systemic 00:10:54.830 --> 00:10:58.590 failure moves from theoretical to concrete. Let's 00:10:58.590 --> 00:11:01.750 look at 1982 in Mississippi. He was arrested 00:11:01.750 --> 00:11:04.110 for the murder of Melinda Roselupree. She had 00:11:04.110 --> 00:11:06.110 gone missing in September of that year? Correct. 00:11:06.269 --> 00:11:09.350 Little was a suspect. He was in custody. But 00:11:09.350 --> 00:11:12.649 the grand jury declined to indict him. They didn't 00:11:12.649 --> 00:11:14.350 feel there was enough evidence to go to trial? 00:11:14.610 --> 00:11:17.899 Nope. They'll let him go. So he walks. But he 00:11:17.899 --> 00:11:20.019 doesn't go underground. He doesn't flee the country. 00:11:20.320 --> 00:11:23.220 He goes to Florida. And that same year, he is 00:11:23.220 --> 00:11:25.259 charged with the murder of Patricia Ann Mount. 00:11:25.740 --> 00:11:28.320 Now, in this case, they actually went to trial. 00:11:28.759 --> 00:11:31.120 This wasn't just a grand jury dismissal. They 00:11:31.120 --> 00:11:33.720 had him in court. Prosecution witnesses identified 00:11:33.720 --> 00:11:37.360 Little. They placed him with her the night before 00:11:37.360 --> 00:11:41.340 she disappeared. They had him. So paint the picture 00:11:41.340 --> 00:11:43.299 for me. You're in that courtroom in Florida. 00:11:43.759 --> 00:11:45.620 You have the guy who was last seen with the victim. 00:11:45.860 --> 00:11:48.840 You have his violent history. Because by this 00:11:48.840 --> 00:11:51.840 point, he has a rap sheet a mile long for assault 00:11:51.840 --> 00:11:54.120 and theft. A very long rap sheet. How does a 00:11:54.120 --> 00:11:56.419 jury look at that and say, not guilty? It comes 00:11:56.419 --> 00:11:59.039 down to who the witnesses were. The prosecution 00:11:59.039 --> 00:12:01.179 was relying on the testimony of women who moved 00:12:01.179 --> 00:12:03.620 in the same circles as Little and the victim. 00:12:03.779 --> 00:12:06.720 So likely other sex workers or people on the 00:12:06.720 --> 00:12:08.659 margins. Exactly. So their credibility was on 00:12:08.659 --> 00:12:11.330 trial. Right. Not just his guilt. The defense 00:12:11.330 --> 00:12:13.809 strategy was classic dismantling. You attack 00:12:13.809 --> 00:12:15.490 the character of the witness. Oh, you were high 00:12:15.490 --> 00:12:17.450 that night. Oh, you have a record for solicitation. 00:12:17.490 --> 00:12:20.009 Why should the jury believe you? They made the 00:12:20.009 --> 00:12:22.850 jury doubt the source of the truth. So the truth 00:12:22.850 --> 00:12:25.429 itself got discarded. That is, it's systemic 00:12:25.429 --> 00:12:29.090 gaslighting. The jury sees a criminal testifying 00:12:29.090 --> 00:12:31.990 against a criminal and decides it's a wash. And 00:12:31.990 --> 00:12:34.210 the result was an acquittal in January 1984. 00:12:35.700 --> 00:12:38.019 Mistrust of witness testimonies was the official 00:12:38.019 --> 00:12:40.980 reason cited. So bias literally opened the jail 00:12:40.980 --> 00:12:43.039 cell door and let a serial killer walk out. It 00:12:43.039 --> 00:12:45.879 did. And the cost was catastrophic. Yeah. Because 00:12:45.879 --> 00:12:48.600 just months later, he is in California. This 00:12:48.600 --> 00:12:50.759 is the Lori Barrows case. And this one, I don't 00:12:50.759 --> 00:12:52.539 know how this happens. Lori Barrows survived, 00:12:52.860 --> 00:12:54.759 right? She did. She was kidnapped and strangled, 00:12:54.759 --> 00:12:56.759 but she managed to survive. She identified him. 00:12:56.820 --> 00:13:00.299 So you have a survivor, a living witness. And 00:13:00.299 --> 00:13:02.279 not only that, when the police found him, he 00:13:02.279 --> 00:13:04.779 was in his car. And what was in the back seat? 00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:08.980 Another woman. Unconscious. Beaten and strangled. 00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:11.539 In the exact same location where he had attacked 00:13:11.539 --> 00:13:13.879 Burroughs. I mean, come on. That's a smoking 00:13:13.879 --> 00:13:16.419 gun, a fingerprint, and a confession all wrapped 00:13:16.419 --> 00:13:18.940 in one. He's got a body in the car. He has a 00:13:18.940 --> 00:13:21.179 survivor pointing at him. You would think this 00:13:21.179 --> 00:13:25.340 is the end of the line. Life in prison. Case 00:13:25.340 --> 00:13:27.700 closed. But he served only two and a half years? 00:13:27.860 --> 00:13:29.700 Two and a half years. I looked at that number 00:13:29.700 --> 00:13:31.879 in the notes three times to make sure it wasn't 00:13:31.879 --> 00:13:35.480 a typo. How? How is that possible? It's not a 00:13:35.480 --> 00:13:38.159 typo. It reflects the plea bargain culture of 00:13:38.159 --> 00:13:40.419 the justice system, especially in the 80s when 00:13:40.419 --> 00:13:43.100 courts were overwhelmed. The prosecutors likely 00:13:43.100 --> 00:13:45.639 looked at the victims, looked at the cost and 00:13:45.639 --> 00:13:48.700 risk of a long trial, maybe fearing another acquittal 00:13:48.700 --> 00:13:50.460 like in Florida. And they took the easy win. 00:13:50.559 --> 00:13:52.399 They took the easy win. They likely allowed him 00:13:52.399 --> 00:13:54.539 to plead to assault with great bodily injury 00:13:54.539 --> 00:13:57.019 rather than attempted murder. They cleared the 00:13:57.019 --> 00:13:59.259 docket. They got a conviction on paper. But they 00:13:59.259 --> 00:14:02.120 released a monster. He was released in February 00:14:02.120 --> 00:14:06.080 1987. And what did he do? Did he reform? Did 00:14:06.080 --> 00:14:09.179 he retire? No. He immediately moved to Los Angeles. 00:14:09.399 --> 00:14:11.679 And according to the records and his later confessions, 00:14:11.700 --> 00:14:14.480 he committed at least 10 more murders right after 00:14:14.480 --> 00:14:17.679 that release in L .A. alone. That is the tragedy 00:14:17.679 --> 00:14:20.019 of the justice system right there. He was in 00:14:20.019 --> 00:14:23.120 custody. They knew he was violent. And they let 00:14:23.120 --> 00:14:25.559 him go to kill 10 more people in one city. It 00:14:25.559 --> 00:14:27.779 also highlights the fragmentation of the system 00:14:27.779 --> 00:14:31.320 in the pre -digital age. In the 80s, information 00:14:31.320 --> 00:14:34.080 didn't travel like it does today. A conviction 00:14:34.080 --> 00:14:36.679 in Florida or an arrest in Mississippi didn't 00:14:36.679 --> 00:14:38.879 necessarily pop up on a computer screen in a 00:14:38.879 --> 00:14:42.019 California patrol car. So he was exploiting the 00:14:42.019 --> 00:14:44.519 linkage blindness between jurisdictions. Exactly. 00:14:44.519 --> 00:14:47.259 He was moving and the information wasn't keeping 00:14:47.259 --> 00:14:51.240 up. So he continues this spree for decades. Fast 00:14:51.240 --> 00:14:54.480 forward to 2012, the fall of Mr. Sam. And like 00:14:54.480 --> 00:14:57.000 so many of these guys, Bundy with the traffic 00:14:57.000 --> 00:15:00.269 stop, Berkowitz with the parking ticket. He doesn't 00:15:00.269 --> 00:15:02.049 get caught in a high -speed chase or a dramatic 00:15:02.049 --> 00:15:05.029 standoff. No. It's the banality of evil again. 00:15:05.190 --> 00:15:07.730 He was arrested at a homeless shelter, the Wayside 00:15:07.730 --> 00:15:09.769 Christian Shelter in Louisville, Kentucky. And 00:15:09.769 --> 00:15:12.490 what were the charges? Murder. Narcotics charges. 00:15:12.549 --> 00:15:14.490 Just a routine drug bust. He was an old man by 00:15:14.490 --> 00:15:16.809 then, staying in a shelter. Unbelievable. But 00:15:16.809 --> 00:15:20.049 this time, something was different. The technology 00:15:20.049 --> 00:15:23.179 had finally changed. DNA testing. That was the 00:15:23.179 --> 00:15:25.399 turning point. When they arrested him in Kentucky, 00:15:25.600 --> 00:15:27.580 they eventually extradited him to California 00:15:27.580 --> 00:15:30.179 on those narcotics charges because of an outstanding 00:15:30.179 --> 00:15:33.440 warrant. But once he was in custody in L .A., 00:15:33.440 --> 00:15:35.919 authorities did what they couldn't do in 1984. 00:15:36.460 --> 00:15:39.779 They ran his DNA. They ran his DNA. And suddenly, 00:15:39.860 --> 00:15:42.360 the ghosts of the 80s showed up. The cold cases. 00:15:42.679 --> 00:15:46.100 Exactly. The DNA matched three cold cases from 00:15:46.100 --> 00:15:49.909 Los Angeles. Carol Linda Alford. killed in 1987, 00:15:50.370 --> 00:15:54.370 Audrey Nelson Everett, 1989, and Guadalupe Apodaca, 00:15:54.549 --> 00:15:56.889 also in 1989. Let's talk about those cases for 00:15:56.889 --> 00:15:59.169 a second to honor them. Carol Linda Alford. She 00:15:59.169 --> 00:16:01.769 was found in a Los Angeles alley. DNA was recovered 00:16:01.769 --> 00:16:04.230 from under her fingernails. This was one of the 00:16:04.230 --> 00:16:06.309 rare cases where there was a struggle or perhaps 00:16:06.309 --> 00:16:08.590 he slipped up. Okay. And Audrey Nelson Everett. 00:16:08.889 --> 00:16:11.529 Found in a dumpster behind a nightclub. And Guadalupe 00:16:11.529 --> 00:16:14.230 Apodaca. Found in an abandoned auto repair shop. 00:16:14.490 --> 00:16:16.820 A boy kicking a soccer ball found her. These 00:16:16.820 --> 00:16:18.620 poor women, they had been waiting for justice 00:16:18.620 --> 00:16:21.440 for over 20 years. And finally, the science caught 00:16:21.440 --> 00:16:24.500 up. The LAPD linked him to these three murders. 00:16:24.720 --> 00:16:28.019 He was charged in January 2013. The trial happens 00:16:28.019 --> 00:16:31.679 in 2014. And the prosecution strategy was interesting. 00:16:31.980 --> 00:16:33.980 They didn't just use the DNA, did they? Yeah, 00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:35.980 this was crucial. They brought in the survivors. 00:16:36.299 --> 00:16:38.940 The women from the 80s? Yes, women who had survived 00:16:38.940 --> 00:16:41.419 his attacks decades earlier, including women 00:16:41.419 --> 00:16:44.419 from that Mississippi and Florida era. They used 00:16:44.419 --> 00:16:47.659 their testimony to establish... Basically showing 00:16:47.659 --> 00:16:50.200 the jury this is his blueprint. This is his pattern. 00:16:50.360 --> 00:16:52.960 Exactly. The stun punch, the strangulation, the 00:16:52.960 --> 00:16:56.340 sexual motive. It showed the jury that this wasn't 00:16:56.340 --> 00:16:59.159 just random DNA found at a scene. This was a 00:16:59.159 --> 00:17:02.960 specific predator with a specific ritual. It 00:17:02.960 --> 00:17:05.759 corroborated the physical evidence with behavioral 00:17:05.759 --> 00:17:08.000 evidence. And this time the jury believed them. 00:17:08.099 --> 00:17:12.180 They did. On September 25, 2014, Samuel Little 00:17:12.180 --> 00:17:14.779 was found guilty. He was sentenced to life imprisonment 00:17:14.779 --> 00:17:16.920 without the possibility of parole. And his reaction, 00:17:16.980 --> 00:17:19.680 what did he do? He screamed in court, I didn't 00:17:19.680 --> 00:17:21.960 do it. He maintained his innocence right to the 00:17:21.960 --> 00:17:24.279 bitter end of the trial. He played the victim. 00:17:24.539 --> 00:17:27.819 So 2014, he's locked up, life sentence, case 00:17:27.819 --> 00:17:29.980 closed, right? He's an old man in prison. He's 00:17:29.980 --> 00:17:31.900 going to die there. You'd think so. But that's 00:17:31.900 --> 00:17:33.559 not the end of the story. That's actually just 00:17:33.559 --> 00:17:35.720 the beginning of the truth coming out. That's 00:17:35.720 --> 00:17:38.839 right. For four years, he sits there. But then 00:17:38.839 --> 00:17:42.599 in 2018, there's a shift. Little wants to transfer. 00:17:42.819 --> 00:17:45.559 He wants to move. Why? He wanted to get out of 00:17:45.559 --> 00:17:48.299 a Los Angeles County prison. He apparently didn't 00:17:48.299 --> 00:17:49.980 like the environment there. It was too noisy 00:17:49.980 --> 00:17:52.920 or he didn't like the cell. He wanted to be moved 00:17:52.920 --> 00:17:55.500 to a different facility. So he was willing to 00:17:55.500 --> 00:17:57.880 trade. He was willing to trade bodies for a better 00:17:57.880 --> 00:18:01.339 cell. That is so transactional and cold. It is 00:18:01.339 --> 00:18:04.980 psychopathic. The catalyst was a visit from Texas 00:18:04.980 --> 00:18:08.339 Ranger James Holland. The source material mentions 00:18:08.339 --> 00:18:11.180 him specifically regarding the murder of Denise 00:18:11.180 --> 00:18:14.079 Christie Brothers in Odessa, Texas. Denise Christie 00:18:14.079 --> 00:18:17.519 Brothers. She was killed in 1994. Correct. Holland 00:18:17.519 --> 00:18:19.880 is a skilled interviewer. He went there to talk 00:18:19.880 --> 00:18:22.339 about the brothers' case, but he managed to build 00:18:22.339 --> 00:18:25.740 a rapport. He played to Little's ego. And Little 00:18:25.740 --> 00:18:27.799 started talking. He confessed to the brothers' 00:18:27.940 --> 00:18:30.660 murder. But once he started talking, he didn't 00:18:30.660 --> 00:18:32.839 stop. It was like a dam breaking. This is where 00:18:32.839 --> 00:18:35.319 we get the 93 number. He starts listing them 00:18:35.319 --> 00:18:39.589 off. one after another across 14 states and the 00:18:39.589 --> 00:18:43.029 detail was the shocking part he wasn't just saying 00:18:43.029 --> 00:18:46.430 i killed a woman in florida he knew details that 00:18:46.430 --> 00:18:48.630 only the killer could know he knew about the 00:18:48.630 --> 00:18:52.150 locations a specific dirt road a specific dumpster 00:18:52.150 --> 00:18:55.309 he knew how the bodies were positioned the fbi 00:18:55.309 --> 00:18:57.990 vicap team that's the violent criminal apprehension 00:18:57.990 --> 00:19:00.509 program they got involved they started verifying 00:19:00.509 --> 00:19:02.430 these confessions and they confirmed over 60 00:19:02.430 --> 00:19:05.650 of them That is an incredibly high rate of verification 00:19:05.650 --> 00:19:08.630 for cold cases going back 40 years. It speaks 00:19:08.630 --> 00:19:11.250 to his memory. He had what some might call a 00:19:11.250 --> 00:19:13.589 photographic memory for his crimes. He could 00:19:13.589 --> 00:19:16.490 visualize the scenes perfectly. To him, these 00:19:16.490 --> 00:19:19.089 weren't people. They were trophies. And he remembered 00:19:19.089 --> 00:19:21.390 where he put every single trophy. And speaking 00:19:21.390 --> 00:19:24.160 of visualizing. We have to talk about the sketches. 00:19:24.420 --> 00:19:26.599 This is the most haunting part of the whole story 00:19:26.599 --> 00:19:28.700 for me. It's unique in the annals of criminal 00:19:28.700 --> 00:19:30.500 history, isn't it? It is. I've never seen anything 00:19:30.500 --> 00:19:32.799 quite like it. Little didn't just confess with 00:19:32.799 --> 00:19:35.799 words. He asked for art supplies. Pastels, pencils. 00:19:36.339 --> 00:19:39.579 And he drew portraits of his victims. 26 of them. 00:19:39.819 --> 00:19:41.519 And I've seen these drawings. They aren't stick 00:19:41.519 --> 00:19:43.900 figures. They are portraits. They have colored 00:19:43.900 --> 00:19:46.700 eyes, specific hairstyles, specific clothing. 00:19:46.900 --> 00:19:48.960 You remember the shape of their faces. You remember 00:19:48.960 --> 00:19:51.519 the earrings they were wearing. It's an incredible, 00:19:51.740 --> 00:19:54.319 awful level of detail. It's terrifying. It's 00:19:54.319 --> 00:19:56.579 like he kept a gallery in his head for decades. 00:19:57.240 --> 00:19:59.680 But there is a silver lining here, if you can 00:19:59.680 --> 00:20:02.940 call it that. The FBI used these sketches. They 00:20:02.940 --> 00:20:05.740 did. They released them to the public. They hoped 00:20:05.740 --> 00:20:08.380 that someone would recognize a mother, a sister, 00:20:08.539 --> 00:20:11.299 a daughter who had gone missing. Because remember, 00:20:11.440 --> 00:20:14.160 many of these victims were Jane Does. They had 00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:16.720 never been identified. Never. And it worked in 00:20:16.720 --> 00:20:19.180 some cases. It did. For example, in Memphis, 00:20:19.380 --> 00:20:21.400 there was a victim known only as a Jane Doe. 00:20:21.400 --> 00:20:25.119 Little provided a sketch. And in 2022, that sketch 00:20:25.119 --> 00:20:28.720 helped identify her as Zena Marie Jones. Zena 00:20:28.720 --> 00:20:31.319 Marie Jones. She was found in 1990, identified 00:20:31.319 --> 00:20:34.839 in 2022. That's 32 years later because he drew 00:20:34.839 --> 00:20:37.539 her face. It's a complex legacy. The killer himself 00:20:37.539 --> 00:20:40.440 providing the key to restoring the identity of 00:20:40.440 --> 00:20:42.519 the victim he destroyed. It's a final act of 00:20:42.519 --> 00:20:45.759 control. in a way, but one that at least provided 00:20:45.759 --> 00:20:48.039 closure for some families. Let's get specific 00:20:48.039 --> 00:20:49.660 on the geography for a minute. We said he was 00:20:49.660 --> 00:20:51.759 all over the place, but there were clusters. 00:20:52.079 --> 00:20:54.859 Ohio was a big one. Ohio was home base in a way. 00:20:54.900 --> 00:20:57.140 He grew up there and he killed there. Cleveland 00:20:57.140 --> 00:20:59.779 specifically. Yes. He killed Mary Jo Payton in 00:20:59.779 --> 00:21:03.900 1984. She remained unidentified until 1992. He 00:21:03.900 --> 00:21:07.400 also killed Rose Evans in 1991. Both strangled, 00:21:07.420 --> 00:21:09.819 both dumped. And Cincinnati. Annie Lee Stewart, 00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:12.980 killed in 1981. Her body was dumped in Grove 00:21:12.980 --> 00:21:15.500 City. And then there were others in Akron and 00:21:15.500 --> 00:21:19.039 Columbus. He confessed to leaving a Jane Doe. 00:21:19.589 --> 00:21:22.049 by a cigarette billboard. A cigarette billboard. 00:21:22.109 --> 00:21:24.809 That's such a specific, mundane detail. It anchors 00:21:24.809 --> 00:21:26.869 the crime in a specific time and place. It does. 00:21:26.910 --> 00:21:28.750 It shows how the landscape of America was just 00:21:28.750 --> 00:21:30.849 a backdrop for his violence. Then you have the 00:21:30.849 --> 00:21:34.509 South. Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana. In Macon, 00:21:34.509 --> 00:21:36.630 Georgia, he confessed to killing Fredonia Smith 00:21:36.630 --> 00:21:41.789 in 1982 and Yvonne Pless way back in 1977. Mississippi 00:21:41.789 --> 00:21:44.670 was a frequent hunting ground, too. Julia Crishfield, 00:21:44.829 --> 00:21:48.250 thrown off a cliff in 1978. Nancy Carroll Stevens, 00:21:48.589 --> 00:21:50.970 much later in 2005. That was one of his later 00:21:50.970 --> 00:21:53.450 crimes. In Louisiana. Melissa Thomas in 1996. 00:21:54.029 --> 00:21:56.869 Dorothy Richards in 1982. The list just goes 00:21:56.869 --> 00:22:00.009 on and on. It's relentless. Prince George's County, 00:22:00.390 --> 00:22:04.349 Maryland, West Memphis, Arkansas. It really shows 00:22:04.349 --> 00:22:06.670 how he used the interstate system. He was a shark. 00:22:07.119 --> 00:22:09.720 Always moving. The highway was his habitat. And 00:22:09.720 --> 00:22:11.819 every time he crossed the state line, he reset 00:22:11.819 --> 00:22:13.880 the clock on the investigation. He knew that 00:22:13.880 --> 00:22:15.339 the police in Georgia weren't talking to the 00:22:15.339 --> 00:22:17.740 police in Arkansas. I want to pivot to the media 00:22:17.740 --> 00:22:19.980 aspect. Why? Because for a long time, nobody 00:22:19.980 --> 00:22:22.299 was telling this story. But then Jillian Lauren 00:22:22.299 --> 00:22:24.220 comes into the picture. This is a fascinating 00:22:24.220 --> 00:22:26.299 intersection of journalism and investigation. 00:22:26.880 --> 00:22:29.059 Jillian Lauren started out writing crime fiction, 00:22:29.200 --> 00:22:31.480 but she became drawn to this story. She moved 00:22:31.480 --> 00:22:33.839 to nonfiction to cover Little. She actually sat 00:22:33.839 --> 00:22:36.680 down with him. For over 40 hours. She interviewed 00:22:36.680 --> 00:22:39.180 him in prison. Can you imagine sitting across 00:22:39.180 --> 00:22:43.900 from a man who has killed 93 women for 40 hours, 00:22:44.019 --> 00:22:46.299 listening to him detail these things? It takes 00:22:46.299 --> 00:22:49.099 a specific kind of fortitude. But she built a 00:22:49.099 --> 00:22:51.759 rapport. The dynamics were strange. He sent her 00:22:51.759 --> 00:22:54.559 drawings. He seemed to enjoy the attention. But 00:22:54.559 --> 00:22:56.910 through that relationship... She got him to confess 00:22:56.910 --> 00:22:59.210 to multiple murders that weren't previously solved. 00:22:59.390 --> 00:23:01.529 So her work, the article in The Cut, the book 00:23:01.529 --> 00:23:04.150 Behold the Monster, the docuseries, it really 00:23:04.150 --> 00:23:06.309 helped bring the scale of this to the public 00:23:06.309 --> 00:23:09.170 eye. She acted as a conduit. She amplified the 00:23:09.170 --> 00:23:11.390 voices of the victims by getting the killer to 00:23:11.390 --> 00:23:13.210 speak their names or at least describe them. 00:23:13.390 --> 00:23:15.970 Now we have to touch on his personal life. Because 00:23:15.970 --> 00:23:18.970 he wasn't always alone. He had a long -term girlfriend, 00:23:19.309 --> 00:23:22.089 Aurelia Dorsey. This is another bizarre chapter. 00:23:22.509 --> 00:23:25.509 Aurelia Dorsey. She was essentially his partner. 00:23:25.900 --> 00:23:27.599 though not necessarily in the murders themselves, 00:23:27.920 --> 00:23:31.039 but in life. She supported them both, largely 00:23:31.039 --> 00:23:33.259 through shoplifting, according to the sources. 00:23:33.519 --> 00:23:35.359 But the origin of their relationship is what 00:23:35.359 --> 00:23:37.420 gets me. It's so strange. It is very strange. 00:23:37.759 --> 00:23:40.279 Dorsey was cellmates with Little's previous girlfriend, 00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:42.519 Lucy Madero. Okay, let me get this straight. 00:23:42.920 --> 00:23:46.119 Little has a girlfriend, Lucy. Lucy gets arrested. 00:23:46.640 --> 00:23:50.359 She's in a cell with Aurelia. Lucy tells Aurelia 00:23:50.359 --> 00:23:52.680 she's going to testify against Little in a robbery 00:23:52.680 --> 00:23:56.480 case. Correct. And Aurelia, the cellmate, takes 00:23:56.480 --> 00:23:59.160 that information, goes to Little's defense team 00:23:59.160 --> 00:24:02.140 and helps them prepare against Lucy's testimony. 00:24:02.420 --> 00:24:04.279 She betrays her cellmate to help the boyfriend 00:24:04.279 --> 00:24:06.799 and then steals the boyfriend. Essentially, she 00:24:06.799 --> 00:24:09.460 helps him beat the rap and then she becomes his 00:24:09.460 --> 00:24:11.279 girlfriend. And they stayed together until she 00:24:11.279 --> 00:24:14.480 died in 1988. It's a twisted loyalty. But it 00:24:14.480 --> 00:24:16.519 shows he could manipulate people. He could maintain 00:24:16.519 --> 00:24:18.680 relationships. He wasn't a complete loner in 00:24:18.680 --> 00:24:20.319 the sense that he couldn't talk to women. He 00:24:20.319 --> 00:24:23.019 was charming when he wanted to be. He could normalize 00:24:23.019 --> 00:24:25.900 himself. He could pass as a human being, which 00:24:25.900 --> 00:24:28.480 made him all the more dangerous. So Aurelia dies 00:24:28.480 --> 00:24:32.500 in 1988. He continues killing until 2005. Finally 00:24:32.500 --> 00:24:35.980 arrested in 2012. Confesses in 2018. And then 00:24:35.980 --> 00:24:39.809 the end comes. December 30, 2020. Samuel Little 00:24:39.809 --> 00:24:42.069 died in a Los Angeles hospital. What was the 00:24:42.069 --> 00:24:44.589 cause? He had health issues, diabetes, heart 00:24:44.589 --> 00:24:47.349 problems. The official cause was undetermined 00:24:47.349 --> 00:24:49.829 or natural causes. He was an old man. He died 00:24:49.829 --> 00:24:52.569 an old man in a hospital bed, which is a lot 00:24:52.569 --> 00:24:54.349 more peaceful than the way his victims died. 00:24:54.529 --> 00:24:57.630 It is. There is no cosmic balance in the manner 00:24:57.630 --> 00:25:00.269 of his death compared to his crimes. He got to 00:25:00.269 --> 00:25:02.690 live a long life. So what does this all mean 00:25:02.690 --> 00:25:05.210 when we look back at the legacy of Samuel Little 00:25:05.210 --> 00:25:08.910 beyond just the horror of the number 93? We have 00:25:08.910 --> 00:25:11.190 to acknowledge the magnitude. He is the most 00:25:11.190 --> 00:25:14.539 prolific serial killer in U .S. history. by confirmed 00:25:14.539 --> 00:25:18.099 victims. That is a dark historical fact. But 00:25:18.099 --> 00:25:20.420 we also have to look at the mirror he holds up 00:25:20.420 --> 00:25:22.500 to the justice system. The aha moment for me 00:25:22.500 --> 00:25:24.799 is that he wasn't a ghost. He wasn't a phantom. 00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:27.339 He was a man who drove a car, who got arrested 00:25:27.339 --> 00:25:29.099 for shoplifting, who lived with a girlfriend. 00:25:29.400 --> 00:25:32.660 He was right there. But he relied on the marginalization 00:25:32.660 --> 00:25:35.220 of his victims. He relied on the fact that if 00:25:35.220 --> 00:25:37.700 he killed a Jane Doe in a bad neighborhood, the 00:25:37.700 --> 00:25:40.220 investigation would stall. He wasn't hiding. 00:25:40.779 --> 00:25:42.619 We were looking away. That's the hard truth. 00:25:42.700 --> 00:25:44.799 We were looking away. And even today, we are 00:25:44.799 --> 00:25:46.619 still catching up. And that brings us to the 00:25:46.619 --> 00:25:49.720 final thought. The sketches. Yes. Little drew 00:25:49.720 --> 00:25:52.400 many women. We've identified Zena Marie Jones. 00:25:52.559 --> 00:25:56.400 We've identified others. But there are still 00:25:56.400 --> 00:25:58.940 sketches out there. Detailed portraits of women 00:25:58.940 --> 00:26:01.660 who are still listed as Jane Does. Somewhere 00:26:01.660 --> 00:26:04.099 out there, there are families who still don't 00:26:04.099 --> 00:26:06.099 know what happened to their missing loved one. 00:26:06.759 --> 00:26:09.740 They are waiting for an answer. And the answer 00:26:09.740 --> 00:26:12.539 might be sitting in an FBI file, a sketch drawn 00:26:12.539 --> 00:26:15.359 by the killer himself, waiting for a match. That 00:26:15.359 --> 00:26:17.500 is a haunting thought to end on. If you want 00:26:17.500 --> 00:26:19.400 to see those sketches, they are available on 00:26:19.400 --> 00:26:21.779 the FBI's website. Maybe, just maybe, someone 00:26:21.779 --> 00:26:23.880 listening can help close another case. It's possible. 00:26:24.039 --> 00:26:25.960 The story isn't quite over yet. Thank you for 00:26:25.960 --> 00:26:28.019 joining us on this deep dive. It was a heavy 00:26:28.019 --> 00:26:29.799 one, but an important one. We'll catch you on 00:26:29.799 --> 00:26:33.000 the next one. Stay curious and stay safe. Welcome 00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:36.500 to the debate. Today, we are looking directly 00:26:36.500 --> 00:26:40.359 into... Well, one of the darkest corners of the 00:26:40.359 --> 00:26:43.380 American justice system. We're dissecting the 00:26:43.380 --> 00:26:46.759 case of Samuel Little. For anyone who follows 00:26:46.759 --> 00:26:49.599 true crime, that name represents a number that 00:26:49.599 --> 00:26:53.559 is, it's almost impossible to comprehend. 93 00:26:53.559 --> 00:26:59.359 confessed murders. And between 1970 and 2005, 00:26:59.579 --> 00:27:03.720 the FBI has confirmed over 60 of those. So officially, 00:27:03.880 --> 00:27:06.440 that makes him the most prolific serial killer 00:27:06.440 --> 00:27:09.480 in the history of the United States. He killed 00:27:09.480 --> 00:27:12.559 everywhere, from Miami all the way to Los Angeles, 00:27:12.779 --> 00:27:16.440 leaving this trail of bodies that just span the 00:27:16.440 --> 00:27:19.059 entire continent. It's a case that forces us 00:27:19.059 --> 00:27:21.319 to, you know, basically burn the traditional 00:27:21.319 --> 00:27:24.440 profile of a serial killer. We talk about figures 00:27:24.440 --> 00:27:27.259 like Bundy or Gacy, and we think of men living 00:27:27.259 --> 00:27:30.039 these double lives, upstanding citizens by day, 00:27:30.220 --> 00:27:33.589 monsters by night. But Samuel Little didn't have 00:27:33.589 --> 00:27:36.009 a double life. He was a transient. He had a criminal 00:27:36.009 --> 00:27:38.690 record a mile long. He was constantly in custody. 00:27:38.970 --> 00:27:43.410 And yet he operated with absolute impunity for 00:27:43.410 --> 00:27:46.470 35 years. And that really gets us to the central 00:27:46.470 --> 00:27:48.950 question we need to tackle today. How does a 00:27:48.950 --> 00:27:51.589 man who is constantly getting arrested, constantly 00:27:51.589 --> 00:27:53.990 interacting with police, manage to murder nearly 00:27:53.990 --> 00:27:57.440 100 women? Was Samuel Little some kind of criminal 00:27:57.440 --> 00:28:00.519 mastermind, a genius of evasion? Or was his reign 00:28:00.519 --> 00:28:02.779 of terror just the result of a justice system 00:28:02.779 --> 00:28:04.880 that decided his victims didn't matter? Well, 00:28:04.940 --> 00:28:07.059 I think the comfortable answer is to blame the 00:28:07.059 --> 00:28:10.279 system. It lets us off the hook. It lets us believe 00:28:10.279 --> 00:28:12.339 that if the police had just done their jobs, 00:28:12.440 --> 00:28:14.619 he would have been stopped. But I think that 00:28:14.619 --> 00:28:17.799 perspective is dangerous because it underestimates 00:28:17.799 --> 00:28:20.660 the adversary. I'm going to argue that Samuel 00:28:20.660 --> 00:28:23.220 Little had a terrifying predatory intelligence. 00:28:23.849 --> 00:28:27.190 He used a specific methodology, a deep understanding 00:28:27.190 --> 00:28:31.170 of forensic limits, and a manipulation of geography 00:28:31.170 --> 00:28:34.250 to actively exploit the system's blind spots. 00:28:34.529 --> 00:28:37.309 He wasn't just slipping through the cracks. He 00:28:37.309 --> 00:28:40.250 was measuring them and prying them open himself. 00:28:40.730 --> 00:28:43.210 See, I have to push back on this idea of intelligence 00:28:43.210 --> 00:28:46.230 or genius right away. Because when you actually 00:28:46.230 --> 00:28:49.069 look at the timeline, this was not some phantom 00:28:49.069 --> 00:28:51.460 moving through the world unseen. This was a man 00:28:51.460 --> 00:28:53.940 operating in broad daylight with a spotlight 00:28:53.940 --> 00:28:57.319 on him. I mean, by 1975, Samuel Little had been 00:28:57.319 --> 00:29:00.880 arrested 26 times in 11 different states. And 00:29:00.880 --> 00:29:02.559 we're not talking about parking tickets. We're 00:29:02.559 --> 00:29:05.339 talking about theft, assault, attempted rape, 00:29:05.440 --> 00:29:09.069 fraud. He was a known entity. But being known 00:29:09.069 --> 00:29:12.289 for assault and being caught for serial murder 00:29:12.289 --> 00:29:14.710 are two very, very different things. But he was 00:29:14.710 --> 00:29:17.410 caught for murder. The system had him in its 00:29:17.410 --> 00:29:21.009 jaws repeatedly and just spat him out. Look at 00:29:21.009 --> 00:29:24.930 the early 80s. In 1982, he's in Pascagoula, Mississippi. 00:29:25.289 --> 00:29:27.970 He's arrested. He's charged with the murder of 00:29:27.970 --> 00:29:30.750 Melinda Rose Lepree. The evidence is there, but 00:29:30.750 --> 00:29:33.809 a grand jury declines to indict him. Later that 00:29:33.809 --> 00:29:36.210 same year, he's extradited to Florida for the 00:29:36.210 --> 00:29:39.160 murder of Patricia Ann Mount. Witnesses put him 00:29:39.160 --> 00:29:41.740 with her the night she vanished. And yet, he 00:29:41.740 --> 00:29:44.460 was acquitted. Okay, but you're listing legal 00:29:44.460 --> 00:29:47.960 outcomes. You have to look at why those outcomes 00:29:47.960 --> 00:29:51.220 happened. You say it's police apathy, but I see 00:29:51.220 --> 00:29:54.180 Little's active hand at work there. He understood 00:29:54.180 --> 00:29:57.380 the burden of proof. He knew that without a smoking 00:29:57.380 --> 00:30:00.200 gun, he could walk. And he made sure there was 00:30:00.200 --> 00:30:02.779 never a smoking gun. And this goes directly to 00:30:02.779 --> 00:30:04.960 his method. You're talking about the strangulation? 00:30:05.390 --> 00:30:08.430 I'm talking about the specific technique he called 00:30:08.430 --> 00:30:11.289 the choke and stroke. It's a grotesque term, 00:30:11.390 --> 00:30:14.849 but it was a calculated method of evasion. Little 00:30:14.849 --> 00:30:17.809 was a former boxer. He called himself a prizefighter. 00:30:17.849 --> 00:30:20.630 He understood anatomy. He didn't use knives. 00:30:20.829 --> 00:30:23.730 He didn't use guns. So there were no shell casings, 00:30:23.730 --> 00:30:26.210 no unique stab wounds a coroner could trace. 00:30:26.410 --> 00:30:28.549 Sure, but strangulation still leaves evidence. 00:30:28.910 --> 00:30:32.700 Bruising, petechia in the eyes. Not always. and 00:30:32.700 --> 00:30:34.720 certainly not to the forensic standards of the 00:30:34.720 --> 00:30:38.099 70s and 80s, especially in, you know, rural counties, 00:30:38.319 --> 00:30:40.920 he would strangle a victim until they passed 00:30:40.920 --> 00:30:44.400 out, let them revive, and then repeat it. And 00:30:44.400 --> 00:30:46.799 the reason that's so relevant is because unlike 00:30:46.799 --> 00:30:50.319 a sudden violent crushing of the windpipe, this 00:30:50.319 --> 00:30:53.900 method often left the hyoid bone intact. So when 00:30:53.900 --> 00:30:55.940 these bodies were found, there are no bullet 00:30:55.940 --> 00:30:58.640 holes, no stab wounds, often very little external 00:30:58.640 --> 00:31:02.000 trauma. To a coroner in a small town, looking 00:31:02.000 --> 00:31:04.180 at a victim who maybe has a history of substance 00:31:04.180 --> 00:31:07.660 abuse. It doesn't scream murder. It looks like 00:31:07.660 --> 00:31:10.740 a heart attack. It looks like an overdose. He 00:31:10.740 --> 00:31:13.359 was killing people in a way that mimicked natural 00:31:13.359 --> 00:31:17.700 death. That is a forensic countermeasure. I acknowledge 00:31:17.700 --> 00:31:21.019 the brutality of the method. I do. But I think 00:31:21.019 --> 00:31:23.039 you're giving him credit for countermeasures 00:31:23.039 --> 00:31:26.680 when he was really just relying on bias. He didn't 00:31:26.680 --> 00:31:29.099 trick the coroners. The coroners just didn't 00:31:29.099 --> 00:31:31.339 look hard enough because of who the victims were. 00:31:31.779 --> 00:31:34.640 And this brings me to the core of my argument. 00:31:35.200 --> 00:31:38.579 Victim selection. He didn't just choose a method. 00:31:38.720 --> 00:31:43.059 He chose a specific demographic. He targeted 00:31:43.059 --> 00:31:46.200 women he knew society would ignore. Sex workers, 00:31:46.480 --> 00:31:49.059 women battling addiction, homeless or transient 00:31:49.059 --> 00:31:51.980 women. He was certainly aware of their status. 00:31:52.279 --> 00:31:55.869 Aware? He was counting on it. He told investigators 00:31:55.869 --> 00:31:58.690 later, and I'm quoting, I'm not going to go over 00:31:58.690 --> 00:32:00.410 there into the white neighborhood and pick out 00:32:00.410 --> 00:32:02.970 a little teenage girl. He said, I'm going to 00:32:02.970 --> 00:32:05.650 go to the bust -down neighborhood. He believed 00:32:05.650 --> 00:32:09.349 these victims would leave fewer clues and, most 00:32:09.349 --> 00:32:12.029 chillingly, leave fewer persons to search for 00:32:12.029 --> 00:32:16.309 them. In that 1982 Florida acquittal, why didn't 00:32:16.309 --> 00:32:18.869 the jury trust the witnesses? Well, because the 00:32:18.869 --> 00:32:20.990 witnesses were from the same marginalized world 00:32:20.990 --> 00:32:23.750 as the victim. The system decided their word 00:32:23.750 --> 00:32:26.710 just wasn't worth a conviction. Little didn't 00:32:26.710 --> 00:32:29.329 outsmart the jury. He relied on the jury's prejudice. 00:32:29.750 --> 00:32:31.730 I don't disagree that the prejudice existed, 00:32:31.930 --> 00:32:34.589 but I argue that Little's ability to identify 00:32:34.589 --> 00:32:37.769 and exploit that prejudice is the genius. It's 00:32:37.769 --> 00:32:41.890 a dark, predatory form of market research. He 00:32:41.890 --> 00:32:44.269 knew exactly where the defenses were down, and 00:32:44.269 --> 00:32:46.809 he didn't just rely on who they were. He relied 00:32:46.809 --> 00:32:49.670 on where he put them. This is the geography component. 00:32:49.930 --> 00:32:52.799 The cross -country travel. Exactly. She treated 00:32:52.799 --> 00:32:55.380 the interstate highway system as his personal 00:32:55.380 --> 00:32:58.119 hunting ground. He realized something that law 00:32:58.119 --> 00:33:00.680 enforcement wouldn't admit for decades. Police 00:33:00.680 --> 00:33:03.180 departments operate in silos. They don't talk 00:33:03.180 --> 00:33:05.339 to each other. He could kill in Mississippi on 00:33:05.339 --> 00:33:07.500 a Tuesday, dump the body in a swamp, and be in 00:33:07.500 --> 00:33:10.220 California by Friday. But is driving a car really 00:33:10.220 --> 00:33:13.140 genius, though? Or is it just having gas money? 00:33:13.500 --> 00:33:16.299 It is when you use it to fragment an investigation. 00:33:16.640 --> 00:33:20.019 He knew that a sheriff in Pascagoula isn't checking 00:33:20.019 --> 00:33:23.079 missing persons reports in Los Angeles. He used 00:33:23.079 --> 00:33:26.299 mobility as camouflage, and he was disciplined 00:33:26.299 --> 00:33:28.799 about it. He never stayed in one place long enough 00:33:28.799 --> 00:33:31.640 for a pattern to form. He also actively destroyed 00:33:31.640 --> 00:33:34.619 the crime scene by using nature. He dumped Mary 00:33:34.619 --> 00:33:37.180 Jo Payton in a basement in Cleveland. He put 00:33:37.180 --> 00:33:39.769 Zena Marie Jones in the Mississippi River. He 00:33:39.769 --> 00:33:42.490 was managing the crime scene long after he left 00:33:42.490 --> 00:33:44.970 it. I want to accept that theory. I really do. 00:33:45.109 --> 00:33:47.809 This idea of him as a ghost who just vanished. 00:33:48.190 --> 00:33:51.190 But then we have to talk about San Diego, 1984. 00:33:51.809 --> 00:33:54.549 This is the case that, for me, just destroys 00:33:54.549 --> 00:33:57.329 the mastermind theory and proves the system is 00:33:57.329 --> 00:33:59.809 fundamentally broken. The Lori Barrows case. 00:34:00.069 --> 00:34:04.269 Yes. October 1984. Little attacks a 22 -year 00:34:04.269 --> 00:34:07.109 -old woman named Lori Barrows. Miraculously, 00:34:07.109 --> 00:34:10.579 she survives. She plays dead. He dumps her. She 00:34:10.579 --> 00:34:13.820 escapes. Little is arrested a month later. And 00:34:13.820 --> 00:34:15.699 when the police find him, he's in the backseat 00:34:15.699 --> 00:34:19.099 of his car. But he isn't alone. There is another 00:34:19.099 --> 00:34:22.360 unconscious woman in the car with him. He is 00:34:22.360 --> 00:34:26.119 literally caught with a pile of victims. It's 00:34:26.119 --> 00:34:28.980 a smoking gun. It's a smoking cannon. And what 00:34:28.980 --> 00:34:31.519 happens? Does the genius talk his way out of 00:34:31.519 --> 00:34:35.780 it? No. He gets convicted. But the system... 00:34:35.840 --> 00:34:38.280 The judges, the prosecutors, they look at this 00:34:38.280 --> 00:34:41.079 man with a rap sheet from here to the moon, caught 00:34:41.079 --> 00:34:43.960 with two strangled women, and they give him two 00:34:43.960 --> 00:34:46.719 and a half years. It's an appalling sentence. 00:34:47.380 --> 00:34:48.920 It's not just appalling. It's an invitation. 00:34:49.260 --> 00:34:51.880 He served his two years. He was released in February 00:34:51.880 --> 00:34:55.650 of 1987. And what did he do? He moved to LA and 00:34:55.650 --> 00:34:58.170 immediately killed at least 10 more women. That 00:34:58.170 --> 00:35:00.429 is not a man outsmarting the police. That is 00:35:00.429 --> 00:35:03.349 a revolving door. The system knew who he was, 00:35:03.510 --> 00:35:06.050 knew what he did, and let him out to do it again. 00:35:06.110 --> 00:35:08.769 If that sentence had been appropriate, 20 years, 00:35:09.010 --> 00:35:11.989 life, dozens of women would be alive today. I 00:35:11.989 --> 00:35:14.909 agree the sentencing was a catastrophic failure, 00:35:15.050 --> 00:35:17.690 but I think you're glossing over how he managed 00:35:17.690 --> 00:35:20.210 to secure such light sentences throughout his 00:35:20.210 --> 00:35:23.349 career. It wasn't just luck. He treated the courtroom 00:35:23.349 --> 00:35:26.869 like another arena to manipulate. He had accomplices. 00:35:27.090 --> 00:35:29.449 We have to talk about Aurelia Dorsey. Right, 00:35:29.510 --> 00:35:32.070 his longtime girlfriend. Well, more than a girlfriend. 00:35:32.250 --> 00:35:34.449 I mean, she was effectively his intelligence 00:35:34.449 --> 00:35:37.289 officer. This is where the criminal enterprise 00:35:37.289 --> 00:35:41.159 aspect comes in. Go back to 1971. Little was 00:35:41.159 --> 00:35:43.800 facing robbery charges in Cleveland. Looked bad. 00:35:44.000 --> 00:35:46.960 The prosecution had a solid witness. But Aurelia 00:35:46.960 --> 00:35:50.480 Dorsey gets herself thrown into the same holding 00:35:50.480 --> 00:35:53.199 cell as the prosecution's key witness, a woman 00:35:53.199 --> 00:35:56.900 named Lucy Madero. Dorsey spends days befriending 00:35:56.900 --> 00:35:59.880 her, getting her to talk, finding the holes in 00:35:59.880 --> 00:36:04.000 her story. She was a spy. She was an operative. 00:36:04.079 --> 00:36:06.699 She fed that information back to Little's defense 00:36:06.699 --> 00:36:09.880 attorney, who used it to just... destroy the 00:36:09.880 --> 00:36:12.260 witness on the stand. They got an acquittal. 00:36:12.300 --> 00:36:14.639 He wasn't just sitting in his cell hoping for 00:36:14.639 --> 00:36:18.000 the best. He was running counter -ops. He manipulated 00:36:18.000 --> 00:36:20.780 people. He knew how to present himself as this 00:36:20.780 --> 00:36:23.679 aging prize fighter who just got into a few scrapes, 00:36:23.679 --> 00:36:27.619 not a sexual sadist. That is a high -level manipulation 00:36:27.619 --> 00:36:30.960 of human psychology. I see the manipulation there. 00:36:31.039 --> 00:36:34.199 I do. But let's fast forward to how this actually 00:36:34.199 --> 00:36:37.340 ended. For 40 years, he operates, he kills, he 00:36:37.340 --> 00:36:39.280 moves, he gets arrested for petty crimes, he 00:36:39.280 --> 00:36:41.920 gets out. How was he finally caught? Is it a 00:36:41.920 --> 00:36:44.199 brilliant profiler? A detective who connects 00:36:44.199 --> 00:36:47.699 the dots across state lines? No, it wasn't. Exactly. 00:36:48.079 --> 00:36:50.320 He's arrested at a homeless shelter in Louisville, 00:36:50.400 --> 00:36:54.719 Kentucky in 2012. Not for murder, for a narcotics 00:36:54.719 --> 00:36:57.920 charge. A routine drug bust. And the only reason 00:36:57.920 --> 00:36:59.940 they catch him for the murders is because they 00:36:59.940 --> 00:37:02.579 extradite him to California and run a routine 00:37:02.579 --> 00:37:05.659 DNA swab. The database caught him. A computer 00:37:05.659 --> 00:37:08.639 caught him. The DNA matched the cold cases of 00:37:08.639 --> 00:37:11.960 Carol Alford, Audrey Everett, and Guadalupe Apodikea 00:37:11.960 --> 00:37:15.440 from the late 80s. If DNA technology hadn't advanced 00:37:15.440 --> 00:37:17.619 to that point, Samuel Little would have died 00:37:17.619 --> 00:37:20.610 a free man. It wasn't human intelligence. It 00:37:20.610 --> 00:37:23.469 was data processing cleaning up a 40 -year mess 00:37:23.469 --> 00:37:26.130 of human incompetence. He was right under their 00:37:26.130 --> 00:37:28.449 noses, living in shelters, getting arrested, 00:37:28.670 --> 00:37:31.550 and nobody put it together until a machine did 00:37:31.550 --> 00:37:34.230 it for them. I'm not so sure it's that cut and 00:37:34.230 --> 00:37:37.989 dry. Yes, DNA links him to three murders, but 00:37:37.989 --> 00:37:41.070 we are talking about 93. The DNA didn't solve 00:37:41.070 --> 00:37:43.650 the other 90 cases. Samuel Little did. Because 00:37:43.650 --> 00:37:46.250 he wanted a prison transfer. Because he viewed 00:37:46.250 --> 00:37:49.610 it as a transaction. Even in defeat, he was negotiating 00:37:49.610 --> 00:37:54.110 terms. In 2018, he's serving life. He's in L 00:37:54.110 --> 00:37:56.969 .A. He hates it there. So he starts talking to 00:37:56.969 --> 00:38:00.289 a Texas Ranger, James Holland. He confesses to 00:38:00.289 --> 00:38:02.789 a murder in Odessa. But he doesn't stop there. 00:38:02.969 --> 00:38:06.269 He opens the floodgates. A deluge of confessions. 00:38:06.530 --> 00:38:09.550 And this brings us back to his mind. The detail 00:38:09.550 --> 00:38:12.949 he provided was photographic. He didn't just 00:38:12.949 --> 00:38:16.690 say, I killed a woman in 1982. He described the 00:38:16.690 --> 00:38:19.869 shape of their eyes. He described their hairstyles. 00:38:19.869 --> 00:38:22.610 He remembered the specific intersection where 00:38:22.610 --> 00:38:25.489 he met them. He was correcting the police files. 00:38:25.769 --> 00:38:28.309 The detectives would say, we found the body in 00:38:28.309 --> 00:38:31.869 1988, and Little would say, no, that was 1987, 00:38:32.110 --> 00:38:35.250 and she was wearing a yellow shirt. It is deeply 00:38:35.250 --> 00:38:38.449 disturbing that he held onto those memories with 00:38:38.449 --> 00:38:41.329 such clarity. It's more than disturbing. It's 00:38:41.329 --> 00:38:43.909 proof of his dominance. And then there are the 00:38:43.909 --> 00:38:46.699 sketches. This is the part that truly separates 00:38:46.699 --> 00:38:49.980 him from just some chaotic drifter. He drew them. 00:38:50.079 --> 00:38:52.659 He asked for pastels and paper, and he produced 00:38:52.659 --> 00:38:55.699 these detailed color portraits of his victims, 00:38:55.900 --> 00:39:00.559 26 of them. I've seen them. They are haunting. 00:39:00.980 --> 00:39:04.059 The eyes just look right at you. They are the 00:39:04.059 --> 00:39:06.619 only record that some of these women ever existed. 00:39:06.840 --> 00:39:10.159 And that's the supreme irony here. The justice 00:39:10.159 --> 00:39:13.119 system had to rely on the killer's art to identify 00:39:13.119 --> 00:39:16.820 the victims it had forgotten. He was the archivist 00:39:16.820 --> 00:39:19.619 of his own crimes. Without his roadmap, women 00:39:19.619 --> 00:39:22.659 like Zena Marie Jones would still be Jane Doe's. 00:39:22.900 --> 00:39:25.900 I mean, she wasn't identified until 2022, two 00:39:25.900 --> 00:39:28.260 years after Little died, purely based on his 00:39:28.260 --> 00:39:31.079 sketch. He was leading the investigation from 00:39:31.079 --> 00:39:33.599 the grave. But doesn't that just reinforce my 00:39:33.599 --> 00:39:35.800 point about the less dead? The fact that the 00:39:35.800 --> 00:39:37.960 police needed the killer to tell them a murder 00:39:37.960 --> 00:39:40.320 had even occurred proves they weren't looking. 00:39:40.980 --> 00:39:43.460 He confessed to a murder in Prince George's County, 00:39:43.619 --> 00:39:46.940 Maryland. That victim was one of only two unidentified 00:39:46.940 --> 00:39:50.119 homicide victims in that entire county. How do 00:39:50.119 --> 00:39:52.820 you not connect that? The body was there. The 00:39:52.820 --> 00:39:55.300 killer was there. But nobody cared enough to 00:39:55.300 --> 00:39:57.300 put the pieces together until the killer handed 00:39:57.300 --> 00:39:59.460 them the solution. I think we have to distinguish 00:39:59.460 --> 00:40:02.420 between not caring and not seeing. The system 00:40:02.420 --> 00:40:05.570 is fractured. It's a collection of silos. Little 00:40:05.570 --> 00:40:07.530 understood that better than the people running 00:40:07.530 --> 00:40:10.429 the silos. He knew that if he killed a woman 00:40:10.429 --> 00:40:12.929 in Cincinnati and left her by a cigarette billboard, 00:40:13.050 --> 00:40:15.650 which he did, the Cincinnati police would treat 00:40:15.650 --> 00:40:18.469 it as a local overdose. They wouldn't call Cleveland. 00:40:18.690 --> 00:40:21.170 They wouldn't call Kentucky. He exploited the 00:40:21.170 --> 00:40:23.849 bureaucracy. It's a failure of information sharing, 00:40:23.969 --> 00:40:26.570 absolutely. But it's also a failure of empathy. 00:40:27.210 --> 00:40:29.889 I mean, if 93 college students had vanished from 00:40:29.889 --> 00:40:32.650 Ivy League campuses, the FBI would have connected 00:40:32.650 --> 00:40:36.530 the dots in six months. But 93 marginalized women 00:40:36.530 --> 00:40:40.230 vanish over 35 years, and it takes a computer 00:40:40.230 --> 00:40:43.250 algorithm in 2012 to finally ring the alarm bell? 00:40:43.429 --> 00:40:46.050 That is a systematic indictment that goes way 00:40:46.050 --> 00:40:48.750 beyond bureaucracy. I agree that it is, but I 00:40:48.750 --> 00:40:51.070 still maintain that if he had targeted Ivy League 00:40:51.070 --> 00:40:53.710 students, he would have just changed his tactics. 00:40:54.030 --> 00:40:56.469 That's the terrifying part of his intelligence. 00:40:57.119 --> 00:41:00.440 He was an adaptive predator, a chameleon. He 00:41:00.440 --> 00:41:02.559 looked like the background noise of the city. 00:41:02.719 --> 00:41:07.019 He used his invisibility as a weapon. And that 00:41:07.019 --> 00:41:09.639 brings us to the tragedy of the timeline. He 00:41:09.639 --> 00:41:12.980 died in a hospital in 2020. He was 80 years old. 00:41:13.119 --> 00:41:15.519 He spent the vast majority of those 80 years 00:41:15.519 --> 00:41:18.800 free. He lived a full life. He ate what he wanted, 00:41:18.920 --> 00:41:22.360 he drove where he wanted, and he robbed 93 women 00:41:22.360 --> 00:41:25.800 of everything. He saw himself as a winner. He 00:41:25.800 --> 00:41:28.500 called himself a prizefighter to the very end. 00:41:28.659 --> 00:41:31.659 He believed he had beaten the house. And in a 00:41:31.659 --> 00:41:35.820 very grim technical sense, he did. So where does 00:41:35.820 --> 00:41:38.900 that leave us? Was he a genius or was the system 00:41:38.900 --> 00:41:41.440 just that broken? I think the synthesis is the 00:41:41.440 --> 00:41:44.900 most terrifying option. He was a predatory genius 00:41:44.900 --> 00:41:48.719 specifically suited for a broken system. He was 00:41:48.719 --> 00:41:51.519 the perfect pathogen for a weak immune system. 00:41:51.800 --> 00:41:54.539 If the police had been better... Maybe he would 00:41:54.539 --> 00:41:56.940 have been caught earlier. But if he hadn't been 00:41:56.940 --> 00:42:00.079 so skilled at manipulation and methodology, he 00:42:00.079 --> 00:42:02.059 wouldn't have lasted past that first arrest. 00:42:02.679 --> 00:42:05.239 I can agree with that. He was a man who had a 00:42:05.239 --> 00:42:08.360 specific, terrible set of skills, operating in 00:42:08.360 --> 00:42:10.619 a world that refused to value the lives he took. 00:42:10.800 --> 00:42:13.440 It was a perfect storm of malice and negligence. 00:42:13.639 --> 00:42:16.960 And the storm hasn't fully passed. The FBI has 00:42:16.960 --> 00:42:20.480 confirmed 60 murders, but he confessed to 93. 00:42:21.239 --> 00:42:23.820 That means there are still over 30 families out 00:42:23.820 --> 00:42:26.400 there with no answers. The sketches are still 00:42:26.400 --> 00:42:29.300 on the FBI website. And that is the final takeaway. 00:42:29.599 --> 00:42:33.139 This case isn't closed just because Samuel Little 00:42:33.139 --> 00:42:36.139 is dead. We encourage our listeners to look at 00:42:36.139 --> 00:42:39.659 those sketches in the FBI's VCAT program. Because 00:42:39.659 --> 00:42:42.400 the system failed them once, we shouldn't fail 00:42:42.400 --> 00:42:45.099 them again by forgetting they exist. Indeed. 00:42:45.960 --> 00:42:48.619 Understanding how he operated is the only way 00:42:48.619 --> 00:42:51.019 to ensure the next prize fighter doesn't get 00:42:51.019 --> 00:42:53.699 a 35 -year career. Thank you for joining the 00:42:53.699 --> 00:42:55.739 debate. Until next time.