Man in prison confesses to 90 murders ranging from Los Angeles to Florida, even provides drawings of victims

TEXAS -- A 78-year-old man in a Texas prison for murder has confessed to 90 killings all over the country and even provided authorities with portraits of some of his victims, according to the FBI.

Samuel Little confessed to the killings as part of a deal to move prisons. The FBI said it is working with the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance, Texas Rangers and state and local law enforcement all over the country to match his confessions with evidence.

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The killings went from California all the way to Florida between 1970 and 2005.

In September 2012, Little was arrested in Kentucky at a homeless shelter and extradited to California over a narcotics charge. Once in custody, LAPD obtained a DNA match to Little with three victims in unsolved murders that happened from 1987 to 1989. He was then charged with three counts of murder.

Little was then convicted and sentenced in 2014 to three consecutive life sentences with no possibility of parole. In all three cases, the women were beaten and strangled. Their bodies were then dumped in an alley, dumpster and garage.

Little asserted his innocence throughout his trial even as a string of women testified to the prosecution of narrowly surviving similar violent encounters with him.

In the early 1980s, Little was charged with killing women in Mississippi and Florida, but escaped indictment in Mississippi and conviction in Florida. Still, he served time in prison for assaulting a woman in Missouri and then for assault and false imprisonment of a woman in San Diego.

When Los Angeles got the DNA evidence on Little, authorities asked the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) to work up a full background on him. The FBI found a pattern and links to many more murders.

ViCAP reached out to the Texas Rangers regarding a murder case in Odessa, Texas. Little was eventually indicted for that murder and was extradited to Texas, where he remains in custody.

Little was interviewed in spring 2018, where he was hoping to move prisons and in exchange for that he was willing to speak with agents.

During that interview, he went through cities and states all over the country, providing the number of people he killed in each area - coming to a total of 90 victims.

So far, agents have been able to confirm 34 of those murders while they continue working on the rest. Some of Little's confessions remain uncorroborated.

Authorities said Little remembered his killings and victims in great detail - such as where he was and what car he was driving. He even drew portraits of many of the women he killed. But authorities said he hasn't been as reliable on remembering specific dates.

Little chose to kill marginalized and vulnerable women who were often prostitutes and on drugs, authorities said, and sometimes they went unidentified and those deaths were not investigated.

Authorities said the way Little murdered his victims did not leave obvious signs of a crime. He was once a competitive boxer and usually stunned or knocked out his victims with powerful punches before strangling them, according to the FBI.

Since the women showed no obvious signs of a homicide, the women's deaths were often classified as drug overdoses, accidents or natural causes. DNA evidence at the time was also not readily available or could not provide a clear link to Little.

A large number of the killings happened in the 1970s and early 1980s, authorities said.

Authorities said Little is in poor health and will likely stay in Texas until his death. The goal for the FBI and other agencies is to identify the victims and provide justice for the unsolved cases.

For more information, you may call ViCAP at (800) 634-4097.

If you would like to view a map of where the suspected killings happened as well as a list of all the unidentified cases and portraits Little provided, you can click here.