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(CNN) –– Samuel Little, believed to be the most prolific serial killer in American history, has died at the age of 80. This was reported this Wednesday by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Little was serving three consecutive sentences of life in prison without parole imposed by Los Angeles County, following the deaths of three women in the late 1980s.
However, Little had confessed to 93 other murders, according to the FBI. The agency said their confessions were “credible.”
His gruesome murder trail was revealed in a report issued in November 2018 by the FBI. According to the agency, his name appeared on its Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP). This in connection with a series of unsolved murders across the country.
A murder in Odessa, Texas, appeared to be especially relevant. So two FBI crime analysts and James Holland of the Texas Rangers went to see Little to try to get him to speak.
“Over the course of that interview in May,” ViCAP crime analyst Christina Palazzolo said in an FBI article, “he looked at the city and the state and gave Holland the number of people he killed at each location. Jackson, Mississippi: one; Cincinnati, Ohio: one; Phoenix, Arizona: three; Las Vegas, Nevada: One.
Samuel Little’s victims
Little sought out marginalized and vulnerable women who were often involved in prostitution or drug addicts, according to the FBI article. Palazzolo and Angela Williamson, chief policy advisor for the Justice Department and ViCAP liaison, who spoke with Little, said he remembered great detail about the killings.
The FBI said in October 2019 that law enforcement agencies have been able to verify 50 confessions. And many more are pending final confirmation.
In September 2012, Little was arrested at a Kentucky homeless shelter and extradited to California. He was wanted there on a narcotics charge, the FBI said. Once in custody, Los Angeles Police Department detectives obtained a match of Little’s DNA with victims in three unsolved homicides from 1987 and 1989. And charged him with three counts of murder, the FBI said.
The victims, all women, had been beaten and then strangled, and their bodies were dumped in an alley, a garbage dump and a garage, the FBI said. Little pleaded not guilty but was convicted in 2014, the FBI said.
On Wednesday, the California Department of Corrections said Little was pronounced dead at 4:53 a.m. at an unnamed outside hospital. He also added that the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office would determine the cause of death.
CNN’s Eric Levenson, Chuck Johnston and Leah Asmelash contributed to this report.
