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A convicted murderer, considered by the FBI to be the most prolific serial killer in American history, died in a California hospital.
Samuel Little, who had been serving three consecutive life sentences for the murder of three women in Los Angeles County during the 1980s, eventually confessed to strangling 93 people.
The state department of corrections said the 80-year-old man died Wednesday, but the county medical examiner’s office would determine the official cause of death.
FBI videotapes recorded during his confessions showed Little smiling as he recounted the murders.
Little was convicted of the three murders in September 2014 after his DNA was found at crime scenes.
Before that, he served two sentences, including a four-year term that ended in 1987 for assault with a deadly weapon and false imprisonment, and another term of about 14 months that ended in April 2014.
When he was interviewed by a Texas Ranger in his California prison cell in 2018, Little began confessing to more murders, according to the FBI.
He eventually admitted to strangling dozens of people across the country between 1970 and 2005 and drowning one of his victims.
The agency says investigators have since verified 50 of his 93 confessions, with many more in need of final confirmation, making him the deadliest American serial killer on record.
Little is said to have targeted mostly vulnerable black women, many of them prostitutes or drug addicts, whose deaths escape the headlines and in some cases go unrecorded as homicides.
A sketch of a victim, Little said, was the only person he killed by drowning in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1982.
According to the only FBI profile on him, many of his victims’ deaths were originally ruled as overdoses or considered accidental. Some causes of death were undetermined and some bodies were never found.
FBI videotapes recorded during his confessions showed Little wearing a blue prison gown and cap, and he seemed puzzled or smiling as he recounted the murders.
In a statement, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said he had been incarcerated in Lancaster, California, north of Los Angeles, but died early yesterday morning at a hospital outside the prison.
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