Suspected serial killer Samuel Little may be connected to at least 90 murders

Nov. 14, 2018 / 8:52 PM GMT

By Elisha Fieldstadt

A man convicted of murdering three women in California and recently charged with killing a woman in Texas could be connected to more than 90 murders committed across more than a dozen states and three decades, Texas authorities said Tuesday.

Samuel Little, 78, has provided investigators details on a “multitude” of murders he may have committed from 1970 to 2005 in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Illinois, Ohio, California, Indiana, Arizona, New Mexico and South Carolina, according to the Wise County Sheriff’s Office. Little is currently incarcerated at the office’s jail.

If Little is found guilty of the murders he’s provided information about, he “will be confirmed as one of, if not the most, prolific serial killers in U.S. history,” according to a statement from Ector County District Attorney Bobby Bland.

Little, also known as Samuel McDowell, is serving three life sentences for strangling three women in the Los Angeles area from 1987 to 1989. He was convicted of those murders in 2014, according to NBC Los Angeles.

In July, Little was charged in the 1994 murder of Denise Christie Brothers in Ector County, Texas, and extradited from California. A Texas investigator “was able to use this case as a catalyst to continue to gain trust and information from Little in order to solve dozens of other cases,” said Bland in the statement.