A man who has confessed to killing more than 90 women across the U.S. was indicted Friday in Cleveland for the strangulation deaths of two women decades ago.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O'Malley said 78-year-old Samuel Little has confessed to killing 21-year-old Mary Jo Peyton in 1984 and 32-year-old Rose Evans in 1991 in Cleveland. He has been charged with four counts of aggravated murder and six counts of kidnapping.
The FBI is working with law enforcement agencies all over the U.S. in an attempt to match up to his confessions with actual cases. Little said his murder spree started in 1970 and didn’t stop until 2005.
Two of the murders he confessed to are in the Metro East area—in East St. Louis and Granite City, Illinois.
Little said between 1976 and 1979 he met a 26-year-old woman in St. Louis. Her name might have been “Jo” he told FBI agents. Little said he killed her in Granite City.
Little said he also killed another woman during that three-year span. Again, he said he met her in St. Louis but killed her across the river in East St. Louis.
So far, law enforcement agencies have not been able to verify either of these confessions.
"There are no words to describe the pure evil that exists within Samuel Little," O'Malley said in a statement. "His heinous disregard for human life is incomprehensible."
Little is possibly the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history, surpassing the likes of John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy and Green River's Gary Ridgway. Little was convicted in California of three slayings in 2013 and pleaded to another killing last year in Texas, where he's currently incarcerated.
If you remember the name Samuel Little, it's because he claims to have killed 90 women in a swath across the nation – including three in Tennessee.
The FBI says 78-year-old Samuel Little has confessed to 90 murders across the country. That includes three in Tennessee in Memphis, Chattanooga and Knoxville.
This past February, the FBI released 16 new portraits, hand-drawn by Little himself, of women he says he killed. The images are hauntingly artistic.
