Inside the Mind of America’s Deadliest Serial Killer: Chilling Confessions of Samuel Little
Time was running out when a frail yet eerily composed Samuel Little finally started talking. From behind bars, the man who claimed to have murdered 93 people—predominantly women—began unraveling decades of terror. Between 1970 and 2005, Little had strangled his way across the country, preying on society’s most overlooked. Despite serving three life sentences in California for the murders of Linda Alford, Guadalupe Apodaca, and Audrey Everett, his name remained relatively obscure.
Dubbed by the FBI as “the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history,” Little’s horrifying legacy seemed buried under a veil of systemic neglect—many of his victims were Black, drug users, or sex workers. As investigative journalist Jillian Lauren reveals in her book, Behold the Monster: Confronting America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, it was society’s dismissal of these women that emboldened Little to keep killing, year after year.
A Predator’s Playground: How Society Enabled a Monster
Time and time again, Little was caught—but never stopped. In Missouri, a judge handed him a mere three-month sentence for rape and assault. In Mississippi, the justice system refused to acknowledge that a Black sex worker could even be a victim. Each slap on the wrist reinforced his belief that he was untouchable. “He disposed of victims society already thought were trash,” Lauren writes.
Over the course of hundreds of hours spent with Little at California State Prison, Lauren extracted confessions that law enforcement had long sought. Before his death on December 20, 2020, he would admit to dozens of additional murders, leaving behind chillingly detailed portraits of his unidentified victims.
Why Did He Confess?
Initially, Little swore he was innocent. But Lauren knew he operated transactionally. She provided him with something he craved: attention.
“He was at the end of his life. He didn’t want to slide into the darkness unknown,” Lauren explains. “His greatest accomplishment, in his mind, was the number of women he killed. It wasn’t anything magical about me—I just had good timing and a strong stomach.”
To win his trust, she brought him snacks, wiped his mouth, and even played along with his delusions of grandeur. “I told him he was the best, he was the king, he was the captain.” Disturbingly, law enforcement had used similar tactics—talking to him in “bro” language, asking about “the baddest bitch” he had ever killed. It worked. He opened up.
Truth vs. Accuracy: Could He Even Remember It All?
Lauren believes that Little tried to be truthful in his confessions—but that didn’t mean he was always accurate. Decades of drug use and the passage of time blurred the details. He often mixed up locations and years, forcing investigators to piece together real clues from his fragmented recollections. “He would say, ‘I was going south on Central Avenue,’ but there was no place south that fit his description,” Lauren recalls. “He had simply forgotten how far he had driven.”
Despite these inconsistencies, his memory for faces was hauntingly sharp. He sketched vivid portraits of victims he couldn’t name—women whose lives he had snuffed out, yet whose faces remained frozen in his mind. “I live in my mind now,” he told Lauren. “With my babies. In my drawings.”
Justice Denied: Why He Was Never Stopped
Little had been arrested repeatedly for kidnapping, assault, and theft. But not murder. “They had him a couple of times, and he was acquitted,” Lauren says. “Grand juries refused to indict because the witnesses—his victims—weren’t seen as credible.”
One survivor even showed up in court, testifying against him. The system still failed. “He served just 18 months of a four-year sentence for that attack. The very next day, he drove to L.A. and killed two more women.”
Lauren argues that the failure wasn’t just on law enforcement. “It wasn’t only the police who didn’t prioritize these deaths. It was all of us. It was a jury of his peers that acquitted him, again and again. Society dismissed these women before he ever did.”
Remorse? Only for Himself
Despite his horrific crimes, Little believed he was always forgiven. Every time he took a life, he asked God for absolution.
Lauren confronted him: “Do you think your victims should have forgiven you in that moment?” His chilling response? “I’d hate to see where they went if they didn’t.”
It was one of the few moments that enraged Lauren to her core. “I could have crawled across the table and killed him myself.”
The End of an Era—But Not the End of His Case
Little died in December 2020, a moment Lauren recalls with relief. “I got a text at four in the morning from one of the detectives: ‘Samuel Little died. You’re listed as next of kin.’” It marked the end of his confessions, but not the end of his legacy.
In May 2023, police in Bibb County, Georgia, identified Yvonne Pless, a 1977 murder victim, as one of Little’s. More are expected to surface. “We are at 62 confirmed victims now out of the 93 he confessed to,” Lauren says. “I believe they will match almost all of them—as forensic science advances and as people continue to care.”
For the families of his unidentified victims, closure may still come. But the question remains: How many more serial killers are out there, slipping through the cracks of a system that still overlooks society’s most vulnerable?
