CRITTENDEN COUNTY, Ark. — The FBI calls him the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history. Now, we’re learning more Mid-South law enforcement agencies sat down with him to analyze the pictures he drew of his victims.
The Crittenden County Sheriff’s Office first heard about Samuel Little when Memphis Police cold case detectives interviewed him last year.
The 79-year-old man confessed to murdering a woman he met a motel in Memphis. He even drew what she looked like to help authorities identify her.
“He’s got a great photographic memory for how old as he is,” Lt. Darrell Prewitt said. “She wanted to make the money, and he wanted her neck. He ended up strangling her, and said when he did it, a Memphis Police car was driving by.”
Prewitt said he joined MPD’s efforts when he found out Little put her body into his trunk, drove her over the bridge into Arkansas and dumped her body into the Mississippi River.
“He heard it splash and then he left. I believe he said he went to Blytheville area and went on that way,” he said.
Prewitt said he looked through cold cases from the 1990s around the same time Little could have been in the area. He found a couple of cases that matched and decided to go to Texas to speak with him.
“We went down and set up an appointment with Ranger [James] Holland,” he said.
Prewitt first met with Holland, who’s spent hundreds of hours with Little getting him to confess to 93 murders from across the country between 1970 and 2005.
Little’s victims were typically involved in prostitution and/or drug addiction. He says strangled every one of them.
“[Holland] had a way he handled Samuel. He told us that he finds if you ask these questions, he`s good. But if you ask stuff like closure for the family, stuff of that nature, he’ll shut down and won’t talk to you,” Prewitt said. “Not knowing what I knew and had I met him or you met him on the street, you would think he’s a nice, older guy, and you’d just sit there and listen to his stories.”
Prewitt said Little not only described this area under the bridge, but he also described what his victim was wearing when he dumped her into the river.
The same clothes on a body found on the Mississippi River shore on July 28, 1990.
WREG covered the scene back then and reported the body had been in the river at least a couple of weeks. A fisherman made the disturbing discovery.
We also found out the body was sent to the crime lab in 1990 where the now-director told us a sample of her remains would have then been submitted to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification.
He says a DNA profile would have been produced and logged into a database that family could later submit DNA and get a match.
“I don’t know what the sample was like,” Prewitt said.
What is clear: as of now, authorities say they haven’t verified any tips they’ve received about the Memphis woman Little drew.
But Prewitt said there’s hope, especially since they’ve narrowed down the time line.
“We would love to ID the woman, so we could give the family some type of closure,” he said.
Little has been moved to a jail in LA where he’s serving three life sentences for murders. He’s continuing to draw his victims to give to authorities, who believe all of his 93 confessions are credible.
So far, they’ve identified 50 women.
If you can help with the Memphis case, call the Memphis homicide bureau at 901-636-3300, or call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit at tip online at tips.fbi.gov.
Go to the FBI’s website for more information on Samuel Little.
