It was a race against the clock when an ailing Samuel Little started confessing his crimes from behind bars. Little, who said he murdered 93 people, mostly women, between 1970 and 2005, was serving three life sentences in California for killing Linda Alford, Guadalupe Apodaca and Audrey Everett.
The FBI dubbed Little the “most prolific serial killer in U.S. history” with his confirmed involvement in at least 50 slayings. Coincidentally, Little’s name carries just that, little recognition—which writer Jillian Lauren suggested was due to many of his victims being Black, drug users and/or sex workers.
In her latest book, Behold the Monster: Confronting America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, Lauren claims that the devaluing of Little’s earliest victims emboldened him to target and strangle dozens of women across the country over a 35-year span.
“A judge in Missouri thought three months was an appropriate sentence [for Little] for rape and assault…” Lauren writes. “Law officials in Mississippi in the ’80s didn’t believe it was possible to commit a crime against a Black prostitute… In a tradition of many serial killers before him…he chose to dispose of victims society already thought were trash.”
After corresponding in letters, Lauren spent hundreds of hours with the serial killer at California State Prison. Little would admit to dozens of murders before his death on December 20, 2020.
Lauren spoke with A&E True Crime about how she got Little—or “Sam,” as she calls him—to confess to more murders, what she found most unsettling and why she believes more cold cases will be linked to him even after his death.
Little proclaimed his innocence in letters to you, but later confessed. Why do you think he became willing to reveal his crimes to you?
He talked to me because I asked. I showed up after all his appeals had been denied. I understood that he operated in a fundamentally transactional way, and I offered him a transaction that was appealing to him.
I believe that he was ready to confess. He was at the end of his life. He didn’t want to slide into the darkness, unknown for what he considered…his greatest accomplishment, which was the number of murders he committed. I don’t think it was anything magical about me other than I had great timing and a strong stomach.
Regarding this ‘transactional relationship’—is that why you heated up Little’s food, opened his drink and wiped his mouth when you visited him?
I wanted the truth, and I wanted him to need and trust me. Therefore, I showed up with his snacks and I listened. I was there for him. In exchange, I believe he did his best to tell me the truth.
I know the rapport with Sam can be uncomfortable. If you hear the confessions that law enforcement got from Sam, you’ll also feel uncomfortable.
I bought him hot wings, wiped his mouth and served him. I told him he was the best, he was the king, he was the captain…but the detectives were saying the same thing to him, just in a different way. It tended to be more of a ‘bro’ sort of conversation: ‘Who was the baddest bitch you’ve ever killed?’ They would establish a rapport with him in a different way that he enjoyed. I did the same thing.
Why do you believe Little was honest about what he told you, but not accurate?
I believe he did his best to be truthful in most of his confessions. Toward the end of his 30-year murdering spree, he was on a lot of drugs. As he aged, his memories became less vivid. I know that he wasn’t 100 percent accurate [because] I figured out [times when] he was wrong.
[Little would say,] ‘I was going south on Central Avenue’ but there was no place that was south on Central Avenue that fit his description. He’d forgotten that he often drove many more miles than he remembered. He often got his years wrong. In those cases, you had to work in tandem with law enforcement to tease apart the real parts of the confession that are going to actually lead to cold cases.
[Editor’s note: Before he died, Little drew 16 portraits of some of his unidentified victims. While he didn’t remember their names, he vividly remembered details about what they looked like. In Lauren’s book, Little tells her he likes to draw women, specifically. “I live in my mind now,” Little says. “With my babies. In my drawings.”]
You explain in the book that some of Little’s earliest victims were beaten, but he spent little or no time in jail because Black prostitutes weren’t seen as victims. How do you think this influenced his later actions?
He served time for kidnapping, assault, theft…everything but murders he actually committed. They had him a couple of times, and he was acquitted [due to] lack of evidence. There was a failure to indict by a grand jury because the eyewitnesses were not credible.
One [victim] actually showed up in court in San Diego, whom he had left for dead. He served 18 months on a four-year sentence for that and drove to L.A. the next day and killed two women on the same night.
People like to look at law enforcement and say they were not prioritizing the deaths of prostitutes, marginalized victims [and] women of color. It was [also] us. It was a jury of his peers that acquitted him again and again. I think that it was a larger dismissal of women of a certain class, a certain profession. A certain marginalization.
What was the most unsettling or enraging aspect of your conversations with Little?
I was used to hearing him talk about women’s last words—and he threatened to crawl through the phone and eat my lips off my face if I didn’t shut my mouth. But [then we’d] talk about [how] he believed he was forgiven every time that he murdered somebody just by the fact that he asked for forgiveness.
I said, ‘Do you believe that your victims should have forgiven you at that moment that you were killing them and asking for forgiveness?’ He said, ‘I’d hate to see where they went if they didn’t.’ I could have crawled across the table and killed him myself.
In your book, you recount challenging Little about whether he was set up for the three murders he was in prison for by asking him if he thought his punishment was deserved. Did he ever show any remorse or regret about what he did?
Remorse was only for himself. He’ll talk about remorse all day long.
In his statements at several of his trials, he said, ‘I’m very sorry to the family, to the victim.’ He wasn’t sorry. He was sorry that, in his words, ‘God made me how I was. I didn’t wanna be made like this. I wanted to have a wife and…a nice life. But God gave me this twisted idea of sex and death. I feel sorry for myself.’ That was Sam’s perspective on remorse.
How did you learn about Little’s death?
It was during COVID that Sam died. I got texts at four in the morning from one of the detectives on the case. A couple of hours later, I got a call and they said, ‘Samuel Little died. You’re listed as next of kin, and we’re very sorry.’
I didn’t know what to say, so I just said, ‘Thank you’ and ‘I’ll follow up with the coroner’s office.’
I knew that it was the end of the information we’d get. But our relationship was a burden to me and my family [due to the amount of time I spent communicating with him for the book]. I’d be lying to say it wasn’t a relief when he died.
In May 2023, police in Bibb County, Georgia, announced they’ve identified 1977 murder victim as Yvonne Pless and determined she was one of Little’s victims. What are your thoughts about that and future cases that may come to light even after his death?
The SAKI [Sexual Assault Kit Initiative] program from the Department of Justice—in which Dr. Angela Williamson was one of the main players in getting Sam to confess and matching the confessions—does a lot of work [around] mandatory reporting on rape kits. The cold case detectives there also did a phenomenal job.
Sam Little’s cases are hardly closed. We are at 62 now out of the 93 confessions. I believe they can match almost all of them as forensic science advances and as people continue to care.
Related Features:
Who Was Serial Killer Samuel Little?
hat Makes the Elderly Commit—and Later Confess to—Murder?
Samuel Little’s Drawings: How and Why Serial Killers Remember Details About Their Victims
