Cast your memories back there, folks, It's twenty twenty January third, your faithful friends and correspondence. Here at Stuff they Don't want you to Know. Dive into an intensely disturbing case. This is not appropriate for all listeners. It is the story of a drifter, petty criminal, a man of violence, a serial killer named Samuel Little. Do you guys remember this one?
I do? This guy used to well he yeah, he used to draw pictures, I believe, I don't. I can't remember if he was drawn or painted, but he would create visual art of the women that were his victims.
And this is also another example of a cold case that was able to be reassessed with improvements in DNA testing. Yeah, so with that caveat and with that description, and please join us for tonight's classic episode.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they Don't want you to Know. A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control Decan most importantly, you are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. This is a dark tale, which is somewhat of our wanton warrant here on the show. However, this contains graphic descriptions of violence and abuse, and as such may not be suitable for all audiences.
Yes, very much so. This is a true crime episode and all of those things are going to come along with it.
And you know, Matt, over the years, you and I have investigated any number of serial murderers, from the well known like Jack the Ripper asque stuff, to the obscure, from the ancient to some that remain unapprehended in the modern day. I think we have a three part series on that.
Right, Yes, several unapprehended and even I think we've even speculated that there are anywhere from tens to hundreds of uncaught unknown serial killers that are operating.
That's true. We pulled those numbers from some fairly solid databases. That wasn't just us choosing numbers.
Of course, they are estimations, but it is still a nice creepy fact, just to keep with you when you tuck into bed at night.
Right, and today's episode focuses on a man you may have never heard of before, unless you are someone who keeps up with this grizzly aspect of the news. This is a man named Samuel Little. Now, before we spoil everything, let's start with just the nuts and bolts of Samuel Little. So who is he? Here are the facts.
The man we know as Samuel Little was born Samuel McDowell. He was born in nineteen forty June seventh of that year. He was born in Reynolds, Georgia. It's about two hours south of Atlanta, where we record this podcast. And his early life, like a lot of just regular people, if you're not being written up in the media somewhere, is
pretty short on details. He did say something to the effect that his mother was a sex worker, and though not in those words, and the authorities believe that he may have been born while his mother was actually in prison or incarcerated in some way, and he ended up being raised by his grandmother in a completely different place
in Lorraine, Ohio. And his childhood, just from those circumstances alone, along with some other possible things that may have happened to him, leads us to believe he probably had a rather difficult childhood.
Yeah, he was from an impoverished family. We know he attended Hawthorne Junior High. We know that at some point he dropped out of high school due to both low grades and intense behavioral issues.
Yes, and I can't speak too much to this stuff, but my wife has experience with children with behavioral issues, the severe ones, and it tends to be so something occurring within the home situation that is the biggest effect on behavioral issues within a school environment. Just putting that outre absolutely, so, we're just painting you this picture here. It makes sense where his life is like, at least leading to an extent, right, absolutely.
I mean, you know, luckily, education and the study of psychology and sociology, these disciplines have all evolved to the point where we can safely say that the majority of times when a child is exhibiting behavioral issues of some sort, especially violent issues, that it's coming from somewhere other than them, you know, most of the time. Again, just most of the time.
Or many of the times. Yeah, you're right, Ben, You're absolutely right. We cannot get into mass generalizations here. It's just it is a somewhat trackable common thing. Once you get down into the nitty gritty, and that does not mean parents out there, that it is your fault, just if you're if you're sure, yeah, yeah, of course.
The reason that I'm doing I'm speaking in this way about it, Matt, is that I want to in the future do an episode that I'll just pitch to you now on air. It's totally okay, so you know, there's no right or wrong answer. What do you think about the about a future episode called can people be Born Evil?
Oh? That's great? Yeah? Or just is evil?
Really?
Yeah? You're right, you're absolutely right. Evil really is evil?
Real? Is I think? I don't know, it's a little different because that goes into the realm of philosophy.
So well it does. Both of them are right. So just by labeling anything evil, maybe it should be what we just need a different word for. Can people be born?
Okay? Well, there are all sorts of terrible people. You can be terrible and not be evil. You could just be a boorish person. But the reason the reason I'm asking this first off, yet, maybe it's a little buzzfeedy to say can children be born evil? But I'm interested in the psychology and science behind that because we have more data to bring to bear. But when we ask about when we ask whether evil exists, we quickly run into the comparison problem, which is, of course, one person's
evil is another person's heroism. Right. Anyhow, Samuel little to serve childhood. His criminal career begins early. He is arrested for burglary in Omaha, Nebraska, on November twenty ninth, nineteen fifty six. So he's sixteen, and he is sentenced to serve time in a program for juvenile offenders in his twenties. After more run ins with crime over those intervening four years in his twenties, he relocates to Florida, where he reunites and lives with his mother. During this time, he
works a variety of jobs, including stints at a cemetery. Also, during this time, he doubles down and quickly establishes his career as a prolific criminal. And we're curating the way that we exhibit the facts here. We want to build our build our case first. So what do we know about What do we know about him from his twenties on?
Sure, So after sixteen he gets to seventeen, and then really for the next eighteen or so, years from nineteen fifty seven until nineteen seventy five, Little would end up getting arrested at least twenty six times in eleven different states, everywhere from Ohio and Maryland to Florida, Massachusetts, out to California in Oregon, then to Philadelphia, New Jersey, Arizona, Illinois, and then Georgia again. And that's not in the order
in which he was arrested. Those are just imagined traveling to all of those various places and being arrested.
He was on the road frequently. He was a drifter, a transient. He was also arrested for a variety of charges. It wasn't always the same thing. He was arrested for shoplifting, for theft, for assault, for sexual assault or rape. He was arrested for aggravated assault on a police officer, DUI's fraud, breaking and entering, solicitation of a sex worker, and more. So we're fast forwarding to December of nineteen seventy six.
He is convicted of assaulting one Pamela CA Smith in Sunset Hills, Missouri, with the intent this is the language of the law here, with the attempt to ravish dash rape. And he's sentenced to three months in county jail. So he was assaulting this person and he fully intended to sexually assault them, So that was enough to lock him up for three months. He gets out. There's something else we want to put. Imagine this if this were true detective or crime show. Imagine this is a vignette that
occurs just the left of the main story. So just we're imagining Little. He's in trouble with the law. But let's go sideways. Let's go to October of nineteen eighty two. This is the month where the skeletal remains of one Melinda La Prix were found in a cemetery in Gautier, Mississippi. She had last been seen in Pascagoula about a month earlier, getting into a brown station wagon with a man that
witnesses would later identify as Little. During the investigation, do sex workers come forward and they say that, you know, they recognize this guy and that he also assaulted them in Pasca Gula once in nineteen eighty once in nineteen eighty one. So the next month, nineteen eighty two, The next month, Little is arrested for shoplifting in Pascagoula and police say, you know what, he matches the description of our unidentified subject in the murder of Melinda La Prix.
Yeah, and he ends up getting charged with this murder for this woman, as well as the aggravated assaults on the other two sex workers. But here's the thing. The grand jury does not indict.
Him because they doubt the trustworthiness of the witnesses.
Yes, exactly. And you can imagine what's going into play there with a you know, a quote jury of his peers unquote of the grand jury, like taking the word of a sex worker, which is a terrible thing that it would be discounted in that way.
But it clearly, it clearly was because these witnesses were involved in what would be seen as the CD underbelly of Pasca Gula.
It's true, It's true. I understand why an individual may take the word of someone from the you know, CD underbelly. Maybe not at face value, but it is. It's just terrible to read about it, I guess from this end of history. So anyway, he gets extradited outside of the state to Florida and he's going to face charges for another murder, and this was the murder of Patricia Ann Mount.
She was found in Forest Grove, Florida, in September of nineteen eighty two, and the authorities believed that, you know, perhaps Little is responsible. So he gets sent to Florida to at least face the charges.
And he does go to trial. He goes to trial for the murder of Patricia Ann Mount. He is acquitted in January of nineteen eighty four. In October of nineteen eighty four, San Diego police officers find Little with a woman who has accused him of attacking her, so he gets arrested. He's charged in that assault and one that occurred a month or so earlier that was also in San Diego. He gets tried for attempted murder. In these cases, the jury deadlocks again, so instead he pleads guilty to
assault in false imprisonment. He's sentenced to four years. He serves about two and a half. On February one, nineteen eighty seven, he he is on parole. He's back on the streets. He moves to Los Angeles, and then from nineteen ninety to two thousand and six he has run ins with the law in seven different states.
So we can just go ahead and see here a pattern where Little seemed to be skirting by getting out of a lot of the legal troubles that he was facing, and in several situations where you know, he's being arrested for a lot of misdemeanors of smaller things, some felonies. Then he ends up, you know, getting getting out, you know, not getting indicted for a lot of these things. Then finally he only goes to jail for two and a half years, and then, like like Ben said, he's out.
He's on the streets for a long time.
And then this begins to come to a head. In two thousand and seven, law enforcement in Los Angeles arrests Samuel Little for possession of cocaine. He is sentenced to what is called a drug diversion program for anyone who is unaware. The idea here is that instead of ending up in the system, one may be able to get their life back on track right. Maybe they will be able to maybe what they need is support rather than punishment.
So they have to submit to drug tests, they have to attend counseling, things of that nature, and some of these programs have great success. However, as soon as he is able to leave, Samuel Little is on the lamb. He doesn't attend this diversion stuff, because of course he doesn't. He does not appear in court. The judge issues a non extraditable warrant. He gets away the fact that his non extraditable will come into play soon.
Yeah, extraditable to California from another state is what we're talking about there. So, then from two thousand and seven to twenty twelve, a lot of there are multiple law enforcement officers, individuals that let's say, I don't know what twelve something like that, let's just put a number to it. They come into some kind of contact with Little. His name continues getting out there with police departments. His record
is growing and growing. There's a whole filing cabinet at this point of Samuel Little, and somebody or several of these people discover that he has this warrant, but because it's non extraditable, they end up letting him go again, like he's just kind of somehow just slipping through through people's grasps.
Yeah, we also have to think, if we, you know, exercise the perspective of some law enforcement communities, we also have to realize that this guy is nothing but trouble. Yeah, and so in many cases. They just want to just get out of here. If he's shoplifting, you know what
I mean. In two thousand twelve, a detective for the LAPD named Mitzi Roberts gets a match on two cold murder cases from back in nineteen eighty nine in Los Angeles, and then she checks this against the statewide offender database and she receives a match.
Is some kind of DNA sample, right.
Yes, And this DNA match identifies the DNA of Samuel Little, linking him to the crimes. On September fifth, twenty twelve, Detective Roberts gets a call from a sheriff in Louisiana. The deputy say they've traced an ATM purchase by Samuel Little to a Mini Mart, a convenience store in Louisville, Kentucky, and there they find Samuel Little at a nearby Christian shelter. He is arrested. He is extradited to California for that drug charge. This time and then the pieces begin coming together.
Yes, the authorities, they are able to at least link him to three more or different murders that occurred between nineteen eighty seven and eighty nine over that two year period. There and hear their names, Guadalupe Apodaca, Audrey Nelson, and Carol Alford and all of these people, and here's that trigger warning for you had been beaten and strangled in a very similar fashion. And very soon after that, the police began to suspect that Little has been out there
for a long time. This is early in his life. Maybe he had more blood on his hands than just these three people.
Much much more. That's right. They realized they were looking at a genuine serial killer. Investigations were resurrected across the country, and law enforcement in multiple states began to look at other older cold cases.
Think about all the places he's traveled over all of those years, and all the places he's operated. But the authorities, even then, they didn't know that they had just captured and begun unraveling the case of the most prolific serial killer in US history.
Down the rabbit hole. After a word from our sponsors, here's where it gets crazy. Let's start with what we know. During his initial trial for those first three murders, Samuel Little staunchly proclaimed his innocence even after being convicted. Things don't change until a while after he's convicted for those three murders and sentenced to three consecutive life terms without parole. He eventually begins to confess other crimes.
Now it's interesting here, We're gonna kind of get into it. But he doesn't want to confess or talk about anything until he knows he's not getting out of prison.
Right when he knows that there is no appeal, no mistrial, no legal loophole through which he can jump, there's a Texas ranger named James Holland who enters the scene. Holland had started flying to California in twenty eighteen, just last year, to interview Little in connection to the nineteen ninety four murder of a sex worker in Odessa, Texas. Samuel Little chooses James Holland to be his confessor to this day, if you ask Holland, he is not sure why Little
chose him. But if you ask other sources, like Christina Palizzolo from the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program or VCaP, she will say that Little was hoping for a transaction. He wanted to move to a different prison now that he knew this was his forever. He agreed to come clean in exchange for this relocation. If I confess you will move me. That was the devil's bargain that they made.
And confess he did. According to Palizzolo, quote, over the course of that interview in May, he went through city and state and gave Ranger Holland the number of people he killed in each place Jackson, Mississippi one, Cincinnati, Ohio one, Phoenix, Arizona three, Las Vegas, Nevada one, and just it went on and on and on.
And in May of twenty eighteen, Samuel Little confessed to the nineteen ninety four murder of Denise Christie Brothers in Odessa. That's who Holland was looking for. Texas Ranger Holland. He pled guilty to the murder of Denise Christie Brothers on December thirteenth, and boom, he received another life sentence, so he's up to four. And then on November ninth, he confessed to the nineteen ninety six strangulation murder of Melissa Thomas.
And this goes on and on and on, as you said, Matt, the Texas District Attorney and the Wise County Sheriff's office also announced on November thirteenth that Little had not just confessed to murders in Texas. He had confessed to dozens of murders and may have committed more than ninety nine zero across what they thought then was fourteen states between nineteen seventy and two thousand and five.
That is horrifying to imagine that, right, And.
The scary thing is we don't have to imagine all in all. At this point, Samuel Little has been linked to at least ninety three separate homicides. On October of twenty nineteen, the FBI announced that Samuel Little is the most prolific known serial killer in American history, full stop. His methods were almost always the same, strangling, beating, and assaulting vulnerable women, people who were homeless, people who were working in the sex industry, runaways, people surviving on the
fringe of mainstream society. This may be one of the more disturbing aspects of the case that you can encounter firsthand now, should you choose to. You can go see video footage of law enforcement interviewing Samuel Little, the FBI interviewing them as he recounts in a grandfatherly warm tone with surprising clarity, the appearance of each victim, their location, the names he associated with them and so on. He also drew sketches of these victims based on his recollections.
Yeah, that's one of the most disturbing parts of this whole thing, are the sketches, because he just apparently can see them in his mind.
Right, and he doesn't have an artistic inclination.
No, you know what I mean.
You can tell it's childlike the way it's straw, you know what I mean. Certain features that he remembers are emphasized when he would see his skin tone or hair color or eye color. While his patterns of murder may not have changed, he did travel widely, as you said, Matt, and this transient lifestyle allowed him to live again on the fringes like his victims. A detective in Mississippi familiar with Little's routines described it thusly.
His whole thing was shoplifting. He would work at shoplifting in a city for three or four days and then move on. He would take the items to drug areas and then sell them. Once he was done, he would go out early in the morning hours and look for women.
So he had this routine, and you can see the prioritization of the routine, right, It's roughly something along the lines of steal to get drugs, to get drugs, do drugs, and then you're leaving town satisfy that other compulsion. So how did he get away for so long? So question will address after award from our sponsor we've returned. Let's
start with why little thought he would get away? First and foremost, and we don't want to be too you know, like sixty minutes TV special about this, But first and foremost, we have to consider the psychological angle. He's like many other serial killers. He's a malignant narcissist. So he's both not very intelligent and extremely arrogant. I think some you know, malignant narcissists have no real use in society, but they have wildly inaccurate beliefs about their own self perceived intelligence.
Just like a narcissist can never forgive other people for the great sin of not being them, they're also incapable of seeing worth ability or intelligence in other people. So it's kind of the scene where it's like, I'm the smartest person in any room, you know what I mean, sure, or the most the most valuable. No one will ever catch me.
Yeah, Oh, I know that feeling, you know, that feelings. Oh yeah, I'm a giant narcissist. I would say here the opposite. I'm always the smartest, most self centered person in every room. That's all I know. And I can't say anything about you guys, especially Paul, but I'm the best.
I think it's pretty great. I think you're pretty pretty topicled.
It's interesting his life experience, though, kind of kind of speaks to why he would feel that way. So like, even if he wasn't an ingrained narcissist, I don't know how the psychology of it functions. I don't know if just one is a narcissist. But after all of his run ins with police over all these years, all the things against laws and against mores and all that he'd been doing up to this point outside of homicide, he'd
just gotten away with it. So I can see why he would lead go down that path of at least mentally believing that he's not going to get caught.
I see, yeah, yeah, I can see that too. The second thing is, as we mentioned, his victim choice. Like other would be predators, he sought the vulnerable, the weak, people who were already in some form of compromise. Circumstance, people who in a way were living halfway off the grid already, And like other abusers or serial murderers, he was a cow and he's just too pathetic to prey on anyone else. I mean, there's a common pattern because frankly,
it works. It's time tested, tried and true. If you want to get away with something, you find the vulnerable members of a society, and people who knew his victims, who could have been witnesses, could have corroborated information, maybe helped organize a search. They would also tend to be less likely to go to the police. Police would be less likely to follow up on the assault or death of someone who had already been in and out of the system on their own unrelated criminal charges.
And even if those people went to trial, as Samuel Little experienced, perhaps a jury isn't going to believe.
Them, right, right, Like I can tell that person is a druggy, right, and so did they remember something or did someone offer them drugs to say this? You know what I mean? And still that's also prejudice. Aside, in many cases, juries might feel that they are exercising critical thinking by doing that.
You know, don't we all think we're criticizing critical thinking.
We're all to some degree assured that we're the smartest person in the room.
No, that's that's me, Is that you? Yeah, yeah, Remember I'm I'm the one, so please don't I'm not being serious at all in anything.
So, uh, well, I think you're top notch. I would vote for you.
Well, I certainly don't, and I would not. So there we go. What's the opposite of a narcissist a human being? Cave sad guy? That's me.
So so in other cases, the bodies when they're you know, of course there was some sort of investigation, but bodies could be unidentified. You might not find any ID, you might not find a record of them in terms of fingerprint or anything in the system. And Little tended to stun or knock out his victims before he strangled them. He was a strangler and because of this, there were no stab marks, There were no bullet wounds, which meant
that authorities could misidentify the cause of death. If you see someone who hasn't been stabbed or shot, there's no head trauma something like that, then you you also see perhaps narcotics of some sort in their system. You could say with reasonable validity that this was a drug overdose, and then if you wanted, you could explain away the bruises by saying life on the streets is an ugly dangerous thing.
Yeah, that's a hard truth there. Just what hard narcotics and a difficult life does to the body in appearance,
and how that could be mistaken. You're right, well, and it's also the third thing here that we have mentioned is that many of his attacks and homicides occurred before really DNA profiling was a thing where there would be databases across each state and there would be a federal database where his if his DNA was found on one scene, it could just be checked right, you know, throughout So a lot of times evidence wasn't available that could provide
really a clear link to him. Again, you've got witnesses maybe that are in the area, who are saying he's somewhere. You think you may have got a hit somewhere, or you do end up getting a DNA hit like the previous occurrence that we talked about at the top of the show, where it just gets linked to this one thing in this one case in this one state or maybe even county.
Right, absolutely, and so again to be clear, we're not saying law enforcement was doing a bad job. No, we're saying that these tools were not available over the course of this long and bloody career. Another factor, the fourth here, is that Little, as we said, shared the fringe with his victims. He was a known transient. He had a rap sheet that was quickly becoming a novel, and it
was for largely petty crime violent assault aside. A lot of the bulk of his charges were for things like shoplifting, fraud, theft, so authorities were often glad to get him booted to get out of here. He's out of here, instead of digging further into his murky past. And it is important, it's crucial to remember that he would have been caught gears or even decades earlier, had DNA testing been available.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And there's another factor here. We're talking about his transience and how he's sharing the fringe with his victims. Remember that the people living on fringes
in local areas maybe are not so transient. Who aren't just you know, traveling around as much as Little was where the people he's interacting with maybe just don't know who he is he's just new in an area, and let's say he attacks somebody pretty pretty soon after arriving in an area and then just disappears to go somewhere else. Every time, it's not just law enforcement that he is presenting himself anew to, it's everybody and every place that he's traveling to across the country.
Yeah, and let's consider also, you know, there's there's more than a little bit of institutionalized racism, whether implicit, explicit, conscious, or subconscious that says, you know, beyond the lookout for unidentified black mail.
Did we mention that he's black at any time in this episode?
But well, no, I don't think we did.
No. Yeah, I think there's a I mean, the statistics varied out that serial killers in general, and it's not always are a white male. Apprehended serial killers are white males. Yes, I mean that's just what we've seen from the statistics after studying it over all these episodes here and speaking
with professionals over the course of several different podcasts. Yeah, Samuel Little certainly stands out because of his the number of people that he's attacked, because of who he is, and I mean, there's so many things and because of the demographics. Yeah, the demographics alone.
Yeah, I believe. Another example would maybe be Lonnie David Franklin, also known as the grim Sleeper. Yeah, but Franklin at this point is known for at least ten murders, not ninety three.
Well, yeah, or like Wayne Williams.
Or Wayne Williams Yeah, or.
The DC Snipers, which they're not serial killers necessarily, they're spree killers.
Well, and you know, you and I may have slightly different opinions about the Wayne Williams case. I don't think we do, but if you would like to, well, is your opinion that he probably did kill quite a number of them, but there are several on the list that he almost certainly did not kill my opinion, in the legal fact as they was convicted of two murders that do not fit the demographics of the victims of the rest of the Atlanta child murders.
Okay, sounds good.
I mean that's just the fact, that's what he's convicted.
Of, right, I mean, yes, that's the truth.
But yes, I'm not here to defend him in any way.
No, I get it. That's what the whole show was about. So that's the whole point. I think over time after enough interaction, like you know, secondhand interaction with him directly. Mmmmm.
So if you want Douglas, if you want to learn more about what we're talking about, check out check out Matt's show that he creates my collaboration, which did you.
Know, Yeah, yeah, but it's not my show, that's Payne Lindsay's show.
Okay, Well, check out the show Matt and Paine did called Atlanta Monster, and check out the follow up which is very much Matt's show he does a lovely job on called Zodiac.
Yeah, and it's just because we're here and he knows when this comes out. Okay, the third season will be available in January.
Any spoilers for the audience.
We mentioned the the subject that it's about previous to this moment within this podcast.
There we go. I like that spoiler a lot, and I gotta say I love a good long form true crime narrative. I'd love to work on one someday. I think that if you are I hesitate to say, a fan of true crime, but if you are interested in this and you want to hear top notch research and just a masterfully done show, then check out The Monsters The first two seasons are already out. I believe season two is ongoing too, right.
Yeah, I'm all Atlanta Monster and does Zodiac Killer both have bonus content at some point coming out, and they always will. They will have something.
Oh fantastic, Yes, do check them out. Let us know what you think.
You mentioned something, you said long form true crime, and now I just want to see long form true crime improv. I want to see that, Like what is that? What is long form true crime improv? Comedic improv or like long long form true improv crime.
Oh well, for people who've been to some of my shows, they would say, any improv I do as a crime. Oh yes, that's a good taste.
Disagree. While we're patting each other back, you're an excellent improviser, very kind. So numerous times.
We're hoping to delay a little bit of the darkness here because we're talking about some very ugh, some very troubling things, both with the system in which these crimes occur and with the individual and with what this means for the future. Because the last factor and why Little would get away for so long, why he thought he would get away for so long, is simply this. He seemed absolutely fine, with going down for a drug possession, burglary, shoplifting,
dui rap or something like that. But he always fought murder charges and for a long time, as you heard in our recounting of this chronology, he came away clean. In the nineteen eighties, as we said, he was charged with killing women in two different states, but he escaped
indictment in Mississippi, and he escaped conviction in Florida. And even after being convicted of three murders in California that was in twenty fourteen, remember those nineteen eighties cold cases, he refused to admit to the crimes that dated back to the nineteen eighties. It was, as you said, Matt, only when he realized this would be his forever that he decided to make these confessions.
And then perhaps some fame was also involved.
Right, And this leads us to something that I like to call the Lucas problem. So what makes Samuel little different from these criminals? I mean, there's scum whatever, these people who say that they have murdered a lot of other binniscent people. It's it's no secret that he's not unique in this kind of confession. There's, of course, of the famous case of Henry Lee Lucas, for whom the Lucas Problem is named. Henry Lee Lucas would go on to confess to over three hundred murders.
He said that he.
And his compatriototist tool were in the service of something called the Hand of Death, which we I think did an episode.
Yeah, four pie, Yeah, name for it.
I guess the four pie idea did have a little bit more sand to it.
Yeah.
Yeah, that they're related, they're okay, yah yeah yeah. Oh man, I still think about that one me too. Well, Okay, So here's the Lucas problem. Simply put its this. So, like most serial killers, again, Lucas is of below average intelligence. He's also easily manipulated by law enforcement, and he's going to be in jail like little for the rest of his life.
Nothing he can do.
Game, set and match. This is this is maybe not officially true. This is not admitted by a lot of law enforcement, especially people involved directly with the Lucas case. But the fact of the matter is that evidence overwhelmingly suggests unscrupulous law officers used Henry Lee Lucas to close out cold cases.
And you know about this. We talked about this, Well, yeah, I mean that that's the thing. He could and would straight up confess to crimes, even if it's not within the realm of possibility that he could physically be in the location where a homicide occurred, Like there's no way he could have been in that scene, but he would do that in exchange for little things here and there
perks if you will within the prison system. And so you know, I'll sure, I'll confess to that crime if you get me x right right.
And you know, there are a thousand ways to message that or speak about it, such that if a tape were played back, someone in law enforcement could say, well, we didn't tell him to say it.
He wasn't coerced. He just stated that.
You know, Like, so, what can you tell me about you know, I'm just making this up, but like, what can you tell me about Linda Alvarez in you know, Cape Canaveral, Florida in insert time.
Sorry Linda for using your name, but we'll continue here. It's just fictional.
This is not a real Lenda. It's not based on real Linda. But and while they're saying it, and maybe they're just recording audio, they slide across a folder or a jacket with the facts of the case in there, and on top of that, there's like a pack of cigarettes. Yeah, it's that simple. It is that simple for that kind of thing to occur.
You should have seen how Ben was slowly pushing this made up folder towards me as he was explaining it to me and maintaining eye contact. It was awesome.
Well, I hope that we are never in a situation like that where we have to bribe or be bribed with cigarettes to confess the murders we didn't commit. But that is okay. So that's the Lucas problem. You cannot believe these untrustworthy people, especially when they're incentivized to lie. But Little's case is different.
Why it really has to do with the amount of information and detail that he was able to provide, and he was doing it unprompted by law enforcement. He was doing doing it for this individual Holland who showed up at his prison looking for one specific or answers to
one specific case. And just the number of crime scenes that he can give details about, very specific stuff, and a lot of this, a lot of these details weren't a part of the public facing investigation, right where reporters didn't weren't privy to a lot of the information that somehow Samuel Little knows.
Yeah, and this is this is a brilliant thing that law enforcement has learned to do because it gives you a way to understand. The weird thing is that there there are false confessions all the time, especially if something reaches public panic level, like during during the Sun of Sam murders. How many people wrote in just because they
mistook their ideas for clever pranks. They would write in and say, I'm not a Sam killing, but they don't know anything that hasn't been released through the papers yet.
It's particularly difficult when there's a lot of press or leaks have occurred exactly exactly, so he passes that test.
He knows stuff that has not been released to the public or has not at the very least not been widely circulated, and the information provided has been corroborated in multiple cases. Again, the thing that this is just maybe one person's opinion. But the thing that bothers me the most about this is that you can go on YouTube. You can see the FBI interviewing Samuel Little, and you can see his warm, grandfatherly or a vuncular I guess, depending on how old you are. His tone as he
recalls the specifics of these murders. He is never going to leave prison, not while he's alive. He has nothing left to lose, and likely that media attention is attractive to him, as well as the opportunity to recount and therefore relive his crime. There is one issue with Little's recollection. It is his issue with chronology. As you said, Matt, he is incredibly lucid when it comes to remembering details of victims, locations, you know, their appearances, the order of
operations of these atrocious acts. But he's bad at remembering specific dates. And to be honest, I don't think that means he's making it up, and I don't think it means it should be dismissed. Like most people have a problem with specific dates.
Oh sure, and especially when you're traveling as much or traveled as much as he has to all these varying places.
Add to that the years of heavy drug use.
Yeah.
So this leads us to some implications that we may have mentioned at the top of the show. First, there is more to come. This tale has not concluded. Of the ninety plus murders Little list confessed to from nineteen seventy two thousand and five. The FBI currently has solidly connected him to at least fifty wow that we know of. That doesn't include murders that he may not have confessed to yet, nor does it include other connected murders the
FBI may have yet to publicly confirm. Right, Yeah, and there may be more cases like this on the way. I don't know if you've heard about this. A crime scene DNA company just acquired the database that was used to apprehend the Golden State Killer, which means that now.
Is that wait, are they using the jed match thing? Is that what it's talking about? I believe so yeah, whoa, it is jed matched. Oh my gosh. That is a powerful tool. Whoa.
And now it's going to be used specifically by this crime scene DNA friends company or profiling company Holy mackerel. So there may be more on the way. But we're also in a ticking clock situation because as we record this, Samuel Little is seventy nine years old. He is in bad health. He will stay in prison in Texas until his death. So the goal becomes one of identifying his victims and providing closure and justice in these unsolved cases that we're formerly going to be relegated to the Cold
Case Files VCaP, which we mentioned earlier. Palazzolo's organization is hoping this case will serve as a reminder to every jurisdiction of the importance of consistent crime reporting and inter departmental interagency communication. Absolutely, and that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
That's right, let us know what you think.
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