BEHOLD THE MONSTER-Jillian Lauren

of a monster. After maintaining his innocence for decades, Little confessed to the murders of ninety three women, often drawing his victims in haunting detail as he spoke, how could one man evade justice? Manipulating the system for over four decades, as the FBI, the DOJ, the LAPD, and countless law enforcement officials across the country worked to connect their coal cases with the confessions. Lauren's coverage of the investigations and

obsession with Little's victims only escalated. New York Times bestselling author and lead of the Stars docuseries Confronting a serial Killer, Jillian Lauren delivers the harrowing report of her unusual relationship with a psychopath. But this is more than a deep dive into the actions of Samuel Little. Lauren's riveting and emotional accounts revealed the women who were lost to cold files, giving Little's victims a check ants to have their stories

heard for the first time. The book that we're featuring this evening is Behold the Monster, Confronting America's most prolific serial killer, with my special guest, journalist and best selling author, Jillian Lauren. Welcome to the program, and thank you so much for this interview. Jillian Lauren, thank you for having me. Thank you so much for this interview. Congratulations on this book, Behold the Monster.

the media went wild and it was never solved. There are several applausible theories, but is it will never be solved and the detective who took the case no one and wants that case. Okay, no actual detective who's working homicide wants to be the custodial detective of the black Dahlia case, because it means you're going to get calls every day from some kouk who thinks it was their dad,

and you're obligated to follow up on those tips. I used to joke around the cops that I was just gonna call in a new Black Dahlia tip every day. I was just gonna like call in the car. It's just like I just you know, I know it was my mother in law who killed a black Doahalia. But what I got was an interview, and I got that through writer Michael Connolly, who has served as a mentor to me through my career. And I decided I was

going to do a departure. I was writing a novel, and you know, in some ways, I was having a blast. I was interviewing these detectives. I got this famous detective do an interview with me through Michael. He was like, she's okay, this one's all right. You can talk to her. And at the very end of the interview, I said, what are you most proud of and she said, I

am proud of them all. But I did catch this serial killer once and that was pretty cool and that was what sort of set me on the very beginning of the Yellow Brick Road.

That's who the character is based on. And they're running evidence. They're running old evidence on a Department of Justice grant as forensic as DNA fingerprinting and forensic science advanced all of a sudden, these cold cases that were so hard to connect through traditional gumshoeer because they were often stranger murders. Transience, you know, how are you going to connect them. All

of a sudden, here comes this way. So they got one, two, three, and then there was a manhunt across the country to catch this guy because is he still killing people? I mean? And for how long? They ran his wrap sheet and the DA, the Deputy DA, Beth Silverman, who prosecuted the grim Sleeper Chester Turner, like almost every serial killer who was operating in the eighties and nineties in Los Angeles, said she'd never seen a rap. She liked it before

in her life. You know. He was arrested day after day after day after day for petty theft, for assault and for every well, and for murder and for kidnapping, and got off again and again and again. So all together, Samuel Little had a sixty year crime career, and almost forty of it included serial killing, included sexual serial killing.

were more Sam Little related murders across the country. I'd get some heat on it, and then maybe local jurisdictions would be inspired, or family members come forward, or you know, would start to pursue these cold cases. Again. That was really my goal. Like, I didn't go in there to start solving murders. I didn't go in there to insert myself into the middle of an FBI investigation. I wouldn't recommend that to anybody. I went in to talk to Sam Little, and I also thought, what a splashy story.

Here's an underreported serial killer. Maybe I can say, oh, there are these other victims. If I can get this guy talking. And that's kind of my thing, you know, like if I have a superpower, that's sort of it, right, And so I'm like, if anyone can do it, I can. I Like, I can figure an angle into the sky. I didn't take it lightly, you know. I studied what I was doing. I studied successful confessions of serial killers in the past. I studied all kinds of interview techniques,

you know. I looked at the brilliant work of Hugh Ainsworth and Steven Michau who did the interviews with Bundy where they got him to confess in the third person, and I, because you're so smart. I just read those words of theirs over and over again. You're so smart, you know, we bet you could analyze somebody like this right, and then got him talking about himself that way. And I was like, that was a turn of brilliance. Now

I had that in my back pocket, you know. I had a few different ideas, but I was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna get this guy talking. And then I thought, you know, and if I can't, then I spent a lot of research, but not a ton. And I wrote some letters to a serial killer and I'm gonna walk into a men's maximum security prison and I've never seen one before, so let's give it a shot. And that's how it started. It didn't start with any possible idea of what the horizons.

story out of. And she said, you know, we're not going to just do some gruesome serial killer story. You know, we're not doing something nationalist. We're not doing something exploitative like come back at me with an angle. And I'm like, okay, So I wasn't sure what that was yet, but I'm like, here's my angle. I'm going to start writing some letters. So I started writing letters, and you have to request giving you all my professional secrets here. You need to request,

you know, visitors admission. And it takes about six months to get one, and not only do you have to

request it, your inmates has to request it. So as I waited for that to come through, I sort of sort of slowly massaged a rapport with him and listen to his professions of innocence, innocence, innocence, innocence, innocence, and I just was waiting to get face to faced for I started to contradict that, or to a challenge it in any way, you know, But I said, you know, I do think if you're innocent of these times, and in fact, you're just a very unlucky guy who happened

to be at all of these places. That's you know, just because my DNA was there does in me and I killed her just means I was there. I'm just an unlucky guy. But I mean he stopped all that once he started confessing and began to really embrace his crimes more than deny them. I mean, he was long past and he appeals, and he knew he was going to die soon. He was no man so die famous or die in obscurity, and I think he decided to die famous.

funny nicknames in my head. And when Texas Ranger James Holland met Samuel Little Samuel would Little thought me and text range James Halm was in the big tall hat and the sinkle Peso star and the whole thing, and sam All said, why do you use some kind of cowboy from Mars? So then in my notes he became the Space Cowboy. Then that winds in the book, and you know, I think that's one of the things that makes it unique, you know, is that it's a it's

an unfolding. So you asked me two things. What was it like to meet sam What was it like to meet Jim? Sometimes I think it wasn't that different. But what it was like to meet Sam was there was so much, uh, there's drama and pressure the you know, I mean, it's one of the largest men's maximum security facilities. It's horribly overcrowded. I'm in the country, it's horribly overcrowded. It is in the middle of the desert with this punishing atmosphere, and you walk, you know, you walk the

moms and their kids. You walk like about a mile front a visitors parking lot to the visitors waiting center, and you wait and you wait, you wait, wait, and then every single weekend it seems like there's a new wardrobe something that you violated. You know, I had to chew my own underwire out of my bra because there are no sharp objects, there are no sharp objects available,

and the metal detector kept getting set off. So you know, like there was that kind of dramatic experience getting into the prison, getting into B block, you know, and then have Sam little roll up to me in a wheelchair,

you know, and talk to me. It was two days before he confessed, and you know, after about a total of six hours conversation, and it would be so easy to say that you know, it was looking into the eyes of evil, you know, which is what I think that you know, they love in documentaries, you know, And it wasn't It was like talking to human being who I found sort of surprisingly challenging, surprisingly charming, surprisingly like I mean, probably not at that point, not that early.

But I don't know if I've ever wanted to crawl up over a table and kill someone myself that infuriating or.

of our conversations were were interesting. He was a fantastic storyteller with an incredible, incredible recollection, which is something that we shared. And he could really recollect times and and bring things to life, like you know, the steel trade in Lorain, Ohio, and the and the transgender clubs in

Miami in the seventies. And you know, I sort of went on this journey around the country talking to victims' families and talking to law enforcement, and I thought, you know that knowing somebody like Sam little who I mean, evil is a tough word, but it is the takeaway, you know that, you know the takeaway. He's dead now, it's a couple of years, and still I wake up and when I hear his voice in my head, it's

that takeaway. But that doesn't explain much about how he got away with it, about how whole society, society participated in it. Law enforcement and you know, everyone who looked away, you know, and and every institution that abused the little boys who were in you know, reformed schools, and you know, possibly like you know, flipped on all those genes that were in there already. But you know, what would have happened had not the abuse, had not the head trauma happened.

Who knows Sam says the same exact thing would have happened. They said there was nothing that would have changed him.

There really aren't that many of them statistically within the population, but it does tend to be something that is commonality. And there were these they weren't quite pornography, and you could buy them. You could buy them at the corner store.

You could buy them at the five and dimes, was the seven eleven, and they were true detective or inside detective, and they showed I mean, I sort of couldn't believe it when I you know, I started finding like vindage magazine dealers and I was like, I'm going to find this one. This one. He was obsessed with these and he would steal them. And there was this one story

about a woman named Gloria Fairy. Gloria Fairy ran off from her home where she was poor and abused when she was sixteen with her boyfriend who's much older than her, and and then she tried to leave him. She went to work at laundrying Cleveland. He strangled her to death for the crime of leaving him and left her in the park. And there were a couple of magazines that featured this story, and Sam became obsessed, and he became obsessed with the picture, in particular of Gloria Fairy Blonde.

There was she was and pearls and had this very long neck. And he'd been looking in next since he was five. And there was a little girl in class, Carol Messenger, a little redhead girl who used to make funny faces at him, and he would fantasize about putting his hands around her neck. And then there was a teacher that he fantasized about in the third grade and

her neck. And you know, he had this whole narrative and sometimes, I would mean often always I questioned his veracity and his narratives were so colorful, and you know, so I checked, I checked my work. And one of the things that made me think that maybe this whole thing was made up. Was Carol Messenger the little Redhead Girl. And I was just thinking, who's the little redhead girl? What does that sound like? And I was like, that's Charlie Brown. That's the crush in Charlie Brown, that's the

crushing piece. Nuts is the little redhead girl. And I was like, did he make a whole thing up? Except that no, I've corroborated it. And also I found these magazines. I found nineteen fifty four Inside Detective, nineteen fifty five True Detective. Maybe switch those around, I'm not sure one or the other. I found two and there was a story of Gloria Faria and there was the picture he described. So by the time I brought him that picture, he was already in Texas. He was confessing to the FBI

he'd been extra guided to Texas. He was in a sheriff he was in a county jail in Wise County. I mean, I sort of couldn't believe it. I was like, what this looks. There's less there's more security at my kids high school. And I did get to go and interview there and I showed him the Gloria Fairy pictures. And he was just like where did you get these? And where did you like? How? And I was like,

you want them? You know, you want these pictures? Well, then you know I want things too, I mean, And that is what it was always like with Sam and me. You know, he was like, I want a TV. I was like, cool, I want things to you know, I want a story.

and quoted it and showed it to people. There was a moment a few days ago and I was like, I don't think I can read the Denise chapter on tour. I don't think I could look at it again. It was just, you know, it was told to me in such detail. And it was also going back to the Texas Ranger. Texas Ranger James Holland, who is this sort of legendary you know, serial killer whisperer and works multi

jurisdictionally within Texas. But if he has a Texas case that's connected to a case in another state, that gives him jurisdiction there as well. So he was able to locate the Denise Brother's case and that is what brought him to sam Now Texas Ranger James Allen and I happened to come upon the same serial killer at the same time. So that was how I got involved in the FBI investigation.

perhaps the cops weren't getting. So I was communicating with law enforcement about the conversations we had about particular murders, and there were a handful that my details were the lynchpin that sought the case. But I didn't, you know, go in there to go solve murders. I just started to learn as I went.

And I also interviewed people who you know, and law enforcement officers who ignored the claims of marginalized women in the eighties, and and you know, you know, I did more confrontational interviews as well, but I was helped by local cops all across the country at the FBI and I I mean, you know, journalists and law enforcement have a classically tense relationship because my job is to is to find stuff out, you know, my job is to hold people accountable. And law enforcement tends to be a

very cloistered community. And they would I try to like you just go away and let them do your job. Let them do their job. I mean, they said as much to me, you know, like, thank you, young lady for your help. Go Why don't you go let law enforcement do their job and stay in your lane. I'm like, I'm really sorry, but I'm dug in here, you know, and I have an exclusive with a serial killer who's

in the middle of ninety three confessions. Now, those ninety three confessions weren't to me, you know, I would be maybe in the thirties I would say, I got, you know, of like detailed confessions from him. He was confessing to law enforcement, and I was focusing on cases in it. I was doing a deeper dive. Wasn't my goal to get every single confession out of him that was already being done.

thirty five happened fast. I mean, now it's twenty twenty three and we're at sixty three, sixty three, I believe, and I just got to move. I have a map with pins in it that I made at the beginning because it was so hard to sort of imagine the carnage. And also I wanted to see his pattern across the United States because he you know, he was he was a drifter. He was a traveler. He traveled mostly on the ten back and forth across the United States, theft

by day, murder by night. So I made this map and the red pins in it are for the victims that I know that are still unsolved, and the black pins are solves. And I got to change one out the other week. And it's been it's been a while. And believe that this book coming out, you know, I have the most comprehensive list of Sam Little's victims that I know of out there. It's all in the book.

I believe that we're going to see salves. You know, we're going to see action and also awareness and hopefully, you know, I'll entertain you and grab you from the first page to the last, because that's how you get people to care.

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g U s t A Precious Metals dot com. Now what we you write about is incredible. Some there are living victims. There are some victims that escaped the clutches of Samuel Little and specifically a woman that fought him, and you you write that boxed him, also that you had alluded to it and or you had mentioned it.

But you go explore how on earth this guy, even though he was a major suspect in so many of these murders, that even with grand jury indictments, those failed trials failed, even with living victims like the one you chronicle. Leela McLain Bowlegs, can can you tell us just this incredible story that really demonstrates and illustrates what Samuel Little was all about?

the street was the projects. And on the front was where there were pool halls and juke joints and music and prostitutes and guns and drugs and teas and blues and anything you wanted all night long, and people had come from all over the South to come to Carver Village. Now, the women who lived in the projects often worked as prostitutes. And the two women who survived there, the first one Hilden Nelson, who is the woman who I interview in my book. I have the only interview with her, only

interview she ever gave. She and her friends had a pact that you know, if you walked up into your room with a man and it took longer than fifteen minutes, somebody would come, and there was they were breeze ways, you know, like walkways, like two story buildings walkways. Somebody would come and knock on your door. And so her best friend came and knocked on her door, and a man's voice answered, like, she's fine, she's handling her business.

But that wasn't their deal. So Dolores was her friend's name, walked around the back and they had window fans. You know, it was hot Mississippi, it was a summer. She kicked in the window fan and Sam was strangling Hilda in the bathtub with a scarf and drowning her. And Sam just stood up and walked out. And so she was

saved by her friend. Now, she didn't report this, but words started to get around amongst the women, and just a few years later, Sam picked up five foot two inch spark plug named Layla McClain who ran Pool Hall, which was in the back was a brothel where you would rent rooms. And she was also a prostitute. And she got in a car with Sam and she told him where to go, and he's like, no, I'm going somewhere else. And she immediately saw that he was not

going where he said he was going. And this woman is the only woman who fought him off out of ninety three. I mean, plenty of women fought him and she just I mean at the trial she said, I learned to box because I had too many step brothers. She took her foot and put it on the gas and took the wheel and tried to drive the car into a wall, and then she boxed him. I mean, they said how many doors were in that car? Said, I know there were four because I was in and

out of them so many times. You know, like I ran, he grabbed me, I ran, he grabbed me. Finally she got away. She ran across four lanes of traffic and the shipyards that were there were getting out. It was a change of shift.

before that. And you know, I will just never forget them saying you showed up at a hospital with particular hemorrhaging in your eyes, which is what happens when you're strangled. It's the blood vessels and your eyes break, and you know, and you couldn't speak for three days, and you had bruises around your neck, and you'd been hitting the head so many times you couldn't see. Did you report what happened to you? And she said no, ma'am. And the

prosecutor said, let me put this another way. Did any doctor ask you what happened to you? And she said no, ma'am. And she said, well, why didn't you report it? Why didn't you talk to them afterward? And she said, well, I'm going to walk down to the police station in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and said I was working as a prostitute and I was assaulted. I'd wind up in jail. They don't know why I'm down there. They don't know why who I

am or what I'm working. You know, and you, Aunt, you couldn't commit a crime against a black prostitute in Mississippi at that time, sim Lane wasn't considered a crime, and their testimony was never subpoenaed until well, eventually they both did go report it. Their testimony was never subpoenaed until a white girl went missing. Her name was Melinda la Prie, and they connected him to Sam when they showed up at the courthouse old it was eight months pregnant.

They showed up testified at Melinda La Prie's grand jury indictment, and Hilda took one look at Sam and she urinated on the floor and they made her clean it up and they sent them home without testifying. So it wasn't until they testified. It wasn't until they testified at Sam's trial in twenty and thirteen that they finally got to

tell their stories. So Layla McClain Elda Nelson. There was another victim, Laurie Carriage in San Diego, who testified then and testified again in La Sam served eighteen months on was initially attempted murder, kidnapping, assault, rape. He did some time for kidnapping, served eighteen months in a four year sentence. The other victim didn't show up and it's never been identified again. Aunt Tanya Jackson Lori Carriage still very much alive and is a trauma counselor and living in Portland

and works through victims of violent crime. But she is furious, furious that he served eighteen months after having tried to kill her. He left her for dead, he thought she was dead and she just played possum by the side of the road until he was gone. And you know, if you really want to hear some anger about how the social justice system treated a woman they felt, you know, was an unreliable witness, in spite of how precise and impeccable her testimony was, as well as the cops involved

in the case. In spite of that, he served eighteen months, drove straight to La and killed two women in one night.

took a bite out of me. You know, it just had to sit there and look and look that in the eye. And the fact that I did it for so long, which I also think really gave me a unique perspective. I don't know that there's a journalist that's done that sort of long term research with somebody where you get to see their personality unfold in so many ways,

or say the layers of the onion peeling away. But yet when they actradited him to Texas, I thought like, oh, now I don't have to now I can just pretend, oh, bummer, too bad they brought Texas. Now, you know, I can't see him all that much. And then you know, when they gave him the option at the end of it, at the end of the confessions and at the end of his conviction for the murder of Denis Brothers, they gave him the option of where he wanted to be, and he said he wanted to be back in Los

Angeles with his journalist. The difference, I mean every time I talked to Sam was different. There was a time I was working on the documentary Joe Berlinger, who did the amazing Paradise Lost serie, you know, the recent Ted Bundy and Jeffrey John documentaries in Netflix did a documentary about me working on this book and working on Sam Little's cases. And for that and also you know, for my own research, I pretty much talked to Sam on

the phone from prison every day. And one of the things I did for the documentary was, you know, like they can't always have you know, a big fancy camera there when every moment of something real happens in a

true crime story or what that relationship was like. So I put a go pro in my office and every single time I walked in, I turned it on and I was just like, no matter what, no matter what, no matter how shitt you look, no matter you just like ran in from the pool where you were with your kids, you know, their aaron and not in a bikini, and I'm like, no matter what, just like like show what it was like, because that's what it was like.

You know, it was like running up from Christmas dinner and you know, and I think that Keith to do it montage in the documentary that shows like how very many times they spoke to him and you know, and like what different kind of conditions I was in. They even asked me. They were like really, like, I mean, we realize this is powerful, but like most people don't want to be, you know, photographed like bent over their desk crying in a bikini. And I was just like,

fuck it. You know, I'm not a model. Can I say fuck it?

And then when they did shut down the visiting, very shortly after, Sam went into the into the infirmary with COVID related symptoms and died there on December thirtieth, twenty twenty. And it was so the COVID crisis was so crazy, and there were meat trucks in the in the parking lot of the corner's office, and I was never able to get that brain, which is a real shame. What I did get was packages and packages and packages of

things that were in his cell. And also I got one surprising letter that I think can sum up in a sense. You know, when people say, what was it like talk to associated path, you know, you know, really what was it like? You know, I was like, you were looking at the devil, and I was like, do you think that the devil shows up dressed like the devil? You think the devil's that stupid? You know, like he was just he was a Toddler. He was a con man. He was charming. He taught me so much. All nightmares

about him for the rest of my life. But the end of his life, he was he was testy, you know, he was getting he was and also he was starting to get fan letter after fan letter after fan letter, and so all of a sudden, he's like, well, really, you know, this person's offering me money, and and you know, maybe I'm gonna tell them my story. I'm just like, just shut up, Sam. You know, I've been talking to you for years, you know, like I've got your story.

But he would shake me down. He was a hust so he would shake you down to the last minute. And I'm his real I'm like his last friend. I'm his real friend. I'm the only one who's come to see him in prison. You know, he knows these people are just gonna take the drawings, the you know, tracings of his hands. He did, the tracings of his penis. He did the drawings people would ask for, you know, for three hundred dollars or whatever, or because they love him,

love him, love him, love me. They don't know why I would call him a monster. And in any case, I remember one of our last conversations was like, you gave me enough money for ramen, but not a hot pot like you are just you know, because I put like fifteen bucks on his books every once in a while. And you know, he was like, and not a high pathage. You're just like every one of these bitches, you're this, You're that. I get a letter in the mount he

left me one thousand and ninety seven dollars. I was like, you had money, you had money the whole time, and you're shaking down your last friend for five bucks, like you can't help yourself, just doing to see if you can do it to me, you know, And yeah, I got the I opened that check and I was just like, fuck it sad. You know, there's a piece that'll be a mystery to me forever. There's a piece that's just he wanted and he took. There are a lot of

reasons maybe that's what he wanted. You know, I explore them in the book Scientific Psychological. If you figure it out, send me a line.

point in a humiliating fashion. Sure, and like you, you chronicle in this book too, his stay at the Boys Industrial Reformatory did some shaping in or misshaping his character along the way. I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about your extraordinary book, Behold the Monster, Confronting America's most prolific serial Killer. For those that might want to find out further about this, do you have a website and you do any social media?

I'm talking about true prime stories. I'm talking about self defense, and I would love you look at my TikTok. My Instagram is at Jillian Lauren, TikTok at Jillie Lauren Facebook, somewhere Jillian Lauren author, but really go to my website pre order the book. Support this effort. I'm very proud of it.