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| In this Monday, March 4, 2013 photo, Samuel Little, a suspected serial killer, appears at Los Angeles Superior Court in Los Angeles. Little, 72, was arrested in Louisville, Ky., in September by U.S. Marshals on an unrelated narcotics warrant while investigators built their case. He later waived extradition and was brought to Los Angeles, where he was charged with three murder counts and the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders. |
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- When Los Angeles cold case detectives caught up with Samuel Little this past fall, he was living in a Christian shelter in Kentucky, his latest arrest a few months earlier for alleged possession of a crack pipe. But the LA investigators wanted him on far more serious charges: The slayings of two women in 1989, both found strangled and nude below the waist - victims of what police concluded had been sexually motivated strangulations.
Little's
name came up, police said, after DNA evidence collected at old crime
scenes matched samples of his stored in a criminal database. After
detectives say they found yet another match, a third murder charge was
soon added against Little.
Now, as the
72-year-old former boxer and transient awaits trial in Los Angeles,
authorities in numerous jurisdictions in California, Florida, Kentucky,
Missouri, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi and Ohio are scouring
their own cold case files for possible ties to Little. One old murder
case, in Pascagoula, Miss., already has been reopened. DNA results are
pending in some others.
Little's more than
100-page rap sheet details crimes in 24 states spread over 56 years -
mostly assault, burglary, armed robbery, shoplifting and drug
violations. In that time, authorities say incredulously, he served less
than 10 years in prison.
But Los Angeles
detectives allege he was also a serial killer, who traveled the country
preying on prostitutes, drug addicts and troubled women.
They
assert Little often delivered a knockout punch to women and then
proceeded to strangle them while masturbating, dumping the bodies and
soon after leaving town. Their investigation has turned up a number of
cases in which he was a suspect or convicted.
Police are using those old cases - and tracking down surviving victims - to help build their own against Little.
"We see a pattern, and the pattern matches what he's got away with in the past," said LAPD Detective Mitzi Roberts.
Little
has pleaded not guilty in the three LA slayings, and in interviews with
detectives after his September arrest he described his police record as
"dismissed, not guilty, dismissed."
"I just
be in the wrong place at the wrong time with people," he said, according
to an interview transcript reviewed by The Associated Press.
Still,
as more details emerge, so do more questions. Among them: How did
someone with so many encounters with the law, suspected by prosecutors
and police officers of killing for decades, manage to escape serious
jail time?
"It's the craziest rap sheet I've
ever seen," said Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman,
who has worked many serial killer cold cases. "The fact that he hasn't
spent a more significant period of his life (in custody) is a shocking
thing. He's gotten break after break after break."
Deputy Public Defender Michael Pentz, who represents Little, declined to comment.
Authorities
have pieced together a 24-page timeline tracking Little's activity
across the country since his birth. His rap sheet has helped them
pinpoint his location sometimes on a monthly basis. Law enforcement
agencies are now cross-referencing that timeline with cold case slayings
in their states.
The Florida Department of
Law Enforcement is leading a review of that state's unsolved murders and
helping coordinate the effort among 12 jurisdictions. The department
published an intelligence bulletin alerting authorities in Florida,
Alabama and Georgia about Little's case, noting he lived in the area on
and off in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.
"We
strongly encouraged them to look at any unresolved homicides that they
had during those time frames and then consider him as a potential
suspect," said Jeff Fortier, a special agent supervisor at the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement. The department is re-examining DNA
evidence in about 15 cases that was collected before advances in
forensic science allowed for thorough analysis, Fortier said.
"We are in the infancy stages of what we expect will be a protracted investigation," he said.
In
Mississippi, Pascagoula cold case Detective Darren Versiga is
re-investigating the killing of Melinda LaPree, a 22-year-old prostitute
found strangled in 1982. Little had been arrested in that crime but
never indicted, Versiga said. The detective has tracked down old
witnesses and is working to reconstruct the case file because much of it
was washed away during Hurricane Katrina.
Little,
who often went by the name Samuel McDowell, grew up with his
grandmother in Lorain, Ohio. His rap sheet shows his first arrest at age
16 on burglary charges. After serving time in a youth authority he was
released and, months later, arrested again for breaking and entering.
In
an hour- and 15-minute interview with Los Angeles detectives, Little
spoke openly about his past and his time in the penitentiary, where he
started boxing as a middleweight against the other inmates. "I used to
be a prizefighter," he said.
In his late 20s,
Little went to live with his mother in Florida and worked at the Dade
County Department of Sanitation and, later, at a cemetery. Soon, he
began traveling more widely and had more run-ins with the law; between
1971 and 1974 Little was arrested in eight states for crimes that
included armed robbery, rape, theft, solicitation of a prostitute,
shoplifting, DUI, aggravated assault on a police officer and fraud.
"I've been in and out of the penitentiary," he told the California officers.
"Well, for what?" a detective asked, to which Little responded: "Shoplifting and, uh, petty thefts and stuff."
Then came the 911 call of Sept. 11, 1976, in Sunset Hills, Mo.
Pamela
Kay Smith was banging on the back door of a home, crying for help,
naked below the waist with her hands bound behind her back with
electrical cord and cloth. Smith, who was a drug addict, told officers
that she was picked up by Little in St. Louis. She said he choked her
from behind with electrical cord, forced her into his car, beat her
unconscious, then drove to Sunset Hills and raped her.
Officers
found Little, then 36, still seated in his car near the home where
Smith sought refuge, with her jewelry and clothing inside. Little denied
raping Smith, telling officers: "I only beat her." The case summary was
recalled in court papers filed by prosecutors in Los Angeles.
Little
was found guilty of assault with the intent to ravish-rape and was
sentenced to three months in county jail. Pascagoula Detective Versiga,
who reviewed the Smith case, believes Little may have pleaded to a
lesser charge and received a shorter sentence because of the victim's
lifestyle. The case file refers to Smith as a heroin addict who often
failed to appear in court.
After that, the charges against Little grew more serious.
In
Pascagoula, LaPree went missing in September 1982 after getting into a
wood-paneled station wagon with a man witnesses later identified as
Little. A month later her remains were found, and Little was arrested in
her killing and the assault of two other prostitutes. Versiga believes
grand jurors failed to indict in part because of the difficulty in
determining a precise time of death but also because of credibility
problems due to the victim and witnesses working as prostitutes.
Little, nevertheless, remained in custody and was extradited to Florida to be tried in the case of another slain woman.
Patricia
Ann Mount, 26 and mentally disabled, was found dead in the fall of 1982
in rural Forest Grove, Fla., near Gainesville. Eyewitnesses described
last seeing her leaving a beer tavern with a man identified as Little in
a wood-paneled station wagon.
According to
The Gainesville Sun's coverage of the trial, a fiber analyst testified
that hairs found on Mount's clothes "had the same characteristics as
head hairs taken from" Little. But when cross-examined the analyst said
"it was also possible for hairs to be transferred if two people bumped
together."
A jury acquitted Little in January 1984.
By
October 1984, Little was back in custody - this time in San Diego,
accused in the attempted murder of two prostitutes who were kidnapped a
month apart, driven to the same abandoned dirt lot, assaulted and
choked. The first woman was left unconscious on a pile of trash but
survived, according to court records. Patrol officers discovered Little
in a car with the second woman and arrested him.
The
two cases were tried jointly, but the jury failed to reach a verdict.
Little later pleaded guilty to lesser charges of assault with great
bodily injury and false imprisonment. He served about 2.5 years on a
four-year sentence and, in February 1987, he was released on parole.
As
he told the LA detectives in his interview, Little then moved to Los
Angeles, where three more women were soon discovered dead: Carol Alford,
41, found on July 13, 1987; Audrey Nelson, 35, found on Aug. 14, 1989;
and Guadalupe Apodaca, 46, found on Sept. 3, 1989. All were manually
strangled.
It is for those slayings that
Little now stands charged. No trial date has been set, though Little is
due back in court this month for a procedural hearing. If convicted,
Little would face a minimum of life in prison without parole, though
prosecutors said they may seek the death penalty.
When
the case landed on Detective Roberts' desk, she had no idea it would
grow from two local cold case slayings to a cross-country probe into the
past of a man with some 75 arrests. As she studied her suspect, Roberts
also began calling agencies that had dealt with Little most recently.
He
had been arrested on May 1, 2012, by sheriff's deputies in Lake
Charles, La., for possession of a crack pipe and released with an
upcoming court date. At Roberts' request, deputies tried finding him but
came up empty. Then last September deputies called with a hit tracing
an ATM purchase by Little to a Louisville, Ky., minimart. Within hours
he was found at a nearby shelter.
In his
interview with police, Little said he didn't recognize the slain LA
women. Detectives said that DNA collected from semen on upper body
clothing or from fingernail scrapings connect him to the crimes.
Roberts
and others who've investigated Little through the years said some cases
may not have gone forward because DNA testing wasn't available until
the mid-1980s and, even when it was, wouldn't have been useful in these
cases unless authorities tested clothing, fingernails or body swabs. Due
to this perpetrator's particular modus operandi, DNA wouldn't
necessarily be found through standard rape kit collection.
Even
in those cases that did go to trial, they said, jurors may have found
the victims less credible because of their backgrounds, and the
witnesses - often prostitutes - in some cases disappeared. Because
Little was also a transient, Roberts said: "I don't think he stuck in a
lot of peoples' minds much."
"But what's
different now, we're just not going to allow that to happen," she said.
"I think we owe it to the victims. I think we owe it to the families."
Tony Zambrano was 17 when he learned his mother, Guadalupe Apodaca, was killed after going out for a drink one night.
"My
brother told me she left, she went to go have a couple beers, and never
came home," he recalls. Soon after he learned of her slaying.
For
years Zambrano tried to find out what happened to his mother. When
Roberts called him following Little's arrest, he was grateful. But he's
also upset.
"My mom shouldn't really be dead
now. For all those charges in San Diego, who gets four years?" Zambrano
said. "This thing ain't over for a long shot."
