WEBVTT
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James B.
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Holland with the Texas Rangers interviewing Samuel Little, the Palmdale
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Prison Unit, California Bureau of Corrections.
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I tried to trace back to.
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When I became attracted to Odin Wood's throat.
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He might just be the most prolific serial killer in U.S.
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History.
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He came down on my neck with his thumbs like that.
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He says, I like it when you swallow.
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He is literally hunting these women for close to four
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decades and getting away with it. Oh, God.
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That got so crazy. I wanted more.
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That's the curse.
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That I got.
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Once it became clear to people like Samuel Little that
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they could hunt black women and girls, that's what they did.
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Samuel Little could be the worst serial killer in American history,
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but you've probably never heard of him. Investigators think he
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may have been born in prison, to a mother who
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abandoned him early in his life. He was a drifter,
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spending his time on the roads, but he had a
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much darker side.
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St.
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Louis, Omaha, Nebraska, Arizona, Phoenix, one, two, three. I took
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my shit out.
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Are any bodies buried anywhere?
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What you've just listened to has never been broadcast before.
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It's audio from a series of police interviews recorded in
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May 2018. In them, Samuel Little confesses to murder after
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murder after murder. They're so detailed and so specific that
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the help and police forces across the US solve decades-old murders.
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For 40 years, he claims to have killed across the
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whole country. Now, I'm telling his story for the first time.
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So I've been to Los Angeles quite a few times,
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but I've never been around here. This is the darker underbelly,
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the place most people don't see. And it's also where
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my search to find out about Sam Little, the serial killer, begins.
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Samuel Little was finally put behind bars in 2014. He
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was convicted of killing three women in the 1980s. The
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bodies were found around here, close to where I'm driving now.
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I'm going to meet Brenda. Her mother Carol was one
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of the women he was convicted of murdering. To understand
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the story of Samuel Little, I have to understand how
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it all came to an end.
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Hey, how are you doing?
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Are you Brenda? Yes, I'm Brenda. Really nice to meet you.
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How is your day going?
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Oh, it's a blessing.
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It's a blessing.
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Yeah, this is my favorite picture right here.
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She looks like the queen or something on that. She's
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got a friendly face.
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Mm-hmm.
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What can you remember about when she passed away?
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I was pregnant and I was asleep and a bang, bang, bang,
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bang on the front door. And it was my neighbor
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telling me to get up, put on something, put on something.
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It's about your mother.
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I had to identify, she okay, but she's not breathing,
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you know. But I see her feet straight up.
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Yeah.
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So, yeah.
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I found out everything later on, how, you know.
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That she was murdered. So what did they say had
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happened at the time?
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Strangulation. Strangulation.
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You know, were they saying to you, we think we
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can solve this case, we'll find out who did it?
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Matter of fact, no. No, I didn't hear from no one.
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I didn't hear from anyone for a long time.
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That's kind of crazy, isn't it? That is. Brenda finally
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found out who killed her mum 25 years later. She
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got a call from the police. Samuel Little had been arrested.
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A convicted South LA serial killer has received three consecutive
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life sentences in prison for strangling three women in the 80s.
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He was convicted for the 1987 murder's of Brenda's mom
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and two other women. It was down to DNA analysis
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that wasn't available at the time. They had finally got
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him for murder. But after four years, something extraordinary happened.
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And now to a major discovery. A man who may
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be the worst serial killer in US history, Samuel Little,
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is already behind bars for murder.
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And now he says he killed around 90 people since
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the 1970s. The first murder he's confessed to is from 1970,
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and his last was 2005.
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The FBI is asking the public for help and information.
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The FBI have told us that using existing evidence and
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the new information from his confessions, they've confirmed at least
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46 of the murders, and so far have linked them
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to another 12. putting him on course to be the
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most prolific serial killer in American history. This is so
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early on. This is in 1972. And you do just
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look at his face here and think, how could any
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person do that? I'm looking at some of the pictures
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of the women's lives he ruined here. But this is
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probably like 10 max. He's thought to have killed potentially
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80 more. He is literally hunting these women for close
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to four decades and getting away with it. The pictures
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you're looking at were drawn by Samuel Little himself. They're
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the women he claims to have killed. Since confessing, he's
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been drawing more and more. Faces that haven't been seen
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by anyone for years. and whose disappearances were rarely reported
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or noticed. Family members have even recognised their lost loved.
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Ones from them.
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So I actually have the original audio of Samuel Little
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confessing seven hours of it. I'm the first journalist to
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get a hold of the recordings.
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What would you do if I strangled you?
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What'd she say?
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She had legs with arms like that. He's so proud
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of everything he's done. It actually makes you feel sick.
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It's not hard to see why the police believe him.
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He just describes everything in so much detail. He's so specific.
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And he also explains in there why he thinks he
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wasn't caught. And for him, it's not just DNA. It's
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because of who he was going after.
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Yeah, I keep going, motherfuckers.
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From 17, Samuel Little was on the wrong side of
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the law.
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He was arrested nearly 100 times over his 50-year crime spree.
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A lot of the time, the crimes were petty.
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And he was let go due to insufficient evidence. As
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early as 1976, though, he was convicted for rape, but
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he was only given three months in jail. He'd constantly
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move between states, spending time in seedy bars, red light areas.
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He was always on the lookout for women nobody else
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was paying attention to. I'd found someone who was a
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prostitute on these streets at the same time Samuel Little
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was here. Her name is Tika Thornton.
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This is one of the oldest tracks or streets that's
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known for prostitution. There's one on this corner here. There's
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one on this corner here.
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It's just completely in plain sight. Mm-hmm. but you don't
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see it unless you're looking for it. There's two ladies.
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They were just chatting to that car. Had you heard
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of women going missing? Oh, all the time. Did you
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ever feel protected by the police when you were working
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on this road?
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The police were part of the problem in my mind.
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I have been on the streets and police have called
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me a hoe or a slut. So it's very easy
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for them to think that we're just bad people.
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No one is born a bad person.
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The worst thing of all of it is just how
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disposable these sex workers seem to be. The 80s, when
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Samuel Little was here, were a dark time for L.A.
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It was in the grip of a crack cocaine epidemic,
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and hundreds of women who died on the streets were
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unaccounted for. And Samuel Little wasn't the only murderer around.
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There were other serial killers operating in Los Angeles during
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this period. Was anyone protecting these women? Hello, Nana, how
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are you doing? I'm Ben. Nana Jiamfi has been a
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civil rights lawyer for 20 years here, and she's been
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looking into the Samuel Little case. No one knows about
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Son Little. No one knows about his victims.
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Yeah, because his victims aren't white women.
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If you are a black woman and you are a
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sex worker or you are an addict, then you are
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deserving of any horrible and terrible thing that.
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Happens to you.
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That is dark, isn't it?
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But that's the mentality, right? And when we look at
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the police reports that LAPD put together, so many of
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them have at the top, N-H-I. NHI standing for no
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human involvement. The police literally described this in which no
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human was involved.
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They're literally saying no human, even the victim?
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Yes, that's what they're talking about.
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There's no human.
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That's correct.
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That's what they're saying, that that person is not a
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human being.
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I tried to check these claims with the Los Angeles
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Police Department. that the police would actually refer to a
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victim of a murder as not human. They refused to comment.
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But I've managed to find one former LAPD detective who
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was willing to talk to me about Samuel Little, and
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that's where I'm going next. If the FBI verifies claims,
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Samuel Little is on course to be the most prolific
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serial killer America has ever known, and the police didn't
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stop him for decades. Why? The LAPD wouldn't talk to
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me about it, but there was one man who would.
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He was a retired detective who, for 30 years, was
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the go-to authority on the homicide scene in LA. His
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name is Rick Jackson. You worked in the police for decades.
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How is it possible for someone like Sam Little to exist,
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you know, to operate? Multiple states kill... dozens and dozens
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of people for so long.
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A lot of it comes down to the type of
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victims that you target. They're out there using drugs and
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there's prostitution involved and there's no immediate person to report
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them missing.
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Before he retired in 2013, Rick was investigating Samuel Little.
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It's like there is a certain type of individual that
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is just cared about a little bit less. And I
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think that is the quite depressing thing about the story.
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Well, you know what? I shouldn't say that I don't
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think they were cared less about. I just, it's, you know, like,
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what were you thinking? I mean, it's too bad, but
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you're putting yourselves in a position of vulnerability here. You know,
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You gravitate to certain cases that strike you, and those
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oftentimes don't strike you as heartbreaking because the person, even
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though they're not deserving to be killed, they put themselves
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in a position, it's a very risky position.
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This claim by Rick that these women were in some
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way responsible for what happened to them was shocking. And
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it wasn't just that they were prostitutes. Most were black.
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Was racism why Brenda didn't hear from the police about
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him for so long? There's been some suggestions that the
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race of the victims did play a part in LA.
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See, I just don't buy that.
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I really, really don't. But when you say you don't
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buy it, so you don't think in any way there
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could be some form of institutional.
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Anything's possible, but I just didn't see that. I really didn't.
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I'm not trying to protect anybody. I just didn't see it.
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Samuel Little claims to have killed 20 women in Los
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Angeles alone, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
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According to the FBI's investigation, he got away with murder
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all over the country. He'd drive around, selling stolen goods
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out of his car and killing along the way. After
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the FBI sent out the details from Samuel Little's confessions,
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police forces from around the country stated in public they
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had cases that matched his claims.
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19 states overall, including 10 in Mississippi.
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Where I'm going next.
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I'm meeting Detective Darren Visagia, a serving police officer in
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the city of Pascagoula. He's a key figure in linking
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Little's confessions to unsolved cases in Mississippi. Hello, Darren.
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How we doing?
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He'd also provided key witnesses who'd helped put Little behind bars.
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There are two women he's certain Samuel Little killed in Pascagoula.
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One of them was a 22-year-old woman called Melinda Lepree,
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or Mindy for short. Since 1982, her murder has remained unsolved.
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It's been a busy Sunday.
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Yeah, you know, it's a typical Sunday. You know, church,
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first thing.
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This is Mindy, isn't it?
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Yeah, this is Mindy.
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With a case like Mindy, has he said 100% he
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killed her?
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Yes.
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He's admitted to it? Yes.
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Some of those cases, when the detectives got them and
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they're looking through them, it's what Sam said.
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Word for word.
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Well, pretty much. I mean, to the evidence, to where
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they were dumped at, to where they were picked up at.
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00:17:51.799 --> 00:17:54.900
I mean, how would Sam know where the person was
250
00:17:54.960 --> 00:17:57.430
last seen and then where he dumped her at unless
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he was there?
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00:18:00.970 --> 00:18:03.509
Mindy Lepree's murder was one of the few that did
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00:18:03.549 --> 00:18:06.450
get reported. The deaths of most of the other women
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00:18:06.490 --> 00:18:09.910
he claims to have killed never made the press. Like
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a lot of his other victims, Mindy was a prostitute.
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00:18:13.150 --> 00:18:19.869
This time, though, she was white. Mindy Lepree's family have
257
00:18:19.910 --> 00:18:23.670
been searching for answers for 30 years. She was ambitious,
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she loved music, she left home and moved state. And
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00:18:27.579 --> 00:18:28.500
they never saw her again.
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We're going out to the Gouthière family cemetery where Melinda was.
261
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Raped, murdered.
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00:18:37.079 --> 00:18:40.829
And dumped. I'm with Mindy's brother Bob and the rest
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00:18:40.869 --> 00:18:41.410
of his family.
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00:18:42.349 --> 00:18:42.630
Hello, Gus.
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00:18:48.079 --> 00:18:51.779
Why do you think he targeted your sister?
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He, quote, hunted prostitutes, and that's what she was doing.
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00:18:56.609 --> 00:18:58.829
But he did specifically.
268
00:18:58.309 --> 00:18:58.930
Point her out.
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00:18:58.970 --> 00:19:01.670
A woman got into the car with him at the corner,
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00:19:01.750 --> 00:19:03.589
and he said, no, no, no, I want that one
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over there, Mindy. I mean, she was a beautiful white girl.
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You know, he didn't just victimize black women.
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00:19:14.430 --> 00:19:19.750
Yeah, she looks all right, but she.
274
00:19:19.569 --> 00:19:20.670
Doesn't look good.
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Tragically, the reason Mindy had a belly, as Samuel Little said,
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is because she'd given birth two weeks earlier. Mindy's son, Will,
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is here.
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00:19:55.829 --> 00:19:56.269
That's Will.
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00:19:56.750 --> 00:19:58.490
That's the day we picked him up at the shelter.
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Will's only image of his mum is based on what
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00:20:01.890 --> 00:20:05.349
his family's told him. She was addicted to drugs, she
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00:20:05.390 --> 00:20:07.029
went missing, and she was killed.
283
00:20:07.509 --> 00:20:08.869
I see how much I look like her.
284
00:20:09.309 --> 00:20:10.670
What's it like here and all this? It's surreal.
285
00:20:12.519 --> 00:20:13.150
It's surreal.
286
00:20:14.329 --> 00:20:16.750
I get to watch everybody I care about reliving all
287
00:20:16.769 --> 00:20:17.309
this pain.
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00:20:17.690 --> 00:20:20.079
This is all I've ever known. So it's like the
289
00:20:20.130 --> 00:20:23.039
eye of a hurricane. I'm watching all this destruction and.
290
00:20:23.059 --> 00:20:23.839
Pain and hurt.
291
00:20:29.019 --> 00:20:31.960
For the Lepree family, it wasn't until Darren came along
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00:20:32.019 --> 00:20:35.160
that they felt anyone in a position of authority truly
293
00:20:35.200 --> 00:20:36.019
cared about Mindy.
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I wanted to say thank you for helping my family
295
00:20:41.039 --> 00:20:41.579
out so much.
296
00:20:43.230 --> 00:20:45.339
Darren knows where Mindy's body was found.
297
00:20:49.019 --> 00:20:52.579
All this was high ground. Like this one we're looking
298
00:20:52.599 --> 00:20:54.460
for now, he's upset that we haven't found her yet.
299
00:20:54.839 --> 00:20:57.279
Did you just say that you think that he wanted
300
00:20:57.359 --> 00:20:59.079
them to be found? Oh, I think so. So he
301
00:20:59.119 --> 00:21:00.880
put them in places that he thought people would.
302
00:21:00.940 --> 00:21:06.619
Yeah. So what happened in the graveyard?
303
00:21:07.059 --> 00:21:07.500
Okay.
304
00:21:07.519 --> 00:21:07.839
Okay.
305
00:21:07.900 --> 00:21:10.359
She laid up there for a while.
306
00:21:16.470 --> 00:21:19.029
It is hard to believe. When she was found here
307
00:21:19.049 --> 00:21:22.009
in a graveyard, she'd been here for five weeks, just
308
00:21:22.069 --> 00:21:25.250
meters away from the road. It's like nobody was paying attention.
309
00:21:42.259 --> 00:21:45.950
The police down here were really not invested in figuring
310
00:21:46.009 --> 00:21:47.569
out who this person was.
311
00:21:47.589 --> 00:21:50.269
About how many more lives have.
312
00:21:50.150 --> 00:21:54.950
Been ruined because they didn't want to put the work
313
00:21:55.019 --> 00:21:59.619
in to convict him. These are a lot of my
314
00:21:59.799 --> 00:22:01.339
documents from the time.
315
00:22:01.359 --> 00:22:02.160
These are my notes.
316
00:22:02.720 --> 00:22:04.799
Is this you basically trying to solve the case yourself?
317
00:22:04.900 --> 00:22:07.160
Well, at least keeping track of what I was being told.
318
00:22:07.980 --> 00:22:10.579
You have a name written down twice on this, which
319
00:22:10.660 --> 00:22:15.039
is Lieutenant G.J. Brooks. Who is that?
320
00:22:15.380 --> 00:22:17.980
He was, you know, part of this whole investigation.
321
00:22:22.819 --> 00:22:26.509
G.J. Brooks, or Judson Brooks, was the lead detective on
322
00:22:26.549 --> 00:22:30.410
Mindy's case when she went missing. He oversaw the investigation.
323
00:22:30.890 --> 00:22:34.289
He even arrested Samuel Little at one point. The question
324
00:22:34.329 --> 00:22:36.230
I have is why did he let him go?
325
00:22:36.250 --> 00:22:37.609
Hello?
326
00:22:38.230 --> 00:22:42.089
Hey, is that Judson? It'd be great to just talk
327
00:22:42.130 --> 00:22:44.509
to you about the Sam Little case and when he
328
00:22:44.529 --> 00:22:47.089
first came on your radar all those years ago. Does
329
00:22:47.109 --> 00:22:47.789
that sound okay?
330
00:22:49.730 --> 00:22:51.369
You have some friendly dogs.
331
00:22:53.009 --> 00:22:54.880
Get back, get back.
332
00:22:54.910 --> 00:23:10.109
Do they work? Yeah, do they work? You think I'd
333
00:23:10.130 --> 00:23:12.670
have a gun if it didn't work? Kick the door
334
00:23:12.690 --> 00:23:14.829
open and stick that double barrel through there and everybody
335
00:23:14.849 --> 00:23:15.970
hits the floor and lays down.
336
00:23:15.990 --> 00:23:20.390
Do you remember the Sam Little case?
337
00:23:21.069 --> 00:23:21.329
Oh, yeah.
338
00:23:21.670 --> 00:23:22.670
So you spoke to him?
339
00:23:23.009 --> 00:23:23.289
Oh, yeah.
340
00:23:23.609 --> 00:23:26.539
We had a young girl go missing. In the village,
341
00:23:26.579 --> 00:23:28.839
I found some witnesses that saw that she got in
342
00:23:28.859 --> 00:23:31.880
the car with him and left and didn't come back
343
00:23:31.920 --> 00:23:36.279
with him. Sometime later, her body was found.
344
00:23:36.759 --> 00:23:37.740
Is it Mindy LaPree?
345
00:23:38.609 --> 00:23:41.069
Yeah, that's who it was. She was working as a
346
00:23:41.109 --> 00:23:45.829
prostitute in the village, which was quite unusual, you know,
347
00:23:45.869 --> 00:23:51.670
her being white, and the two black girls that were
348
00:23:51.710 --> 00:23:53.170
the only witnesses we had.
349
00:23:53.670 --> 00:23:55.390
Did you ever have Sam in custody?
350
00:23:55.910 --> 00:23:58.410
One time, and that's when I had to turn him loose.
351
00:24:00.470 --> 00:24:04.130
According to Judson, prosecutors felt the evidence wouldn't stand up
352
00:24:04.170 --> 00:24:08.599
in court, despite having two witnesses. One even claiming Little
353
00:24:08.640 --> 00:24:12.170
said he wanted to kill Mindy. You had two women saying,
354
00:24:12.609 --> 00:24:14.529
we saw her in the car with Little.
355
00:24:14.569 --> 00:24:17.170
That's right. And when he came back, she was not
356
00:24:17.190 --> 00:24:18.009
with him.
357
00:24:18.029 --> 00:24:24.119
That seems like some form of evidence. That's hearsay. Was
358
00:24:24.160 --> 00:24:27.259
it because of who they were, though? These were black prostitutes.
359
00:24:27.440 --> 00:24:28.500
No, no.
360
00:24:28.779 --> 00:24:30.779
You don't think anybody in the police at the time
361
00:24:31.410 --> 00:24:32.809
may have saw these women differently.
362
00:24:32.829 --> 00:24:35.609
No, I don't think anybody in the police department, I
363
00:24:35.650 --> 00:24:39.049
just don't think that anybody would have washed that off
364
00:24:39.130 --> 00:24:42.309
as saying, oh, they're just prostitutes or whatever.
365
00:24:42.410 --> 00:24:45.130
Do you remember Bob Lepre, the brother of Mindy?
366
00:24:45.430 --> 00:24:48.779
He's the one who filed a missing persons report on her.
367
00:24:49.839 --> 00:24:51.779
He feels as though if the police had paid more
368
00:24:51.819 --> 00:24:55.390
attention here, maybe people like yourself, then Sam wouldn't have
369
00:24:55.410 --> 00:24:57.029
got away with it for another 30 years.
370
00:24:57.049 --> 00:24:59.349
Well, do you know that there's people that could say
371
00:24:59.529 --> 00:25:01.869
if he hadn't let his sister go in that area,
372
00:25:01.890 --> 00:25:05.410
she wouldn't have got hurt in the first place. Everybody
373
00:25:05.450 --> 00:25:06.769
can make opinions.
374
00:25:06.910 --> 00:25:08.349
That's a bit of a weird thing to say, because
375
00:25:08.369 --> 00:25:11.690
I suppose it's not necessarily his decision. Women have free will,
376
00:25:11.710 --> 00:25:12.880
they make their own choices.
377
00:25:12.960 --> 00:25:14.220
I understand that part.
378
00:25:14.299 --> 00:25:15.960
And I suppose that's one of the things, you know,
379
00:25:16.410 --> 00:25:18.750
There seems to be maybe a mentality that these ladies
380
00:25:18.789 --> 00:25:21.309
deserved it because of who they were, when in actual
381
00:25:21.349 --> 00:25:22.589
fact they're victims themselves.
382
00:25:22.670 --> 00:25:25.630
There is no justification for that anywhere.
383
00:25:32.609 --> 00:25:35.750
After the police let Samuel Little go following Mindy's murder,
384
00:25:36.289 --> 00:25:39.170
he claims he went on to kill at least 35
385
00:25:39.170 --> 00:25:43.980
more women. Judson was now the second senior detective I'd
386
00:25:44.019 --> 00:25:49.160
heard placed the responsibility elsewhere this time on the victim's family.
387
00:25:49.740 --> 00:25:52.380
I suppose in short, how does a guy like Sam
388
00:25:52.400 --> 00:25:55.200
Little get away with killing so many people over nearly
389
00:25:55.240 --> 00:25:55.940
four decades?
390
00:25:56.200 --> 00:26:00.880
Because of the victimology. The victims in this case aren't
391
00:26:00.900 --> 00:26:05.329
your Baptist preacher's daughters, chief of police's daughters. They're basically
392
00:26:05.349 --> 00:26:10.029
people out there that maybe in society we look at
393
00:26:10.069 --> 00:26:10.589
a little different.
394
00:26:13.730 --> 00:26:18.559
His method of murder, strangulation, often didn't leave marks, and
395
00:26:18.579 --> 00:26:20.930
many of the women had drugs in their system at
396
00:26:20.970 --> 00:26:23.920
the time of death. This meant in a lot of cases,
397
00:26:24.480 --> 00:26:28.819
deaths were recorded as accidental, or natural, and might explain
398
00:26:28.859 --> 00:26:34.619
why their murders weren't investigated. But now, Little's confessions are
399
00:26:34.660 --> 00:26:38.140
forcing police to identify murder cases they didn't even know
400
00:26:38.200 --> 00:26:46.119
they had. Here in Mississippi, it's not just Mindy's case
401
00:26:46.789 --> 00:26:50.750
there's another mare that Little has confessed to. Detective Darren
402
00:26:50.769 --> 00:26:54.769
Versager has interviewed Samuel Little twice and has now started
403
00:26:54.809 --> 00:26:57.950
receiving letters from him. Are these the letters?
404
00:26:58.109 --> 00:27:00.089
These are the letters. This is his handwriting.
405
00:27:00.109 --> 00:27:05.440
It's a pretty interesting pen pal, isn't it? Yeah, it is.
406
00:27:06.240 --> 00:27:09.619
This relationship is paying off. He's already got key information
407
00:27:09.660 --> 00:27:12.299
on the second case, a woman killed in 1977 in
408
00:27:12.420 --> 00:27:16.289
an area not too far from here. He's trying to
409
00:27:16.329 --> 00:27:18.849
locate where the remains were found. As I say, I'm
410
00:27:18.869 --> 00:27:20.650
still waiting for that mugshot.
411
00:27:20.230 --> 00:27:21.309
Of the girl.
412
00:27:21.329 --> 00:27:23.750
The girl strangled him at this point. I will try
413
00:27:23.829 --> 00:27:27.390
to draw the picture of the girl from Gutport. He's
414
00:27:27.410 --> 00:27:29.069
telling me this is the bar and that's the house
415
00:27:29.089 --> 00:27:30.710
where he went across the street and picked her up from.
416
00:27:35.730 --> 00:27:38.750
He's learned from Samuel Little that he sometimes took women
417
00:27:38.789 --> 00:27:42.430
out to dinner, for drinks, or even took them shopping
418
00:27:42.609 --> 00:27:46.079
before eventually killing them. I'd also heard this in the
419
00:27:46.119 --> 00:27:46.880
police recordings.
420
00:27:50.019 --> 00:27:52.339
We went down to this little hill town on my
421
00:27:52.359 --> 00:27:56.289
side in the county and bought some lunch and whiskey.
422
00:27:57.470 --> 00:27:59.609
And she started drinking and I started drinking and she
423
00:27:59.789 --> 00:28:00.349
rolled her.
424
00:28:00.289 --> 00:28:01.569
Big eyes and I do her eyes.
425
00:28:01.589 --> 00:28:05.349
She rolled her eyes at me and getting all paranoid.
426
00:28:05.390 --> 00:28:06.430
You know?
427
00:28:06.869 --> 00:28:08.130
Because she didn't know how well.
428
00:28:08.150 --> 00:28:10.440
She didn't know if we were drunk or we had to.
429
00:28:10.279 --> 00:28:11.210
Get up there and fuck her.
430
00:28:15.710 --> 00:28:19.059
It's quite eerie to think this is the trip that
431
00:28:19.099 --> 00:28:20.500
he did to pick up.
432
00:28:21.279 --> 00:28:23.539
What Sam says about the second lady, he said he
433
00:28:23.579 --> 00:28:27.220
picked her up, pulled in, and pow, he's that monster, man.
434
00:28:28.640 --> 00:28:30.940
So he just says, no, I was abusing her, and then,
435
00:28:31.599 --> 00:28:35.880
you know, I strangled her, and that she was mine.
436
00:28:40.369 --> 00:28:41.650
Is that this woman here?
437
00:28:41.690 --> 00:28:45.579
That is the one. That's the 1977 case. He says
438
00:28:45.640 --> 00:28:47.200
that's her. Is there a.
439
00:28:47.200 --> 00:28:51.410
Worry that maybe some police organizations are linking cold cases
440
00:28:51.450 --> 00:28:53.309
to him to solve cases that haven't been?
441
00:28:53.650 --> 00:28:55.109
Could they be doing that? Maybe they could.
442
00:28:55.130 --> 00:28:55.569
I don't know.
443
00:28:56.190 --> 00:28:58.049
I would hate to think that they would. You know,
444
00:28:58.069 --> 00:28:59.589
there are a lot in law enforcement. A lot of
445
00:28:59.630 --> 00:29:01.349
Miami officers were down there, and they had a bunch
446
00:29:01.369 --> 00:29:04.059
of cases, and he went through them. Nope, that's not mine. Nope,
447
00:29:04.230 --> 00:29:06.279
that's not mine. So, I mean, if he wanted to
448
00:29:06.319 --> 00:29:07.859
take credit for all of them, he could have said, yeah,
449
00:29:07.920 --> 00:29:10.480
they're all mine. Put them on me. But he doesn't
450
00:29:10.500 --> 00:29:10.819
want that.
451
00:29:11.160 --> 00:29:12.700
I mean, he could just be exaggerating.
452
00:29:13.339 --> 00:29:15.660
I mean, when he can tell... what the last meal
453
00:29:15.680 --> 00:29:18.400
she had, and he has confirmed those.
454
00:29:19.420 --> 00:29:21.599
I was concerned at how willing the police I'd met
455
00:29:21.640 --> 00:29:26.299
were to believe Samuel Little. But for Darren, what's important
456
00:29:26.400 --> 00:29:29.869
is the level of detail in the confessions, details only
457
00:29:29.900 --> 00:29:33.829
the killer could have known, and that he's denying other murders.
458
00:29:35.190 --> 00:29:38.309
So, Willie May Bevins, Florida.
459
00:29:38.390 --> 00:29:49.640
Yes, sir. The FBI and police forces across the country
460
00:29:50.220 --> 00:29:54.019
are taking Samuel Little as seriously as Darren is. She
461
00:29:54.140 --> 00:29:54.619
is mine.
462
00:29:54.660 --> 00:29:58.130
She is mine. That's what he claims. When he kills them,
463
00:29:58.150 --> 00:29:58.549
they're his.
464
00:29:58.670 --> 00:29:59.450
Like he owns them.
465
00:29:59.470 --> 00:30:02.410
Like he owns them, that's right. These things just stay
466
00:30:02.430 --> 00:30:03.849
with you, stay with you, and they haunt you.
467
00:30:04.250 --> 00:30:19.880
And I'm just not gonna let it go.
468
00:30:19.920 --> 00:30:23.140
Why can't you know bigger things when they die?
469
00:30:36.779 --> 00:30:39.440
I wanted to know how it came to this. I'd
470
00:30:39.480 --> 00:30:42.549
heard Little explaining his story in his own voice, but
471
00:30:42.569 --> 00:30:44.230
what was he like to the people who knew him?
472
00:30:45.170 --> 00:30:48.650
He was born in the deep south in 1940, but
473
00:30:48.670 --> 00:31:17.589
grew up in Ohio with his grandmother. Yeah, so this
474
00:31:17.690 --> 00:31:21.250
is Lorraine, Ohio. This is where Sam Little spent much
475
00:31:21.289 --> 00:31:24.190
of his childhood. You quite like to think sometimes when
476
00:31:24.230 --> 00:31:26.539
you think of a serial killer that you'll be able
477
00:31:26.559 --> 00:31:28.980
to see the signs or they'll be from somewhere weird
478
00:31:29.140 --> 00:31:34.140
or they'll have a crazy childhood. I'd managed to track
479
00:31:34.200 --> 00:31:37.250
down the church his family had attended when Samuel Little
480
00:31:37.289 --> 00:31:40.150
lived here. His father was a prominent member, but it
481
00:31:40.190 --> 00:31:44.589
was closed. Everything's closed. There was a boxing gym in town.
482
00:31:44.970 --> 00:31:48.130
He claims he was a promising boxer and called himself
483
00:31:48.170 --> 00:31:51.750
the Mad Daddy. He used his signature punch in his attacks.
484
00:31:52.009 --> 00:32:10.309
Sam Little, this guy. Yeah. Eventually, I heard about a
485
00:32:10.349 --> 00:32:13.190
man who might be able to tell me more. Ben
486
00:32:13.250 --> 00:32:16.130
Davis was in a relationship with Samuel Little's sister for
487
00:32:16.230 --> 00:32:20.039
over 20 years. He's never spoken publicly about it before.
488
00:32:20.839 --> 00:32:22.180
Does Ben Davis live here too?
489
00:32:22.200 --> 00:32:22.920
Yeah, I'm Ben.
490
00:32:23.039 --> 00:32:23.539
Are you Ben?
491
00:32:23.579 --> 00:32:24.200
Hey, Ben.
492
00:32:24.509 --> 00:32:25.869
I'm also Ben. How are you doing?
493
00:32:25.880 --> 00:32:26.309
Okay, Ben.
494
00:32:26.410 --> 00:32:34.910
Nice to meet you. When the news broke, Ben was
495
00:32:34.950 --> 00:32:36.730
at home watching TV with his wife.
496
00:32:38.650 --> 00:32:40.410
It was hard for me to see him in that
497
00:32:40.450 --> 00:32:44.410
condition too when they arrested him in a wheelchair and overweight.
498
00:32:45.539 --> 00:32:46.259
Did you like him?
499
00:32:46.859 --> 00:32:47.079
Yeah.
500
00:32:48.740 --> 00:32:51.400
Because it's crazy to think that A guy like that
501
00:32:51.440 --> 00:32:55.200
can be likeable. What were the family like? Were they
502
00:32:55.220 --> 00:32:55.920
a normal family?
503
00:32:56.799 --> 00:33:00.819
Like seven or eight kids. There was a lot of
504
00:33:01.079 --> 00:33:04.849
illness in the family. One of the girls died young.
505
00:33:04.940 --> 00:33:06.869
One of the brothers died young.
506
00:33:07.490 --> 00:33:09.069
Do you know, what did he do as a job?
507
00:33:09.309 --> 00:33:13.890
He was a hustler. I remember he had an old Oldsmobile.
508
00:33:14.809 --> 00:33:21.420
It was just full of stuff. Clothes, meats... Like, horrible
509
00:33:21.579 --> 00:33:21.900
and messy.
510
00:33:21.940 --> 00:33:22.339
Oh, yeah.
511
00:33:22.720 --> 00:33:23.970
That car had mice in it.
512
00:33:25.119 --> 00:33:26.740
He opened the trunk up, and I seen the mice.
513
00:33:26.900 --> 00:33:27.180
Really?
514
00:33:27.400 --> 00:33:32.779
Yeah. He did all of the murders in the car? Yeah.
515
00:33:34.440 --> 00:33:37.990
Ben was with Samuel Little's sister for 20 years. That
516
00:33:38.029 --> 00:33:41.130
whole time, Little says he was on the road, killing.
517
00:33:41.730 --> 00:33:43.990
You know, he killed a lot of people during that period.
518
00:33:44.049 --> 00:33:47.789
I mean, like, so he was coming to you in
519
00:33:47.829 --> 00:33:48.950
between these moments.
520
00:33:49.430 --> 00:33:50.230
I would say....
521
00:33:52.730 --> 00:33:53.269
I would say.
522
00:33:53.589 --> 00:33:55.049
He didn't see nothing or.
523
00:33:55.829 --> 00:33:57.529
What would you say to him now if you saw him?
524
00:33:58.190 --> 00:34:03.559
Wow, Sammy. What was you thinking about? Give him a
525
00:34:03.599 --> 00:34:07.740
bag of pistachios. He'll tell you anything you want. Well,
526
00:34:07.759 --> 00:34:12.619
he likes pistachios. Crazy story, isn't it? It's hard to believe. Yeah.
527
00:34:12.639 --> 00:34:13.340
But thank you very much.
528
00:34:13.699 --> 00:34:14.000
All right.
529
00:34:15.880 --> 00:34:18.250
Yeah, I mean, I think the only thing I can
530
00:34:18.289 --> 00:34:22.010
really take away from that is that you just never...
531
00:34:22.599 --> 00:34:27.900
know who killers are. And it's scary because this car
532
00:34:27.940 --> 00:34:29.659
that Ben keeps bringing up and the fact that it
533
00:34:29.699 --> 00:34:31.280
was dirty and it was horrible, it had loads of
534
00:34:31.300 --> 00:34:35.690
things in. That car is where he killed all these women.
535
00:34:42.530 --> 00:34:45.889
Sammy Little was a nice guy, Ben said. I found
536
00:34:45.909 --> 00:34:49.869
that hard to believe. I'd learned that he moved around constantly.
537
00:34:50.719 --> 00:34:53.119
I'd learned that he chose specific types of women. He
538
00:34:53.159 --> 00:34:56.400
appears to have enjoyed it. But I still couldn't understand
539
00:34:56.480 --> 00:34:57.960
how someone could actually do this.
540
00:35:03.219 --> 00:35:10.820
I tried to trace back to when I became attracted
541
00:35:10.880 --> 00:35:18.539
to open much throats. I remember going to school at Lorraine,
542
00:35:19.019 --> 00:35:23.860
four or five. years old, I noticed the teacher's name.
543
00:35:24.639 --> 00:35:30.440
She's turned me on. I know she used to do
544
00:35:30.579 --> 00:35:31.480
it like this.
545
00:35:31.519 --> 00:35:33.460
She'd be teaching me.
546
00:35:33.480 --> 00:35:38.989
What attracted that shit to me?
547
00:35:39.750 --> 00:35:42.489
Oh, God. I got so crazy.
548
00:35:43.150 --> 00:35:44.750
Why did you wait until you were 30 to do it?
549
00:35:44.809 --> 00:35:45.369
Oh, just imagining it.
550
00:35:49.699 --> 00:35:53.559
Until all of a sudden, I wanted to move.
551
00:35:59.360 --> 00:36:02.599
I wanted to understand how his mind worked, and to
552
00:36:02.639 --> 00:36:06.300
do that, I needed help. I'm meeting Dr Robert Shug,
553
00:36:06.559 --> 00:36:10.880
a forensic psychologist. He's built his career on understanding the
554
00:36:10.940 --> 00:36:13.260
minds of serial killers. Hey, are you Robert?
555
00:36:13.739 --> 00:36:14.139
I am.
556
00:36:14.260 --> 00:36:16.780
Very nice to meet you, I'm Ben. Nice to meet you, Ben.
557
00:36:16.800 --> 00:36:16.860
Hi.
558
00:36:23.550 --> 00:36:28.010
This cannot be explained by one event, by one sort
559
00:36:28.050 --> 00:36:32.530
of magic bullet moment in his life. This is the
560
00:36:32.760 --> 00:36:36.780
culmination of a series of rejections.
561
00:36:36.199 --> 00:36:38.880
And disappointments and possibly traumas.
562
00:36:41.599 --> 00:36:43.860
To understand Samuel Little, we need to look at his
563
00:36:43.929 --> 00:36:46.210
early life and kind of the way events unfolded for him.
564
00:36:47.289 --> 00:36:50.309
Mom is either, she's absent, right? So we don't know
565
00:36:50.329 --> 00:36:52.409
if she's in prison, is she working as a prostitute?
566
00:36:52.869 --> 00:36:54.489
She doesn't seem to have been there.
567
00:36:56.570 --> 00:36:59.429
If his mum is working as a prostitute and he
568
00:36:59.869 --> 00:37:02.619
doesn't have a great relationship with her, that seems like
569
00:37:02.679 --> 00:37:04.559
a major red flag of why he would then go
570
00:37:04.639 --> 00:37:07.159
on to target prostitutes. Big red flag.
571
00:37:09.900 --> 00:37:14.530
She did the strangest thing.
572
00:37:15.449 --> 00:37:18.090
I put my hand around her neck. Could it be
573
00:37:18.130 --> 00:37:23.530
as simple as he is obsessed with a certain sexual act?
574
00:37:34.840 --> 00:37:37.280
And he has found the perfect type of woman to
575
00:37:37.320 --> 00:37:40.019
do it on and to not face retribution for doing so.
576
00:37:40.099 --> 00:37:41.920
I think that's an excellent hypothesis.
577
00:37:42.039 --> 00:37:43.659
And you can sort of see the scenario if you
578
00:37:43.679 --> 00:37:44.210
think about it.
579
00:37:44.260 --> 00:37:48.199
If he's sexually aroused by choking, he's got to go
580
00:37:48.260 --> 00:37:49.820
right to the type of women who would at least
581
00:37:49.909 --> 00:37:51.869
entertain the initial aspects of that.
582
00:37:51.989 --> 00:37:53.389
And because he's a big guy, right?
583
00:37:53.449 --> 00:37:55.789
Maybe he didn't know his own strength at first, but
584
00:37:55.829 --> 00:37:56.960
then sort of grew to like it.
585
00:37:57.510 --> 00:37:58.110
It is interesting.
586
00:37:58.480 --> 00:38:02.039
This relationship between serial killers and prostitutes, I'm fascinated with
587
00:38:02.119 --> 00:38:04.940
because that is a very common theme.
588
00:38:23.030 --> 00:38:25.590
Samuel Little claims to have killed up to 93 women.
589
00:38:27.130 --> 00:38:30.090
He replays the murders in his mind over and over again.
590
00:38:30.989 --> 00:38:32.780
He believes they wanted to die.
591
00:38:32.800 --> 00:38:37.599
They want to die?
592
00:38:37.699 --> 00:39:00.880
Yeah. The more you listen to Samuel Little, the more
593
00:39:00.920 --> 00:39:06.039
horrific the story becomes. He sounds obsessed with killing, unwilling
594
00:39:06.559 --> 00:39:11.699
or unable to stop. So there are very few people
595
00:39:11.780 --> 00:39:14.659
who have survived a Sam Little attack, but I have
596
00:39:14.719 --> 00:39:16.960
read in a few reports that there are four women
597
00:39:17.260 --> 00:39:20.769
who somehow managed to get away. The difficult thing is
598
00:39:20.809 --> 00:39:24.429
that in the majority of those reports, these women are nameless,
599
00:39:25.590 --> 00:39:28.110
but I have managed to track one of them down.
600
00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:31.340
Hello.
601
00:39:31.420 --> 00:39:35.400
Hello. Hi. It's really nice to meet you.
602
00:39:43.570 --> 00:39:45.250
OK, yep, this is the place.
603
00:39:52.300 --> 00:40:04.900
Are you feeling comfortable? Is everything okay? Yeah. Laurie's never
604
00:40:04.960 --> 00:40:08.599
spoken publicly about this. It's taken her a long time
605
00:40:08.639 --> 00:40:11.920
to feel ready. She's spent time as a prostitute after
606
00:40:11.960 --> 00:40:16.719
a traumatic childhood and an abusive relationship. Start where you
607
00:40:16.760 --> 00:40:18.429
feel comfortable with the story.
608
00:40:21.469 --> 00:40:29.789
He pulled up behind me, I could hear something. I
609
00:40:29.849 --> 00:40:32.849
think I might have just froze in place while he'd
610
00:40:32.909 --> 00:40:36.989
already gotten out of his car and put me in
611
00:40:37.030 --> 00:40:41.610
a headlock and shoved me in his car. Yeah.
612
00:40:41.969 --> 00:40:44.989
Did he try and say anything? He just attacked?
613
00:40:45.590 --> 00:40:49.969
Mm-hmm. So I just started having a conversation with him.
614
00:40:51.829 --> 00:40:53.570
I remember him just saying, I'm a traveler.
615
00:40:53.929 --> 00:40:55.670
So he was acting normal at this point, as if.
616
00:40:56.230 --> 00:40:57.789
Oh, he went along with it with me, yeah.
617
00:40:58.909 --> 00:40:59.210
Yeah.
618
00:41:02.429 --> 00:41:05.150
I remember staring at the panel of the car and
619
00:41:05.190 --> 00:41:13.489
just really checking it out. What happened next was very
620
00:41:13.789 --> 00:41:16.969
quickly is being pulled and yanked into the back seat
621
00:41:16.989 --> 00:41:21.130
of the car. He wanted to play something different. And
622
00:41:21.190 --> 00:41:22.849
I got turned over on my.
623
00:41:22.869 --> 00:41:22.949
I.
624
00:41:30.860 --> 00:41:32.280
Had to get up, oh boy.
625
00:41:33.460 --> 00:41:35.039
Remember, you can take a break.
626
00:41:37.079 --> 00:41:40.699
I had to get on my knees, get turned over
627
00:41:40.719 --> 00:41:46.570
on the seat. He had taken my nylons off when
628
00:41:46.630 --> 00:41:51.179
I was on my back initially. And he used those
629
00:41:51.219 --> 00:41:54.900
to tie my wrists up. And I tried to encourage him,
630
00:41:54.960 --> 00:41:57.539
keep going along, keep going along. Don't let him know
631
00:41:57.579 --> 00:42:05.679
you're afraid. He came down on my neck with his
632
00:42:05.739 --> 00:42:12.139
thumbs like that. And I'm like, I'm screwed. And then
633
00:42:12.159 --> 00:42:13.920
he asked me to swallow. He says, I like it
634
00:42:13.960 --> 00:42:16.440
when you swallow. So I'd have to try and swallow
635
00:42:17.280 --> 00:42:23.980
while his thumbs are on my throat. And then I
636
00:42:24.039 --> 00:42:33.659
remember going out again. And I remember saying to myself,
637
00:42:35.559 --> 00:42:38.760
as if I'm praying to God, God tell my parents
638
00:42:38.800 --> 00:42:43.489
I'm sorry for getting killed. And I don't have any
639
00:42:43.909 --> 00:42:48.170
recollection after that. That's when I was out for good.
640
00:42:51.030 --> 00:42:52.869
Somehow, Laurie survived.
641
00:42:56.760 --> 00:42:59.260
And when I got pushed out of the car and
642
00:42:59.280 --> 00:43:01.820
I just stayed there trying to play dead, I listened
643
00:43:01.880 --> 00:43:04.420
and listened and listened. Could he be anywhere? Because he
644
00:43:04.460 --> 00:43:06.179
was going to come back and kill me for sure
645
00:43:06.219 --> 00:43:08.639
if I moved. So in that moment, I felt like
646
00:43:08.679 --> 00:43:12.730
a whore and a slut. This is what you get
647
00:43:12.769 --> 00:43:15.690
when you do stupid things, Lori. I kind of felt
648
00:43:15.730 --> 00:43:18.349
like I deserved it. No, I did feel that way.
649
00:43:19.869 --> 00:43:24.289
Very ashamed. And I didn't feel like I had a
650
00:43:24.329 --> 00:43:26.869
right to be afraid. Because I was stupid. It was
651
00:43:26.909 --> 00:43:30.369
my fault that this happened. I remember two people sitting
652
00:43:30.409 --> 00:43:32.010
in this car and they just looked at me and
653
00:43:32.210 --> 00:43:36.659
drove by. I'm like, they probably are scared of me.
654
00:43:38.679 --> 00:43:47.500
I probably look like a hooker. The first time she
655
00:43:47.539 --> 00:43:50.920
went to the police, Laurie felt ignored because of her
656
00:43:50.960 --> 00:43:55.300
history of prostitution. And it wasn't long before Samuel Little...
657
00:43:55.440 --> 00:43:56.559
targeted another woman.
658
00:43:58.239 --> 00:44:02.360
It was exactly 30 days later, I believe, that he
659
00:44:02.400 --> 00:44:07.019
had attempted to murder the next girl. In the same place,
660
00:44:07.179 --> 00:44:10.079
in the same way, and the police actually caught him
661
00:44:10.239 --> 00:44:10.880
in the act.
662
00:44:12.840 --> 00:44:15.949
With two women now telling the same story, the police
663
00:44:15.989 --> 00:44:20.670
had enough to arrest him. Samuel Little stood trial in 1984,
664
00:44:20.670 --> 00:44:23.030
but he escaped the attempted murder charge of the two
665
00:44:23.110 --> 00:44:26.369
women and was convicted of a lesser charge of assault
666
00:44:26.570 --> 00:44:27.489
and false imprisonment.
667
00:44:28.170 --> 00:44:30.769
I wasn't telling the truth, according to the jury. They
668
00:44:30.809 --> 00:44:33.309
didn't believe me. He got four, but he served two
669
00:44:33.349 --> 00:44:35.050
and a half, so I guess he got good behaviour
670
00:44:35.070 --> 00:44:38.849
or something. So then, yeah. Then he promptly went out
671
00:44:38.869 --> 00:44:40.190
and killed the next three women.
672
00:44:42.150 --> 00:44:45.440
But it wasn't just three more. He claims he killed
673
00:44:45.440 --> 00:44:50.139
27 more women. I'm offended by the interviews I'm doing
674
00:44:50.199 --> 00:44:53.449
in this film, because it is offensive. You know, the
675
00:44:53.530 --> 00:44:58.510
idea that the police only care about people if society
676
00:44:58.570 --> 00:45:02.349
deems them worth while. And it shouldn't be the case.
677
00:45:02.389 --> 00:45:04.829
And Laurie is the human personification of that. You know,
678
00:45:04.849 --> 00:45:07.230
she spent years having to deal with this, years thinking
679
00:45:07.250 --> 00:45:09.769
it was her fault. Her fault that a guy pulled
680
00:45:09.829 --> 00:45:11.170
up at the side of the road and dragged her
681
00:45:11.190 --> 00:45:11.730
into a car.
682
00:45:14.730 --> 00:45:20.670
If they was alive to this day, they'd be my friends.
683
00:45:21.480 --> 00:45:22.760
They didn't die mad at me.
684
00:45:23.760 --> 00:45:28.280
They didn't cuss me and call me everything in the book.
685
00:45:28.559 --> 00:45:29.659
They was my friend.
686
00:45:29.699 --> 00:45:30.099
I didn't.
687
00:45:31.679 --> 00:45:33.090
Hate them, they didn't hate me.
688
00:45:41.869 --> 00:45:45.869
Samuel Little is a deluded and dangerous serial killer. Somewhere
689
00:45:45.949 --> 00:45:49.630
over these walls is where he is today, California State Prison.
690
00:45:50.980 --> 00:45:55.090
For many, justice came decades too late. But speaking out,
691
00:45:55.170 --> 00:45:57.630
for Laurie at least, helps keep the memory of his
692
00:45:57.670 --> 00:45:58.469
victims alive.
693
00:45:59.369 --> 00:46:02.369
I think it makes me a little stronger each time, yes,
694
00:46:02.389 --> 00:46:04.730
because I'm doing it afraid, I'm doing it anyway. I
695
00:46:07.800 --> 00:46:10.360
owe more to those women than just to run away.
696
00:46:10.380 --> 00:46:12.980
MUSIC PLAYS
1
00:00:06.370 --> 00:00:06.710
James B.
2
00:00:06.719 --> 00:00:09.970
Holland with the Texas Rangers interviewing Samuel Little, the Palmdale
3
00:00:10.029 --> 00:00:11.769
Prison Unit, California Bureau of Corrections.
4
00:00:16.129 --> 00:00:18.629
I tried to trace back to.
5
00:00:18.629 --> 00:00:24.570
When I became attracted to Odin Wood's throat.
6
00:00:26.929 --> 00:00:30.250
He might just be the most prolific serial killer in U.S.
7
00:00:30.300 --> 00:00:30.679
History.
8
00:00:35.340 --> 00:00:38.469
He came down on my neck with his thumbs like that.
9
00:00:38.490 --> 00:00:40.570
He says, I like it when you swallow.
10
00:00:43.229 --> 00:00:46.350
He is literally hunting these women for close to four
11
00:00:46.390 --> 00:00:49.329
decades and getting away with it. Oh, God.
12
00:00:49.890 --> 00:00:52.159
That got so crazy. I wanted more.
13
00:00:53.240 --> 00:00:54.219
That's the curse.
14
00:00:53.979 --> 00:00:54.460
That I got.
15
00:00:59.770 --> 00:01:03.350
Once it became clear to people like Samuel Little that
16
00:01:03.380 --> 00:01:06.480
they could hunt black women and girls, that's what they did.
17
00:01:31.239 --> 00:01:34.620
Samuel Little could be the worst serial killer in American history,
18
00:01:35.439 --> 00:01:39.939
but you've probably never heard of him. Investigators think he
19
00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:42.890
may have been born in prison, to a mother who
20
00:01:42.950 --> 00:01:47.129
abandoned him early in his life. He was a drifter,
21
00:01:47.590 --> 00:01:50.290
spending his time on the roads, but he had a
22
00:01:50.349 --> 00:01:51.230
much darker side.
23
00:01:55.379 --> 00:01:55.680
St.
24
00:01:55.739 --> 00:02:04.870
Louis, Omaha, Nebraska, Arizona, Phoenix, one, two, three. I took
25
00:02:04.890 --> 00:02:05.469
my shit out.
26
00:02:06.390 --> 00:02:08.330
Are any bodies buried anywhere?
27
00:02:08.430 --> 00:02:19.659
What you've just listened to has never been broadcast before.
28
00:02:23.050 --> 00:02:26.349
It's audio from a series of police interviews recorded in
29
00:02:26.400 --> 00:02:31.060
May 2018. In them, Samuel Little confesses to murder after
30
00:02:31.099 --> 00:02:35.819
murder after murder. They're so detailed and so specific that
31
00:02:35.840 --> 00:02:41.409
the help and police forces across the US solve decades-old murders.
32
00:02:41.490 --> 00:02:43.810
For 40 years, he claims to have killed across the
33
00:02:43.870 --> 00:02:50.750
whole country. Now, I'm telling his story for the first time.
34
00:03:00.500 --> 00:03:03.110
So I've been to Los Angeles quite a few times,
35
00:03:05.129 --> 00:03:08.990
but I've never been around here. This is the darker underbelly,
36
00:03:09.050 --> 00:03:13.810
the place most people don't see. And it's also where
37
00:03:14.090 --> 00:03:19.479
my search to find out about Sam Little, the serial killer, begins.
38
00:03:28.419 --> 00:03:32.439
Samuel Little was finally put behind bars in 2014. He
39
00:03:32.460 --> 00:03:36.500
was convicted of killing three women in the 1980s. The
40
00:03:36.530 --> 00:03:39.409
bodies were found around here, close to where I'm driving now.
41
00:03:44.949 --> 00:03:47.729
I'm going to meet Brenda. Her mother Carol was one
42
00:03:47.750 --> 00:03:51.060
of the women he was convicted of murdering. To understand
43
00:03:51.080 --> 00:03:53.860
the story of Samuel Little, I have to understand how
44
00:03:53.900 --> 00:03:54.740
it all came to an end.
45
00:03:56.250 --> 00:03:56.949
Hey, how are you doing?
46
00:03:57.129 --> 00:03:59.810
Are you Brenda? Yes, I'm Brenda. Really nice to meet you.
47
00:04:04.639 --> 00:04:05.639
How is your day going?
48
00:04:05.659 --> 00:04:06.219
Oh, it's a blessing.
49
00:04:06.240 --> 00:04:06.939
It's a blessing.
50
00:04:10.840 --> 00:04:13.319
Yeah, this is my favorite picture right here.
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She looks like the queen or something on that. She's
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got a friendly face.
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Mm-hmm.
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What can you remember about when she passed away?
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I was pregnant and I was asleep and a bang, bang, bang,
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bang on the front door. And it was my neighbor
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telling me to get up, put on something, put on something.
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It's about your mother.
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I had to identify, she okay, but she's not breathing,
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you know. But I see her feet straight up.
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Yeah.
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So, yeah.
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I found out everything later on, how, you know.
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That she was murdered. So what did they say had
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happened at the time?
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Strangulation. Strangulation.
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You know, were they saying to you, we think we
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can solve this case, we'll find out who did it?
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Matter of fact, no. No, I didn't hear from no one.
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I didn't hear from anyone for a long time.
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That's kind of crazy, isn't it? That is. Brenda finally
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found out who killed her mum 25 years later. She
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got a call from the police. Samuel Little had been arrested.
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A convicted South LA serial killer has received three consecutive
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life sentences in prison for strangling three women in the 80s.
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He was convicted for the 1987 murder's of Brenda's mom
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and two other women. It was down to DNA analysis
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that wasn't available at the time. They had finally got
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him for murder. But after four years, something extraordinary happened.
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And now to a major discovery. A man who may
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be the worst serial killer in US history, Samuel Little,
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is already behind bars for murder.
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And now he says he killed around 90 people since
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the 1970s. The first murder he's confessed to is from 1970,
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and his last was 2005.
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The FBI is asking the public for help and information.
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The FBI have told us that using existing evidence and
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the new information from his confessions, they've confirmed at least
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46 of the murders, and so far have linked them
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to another 12. putting him on course to be the
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most prolific serial killer in American history. This is so
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early on. This is in 1972. And you do just
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look at his face here and think, how could any
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person do that? I'm looking at some of the pictures
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of the women's lives he ruined here. But this is
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probably like 10 max. He's thought to have killed potentially
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80 more. He is literally hunting these women for close
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to four decades and getting away with it. The pictures
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you're looking at were drawn by Samuel Little himself. They're
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the women he claims to have killed. Since confessing, he's
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been drawing more and more. Faces that haven't been seen
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by anyone for years. and whose disappearances were rarely reported
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or noticed. Family members have even recognised their lost loved.
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Ones from them.
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So I actually have the original audio of Samuel Little
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confessing seven hours of it. I'm the first journalist to
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get a hold of the recordings.
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What would you do if I strangled you?
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What'd she say?
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She had legs with arms like that. He's so proud
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of everything he's done. It actually makes you feel sick.
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It's not hard to see why the police believe him.
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He just describes everything in so much detail. He's so specific.
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And he also explains in there why he thinks he
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wasn't caught. And for him, it's not just DNA. It's
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because of who he was going after.
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Yeah, I keep going, motherfuckers.
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From 17, Samuel Little was on the wrong side of
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the law.
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He was arrested nearly 100 times over his 50-year crime spree.
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A lot of the time, the crimes were petty.
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And he was let go due to insufficient evidence. As
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early as 1976, though, he was convicted for rape, but
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he was only given three months in jail. He'd constantly
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move between states, spending time in seedy bars, red light areas.
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He was always on the lookout for women nobody else
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was paying attention to. I'd found someone who was a
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prostitute on these streets at the same time Samuel Little
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was here. Her name is Tika Thornton.
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This is one of the oldest tracks or streets that's
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known for prostitution. There's one on this corner here. There's
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one on this corner here.
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It's just completely in plain sight. Mm-hmm. but you don't
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see it unless you're looking for it. There's two ladies.
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They were just chatting to that car. Had you heard
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of women going missing? Oh, all the time. Did you
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ever feel protected by the police when you were working
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on this road?
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The police were part of the problem in my mind.
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I have been on the streets and police have called
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me a hoe or a slut. So it's very easy
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for them to think that we're just bad people.
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No one is born a bad person.
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The worst thing of all of it is just how
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disposable these sex workers seem to be. The 80s, when
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Samuel Little was here, were a dark time for L.A.
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It was in the grip of a crack cocaine epidemic,
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and hundreds of women who died on the streets were
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unaccounted for. And Samuel Little wasn't the only murderer around.
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There were other serial killers operating in Los Angeles during
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this period. Was anyone protecting these women? Hello, Nana, how
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are you doing? I'm Ben. Nana Jiamfi has been a
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civil rights lawyer for 20 years here, and she's been
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looking into the Samuel Little case. No one knows about
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Son Little. No one knows about his victims.
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Yeah, because his victims aren't white women.
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If you are a black woman and you are a
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sex worker or you are an addict, then you are
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deserving of any horrible and terrible thing that.
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Happens to you.
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That is dark, isn't it?
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But that's the mentality, right? And when we look at
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the police reports that LAPD put together, so many of
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them have at the top, N-H-I. NHI standing for no
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human involvement. The police literally described this in which no
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human was involved.
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They're literally saying no human, even the victim?
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Yes, that's what they're talking about.
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There's no human.
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That's correct.
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That's what they're saying, that that person is not a
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human being.
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I tried to check these claims with the Los Angeles
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Police Department. that the police would actually refer to a
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victim of a murder as not human. They refused to comment.
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But I've managed to find one former LAPD detective who
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was willing to talk to me about Samuel Little, and
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that's where I'm going next. If the FBI verifies claims,
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Samuel Little is on course to be the most prolific
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serial killer America has ever known, and the police didn't
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stop him for decades. Why? The LAPD wouldn't talk to
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me about it, but there was one man who would.
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He was a retired detective who, for 30 years, was
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the go-to authority on the homicide scene in LA. His
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name is Rick Jackson. You worked in the police for decades.
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How is it possible for someone like Sam Little to exist,
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you know, to operate? Multiple states kill... dozens and dozens
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of people for so long.
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A lot of it comes down to the type of
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victims that you target. They're out there using drugs and
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there's prostitution involved and there's no immediate person to report
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them missing.
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Before he retired in 2013, Rick was investigating Samuel Little.
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It's like there is a certain type of individual that
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is just cared about a little bit less. And I
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think that is the quite depressing thing about the story.
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Well, you know what? I shouldn't say that I don't
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think they were cared less about. I just, it's, you know, like,
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what were you thinking? I mean, it's too bad, but
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you're putting yourselves in a position of vulnerability here. You know,
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You gravitate to certain cases that strike you, and those
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oftentimes don't strike you as heartbreaking because the person, even
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though they're not deserving to be killed, they put themselves
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in a position, it's a very risky position.
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This claim by Rick that these women were in some
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way responsible for what happened to them was shocking. And
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it wasn't just that they were prostitutes. Most were black.
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Was racism why Brenda didn't hear from the police about
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him for so long? There's been some suggestions that the
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race of the victims did play a part in LA.
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See, I just don't buy that.
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I really, really don't. But when you say you don't
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buy it, so you don't think in any way there
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could be some form of institutional.
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Anything's possible, but I just didn't see that. I really didn't.
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I'm not trying to protect anybody. I just didn't see it.
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Samuel Little claims to have killed 20 women in Los
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Angeles alone, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
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According to the FBI's investigation, he got away with murder
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all over the country. He'd drive around, selling stolen goods
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out of his car and killing along the way. After
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the FBI sent out the details from Samuel Little's confessions,
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police forces from around the country stated in public they
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had cases that matched his claims.
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19 states overall, including 10 in Mississippi.
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Where I'm going next.
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I'm meeting Detective Darren Visagia, a serving police officer in
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the city of Pascagoula. He's a key figure in linking
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Little's confessions to unsolved cases in Mississippi. Hello, Darren.
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How we doing?
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He'd also provided key witnesses who'd helped put Little behind bars.
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There are two women he's certain Samuel Little killed in Pascagoula.
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One of them was a 22-year-old woman called Melinda Lepree,
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or Mindy for short. Since 1982, her murder has remained unsolved.
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It's been a busy Sunday.
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Yeah, you know, it's a typical Sunday. You know, church,
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first thing.
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This is Mindy, isn't it?
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Yeah, this is Mindy.
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With a case like Mindy, has he said 100% he
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killed her?
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Yes.
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He's admitted to it? Yes.
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Some of those cases, when the detectives got them and
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they're looking through them, it's what Sam said.
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Word for word.
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Well, pretty much. I mean, to the evidence, to where
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they were dumped at, to where they were picked up at.
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I mean, how would Sam know where the person was
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last seen and then where he dumped her at unless
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he was there?
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Mindy Lepree's murder was one of the few that did
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get reported. The deaths of most of the other women
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he claims to have killed never made the press. Like
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a lot of his other victims, Mindy was a prostitute.
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This time, though, she was white. Mindy Lepree's family have
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been searching for answers for 30 years. She was ambitious,
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she loved music, she left home and moved state. And
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they never saw her again.
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We're going out to the Gouthière family cemetery where Melinda was.
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Raped, murdered.
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And dumped. I'm with Mindy's brother Bob and the rest
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of his family.
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Hello, Gus.
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Why do you think he targeted your sister?
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He, quote, hunted prostitutes, and that's what she was doing.
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But he did specifically.
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Point her out.
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A woman got into the car with him at the corner,
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and he said, no, no, no, I want that one
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over there, Mindy. I mean, she was a beautiful white girl.
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You know, he didn't just victimize black women.
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Yeah, she looks all right, but she.
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Doesn't look good.
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Tragically, the reason Mindy had a belly, as Samuel Little said,
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is because she'd given birth two weeks earlier. Mindy's son, Will,
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is here.
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That's Will.
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That's the day we picked him up at the shelter.
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Will's only image of his mum is based on what
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his family's told him. She was addicted to drugs, she
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went missing, and she was killed.
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I see how much I look like her.
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What's it like here and all this? It's surreal.
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It's surreal.
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I get to watch everybody I care about reliving all
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this pain.
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This is all I've ever known. So it's like the
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eye of a hurricane. I'm watching all this destruction and.
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Pain and hurt.
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For the Lepree family, it wasn't until Darren came along
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that they felt anyone in a position of authority truly
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cared about Mindy.
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I wanted to say thank you for helping my family
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out so much.
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Darren knows where Mindy's body was found.
297
00:20:49.019 --> 00:20:52.579
All this was high ground. Like this one we're looking
298
00:20:52.599 --> 00:20:54.460
for now, he's upset that we haven't found her yet.
299
00:20:54.839 --> 00:20:57.279
Did you just say that you think that he wanted
300
00:20:57.359 --> 00:20:59.079
them to be found? Oh, I think so. So he
301
00:20:59.119 --> 00:21:00.880
put them in places that he thought people would.
302
00:21:00.940 --> 00:21:06.619
Yeah. So what happened in the graveyard?
303
00:21:07.059 --> 00:21:07.500
Okay.
304
00:21:07.519 --> 00:21:07.839
Okay.
305
00:21:07.900 --> 00:21:10.359
She laid up there for a while.
306
00:21:16.470 --> 00:21:19.029
It is hard to believe. When she was found here
307
00:21:19.049 --> 00:21:22.009
in a graveyard, she'd been here for five weeks, just
308
00:21:22.069 --> 00:21:25.250
meters away from the road. It's like nobody was paying attention.
309
00:21:42.259 --> 00:21:45.950
The police down here were really not invested in figuring
310
00:21:46.009 --> 00:21:47.569
out who this person was.
311
00:21:47.589 --> 00:21:50.269
About how many more lives have.
312
00:21:50.150 --> 00:21:54.950
Been ruined because they didn't want to put the work
313
00:21:55.019 --> 00:21:59.619
in to convict him. These are a lot of my
314
00:21:59.799 --> 00:22:01.339
documents from the time.
315
00:22:01.359 --> 00:22:02.160
These are my notes.
316
00:22:02.720 --> 00:22:04.799
Is this you basically trying to solve the case yourself?
317
00:22:04.900 --> 00:22:07.160
Well, at least keeping track of what I was being told.
318
00:22:07.980 --> 00:22:10.579
You have a name written down twice on this, which
319
00:22:10.660 --> 00:22:15.039
is Lieutenant G.J. Brooks. Who is that?
320
00:22:15.380 --> 00:22:17.980
He was, you know, part of this whole investigation.
321
00:22:22.819 --> 00:22:26.509
G.J. Brooks, or Judson Brooks, was the lead detective on
322
00:22:26.549 --> 00:22:30.410
Mindy's case when she went missing. He oversaw the investigation.
323
00:22:30.890 --> 00:22:34.289
He even arrested Samuel Little at one point. The question
324
00:22:34.329 --> 00:22:36.230
I have is why did he let him go?
325
00:22:36.250 --> 00:22:37.609
Hello?
326
00:22:38.230 --> 00:22:42.089
Hey, is that Judson? It'd be great to just talk
327
00:22:42.130 --> 00:22:44.509
to you about the Sam Little case and when he
328
00:22:44.529 --> 00:22:47.089
first came on your radar all those years ago. Does
329
00:22:47.109 --> 00:22:47.789
that sound okay?
330
00:22:49.730 --> 00:22:51.369
You have some friendly dogs.
331
00:22:53.009 --> 00:22:54.880
Get back, get back.
332
00:22:54.910 --> 00:23:10.109
Do they work? Yeah, do they work? You think I'd
333
00:23:10.130 --> 00:23:12.670
have a gun if it didn't work? Kick the door
334
00:23:12.690 --> 00:23:14.829
open and stick that double barrel through there and everybody
335
00:23:14.849 --> 00:23:15.970
hits the floor and lays down.
336
00:23:15.990 --> 00:23:20.390
Do you remember the Sam Little case?
337
00:23:21.069 --> 00:23:21.329
Oh, yeah.
338
00:23:21.670 --> 00:23:22.670
So you spoke to him?
339
00:23:23.009 --> 00:23:23.289
Oh, yeah.
340
00:23:23.609 --> 00:23:26.539
We had a young girl go missing. In the village,
341
00:23:26.579 --> 00:23:28.839
I found some witnesses that saw that she got in
342
00:23:28.859 --> 00:23:31.880
the car with him and left and didn't come back
343
00:23:31.920 --> 00:23:36.279
with him. Sometime later, her body was found.
344
00:23:36.759 --> 00:23:37.740
Is it Mindy LaPree?
345
00:23:38.609 --> 00:23:41.069
Yeah, that's who it was. She was working as a
346
00:23:41.109 --> 00:23:45.829
prostitute in the village, which was quite unusual, you know,
347
00:23:45.869 --> 00:23:51.670
her being white, and the two black girls that were
348
00:23:51.710 --> 00:23:53.170
the only witnesses we had.
349
00:23:53.670 --> 00:23:55.390
Did you ever have Sam in custody?
350
00:23:55.910 --> 00:23:58.410
One time, and that's when I had to turn him loose.
351
00:24:00.470 --> 00:24:04.130
According to Judson, prosecutors felt the evidence wouldn't stand up
352
00:24:04.170 --> 00:24:08.599
in court, despite having two witnesses. One even claiming Little
353
00:24:08.640 --> 00:24:12.170
said he wanted to kill Mindy. You had two women saying,
354
00:24:12.609 --> 00:24:14.529
we saw her in the car with Little.
355
00:24:14.569 --> 00:24:17.170
That's right. And when he came back, she was not
356
00:24:17.190 --> 00:24:18.009
with him.
357
00:24:18.029 --> 00:24:24.119
That seems like some form of evidence. That's hearsay. Was
358
00:24:24.160 --> 00:24:27.259
it because of who they were, though? These were black prostitutes.
359
00:24:27.440 --> 00:24:28.500
No, no.
360
00:24:28.779 --> 00:24:30.779
You don't think anybody in the police at the time
361
00:24:31.410 --> 00:24:32.809
may have saw these women differently.
362
00:24:32.829 --> 00:24:35.609
No, I don't think anybody in the police department, I
363
00:24:35.650 --> 00:24:39.049
just don't think that anybody would have washed that off
364
00:24:39.130 --> 00:24:42.309
as saying, oh, they're just prostitutes or whatever.
365
00:24:42.410 --> 00:24:45.130
Do you remember Bob Lepre, the brother of Mindy?
366
00:24:45.430 --> 00:24:48.779
He's the one who filed a missing persons report on her.
367
00:24:49.839 --> 00:24:51.779
He feels as though if the police had paid more
368
00:24:51.819 --> 00:24:55.390
attention here, maybe people like yourself, then Sam wouldn't have
369
00:24:55.410 --> 00:24:57.029
got away with it for another 30 years.
370
00:24:57.049 --> 00:24:59.349
Well, do you know that there's people that could say
371
00:24:59.529 --> 00:25:01.869
if he hadn't let his sister go in that area,
372
00:25:01.890 --> 00:25:05.410
she wouldn't have got hurt in the first place. Everybody
373
00:25:05.450 --> 00:25:06.769
can make opinions.
374
00:25:06.910 --> 00:25:08.349
That's a bit of a weird thing to say, because
375
00:25:08.369 --> 00:25:11.690
I suppose it's not necessarily his decision. Women have free will,
376
00:25:11.710 --> 00:25:12.880
they make their own choices.
377
00:25:12.960 --> 00:25:14.220
I understand that part.
378
00:25:14.299 --> 00:25:15.960
And I suppose that's one of the things, you know,
379
00:25:16.410 --> 00:25:18.750
There seems to be maybe a mentality that these ladies
380
00:25:18.789 --> 00:25:21.309
deserved it because of who they were, when in actual
381
00:25:21.349 --> 00:25:22.589
fact they're victims themselves.
382
00:25:22.670 --> 00:25:25.630
There is no justification for that anywhere.
383
00:25:32.609 --> 00:25:35.750
After the police let Samuel Little go following Mindy's murder,
384
00:25:36.289 --> 00:25:39.170
he claims he went on to kill at least 35
385
00:25:39.170 --> 00:25:43.980
more women. Judson was now the second senior detective I'd
386
00:25:44.019 --> 00:25:49.160
heard placed the responsibility elsewhere this time on the victim's family.
387
00:25:49.740 --> 00:25:52.380
I suppose in short, how does a guy like Sam
388
00:25:52.400 --> 00:25:55.200
Little get away with killing so many people over nearly
389
00:25:55.240 --> 00:25:55.940
four decades?
390
00:25:56.200 --> 00:26:00.880
Because of the victimology. The victims in this case aren't
391
00:26:00.900 --> 00:26:05.329
your Baptist preacher's daughters, chief of police's daughters. They're basically
392
00:26:05.349 --> 00:26:10.029
people out there that maybe in society we look at
393
00:26:10.069 --> 00:26:10.589
a little different.
394
00:26:13.730 --> 00:26:18.559
His method of murder, strangulation, often didn't leave marks, and
395
00:26:18.579 --> 00:26:20.930
many of the women had drugs in their system at
396
00:26:20.970 --> 00:26:23.920
the time of death. This meant in a lot of cases,
397
00:26:24.480 --> 00:26:28.819
deaths were recorded as accidental, or natural, and might explain
398
00:26:28.859 --> 00:26:34.619
why their murders weren't investigated. But now, Little's confessions are
399
00:26:34.660 --> 00:26:38.140
forcing police to identify murder cases they didn't even know
400
00:26:38.200 --> 00:26:46.119
they had. Here in Mississippi, it's not just Mindy's case
401
00:26:46.789 --> 00:26:50.750
there's another mare that Little has confessed to. Detective Darren
402
00:26:50.769 --> 00:26:54.769
Versager has interviewed Samuel Little twice and has now started
403
00:26:54.809 --> 00:26:57.950
receiving letters from him. Are these the letters?
404
00:26:58.109 --> 00:27:00.089
These are the letters. This is his handwriting.
405
00:27:00.109 --> 00:27:05.440
It's a pretty interesting pen pal, isn't it? Yeah, it is.
406
00:27:06.240 --> 00:27:09.619
This relationship is paying off. He's already got key information
407
00:27:09.660 --> 00:27:12.299
on the second case, a woman killed in 1977 in
408
00:27:12.420 --> 00:27:16.289
an area not too far from here. He's trying to
409
00:27:16.329 --> 00:27:18.849
locate where the remains were found. As I say, I'm
410
00:27:18.869 --> 00:27:20.650
still waiting for that mugshot.
411
00:27:20.230 --> 00:27:21.309
Of the girl.
412
00:27:21.329 --> 00:27:23.750
The girl strangled him at this point. I will try
413
00:27:23.829 --> 00:27:27.390
to draw the picture of the girl from Gutport. He's
414
00:27:27.410 --> 00:27:29.069
telling me this is the bar and that's the house
415
00:27:29.089 --> 00:27:30.710
where he went across the street and picked her up from.
416
00:27:35.730 --> 00:27:38.750
He's learned from Samuel Little that he sometimes took women
417
00:27:38.789 --> 00:27:42.430
out to dinner, for drinks, or even took them shopping
418
00:27:42.609 --> 00:27:46.079
before eventually killing them. I'd also heard this in the
419
00:27:46.119 --> 00:27:46.880
police recordings.
420
00:27:50.019 --> 00:27:52.339
We went down to this little hill town on my
421
00:27:52.359 --> 00:27:56.289
side in the county and bought some lunch and whiskey.
422
00:27:57.470 --> 00:27:59.609
And she started drinking and I started drinking and she
423
00:27:59.789 --> 00:28:00.349
rolled her.
424
00:28:00.289 --> 00:28:01.569
Big eyes and I do her eyes.
425
00:28:01.589 --> 00:28:05.349
She rolled her eyes at me and getting all paranoid.
426
00:28:05.390 --> 00:28:06.430
You know?
427
00:28:06.869 --> 00:28:08.130
Because she didn't know how well.
428
00:28:08.150 --> 00:28:10.440
She didn't know if we were drunk or we had to.
429
00:28:10.279 --> 00:28:11.210
Get up there and fuck her.
430
00:28:15.710 --> 00:28:19.059
It's quite eerie to think this is the trip that
431
00:28:19.099 --> 00:28:20.500
he did to pick up.
432
00:28:21.279 --> 00:28:23.539
What Sam says about the second lady, he said he
433
00:28:23.579 --> 00:28:27.220
picked her up, pulled in, and pow, he's that monster, man.
434
00:28:28.640 --> 00:28:30.940
So he just says, no, I was abusing her, and then,
435
00:28:31.599 --> 00:28:35.880
you know, I strangled her, and that she was mine.
436
00:28:40.369 --> 00:28:41.650
Is that this woman here?
437
00:28:41.690 --> 00:28:45.579
That is the one. That's the 1977 case. He says
438
00:28:45.640 --> 00:28:47.200
that's her. Is there a.
439
00:28:47.200 --> 00:28:51.410
Worry that maybe some police organizations are linking cold cases
440
00:28:51.450 --> 00:28:53.309
to him to solve cases that haven't been?
441
00:28:53.650 --> 00:28:55.109
Could they be doing that? Maybe they could.
442
00:28:55.130 --> 00:28:55.569
I don't know.
443
00:28:56.190 --> 00:28:58.049
I would hate to think that they would. You know,
444
00:28:58.069 --> 00:28:59.589
there are a lot in law enforcement. A lot of
445
00:28:59.630 --> 00:29:01.349
Miami officers were down there, and they had a bunch
446
00:29:01.369 --> 00:29:04.059
of cases, and he went through them. Nope, that's not mine. Nope,
447
00:29:04.230 --> 00:29:06.279
that's not mine. So, I mean, if he wanted to
448
00:29:06.319 --> 00:29:07.859
take credit for all of them, he could have said, yeah,
449
00:29:07.920 --> 00:29:10.480
they're all mine. Put them on me. But he doesn't
450
00:29:10.500 --> 00:29:10.819
want that.
451
00:29:11.160 --> 00:29:12.700
I mean, he could just be exaggerating.
452
00:29:13.339 --> 00:29:15.660
I mean, when he can tell... what the last meal
453
00:29:15.680 --> 00:29:18.400
she had, and he has confirmed those.
454
00:29:19.420 --> 00:29:21.599
I was concerned at how willing the police I'd met
455
00:29:21.640 --> 00:29:26.299
were to believe Samuel Little. But for Darren, what's important
456
00:29:26.400 --> 00:29:29.869
is the level of detail in the confessions, details only
457
00:29:29.900 --> 00:29:33.829
the killer could have known, and that he's denying other murders.
458
00:29:35.190 --> 00:29:38.309
So, Willie May Bevins, Florida.
459
00:29:38.390 --> 00:29:49.640
Yes, sir. The FBI and police forces across the country
460
00:29:50.220 --> 00:29:54.019
are taking Samuel Little as seriously as Darren is. She
461
00:29:54.140 --> 00:29:54.619
is mine.
462
00:29:54.660 --> 00:29:58.130
She is mine. That's what he claims. When he kills them,
463
00:29:58.150 --> 00:29:58.549
they're his.
464
00:29:58.670 --> 00:29:59.450
Like he owns them.
465
00:29:59.470 --> 00:30:02.410
Like he owns them, that's right. These things just stay
466
00:30:02.430 --> 00:30:03.849
with you, stay with you, and they haunt you.
467
00:30:04.250 --> 00:30:19.880
And I'm just not gonna let it go.
468
00:30:19.920 --> 00:30:23.140
Why can't you know bigger things when they die?
469
00:30:36.779 --> 00:30:39.440
I wanted to know how it came to this. I'd
470
00:30:39.480 --> 00:30:42.549
heard Little explaining his story in his own voice, but
471
00:30:42.569 --> 00:30:44.230
what was he like to the people who knew him?
472
00:30:45.170 --> 00:30:48.650
He was born in the deep south in 1940, but
473
00:30:48.670 --> 00:31:17.589
grew up in Ohio with his grandmother. Yeah, so this
474
00:31:17.690 --> 00:31:21.250
is Lorraine, Ohio. This is where Sam Little spent much
475
00:31:21.289 --> 00:31:24.190
of his childhood. You quite like to think sometimes when
476
00:31:24.230 --> 00:31:26.539
you think of a serial killer that you'll be able
477
00:31:26.559 --> 00:31:28.980
to see the signs or they'll be from somewhere weird
478
00:31:29.140 --> 00:31:34.140
or they'll have a crazy childhood. I'd managed to track
479
00:31:34.200 --> 00:31:37.250
down the church his family had attended when Samuel Little
480
00:31:37.289 --> 00:31:40.150
lived here. His father was a prominent member, but it
481
00:31:40.190 --> 00:31:44.589
was closed. Everything's closed. There was a boxing gym in town.
482
00:31:44.970 --> 00:31:48.130
He claims he was a promising boxer and called himself
483
00:31:48.170 --> 00:31:51.750
the Mad Daddy. He used his signature punch in his attacks.
484
00:31:52.009 --> 00:32:10.309
Sam Little, this guy. Yeah. Eventually, I heard about a
485
00:32:10.349 --> 00:32:13.190
man who might be able to tell me more. Ben
486
00:32:13.250 --> 00:32:16.130
Davis was in a relationship with Samuel Little's sister for
487
00:32:16.230 --> 00:32:20.039
over 20 years. He's never spoken publicly about it before.
488
00:32:20.839 --> 00:32:22.180
Does Ben Davis live here too?
489
00:32:22.200 --> 00:32:22.920
Yeah, I'm Ben.
490
00:32:23.039 --> 00:32:23.539
Are you Ben?
491
00:32:23.579 --> 00:32:24.200
Hey, Ben.
492
00:32:24.509 --> 00:32:25.869
I'm also Ben. How are you doing?
493
00:32:25.880 --> 00:32:26.309
Okay, Ben.
494
00:32:26.410 --> 00:32:34.910
Nice to meet you. When the news broke, Ben was
495
00:32:34.950 --> 00:32:36.730
at home watching TV with his wife.
496
00:32:38.650 --> 00:32:40.410
It was hard for me to see him in that
497
00:32:40.450 --> 00:32:44.410
condition too when they arrested him in a wheelchair and overweight.
498
00:32:45.539 --> 00:32:46.259
Did you like him?
499
00:32:46.859 --> 00:32:47.079
Yeah.
500
00:32:48.740 --> 00:32:51.400
Because it's crazy to think that A guy like that
501
00:32:51.440 --> 00:32:55.200
can be likeable. What were the family like? Were they
502
00:32:55.220 --> 00:32:55.920
a normal family?
503
00:32:56.799 --> 00:33:00.819
Like seven or eight kids. There was a lot of
504
00:33:01.079 --> 00:33:04.849
illness in the family. One of the girls died young.
505
00:33:04.940 --> 00:33:06.869
One of the brothers died young.
506
00:33:07.490 --> 00:33:09.069
Do you know, what did he do as a job?
507
00:33:09.309 --> 00:33:13.890
He was a hustler. I remember he had an old Oldsmobile.
508
00:33:14.809 --> 00:33:21.420
It was just full of stuff. Clothes, meats... Like, horrible
509
00:33:21.579 --> 00:33:21.900
and messy.
510
00:33:21.940 --> 00:33:22.339
Oh, yeah.
511
00:33:22.720 --> 00:33:23.970
That car had mice in it.
512
00:33:25.119 --> 00:33:26.740
He opened the trunk up, and I seen the mice.
513
00:33:26.900 --> 00:33:27.180
Really?
514
00:33:27.400 --> 00:33:32.779
Yeah. He did all of the murders in the car? Yeah.
515
00:33:34.440 --> 00:33:37.990
Ben was with Samuel Little's sister for 20 years. That
516
00:33:38.029 --> 00:33:41.130
whole time, Little says he was on the road, killing.
517
00:33:41.730 --> 00:33:43.990
You know, he killed a lot of people during that period.
518
00:33:44.049 --> 00:33:47.789
I mean, like, so he was coming to you in
519
00:33:47.829 --> 00:33:48.950
between these moments.
520
00:33:49.430 --> 00:33:50.230
I would say....
521
00:33:52.730 --> 00:33:53.269
I would say.
522
00:33:53.589 --> 00:33:55.049
He didn't see nothing or.
523
00:33:55.829 --> 00:33:57.529
What would you say to him now if you saw him?
524
00:33:58.190 --> 00:34:03.559
Wow, Sammy. What was you thinking about? Give him a
525
00:34:03.599 --> 00:34:07.740
bag of pistachios. He'll tell you anything you want. Well,
526
00:34:07.759 --> 00:34:12.619
he likes pistachios. Crazy story, isn't it? It's hard to believe. Yeah.
527
00:34:12.639 --> 00:34:13.340
But thank you very much.
528
00:34:13.699 --> 00:34:14.000
All right.
529
00:34:15.880 --> 00:34:18.250
Yeah, I mean, I think the only thing I can
530
00:34:18.289 --> 00:34:22.010
really take away from that is that you just never...
531
00:34:22.599 --> 00:34:27.900
know who killers are. And it's scary because this car
532
00:34:27.940 --> 00:34:29.659
that Ben keeps bringing up and the fact that it
533
00:34:29.699 --> 00:34:31.280
was dirty and it was horrible, it had loads of
534
00:34:31.300 --> 00:34:35.690
things in. That car is where he killed all these women.
535
00:34:42.530 --> 00:34:45.889
Sammy Little was a nice guy, Ben said. I found
536
00:34:45.909 --> 00:34:49.869
that hard to believe. I'd learned that he moved around constantly.
537
00:34:50.719 --> 00:34:53.119
I'd learned that he chose specific types of women. He
538
00:34:53.159 --> 00:34:56.400
appears to have enjoyed it. But I still couldn't understand
539
00:34:56.480 --> 00:34:57.960
how someone could actually do this.
540
00:35:03.219 --> 00:35:10.820
I tried to trace back to when I became attracted
541
00:35:10.880 --> 00:35:18.539
to open much throats. I remember going to school at Lorraine,
542
00:35:19.019 --> 00:35:23.860
four or five. years old, I noticed the teacher's name.
543
00:35:24.639 --> 00:35:30.440
She's turned me on. I know she used to do
544
00:35:30.579 --> 00:35:31.480
it like this.
545
00:35:31.519 --> 00:35:33.460
She'd be teaching me.
546
00:35:33.480 --> 00:35:38.989
What attracted that shit to me?
547
00:35:39.750 --> 00:35:42.489
Oh, God. I got so crazy.
548
00:35:43.150 --> 00:35:44.750
Why did you wait until you were 30 to do it?
549
00:35:44.809 --> 00:35:45.369
Oh, just imagining it.
550
00:35:49.699 --> 00:35:53.559
Until all of a sudden, I wanted to move.
551
00:35:59.360 --> 00:36:02.599
I wanted to understand how his mind worked, and to
552
00:36:02.639 --> 00:36:06.300
do that, I needed help. I'm meeting Dr Robert Shug,
553
00:36:06.559 --> 00:36:10.880
a forensic psychologist. He's built his career on understanding the
554
00:36:10.940 --> 00:36:13.260
minds of serial killers. Hey, are you Robert?
555
00:36:13.739 --> 00:36:14.139
I am.
556
00:36:14.260 --> 00:36:16.780
Very nice to meet you, I'm Ben. Nice to meet you, Ben.
557
00:36:16.800 --> 00:36:16.860
Hi.
558
00:36:23.550 --> 00:36:28.010
This cannot be explained by one event, by one sort
559
00:36:28.050 --> 00:36:32.530
of magic bullet moment in his life. This is the
560
00:36:32.760 --> 00:36:36.780
culmination of a series of rejections.
561
00:36:36.199 --> 00:36:38.880
And disappointments and possibly traumas.
562
00:36:41.599 --> 00:36:43.860
To understand Samuel Little, we need to look at his
563
00:36:43.929 --> 00:36:46.210
early life and kind of the way events unfolded for him.
564
00:36:47.289 --> 00:36:50.309
Mom is either, she's absent, right? So we don't know
565
00:36:50.329 --> 00:36:52.409
if she's in prison, is she working as a prostitute?
566
00:36:52.869 --> 00:36:54.489
She doesn't seem to have been there.
567
00:36:56.570 --> 00:36:59.429
If his mum is working as a prostitute and he
568
00:36:59.869 --> 00:37:02.619
doesn't have a great relationship with her, that seems like
569
00:37:02.679 --> 00:37:04.559
a major red flag of why he would then go
570
00:37:04.639 --> 00:37:07.159
on to target prostitutes. Big red flag.
571
00:37:09.900 --> 00:37:14.530
She did the strangest thing.
572
00:37:15.449 --> 00:37:18.090
I put my hand around her neck. Could it be
573
00:37:18.130 --> 00:37:23.530
as simple as he is obsessed with a certain sexual act?
574
00:37:34.840 --> 00:37:37.280
And he has found the perfect type of woman to
575
00:37:37.320 --> 00:37:40.019
do it on and to not face retribution for doing so.
576
00:37:40.099 --> 00:37:41.920
I think that's an excellent hypothesis.
577
00:37:42.039 --> 00:37:43.659
And you can sort of see the scenario if you
578
00:37:43.679 --> 00:37:44.210
think about it.
579
00:37:44.260 --> 00:37:48.199
If he's sexually aroused by choking, he's got to go
580
00:37:48.260 --> 00:37:49.820
right to the type of women who would at least
581
00:37:49.909 --> 00:37:51.869
entertain the initial aspects of that.
582
00:37:51.989 --> 00:37:53.389
And because he's a big guy, right?
583
00:37:53.449 --> 00:37:55.789
Maybe he didn't know his own strength at first, but
584
00:37:55.829 --> 00:37:56.960
then sort of grew to like it.
585
00:37:57.510 --> 00:37:58.110
It is interesting.
586
00:37:58.480 --> 00:38:02.039
This relationship between serial killers and prostitutes, I'm fascinated with
587
00:38:02.119 --> 00:38:04.940
because that is a very common theme.
588
00:38:23.030 --> 00:38:25.590
Samuel Little claims to have killed up to 93 women.
589
00:38:27.130 --> 00:38:30.090
He replays the murders in his mind over and over again.
590
00:38:30.989 --> 00:38:32.780
He believes they wanted to die.
591
00:38:32.800 --> 00:38:37.599
They want to die?
592
00:38:37.699 --> 00:39:00.880
Yeah. The more you listen to Samuel Little, the more
593
00:39:00.920 --> 00:39:06.039
horrific the story becomes. He sounds obsessed with killing, unwilling
594
00:39:06.559 --> 00:39:11.699
or unable to stop. So there are very few people
595
00:39:11.780 --> 00:39:14.659
who have survived a Sam Little attack, but I have
596
00:39:14.719 --> 00:39:16.960
read in a few reports that there are four women
597
00:39:17.260 --> 00:39:20.769
who somehow managed to get away. The difficult thing is
598
00:39:20.809 --> 00:39:24.429
that in the majority of those reports, these women are nameless,
599
00:39:25.590 --> 00:39:28.110
but I have managed to track one of them down.
600
00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:31.340
Hello.
601
00:39:31.420 --> 00:39:35.400
Hello. Hi. It's really nice to meet you.
602
00:39:43.570 --> 00:39:45.250
OK, yep, this is the place.
603
00:39:52.300 --> 00:40:04.900
Are you feeling comfortable? Is everything okay? Yeah. Laurie's never
604
00:40:04.960 --> 00:40:08.599
spoken publicly about this. It's taken her a long time
605
00:40:08.639 --> 00:40:11.920
to feel ready. She's spent time as a prostitute after
606
00:40:11.960 --> 00:40:16.719
a traumatic childhood and an abusive relationship. Start where you
607
00:40:16.760 --> 00:40:18.429
feel comfortable with the story.
608
00:40:21.469 --> 00:40:29.789
He pulled up behind me, I could hear something. I
609
00:40:29.849 --> 00:40:32.849
think I might have just froze in place while he'd
610
00:40:32.909 --> 00:40:36.989
already gotten out of his car and put me in
611
00:40:37.030 --> 00:40:41.610
a headlock and shoved me in his car. Yeah.
612
00:40:41.969 --> 00:40:44.989
Did he try and say anything? He just attacked?
613
00:40:45.590 --> 00:40:49.969
Mm-hmm. So I just started having a conversation with him.
614
00:40:51.829 --> 00:40:53.570
I remember him just saying, I'm a traveler.
615
00:40:53.929 --> 00:40:55.670
So he was acting normal at this point, as if.
616
00:40:56.230 --> 00:40:57.789
Oh, he went along with it with me, yeah.
617
00:40:58.909 --> 00:40:59.210
Yeah.
618
00:41:02.429 --> 00:41:05.150
I remember staring at the panel of the car and
619
00:41:05.190 --> 00:41:13.489
just really checking it out. What happened next was very
620
00:41:13.789 --> 00:41:16.969
quickly is being pulled and yanked into the back seat
621
00:41:16.989 --> 00:41:21.130
of the car. He wanted to play something different. And
622
00:41:21.190 --> 00:41:22.849
I got turned over on my.
623
00:41:22.869 --> 00:41:22.949
I.
624
00:41:30.860 --> 00:41:32.280
Had to get up, oh boy.
625
00:41:33.460 --> 00:41:35.039
Remember, you can take a break.
626
00:41:37.079 --> 00:41:40.699
I had to get on my knees, get turned over
627
00:41:40.719 --> 00:41:46.570
on the seat. He had taken my nylons off when
628
00:41:46.630 --> 00:41:51.179
I was on my back initially. And he used those
629
00:41:51.219 --> 00:41:54.900
to tie my wrists up. And I tried to encourage him,
630
00:41:54.960 --> 00:41:57.539
keep going along, keep going along. Don't let him know
631
00:41:57.579 --> 00:42:05.679
you're afraid. He came down on my neck with his
632
00:42:05.739 --> 00:42:12.139
thumbs like that. And I'm like, I'm screwed. And then
633
00:42:12.159 --> 00:42:13.920
he asked me to swallow. He says, I like it
634
00:42:13.960 --> 00:42:16.440
when you swallow. So I'd have to try and swallow
635
00:42:17.280 --> 00:42:23.980
while his thumbs are on my throat. And then I
636
00:42:24.039 --> 00:42:33.659
remember going out again. And I remember saying to myself,
637
00:42:35.559 --> 00:42:38.760
as if I'm praying to God, God tell my parents
638
00:42:38.800 --> 00:42:43.489
I'm sorry for getting killed. And I don't have any
639
00:42:43.909 --> 00:42:48.170
recollection after that. That's when I was out for good.
640
00:42:51.030 --> 00:42:52.869
Somehow, Laurie survived.
641
00:42:56.760 --> 00:42:59.260
And when I got pushed out of the car and
642
00:42:59.280 --> 00:43:01.820
I just stayed there trying to play dead, I listened
643
00:43:01.880 --> 00:43:04.420
and listened and listened. Could he be anywhere? Because he
644
00:43:04.460 --> 00:43:06.179
was going to come back and kill me for sure
645
00:43:06.219 --> 00:43:08.639
if I moved. So in that moment, I felt like
646
00:43:08.679 --> 00:43:12.730
a whore and a slut. This is what you get
647
00:43:12.769 --> 00:43:15.690
when you do stupid things, Lori. I kind of felt
648
00:43:15.730 --> 00:43:18.349
like I deserved it. No, I did feel that way.
649
00:43:19.869 --> 00:43:24.289
Very ashamed. And I didn't feel like I had a
650
00:43:24.329 --> 00:43:26.869
right to be afraid. Because I was stupid. It was
651
00:43:26.909 --> 00:43:30.369
my fault that this happened. I remember two people sitting
652
00:43:30.409 --> 00:43:32.010
in this car and they just looked at me and
653
00:43:32.210 --> 00:43:36.659
drove by. I'm like, they probably are scared of me.
654
00:43:38.679 --> 00:43:47.500
I probably look like a hooker. The first time she
655
00:43:47.539 --> 00:43:50.920
went to the police, Laurie felt ignored because of her
656
00:43:50.960 --> 00:43:55.300
history of prostitution. And it wasn't long before Samuel Little...
657
00:43:55.440 --> 00:43:56.559
targeted another woman.
658
00:43:58.239 --> 00:44:02.360
It was exactly 30 days later, I believe, that he
659
00:44:02.400 --> 00:44:07.019
had attempted to murder the next girl. In the same place,
660
00:44:07.179 --> 00:44:10.079
in the same way, and the police actually caught him
661
00:44:10.239 --> 00:44:10.880
in the act.
662
00:44:12.840 --> 00:44:15.949
With two women now telling the same story, the police
663
00:44:15.989 --> 00:44:20.670
had enough to arrest him. Samuel Little stood trial in 1984,
664
00:44:20.670 --> 00:44:23.030
but he escaped the attempted murder charge of the two
665
00:44:23.110 --> 00:44:26.369
women and was convicted of a lesser charge of assault
666
00:44:26.570 --> 00:44:27.489
and false imprisonment.
667
00:44:28.170 --> 00:44:30.769
I wasn't telling the truth, according to the jury. They
668
00:44:30.809 --> 00:44:33.309
didn't believe me. He got four, but he served two
669
00:44:33.349 --> 00:44:35.050
and a half, so I guess he got good behaviour
670
00:44:35.070 --> 00:44:38.849
or something. So then, yeah. Then he promptly went out
671
00:44:38.869 --> 00:44:40.190
and killed the next three women.
672
00:44:42.150 --> 00:44:45.440
But it wasn't just three more. He claims he killed
673
00:44:45.440 --> 00:44:50.139
27 more women. I'm offended by the interviews I'm doing
674
00:44:50.199 --> 00:44:53.449
in this film, because it is offensive. You know, the
675
00:44:53.530 --> 00:44:58.510
idea that the police only care about people if society
676
00:44:58.570 --> 00:45:02.349
deems them worth while. And it shouldn't be the case.
677
00:45:02.389 --> 00:45:04.829
And Laurie is the human personification of that. You know,
678
00:45:04.849 --> 00:45:07.230
she spent years having to deal with this, years thinking
679
00:45:07.250 --> 00:45:09.769
it was her fault. Her fault that a guy pulled
680
00:45:09.829 --> 00:45:11.170
up at the side of the road and dragged her
681
00:45:11.190 --> 00:45:11.730
into a car.
682
00:45:14.730 --> 00:45:20.670
If they was alive to this day, they'd be my friends.
683
00:45:21.480 --> 00:45:22.760
They didn't die mad at me.
684
00:45:23.760 --> 00:45:28.280
They didn't cuss me and call me everything in the book.
685
00:45:28.559 --> 00:45:29.659
They was my friend.
686
00:45:29.699 --> 00:45:30.099
I didn't.
687
00:45:31.679 --> 00:45:33.090
Hate them, they didn't hate me.
688
00:45:41.869 --> 00:45:45.869
Samuel Little is a deluded and dangerous serial killer. Somewhere
689
00:45:45.949 --> 00:45:49.630
over these walls is where he is today, California State Prison.
690
00:45:50.980 --> 00:45:55.090
For many, justice came decades too late. But speaking out,
691
00:45:55.170 --> 00:45:57.630
for Laurie at least, helps keep the memory of his
692
00:45:57.670 --> 00:45:58.469
victims alive.
693
00:45:59.369 --> 00:46:02.369
I think it makes me a little stronger each time, yes,
694
00:46:02.389 --> 00:46:04.730
because I'm doing it afraid, I'm doing it anyway. I
695
00:46:07.800 --> 00:46:10.360
owe more to those women than just to run away.
696
00:46:10.380 --> 00:46:12.980
MUSIC PLAYS
