One of the most famous US serial killers, Samuel Little, died in prison at the age of 80, according to Accociated Press.
FBI recognized Little as the “most productive” assassin in US history. For 35 years, the perpetrator managed to remain at large, as his victims were women from low-income, marginal or discriminated segments of the population.
Little himself was convinced that he would never be caught, because “nobody cared about his victims.” Thus, the overwhelming majority of the women he killed were black and lived on the brink of poverty. The victims of the maniac were often prostitutes or women with drug addiction. In addition, among those killed was a transgender teenager who called himself Marianne, as well as a “hippie-looking” white woman whom Little spotted outside a strip club.
Often, investigations into the disappearance of these women were not conducted thoroughly enough, according to The Guardian a >. Many were started to be found too late, believing that their disappearance was related to a marginal lifestyle.
Moreover, the deaths of some of those killed were attributed to a drug overdose or an accident, despite the circumstances that clearly indicated the violent nature of the death. So, one of Little’s victims, Martha Cunningham , was found in a forest in Tennessee beaten and topless from the waist down, while it was found that some of her jewelry was missing, but the police still said that the woman’s death occurred “of natural causes” and had nothing to do with crime.
Little committed murders from 1970 to 2005. The maniac himself confessed to 93 crimes, but the investigators have so far managed to prove his involvement in only 50 of them. Little was caught only in 2012 in a homeless shelter; DNA tests from crime scenes became proof of his guilt, although until 1975 he was arrested 26 times in 11 American states.