Samuel Little, who the FBI has confirmed is the most prolific serial killer in American history, died at age 80 on Wednesday.
CBS News reports his death was first revealed by a law enforcement source, and was then later confirmed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in a press release. "An official cause of death will be determined by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office," reads the press release. "Little, 80, had been serving three consecutive life-without-parole sentences from Los Angeles County for the deaths of three women that occurred in the late 1980s."
In 2018, Little confessed to 93 murders across the span of over three decades. The FBI has confirmed 50 of those victims, while the other murders he confessed were not officially identified. He had been serving time in jail since 2014 for convictions related to three women he strangled in the '80s. In a 60 Minutes interview last year, Little suggested that there could be innocent people behind bars serving time for crimes he committed.
Little specifically targeted women he believed were vulnerable, specifically sex workers or any other women he thought the police might not investigate as thoroughly. A number of his killers were initially labeled as overdoses, while the bodies of some of his victims were never found. Prior to his convictions in 2014, Little had been linked to eight sexual assaults and attempted murders, and he even served four years in prison in the '80s for assault with a deadly weapon and false imprisonment.
