It was his trigger, his hot button. It fired up his memory, stoked his obsession, and drove his compulsion...to kill. Hardwired with a brain to record and remember every single detail about the 93 murders he claims he committed, Pascagoula Police Lieutenant Darren Versiga descibes Samuel Little life as a killer: "He was the bogey-man under the bed. He was that criminal that you hoped you'd never come across. Especially at a younger age, when he was very powerful."
How did Little target his victims? Lieutenant Versiga describes the strange fatal fetish that picqued his obsession and marked a woman for death: "His trigger was the neck, and if he saw a neck that he through looked good, and was something he wanted to get his hands around, that was a lot of his trigger. And if they didn't have an appealing neck he wasn't interested in it."
How powerful was Little's trigger to drive him toward murder. "He didn't kill every woman he came across, but he did see women that he wanted to go back and kill, but he never did." Samuel Little's strange combination of brains, brawn, obsession, compulsion, and desire to keep moving are the keys to how he became the America's most prolific serial killer.
He was a deadly combination of strength and cunning, serial killer Samuel Little drifted across the United States committing crimes and strangling women. To women he came on charming, but he quickly turned violent and deadly. One woman found out how Little could turn on a dime, as Lieutenant Versiga explains: "He takes her around the corner and he pops her in the mouth," Versiga describes how the former boxer would knock out victims with one shot. "But she was a sister who had five brothers that she was used to fight. So the fight was on in that car that he'd killed so many in. So they're fighting and she gets [out of the car] and runs away in front of traffic."
A second survivor described how Little tortured his victims repeatedly choking them. "He knocked her out and then she woke and he was submerging her in the tub, had a scarf around her neck around her neck," Lieutenant Versiga says. "He pulls her up and out of the water, she passes out several times. He thought he'd killed so her so he decides to get out of Dodge."
By his own admission, Little described repeatly strangling his victims with one hand while masturbating. DNA evidence left on one of his victims would be his undoing. He was arrested in 2012, charged in 2013 and in 2014 was off the streets for good. Now all that's left is his memories, and drawings.
"He's like an old grandpa, he's funny, he's got humor about him, cracks jokes," Lieutenant Versiga says about the Samuel Little of today. "But he also has no remorse..."
As this report was being prepared, WWL learned about a cold case murder in Plaquemines Parish recently solved by a confession from the long time serial killer. It's 1978 and Samuel Little takes the life of a 14-year-old girl.
For so many years Karlene Jones was killed her brother Ernest Garrison thought his sister's killer knew the family in the rural roadside community of Jesuit Bend. "We throught it was somebody that she knew, " Garrison says. "Because Karlene, she wouldn't leave with no stranger. When detectives described how she was snatched from the house out the front door."
It was serial killer Samuel Little. Somehow Little learned Karleen's mothers name and used it to kidnap and kill the 14-year-old. Years later when cold case detectives were interviewing Little, according to Garrison, the killers incredible recall of an old landmark sign on the road leading into Plaquemines Parish confirmed to detectives they were on the right trail.
"When the detectives were interviewing him he said 'Plaquemeens', "Garrison says. "See they thought they were talking about Plaquemine, Louisiana up toward Baton Rouge. But [one] detective knew, he remembered that and knew it was Plaquemines Parish because of the symbol up by the highway."
Garrison describes how he feels when thinking his sister was the victim of serial killer: "It was devasting when we found that out. I was surprised, I mean a serial killer in Plaquemines Parish? Cause that's a rural area not like a city or something, it's rural. What he was doing down there, I don't know."
Little even provided another intricate sketch of Karleen. After an additional interview, detectives were able to secure an arrest warrant for the first degree murder of Karleen Jones, 40 years ago.