HAMILTON COUNTY, Ohio — Serial killer Samuel Little, already serving a life sentence for three murders and suspected of committing over 60 more, will plead guilty to killing two Ohio women Friday afternoon in Hamilton County court.
According to Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters, 78-year-old Little — appearing via teleconference from California State Prison in Los Angeles — will be sentenced in the same hearing.
Per his own past confessions, Little spent decades traveling the United States and strangling women along the way. Most of the victims were young and many were black.
During the ‘80s, prosecutors said, he killed two woman in Cincinnati: Anna Stewart, a mother of three visiting her sister at a hospital, and a still-unidentified “Jane Doe.”
Stewart likely died Oct. 6, 1981, the day she disappeared. Her body was found six days later in Grove City, but her family wouldn’t learn exactly what had happened to her until Little’s confession in June 2019.
"He is the epitome of evil," Deters said in June.
Transient and prone to violence against women, Little accumulated a host of less serious charges and convictions between 1970 — when he claims he committed his first murder— and 2012, when he was arrested in Louisville, Kentucky, for the late-‘80s murders of Carol Elford, Guadalupe Abodaca and Audrey Nelson in Los Angeles.
Little confessed to dozens of other killings during his trial and after his 2014 conviction. Like Cincinnati’s “Jane Doe,” many of his victims remain unidentified except for the sketches he draws from prison.
If every one of his 90 confessions is accurate, Little could be the most prolific serial killer in the history of the United States.
This story was originally published by WCPO.
