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Samuel Little Pleads Guilty to Four Ohio Murders

Appearing by video from a California prison, Little admitted killing two women in Cincinnati and two in Cleveland and received more consecutive life terms in both counties.

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Police photograph of Samuel Little in a striped shirt

Samuel Little never set foot in an Ohio courtroom to answer for the four women he killed in the state. On August 23, 2019, the 79-year-old appeared by video from the California state prison where he was already serving multiple life sentences, and over the course of one Friday he pleaded guilty to two murders in Cincinnati and two more in Cleveland.

The Cincinnati hearing came first. Hamilton County Judge Melba Marsh walked Little through a series of questions about the rights he was giving up by not going to trial, and he answered each one in the affirmative, at times with a polite "Yes, ma'am." Marsh then sentenced him to two consecutive terms of 15 years to life. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said Little had confessed to both killings that May.

One of the two women was Anna Stewart, a 33-year-old mother of three whose body was found in Grove City in October 1981. According to Deters, Little killed her in Cincinnati and then, because it was raining, put her in the trunk of his car and drove her to Grove City, where he left her. The second woman has never been identified. Investigators did not know when she died or who she was, and the only picture they had of her was a portrait Little drew from memory. He called her "the girl by the highway."

Deters had pressed for the Ohio sentences to run consecutively for a reason. If California ever released Little, he said, he wanted him brought back to answer for the two Cincinnati victims. FOX19 reported that Little showed no remorse in court, and his attorney, Norm Aubin, said the plea itself was the only sign of responsibility he could point to. Asked about regret, Aubin said he did not know.

That afternoon, again by video, Little pleaded guilty in Cuyahoga County to two counts of aggravated murder for the deaths of Mary Jo Peyton, 21, and Rose Evans, 32. Judge John Russo imposed two consecutive life terms. Local reporting described the sentence as a minimum of 40 years, to be served after the time Little already owed in Texas, California and Cincinnati. One of his attorneys read a statement saying Little thoroughly apologized for the killings and wanted to bring closure to the women's families.

The Cleveland cases had reached the county prosecutor's office on October 1, 2018, when an analyst with the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program told prosecutors about an investigation into Little. Authorities in Texas, where he had pleaded guilty to another murder that year, had linked him to five Ohio women, three of them from the Cleveland area. Assistant Prosecutor Richard Bell and investigator Jack Bornfeld traveled to Texas and came back with a detailed confession.

The account the prosecutor's office laid out was spare and bleak. Sometime in May or June 1984, Little met Mary Jo Peyton in a bar near East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue. He drove her to what looked like an abandoned factory, strangled her, and threw her body to the bottom of a basement stairwell, where two employees of a nearby business found her on July 3, 1984. In August 1991, near East 55th Street and Central Avenue, he offered Rose Evans a ride, took her instead to a vacant lot near East 39th Street, and strangled her in his car. He covered her body with two tires. A passerby found her on the morning of August 24.

"Samuel Little made a career out of killing vulnerable women," Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael C. O'Malley said. The third Cleveland-area woman Little was linked to had not yet been found or identified, and her case remained under investigation.

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