Samuel Little's Sketch of an Unidentified Woman: 11Alive Atlanta Report, December 2018
An 11Alive Atlanta news report from December 2018 on the sketch Samuel Little drew of an unidentified woman, released by Maryland police, and on his unconfirmed claims of three Atlanta killings. Little is not heard.
- Subject
- Samuel Little
- Recorded
- about December 26, 2018
- Runtime
- 1:28
Content warning: Concerns claimed murders of women; no graphic detail is spoken in the video.
The Report
This is a 1-minute-28-second news report by 11Alive (WXIA-TV) in Atlanta, posted on the station's own channel on December 26, 2018. It concerns a portrait Samuel Little drew of a woman he said he had killed, which police in Prince George's County, Maryland, had released a few days earlier in the hope that someone would recognize her, and Little's claims to have killed three women in Atlanta in the early 1980s. The report is narrated by an 11Alive reporter and includes three short comments from interviewees who are not identified in the video (the frames show two different men). Little himself is not heard.
Historical Context
Samuel Little was convicted in Los Angeles in 2014 of three murders committed in the 1980s. In 2018, in interviews with a Texas Ranger and then the FBI, he began confessing to dozens more killings across the country; he eventually confessed to 93 murders committed between 1970 and 2005, and the FBI later called him the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history. On December 13, 2018, he pleaded guilty in Odessa, Texas, to the 1994 murder of Denise Christie Brothers. He drew portraits of many of the women he described, and investigators used them to try to identify victims.
Circumstances
On December 21, 2018, the Prince George's County Police Department released Little's portrait of a woman whose skeletal remains had been found in December 1972 in woods off Route 197, near the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. Little said he had picked her up at a bus station in Washington; police believe she was killed in the summer of 1972. She has never been identified. The 11Alive report adds the Atlanta angle: Little said he killed three women in the city in the early 1980s, and Atlanta police were trying to establish whether his accounts were true.
What the Report Covers
The reporter says Little "calls them his babies" and "remembers every detail" about the women he says he killed, mentions the more than a dozen sketches he gave New York magazine, and says his descriptions of the Atlanta victims were vague and none of those confessions had been confirmed. An interviewee says that Little indicated in an interview "that's why God put him on earth" and calls the total "a scary number," more than the BTK killer and the Green River Killer; a second man, also not identified, says families "haven't had answers, haven't had justice, but now they will." The report closes with the figure, as of December 2018, of more than 30 confirmed killings out of about 90 confessed.
What Makes the Recording Significant
The report records the moment, in December 2018, when a police department published one of Little's own portraits to try to identify a victim, about two months before the FBI released a wider set of his drawings in February 2019. It also documents how Atlanta, in his home state of Georgia, was investigating his claims at the time.
Archival Importance
A short local report from the first weeks of national attention to Little's confessions.
Important Caveats
Little does not speak in this video. The interviewees are not identified in the audio, the captions or the YouTube description, and no name strap appears in the frames checked; the page should describe them only as interviewees. The frames show one man outside a sheriff's office (0:07) and a different man in an office (0:57), so the passage at 0:56 is probably a second interviewee. The reporter's and anchor's first names ("Ryan", "Ron") are as heard and were not verified. The figures in the report (about 90 confessed, more than 30 confirmed) are December 2018 reporting; Little later confessed to 93 murders, and the FBI later said at least 50 to 60 had been verified. The YouTube description's "since the 1980s" is wrong: his confessed killings run from 1970 to 2005, and the Maryland case dates from 1972. The three Atlanta claims were unconfirmed when the report aired; their later status was not checked for this record. His statements about his victims are his claims.
Reporter: He calls them his babies, nearly 90 of them [unclear: "and all" / "at all"; probably "in all"], and Samuel Little remembers every detail about the women he says he killed.
Interviewee: During the interview with him, he indicated that's why God put him on earth. God knew what he was gonna do.
Reporter: Just before Christmas, police in Maryland released this sketch of an unidentified woman that Little drew. They're hoping someone might recognize her. And in an exclusive interview with New York magazine, Little gave them more than a dozen sketches of women he claims to have killed.
Interviewee: That's a scary number. That's more than [unclear: "the" / "a"] BTK killer and the Green River Killer.
Reporter: And Little says he killed three women here in Atlanta in the early '80s, but his descriptions of the victims are vague. Atlanta police are working to find out if Little is telling the truth. So far, none of those confessions have been confirmed.
Interviewee 2: There are people all over this country that haven't had answers, haven't had justice, but now they will.
Reporter: But as time goes on, Samuel Little will continue to draw. Will his sketches lead to justice in Atlanta? And of the 90 murders Little has confessed to, more than 30 of them have been confirmed. Detectives have yet to find one he's lying about. Sadly, though, some of these bodies were never discovered, meaning dozens of families may never get closure. Ron.
Anchor: Oh, boy. Chilling details there, Ryan. Thank you. [Clip ends at 01:28.] ---