"Tell Me About Marianne": Samuel Little's FBI Confession, Miami, 1972

Name: "Tell Me About Marianne": Samuel Little's FBI Confession, Miami, 1972
Uploaded: 2019-10-06
Duration: 2 min 50 s
Description: Asked about a 19-year-old he called Marianne, Samuel Little described meeting her at a bar on 17th Avenue in Miami, driving out toward Fort Lauderdale and leaving her in swampy ground. She has never been identified.

Asked about a 19-year-old he called Marianne, Samuel Little described meeting her at a bar on 17th Avenue in Miami, driving out toward Fort Lauderdale and leaving her in swampy ground. She has never been identified.

Subject: Samuel Little
Runtime: 2:50

Content warning: Little describes killing a young transgender woman and leaving her body in swampy water; he describes her in terms that are offensive and are kept in the transcript as spoken.

The Interview

In this clip, released by the FBI on October 6, 2019, Samuel Little answers questions from Texas Ranger James Holland about a victim he calls "Marianne". He says she was 19, from Liberty City in Miami, and had a boyfriend named Wes. He says he met her at a bar on 17th Avenue, drove her out on 27 toward Fort Lauderdale in his stepfather's Pontiac Le Mans, turned off toward the vegetation beyond the city limits, and left her where the ground became mushy near running water. Asked the year, he says "'72".

Historical Context

Samuel Little, born Samuel McDowell in Reynolds, Georgia, in 1940, spent decades drifting across the United States, with a long record of arrests. In September 2012 he was arrested at a homeless shelter in Louisville, Kentucky, and extradited to California, where DNA linked him to the murders of three women in Los Angeles in 1987 and 1989. In September 2014 he was convicted of those murders and sentenced to life without parole. In 2018 Texas Ranger James Holland interviewed him about the 1994 killing of Denise Christie Brothers in Odessa, Texas. Little confessed to it in May 2018 and went on to describe dozens of other killings, often drawing the women from memory. Working with the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP), investigators matched his accounts to cases across the country. On October 6, 2019, the FBI said he had confessed to 93 murders between 1970 and 2005, that 50 had been verified, and called him the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history. To find the women still unidentified, it published his drawings and five short interview clips, of which this is one.

Circumstances of the Interview

The FBI has not said when or where this interview was recorded; in October 2019 it called it "a recent interview", and Holland had been questioning Little since the spring of 2018. The clip is an edited excerpt focused on a single victim. The FBI's written summary of this account says Little met an 18- or 19-year-old transgender woman at a bar, killed her off Highway 27 (U.S. Route 27) and dragged her body into muddy water in the Everglades. It gives the date as 1971 or 1972. Little does not believe her body was ever found.

What the Interview Covers

Holland asks for a description; Little gives her height (about 5'6" or 5'7"), weight (about 135 to 140 pounds) and age, and says she was from Liberty City. He describes what she was wearing, the car, the route toward Fort Lauderdale and Alligator Alley, and the place he left her, which he puts about one or two miles outside Miami. The clip does not describe how she died; the FBI's summary does.

What Makes the Recording Significant

The FBI listed this confession as unmatched: no victim has been identified. The clip was released so that someone might recognise the young woman Little describes, or the boyfriend he calls Wes.

Archival Importance

The FBI released these five clips for a practical purpose: to identify victims. They show how ViCAP and the Texas Ranger worked, asking for heights, weights, cars, roads and landmarks that could be checked against old records. Little died on December 30, 2020, so the recorded interviews and the FBI's written summaries now hold what remains of his accounts of the unmatched cases.

Important Caveats

Everything in the clip is Little's own account. The FBI regarded his confessions as credible but warned that his memory for dates was not always accurate, so the year (1971 or 1972) is approximate. Little describes Marianne in his own outdated terms, kept in the transcript as spoken; the FBI describes her as a transgender woman, and the page should follow the FBI. "Marianne" (the FBI also writes "Mary Ann") and "Wes" are names as Little remembers them; neither person has been identified. Where Little says he drove ("27th Street" or "I-27" in different readings) is uncertain in the audio; the FBI's summary says Highway 27.

Ranger James Holland: Tell me about Marianne.

Samuel Little: She was what [unclear: "nowadays you" / "you'd not hate to" / "you not going to"] call a transgender. She's a black male dressed up as a female.

Ranger James Holland: Okay. How tall is she?

Samuel Little: Marianne is about 5'7", 5'6". She weighed about 135, maybe 140.

Ranger James Holland: And how old do you think she was?

Samuel Little: She was 19.

Ranger James Holland: Okay. And where was she from?

Samuel Little: Miami. Down in Liberty City.

Ranger James Holland: Okay. And did she, um... You mentioned before she had a boyfriend, or she talked about a boyfriend.

Samuel Little: Named Wes.

Ranger James Holland: Wes?

Samuel Little: Yeah.

Ranger James Holland: And tell me about where you met her at.

Samuel Little: I seen her down at the bar on 17th Avenue, and she had on a short cream miniskirt.

Ranger James Holland: Mhm.

Samuel Little: Cream and red. So then this opportunity popped up. Take her to the store.

Ranger James Holland: Right.

Samuel Little: [unclear: "Instead of me bringing her" / "She didn't even bring it" / "Still we bring it up"] back to the apartment, I went [unclear: "down 27th Street" / "to I-27, see"]. That's going down to, uh, Fort Lauderdale. Called the Gator, the Alligator Alley. It turns into, it runs into Alligator Alley.

Ranger James Holland: Right.

Samuel Little: But the further out you get, the further you get out of Miami, you got vegetation in there.

Ranger James Holland: Now how far outside of Miami do you think you were?

Samuel Little: About... it wasn't too far out of Miami right there. I was in my stepdaddy's car. Pontiac Le Mans.

Ranger James Holland: And where did you take her to?

Samuel Little: Continue down 27. Got back on 27.

Ranger James Holland: Going outside of Miami?

Samuel Little: Going away from Miami.

Ranger James Holland: Going away from Miami?

Samuel Little: We got down past the, um, past the city limits. So I continued on toward Fort Lauderdale. And I seen a road going off the main road back into vegetation on the left side. So I got her out of the car. Pulled her out and [unclear: "drug" / "drove"] her into the growth back there. And pulled her deeper into... there's a path, a little path [unclear: "that went in somewhere" / "was running somewhere"]. I don't know where it led to, but it was running deeper into the undergrowth. It's like Everglades like that. And we ran into some water running. And, but before we got to the water, the earth was mushy. I turned her loose, and she fell into it face down.

Ranger James Holland: And how far outside of Miami do you think you were?

Samuel Little: About a mile, two miles.

Ranger James Holland: What year did Marianne occur?

Samuel Little: Uh, '72.

Ranger James Holland: Okay, 1972. ---