"I Think It Was Ruth": Samuel Little's FBI Confession, North Little Rock, 1992 to 1993

Name: "I Think It Was Ruth": Samuel Little's FBI Confession, North Little Rock, 1992 to 1993
Uploaded: 2019-10-06
Duration: 2 min 43 s
Description: Samuel Little described a woman he met at a crack house in North Little Rock, a shoplifting arrest at a Kroger store, and a cornfield about ten miles outside the city where he says he left her. She has never been identified.

Samuel Little described a woman he met at a crack house in North Little Rock, a shoplifting arrest at a Kroger store, and a cornfield about ten miles outside the city where he says he left her. She has never been identified.

Subject: Samuel Little
Runtime: 2:43

Content warning: Little describes killing a woman and leaving her body on a trash pile by a cornfield; drug use is mentioned.

The Interview

In this clip, released by the FBI on October 6, 2019, Samuel Little tells Texas Ranger James Holland about a woman he met in North Little Rock, Arkansas. He says he has forgotten her name but thinks it was Ruth. He says they stayed together for two or three days, that he was arrested for shoplifting at a Kroger store while she waited in the car, and that after his release he drove her out of town, turned off the road past a cornfield and left her on a trash pile of cornstalks, about ten miles from the city.

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 says Little met a Black woman of about 24 in a transient area, strangled her on a dirt road outside Little Rock and left her body near a cornfield. The FBI added that records show Little was arrested for shoplifting at a Kroger store in North Little Rock on April 20, 1994. The FBI's case list gives 1992 to 1993 (its 2019 story, 1992 to 1994); Little's dates are not always accurate.

What the Interview Covers

Little describes the woman's appearance, height (about 5'7") and weight, and says he met her at a crack house where she and other women were sitting on the porch. He describes shoplifting at Sears and Kroger, his arrest, the store manager calling the police about the car, and his release. He then describes the drive toward the place of "Walmart's, uh, original store", the cornfield and the trash pile, and what could be seen from the spot. The clip does not describe how she died; the FBI's summary does.

What Makes the Recording Significant

The arrest Little describes gives investigators a fixed point: the FBI pointed to records of a shoplifting arrest at a North Little Rock Kroger in April 1994. The woman herself remained unidentified and the confession unmatched.

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 (1992 or 1993) is approximate. "Ruth" is Little's uncertain recollection of a name; the woman has not been identified. Little calls her a "big old yellow gal"; this is kept in the transcript as spoken. Some of his account of the call from the store manager is unclear in the audio. The 1994 arrest record is later than the 1992 to 1993 dates on the FBI's case list.

Ranger James Holland: North Little Rock. Tell me what that girl looked like.

Samuel Little: Oh, man, I loved her. I forget her name. Oh, wait, I think it was Ruth.

Ranger James Holland: Okay.

Samuel Little: She was a heavyset, big old yellow [unclear: "gal" / "girl"]. And had buck teeth. Had a gap between her teeth. That's what it was. And she, she was like honey-colored skin. And she had, like, her hair was not really long. It was...

Ranger James Holland: How tall do you think she was?

Samuel Little: She was about 5'7".

Ranger James Holland: How much do you think she weighed?

Samuel Little: She weighed about close to 200, about 170, 180.

Ranger James Holland: Pretty big girl.

Samuel Little: Yeah.

Ranger James Holland: Now, where did you meet her at?

Samuel Little: Okay. Down in a crack house. I was... Her and about six other girls was sitting on the porch, uh, they were doing some crack in there. I stopped to go in there. I seen a girl, that's why I stopped. We stayed together two days, or more. I think it was about three days. We was going shoplifting. We went to Sears. We went to a, uh, Kroger's. And that's where I got busted.

Ranger James Holland: Mhm.

Samuel Little: They took me to jail, and she went and stayed in the car. And the manager of Kroger's, I guess he got tired of her laying around on his property in that car. He called the station where I was at in North, North [unclear: "Arkansas" / "Little Rock" / "Arizona"], [unclear: "to drop the charges" / "The driver was charged" / "The driver's license"], so he [unclear: "come down and get" / "didn't come out and get"] this gal and car out of there. They cut me loose.

Samuel Little: So we was headed toward, what's that place where Walmart's, uh, original store? Benton... I [unclear: "hooked" / "whipped"] off the road and back into that little woods. It was a cornfield back there. I pulled through it. And on the other side of the cornfield was a trash pile. And I parked the car facing out where I could see anybody coming in. So I pulled her out of the car. She's too big for me to carry, carry her. So I just pulled her out of the car, laid her on that trash that was [unclear: "left" / "laying"] there.

Ranger James Holland: So was it like a cornstalk pile, or was it a...

Samuel Little: Yeah, a bunch of cornstalks.

Ranger James Holland: What could you see from there?

Samuel Little: Uh, I could see the highway. And in the woods is that way. But it's right outside of Little Rock. I was about 10 miles from [unclear: "here" / "it" / "there"].

Ranger James Holland: From North Little Rock, you think 10 miles?

Samuel Little: Yeah, it was about 10 miles.

Ranger James Holland: Okay. ---