CLEVELAND (AP) — A man who has confessed to killing more than 90 women across the U.S. was indicted Friday in Cleveland for the strangulation deaths of two women decades ago.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said 78-year-old Samuel Little has confessed to killing 21-year-old Mary Jo Peyton in 1984 and 32-year-old Rose Evans in 1991 in Cleveland. He has been charged with four counts of aggravated murder and six counts of kidnapping.
“There are no words to describe the pure evil that exists within Samuel Little,“ O’Malley said in a statement. “His heinous disregard for human life is incomprehensible.“
Little is possibly the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history, surpassing the likes of John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy and Green River’s Gary Ridgway. Little was convicted in California of three slayings in 2013 and pleaded to another killing last year in Texas, where he’s currently incarcerated.
Little told authorities he killed five women in Ohio, including three who lived around Cleveland, during a murder spree that began in 1970 when he was 30 years old and ended 35 years later, O’Malley said.
The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Office’s Cold Case Unit was able to identify Peyton and Evans as Little’s victims and is trying to determine with other law enforcement agencies the identity of the third woman, O’Malley said.
The FBI in February released sketches drawn by Little of some of his victims based on his memories of them. Agents who have interviewed Little said he remembers his victims and the killings in great detail, including where he was and what car he was driving.
The FBI said Little targeted “vulnerable women who were often involved in prostitution and addicted to drugs.“
Ector County District Attorney Bobby Bland in Odessa, Texas, said 50 cold homicide cases have been closed as a result of Little’s confessions and that most of the remaining unsolved slayings occurred in California.
