In May 2018, Texas Ranger James Holland began interviewing Samuel Little, a convicted murderer serving life without parole in California, about the 1994 killing of Denise Christie Brothers in Odessa, Texas. Little had already been convicted in Los Angeles for murdering Carol Alford, Guadalupe Apodaca, and Audrey Nelson after cold-case DNA connected him to their deaths. For years, he denied being a murderer. Then he began talking.

Little ultimately confessed to ninety-three killings across nineteen states, covering roughly 1970 through 2005. By October 2019, the FBI said fifty of those confessions had been matched or verified, and that analysts considered all ninety-three credible. The FBI called him the most prolific serial killer in United States history. But that designation does not mean ninety-three murders were proven in court.

This episode follows the evidence: Little’s long arrest history, the Los Angeles DNA breakthrough, the ViCAP review that connected his movements to cold cases, Holland’s interviews, the Odessa guilty plea, the portraits Little drew of women he said he killed, and the continuing effort to identify victims whose names remain unresolved. The central question is not only how many killings can be proved. It is how so many women could die across decades before one national pattern was recognized.

This podcast uses artificial intelligence in its research, writing, production, and narration. Episodes are editorially reviewed before publication.

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