This Prolific Serial Killer Is Now in a Wheelchair

Investigation Discovery is airing a special week of programming this week called Serial Killer Week. The two-part entry on Monday, August 31 and Tuesday, September 1 is called The 93 Victims of Samuel Little. It chronicles one of the most prolific and elusive serial killers of all time in Samuel Little.

Little has only been convicted of four murders, but he is believed to have committed as many as 93 total over 40 years. Ahead of the Investigation Discovery special, here’s what you need to know about his life in prison and what health problems he suffers from at age 80.

Samuel Little Is in a Wheelchair and Has Diabetes and a Heart Condition

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According to a 2019 report by the New York Times, Little is now in a wheelchair due to his diabetes and heart disease. He was tried and convicted of three murders in 2014 — Carol Ilene Elford, Guadalupe Duarte Apodaca, and Audrey Nelson Everett, killed between 1987 and 1989 in Southern California. For those murders he received life in prison without the possibility of parole, so Little will presumably die in prison.

In 2018, he was convicted of the 1994 murder of Denise Christie Brothers in Odessa, Texas. Since being incarcerated in 2014, he has confessed to nearly 90 other murders, but it is unlikely he will ever be charged in them, according to the New York Times, because he is already serving life in prison.

In 2019, Little was charged in the cold case murders of Mary Jo Peyton and Rose Evans in Ohio. Cuyahoga County Judge John Russo sentenced Little to 40 years in prison for those murders, to be served after the sentences he has received in other states.

Little Was Called the ‘Choke and Stroke Killer’ By the LAPD

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Between 1987 and 1989, Little killed several women in the Los Angeles area. According to A&E’s Biography, the Los Angeles Police Department began referring to Little as the “Choke and Stroke Killer” at that time because he often masturbated while strangling his victims.

The FBI reports that they have positively linked over 60 murders to Little, but it will be hard to conclusively confirm the others because he cannot positively identify his victims by name.

VICAP crime analyst Christie Palazzolo said that the FBI thinks it is important to try to account for every victim.

“For many years, Samuel Little believed he would not be caught because he thought no one was accounting for his victims,” said Palazzolo. “Even though he is already in prison, the FBI believes it is important to seek justice for each victim — to close every case possible.”

In an interview with New York Magazine, Little said that he stuck to “the ghettos” because it was easier to evade being captured.

“I never killed no senators or governors or fancy New York journalists — nothing like that,” he said to New York Magazine reporter Jillian Lauren. “I killed you, it’d be all over the news the next day. I stayed in the ghettos.”

Serial Killer Week is airing every night at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Investigation Discovery.

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