Video shows serial killer’s confession to 1993 Las Vegas murder

Serial killer Samuel Little said he was driving through Las Vegas in a yellow Cadillac Eldorado in 1993 when he met a woman in the Historic Westside. He said he took her to a motel, strangled her and later rolled her body down a steep slope on the outskirts of Las Vegas.

The FBI believes him.

“It is highly likely that her body was never found,” the agency said in a news release Sunday, when it announced that Little — who has confessed to 93 murders between 1970 and 2005 — was considered to be the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history.

Ted Bundy confessed to 30 homicides from about 1974 to 1978. John Wayne Gacy killed at least 33 boys and young men in the 1970s.

Little, 79, has been behind bars since 2012 serving three consecutive life sentences and had offered the confessions in early 2018 while trying to obtain a prison transfer. He is imprisoned in Texas.

The FBI first announced Little’s “breathtaking number of confessions” in November 2018 in a news release that included portraits of the victims sketched by Little himself.

As of Sunday, law enforcement agencies across the country had verified 50 of his confessions, and the FBI said crime analysts believe all of his confessions are credible.

But Metropolitan Police Department homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said Tuesday that the Las Vegas confession has not been linked to any open cases.

“We can’t find anything that corresponds with the details he gave,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Before Sunday’s announcement, which included a series of short video confessions titled “In the Words of a Killer,” the only details released about the possible Las Vegas victim had been that she was a “black female, age 40, killed in 1993.”

In his Las Vegas confession, edited down to a nearly 3-minute video, Little told an investigator, “She was out there hustling. I think she was a drunk addict because she wouldn’t have been out there.”

Little said he encountered the woman on either Owens Avenue or Jackson Avenue, near H Street, while on his way to Los Angeles. He described her as a thin, 5-foot-5, dark-skinned woman weighing between 110 and 120 pounds.

The woman briefly introduced Little to her adult son, he said, before he took her to a motel. There, he said, he strangled her and then placed her body in the trunk of his 1978 Cadillac Eldorado.

He drove to the outskirts of Las Vegas, he said, on the road “going toward Searchlight,” until he pulled over near some brush and disposed of her naked body.

“I heard a secondary road noise that meant she was still rolling,” Little told the investigator, his hands mimicking the movement of her body rolling down the slope.

After, he said, he drove farther down the road and threw her clothes out.

Little said he strangled all 93 of his victims. Many of his victims’ deaths, according to the FBI, originally were ruled overdoses or had been attributed to accidental or undetermined causes. Some bodies have never been found.

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

Anyone with information about Little’s confessions may contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or online at tips.fbi.gov. Information about the possible Las Vegas victim may be submitted to Metro’s homicide section at 702-828-3521.

Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter.