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The Choke and Stroke Killer PART 1 · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

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  Discretion is advised. This is ten minted murder. Once they're in custody,
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  it's common for criminals to begin confessing to multiple crimes, often including murders that
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  they didn't commit or imaginary killings that never even took place. Sometimes it's an
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  attempt to get a shorter prison sentence somehow or a better plea bargain, but
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  on other occasions, it's a violent criminals last chance to exert power over others
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  by leading authorities on a wild goose chase. But when Samuel Little was convicted
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  of murder, the FBI spent the next three years seeing if any unsolved cases
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  would be linked to him, and what they found didn't even scratch the surface.
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  They only found out the true extent of Samuel's crimes when he began to
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  confess to a dizzying number of murders totaling almost one hundred kills in more than
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  three decades. He was confessing in the hope that he would be transferred to
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  a different prison, but investigators quickly realized that Samuel didn't seem to be lying.
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  One by one, they fact checked the details that Samuel gave them.
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  It all lined up. They hadn't just caught a murderer. They'd caught one
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  of the most prolific serial killers in the history of the United States. But
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  why spend so much time chasing down the victims of a man already spending the
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  rest of his life in prison. Christie Palozzolo, a crime analyst for the
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  FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, described why it was so important to track down
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  as many as Samuel's victims as possible. For many years, Christie said Samuel
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  Little believed he would not be caught because he thought no one was accounting for
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  his victims. Even though he is already in prison, the FBI believes it's
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  important to seek justice for each victim to close every case possible. By the
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  age of sixteen, Samuel already had a criminal record. He was caught breaking
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  and entering in nineteen fifty six, long before his first day in juvenile detention.
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  He had been a troubled child. The details of his early life for
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  Fuzzy and all the authorities had to go on is what Samuel himself believed about
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  his upbringing. He told investigators that his mother, Bessie, had been a
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  teenage prostitute. From the details, investigators were able to find about Bessie.
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  They came to believe that Samuel might have been born while Bessie was in prison.
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  The first time Samuel fantasized about choking and strangling women, he was five
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  for six years old. One day he saw his kindergarten teacher touching her own
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  neck, and he immediately began to imagine strangling her. From then on,
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  he was obsessed. In his teenage years, he started a collection of true
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  crime newspapers and magazines, but only the issues containing stories about women being strangled.
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  Samuel's behavioral issues escalated as he aged, and by the time he was
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  incarcerated at sixteen years of age, he was at a breaking point. From
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  then on, he hopped between different jobs, moving from state to state.
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  The more times he relocated, the longer the list of crimes that followed him
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  fraud, armed robbery, shoplifting, assault, and rape. By early nineteen
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  seventy five, he had been arrested in eleven different states on twenty six separate
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  occasions. In nineteen eighty two, Samuel was arrested yet another time, and
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  this time his arrest was in Mississippi, where he was suspected of murdering Melinda
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  Rose Laprie, a twenty two year old woman who had recently gone missing.
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  Even though Samuel wasn't indicted for Melinda's murder, he was extradited back to Florida
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  during the investigation to be tried for a different murder. Patricia Anne Mount was
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  a twenty six year old woman who had been killed by an unknown assailant,
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  and her remains had been found in September nineteen eighty two, the same month
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  that Melinda Lapree had disappeared. In court, Samuel was positively identified by witnesses
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  who had seen him with Patricia on the day that she went missing. However,
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  the testimonies were ruled to be untrustworthy. Shortly after being acquitted for Patricia's
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  murder, Samuel moved to San Diego. He kidnapped and strangled another young woman,
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  who managed to survive the attack, leading to Samuel being rested once again.
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  Less than a month later, police found Samuel with a badly beaten and
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  unconscious woman in the back seat of his car. He'd carried out the attack
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  in the exact location where he'd tried to kill his last victim. For both
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  attempted murders, he was sentenced to less than three years of jail time.
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  Straight after his release, he moved to LA and killed ten more women.
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  The arrests weren't stopping him, they were just slowing him down a little bit,
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  despite the fact that Samuel wasn't stopping. The next arrest came decades later,
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  in late twenty twelve. At first, he only faced charges related to
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  narcotics, but technology had advanced since the last time that Samuel spent time behind
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  bars. Through DNA testing, he was connected to three unsolved murders that had
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  taken place in Los Angeles during the nineteen eighties. The first murder was that
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  of Carol Alford, a forty one year old woman who had been killed in
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  July of nineteen eighty seven. Her half naked body was found dumped in an
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  alleyway after she was strangled to death. DNA samples were collected from under her
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  fingernails, where she had scratched at her attacker's skin, as well as from
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  her underwear. Both samples were a match to the same man, Samuel Little.
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  The second woman, forty six year old Guadalupe Apudhaka, had been strangled
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  to death and sexually assaulted before her body was left in an abandoned shop.
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  Samuel's third suspected victims thirty five year old Audrey Everett. She had been strangled,
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  beaten, and dragged across the ground before her body was left in an
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  LA dumpster in August of nineteen eighty nine. Her beating had been so severe
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  that her spine had been smashed, and the coroner described her injuries as showing
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  a degree of force that was the greatest that he had seen in a twenty
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  seven year practice in a county which has its share of strangulation cases. The
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  more that investigators looked into Samuel Little's life, the more crimes they suspected he
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  had been involved in. Within two months, California police announced that Samuel was
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  now believed to be involved in more than thirty murders. There were some similarities.
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  Most of his victims were women of lower socioeconomic status, and there was
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  proof that most had been strangled to death. However, Samuel didn't seem to
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  discriminate by age. He had picked up his victims in a wide array of
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  locations before disposing of their bodies and abandoned buildings, bodies of water, secluded
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  roads, vacant houses, or empty fields in September of twenty fourteen, Samuel
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  went to trial for the murders of Linda Alfred, Guadalupe Apodaca, and Audrey
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  Everett, who were all killed between July nineteen eighty seven and August nineteen eighty
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  nine. With a combination of reliable witnesses and DNA matches found at the scenes
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  of the crimes, he was found guilty, receiving a sentence of life in
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  prison without parole. During the sentencing, Samuel insisted that he was innocent,
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  but only just a few years later his story of innocence began to change.
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  In twenty eighteen, the confessions began, and they kept coming. By November
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  of twenty eighteen, Texas sheriffs announced that Samuel had credibly confessed or been linked
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  to over ninety murders, which took place over thirty five years in fourteen different
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  states. Despite giving incredibly detailed descriptions of his victims and their deaths, where
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  he seemed to particularly enjoy describing how attractive he had found the women he killed,
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  there was only enough evidence to charge him with five additional murders. In
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  total, he was only ever convicted of murdering eight of the women he confessed
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  to killing. During his confessions, Samuel explained how he picked his victims,
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  How he chose women who were on the outskirts of society, women who were
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  living on the streets, addicted to hard drugs, or forced to work as
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  prostitutes. They weren't crimes of opportunity for Samuel. Instead, he was cherry
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  picking women who he believed that nobody would miss. He believed that by selecting
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  his victims in this way, he was making it harder for authorities to track
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  him down or even identify that the women were victims of a serial killer.
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  Tragically, he was right. He was only identified as a serial offender after
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  his arrest, and most of his murders were written off as being isolated incidents.
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  On the twenty seventh of November twenty eighteen, the FBI made an announcement
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  they had been working on confirming Samuel's confessions by matching the details to missing persons
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  cases and unsolved debts. So far, they had been able to verify thirty
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  four confessions he had made, but their job was far from done, with
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  more than fifty unverified confessions still remaining. And that's the end of Part one
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  of Samuel Little the choke and stroke killer on ten Minute Murder. Now,
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  I could have stopped right there. That could have been the entire episode in
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  itself. However, in part two you're going to hear from Samuel Little himself
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  because, like I said, the sessions didn't stop. He kept confessing to
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  so many things, and these confessions were recorded. He also gave interviews.
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  So in the next episode you're going to hear from Samuel Little himself. And
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  by the way, before we get started with that, if you are new
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  to ten Minute Murder, hit subscribe right now so that you can continue listening.
• 10:16
  It's not that you couldn't continue listening if you don't subscribe. It makes
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  it easier to continue listening. If you are a subscriber, If you've got
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  story suggestions or just want to reach out to me, Joe at ten minute
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  Murder dot com is my email address. All right, on to Part two,