American Monsters: Samuel Little - featuring Anson Maddocks
Explore the art of Anson Maddocks: https://ansonmaddocks.com/
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/us/samuel-little-dead.html
https://www.dps.texas.gov/news/new-details-released-unsolved-samuel-little-murders https://www.insider.com/samuel-little-fbi-most-prolific-serial-killer-us-history-2019-10 https://www.insider.com/samuel-little-portraits-victims-paint-drawings-2019-10#:~:text=America's%20most%20prolific%20serial%20killer%2C%20Samuel%20Little%2C%20has%20been%20helping,victims%20by%20painting%20their%20portraits.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/kinda-murdery-true-crime-murder-stories--5496890/support.
Zevon Odelberg is a true crime podcast host and disability advocate. Zevon has cerebral palsy and he wants Kinda Murdery to be welcoming community for people with disabilities and for people living with challenges of any kind. Life can be hard, but being together makes it better.
Speaker 1: Warning, Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and
Speaker 1: descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and
Speaker 1: we recommend you stop listening now.
Speaker 2: True crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish,
Speaker 2: the strange in the darkly comic. I'm Zevan Odelberg, host
Speaker 2: of Kind of Murdery, a podcast that's about more than
Speaker 2: just murder. It's my very own pocket dimension, home to
Speaker 2: a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories, the unsolved,
Speaker 2: the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it all just
Speaker 2: so long as it's kind of Murdery. It's a very
Speaker 2: exciting day for Kind of Murdery because my friend and
Speaker 2: legendary artist Ansine Maddox is back with us today and
Speaker 2: I am beyond stoked that he's back. Hey, answer, how
Speaker 2: you do it?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm thrilled to announce that going forward, ants
Speaker 2: and will be transitioning from storied guest of honor to
Speaker 2: co host, as we're going to be doing shows together regularly. Now,
Speaker 2: he won't be on every episode of Kind of Murdery,
Speaker 2: but we have so much fun hanging out together that
Speaker 2: I'm hoping to have him on at least once a
Speaker 2: month or essentially as often as he's willing. And I
Speaker 2: have to say that I am beyond excited to have
Speaker 2: a partner in crime, so to speak. To be clear,
Speaker 2: that's metaphorical, not literal.
Speaker 4: Crime, and not the partner part. Well, yeah, not the
Speaker 4: crime part. You know, we have the precautions we have
Speaker 4: to make.
Speaker 2: Exactly, we have to couch things carefully. I saw a
Speaker 2: news story recently about a there's some rapper who's facing
Speaker 2: various criminal charges, and the prosecution moved to introduce his
Speaker 2: rap songs as character evidence. And obviously rap music tends
Speaker 2: to be sort of this toxic male fantasy of crime
Speaker 2: and misogyny, et cetera. And that's just kind of what
Speaker 2: it often is. And so I was like, yikes, they're
Speaker 2: actually gonna take like a gangster rapper and say he
Speaker 2: said this, he said that, and that goes to the
Speaker 2: probability that he then did this and that. And that
Speaker 2: made me think, boy, maybe I need to throw some
Speaker 2: more disclaimers into into condmurdery here.
Speaker 3: I mean, what about hornymous bosh you know? Oh man, yeah,
Speaker 3: that would be that'd be quite a document of some
Speaker 3: serious crimes if he was you know, he actually did
Speaker 3: all the things.
Speaker 2: That he depicted, Oh my gosh. Yeah, if his paintings
Speaker 2: were auto biographical. Oh no, all right, all right, So
Speaker 2: today I want to kick off the show with a
Speaker 2: couple of pretty obvious observations, but answered if you'll bear
Speaker 2: with me, and hopefully the audience will bear with us,
Speaker 2: I've hopefully got a less obvious point to make ultimately,
Speaker 2: So you know, here we go obvious point number one.
Speaker 2: Kind of Murdery is a true crime podcast. Now, perhaps
Speaker 2: there's a few of you listening that aren't really true
Speaker 2: crime fans, but maybe you like the sound of my
Speaker 2: voice or the way I tell a story, or you
Speaker 2: like hearing Anson and I talk, so you're willing to
Speaker 2: trudge through the grim and grimy detail for the narrative
Speaker 2: and for the human drama. And if that's the case,
Speaker 2: thank you. Consider us flattered. But I imagine that most of
Speaker 2: you are like me. True crime fans is an odd word,
Speaker 2: I guess, but enthusiasts, shall we say, And you find
Speaker 2: criminal psychology, the occasional genius and the much more common
Speaker 2: lack thereof, to be fascinating. And I think that most
Speaker 2: of us who follow this world of human mal intent,
Speaker 2: if you will, would agree that serial killers, especially the
Speaker 2: most successful among them, are the elite of the murdery world.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 2: They're almost like pro athletes, if you will, like Anson.
Speaker 2: What are some if I say serial killer, what are
Speaker 2: some names that spring to mind for you?
Speaker 3: John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Just I kind of lump
Speaker 3: them all together as scum.
Speaker 2: Yeah, total scum. But you mentioned the killer clown and
Speaker 2: the lady killer. There's also, of course the Milwaukee Cannibal.
Speaker 2: That would be Jeffrey Dahmer. The point being that everybody
Speaker 2: listening true crime fan or not, when you say Ted Bundy,
Speaker 2: John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, these are household names. They're
Speaker 2: almost like pop culture brands. Now, all kinds of killers
Speaker 2: become celebrities, but in our pop culture consciousness, we'll call
Speaker 2: it the kind of murdery zeitgeist of America. In the world,
Speaker 2: it's serial killers who separate themselves from the freight. I
Speaker 2: think it's the mystery, the lurid details, the trophies, the
Speaker 2: lengths they go to evade capture, sometimes successfully for decades,
Speaker 2: until they're eventually brought down. There's an undeniable charisma. I
Speaker 2: think in a fascination with these all too human monsters,
Speaker 2: it's important to me to actually point out the human
Speaker 2: nature of serial killers and other people that do awful things,
Speaker 2: because too often, I think, in reporting and even in
Speaker 2: the way that we react to terrible crimes, we say
Speaker 2: things like that guy is not even human.
Speaker 3: That is is because no, this is somebody that shares
Speaker 3: many things with you. It's like that the most horrific
Speaker 3: thing about Hitler was that he was not a monster.
Speaker 3: He was a human being that you know, you could
Speaker 3: have fad. That's right. It was in common somewhere down
Speaker 3: the line, you know, in the past. And yeah, to
Speaker 3: call the monster doesn't really work, right.
Speaker 2: We want to call them monsters. We want to call
Speaker 2: them demons. We want to dehumanize them and make them
Speaker 2: inhuman so that we can divorce ourselves from their actions.
Speaker 2: But the truth is murdering, and especially something like psycho
Speaker 2: sexual serial murder, which a lot of these guys we
Speaker 2: just named engaged in, that is a uniquely human trait.
Speaker 2: If you go into the animal kingdom, you're not going
Speaker 2: to find a bunch of serial killing animals that are
Speaker 2: taking trophies and doing horrible things that some of us
Speaker 2: wouldn't even conceive of. That's something people do, and only
Speaker 2: people do it, and I think we should be honest
Speaker 2: about that. But there is an undeniable fascination, right and
Speaker 2: there is a charisma to the stature that these human monsters,
Speaker 2: if you will build, I mean, the stories of people
Speaker 2: who fall in love with them, are practically legion. Now.
Speaker 2: Of course, treating serial killers like superheroes or super villains
Speaker 2: archetypes that the public good or evil tends to adore.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's also manifestly the case. After all,
Speaker 2: what Star Wars character has more fans or stands, as
Speaker 2: the kids would say, than Darth Vader. With all due
Speaker 2: respect to Han Solo, I'd argue that they're none now
Speaker 2: actually treating serial killers the same way we do superheroes
Speaker 2: and villains, giving them origin stories, teasing out what makes
Speaker 2: them sympathetic. The Netflix series Dahmer is a great example
Speaker 2: of this kind of questionable recontextualizing. Presenting them as icons
Speaker 2: rather than horrific predators is deeply problematic for many reasons.
Speaker 2: I think I hope that we would all recognize that,
Speaker 2: but that's not really what we're here to talk about today.
Speaker 2: My point is, and I think it's another obvious one.
Speaker 2: I guess that serial killers, especially the most successful among them,
Speaker 2: are huge celebrities with massive fan bases. If they had
Speaker 2: social media accounts, they'd have millions of followers. If murder
Speaker 2: weren't immoral and illegal, they'd probably have a long running
Speaker 2: reality show about a family of psychotic murderers called Keeping
Speaker 2: Up with the kill Dashians or something.
Speaker 3: So maybe we could figure out a way to deplatform them.
Speaker 2: I'm still stuck on my dad pun keeping Up with
Speaker 2: the kill Dashians. Everybody puns, Please, somebody get me a
Speaker 2: pitch meeting. I'm pretty sure that show would be a hit.
Speaker 2: But in a certain sense, serial killers are beloved, or
Speaker 2: at least be fascinating, and many of them are, as
Speaker 2: we've been saying, household names, even outside of the true
Speaker 2: crime core, and one of the most predictable indicators of
Speaker 2: a serial murderer being an omnipresent brand, well, that would
Speaker 2: have to be And this is all very ghoulish, I know,
Speaker 2: but it's the truth that would be kill count I mean,
Speaker 2: John Wayne Gacy killed thirty three and arguably inspired the
Speaker 2: massively successful IT franchise. Ted Bundy had twenty confirmed kills,
Speaker 2: thirty confessed, and thirty nine suspected. His mo and work
Speaker 2: with the FBI as they were hunting the Green River
Speaker 2: Killer helped to inspire silence of the Lambs and the
Speaker 2: characters of both Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter. As for
Speaker 2: the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgeway, well, he was once
Speaker 2: considered to be the most prolific serial killer in American history,
Speaker 2: having been convicted of forty nine murders and confessing to
Speaker 2: between seven and ninety. Granted, Ridgeway himself is not quite
Speaker 2: the household name that Bundy and Gaysey are, but I
Speaker 2: would argue that his nickname, the Green River Killer is
Speaker 2: at least close Bundy, the Lady Killer, John Wayne Gacy,
Speaker 2: the Killer Clown. And the point of our endless intro
Speaker 2: here is something that caught me completely by surprise, and
Speaker 2: that was that I had never heard of the subject
Speaker 2: of today's episode. Now had you heard of Samuel Little
Speaker 2: before we started talking about this week's episode of Anson?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: I mean either. Now, I'm sure that some of the
Speaker 2: hardercore true crime fans will scoff at me for saying
Speaker 2: that you never heard of Samuel Little. What do you
Speaker 2: even have a true crime show for But honestly, I'd
Speaker 2: rather admit to my deficiencies, my lack of knowledge, than
Speaker 2: be embarrassed by it. And I'm pretty sure I'm not
Speaker 2: the only one. These other guys I've known about my
Speaker 2: entire life, Gaysey, Bundy, Dummer. But I found out about
Speaker 2: Samuel Little. You ready for the nickname answer? Samuel Little's
Speaker 2: like official nickname in the same sense as Milwaukee cannibal
Speaker 2: or lady killer or killer clown. He was. He passed
Speaker 2: away in twenty twenty. He was the choke and stroke killer.
Speaker 2: Charming not a joke, not a joke. It is exactly
Speaker 2: what it sounds like where I'm going with this. I
Speaker 2: found out about the choke and stroke killer Samuel Little
Speaker 2: this Monday. And here's why that's weird. Samuel Little is
Speaker 2: now and has been since roughly twenty eighteen, So I
Speaker 2: guess he's a bit of a Johnny cum lately in
Speaker 2: the all time serial killer rankings. But I mean not really.
Speaker 2: It's been five years. Five years is fifty years the
Speaker 2: way that media moves these days. Since twenty eighteen, he's
Speaker 2: been recognized by the FBI as the most prolific serial
Speaker 2: killer in American history. He was convicted of only four murders,
Speaker 2: but he confessed to ninety three. Ninety three and a
Speaker 2: lot of confessions are suspect, of course, but subsequent to
Speaker 2: those confessions, the FBI has been able to corroborate, through
Speaker 2: DNA and other evidence, at least sixty of those ninety three,
Speaker 2: which makes the remaining thirty three more than just a
Speaker 2: little bit probable and gives Little the statistically provable most
Speaker 2: kills in American history. So, yeah, that's what we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking about today. Samuel Little, the choke and
Speaker 2: stroke killer, all time American murder leader.
Speaker 3: Ah, just killing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, God. Yes, some people say Barry Bods is the
Speaker 2: all type hope red leader. Some people say, I hate
Speaker 2: that steroid freak, it's Hank Aaron. But there's at this point,
Speaker 2: at least according to the FBI, and they ought to know,
Speaker 2: there's no argument that Samuel Little is the all time
Speaker 2: leading American serial killer. Yes, except for you know, the
Speaker 2: vampires that haven't been caught. Certainly you live a few
Speaker 2: hundred years, you can killers. The consumers aren't they interested? Well,
Speaker 2: I guess it depends on the vampire. But we digress.
Speaker 2: But yes, yes, potentially they're just you know, potentially, they're
Speaker 2: just we're just livestock, really, right, cattle ranchers. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So Samuel Little is a man who is still bizarrely
Speaker 2: but largely anonymous. But wait, there's more. So here's a
Speaker 2: really interesting point about the Little case. And we're going
Speaker 2: to get into the Little case sort of from the
Speaker 2: beginning in just a moment. But another reason that I'm
Speaker 2: really excited that Anson is here with us today is
Speaker 2: something specific both to Samuel Little and his case. He
Speaker 2: was known to or purported to have a photographic memory,
Speaker 2: and the vast majority of his victims were completely unknown,
Speaker 2: in part because he targeted specifically drug addicts and prostitutes
Speaker 2: of color in the ghetto, so they and Samuel Little
Speaker 2: was a African American man himself, so essentially, there was
Speaker 2: not nearly the official interest in the deaths of his
Speaker 2: victims that there may have been had he gone after
Speaker 2: a different demographic, either racially or economically. A lot of
Speaker 2: those deaths were chalked up to drug overdose or even
Speaker 2: natural causes and just not really investigated because there wasn't
Speaker 2: necessarily a family or a vocal powerful contingent that was
Speaker 2: worrying the authorities for this to solve these murders, most
Speaker 2: of his victims were unknown, and so when he confessed
Speaker 2: to some ninety killings, the FBI said, how are we
Speaker 2: going to a, you know, prove to ourselves and others
Speaker 2: that he's not making it up, and b figure out
Speaker 2: who they were in the first place, assuming he is
Speaker 2: telling the truth. And the answer to that was when
Speaker 2: they discovered that he had both a photographic memory and
Speaker 2: what is described as some artistic talent. They asked him
Speaker 2: to start painting his victims, and he did, and they
Speaker 2: used Samuel Little's paintings to track down the women that
Speaker 2: he killed. Anson, you're a painter of some renown at
Speaker 2: some point, and not quite yet, because I do kind
Speaker 2: of want to start from the beginning, but at some
Speaker 2: point I do want to talk to you about some
Speaker 2: of Samuel Little's morbid artwork and your thoughts on it.
Speaker 3: I have some things to say about it.
Speaker 2: I think we owe it to the narrative at this
Speaker 2: moment to get into the narrative, but I definitely and
Speaker 2: I think everybody wants to hear from you about that topic.
Speaker 2: A little bit later in the show. So if you
Speaker 2: are curious what Anson Maddox has to say about the
Speaker 2: art done by notorious serial killer Samuel Little, the most
Speaker 2: prolific murderer in the history of the United States, then
Speaker 2: please stay tuned because later on in the sho show
Speaker 2: we will get into that. And now, if you're ready,
Speaker 2: please join me and Anson as we uncover what truths
Speaker 2: we can and solve what mysteries we may kind of
Speaker 2: murderies criminally underrated. The monstrous career of Samuel Little starts now.
Speaker 2: Samuel Little, the choke and stroke killer. Let's go ahead,
Speaker 2: let's let's let's play the cringe worthy game. If you
Speaker 2: had to guess, why do you think they called him
Speaker 2: the choke and stroke killer? Answer? Oh really, yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna make you say it.
Speaker 3: I think he's probably sharing his private time with his victims.
Speaker 2: That is right. He was known to masturbate while strangling
Speaker 2: his victims. And rather than come up with any clever
Speaker 2: euphemism or anything to sort of, you know, take the
Speaker 2: squirm out of it a bit, which I guess I
Speaker 2: was just advocating for not taking the squirm out of things.
Speaker 2: So there you go, they just went with exactly what
Speaker 2: it was the guy masturbated while strangling. He's the choke
Speaker 2: and stroke killer. So Samuel Little, the choke and stroke Killer,
Speaker 2: was born on June seventh, nineteen forty. He hailed from Reynolds, Georgia,
Speaker 2: and according to Little, his mother was a teenage prostitute
Speaker 2: and abandoned him. In fact, authorities believe that Little's mother
Speaker 2: may have given birth to him while she was in jail.
Speaker 2: He was raised by his grandmother in Loraine, Ohio. He
Speaker 2: had a difficult time in high school and he eventually
Speaker 2: dropped out. Little began committing crimes in his teenage years,
Speaker 2: starting with theft. He was thrown into juvenile detention, and,
Speaker 2: as is sadly often the case, there was no real
Speaker 2: rehabilitation provided by the prison system. His crimes only got worse.
Speaker 2: Starting in the fifties, he moved from state to state,
Speaker 2: where he got arrested for fraud, dui assault, armed robbery,
Speaker 2: and rape, among other crimes. He made a point in
Speaker 2: his early years, you know, between the ages of born
Speaker 2: in a jail and twenty years old, of really making
Speaker 2: sure to round out his resume. Some callous I'd like
Speaker 2: those Ivy League serial killer universities really want to make
Speaker 2: sure that you demonstrate that you're multifaceted person. You know,
Speaker 2: so he's thought, I need to hit fraud, DUI, assault,
Speaker 2: armed robbery, and rape, among other things. Enough other crimes
Speaker 2: that I guess they don't have to be specified.
Speaker 3: He is a jack of all trades. You're saying, Oh no.
Speaker 2: Sorry yet, that's yep, you heard it, folks. The choke
Speaker 2: and stroke killer is a jack of all trades.
Speaker 3: Okay, sorry, don't spend them too much time with my life.
Speaker 3: She has the worst, the worst jokes.
Speaker 2: Oh no, we're gonna have to get her on here.
Speaker 2: I love that kind of stuff. Oh my gosh, all right,
Speaker 2: dead baby jokes go okay. My my best friend's mom
Speaker 2: growing up, she was a nurse. She could tell like
Speaker 2: she had she knew all the awful dead baby jokes.
Speaker 2: It was kind of shocking, you'd never expected.
Speaker 3: Did she develop an interest in these jokes before or
Speaker 3: after becoming a nurse?
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know the answer to that, but
Speaker 2: I do think, and this is also something I advocate
Speaker 2: for a lot on this show, that everybody deals with
Speaker 2: trauma in different ways. Some people choose humor and some
Speaker 2: people choose outrage and a lot of times, those different
Speaker 2: kinds of people don't necessarily get each other. So I
Speaker 2: obviously I try not to judge other people's the way
Speaker 2: that people choose to deal with trauma, and I obviously
Speaker 2: am someone who tends towards the black comedy side of
Speaker 2: reacting to awful things, and I think that both ways
Speaker 2: to react are legitimate. But it's important to remember that
Speaker 2: just because somebody laughs when you think they should cry,
Speaker 2: or cries when you think they should laugh, it doesn't
Speaker 2: mean they're a terrible person. It just means that they
Speaker 2: deal with trauma in a different way than you do,
Speaker 2: or I do, or we do. Anyway. That's my overlengthy
Speaker 2: apologist speech about dead baby jokes, which were just like
Speaker 2: a standard genre of jokes when I was growing up,
Speaker 2: believe it or not, but I feel like they still are,
Speaker 2: but now nobody will for good humor. Yes, garbage pail kids.
Speaker 3: Sure yeah.
Speaker 2: So so okay, before I alienate my co host and
Speaker 2: all of you listening, let's move on with the actual story.
Speaker 2: By nineteen seventy five, he had been arrested. This is
Speaker 2: Samuel Little twenty five times across eleven states. So he
Speaker 2: was born in nineteen forty and by thirty five years old,
Speaker 2: he had twenty five arrests across eleven states, and in
Speaker 2: total he served ten years for various offenses and escaped
Speaker 2: two murder convictions before he was finally convicted in twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen for the four murders that put him away for life. Now.
Speaker 2: Little says that he spent his years in prison learning
Speaker 2: how to box, and that he showed promise as a
Speaker 2: prize fighter, a career which he and this seems rather obvious,
Speaker 2: ended up not pursuing. So one of the main reasons
Speaker 2: that Little's murders went undetected for so long, and this
Speaker 2: is something I touched on a moment ago, was that
Speaker 2: many of his victims, alleged victims, were on the fringes
Speaker 2: of society. They were sex workers, homeless, people in drug addicts,
Speaker 2: and nearly all of them were women of color. So
Speaker 2: they had been socially and sort of legally judicially dualized
Speaker 2: already in many ways, which made society have less of
Speaker 2: invested interest, unfortunately, in pursuing justice on their behalf. I
Speaker 2: don't know if there's much to say about that without
Speaker 2: getting up on a soapbox, which is not really what
Speaker 2: I'm here for, So we'll just move on. In regards
Speaker 2: to his chosen victims, Little himself said he told The
Speaker 2: New York Times, he said, I never killed no senators
Speaker 2: or governors or fancy New York journalists, nothing like that.
Speaker 2: I stayed in the ghettos. Now, to this day, dozens
Speaker 2: of his victims remain unidentified, and many of their deaths
Speaker 2: were attributed to natural causes, drug overdoses, or accidents.
Speaker 3: I have a question when you say many of his
Speaker 3: victims remain unidentified, does that mean always assuming that he
Speaker 3: has that he was the killer of bodies that were
Speaker 3: found that weren't identified, or how does that work?
Speaker 2: You know. I don't have a perfect answer for that,
Speaker 2: but I believe what we're assuming is that they caught
Speaker 2: him for four murders. He confessed to ninety once he
Speaker 2: started painting his portraits of his victims. Through a combination,
Speaker 2: they were able through a combination of looking for those
Speaker 2: people and emerging DNA and other evidence, they were able
Speaker 2: to corroborate sixty more victims beyond the original four. So
Speaker 2: I think what the many remain unidentified means is that, well,
Speaker 2: if he wasn't lying about the next sixty, then the
Speaker 2: additional thirty ish are probably out there somewhere.
Speaker 3: Too, would you say, I mean, does it seem like
Speaker 3: he's proud of his number, Like he's not trying to
Speaker 3: hide it, and he's sort of blowing it beyond what
Speaker 3: they suspected he might be responsible for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I don't in my research, and perhaps
Speaker 2: I'm a poor reason searcher, but I didn't get too
Speaker 2: far into his psychology or motivations. I mean, I suppose
Speaker 2: that he could. He could either be proud of the
Speaker 2: number or at end of life somehow repentant and wanting
Speaker 2: to confess, or some combination of both, although having killed
Speaker 2: ninety some people, it's hard to believe that he felt
Speaker 2: terribly repentant.
Speaker 3: I noticed something about the pictures that I saw that
Speaker 3: he painted. They all look like portraits. They all look
Speaker 3: like poses that people make when they're being photographed for
Speaker 3: a portrait or for a you know, just a picture
Speaker 3: that they are kind of sitting for, And and made
Speaker 3: me wonder if if it's possible that you know, he
Speaker 3: what he's Does he have a photographic memory or does
Speaker 3: he have a memory for photographs? Did he look in
Speaker 3: the paper and see that you know, one of his victims,
Speaker 3: you know, showed up in the paper with the picture,
Speaker 3: and he remembered his picture and then that's his memory.
Speaker 3: Or is it possible that he was lying but he'd
Speaker 3: seen all these images, you know, in the paper of
Speaker 3: these missing people or murdered people, and he just sort
Speaker 3: of added those to his painting output.
Speaker 2: That is really that's a really interesting question. I don't
Speaker 2: know the answer to that, but it certainly it certainly
Speaker 2: raises some interesting issues and is something I hadn't thought about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So just to just to fill everybody in a little
Speaker 2: bit on what happened with all of these portraits, and
Speaker 2: we'll be posting we'll be posting some of these portraits
Speaker 2: to kind of murdery his Instagram page if you'd like
Speaker 2: to check them out. I'll also link to them in
Speaker 2: the show notes. So what happened was in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: after a career, a murder career that spanned almost sixty
Speaker 2: five years, that's when Samuel Little was arrested for the
Speaker 2: murder of three women in California. And then in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: a Texas ranger named James Holland flew out to California
Speaker 2: to interview Little in prison because he suspected that Little
Speaker 2: might be connected to the nineteen ninety four murder of
Speaker 2: a sex worker in Odessa, Texas. In the process of
Speaker 2: talking too Little about that murder, Little started to talk
Speaker 2: about other murders that he had committed. Little told the
Speaker 2: Texas ranger that he had a photographic memory and also
Speaker 2: that he liked to paint, and so the ranger said, well, hey,
Speaker 2: let's see if you can help us find some of
Speaker 2: these victims, and he gave him art supplies and Little
Speaker 2: started to paint the faces that he allegedly remembered of
Speaker 2: his various victims, which goes to the question that answered
Speaker 2: you just posed. Were these the faces he remembered from
Speaker 2: committing the murder? Were they Jane Does whose pictures were
Speaker 2: printed in the paper later that he saw and committed
Speaker 2: to memory. It's pretty remarkable though, right, I mean, photographic
Speaker 2: memories almost like a superpower to those of us who
Speaker 2: don't have it. So are art skills for that matter,
Speaker 2: but the idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know, and memories are sort of embedded
Speaker 3: with adrenaline. Mm hmmm, so I hear, and yeah, if
Speaker 3: he's getting some gratification off of these acts that he's committing,
Speaker 3: then maybe that helps his photographic memory commit it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, we know he
Speaker 2: was getting gratification and that's not metaphorical. He was the
Speaker 2: choking stroke killer, so we know, yeah, maybe he was
Speaker 2: committing things to memory. Gosh, it feels so wrong to
Speaker 2: do any kind of chuckling talking about this, but here
Speaker 2: I am boy, So let's see.
Speaker 3: But you know, I'm sitting across from you, you know,
Speaker 3: through the computer, scowling at you, like what are you doing?
Speaker 3: Laughing at this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? But what are we supposed to do? Right? I mean,
Speaker 2: certainly nobody listening to the PODCAS wants us to sit
Speaker 2: in silent consternation and weeping is probably bad. Rending our
Speaker 2: flesh and shaking our fists at the heaven does heavens
Speaker 2: doesn't really translate across the microphone.
Speaker 3: So I'm glad you said that. It makes me feel better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like grim bileaguered chuckling is about all
Speaker 2: I can express. But it's a horrified chuckle. I assure you.
Speaker 2: A lot of these identifications were kicked off through Little's paintings. Now, granted,
Speaker 2: obviously they had other data points that helped them to
Speaker 2: triangulate these victims. Notably, Little had a hard time remembering
Speaker 2: specific years or specific places. In fact, his best guess
Speaker 2: would sometimes be up to ten years and or forty
Speaker 2: miles off. That's how long this how long, and how
Speaker 2: how prolifically this guy had been murdering for some sixty
Speaker 2: five plus years to the point where he would remember
Speaker 2: specific murders, but the location might be fifty miles off,
Speaker 2: and the timing might be even a decade off. So
Speaker 2: it was a really impressive amount of sort of forensic
Speaker 2: research that these law enforcement officers did to take all
Speaker 2: of these portraits that Little painted and then essentially pour
Speaker 2: through a decade's worth in a fifty mile radius of
Speaker 2: Little's best guess until they came across a photograph that
Speaker 2: resembled what he had painted and were able to pursue
Speaker 2: DNA and other evidence to confirm that that was in
Speaker 2: fact the murder.
Speaker 3: Jane Doe, I'd be interested to know if they compared
Speaker 3: the portraits that he painted with potentially any that ended
Speaker 3: up in the papers, no picture, so that if they
Speaker 3: had them in the papers.
Speaker 2: I would think so I would I would think they
Speaker 2: they must have I mean how how else would you
Speaker 2: do it?
Speaker 3: Maybe their ideas, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that could be a too. Hey, if anybody knows
Speaker 2: more about Samuel Little than than we do, which admittedly
Speaker 2: is probably not that hard, feel free to reach out
Speaker 2: to the show kind of Murdery at gmail dot com,
Speaker 2: at kind of Murdery on all social media, or you
Speaker 2: could call eighty eight Murdery. That's eighty eight six eight
Speaker 2: seven three three seven nine. I don't know about you, answered,
Speaker 2: but I'm an enthusiast of a sort. Not that I'm
Speaker 2: enthusiastic about the uh, the horror of all of this,
Speaker 2: but the stories. I am an enthusiast. I'm not an expert.
Speaker 2: I don't hold myself up as an expert. So please
Speaker 2: be smarter and more informed than I am. All of
Speaker 2: you listening, and don't be afraid to reach out to
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. I just didn't mean to throw a wrench
Speaker 3: in there in my fire.
Speaker 2: No no, no, no, you're not Oh you're no wretches, no ritches.
Speaker 3: My enthusiasm is trying to figure out my wife's fascination
Speaker 3: with this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of metaphorically speaking, not exactly the same, but kind of.
Speaker 2: My daughter is a voracious consumer of pop culture properties,
Speaker 2: like she started with the Teen Titans and then it's Naruto,
Speaker 2: and now we're watching the screen movies. But she loves
Speaker 2: all kinds of pop culture properties, and she tends to
Speaker 2: consume them with almost single minded focus until she's soaked
Speaker 2: up everything she can, and then she moves on. And
Speaker 2: I know other parents have this experience too, But as
Speaker 2: a parent, I want to be able to talk to
Speaker 2: her about what she's excited about, and so I have
Speaker 2: made myself into an anime fan and fans of other
Speaker 2: stuff that I wouldn't necessarily naturally be a fan of.
Speaker 2: But it's important to me to know what the heck
Speaker 2: my daughter is talking about when she wants to talk
Speaker 2: to me, because otherwise we'll just be talking past each
Speaker 2: other and it's hard to connect, which I think is
Speaker 2: what I've tried to say in my patented overly long
Speaker 2: way is I imagine? Is that a bit like pursuing Brenda's
Speaker 2: fascination with true crime so that you can know what
Speaker 2: the heck it is that makes her eyes light up?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think so I would assume that what you're
Speaker 3: talking about is actually just a good example of good parenting. Also,
Speaker 3: you know, but it seems like you do it naturally.
Speaker 3: So that's great.
Speaker 2: That's nice of you to say, I don't. I certainly
Speaker 2: have my faults as a parent, But that's funny. Now
Speaker 2: you made me think of something else I saw on Instagram.
Speaker 2: This the sub guy posted, I realized today that when
Speaker 2: my kid wants to talk to me about Pokemon, he
Speaker 2: doesn't actually want to talk about Pokemon. He wants to
Speaker 2: share his excitement and knowledge and his love of something
Speaker 2: with his father, which is basically exactly what I just described.
Speaker 2: And then the guy goes, still, it's a hard no boy.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that perspective as well.
Speaker 3: But you know what, you know, a lot of people
Speaker 3: think I know all kinds of things about playing magic,
Speaker 3: and the fact is I just don't, and they'll talk
Speaker 3: to me about it and I'll be like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: just sort of contribute visuals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like, I'm an artist, not a nerd.
Speaker 3: No, I love nerdsrds are great. I was adding, I know,
Speaker 3: I'm just kidding, but I probably didn't, you know.
Speaker 2: For anyone who might be listening who wasn't. The last
Speaker 2: time Anson was on. There is a very famous legendary
Speaker 2: card game, strategic card game called Magic the Gathering, which
Speaker 2: is essentially Dungeons and Dragons the card game. To greatly
Speaker 2: oversimplify it, but it's a card game enjoyed by millions
Speaker 2: of people around the world, including myself, and Anthematics is
Speaker 2: an absolutely legendary Magic the Gathering artist. He's my favorite
Speaker 2: artist from when I was a kid, and he is
Speaker 2: certainly in anybody's top three to five. And we can
Speaker 2: argue about who one R two is. It's probably a
Speaker 2: wrestling match between Anson and his childhood friend Mark to
Speaker 2: Dean if you ask me. But anyway, that's when we
Speaker 2: were referring to magic. That's what we're talking about. A
Speaker 2: lot of you probably have heard of it. And Anson
Speaker 2: is an extremely talented artist who does all kinds of
Speaker 2: great work. And yeah, just just a little context there
Speaker 2: speaking of Magic and your very good friend Mark to
Speaker 2: Dean Anson. Now, you guys grew up together, right, like
Speaker 2: from young young kid grew up together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we're about eight when we interacted for
Speaker 3: the first time on the playground. I think did I
Speaker 3: already tell this story?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I don't think you did. I didn't tell the story
Speaker 3: about how he walked up to me with his long
Speaker 3: sleeve Star Trek T shirt.
Speaker 2: No please. So you were eight years old, so that's
Speaker 2: about what third grade maybe second grade, second grade, okay,
Speaker 2: and he walked up to you on the playground.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he said, Well that is one of his hands
Speaker 3: drawn up into his sleeve and he says, Answen, shoot
Speaker 3: my arm. And I was like, so, I made a
Speaker 3: gun shape with my hand and you know, pointing, pulled
Speaker 3: the trigger and he drops this handful of gravel and
Speaker 3: barker molt shout of his sleeve.
Speaker 2: You know, viscera from the arm to drop to the ground.
Speaker 2: And I was like, yeah, yeah, I can hang with
Speaker 2: this guy. Oh boy, I love it. I love it.
Speaker 2: This guy is my kind of guy.
Speaker 3: He's always always making me laugh. He's great.
Speaker 2: All right, we should probably.
Speaker 3: Didn't We have a Yeah, we had a thing we're
Speaker 3: doing here.
Speaker 2: That's right. You and Mark Deaden are far too kind
Speaker 2: and good of human beings to be talked about much
Speaker 2: alongside mister Samuel Little.
Speaker 3: Uh, we don't really hang in the same circle.
Speaker 2: Now. That's that speaks well of both of you, certainly,
Speaker 2: especially since you know mister Little passed away three years ago,
Speaker 2: so I have a stroke yet you know what, very
Speaker 2: probably he had chronic they had. I'm slow on the
Speaker 2: uptake there.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. I wasn't gonna boy flesh, you know, flush
Speaker 3: it out or anything.
Speaker 2: He had chronic heart issues and diabetes and various other
Speaker 2: things that would contribute to mortality. That said, he lived
Speaker 2: to be eighty years old, so he had a fairly
Speaker 2: long and I'm not going to say illustrious but infamous life.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you wouldn't want to be hanging out with
Speaker 2: him now because that would mean you were robbing graves
Speaker 2: like some sort of evil da Vinci.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't really have to do that anymore for
Speaker 3: artistic reasons. Oh about this Samuel little guy who wasn't
Speaker 3: wasn't really quite the artist that da Vinci was probably.
Speaker 2: No, Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that too.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you about your take on his
Speaker 2: art or his potential as an artist, given that he
Speaker 2: was untrained. What were your thoughts when you were looking
Speaker 2: at those those portraits that he painted. They look like
Speaker 2: their watercolor? Are they watercolor?
Speaker 3: I think there were probably whatever he was given to
Speaker 3: do it. I don't know if he had a whole
Speaker 3: lot of choice, but they could have been tempera or crylic.
Speaker 3: I didn't see it blown up version of it, so
Speaker 3: I couldn't get a real good look. But overall they
Speaker 3: I just couldn't. I couldn't get away from the fact
Speaker 3: that they all looked like portraits, like frame, you know,
Speaker 3: like close, you know, all kind of the same size. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean a lot of them were smiling, and I
Speaker 3: wouldn't imagine that would be something he'd remember much unless
Speaker 3: he looked at the photograph, and if he was responsible
Speaker 3: for their death, maybe he got some exhilaration from looking
Speaker 3: at the photograph, thinking yeah, that's one of my victims,
Speaker 3: you know, and then he just remembered it. Everything does
Speaker 3: appear much flatter when you work from a photograph. It's
Speaker 3: like you don't really have, you know, the binocular you know,
Speaker 3: advantage of seeing how the light is wrapping around the
Speaker 3: figure or the face and what you're interpreting is that
Speaker 3: makes sense so concrete when it's in a photograph, it's
Speaker 3: like it's giving you light and dark, light and.
Speaker 2: Dark because we see in three dimensions. But when you
Speaker 2: look at a photograph, that's like can't escape from its
Speaker 2: two dimensionality, you're actually limiting your sort of creative instruments
Speaker 2: ability to to to create something that feels alive.
Speaker 3: There is a lot of information to take in when
Speaker 3: you're looking at somebody in person, that the light is
Speaker 3: so much more dynamic than what is trapped on a photograph,
Speaker 3: which is just you know, there's a range there, but
Speaker 3: it's it doesn't shift or move. And when you're looking
Speaker 3: at somebody in real life there the light on them
Speaker 3: is changing. It's it's you know, it's kind of hard
Speaker 3: to describe, but it's what it's just this this tool
Speaker 3: that you develop as an artist when you're looking at
Speaker 3: something and you are transferring it from what you're looking
Speaker 3: at to another surface. It's the interpretation is if you
Speaker 3: if when you develop it, you start to notice it
Speaker 3: and it becomes an extremely fascinating thing, but it doesn't know,
Speaker 3: it doesn't really end up on the surface that you're
Speaker 3: working on because it's going on inside your head.
Speaker 2: Interesting. You think then that he saw pictures of his
Speaker 2: victims as Jane Do's in the newspaper or maybe on
Speaker 2: their driver's licenses or something, and that's what he was
Speaker 2: recreating in his paintings as opposed to recreating his actual memory.
Speaker 2: One thing we can say for Samuel Little as an
Speaker 2: artist is that whether he was working from photographs or
Speaker 2: from memory, he was able to produce portraits of his
Speaker 2: victims that looked recognizably enough like his victims that the
Speaker 2: FBI I was able to successfully track down many of them.
Speaker 2: And for somebody like me who has the artistic talent
Speaker 2: of one of the hot dog fingers, people from everything
Speaker 2: everywhere all at once, that's pretty impressive feet in and
Speaker 2: of itself. Whether or not one wants to hang his
Speaker 2: work on their walls or write about it in years
Speaker 2: to come is one thing. But the ability to sit
Speaker 2: down with prison art supplies and faithfully enough recreate the
Speaker 2: faces of these women that they could be found decades later,
Speaker 2: there's some modicum of talent in there.
Speaker 3: I would say, Yeah, I don't want to give them
Speaker 3: any positive reinforcement. I'm a human critic more than an
Speaker 3: art critic. What I would like to do now, just
Speaker 3: to kind of ground.
Speaker 2: This in reality a little bit. I have some of
Speaker 2: the actual transcript accounts we're taken by this Texas ranger
Speaker 2: from Little himself describing some of these previously unknown murders
Speaker 2: that he committed, and so in kind of a clinical manner,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to read. I'm going to read through
Speaker 2: some of these police accounts and then some of what
Speaker 2: Little himself described happening, and will just sort of reground
Speaker 2: ourselves in the reality of this story that way. But
Speaker 2: I mean, it will likely be somewhat harrowing. So let's
Speaker 2: talk about California murders from the late eighties here. So
Speaker 2: between January thirty first and February first of nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: shortly out of getting out, shortly after getting out of
Speaker 2: prison and well on parole, Little met a black female
Speaker 2: wearing shorts near Central Avenue in Los Angeles, California. He
Speaker 2: went to a drug dealer's house, and the drug dealer,
Speaker 2: also a pimp, told the female to leave with Little.
Speaker 2: Little walk down Figaroa Avenue with the woman then turned
Speaker 2: left onto floor. He bought some dope with the female
Speaker 2: and then walked back down Figaroa to a vacant house
Speaker 2: located next to Florence. There was a gas station on
Speaker 2: the corner of Florence and Figueroa. There was a garage
Speaker 2: in front of the vacant house with only a hook
Speaker 2: on the door and a fence around the house. The
Speaker 2: house faced Figueroa Avenue, The garage had wooden doors on rollers,
Speaker 2: and the house had a driveway. There was a brick
Speaker 2: residence next to the door to the garage. So this
Speaker 2: is an interesting little window into Little's mind and how
Speaker 2: it worked, because although he sometimes struggled with exact locations,
Speaker 2: some of which were triangulated by law enforcement following his accounts,
Speaker 2: he struggled with exact locations and times right, but he
Speaker 2: was able to give these photographic memory incredibly precise details.
Speaker 2: In other ways, there was a fence around the house,
Speaker 2: the house faced Figueroa, the garage had a wooden door
Speaker 2: on rollers, and the house had a drive wway. I
Speaker 2: mean a hook on the door, right. I don't know
Speaker 2: about you, but if somebody asked me, I would be like,
Speaker 2: it was a house. I might remember the color, but
Speaker 2: the garage had a wooden door on rollers, those kind
Speaker 2: of things. It is pretty pretty amazing, I mean, and
Speaker 2: he was recounting this stuff, you know, forty years after
Speaker 2: the fact. So there was a brick residence next door
Speaker 2: to the garage. Little entered the garage with the female
Speaker 2: The garage contained sawhorses, wood planks, and paint. There was
Speaker 2: a wide lead shelf around the interior of the garage,
Speaker 2: approximately five feet off the ground and made of solid
Speaker 2: two by force. Little described the female as having a
Speaker 2: quote big unquote butt and being approximately twenty three to
Speaker 2: twenty four years old. She was dark skinned and stood
Speaker 2: approximately five feet tall and weighed approximately one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty pounds. He got onto the shelf with the woman.
Speaker 2: The woman began playing with her necklace, and Little then
Speaker 2: strangled her. They fought and both fell off the shelf
Speaker 2: onto the wide platform. He then strangled the woman to
Speaker 2: death while sitting on her back. The black female was
Speaker 2: left fully clothed, lying on the elevated board platform, laying
Speaker 2: on her stomach. Approximately two weeks later, Little walked past
Speaker 2: the garage and it had yellow police tape on it.
Speaker 2: He killed this woman a couple weeks after he got
Speaker 2: out of prison. He believed he'd killed the woman in
Speaker 2: the middle of February in nineteen eighty seven when he
Speaker 2: walked past the garage. Several months later, it had been
Speaker 2: torn down again. I mean, a horrible, horrible story, but
Speaker 2: you know it's funny and but not butt. But it's
Speaker 2: not horrible. That's not what I'm not going It's funny
Speaker 2: that I sort of prefaced this story by talking about
Speaker 2: the fact that murder, and especially serial murder, is uniquely
Speaker 2: human and how we're basically protecting ourselves in largely off
Speaker 2: base when we call these people monsters or inhuman because
Speaker 2: that which we call them in human four is actually
Speaker 2: a uniquely human thing. And you and I kind of
Speaker 2: agreed on that. But now as I read these accounts
Speaker 2: of the killings that were written from all of the
Speaker 2: specific details that Little gave, and I'll read another one
Speaker 2: in just a moment, it almost makes me doubt my
Speaker 2: conclusion because I start feeling like he's a terminator robot
Speaker 2: or something like he has sort of a heads up
Speaker 2: display that instantly recognizes everything it sees and commits it
Speaker 2: to a database. That's that's how this reads to me.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you have any thoughts on that answer.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking about. You know that whenever you
Speaker 3: remember something, the way that you are recalling it changes
Speaker 3: the way that you rere You know, you recommitted to memory, right,
Speaker 3: And I don't know if this is relevant, but there
Speaker 3: are things that I in the past, I've wanted to
Speaker 3: kind of get out of my head because they were
Speaker 3: you know, traumatic or something, and I would intentionally remember
Speaker 3: those things, but I would put like a checkerboard over it,
Speaker 3: and every time I remembered it, it was more difficult
Speaker 3: to make it out, you know, in my memory, because
Speaker 3: I would see this checkerboard and I would do put
Speaker 3: the checkerboard there every time to try to just you know,
Speaker 3: just fade it out.
Speaker 2: So you sort of proactively edited your own memories.
Speaker 3: I thought that's what I was doing, and it seemed
Speaker 3: to be effective. So I don't know what I was
Speaker 3: really doing because I'm not you know, I don't know
Speaker 3: the science or anything, but it was Wow, it's just
Speaker 3: like I mean, actually, I think I said something about
Speaker 3: about that in the previous episode that I was with
Speaker 3: you on where I was talking about the Spider. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like I just I just do these little things
Speaker 3: to like sort of steer my head in the right direct.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. That's really interesting. Now I have to ask,
Speaker 2: just because I have to ask, are there any of
Speaker 2: those checkerboarded memories that you would be willing to share.
Speaker 3: Right now? I mean, I would I might want to
Speaker 3: like go through them and see if I can remember
Speaker 3: them well enough to.
Speaker 2: Sure that's of course, and that's a fine answer. And
Speaker 2: again I can edit everything. I just you know, as
Speaker 2: a as a listener as I'm listening to our episode
Speaker 2: in real time as it's happening. When you that that
Speaker 2: is extremely interesting to me. It's something I've never heard before.
Speaker 2: And when you tell me that you had traumatic memories
Speaker 2: that you check or boarded out of your mind, I'm like,
Speaker 2: first of all, like wow, what an what a sort
Speaker 2: of surreal and yet concrete way to address a memory
Speaker 2: Like I don't then maybe it speaks to also who
Speaker 2: you are and how you do your arc, but I
Speaker 2: it would never occur to me to address a traumatic
Speaker 2: memory in sort of an almost three dimensional sculptural way
Speaker 2: as a way to delete it. I think that's super interesting.
Speaker 2: Beyond that, of course, I think and want to know, like, well,
Speaker 2: what's the memory? You know?
Speaker 3: But well, there's like, for instance, one is of seeing
Speaker 3: my dog being run over by a car, and you know,
Speaker 3: it's not a human related thing, but it is something
Speaker 3: that is emotionally people can probably relate how traumatic that
Speaker 3: would be. And it's something that like whenever I thought
Speaker 3: about it, I would physically flinch and it would just
Speaker 3: completely derail me. So I had to, you know, do
Speaker 3: something to to make it less. You know, it's just
Speaker 3: really it was a horrible mine. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So that's an example of something that I would go
Speaker 3: out of my way to try to fix in my
Speaker 3: head because.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I understand. You know, it's interesting. I
Speaker 2: think something that you and I sort of have in
Speaker 2: common is I always feel like I feel things, and
Speaker 2: I'm assuming we have it in common because it's I'm
Speaker 2: deducing from what I hear you say and what I
Speaker 2: think it means, and so you feel free to correct me.
Speaker 2: I always feel like I feel things too much, that
Speaker 2: like everything's a little bit raw, that it's all like
Speaker 2: a little bit too bright and too loud and too
Speaker 2: sort of graphic. And it's funny because then somebody would say, well,
Speaker 2: then why the hell do you have a true crime
Speaker 2: podcast where you talk about these horrible things. And on
Speaker 2: the flip side, I've had people who hear me chuckling
Speaker 2: at the darkness of some of this stuff say, you know,
Speaker 2: arrive at the opposite sort of judgmental assumption that like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, are you a psychopath yourself? Do you
Speaker 2: not feel anything like, how can you be laughing hearing
Speaker 2: this horrible thing?
Speaker 3: Can I say something about that?
Speaker 2: Please? Please?
Speaker 3: To me, it just seems like you're obviously reassuring yourself
Speaker 3: that you are able to handle what you're the topic.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like a like, okay, maybe you've noticed
Speaker 3: like in videos, content creators or people are like laughing
Speaker 3: at points where you know they're not really amused by anything,
Speaker 3: or they're not like uncomfortable about something. They're laughing because
Speaker 3: it's part of the dialogue you or the style, and
Speaker 3: it just to me, as someone who's not that familiar
Speaker 3: with that way, it sounds so fake, right, And I
Speaker 3: don't think you can take somebody's laughter and use that
Speaker 3: to paint them in any particular way. It's just something
Speaker 3: that people do naturally to try to be more comfortable
Speaker 3: about something that is not comfortable. And whether it's for
Speaker 3: themselves or for other people or both, you know.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, yeah, yeah. When you described that when you
Speaker 2: would remember this awful moment of your dog getting ran over,
Speaker 2: that you would you would physically flinch, and so you
Speaker 2: felt like you had to check orboard it to kind
Speaker 2: of you know, make it through the day without like
Speaker 2: moments of a like a horrible, horrible emotion, but also
Speaker 2: like almost a physical tick, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean when you remember something like that, you get
Speaker 3: you get a you know, the chemistry of your body
Speaker 3: makes it so that you react to it, you know,
Speaker 3: in a way that it's like a muted version of
Speaker 3: how it was at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, But I also think that that is a
Speaker 2: hugely empathetic reaction, and unfortunately not everybody is that way,
Speaker 2: and trying to build more empathy is also something that
Speaker 2: I talk we talk about on this show pretty often.
Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons that I want people to
Speaker 2: share not just their kind of murdery stories with me,
Speaker 2: but if they're disabled, or if they struggle with addiction,
Speaker 2: or if they have other challenges that maybe you're not
Speaker 2: quote unquote typical. I want them to be willing to
Speaker 2: share those things if they feel that they can, because
Speaker 2: I feel like what's happened in our culture, it's become
Speaker 2: such an us and them thing that people who have
Speaker 2: a life that's very different from the life that we
Speaker 2: know sometimes become too much of another and we sort
Speaker 2: of stop and don't consider their humanity. A disabled person
Speaker 2: is like a disabled person, and they're in this box
Speaker 2: with all the other disabled people and someone else with
Speaker 2: this other identities in this box. But it's not me,
Speaker 2: it's not us, it's not our family. But I feel
Speaker 2: like if we share these stories of otherness, then people
Speaker 2: can learn that the others are just like us. And
Speaker 2: these people in all these other boxes, well, hey, they
Speaker 2: all listen to kind of murdery together. And I hope
Speaker 2: that we can build some empathy for each other in
Speaker 2: our different stories that way, because I think too often
Speaker 2: we tend to treat somebody like they're just an el
Speaker 2: for a fairy. It's like, oh, illegal immigrants are just
Speaker 2: actually they're not real to me. They're an l for
Speaker 2: a fairy or something. It's not something I have to
Speaker 2: deal with, you know. I mean, I just I threw
Speaker 2: that out as one example. But I want people to
Speaker 2: sort of recognize our common humanity, and I feel like
Speaker 2: stories of struggle are one way to do that.
Speaker 3: I think your obvious concern about those things and the
Speaker 3: attention that you draw to it in the way that
Speaker 3: you do that is a perfect offset to the you know,
Speaker 3: the horrific stories and accounts and stuff, and it's I
Speaker 3: don't know, it's a really strange, but I think it
Speaker 3: works really well. I think and when you go into
Speaker 3: this spiel about you know where people can get help
Speaker 3: if they need it or want it, and you know
Speaker 3: their ability to contact you, that that's just a really
Speaker 3: cool feature of you. And I think that's a yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't think you have to worry about anybody thinking
Speaker 3: that you are too amused or or anything by the
Speaker 3: content you're creating. I think it's like, hey, let's uh,
Speaker 3: let's get some of this off our you know, out
Speaker 3: of our heads.
Speaker 2: Well. I do appreciate that, And that is a perfect
Speaker 2: segue for me to say to everybody. First of all,
Speaker 2: if you would like to share a kind of Murdery
Speaker 2: story or a story of a particular challenge that you
Speaker 2: face in life, please don't hesitate to call eight eight
Speaker 2: eight Murdery. That's eight eight eight six eight seven three
Speaker 2: three seven nine. I would love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: I would love to share your story on the show
Speaker 2: if you're willing. You can also email us at Kindomurdery
Speaker 2: at gmail dot com or reach out on social media
Speaker 2: at kind of Murdery. And if you have a kind
Speaker 2: of murdery story to share that could inspire an episode.
Speaker 3: Of the show.
Speaker 2: And of course I want to remind everybody about the
Speaker 2: three digit lifeline number nine eight eight. Please program it
Speaker 2: into your phone right now, nine eight eight that you
Speaker 2: can call twenty four hours a day, seven days a
Speaker 2: week to receive immediate counseling for substance use, mental health
Speaker 2: or suicidal thoughts. So if you find yourself an acute crisis,
Speaker 2: please do call nine eight eight, and please do remember
Speaker 2: that you are loved and the world is a better
Speaker 2: place with you in it. If you're not an acute crisis,
Speaker 2: please don't reach out to me if things are really dire,
Speaker 2: because I'm not qualified to help you in that case.
Speaker 2: But if you're going through stuff and you just want
Speaker 2: to share, you just want to connect with someone, you
Speaker 2: can reach out in any of the ways just mentioned.
Speaker 2: Kind of Murdery at gmail dot com the hotline eighty
Speaker 2: eight Murdery, and you can connect with me there, and
Speaker 2: I would love to connect with you. Yeah, thank you
Speaker 2: for giving me the opening to talk about that anson.
Speaker 2: And let's jump right back into the darkness here. I
Speaker 2: want to share one more of these specific accounts then
Speaker 2: we'll maybe wrap up our conversation about Samuel a Little,
Speaker 2: which has not always been an easy one. He is really,
Speaker 2: really a bad, bad dude on this tip of empathy.
Speaker 2: And I'm not going to pitch empathy for serial killers
Speaker 2: here per se. But it is kind of you know,
Speaker 2: it's moving. It's sad a little bit how you can't
Speaker 2: forgive anything that he did. But my gosh, talk about
Speaker 2: starting out behind the eight ball, born to a sex
Speaker 2: worker mother while she was incarcerated in prison. You know, like,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying you're going to grow up to be
Speaker 2: in a serial killer, but man, that's a hard way
Speaker 2: to start life. That's a hard way to start life. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's talk about just in case we start feeling too
Speaker 2: bad for him, I've got another terrible story for you
Speaker 2: already as it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, go for it.
Speaker 2: Great, you want to read this one book? These are good, Okay,
Speaker 2: it's all right. This is also nineteen eighty seven. Samuel
Speaker 2: Little met a five foot six tall, one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty pounds. Again, these are his details, folks, twenty five
Speaker 2: year old quote golden brown skinned black female at TAM's Hamburgers.
Speaker 2: Again on figueroa little stated that the woman had a girlfriend,
Speaker 2: so he gave the woman and her lesbian girlfriend, again
Speaker 2: Little's words, a ride. He made a date with the
Speaker 2: woman for the following day at four o'clock behind TAM's
Speaker 2: public service announcement, If anybody wants to make a date
Speaker 2: with you at four pm behind a hamburger joint, just
Speaker 2: just don't go, Just don't go. Little stated that the
Speaker 2: woman was wearing a black dress and was a blood
Speaker 2: as in a member of the gang the Bloods. He
Speaker 2: was driving a blue Cadillac, and all I was wrong.
Speaker 2: This was this the year for this was nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 2: So Little met the woman behind the burger joint. He
Speaker 2: choked her out and put her in the trunk. He
Speaker 2: quote took her out to a convenience store with a
Speaker 2: field right next to it. He left the woman in
Speaker 2: the field, laid her down on that field, and then
Speaker 2: he backed up onto the field, opened the trunk, and
Speaker 2: drug her up onto the grass, which is where he
Speaker 2: left her. I'm not quite understanding the physics of that.
Speaker 2: This is kind of redundant. So he left her in
Speaker 2: a field next to a convenience store. That's the gist
Speaker 2: of it. And then he drove all the way down
Speaker 2: Vermont Avenue somewhere, and the next day he drove by
Speaker 2: again and saw that the woman was well concealed by weeds.
Speaker 2: He then said, I know that they found her the
Speaker 2: next day. I didn't do anything special to conceal her, really,
Speaker 2: I just laid her down in a field next to
Speaker 2: the seven eleven. He described her as having medium, short,
Speaker 2: pretty hair, and said and specified that she was pretty.
Speaker 2: He then stated that he passed a horse ranch when
Speaker 2: he discarded the woman's body. He did not think he
Speaker 2: went all the way out to Hawthorne, but he may have.
Speaker 2: Hawthorne is a town near Los Angeles. He said he
Speaker 2: thought she was named Sheila. So all of these vehicles,
Speaker 2: pardon me, all of these details that are a little
Speaker 2: disjointed in the telling. For me right now, these are
Speaker 2: these sort of real time recollections of serial killer Samuel
Speaker 2: Little trying to help the authorities identify his victims. So
Speaker 2: he was kind of like, I left her in a
Speaker 2: field by a seven eleven. Oh, but it might have
Speaker 2: been out by Hawthorne. She was pretty, there was maybe
Speaker 2: there was a horse ranch nearby. It makes for poor
Speaker 2: telling on my part, but I think it's interesting if
Speaker 2: you consider it sort of as the pinball bouncing around
Speaker 2: in his brain as he tries to remember these murders,
Speaker 2: it makes a little more sense how the narrative is disjointed.
Speaker 3: That's a good comparison. I can imagine that the way
Speaker 3: he's telling it probably isn't that linear. It's kind of
Speaker 3: scattered and he's trying to put the pieces together as
Speaker 3: he's saying it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, as we already know, he was convicted in
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen of four murders of women in Los Angeles
Speaker 2: in the eighties and nineties, and then these other eighty
Speaker 2: some odd murders came to light as he confessed to them.
Speaker 2: He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, not
Speaker 2: life like twenty five years to life, but natural life
Speaker 2: in prison without the possibility of parole. He was caught
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve, convicted in twenty fourteen, and then he
Speaker 2: died at the age of eighty in twenty twenty. And
Speaker 2: as we had previously mentioned, of the ninety some odd
Speaker 2: additional murders that he confessed to, so far the FBI
Speaker 2: and others have been able to confirm at least sixty
Speaker 2: of those victims through a combination of his detail, his paintings,
Speaker 2: and DNA and other evidence that has subsequently been found.
Speaker 2: Sad story, remarkable story, I mean, convicted of four murders. Certainly,
Speaker 2: if I was the FBI or I was a Texas
Speaker 2: ranger and some guy that we had, an eighty year
Speaker 2: old man that we had in prison for four murders
Speaker 2: told me that he'd killed ninety, I would think it
Speaker 2: was bravado. Tragically, in this case, it was not.
Speaker 3: It's weird to try to get yourself down understand that
Speaker 3: when you're looking at an older person they could be
Speaker 3: responsible for crimes that he would never assume.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, we essentially know that by the time
Speaker 2: he was caught, he had a sixty five year murdering career.
Speaker 2: Whoa I mean, imagine if someone had a sixty five
Speaker 2: year football career, or a sixty five year like corporate
Speaker 2: Jack Welch career, or any other sort of career spanning
Speaker 2: sixty five years, you'd be like, what a fucking legend.
Speaker 2: Like look at the staying power of this guy. This
Speaker 2: is remarkable. Or when you see a restaurant that's like,
Speaker 2: we've been open since nineteen fifty you're like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: this little mom and pop restaurant has been open for
Speaker 2: sixty five years. They must really do something, right. I
Speaker 2: bet that Ruben is killer. Like I want to try
Speaker 2: to pastrami if.
Speaker 3: They what if they didn't advertise that at all, but
Speaker 3: they always really wanted to, Like I really want to
Speaker 3: tell people that that we've been open for you know,
Speaker 3: eighty years. But I think, you know, so you might
Speaker 3: have been sitting on that information for so long and
Speaker 3: wanting to tell his story and by the time he
Speaker 3: might have been It's just I just wish the world
Speaker 3: didn't have them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I know. That's that's the thing that's
Speaker 2: I mean, sixty five years of doing anything else is
Speaker 2: an incredible level of like success, acumen, excellence, expertise by
Speaker 2: any measure, and yet what we're talking about is horrific,
Speaker 2: horrific predatory psychosexual murders. It's like, it's really just mind
Speaker 2: blowing that that it could be going on for that long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, let's hope he was, you know, paranoid the
Speaker 3: entire time looking over his shoulder. I guess.
Speaker 2: I mean, boy, it doesn't sound like meet me behind
Speaker 2: the burger joint for a quick murdering doesn't sound overly
Speaker 2: paranoid to be I think tragically he was.
Speaker 3: Well, I was just thinking, and what about the uh,
Speaker 3: I mean he the pimp of that, you know, one
Speaker 3: of those earlier victims. You know, obviously the pimp wasn't
Speaker 3: going after him for you know, taking out one of his.
Speaker 2: Girls, right, you'd think. But from what I read, he
Speaker 2: usually just would leave town. He'd kill somebody and he'd
Speaker 2: get right in his car and leave town. So I
Speaker 2: don't think there was much of an opportunity to for retribution.
Speaker 2: And I mean, let's be honest, the guy was cynically
Speaker 2: very smart. With the social justice narratives in the world today,
Speaker 2: people would say, these people, these people, authorities don't care
Speaker 2: about them, they don't get a fair shake. Well, Samuel
Speaker 2: Little zeroed in on that immediately. He was like, I
Speaker 2: stayed in the ghetto. I chose sex workers and drug addicts,
Speaker 2: and they were all African American women. Like he basically
Speaker 2: stacked the scales against ever getting caught by more or
Speaker 2: less ensuring unfortunately that he was killing people that the
Speaker 2: authorities would never prioritize, also because they didn't have loved
Speaker 2: ones clamoring for assault.
Speaker 3: But there are those, you know, the associates and friends,
Speaker 3: and you know they're also out there on the street
Speaker 3: with them, and you know they have a mutual concern about,
Speaker 3: you know, not being a victim. I wonder if sure,
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe he picked situations or individuals as he
Speaker 3: knew that wouldn't be right. Well.
Speaker 2: I think it's worth noting too that he ultimately was
Speaker 2: arrested in twenty twelve for murders committed in the eighties
Speaker 2: and nineties. So when he started killing people in the
Speaker 2: era of American history that people started to care about
Speaker 2: the disenfranchised to be very much overly general then eventually
Speaker 2: got caught as that era continued to heighten. But he
Speaker 2: started killing in the fifties and the sixties and the
Speaker 2: seventies and all of those decades. I really I think
Speaker 2: that all of the groups that we just talked about
Speaker 2: were even more disenfranchised. Yeah, I mean so yeah, smart, evil, disgusting, artistic, artistic.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Now I see why you were pushing back
Speaker 2: against that so much. Because I looked at those things.
Speaker 2: I was like, hey, he's better than I thought he
Speaker 2: would be. And you're like, no, no, no, no, I.
Speaker 3: Don't even know what I've but I don't know what
Speaker 3: my point was with that.
Speaker 2: I was just sort of, yeah, all right, that was
Speaker 2: kind of murderies criminally underrated the monstrous career of Samuel Little.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed it. I know that that story
Speaker 2: was a tough one. I think it was hard to
Speaker 2: just kind of navigate how awful this guy was, but
Speaker 2: I still had a great time doing it. Anson, thank
Speaker 2: you so much for being here. I look forward to
Speaker 2: the next time you're here. It's really a blast having
Speaker 2: a chance to spend some time with you and to
Speaker 2: share some of these hideously grim stories with the listeners.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is fun. This is disturbingly fun, And thanks
Speaker 3: for having
Speaker 2: Awesome for Anson Maddox, I'm Zevan Odleberg, and this is
Speaker 2: kind of murdery.
Apple Podcasts
Castbox
Castro
Goodpods
Moon FM
Overcast
Pocket Casts
Podbean
Podcast Addict
Podcast Republic
Spotify