The Choke and Stroke Killer PART 1

WEBVTT

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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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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,