Investigators have identified a Macon woman, killed 46 years ago, as the earliest confirmed victim of the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history.
Samuel Little, from Reynolds, Georgia, died at age 80 in a California prison. Before his death, he confessed to murdering 93 women between 1970 and 2014.
So far, the FBI has confirmed his involvement in at least 60 of the murders.
Little confessed to killing eight Georgia women, including two in Macon.
On Thursday, investigators with the Bibb County Sheriff’s office identified a woman, previously known as ‘Macon Jane Doe’, as Yvonne Pless who was killed in 1977. Pless is Little’s earliest confirmed victim to date.
Pless’s body was found off Arkwright Road and she remained unidentified for years. Pless was linked to Little through a previously unsubmitted sexual assault kit.
His second Macon victim was Fredonia Smith, who was murdered in a park in 1982.
Little was born in Georgia but raised in Ohio. By the time he was 35, he had been arrested 26 times in eleven states for crimes including theft, assault, attempted rape and fraud.
He was arrested twice for murder in 1982, once in Florida and once in Mississippi, but acquitted. Little then spent two-and-a-half years in prison for attempted murder in California before his final arrest in 2012, which linked him to the murders of three more women in California. He was found guilty in 2014 and sentenced to life in the California State Prison.
While he was in prison, Little began to confess to dozens more murders and sketched and described his victims.
Recently, Cox Media Group’s Nicole Bennett had the opportunity to speak with New York Times best-selling author and journalist Jillian Lauren. Following Little’s murder conviction in 2014, Lauren confronted him and fought to identify many of his unknown victims before his death six years later in December 2020.
>> Listen to the full interview below or in Bennet’s series ‘Beyond Criminal Headlines’ on any podcast provider.
Investigators say the majority of his victims were sex workers, drug abusers or were homeless, which made it difficult to identify them.
Before his death, Little was only charged and convicted in eight of the murders.