How did a serial killer escape notice? His victims were vulnerable and overlooked

A composite of mugshots and booking photos of Samuel Little, who has confessed to 93 killings between 1970 and 2005. Photo / FBI via The New York Times

The families of women killed by a man the FBI has described as America's most prolific serial killer say their cases went unnoticed for years. "It just tears me up," one relative said.

When Martha Cunningham was found dead near Knoxville, Tennessee, in January 1975, her body was bruised, her clothes had been pulled off and she was missing her purse.

Not long after, the police closed the case. A medical examiner's report listed the cause of Cunningham's death as unknown, according to David Davenport, a retired investigator for the Knox County Sheriff's Office who later reopened the case.

Nearly half a century later, Cunningham's family has learned what they and the police now believe is true: that Cunningham, 34, was one of scores of people killed by Samuel Little, whom the FBI identified this week as the most prolific serial killer in US history. Jessie Lane Downs, Cunningham's sister, said she was still pained that the case was closed so quickly, all those years ago.

"The police department did not ask the family any questions or anything when this happened," Downs said. "They could've settled this, and look at all the people that got killed."

Little, who the authorities say has confessed in recent months to 93 killings between 1970 and 2005, told them about killing a woman in the Knoxville area that he remembered only as Martha, officials say. Little has not been charged in Cunningham's death, but Davenport said the authorities believe that Little was alluding to her in his confession.

Representatives at the Knox County Sheriff's Office said no one was available to speak about Cunningham's case. But Davenport, who retired from there in the last year, said it was clear that her death had not gotten the attention it deserved.

Drawings made by admitted serial killer Samuel Little, based on his memories of some of his victims. Photo / AP

"There was no file in existence, except for the medical examiner's report," he said. "That speaks for itself, that it wasn't investigated the way it should've been."

In the year since Little, 78, began confessing to killings from a prison cell in California, a portrait has begun to emerge of his victims that offers one explanation for how a serial killer could have managed to go undetected, unnoticed for so many decades.

Many of the victims were vulnerable women. Most of them were black, and many were poor. Some were estranged from family members or living far from relatives. And some were isolated, users of drugs or alcohol, or prostitutes. And, in many cases, their deaths did not draw the same level of attention and outrage as other killings.

"One of the unfortunate realities of policing is that departments that are under pressure to solve a variety of murders may pay less attention to victims from a more vulnerable population if they don't have the same organised community pressure to solve those crimes," said Jim Bueermann, the former police chief of Redlands, California, and the former president of the National Police Foundation. "If a killer wants to do as many murders as possible, they'll start to exploit those gaps in the social fabric and those weaknesses in law enforcement with victims that few people care about."

Little drew little attention until 2014, when he was sentenced to life in prison for three murders. No one representing Little, who has been convicted of at least eight murders, could be reached for comment. Prosecutors around the country are still weighing whether to formally charge him for the many killings in at least 14 states that he has told the authorities about in recent months, although the authorities say they believe his confessions. It is uncertain how many charges he will ultimately face.

But for families who believe their loved ones were among Little's victims, the flood of confessions has brought a sense, for some, of closure, but also new pain.

In 2014, Pearl Nelson, left, held a photo of her mother Audrey Nelson, a victim of the serial killer, beside Mary Louise Frias, a goddaughter of another victim. Photo / AP

"The Lord kept us through this and I had gotten myself together, until this came up," Downs said. Cunningham's family described her as less vulnerable than some of the other victims; she was a gospel singer who played the piano in church, they said, and someone who put religion first.

"I was so mad when I saw this man grinning," she said of Little's videotaped confessions. "He's grinning and my sister is dead. It just tears me up."

Minnie Hill said the last time she spoke to her daughter, Rosie Hill, was during a rushed telephone call from Florida in August 1982. Hill said Rosie sounded uncharacteristically worried.

"She let me know she was up into something and the only way she could get out of it was to come home," Hill recalled.

Rosie, who was 20 years old, never made it back home to Memphis, Tennessee, and her mother said she never found out what sort of trouble her daughter had been in.

Within 72 hours, the authorities say, Rosie Hill became a victim of Little.

Little has not been charged in the case, but he has told detectives that he strangled Hill after he met her in a bar in Marion County, Florida. He said he dumped her body in a wooded area.

Investigators have said that he remembered her because she had fought back.

Minnie Hill said that by the time her daughter's body was discovered, she was unrecognisable. Rosie Hill was ultimately identified through X-rays. Yet the elder Hill said that even then, she had not quite believed that her daughter was dead.

"For two years, I waited for a call from her," she said. "Or for her to come home."

Samuel Little leaves the Ector County Courthouse in November 2018. Photo / AP

Minnie Hill, who raised her daughter's young child — she was 2 when Rosie Hill died — said she was not convinced that the authorities had done all they could have to solve the crime.

"When I went down there to ask around, no one knew anything," she said.

She said she had forgiven Little, although she said she was troubled especially to learn that Little told investigators that he believed God intended him to carry out his crimes. "That is between him and the good Lord," she said.

Experts said Little's case was eerily similar to that of Lonnie D. Franklin Jr., the so-called Grim Sleeper, who was convicted of murdering nine women and one teenage girl in South Los Angeles beginning in the 1980s before he was convicted and sentenced to death in 2016.

The effort to capture Franklin was muddled by the high number of murders in Los Angeles in the 1980s, which included homicides attributed to other serial killers.

But, like Little, Franklin had targeted young black women, including drug users and prostitutes. Relatives complained that the police and the media paid less attention to Franklin's victims. They said that slowed efforts to bring Franklin to justice.

Written by: Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Timothy Williams and Richard A. Oppel Jr.

© 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES