Samuel Little named America's deadliest serial killer

The FBI says the inmate who claims to have killed close to 100 women across the United States is now considered to be the most prolific serial killer in country’s history.

The crime agency says that it believes that Samuel Little, who told investigators last year that he was responsible for 93 killings nationwide between 1970 and 2005, is telling the truth. It says its officials have been able to verify 50 of his confessions so far.

Little, 79, is serving multiple life sentences in California. He says he strangled his victims, nearly all of them women.

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He made the confessions to a Texas ranger while serving time for the murder of three Los Angeles women. “In all three cases, the women had been beaten and then strangled, their bodies dumped in an alley, a dumpster, and a garage,” the FBI said.

After investigating those murders, the crime agency began looking further into his background and found an “alarming pattern” that linked Little to a number of other murders.

The FBI said the man, who has a history of criminal activity dating back to his teenage years, chose to kill “marginalised and vulnerable women who were often involved in prostitution and addicted to drugs”.

Officials have released taped confessions of Little and portraits he has drawn of some of his alleged victims on a website entitled Confessions Of A Killer in the hope of securing public help to identify the remaining victims.

Around the world, prolific serial killers include Harold Shipman, the UK doctor who killed over 215 people, Erzebet Bathory of Hungary, who tortured and murdered more than 600 victims from her family estate in Transylvania, and Luis Alfredo Gavarito who confessed to the rape, torture and murder of 140 children in Colombia.

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