'He draws sketches of 93 women he murdered': US killer's lifetime backed by memory

Agencies
October 9, 2019

Washington, Oct 9: Samuel Little's depravity is matched only by his prodigious memory.

Little, a California inmate considered by the FBI to be the most prolific serial killer in US history, has confessed to 93 slayings committed across the country between 1970 and 2005, recounting the crimes with astonishing, near-photographic detail. He even drew colour portraits of dozens of the women he strangled.

His case, featured on "60 Minutes" on Sunday, has offered a frightening look inside the mind of a killer and the wrongheaded assumptions on the part of law enforcement that enabled him to escape justice for so long.

Little, who is 79 and has been behind bars since 2012 for several killings, preyed on prostitutes, drug addicts and other women on the margins, many of them black like Little himself, and many of the deaths were originally deemed overdoses or attributed to accidental or undetermined causes. Some bodies were never found.

In a case out of Tennessee, for example, Martha Cunningham's body was found bruised and nude from the waist down in the woods in 1975, her pantyhose and girdle bunched around her knees. Detectives initially attributed her death to natural causes; the cause was later classified "unknown."

But in 48 straight days of interviews with Texas Ranger James Holland, who kept the killer supplied with pizza and Dr Pepper, Little offered a wealth of details that were used to corroborate his accounts one by one.

One woman wore dentures, for example. Another was killed near a set of arches in Miami. There was a 5-foot-6 woman with brown skin in Florida in the mid-1980s. In 1984 in Kentucky, there was a 25-year-old woman outside a strip club with short blond hair, blue eyes and a "hippie" look.

And in a case from Florida in the 1970s, Little remembered the flowered sundress and necklace the victim wore, and how he played with it before he choked her to death. Fort Myers, Florida, homicide detective Mali Langton, who was among a number of investigators from other jurisdictions who talked to Little in prison as well, said she was astonished by his memory.

"I couldn't tell you who I bought a burger from yesterday," she said.

Noticing that Little liked to draw, Holland gave him art supplies behind bars. Little went on to produce more than 30 portraits of his victims that proved remarkably helpful.

Serial killers are often world-class liars and manipulators who crave notoriety and exaggerate or confess to crimes they didn't commit, according to criminal justice experts. But Little stands apart.

Law enforcement authorities in several states have verified 50 of his confessions so far and are scrambling to link dozens more cold cases to his recollections.

"I would be suspicious of believing him, except it was actually corroborated," said Marina Sorochinski, a professor of criminal justice at Mercy College in New York. As Holland said on "60 Minutes": "Nothing he's ever said has been proven to be wrong or false. We've been able to prove up almost everything he said."

All told, Little is believed responsible for more killings than Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer combined.

Little's modus operandi made it hard to link him to victims. The former boxer often delivered a knockout punch to women, authorities said, then strangled them while masturbating. He would dump their bodies and soon after leave town.

He claimed to have killed in 19 states. The biggest concentrations of killings were in Florida and California, he said, with about 20 in Los Angeles alone.

He was repeatedly arrested for various offenses over the decades, including murder and assault, and served time for some things, but escaped prosecution for his most serious crimes. He was finally caught when a Kentucky arrest in 2012 on drug charges led authorities to link his DNA to three slayings in California.

"It makes sense that he could have gotten away with so many" for so long, Sorochinski said.

Crimes scattered across several states can lead to communication gaps between jurisdictions and a failure to recognize that a single murder is the work of a serial killer. Also, because the women were mostly living on the dangerous edges of society, relatives may not have realized they were gone and reported them missing to police, Sorochinski said.

Langton said that Little flirted, laughed and was "giddy" as he recounted a particular slaying.

In a 2018 prison interview with New York magazine's website The Cut, he was asked how it felt to kill the women. He replied: "Oooeee, it felt like heaven. Felt like being in bed with Marilyn Mon-roe!"

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News Network
March 13,2020

Mar 13: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife announced they were self-isolating Thursday as she undergoes tests for the new coronavirus after returning from a speaking engagement with "mild flu-like symptoms."

Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau's symptoms have subsided since she recently got back from Britain, but as a precaution the prime minister "will spend the day in briefings, phone calls and virtual meetings from home," according to a statement.

Trudeau also cancelled a meeting Thursday and Friday with Canada's provincial and territorial leaders in Ottawa, but still planned to speak with them and world leaders by phone about measures being taken to curb the spread of the virus in Canada.

Gregoire-Trudeau's symptoms had included "a low fever late last night." She immediately sought medical advice and testing.

Trudeau has exhibited no symptoms, and was advised by doctors "to continue daily activities while self-monitoring."

"However, out of an abundance of caution, the prime minister is opting to self-isolate and work from home until receiving Sophie's results," said his office.

Since the novel coronavirus first emerged in late December 2019, 127,070 cases have been recorded in 115 countries and territories, killing 4,687 people, according to an AFP tally compiled at 1200 GMT on Thursday based on official sources.

Canada has so far reported more than 100 cases in six provinces, and one death.

Also Thursday, the Canada's Juno music awards cancelled its upcoming gala show, planned for Sunday evening in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

"We are devastated to cancel this national celebration of music, but at this time of global uncertainty, the health, safety and well-being of all Canadians must stand at the forefront of any decisions that impact our communities," organisers said in a statement.

And in Quebec province, Premier Francois Legault unveiled a series of measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, including placing all travellers returning from overseas under quarantine for two weeks.

Quebec also banned indoor gatherings of more than 250 people.

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News Network
May 21,2020

Washington, May 21: US President Donald Trump China is on a "massive disinformation" campaign and is desperately trying to deflect the "pain and carnage" that it spread throughout the world, US President Donald Trump has said, upping the ante on Beijing over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

Trump, who has expressed disappointment over China's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, claimed that it was the "incompetence" of Beijing that led to the mass killing across the globe. 

"China is on a massive disinformation campaign because they are desperate to have Sleepy Joe Biden win the presidential race so they can continue to rip-off the United States, as they have done for decades, until I came along!" Trump said in a tweet on Wednesday.

"Spokesman speaks stupidly on behalf of China, trying desperately to deflect the pain and carnage that their country spread throughout the world. Its disinformation and propaganda attack on the United States and Europe is a disgrace… It all comes from the top. They could have easily stopped the plague, but they didn't," he said in a series of tweets.

Trump blamed China for spreading the coronavirus globally and accused it of being incompetent.
"Some wacko in China just released a statement blaming everybody other than China for the Virus which has now killed hundreds of thousands of people. Please explain to this dope that it was the 'incompetence of China', and nothing else, that did this mass Worldwide killing!" Trump said.

China has denied covering up the extent of its coronavirus outbreak and accused the US of attempting to divert public attention by insinuating that the virus originated from a virology laboratory in Wuhan.

"China was the first country to report the COVID-19 to the World Health Organisation (WHO), (and) that doesn't mean the virus originated from Wuhan... There has never been any concealment, and we'll never allow any concealment," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said last month.

"A discerning person will understand at a glance that the purpose is to create confusion, divert public attention, and shirk their responsibility," he said.

The novel coronavirus which first originated in Wuhan in December last year has claimed 328,120 lives and infected nearly 5 million people globally. The Us is the worst affected country with 93,439 deaths and over 1.5 million infections, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Meanwhile, the US Senate passed a bill boosting oversight of companies based in China and other nations that could lead to their removal from American stock exchanges.

The Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, proposes to increase oversight of Chinese and other foreign companies listed on American exchanges and delist and ban over-the-counter trading for firms that are out of compliance with US regulators for a period of three years.

In a related development, a group of top Republican Senators led by Marco Rubio sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin following disturbing reports that China's state-owned and-directed enterprises were looking to exploit the economic crisis by buying US and foreign companies.

As companies backed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) approach banks to identify the purchase of companies in the US and in Europe affected by the pandemic, the senators urged Mnuchin to protect against the China's and the CCP's predatory economic behaviour during the COVID-19 crisis.

"We write to express our concerns related to the People's Republic of China's (PRC) efforts to exploit the economic crisis wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic to gain control of distressed companies or shirking its international responsibilities amidst a worldwide crisis.

"In both Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and PRC policy documents, Beijing has made no secret of its intentions to dominate strategic industrial and emerging technology sectors as well as influence standards at the expense of liberal, rules-based governance," wrote the senators.

As the crisis reverberates across the globe, the PRC's predatory lending practices — including the use of non-disclosure agreements for bilateral loans — not only damage the fiscal situation of recipient countries but also undermine the international community's ability to respond effectively to the crisis, they said.

"Without US and international pressure for accountability and transparency, those countries that are in debt to the PRC will not have the political cover or protection to open their financial books. Such countries will face the risk of default or a currency crisis, leaving the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and Western countries to clean up the PRC's mess," the senators said.

During a campaign round table Katrina Pierson, Senior Advisor to the Trump 2020 Campaign, said that only the US President will defeat the coronavirus, hold China accountable for their negligence, and defend the American people from socialism. 

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News Network
January 27,2020

Jan 27: Bollywood Film Director Anurag Kashyap, who has been vocal about his political views on social media, slammed Union Minister Amit Shah and accused him of being 'cheap'.

"How timid our Home Minister is. Its own police, its own goons, its own army and security increases and invades unarmed protestors. Amit Shah has crossed the extent of cheapness and inferiority. History will spit on this animal," Kashyap tweeted.

The film director has taken an active part in the anti-Citizenship Act protest rallies and was against the Jawaharlal Nehru violence. He also came in support of his contemporary Deepika Padukone when the latter faced backlash for showing up at JNU in support of the students.

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