'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
February 14,2020

Feb 14: R K Pachauri, a former chief of The Energy and Resources Institute, passed away on Thursday after a prolonged cardiac ailment, TERI Director General Ajay Mathur said.

He was 79.

"It is with immense sadness that we announce the passing away of R K Pachauri, the founder Director of TERI. The entire TERI family stands with the family of Dr Pachauri in this hour of grief," Mathur said in a statement issued by the TERI.

"TERI is what it is because of Dr Pachauri's untiring perseverance. He played a pivotal role in growing this institution, and making it a premier global organisation in the sustainability space," said Mathur, who succeeded Pachauri at TERI in 2015. Pachauri was admitted to Escorts Heart Institute in the national capital where he underwent open heart surgery and was put on life support on Tuesday, sources said.

In the statement issued by TERI, its Chairman Nitin Desai hailed Pachauri's contribution to global sustainable development as "unparalleled".

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News Network
May 11,2020

New Delhi, May 11: Shares of Indian Railway Catering And Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) jumped 5 per cent in early trade on Monday after the Indian Railways said it will gradually resume passenger train services from May 12.

The company's shares gained 5 per cent to Rs 1,302.85 -- its highest trading permissible limit for the day -- on the BSE. At the National Stock Exchange (NSE), it rose 5 per cent to Rs 1,303.55 -- its upper circuit limit.

Booking for reservation in these trains will start at 4pm on May 11 and will be available only on the IRCTC website.

The Indian Railways will gradually resume passenger train services from May 12 and will ask passengers to arrive at the station at least an hour before departure, the national transporter said on Sunday.

Initially, the all air-conditioned services will begin on 15 Rajdhani routes and the fare would be equivalent to that of the super-fast train, it said.

The special trains will run from New Delhi to Dibrugarh, Agartala, Howrah, Patna, Bilaspur, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Secunderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Madgaon, Mumbai Central, Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi.

All passenger services were suspended due to a lockdown announced on March 25 and the railways later started the on-demand Shramik Specials to ferry migrants stranded across the country. It, however, has been running freight and parcel services.

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News Network
February 4,2020

Feb 4: Americans on Monday kicked off the first vote of the 2020 presidential race as the midwestern state of Iowa began its caucuses, the closely-watched first step in deciding which Democrat will face incumbent Donald Trump in November's election.

The two frontrunners, left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden face a key test in the sparsely populated state, with a handful of others looking to make their mark to give their campaigns momentum.

The Iowa vote is a critical early look at the viability of the 11 Democratic candidates still in the race - even though just 41 Iowa delegates are up for grabs, a fraction of the 1,991 needed to secure the party nomination in July.

Iowa Democrats filed into nearly 1,700 caucus sites - schools, libraries, churches, mosques and meeting halls with Sanders and Biden in the lead in the state, followed by former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is also on the left of the party.

But polling has fluctuated and Iowa's quirky caucus system - where voting is not by secret ballot but by public declaration for a candidate - makes the night hard to predict.

Luke Elzinga, a volunteer for Sanders, appeared early at Lincoln High School in Des Moines which was converted into a caucus location.

"I think he really inspires a lot of young people, a lot of disaffected voters who might not otherwise turn out," Elzinga, 28, told AFP news agency shortly before the caucusing began.

"And so I think he's the best candidate to beat Trump."

Three candidates - Sanders, Warren and Amy Klobuchar - have faced the unprecedented scenario of spending much of the past two weeks tethered to Washington for the impeachment trial of Trump instead of on the campaign trail in Iowa.

Even as candidates sought to make 11th-hour impressions on undecided voters, the senators were obligated to return to Washington for the trial's closing arguments on Monday.

Defeating Trump

In a vote scheduled for Wednesday, Trump is almost certain to be acquitted by the Republican-led upper house on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

For Democrats, second-tier hopefuls Klobuchar and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang look to outpace expectations and seize momentum heading into the next contest in New Hampshire on February 11.

Earlier on Monday Biden - who still holds the lead in national polls - brought pizza to a field office in a strip mall near Des Moines to thank volunteers.

"I'm feeling good about today," he said.

Like many candidates, Biden spent the weekend crisscrossing Iowa in a final push to convince undecided voters he is best placed to accomplish Democrats' number one goal: defeating Trump.

The president has not stood idly by. On Sunday he branded Biden "Sleepy Joe" and described Sanders as "a communist," previewing a likely line of attack were Sanders to win the nomination.

Unlike secret ballot voting, caucus-goers publicly declare their presidential choice by standing together with other supporters of a candidate.

Candidates who reach 15 percent support earn delegates for the nomination race while supporters of candidates who fall short can shift their allegiance to others.

Turnout is critical, and candidates and their representatives will seek to persuade voters on issues including healthcare, taxes and ending Washington corruption.

One key candidate who has opted not to contest in Iowa is billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg, who entered the race in November but has surged into fourth place in RealClearPolitics' national polling average.

The former New York mayor, who has spent more than $300m on advertising, according to Advertising Analytics, is focused on running a national campaign with particular emphasis on states that vote on "Super Tuesday," on March 3.

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