Samuel Little's childhood home

The empty lot where Samuel Little's childhood home once stood is at 223 East 33rd Street in Lorain, Ohio.

The driveway in the center once led to a wooden garage, which was demolished between 2008 and 2013.

Little is one of the most prolific serial killers in US history. In 2018, he confessed to killing 93 women. To date, the FBI's ViCAP unit and the Texas Ranger Division have confirmed his involvement in at least 60 murders.

Childhood

The 1950 US Census shows that Little lived at 223 East 33rd Street with his grandparents, Henry and Fannie Mae McDowell. He was nine years old at the time.

The house sat between 219 East 33rd Street and 3254 Elyria Avenue in enumeration district 47-69. His grandfather, Henry, worked as a cement mixer at a nearby steel plant, while his grandmother, Fannie, was a homemaker.

Little was born in Reynolds, Georgia, but soon moved to Lorain, Ohio, to live with his paternal grandparents. Henry and Fannie Mae took the boy into their care after his birth mother, Bessie Mae Little, reportedly abandoned him. Little claimed his mother was a sex worker who left him on the side of a dirt road in Georgia.

Investigators believe she gave birth to him while she was incarcerated on charges relating to the sex trade.

The house's demolition date is unclear. Aerial images show that it was removed by 1996. Property records indicate that the lot is now part of 3254 Elyria Avenue.

While living in Lorain, Little went by the surname McDowell. Census records also indicate Henry and Fannie listed him as their son. Coincidentally, the grandparents of serial killer Ted Bundy did the same thing during the 1950 Census.

Little had a troubled childhood. At 13, he was sent to the Boys' Industrial School in Lancaster, Ohio, for stealing a bicycle.

During his 18-month stint at the reformatory, his behavior worsened, and he accumulated dozens of violations.

In his late teens and early adulthood, he was jailed several times for burglary, breaking and entering, and assault. A newspaper article about an early crime shows he was still using the surname McDowell at 21.

His mother re-entered his life in the late 1960s. Shortly afterward, he relocated to Miami, Florida, to live with her.

Murders

He committed his first known murder in the early hours of January 1, 1971, when he strangled Mary Jo Brosley.

Brosley struggled with alcoholism and had abandoned her seven-year-old son a few months earlier. Little told investigators that he met her at a bar in Miami on New Year's Eve in 1970.

After the murder, he drifted from state to state, killing women and committing petty crimes such as shoplifting.

By May 1972, he had murdered an estimated two to five women.

Between 1971 and 1997, he killed at least 60 women across Ohio, California, Texas, Maryland, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Illinois, Mississippi, South Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas, Nevada, and Arizona. His spree reportedly continued until August 2005, when he killed his final victim in Tupelo, Mississippi.

Many of his victims are still unidentified.

Although Little's crimes spanned decades, he was not arrested until 2012, when authorities apprehended him at a homeless shelter in Kentucky on an old narcotics charge. After his arrest, a DNA match linked him to the murders of three women in Los Angeles between 1987 and 1989.