It is an unfortunate reality that there are people who exist who find excitement and pleasure in killing. It is even more unfortunate that when these people turn the corner and become serial killers, they grow ever more aware of new methods to avoid capture. One method, however, that has remained a timeless strategy for killers seeking to remain undetected is to kill the “less dead.”
The term less dead applies to many victims of serial killers. It is used to define the people whom society has deemed less important. These are the marginalized groups - the people who attract less attention and whose faces networks decide are not worthy of broadcast. These are mostly people of color, sex workers, LGBTQ, and the poor.
These groups generally lack status and social standing and are ignored and devalued by the community. Therefore the police tend to give only a cursory glance to the deaths or disappearances of those from marginalized backgrounds, if that. These women are the perfect victims for someone looking to kill without making headlines or attract the attention of law enforcement.
Through my next few blog posts, I will examine specific instances of marginalized women dying or disappearing at the hands of serial killers known or unknown. I will attempt to unpack how society has treated these crimes and if there has been any change in the last few years to how crimes like these are investigated. I also wish to use this space to give recognition for the victims of these crimes, many of whom have yet to see justice served against those who harmed them.
This brings me to the main focus of this first blog: Sam Little. Little is confirmed to have killed at least 34 marginalized women between 1970 and 2005. However, that number pales in comparison to the at least 90 women he has confessed to murdering during his lifetime.
Despite the fact the federal investigators in charge of identifying the victims have stated Little is one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history, he has not received the attention other serial killers operating around the same time have gotten.
For example, Ted Bundy was also active during 1970, the same time as Little. Bundy is a household name with countless documentaries and movies written about him (the most recent set to star Zac Efron) while Little is obscure and scarcely discussed. This is because the women Bundy killed were white college co-eds, and the women Little killed were almost exclusively sex workers of color.
To focus on his crimes in Los Angeles in particular, Little has stated in 1987 alone he killed six black women. Little then left Los Angeles to kill elsewhere, only to return between 1990 and 1993 to kill an additional five women and again in 1996 to kill four women.
One of these women, Guadalupe Apodaca, was found in an abandoned parking garage in South Central Los Angeles. This was almost exactly where the kidnappers of Patty Hearst, the famous white heiress, were gunned down in front of a media frenzy. There were no stories in the media about Apodaca’s death.
It wasn’t until April 2012 when Los Angeles detective Mitzi Roberts began to enter cold cases into DNA databases that Sam Little was connected forensically to Apodaca’s murder. As Roberts began to investigate Little, she noticed a disturbing trend in his convictions and crimes. While he was sentenced to lengthy prison terms for crimes like robbing a furniture store, when Little was found guilty in 1976 of “assault with attempt to ravish” for strangling, raping, sodomizing, and beating Pamela Smith, he was only sentenced to three months.
In these instances, society sent a clear message to Little and other killers: attack women of color and you’ll get a pass, but if you try to steal property you’re going away.
Little’s victims knew this themselves. One victim, Leila McClain, who was able to escape Little before he killed her told Roberts why she didn’t report the attack to the police. She said:
Ain’t nobody cared until that white girl (Melinda LePerre; Little was acquitted of her murder) turned up dead a year later. Didn’t nobody care about a black prostitute in Mississippi. No, ma’am, they didn’t.
This reality is something Little was acutely aware of. In an interview with a reporter in December 2018, Little revealed that the reason he chose women of color and sex workers was because he knew the police didn’t investigate those crimes. He was aware the rest of society didn’t seem to care if these women died. Little explained:
I never killed no senators or governors or fancy New York journalists. Nothing like that. [If] I killed you, it’d be all over the news the next day. I stayed in the ghettos.
It wasn’t until someone finally did care that Little’s reign of terror came to an end. It is because of Detective Mitzi Roberts that the murders in Los Angeles began to be connected to Little. Roberts’ dedication in her investigation of Little revealed not only another confirmed murder victim in LA, but also multiple survivors of Little’s attacks, including Leila McClain.
It was with this dedication, and the courage of survivors like McClain testifying, that Little was finally brought to justice in 2014. After a lengthy trial filled with criminalists, expert witnesses, police officers, and pathologists, Little was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences.
Little’s crimes show us the pervasive impact racism and sexism have on the safety of women. Little was able to commit so many murders because he realized that if he killed women who society did not care about no one would even bother to look for him.
In my opinion, this case shows the importance of having women, specifically women of color work in investigative capacities. If it weren’t for the increase in female detectives such as Roberts, it is unclear how long Little would be able to remain an anonymous killer.
Although Little is serving three life sentences, there are still over 50 victims that have yet to be identified. The FBI has generated a list of these unidentified victims using descriptions from Little himself. This list can be found here.
Katie,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this insightful post. Having recently watched the documentary “Conversations with a Killer: Ted Bundy” on Netflix, I completely resonate with the sentiments you have expressed. It is deeply troubling that atrocious crimes are only recognized as significant losses if they are perpetrated against white females, as showcased by the prolific documentation of Ted Bundy’s crimes.
Unfortunately, the idea of the “less dead” is deeply rooted in the history of our nation and continues to rampantly exist in our society today, even outside the realm of serial killings. The media often overlooks these atrocities because we as a society devalue their significance. As you aptly note, most people associated with the term “less dead” are people who have been historically considered “less than”, such as people of color, sex workers, LGBTQ and the poor. It is particularly troubling that although we have made “some” progress in considering marginalized groups as “equal”, very limited progress has been made in considering marginalized groups equal in the criminal justice system.
I noticed this disheartening discrepancy within the criminal justice system in a slightly different context. When examining the role that race and privilege plays on sentencing of sexual assault and rape perpetrators, I found widespread differences in the duration and type of sentencing white perpetrators and African American perpetrators received. Similar to the “less dead”, these differences often rested on the value judges assigned to their lives. For these perpetrators, the severity of their sentences reflected the importance their respective judge assigned to the detrimental impact prison placement could have on their future. Time and time again, judges only found this impact significant for white perpetrators and not African American perpetrators.
Given these similarities, I wonder what will be required to inspire change in how society values the “less dead.” What will it take to bring stories of the “less dead” to the forefront and inspire people to consider their lives as equally valuable? I agree with your notion that empowering more women like Mitzi Roberts to seek justice for the “less dead” is an integral part of solution. However, I continue to ponder the steps that would need to be taken to facilitate this process. As a first step, I think it would be important for all members of society, especially women, to look at this issue at its core: the loss of life. A person’s life should not be considered more valuable simply because of their appearance or socioeconomic status. From this fundamental acknowledgement, further steps can be taken to empower women to seek justice for these victims.
I look forward to reading your future blog posts to gain a deeper understanding of underlying trends amongst these serial killings that contribute to the continued devaluation of the “less dead” and uncover potential solutions that we as a society can adopt to give these victims the attention and credence they deserve.