‘Do you recognize me?’ Police asking for help to identify a serial killer’s victim

Twenty-seven years ago, a serial killer murdered women in Gulfport, Miss. Now, police are using his portrait of one of his victims to try to find out who she is.

The Harrison County Sheriff’s Office created a flyer to ask for the public’s help to identify the woman murdered in 1992 by a man the FBI calls the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history: Samuel Little.

“Do You Recognize Me?” the flyer asks.

Little sketched the woman, one of more than 90 he has confessed to killing between 1970 and 2005. She is one of five women he murdered in the Gulfport, Miss., area, and one of two of his unidentified victims there.

Three Gulfport victims have been identified based on Little’s confessions, WLBT reports. The Harrison County Sheriff’s Office has charged him with murdering Alice Taylor and Tracy Johnson in December 1992 just a few days apart. He is also suspected of killing Melinda LePree, whose body was found ten years earlier, in 1982.

“We are working under the assumption that the other two confessions, just like the first three we identified, are true and he’s relatively accurate in his confessions,” Kristi Johnson, a crime scene investigator with Harrison County Sheriff’s Department told WLBT. “I recognized that first case immediately because he remembered enough details about it, and he is remembering specific things, and they are turning out to be accurate. So, we’re working under the assumption that this girl in this drawing does resemble the victim and the details he remembers are accurate.”

The woman is described as African American in her early to mid-20s, between 5-feet and 5-feet 5-inches in height and weighing about 130 pounds. She was probably last seen near a bar in the North Gulfport area before December of 1992. Little said he placed her body in a grassy area somewhere in Gulfport.

An FBI composite of several of Samuel Little’s booking photos. He was arrested at least three times in Harrison County for petty crimes. (click to expand)

Harrison County authorities arrested Little three times for petty crimes such as shoplifting and selling stolen property.

Little was convicted in California in 2012 of three murders from 1987 to 1989. Texas also convicted him in 2018 of a murder in 1994.

He began confessing in 2018 and the body count is 93 murders. Authorities across the country have verified more than 60 of his confessed murders, from Ohio to Florida, and from Philadelphia to Los Angeles.

A former boxer, Little would typically punch his victims, knocking them out, then strangle them and dump their bodies.

Most of his victims were African American, as he is, and all are women.

He has recounted his murders in near photographic detail, the Clarion Ledger reports, and has created numerous portraits of his victims. The FBI has published several of his sketches, 16 of which have yet to be identified.

A composite of Little’s sketches of his victims who have yet to be identified. (click to expand)

“For many years, Samuel Little believed he would not be caught because he thought no one was accounting for his victims,” said Christie Palazzolo, a crime analyst with the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. “Even though he is already in prison, the FBI believes it is important to seek justice for each victim—to close every case possible.”

If you have any information on who the woman in the sketch might be, or if you recall any case where a woman went missing or was found outside deceased in the Gulfport area, please contact the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigation Division at 228-896-0678 or email mailto:coldcases@harrisoncountysheriff.com.