[Becker] Back with our Appalachian Unsolved special. For the United States' most prolific
serial killer, murder was an obsession. Samuel Little admitted to killing 93 women
in a 35-year killing spree across America. His victims included at least
two women in East Tennessee, but he never was charged with their crimes. Little was a cruel man who thought of
nothing of humiliating Knoxville women, including one woman who lay dying. We take a closer look at what you want to see, but first, a warning this story is graphic and disturbing. [David] Everybody described him as really a
nice, gentle person when you first met him. Slick, I mean, a good talker, able
to talk his way out of, into things. [Becker] Sometime around Christmas 1974, a killer came to town. By the time, he left he'd notched another victim. A drifter, a thief. Ohio native Samuel Little murdered
Knoxvillian Martha Cunningham, likely on New Year's Eve night 1974. Little preyed on prostitutes, addicts. Cunningham was no prostitute, but she was vulnerable. A woman of God cursed to
cross paths with a serial killer. Family members had last heard
from her that New Year's Eve night. The 34-year-old was supposed to
be at church on Parkview Avenue. [David] From what he told us was that he
had seen her on more than one occasion and then on New Year's Eve, he brought her
out to the woods, strangled her and killed her. [Becker] Veteran lawman David Davenport
suspects Little drove her from the Magnolia area heading east about 15 minutes toward
remote woods off Oglesby Road. A spot where no one could hear her
above the drone of nearby Interstate 40. He left her body splayed on the ground. Little treated her like so many of his victims, robbing her of any dignity, leaving her slip and dress up over her chest, and her stockings and panties pulled down to her thighs. No respect, no regard. Hunters found her body more than three weeks later. Fate would deal Martha Cunningham another indignity. Records show authorities didn't
investigate her death as a homicide. Despite the circumstances, out by herself
in a remote location in a disheveled state, investigators found no signs of foul play. The autopsy's conclusion quote, "No obvious cause of death was noted." Decades passed, eventually, only family and
friends remembered Martha Cunningham. And then, in 2018, Little decided it was time to confess. Once prosecutors promised Little
they wouldn't seek the death penalty, he started talking about all the horrors he had inflicted. Not one, not 10, not 20 killings. No, he confessed to murdering 93 women, starting in 1970 when he was 30 years old. He drew pictures of many of their faces, claiming he had a photographic memory. [Becker] To the surprise of Knox County investigators, his confessions included Cunningham, who he remembered as Martha. The FBI alerted the sheriff's office. Working cold cases for the county,
Davenport checked out Little's story. [David] They give us so many things about her that... made us believe that he was telling the truth. [Becker] The old convict claimed he'd also killed a
Black prostitute in Knoxville around the same time. [David] And from what he described, he dumped her body somewhere
in the city limits of Knoxville, but we never could find anything that fit that description. [Becker] That woman's body has never been found. [Becker] Samuel Little died in a Texas
prison at the age of 80 back in 2020. Investigative journalist and my colleague John North has worked many of these Appalachian Unsolved cases. And John, let's talk about this case in
particular mishandled from the get-go. [North] It's kind of extraordinary and
a travesty to be honest with you, John. I mean, if you come upon a victim who is
lying there, been dead several weeks. Their genitals are exposed. Their clothing clearly has been pulled down. You don't think it's a natural. [Becker] You don't. Let's talk about other things that stood
out to you in this case in particular. [North] Well, one thing that strikes me is well, first of all, we didn't even know that it was a homicide. We had completely forgotten, the investigators had, about this case until Samuel Little himself came forward and said, essentially, "Oh, by the way,
I killed a woman in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1975." That's just amazing. And it was the cold case investigator
in 2018 then had to go back and try to assemble what
Samuel Little had been telling him. [Becker] John, we're going to get to it in a second, but technology is helping solve more of these cases. [North] Yeah, it's incredible. Almost every day now, we are seeing breaks
locally, statewide, nationally in cases simply because DNA profiling has
become so much more sophisticated.
