Prosecutors will seek life without the possibility of parole for a 72-year-old man suspected of killing three women south of downtown Los Angeles in the 1980s.
Samuel Little faces charges in three cold-case murders that investigators believe were sexually motivated strangulations against prostitutes and drug users.
He was accused of two murders and two attempted murders in Gainesville, Fla., and Pascagoula, Miss., in the early 1980s, where he was identified then as Samuel McDowell. He avoided conviction in those cases and came to California, where he lived in the mid- to late 1980s in the LA and San Diego areas.
He also preyed on two women in the San Diego area in 1984, according to a report from U-T San Diego. He served two years in state prison for those two assaults.
Little was arrested by the U.S. Marshal's Office in September in Louisville, Ky., on a 2009 LA narcotics warrant, according to a Los Angeles Police Department press release.
DNA evidence had linked to the 1989 murders of Audrey Nelson and Guadalupe Apodaca.
Held in Kentucky while local detectives built a case against him, Little waived extradition and was brought to Los Angeles in October, police said.
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Then, in November, Little was connected by DNA evidence to a third case, the 1987 slaying of Carol Alford.
His arrest came as a result of cold-case screenings and DNA testing funded by a federal "Solving Cases with DNA" grant awarded to LAPD.
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