Suspected serial killer confesses to 5 Mississippi deaths

JACKSON, Miss. – Five Mississippi homicides are linked to a man suspected in dozens of deaths.

The FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program says Samuel Little has confessed to killings in Gulfport, Jackson and Pascagoula.

Harrison County Sheriff Troy Peterson says Little is charged with killing Alice Taylor and Tracy Johnson, friends found strangled to death in 1992. Taylor was found Gulfport, while Johnson was found three weeks later in Saucier.

Peterson says Little is also charged with killing 36-year-old Julia Critchfield, found strangled in 1978 in a Saucier dirt pit.

Little has also confessed to killing Melinda Lapree of Pascagoula, found dead in a Gautier cemetery ditch in 1982.

Finally, Little confessed to killing a 16-year-old male in Jackson in 1984, but authorities have yet to match a name to that confession.