By: Emma McSpadden
After 26 years, a homicide case has been reopened and solved, providing a family long-awaited answers that led to the indictment of 79-year-old Samuel Little, a serial killer out of California.
On the morning of Sept. 24, Lubbock Police Capt. Ray Mendoza spoke at a news conference designated for Texas Tech Reporting students as he addressed the details of the case.
“Eventually, all investigative leads at the time were exhausted with no arrest or known suspect development,” Mendoza said, “and the case went cold.”
In 2018, developments allowed the Lubbock Metropolitan Special Crimes Unit to reopen the case, Mendoza said. Little, a recognized serial killer, was indicted by a Lubbock County Grand Jury in the killing of Fields.
According to a statement release by the FBI on Oct. 6, Little has confessed to the murders of 93 victims, and his statements are credible. Thus far, the FBI has been able to confirm 50 victims.
California State Prison records show Little’s admission date as Nov. 24, 2014. Those same records also show he is being held at the California State Prison in Los Angeles County where he is serving three life sentences without parole. As a result of the indictment, Mendoza said a warrant was issued, and the California Department of Corrections has placed a detainer on Little should he ever be released.
According to Mendoza, Little is likely to live out the remainder of this life incarcerated in California.
Field near 1200 block of Keel Avenue (Photo provided by Lucinda Holt)
On Aug. 8, 1993, 37-year-old Bobbie Fields’ body was found in a field near the 1200 block of Keel Avenue, according to a Lubbock Police Department news release.
Shortly before her body was discovered, Mendoza said Fields was last seen entering a yellow Cadillac Eldorado at the Rose Hotel – 700 13th St.
On Nov. 16, 2018, Metropolitan Special Crimes investigators enlisted the help of the FBIs Violent Criminal Apprehension Program’s crime analyst Christina Palazzolo, according to the LPD news release.
“(Local investigators) were provided with a timeline of Mr. Little’s historical criminal activities,” the release states. “Samuel Little, who (is) currently incarcerated in California and believed to be among the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history, provided information and admitting to committing a murder somewhere in the area of Wichita Falls.”
A review of state jail records indicated Little was incarcerated in Travis County on July 30, 1993, days before the Lubbock murder. On March 11, 2019, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program – ViCAP – issued an alert in regard to Little’s reported murder in Wichita Falls.
According to the statement provide by police, Little offered a composite drawing of the victim and included information on where he placed the body.
“This murder was believed to have occurred in 1976 or 1977 and 30-50 miles south of Wichita Falls, Texas,” the release states.
Despite Little’s statements, investigative work showed no matches in that particular area; however, the murder in Wichita Falls was beginning to sound like Fields’ case.
After comparing information, On July 2, 2019, investigators and ViCAP agreed that Little’s statements required further investigation in the Lubbock area.
“Given the new information regarding his incarceration dates in 1993” the LPD statement reads, “investigators now realized Mr. Little could not have been incarcerated at the time of this murder, increasing the likelihood that Mr. Little was actually a suspect in the murder of Bobbie Fields.”
On Aug. 18, investigators found an attempt-to-locate flyer created by the LPD Crime Analyst Unit at the time of the 1993 discovery. During the course of the investigation, ViCAP provided Lubbock investigators a list of all the types of vehicles Little owned. The list included a 1978 yellow Cadillac Eldorado, the same vehicle Fields was last seen in.
Fields was survived by several family members, including 40-year-old Dollena Hunnicutt, who was in her early teens at the time of her mother’s death.
“We just thought that it would be like any other case in Lubbock or anywhere else where they just throw it back on the back of the burner and that was it,” Hunnicutt said.
In a tearful interview, Hunnicutt said she knew her mother had been leading a difficult life prior to death.
“I know my mom’s lifestyle. She was out there working in prostitution and just dealing with an addiction,” Hunnicutt said. “It’s sad because she went to college for four years, graduated in Omaha, Nebraska, and then she came here.”
For Hunnicutt, that very same story of personal struggles soon became her own as she said she traveled down a similar road in her younger years.
Becoming pregnant at an early age, Hunnicutt said she had to navigate many hardships, including addiction, manic depression and bipolar disorder, being sexually assaulted, the death of two of her children, giving up her children to Child Protective Services and ultimately serving a four-year prison sentence.
“It’s just hard not having anyone to turn to,” Hunnicutt said. “It was just real hard growing up without my mom because my mom was my best friend. I could talk to my mom about anything.”
And while Hunnicutt shared her story, she said there are other victims who fell at the hands of Little.
At the news conference, Lubbock Police Detective Brandon Price discussed Little’s history as a serial killer.
According to Price, Little was actively killing from 1970 to 2005, before he was incarcerated.
Lubbock County Court records also showed Little had returned to the Hub City as he was arrested for shoplifting on Nov. 9, 2006, from a local Walmart.
And while details of Little’s victims are emerging, Price said the women shared a common lifestyle of prostitution and drug addiction.
“The motive for him was: he would drive through a town; he wanted to kill,” Price said. “And when he drove through, he’d find somebody and kill them and leave them.”
Price said his conversation with Little was casual and seemed incredibly normal. Little had no remorse when speaking about his victims.
“He was real, you know, polite, he was big on respect,” Price said. “He would laugh and joke at times.”
While Little’s information has helped close several cases across the nation, there are still victims who have yet to be discovered.
Officials want to encourage those who think their loved one may be a victim of Little to contact the FBI ViCAP through their websitehttps://www.fbi.gov/wanted/vicap or their hotline at 1-800-CALL-FBI.
Mendoza commended Price and Detective George Madrigal for their work on Fields’ case.
Expressing her gratitude for the Lubbock Police Department and Detective Price, Hunnicutt said she never thought her mother’s case would come to a close.
“My mom was a really, really good person. She was a beautiful woman,” Hunnicutt said. “She had went through a lot, and I guess it was God calling her.”
Watch Samuel Little confess to killing a woman in New Orleans in 1982.
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