Man identifies mother as slain woman from serial killer's prison drawing
A Tennessee man believes his mother is one of the women depicted in a series of 16 drawings made by an infamous serial killer in prison.
Anthony Jones last saw his mother, Priscilla Baxter-Jones, on Christmas Eve 1996, when he was 15 years old, he told WREG-TV.
"She was like, 'I love you son… I’m gonna see you for Christmas tomorrow.' I’m like, 'Yes ma'am, I'll see you tomorrow,'" he told the station. "Next day comes, nobody heard from my mama. Day after that, nobody heard from my mama."
Baxter-Jones's body was discovered in the Mississippi River nearly two weeks after she disappeared. The 36-year-old prostitute had been raped, stabbed and strangled to death, and her killer was never caught.
However, after the FBI released a series of drawings serial killer Samuel Little created of his victims while in prison, Jones and his family believe they know who her killer is.
"We put those pictures side by side and you know, like, that's her," Jone's wife, Erica Wells-Jones, told WREG-TV.
Jones said that beyond the sketches' uncanny resemblance to his slain mother, he also recognized Little's face and thinks he may have even met him before. He claims Little had a personal relationship with his mother for a few months before she was killed.
"I automatically knew who he was ‘cause I don’t forget faces," Jones told the station. "That’s just me. I can't forget faces."
Little, 78, was arrested at a Kentucky homeless shelter in September 2012 and extradited to California, where he was wanted on a narcotics charge. Once he was in custody, the Los Angeles Police Department was able to match his DNA to three unsolved homicides from 1987 and 1989 and charge him with three counts of murder.
In 2014, Little was convicted on all three counts and was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. He is reportedly in poor health and will likely remain in prison in Texas until his death.
Little had previously been charged with killing women in Mississippi and Florida in the 1980s but escaped indictment in Mississippi and conviction in Florida, according to the FBI. He had also served time for assaulting a woman in Missouri and for the assault and false imprisonment of a woman in San Diego.
He has since confessed to 90 murders, 34 of which have been officially linked to his claims.
Little's typical victims were vulnerable women like Jones' mother, many of whom were involved in prostitution and addicted to drugs. Their bodies sometimes went unidentified and their deaths uninvestigated.
The FBI released drawings of the women Little made in prison, along with information about their deaths, in hopes of positively identifying the victims and providing justice and closure in their cases.
Anyone with information related to Samuel Little's victims is urged to contact the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program at 800-634-4097.
