After nearly 50 years, human remains found scattered along a creek in South Carolina have been positively identified as a woman murdered by Samuel Little, believed to be America’s most prolific serial killer.
Authorities announced this week that the Berkley County Jane Doe who was found in 1977 is Leola Etta Bryant, a 51-year-old woman who vanished in March 1974.
Bryant was last seen at the Midway Bar on Reynold’s Avenue, the same location Little would later confess to meeting the woman before killing her, according to the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office.
In October 1977, the partial skeletal remains of an unidentified woman were discovered by workers clearing brush from a property in Goose Creek, just north of Charleston.
The Berkeley County Coroner collected the remains and sent them to the MUSC Health University Medical Center for examination where they remained until June of 2020.
The remains were then transferred to the University of North Texas for Human Identification Forensic Anthropology for further analysis, it was determined that the victim was likely an African American woman between the ages of 30 and 60, with a height of 5 foot 4 inches to 5 foot 6 inches.
In a renewed effort to identify Berkeley County Jane Doe, the woman’s remains were then transferred to the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office the same year and a death investigation was launched.
A forensic sketch depicting how the woman possibly looked was created and released to the public to help generate new leads about her identity, according to Othram, who joined the effort in 2022, in hopes that advanced DNA testing could also help.
During the investigation, it was revealed that Bryant was murdered by serial killer Samuel “Sam” Little, who had confessed that he strangled an unidentified woman after meeting her at a nightclub in North Charleston.
He admitted to leaving the woman’s body somewhere on the side of Highway 52.
Little confessed to the murders of 93 women across multiple states between the years of 1970 and 2005, before he died in prison in 2020.
The FBI has so far confirmed that Little committed at least 60 murders during his four-decade reign of horror. His other 33 confessions are also deemed to be credible and the bureau continues to work on verifying them.
In 2014, he was convicted of murder for the killings of Linda Alford, Guadalupe Duarte Apodaca and Audrey Nelson Everett in California.
While behind bars in 2018, he began spilling his secrets to Texas Ranger James Holland when he was interviewed about a murder that he actually hadn’t carried out.
He continued to confess to dozens more murders, giving details about each one and painting pictures of what the victims looked like.
Most of his victims were women, many of them drug addicts or sex workers, who he would meet by chance and then strangle them.
