DADE COUNTY, Ga. — The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has identified a woman found dead nearly 40 years ago who is believed to be a victim of an infamous serial killer from Georgia.
The body of the previously unidentified Black woman was found in Dade County, Georgia on September 28, 1981. The remains have been identified as Patricia Parker, who was 30 years old at the time she was killed.
In 2018, prolific serial killer Samuel Little told authorities in Texas he had murdered a woman in Chattanooga in the early 1980s. When authorities there didn’t find any unsolved murders that matched up with Little’s story, they contacted investigators in Georgia. Little’s description of the woman did match Parker’s remains.
Dade County is in the very northwest corner of Georgia just over the Tennessee line.
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GBI agents interviewed Little in December 2018. He provided enough details for investigators to believe that Little abducted Parker in Chattanooga and killed her in Georgia.
Little told investigators he met a woman, now believed to be Parker, in a nightclub on 9th Street in Chattanooga in the early ’80s. He described her as a light-skinned black woman with a big build who was in her early to mid-20s, according to our ABC affiliate WTVC.
Little said he and the woman left the club together and went to a secluded road where he strangled her. Little said he then rolled her body off an embankment. In Little’s words, the body kept rolling, implying he was on a steep ridge.
The GBI released a forensic reconstruction of Parker’s skull in 2019 and asked for the public’s help in identifying her. Family members came forward and said they believed the remains were Parker. DNA evidence confirmed the family match and the GBI was able to make a positive identification.
Little, 79, has confessed to murdering 93 women between 1970 and 2005. He’s been behind bars in California since 2012 serving multiple life sentences. While in prison, he’s drawn color portraits of at least 30 of his victims.
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