On May 15, 1981, the body of 23-year-old Linda Sue Boards, a Black female, was discovered on a farm located on Hydro-Pondsville Road, southeast of Smiths Grove in Warren County, Kentucky. An investigation revealed that she had been raped and strangled to death. Boards was last seen leaving a club in Bowling Green a few days before her body was found.
For decades, her case remained a cold case, leaving her family without answers and her killer at large.
The break in the case came nearly four decades later through the confession of one of history's most prolific serial killers, Samuel Little. Already incarcerated for other murders, Little began confessing to numerous killings across the country in 2018 in an effort to be transferred between prisons. His detailed confessions included the murder of Linda Sue Boards. Kentucky State Police investigators traveled to Texas to interview Little, where he provided information that led to the case being presented to a grand jury.
In December 2018, a Warren County Grand Jury indicted Samuel Little for the murder of Linda Sue Boards. At the time of the indictment, Little was 78 years old and already serving multiple life sentences for other murders. His confessions were linked to the deaths of as many as 93 women across the United States. Little passed away in prison in 2020, closing the final chapter on a long and tragic case and finally bringing a measure of justice for Linda Sue Boards.
