In the autumn of 1977, the life of 21-year-old Lee Ann Helms was tragically cut short, leaving a cold case that would haunt Fulton County investigators for decades. A young mother to a 10-month-old son, Helms was from Griffin but had been living and working in downtown Atlanta. One evening, she crossed paths with a man at a local club, a meeting that would have fatal consequences.
Her strangled body was later discovered by a Department of Transportation worker in a wooded area near Union City, at the intersection of Oakley Road and Oakley Industrial Boulevard. For years, the investigation into her death yielded no significant leads, with potential witnesses from the club having passed away and a lack of physical evidence leaving detectives with a file that grew colder with each passing year.
The case remained unsolved for over four decades until a breakthrough came from an unlikely source. In 2018, convicted murderer Samuel Little, already serving multiple life sentences in California, began confessing to a staggering number of murders committed across the country over a 35-year span. Among his many confessions was the murder of a woman in the Atlanta area. The FBI released a collection of sketches drawn by Little of his victims, including a drawing of a white woman he claimed to have killed near Atlanta. This prompted Fulton County police to revisit the Helms case.
Investigators found that the details Little provided about the murder of the woman he met in Atlanta matched the circumstances of Lee Ann Helms's death with chilling accuracy. He recounted specifics about her height, weight, job, and even her infant son. To further confirm his confession, detectives located the only known adult photograph of Helms and presented it to Little. He looked at the picture and confirmed that she was the woman he had killed. Without his confession, authorities believe the case would have likely remained a cold case forever. Following his confession and the corroborating details, the Fulton County Police Department officially closed the murder case of Lee Ann Helms, finally bringing a resolution to a long-unsolved crime. Samuel Little, later identified by the FBI as the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history, was never charged specifically with Helms's murder due to his existing life sentences. He died in a California hospital in December 2020.
