On March 1, 1974, Linda Sue Belcher, a 22-year-old Black / African American woman, was found dead near the intersection of 59th Avenue and Broadway in Phoenix, Arizona. Her body was discovered in the winter of 1974 in an area on the southwest side of the city, and authorities quickly determined that her death was the result of “death by force,” treating it as a homicide rather than an accident or natural death.
Contemporary reports and later summaries describe her as a young mother whose life was abruptly cut short, leaving relatives and friends with almost no immediate answers about what had happened to her in the hours before she was found.
Belcher’s killing remained unsolved for more than four decades. For years, her family lived with the knowledge that she had been murdered but without any clear suspect or motive publicly identified by investigators. Her son, Billy Ray Glass Jr., was about eight years old when she was killed, and he grew up in Phoenix carrying the trauma of losing his mother so young. Decades later he spoke publicly about her, recalling the inscription on her headstone—“to know her is to love her”—and describing her as “a jewel,” emphasizing how deeply she was loved within her family. Burial records list her as Linda Sue Belcher, interred at Tempe Double Butte Cemetery in Maricopa County, reinforcing the basic timeline of a woman born in the early 1950s and laid to rest in 1974 after a violent, unresolved death.
A major development finally came in the late 2010s, when investigators began re-examining old, unsolved homicides in light of confessions from serial killer Samuel Little. Little, who had already been convicted in California of multiple murders and was serving three consecutive life sentences, told investigators and the FBI that he had killed 93 women across the United States between 1970 and 2005. Federal authorities ultimately confirmed dozens of those confessions and publicly labeled him the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history. Among the cases that drew renewed attention was Belcher’s 1974 killing in Phoenix. In 2018, a Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office detective informed Belcher’s son that evidence and information tied his mother’s death to Samuel Little, and subsequent reporting described her as one of the cases potentially connected to his long series of murders.
Local authorities then moved her case into a formal review posture. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office confirmed that in February 2019 it received a case submission from the sheriff’s office specifically concerning Little’s possible involvement in the death of Linda Sue Belcher, making her what was described in news coverage as a potential third Arizona victim of the serial killer. At the same time, the FBI and local agencies publicly acknowledged at least two other Arizona victims linked to Little, while Belcher’s case remained in the category of a suspected but not fully confirmed connection. Despite Little’s broader history of arrests and convictions around the country, there is no public record indicating that anyone has been formally charged or tried specifically for Belcher’s homicide in Phoenix. Her case continues to appear in cold-case listings and unsolved-homicide databases—often explicitly labeled “death by force” or unsolved—reflecting that, while Samuel Little is widely regarded by investigators as the likely suspect, the killing of Linda Sue Belcher has not been brought to a definitive legal resolution.
