STOCKTON, Calif. (AP) — A man suspected in Northern California serial killings has been charged in four additional slayings this week, bringing the total to seven deaths since April 2021, authorities said.

The shootings terrorized the Central Valley city of Stockton earlier this year as police searched for a man clad in black who appeared to be “on a mission” as he hunted victims for ambush-style shootings. He was also tied violence in Alameda County.

Three of the four slayings listed in court documents Tuesday have already been disclosed by authorities — who earlier said they had linked suspect Wesley Brownlee to the killings of six men and the wounding of a woman — but charges had not been filed.

Tuesday’s fourth case, an April 2021 slaying that brings the total to seven killings, was previously unreported.

Brownlee was arrested in October when he “was out hunting” for another possible victim in Stockton, police said at the time. He is set to appear in court Jan. 3. His public defender, Allison Nobert, did not immediately return a request for comment.

Brownlee was i nitially only charged in the deaths of three victims in Stockton: Jonathan Rodriguez Hernandez, 21, who died Aug. 30; Juan Cruz, 52, who died Sept. 21; and Lawrence Lopez Sr., 54, who died Sept. 27.

The amended complaint, filed Tuesday, additionally charges Brownlee with the killings of Paul Yaw, 35, who died July 8, and Salvador Debudey Jr., 43, who died Aug. 11, in Stockton, as well as the Alameda County fatal shootings of Juan Vasquez Serrano, 39, on April 10, 2021, and Mervin Harmon on April 16, 2021.

He is also charged with attempted murder in the April 16, 2021, shooting of Natasha LaTour, 46.

Harmon had not previously been publicly linked to Brownlee’s spate of shootings. Additional details about Harmon’s death were not immediately available.

A convicted drug offender, Brownlee was barred from owning a gun and he allegedly used an unregistered “ghost gun” to carry out at least some of the slayings, police said in October after his arrest.

In January 1999, Brownlee had been sentenced to two years in prison in Alameda County, which encompasses the city of Oakland, for possessing and selling a controlled substance, the California corrections department said. He was released on parole in August 1999 after serving seven months.

Brownlee was again convicted in Alameda County in December 2001 and sentenced to three years for the same crime. He was paroled in May 2003 and discharged three years later.

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Joseph Edward Duncan died at the medical center near United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute, where he was on death row, according to a statement from prosecutors in Riverside County, California.

Duncan, 58, had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

Duncan was convicted of killing four members of a family from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 2005. He kidnapped two children, Dylan and Shasta Groene, from the family’s home and tortured them in Montana before killing the boy.

Shasta Groene was the only survivor of the rampage and was rescued when Duncan stopped at a restaurant in Coeur d’Alene and the staff recognized the girl.

Following that conviction, Duncan was extradited to Southern California to be tried for the death of 10-year-old Anthony Martinez of Riverside County in 1997. Duncan, who is from Tacoma, Washington, was linked by DNA to the killing. He pleaded guilty and received a sentence of life in prison.

“While I would’ve liked to witness his execution, knowing he is now standing before God being held accountable for what he has done, what he did to my son, and the horrible crimes he committed to others, that’s the real justice,” Anthony’s father, Ernesto Martinez, said in a statement provided by prosecutors.

In court filings earlier this year, attorneys disclosed that Duncan underwent brain surgery last October and was diagnosed with glioblastoma, stage 4 brain cancer. According to court records, he declined chemotherapy and radiation.

AP News

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A correctional officer doing rounds spotted Roger Reece Kibbe, 81, unresponsive in his cell at Mule Creek State Prison southeast of Sacramento shortly after midnight Sunday, February 28, officials said. They said they are investigating his death as a homicide.

His cellmate was standing nearby, officials said. Kibbe was taken to a prison health care facility and pronounced dead less than 45 minutes later. Amador County’s chief coroner, sheriff’s Sgt. P. Weart, said he couldn’t give details on the death, citing the ongoing investigation. Kibbe, a former suburban Sacramento furniture maker whose brother was a law enforcement officer, was initially convicted in 1991 of strangling 17-year-old Darcine Frackenpohl, who had run away from her home in Seattle. Her nearly nude body was found by a jogger west of South Lake Tahoe below Echo Summit in September 1987, two to three weeks after she was killed. Her pink dress was discovered about 1,000 feet from the body.

Investigators at the time said Kibbe was also a suspect in six other killings believed linked to the ″I-5 Strangler,″ whose trademark was cutting his victims’ clothing in odd patterns. Several took place in the Sacramento and Stockton areas along Interstate 5.

Prosecutors then were unable to file charges in those cases, and he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for Frackenpohl’s death. That changed in 2009, when a San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office investigator used new developments in evidence to connect him to the old slayings. Kibbe pleaded guilty to six new counts of murder in Amador, Contra Costa, Napa, Sacramento, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties. His victims were Lou Ellen Burleigh, 21, in 1977 and Stephanie Brown, 19; Lora Heedrick, 20; Katherine Kelly Quinones, 25; Charmaine Sabrah, 26; and Barbara Ann Scott, 29, all in 1986.

It wasn’t until 2011 that a Napa County sheriff’s deputy found the remains of Burleigh — a piece of bone — in a dry riverbed near Lake Berryessa, after Kibbe agreed to help locate her body as part of a plea agreement.

Burleigh was 21 and living in Walnut Creek when she disappeared in 1977 after going to meet Kibbe to talk about a secretarial job. Prosecutors said they agreed to drop the possibility of the death penalty because Kibbe was unlikely to ever realistically face execution.

Corrections officials said he was serving two life terms without the possibility of parole from San Joaquin County from 2009, beyond the earlier life with parole sentence in El Dorado County for Frackenpohl’s death. Officials could not immediately explain the lack of other listed charges.

His cellmate is serving a life sentence with the possibility for parole for a first-degree murder in Riverside County. Kibbe had been at the prison since 2013 but officials wouldn’t say how long he had been housed with his cellmate, citing the ongoing investigation.

DON THOMPSON Associated Press

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — The man authorities say was the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history with nearly 60 confirmed victims, died Wednesday in California, officials said. He was 80.

Samuel Little, who had diabetes, heart trouble and other ailments, died at a California hospital. He was serving a life sentence for multiple counts of murder.

California corrections department spokeswoman Vicky Waters said there was no sign of foul play, and his cause of death will be determined by a coroner.

A career criminal who had been in and out jail for decades, Little denied for years he’d ever killed anyone.

Then, in 2018, he opened up to Texas Ranger James Holland, who had been asked to question him about a killing it turned out Little didn’t commit. During approximately 700 hours of interviews, however, Little provided details of scores of slayings only the killer would know.

A skilled artist, he even provided Holland with dozens of paintings and drawings of his victims, sometimes scribbling their names when he could remember them, as well as details such as the year and location of the murder and where he’d dumped the body.

By the time of his death, Little had confessed to killing 93 people between 1970 and 2005. Most of the slayings took place in Florida and Southern California.

Authorities, who continue to investigate his claims, said they have confirmed nearly 60 killings and have no reason to doubt the others.

Nothing he’s ever said has been proven to be wrong or false,” Holland told the CBS news magazine “60 Minutes” in 2019.

The numbers dwarf those of Green River killer Gary Ridgeway (49), John Gacy (33) and Ted Bundy (36).

Almost all of Little’s victims were women, many of them prostitutes, drug addicts or poor people living on the edges of society. They were individuals, he said he believed would leave few people behind to look for them and not much evidence for police to follow.

Indeed, local authorities in states across the country initially classified many of the deaths as accidents, drug overdoses or the result of unknown causes.

Little strangled most of his victims, usually soon after meeting them during chance encounters. He drowned one, a woman he met at a nightclub in 1982.

He was nearly 80, in failing health and serving a life sentence in a California prison when he began confiding to Holland in May 2018, after years of refusing to talk to other authorities. Once a strong, strapping boxer who used his powerful hands to strangle his victims, he was now using a wheelchair to get around.

Holland has described Little as both a genius and a sociopath, adding the killer could never adequately explain to him why he did what he did. Although known as an expert interrogator, Holland himself said he could only guess at why Little opened up to him.

The ranger did work tirelessly to create and maintain a bond with the killer during their hundreds of hours of interviews, bringing him favorite snacks such as pizza, Dr. Pepper and grits and discussing their mutual interest in sports. He also gave Little assurances that he wouldn’t be executed.

Holland would address Little by his childhood nickname, Sammy, while Little called Holland Jimmy and once told the Los Angeles Times he’d “found a friend in a Texas ranger.”

He told “60 Minutes” he hoped his confessions might exonerate anyone wrongly convicted of his crimes.

“I say if I can help get somebody out of jail, you know, then God might smile a little bit more on me,” he said.

A transient who traveled the country when he wasn’t in jail for larceny, assault, drugs or other crimes, Little said he started killing in Miami on New Year’s Eve 1970.

“It was like drugs,” he told Holland. “I came to like it.”

His last killing was in 2005, he said, in Tupelo, Mississippi. He also killed people in Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Kentucky, Nevada, Arkansas and other states.

Kentucky authorities finally caught up with him in 2012 after he was arrested on drug charges and his DNA linked him to three California killings.

When he began recounting the other slayings, authorities were astounded at how much he remembered. His paintings, they said, indicated he had a photographic memory.

One killing was solved after Little recalled the victim wore dentures. Another after he told Holland he’d killed the victim near a set of unusual looking arches in Florida. A victim he met outside a Miami strip club in 1984 was remembered as being 25 years old with short blond hair, blue eyes and a “hippie look.”

As he continued to talk, authorities across the country rushed to investigate old cases, track down relatives and bring closure to families.

Little revealed few details about his own life other than that he was raised in Lorain, Ohio, by his grandmother. Authorities said he often went by the name Samuel McDowell.

He was married once, Little said, and involved in two long-term relationships.

He claimed he developed a fetish for women’s necks after becoming sexually aroused when he saw his kindergarten teacher touch her neck. He was always careful, he added, to avoid looking at the necks of his wife or girlfriends and never hurt anyone he loved.

“I don’t think there was another person who did what I liked to do,” he told “60 Minutes.” “I think I’m the only one in the world. And that’s not an honor, that is a curse.”

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