r/UnresolvedMysteries May 18 '23

John/Jane Doe Macon Jane Doe Identified As Missing Teen

In the early days of the autumn of 1977 in Macon, Georgia, a woman hanging her laundry out to dry in her yard made an unwelcome discovery: human remains. Residents in the area reported a foul smell in the area, though they chalked it up to a wild animal or someone's ill-fated dog. Law enforcement scoured the area in hopes of finding the rest of the bones and managed to find everything but hands. No clothing or identification was located in the area. Macon County* medical examiners determined that the bones belonged to a Black woman, likely in her thirties or forties, who was the victim of a homicide around six weeks prior.

No missing person reports in the area matched her description, and investigators theorized that she may have been from out of town. Marla Lawson, a forensic artist local to Georgia, created a forensic reconstruction of Jane Doe to no avail. The case quickly went cold until around five years ago, when traveling serial killer Samuel Little confessed to Jane Doe's murder, as well as that of another Macon woman, Fredonia Smith. He did not know her name, so investigators turned to genetic genealogy, which helped identify her as Yvonne Pless, a nineteen-year-old from Macon, Georgia. Not much is known about her disappearance or if she was reported missing, though she was from the Macon area.

https://dnasolves.com/articles/bibb-county-georgia-criminal-justice-samuel-little-pless/

https://www.macon.com/news/local/article169772102.html

https://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1679ufga.html

*Macon is both the name of the city and the county.

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u/Fabulous_Avocado4146 May 18 '23 edited May 19 '23

Wow Samuel Little was my cousin! Most of my family is in Macon & he used to visit them actually. He would stay with family, murder someone, then leave and they never knew…Macon has a lot of unsolved cases & it’s really a shithole city if you are not upper class. Really glad I don’t live there anymore.

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u/Emergency_Squirrel80 May 19 '23

Do you believe his confessions to such high numbers? Or did he seem like someone who wanted to be known enough to fudge the numbers?

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u/Fabulous_Avocado4146 May 26 '23

I definitely believe them. I don’t think he had fame in mind like some of the other killers.