Rose Evans was 32 when she was murdered in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 24, 1991. Little reportedly encountered Evans near East 55th Street and Central Avenue, offered her a ride, then drove her to a vacant lot near East 39th Street where he strangled her in his car and covered her body with two tires. A passerby found her remains the next morning, and the case remained unsolved for years.

Evans’ family could not afford a burial; she was cremated and her ashes kept in a box for about a decade before being scattered in a creek. Decades later authorities linked her death to Samuel Little. In 2019 Little pleaded guilty to the murders of Evans and another Cleveland woman, Mary Jo Peyton, and received two consecutive life terms without parole. Evans’ killing is described as part of Little’s pattern of targeting marginalized women and using strangulation, a method that left little forensic evidence.