A woman whose body was dumped in Grove City in 1981 is thought by investigators to be a victim of Samuel Little, who claims to be the most prolific serial killer in American history.

Grove City Police detectives interviewed Little last year in Odessa, Texas, about the death of Anna Stewart, a 32-year-old Cincinnati woman whose body was found there more than 37 years ago, Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien said Wednesday.

O'Brien said he has been appointed special prosecutor by Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters to assist in prosecuting the case in Hamilton County.

Stewart was reported missing from Cincinnati on Oct. 6, 1981. Her body was discovered seven days later on Queen Ann Place off Sonora Drive, east of Hoover Road. Investigators think Little killed Stewart in Cincinnati and dumped the body in Grove City on the way to Lorain, his hometown in northeastern Ohio, O'Brien said.

He declined to say whether Little has admitted to Stewart's death, but Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael C. O'Malley said Monday that Little has confessed to killing five Ohio women, including two from the Cleveland area. Little was indicted in those two cases by a Cuyahoga County grand jury last week.

Little, who turns 79 on Friday, is serving three consecutive life sentences in California, where in 2014 he was convicted of murdering two women in 1987 and one in 1989. He had been linked to the cold cases, all in Los Angeles, through DNA.

Although he professed his innocence at the time of his conviction, Little has since confessed to more than 90 murders across the United States from 1970 to the late 1990s. One of the confessions led to a guilty plea in December to a 1996 murder in Odessa, Texas, and another life sentence. It was while incarcerated in Odessa that he spoke with Grove City detectives.

The FBI announced in November 2018 that its Violent Apprehension Program team had been able to confirm 34 of Little's confessions and was continuing to investigate the others.

jfutty@dispatch.com

@johnfutty