August 6, 2019 • 27 mins
Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins Jr. successfully committed one of the most audacious and brutal attacks ever attempted while on death row – and he did it from the confines of his own cell.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the authors and participants and do not necessarily
represent those of I Heart Media, Stuff Media, or its employees.
Listener discretion is advised from my Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV.
Monster presents Insomniac. I'm Scott Benjamin and everything I'm about
(00:26):
to tell you is real. This is Insomniac. It was
now the early nineteen seventies. Donald Henry pee Wee Gaskins Jr.
Was still killing for recreation to satisfy his bothers emerges,
but now he had moved on to something new. In
(00:48):
addition to his recreational kills, Peewee was now committing a
different type of murder altogether. He was killing people he knew,
or even those that were related to him for personal reasons.
He called these his serious murders, and he handled them
in an entirely different way. Peewee was known to keep
(01:12):
his coastal kills alive for an extended period of time,
in fact, keeping them alive as long as possible, cruelly
torturing them in a variety of ways. Before killing them.
He would mutilate, stab, suffocate, and according to Gaskins would
(01:33):
even eat some of his victims. You'll find graphic descriptions
of these acts and his autobiography Final Truth. By at
age two, pee Wee claimed to have killed over eighty
young girls and boys he found along the Carolina highways,
and that number was still growing. His first serious murder
(01:59):
victims were taken in November of nineteen seventy his niece,
fifteen year old Janice Kirby and her friend, seventeen year
old Patricia Ann Alsbrook, both of Sumter, South Carolina. He
was angry with them for attempting to run away from home,
(02:19):
and when he found them, both girls were high on
some sort of drug or possibly drunk. He offered the
two girls a ride home from the bar where he
found them, but instead drove them to an abandoned tenant house.
There he raped, beat, and drowned the girls in separate locations. Typically,
(02:43):
there was no torture or mutilation involved in his serious murders. Instead,
Gaskins would typically shoot his victims and then bury the
bodies around South Carolina's coastal areas. In the years to follow,
his other serious murder victims would be killed for a
variety of reasons. If anyone mocked Peewee, he'd killed them.
(03:07):
If anyone attempted to blackmail him, he'd killed them. If
someone owed him money or if they stole from him,
that was another reason to kill. It was also known
among others in town, particularly his criminal associates, that Peewee
could be paid to kill someone. In the year Peewee
(03:36):
Gaskins pulled off what many thought to be an impossible murder.
Another inmate on death row named Pop told Peewee that
there was a man on the outside that had good
money and good connections and he wanted a romance shanked.
His name was Tony Simo, and he was looking for revenge.
The Roman was Rudolph Tyner, and he had killed both
(04:00):
of Semo's parents during the hold up of a little
store they owned. Tyner was caught on the scene and
sentenced to death by electric chair in the state of
South Carolina. Seemo was tired of waiting for Tyner's many
appeals to be heard or the possibility of a sentence
being overturned or commuted to life, so we decided to
hire a man on the inside, another death row inmate,
(04:21):
to kill Tyner as soon as possible and That's how
Tony Siemo was introduced to Peewee Gaskins. Because security was
so tight and the condemned inmates were kept in solitary confinement,
a death row murder by another inmate was virtually impossible,
so this one would take a lot of planning and
(04:42):
time to lay the groundwork. Peewee studied his prey by
getting his hands on Tyner's prison file and finding out
from the kitchen trustees what kind of foods and drinks
Tiner ordered. He then started to gain Tyner's trust by
having drugs delivered to his cell, marijuana, heroin, pills of
all kinds, whatever he could get his hands on. That
(05:07):
progressed to visits with Tyner. Since pee Wee could prepare
almost anything, He was initially asked to repair a leaking
pipe in Tyner's cell, and the two began a conversation.
After that, Tyner would intentionally break the pipe over and
over just to he and pee Wee could talk while
the repairs were made. The two even discovered they could
(05:28):
talk between their cells via shared heating duct. Once he
had gained Tyner's trust, pee Wee began to put his
plan into action. He made several attempts to kill Tyner
by slipping poison into his food and drinks whenever he
had the opportunity, poison provided by Tony Simo. The poison,
(05:49):
which Seemo described as strong enough to kill a horse,
was not enough to take down Tyner. After five failed attempts,
with each one of them merely making Tyner ill but
not even sick enough to be sent to the infirmary,
pe We had enough of the poison and told Tony
Siemo that he needed something stronger. He needed explosives. Tony
(06:15):
Siemo was able to smuggle in or to have smuggled
in for him. Everything pe We needed a piece of
C four plastic explosive about the size of a baseball,
a length of electrical wire, and screw connectors and plugs
he needed to set it off. All of this was
(06:36):
brought in piece by piece and delivered to pee Wee
in his cell. He claimed he had helped from prison
officials to make this happen, but that was never proven.
On his next visit to Tyner's cell, pee Wee told
him that he had found a way that they could
communicate easier between their cells. He would rig up an
electric homemade telephone using speakers made of plastic cups from
(07:00):
the mess hall, similar to the ones made by kids
using tin cans and string, but instead of making a speaker,
pee Wee stuffed the bottom of the cup with the explosive,
covered it with speaker cloth, and had it delivered to Tyner.
Pee we then lowered the power chord through the shared
heating duct into Tiner's cell and instructed him to connect
(07:23):
the two wires to the screws in the bottom of
the cup. The two had earlier planned a specific time
to test the communication device, where Tyner would say loud
and clear into the speaker, this is Tyner over to you,
and then put the device up to his ear to
hear the response. At the agreed upon time, pee Wee
(07:45):
listened through the ductwork for Tyner to say the phrase
pee we waited just long enough for Tyner to move
the cup to his ear, and he plugged in his
end of the power chord. The explosion shook the entire
cell block. M Peewee then pulled the end of the
power cord back into his own cell, coiled it up
(08:06):
under his mattress to dispose of later, and then joined
the rest of the inmates on the tier, asking what
had just happened. Tyner was dead, there was no doubt
about that, but Peewee didn't get to see the gory
(08:27):
result of his efforts, at least not on that day.
At his resulting trial, pee Wee was able to see
the crime scene photos of Tyner's body in his cell,
As pee Wee said in his book, there was bits
and pieces of him stuck all over the walls and
ceiling and floor. Peewee had accomplished the impossible, the murder
(08:50):
of another death row inmate, and he had gone about
it in a way that no one ever imagined he could.
The jury handed down a guilty verdict for Peewee and
for Tony Simo too. Pee Wee was given the death penalty,
and Simo received a sentence for twenty five years in prison,
but was eligible for parole after just thirty months. Pee
(09:11):
Wee didn't feel justice was properly served in his case.
Instead of being sentenced to die in the electric chair,
pee Wee said that he felt he should have been
paid for killing Tyner, as he put it, for doing
the state's job, since they was going to murder him theyselves.
If I hadn't got to him first, following the November
(09:36):
murder of his niece and her friend. Gaskin's next serious
murder was a twenty year old named Martha Dix. Pee
Wee had discovered she was the one who had sold
his niece the drugs. Dix was attracted to pee Wee
and often hung around him at his part time job
at a car repair shop, but apparently pee Wee didn't
feel the same attraction. He killed her with a strong
(10:00):
us of acid he had stolen from a photographer. He
poured it into a Coca cola and she unknowingly ingested
the fatal dose. The acid worked fast, and she died
a relatively quick but painful death right in front of
him in Another young woman who considered Gascons a friend
(10:20):
was twenty three year old Doren Dempsey. Doreen was a
mother of a two year old baby girl named Robin Michelle,
and she was pregnant with a second child at the time.
She felt comfortable enough around Peewee to accept a ride
to the bus station, after all, pee Wee was an
old friend. Instead, Gascon's drover to a secluded wooded area,
(10:45):
raped and killed her in the backseat of his Hearse
and then raped and sodomised two year old Robin Michelle
before killing her too. Peewee provided a graphic description of
this pair of rapes and murders in his book, and
the details are as as horrific as you might imagine. Again,
this book isn't for everyone. At the time, no one
(11:08):
suspected pee Wee Gaskins was capable of such statistic killings,
but word was getting around about Peewee, and there were
a few people in town who knew that he would
do it if the price was right. In a year
that pee Wee would later call his killingist year, Gaskins
(11:28):
got a little careless and murdered three people whose van
had broken down on the side of the highway. Gaskins
suddenly found himself in need of a favor. He needed
help getting rid of the trio's van, and he enlisted
the help of an ex con, Walter Neely. Neely and
Gaskins went about their own criminal business, but would occasionally
(11:49):
help out each other if they were in need of
some sort of assistance disposing of stolen cars, stolen goods,
and occasionally bodies. Also in Peewee was hired by Suzanne
Kipper Owens to kill a man by the name of
Silas Barnwell Yates. He was her ex boyfriend. Yates was
(12:13):
a wealthy farmer in Florence County, South Carolina. Gaskins and
a pair of accomplices were successful in kidnapping and murdering Yates,
and he collected the one thousand, five hundred dollars Susan
Owens had promised him. But things went wrong soon after,
and Peewee realized that he had to kill two additional
(12:35):
people to cover up the Yates murder. His accomplices were
twenty nine year old Diane Neely and thirty five year
old Avery Howard. Diane Neely was the wife of Walter Neely,
and she and Howard an ex con we're having an affair.
(12:55):
The pair attempted to blackmail Gaskins for five thousand dollars
in hush money after assisting in the abduction and murder
of Silas Yates. The two were quickly killed by Gaskins
after they agreed to meet Peewee at the payoff location.
In the meantime, Gaskins was busy killing and torturing more
(13:17):
coastal kills as well as other people. He knew, including
a thirteen year old named Kim Gilkins, who sexually rejected him.
All leads in the investigation of the disappearance of Kim
Gelkins pointed to Gaskins, but there was nobody yet, so
there was no arrest. The authorities eventually did find evidence
(13:41):
implicating Peewee, so he was indicted for contributing to the
delinquency of a miner and kept in jail until his trial.
Walter Neely was also being held, but during that time
he began to speak with a local preacher and they
began to pray together. They prayed for forgiveness, and when
(14:03):
Walter Neely was ready to confess his sins to God,
he was also ready to speak to the authorities. Neely
claimed he saw Gaskins killed two young men, twenty eight
year old Dennis Bellamy and fifteen year old Johnny Knight.
He also said Gaskins told him about other kills additional
(14:25):
folks that have been reported as missing over the past
few years. Nearly said he even knew where Gaskins had
buried the bodies. Soon after, in December of nineteen, Walter
Neely followed through in his word and took police out
of Prospect, South Carolina, where Peewee owned property. It was
(14:45):
there police found eight more dead bodies. By the time
of peewee scheduled execution, he had been sitting on South
Carolina his death row for nearly a decade. In that time,
he witnessed a lot of men slowly make their way
(15:06):
to the electric chair, and as he waited his own turn,
he learned a lot about the process. In fact, he
learned everything about the process. The introduction section of Final Truth,
Peewee's book shows he knew exactly what to expect him
the day he was scheduled to die. According to Peewee,
(15:30):
this is how his final day would go. First, the
warden would move him to a new building called the
Capital Punishment Facility, also known as the Death House, and
he would be locked in a cell right next to
the death chamber, the room that contained the electric chair. Well.
There he would have twenty four hour guards supervision to
(15:52):
make sure he didn't attempt to kill himself or take
any drugs to help ease the pain of the execution
in any way. On the day prior to his execution,
he would place an order for his final meal, which
pee Wee thought might be pizza, a strange thought since
he didn't even like pizza, but he was pretty sure
(16:13):
he wouldn't be able to eat it anyway. He would
be allowed to take a final shower, and that's when
the guards would shave his head as well as the
calf on his right leg. Then he would be given
a clean, new green prison uniform for the occasion. Soon after,
the prison chapelain would stop by his cell to speak
(16:34):
with him and to see if he had any final
confessions to make. Then there was time to write, maybe
a couple of letters, or talk to his daughter on
the phone one last time, but the rest of the
time would be spent just waiting, waiting for the time
when they would lead him into the death chamber around
midnight on the night he was to die. In his cell,
(16:57):
the paramedics would instruct him to empty his bladder and
his bowels, and then they would begin to prepare him
for the chair. A rubber band would be tightly wrapped
around his penis, and cotton balls would be forced up
his rectum so that he didn't urinate and defecate all
over himself in the chair. When the electricity began flowing
through his body. After he was dressed once again, prison
(17:22):
guards would lead him into the chamber, where they would
sit him down in the sturdy, old oak chair and
secure a leather strap around his waist as well as
over his lap and around his wrists and ankles so
he wouldn't arch up from the seat as a result
of the lethal current. A wet electrode would be taped
to his right calf in the place where they had
shaved earlier. Two guards would then tilt his head back
(17:46):
and strap it in place well. A third guard would
fit the metal headpiece, make an adjustments to the wet
sponge in the electrode at the top to ensure its
position just right to send the first charge of electricity
directly to the center of his rain. A black hood
would then be positioned over his head so the witnesses
couldn't see exactly what happens to his face. When the
(18:09):
garden charge was sure that everything was just right, he
would signal the warden, who would then turned the key
on the power panel. Three buttons on the panel will
light up, but only one of the buttons is wired
to actually deliver the death charge. Three men will simultaneously
push one button each and that way, none of them
(18:29):
knows who actually pushed the button that killed the inmate
in the chair. The power sent to the chair is
controlled automatically, so it delivers an exact charge for an
exact amount of time. The first is a five second
charge that delivers two thousand volts at five amps. That's
(18:51):
followed by a second surge of one thousand volts for
eight seconds. Here's how Peewee describes the moment he would
received the shock. In the first three seconds after the
buttons are pushed, my brain will be fried, my eyeballs
will explode, the blood of my arteries and veins will boil.
(19:14):
Then my lungs and guts will be cooked, and my
leg will be charred where the current comes out, like
my skull will be charged where it went in. The
theory is I won't feel anything but that first zapp
I damn sure hope the theory is right. After a
doctor rules Peewee dead, the prison official will issue a
(19:35):
statement to the press and public to say the sentence
was carried out. The guards will then wait until all
witnesses have exited the execution chamber before we removing the
black hood and prying the metal headpiece off of his
charred scalp. The next step for Peewee's body will be
the prison Morgue, where he will be subjected to an
(19:57):
autopsy to determine the cause of death. As Peewee said,
like it might could be something besides electrocution. It was
(20:18):
a Sunday night, and it was my first time taking
this particular prescription, an extended release sleeping pill. Turns out
it didn't mix well with my other medication. I lost Monday.
I don't remember waking up, I don't remember getting dressed.
I certainly don't remember driving. What I do remember is
(20:43):
arriving home Monday night, still in a daze, and falling
asleep almost immediately on the couch. I lost most of
Tuesday too. It wasn't until after my two hour commute
home that I noticed that the right front of my
car was damaged. M I don't know when or where,
(21:04):
but I had hit something hard, panic said in immediately.
I didn't know if I had hit another car. That
was bad enough. But then the thought came into my
head that I might not have hit something, but rather someone,
and that really made me worry. I didn't know what
(21:27):
I was gonna do or how or even where to
begin searching for whatever or whoever I had hit. Unlike
my nightmares, it wasn't something I had imagined. The damage
I was looking at was real. By the time I
(21:48):
was able to clear my head, it was Wednesday morning.
I looked at the missing trim pieces and the scratch
bumper and realized they were made by something very abrasive.
Brakes are concrete and probably not another vehicle, but I
didn't know for sure. I drove through the parking structure
that morning, slower than I ever had before, searching for
(22:11):
a car truck that had matching damage, a vehicle with
a new dent and tell tale blue paint scuffs that
matched my own. I was ready to write a note
of apology to the car's owner and except blame. And
that's when I saw it. As I drove up to
my usual level, I saw an all new mark on
the concrete wall ahead, a heavy black scuff mark with
(22:33):
dark blue paint streaks on either side. I stopped my
car just inches from the wall. The height of the scrape,
the color of the paint transfer, it all matched perfectly.
This was it, and I felt instant relief, knowing that
I hadn't hurt anyone else in my confusion. I had
simply brushed the wall two days earlier while making a
(22:56):
sharp left turn, and I never even realized it. I
was lucky this time, real lucky. The damage to my
car is still there, of course, and it's a daily
reminder to me that medications aren't the best way out
of this mess that I'm in. So what's better being
exhausted all the time and just dealing with it. We're
(23:18):
taking pills to help me sleep and then losing control
of my actions while forgetting several days in a row.
I stopped taking that medication. It's not worth the risk.
Timing is everything, and it seemed like Peewee was going
(23:38):
to dodge a bullet. On April, Peewee Gaskins was charged
with eight counts of murder, and he was also a
suspect and as many as thirty nine at this point,
just shy of A month later on a jury found
both Peewee Gaskins and Walter Neely guilty in the murder
(24:00):
of a man named Dennis Bellamy, and both were sentenced
to death. However, the sentence wouldn't stick because in November
the same year, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled South
Carolina's death penalty as unconstitutional. Both sentences were commuted to
life in prison, Still technically sitting on death row, but
(24:25):
no longer awaiting his date in the electric chair. Peewee
could have lived out his remaining years in prison. However,
in the following year, the death penalty ruled by the U. S.
Supreme Court was reversed, so it was legal once again
in the state of South Carolina. At the time, this
(24:48):
meant little to the already spared Gaskins, that is, until
he was found guilty of murdering fellow death row prisoner
Rudolph Tyner in Well in his cell and once again
awaiting a scheduled execution date, Peewee told his life story
to a journalist named Wilton Earl, who in turn wrote
(25:08):
The Condemned Man's Memoirs, who agreed upon the plan of
publishing Pewee's book in his own words after his execution.
At that point in his life, Peewee had nothing to
lose and nothing to hide, so it's an extremely graphic,
unfiltered look back at his entire life, including the neglect, abuse,
(25:33):
and countless rapes he endured as well as the rapes, mutilation,
and torture murders he inflicted on others. Peewee's book was
published a year after his execution on May one. An
audio cassette was included with the book when it was
initially released, and it contained excerpts from some of the
(25:56):
interviews the author recorded with Peewee imprison. Copies of the
original are very rare, but you can still find copies
of the recordings online. To hear Pewee's nightmares stories told
in his own voice is unsettling to say. The least
(26:17):
man will do so. I don't believe you will be
out stas mark. You kill somebody, but we don't give
you a borld. Brace yourself because what's next. I don't
even like to talk about. It's one of the most
horrific stories I've ever encountered Houston, Texas in the early
(26:42):
nineteen seventies and especially shocking story of power, manipulation and brutality.
Next Time on Insomniac and somni Acc is a production
of I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV, written and hosted
(27:04):
by Scott Benjamin and produced by Miranda Hawkins, Alex Williams,
Matt Frederick, and Josh Thain. Music composed by Makeup and Vanity,
set and cover by Trevor Eisler. Follow on Twitter and
Facebook at Insomniac Pod, on Instagram at Insomniac Podcast, and
at our website insomniac podcast dot com. For more podcasts
(27:26):
for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the authors and participants and do not necessarily
represent those of I Heart Media, Stuff Media, or its employees.
Listener discretion is advised from my Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV.
Monster presents Insomniac. I'm Scott Benjamin and everything I'm about
(00:26):
to tell you is real. This is Insomniac. It was
now the early nineteen seventies. Donald Henry pee Wee Gaskins Jr.
Was still killing for recreation to satisfy his bothers emerges,
but now he had moved on to something new. In
(00:48):
addition to his recreational kills, Peewee was now committing a
different type of murder altogether. He was killing people he knew,
or even those that were related to him for personal reasons.
He called these his serious murders, and he handled them
in an entirely different way. Peewee was known to keep
(01:12):
his coastal kills alive for an extended period of time,
in fact, keeping them alive as long as possible, cruelly
torturing them in a variety of ways. Before killing them.
He would mutilate, stab, suffocate, and according to Gaskins would
(01:33):
even eat some of his victims. You'll find graphic descriptions
of these acts and his autobiography Final Truth. By at
age two, pee Wee claimed to have killed over eighty
young girls and boys he found along the Carolina highways,
and that number was still growing. His first serious murder
(01:59):
victims were taken in November of nineteen seventy his niece,
fifteen year old Janice Kirby and her friend, seventeen year
old Patricia Ann Alsbrook, both of Sumter, South Carolina. He
was angry with them for attempting to run away from home,
(02:19):
and when he found them, both girls were high on
some sort of drug or possibly drunk. He offered the
two girls a ride home from the bar where he
found them, but instead drove them to an abandoned tenant house.
There he raped, beat, and drowned the girls in separate locations. Typically,
(02:43):
there was no torture or mutilation involved in his serious murders. Instead,
Gaskins would typically shoot his victims and then bury the
bodies around South Carolina's coastal areas. In the years to follow,
his other serious murder victims would be killed for a
variety of reasons. If anyone mocked Peewee, he'd killed them.
(03:07):
If anyone attempted to blackmail him, he'd killed them. If
someone owed him money or if they stole from him,
that was another reason to kill. It was also known
among others in town, particularly his criminal associates, that Peewee
could be paid to kill someone. In the year Peewee
(03:36):
Gaskins pulled off what many thought to be an impossible murder.
Another inmate on death row named Pop told Peewee that
there was a man on the outside that had good
money and good connections and he wanted a romance shanked.
His name was Tony Simo, and he was looking for revenge.
The Roman was Rudolph Tyner, and he had killed both
(04:00):
of Semo's parents during the hold up of a little
store they owned. Tyner was caught on the scene and
sentenced to death by electric chair in the state of
South Carolina. Seemo was tired of waiting for Tyner's many
appeals to be heard or the possibility of a sentence
being overturned or commuted to life, so we decided to
hire a man on the inside, another death row inmate,
(04:21):
to kill Tyner as soon as possible and That's how
Tony Siemo was introduced to Peewee Gaskins. Because security was
so tight and the condemned inmates were kept in solitary confinement,
a death row murder by another inmate was virtually impossible,
so this one would take a lot of planning and
(04:42):
time to lay the groundwork. Peewee studied his prey by
getting his hands on Tyner's prison file and finding out
from the kitchen trustees what kind of foods and drinks
Tiner ordered. He then started to gain Tyner's trust by
having drugs delivered to his cell, marijuana, heroin, pills of
all kinds, whatever he could get his hands on. That
(05:07):
progressed to visits with Tyner. Since pee Wee could prepare
almost anything, He was initially asked to repair a leaking
pipe in Tyner's cell, and the two began a conversation.
After that, Tyner would intentionally break the pipe over and
over just to he and pee Wee could talk while
the repairs were made. The two even discovered they could
(05:28):
talk between their cells via shared heating duct. Once he
had gained Tyner's trust, pee Wee began to put his
plan into action. He made several attempts to kill Tyner
by slipping poison into his food and drinks whenever he
had the opportunity, poison provided by Tony Simo. The poison,
(05:49):
which Seemo described as strong enough to kill a horse,
was not enough to take down Tyner. After five failed attempts,
with each one of them merely making Tyner ill but
not even sick enough to be sent to the infirmary,
pe We had enough of the poison and told Tony
Siemo that he needed something stronger. He needed explosives. Tony
(06:15):
Siemo was able to smuggle in or to have smuggled
in for him. Everything pe We needed a piece of
C four plastic explosive about the size of a baseball,
a length of electrical wire, and screw connectors and plugs
he needed to set it off. All of this was
(06:36):
brought in piece by piece and delivered to pee Wee
in his cell. He claimed he had helped from prison
officials to make this happen, but that was never proven.
On his next visit to Tyner's cell, pee Wee told
him that he had found a way that they could
communicate easier between their cells. He would rig up an
electric homemade telephone using speakers made of plastic cups from
(07:00):
the mess hall, similar to the ones made by kids
using tin cans and string, but instead of making a speaker,
pee Wee stuffed the bottom of the cup with the explosive,
covered it with speaker cloth, and had it delivered to Tyner.
Pee we then lowered the power chord through the shared
heating duct into Tiner's cell and instructed him to connect
(07:23):
the two wires to the screws in the bottom of
the cup. The two had earlier planned a specific time
to test the communication device, where Tyner would say loud
and clear into the speaker, this is Tyner over to you,
and then put the device up to his ear to
hear the response. At the agreed upon time, pee Wee
(07:45):
listened through the ductwork for Tyner to say the phrase
pee we waited just long enough for Tyner to move
the cup to his ear, and he plugged in his
end of the power chord. The explosion shook the entire
cell block. M Peewee then pulled the end of the
power cord back into his own cell, coiled it up
(08:06):
under his mattress to dispose of later, and then joined
the rest of the inmates on the tier, asking what
had just happened. Tyner was dead, there was no doubt
about that, but Peewee didn't get to see the gory
(08:27):
result of his efforts, at least not on that day.
At his resulting trial, pee Wee was able to see
the crime scene photos of Tyner's body in his cell,
As pee Wee said in his book, there was bits
and pieces of him stuck all over the walls and
ceiling and floor. Peewee had accomplished the impossible, the murder
(08:50):
of another death row inmate, and he had gone about
it in a way that no one ever imagined he could.
The jury handed down a guilty verdict for Peewee and
for Tony Simo too. Pee Wee was given the death penalty,
and Simo received a sentence for twenty five years in prison,
but was eligible for parole after just thirty months. Pee
(09:11):
Wee didn't feel justice was properly served in his case.
Instead of being sentenced to die in the electric chair,
pee Wee said that he felt he should have been
paid for killing Tyner, as he put it, for doing
the state's job, since they was going to murder him theyselves.
If I hadn't got to him first, following the November
(09:36):
murder of his niece and her friend. Gaskin's next serious
murder was a twenty year old named Martha Dix. Pee
Wee had discovered she was the one who had sold
his niece the drugs. Dix was attracted to pee Wee
and often hung around him at his part time job
at a car repair shop, but apparently pee Wee didn't
feel the same attraction. He killed her with a strong
(10:00):
us of acid he had stolen from a photographer. He
poured it into a Coca cola and she unknowingly ingested
the fatal dose. The acid worked fast, and she died
a relatively quick but painful death right in front of
him in Another young woman who considered Gascons a friend
(10:20):
was twenty three year old Doren Dempsey. Doreen was a
mother of a two year old baby girl named Robin Michelle,
and she was pregnant with a second child at the time.
She felt comfortable enough around Peewee to accept a ride
to the bus station, after all, pee Wee was an
old friend. Instead, Gascon's drover to a secluded wooded area,
(10:45):
raped and killed her in the backseat of his Hearse
and then raped and sodomised two year old Robin Michelle
before killing her too. Peewee provided a graphic description of
this pair of rapes and murders in his book, and
the details are as as horrific as you might imagine. Again,
this book isn't for everyone. At the time, no one
(11:08):
suspected pee Wee Gaskins was capable of such statistic killings,
but word was getting around about Peewee, and there were
a few people in town who knew that he would
do it if the price was right. In a year
that pee Wee would later call his killingist year, Gaskins
(11:28):
got a little careless and murdered three people whose van
had broken down on the side of the highway. Gaskins
suddenly found himself in need of a favor. He needed
help getting rid of the trio's van, and he enlisted
the help of an ex con, Walter Neely. Neely and
Gaskins went about their own criminal business, but would occasionally
(11:49):
help out each other if they were in need of
some sort of assistance disposing of stolen cars, stolen goods,
and occasionally bodies. Also in Peewee was hired by Suzanne
Kipper Owens to kill a man by the name of
Silas Barnwell Yates. He was her ex boyfriend. Yates was
(12:13):
a wealthy farmer in Florence County, South Carolina. Gaskins and
a pair of accomplices were successful in kidnapping and murdering Yates,
and he collected the one thousand, five hundred dollars Susan
Owens had promised him. But things went wrong soon after,
and Peewee realized that he had to kill two additional
(12:35):
people to cover up the Yates murder. His accomplices were
twenty nine year old Diane Neely and thirty five year
old Avery Howard. Diane Neely was the wife of Walter Neely,
and she and Howard an ex con we're having an affair.
(12:55):
The pair attempted to blackmail Gaskins for five thousand dollars
in hush money after assisting in the abduction and murder
of Silas Yates. The two were quickly killed by Gaskins
after they agreed to meet Peewee at the payoff location.
In the meantime, Gaskins was busy killing and torturing more
(13:17):
coastal kills as well as other people. He knew, including
a thirteen year old named Kim Gilkins, who sexually rejected him.
All leads in the investigation of the disappearance of Kim
Gelkins pointed to Gaskins, but there was nobody yet, so
there was no arrest. The authorities eventually did find evidence
(13:41):
implicating Peewee, so he was indicted for contributing to the
delinquency of a miner and kept in jail until his trial.
Walter Neely was also being held, but during that time
he began to speak with a local preacher and they
began to pray together. They prayed for forgiveness, and when
(14:03):
Walter Neely was ready to confess his sins to God,
he was also ready to speak to the authorities. Neely
claimed he saw Gaskins killed two young men, twenty eight
year old Dennis Bellamy and fifteen year old Johnny Knight.
He also said Gaskins told him about other kills additional
(14:25):
folks that have been reported as missing over the past
few years. Nearly said he even knew where Gaskins had
buried the bodies. Soon after, in December of nineteen, Walter
Neely followed through in his word and took police out
of Prospect, South Carolina, where Peewee owned property. It was
(14:45):
there police found eight more dead bodies. By the time
of peewee scheduled execution, he had been sitting on South
Carolina his death row for nearly a decade. In that time,
he witnessed a lot of men slowly make their way
(15:06):
to the electric chair, and as he waited his own turn,
he learned a lot about the process. In fact, he
learned everything about the process. The introduction section of Final Truth,
Peewee's book shows he knew exactly what to expect him
the day he was scheduled to die. According to Peewee,
(15:30):
this is how his final day would go. First, the
warden would move him to a new building called the
Capital Punishment Facility, also known as the Death House, and
he would be locked in a cell right next to
the death chamber, the room that contained the electric chair. Well.
There he would have twenty four hour guards supervision to
(15:52):
make sure he didn't attempt to kill himself or take
any drugs to help ease the pain of the execution
in any way. On the day prior to his execution,
he would place an order for his final meal, which
pee Wee thought might be pizza, a strange thought since
he didn't even like pizza, but he was pretty sure
(16:13):
he wouldn't be able to eat it anyway. He would
be allowed to take a final shower, and that's when
the guards would shave his head as well as the
calf on his right leg. Then he would be given
a clean, new green prison uniform for the occasion. Soon after,
the prison chapelain would stop by his cell to speak
(16:34):
with him and to see if he had any final
confessions to make. Then there was time to write, maybe
a couple of letters, or talk to his daughter on
the phone one last time, but the rest of the
time would be spent just waiting, waiting for the time
when they would lead him into the death chamber around
midnight on the night he was to die. In his cell,
(16:57):
the paramedics would instruct him to empty his bladder and
his bowels, and then they would begin to prepare him
for the chair. A rubber band would be tightly wrapped
around his penis, and cotton balls would be forced up
his rectum so that he didn't urinate and defecate all
over himself in the chair. When the electricity began flowing
through his body. After he was dressed once again, prison
(17:22):
guards would lead him into the chamber, where they would
sit him down in the sturdy, old oak chair and
secure a leather strap around his waist as well as
over his lap and around his wrists and ankles so
he wouldn't arch up from the seat as a result
of the lethal current. A wet electrode would be taped
to his right calf in the place where they had
shaved earlier. Two guards would then tilt his head back
(17:46):
and strap it in place well. A third guard would
fit the metal headpiece, make an adjustments to the wet
sponge in the electrode at the top to ensure its
position just right to send the first charge of electricity
directly to the center of his rain. A black hood
would then be positioned over his head so the witnesses
couldn't see exactly what happens to his face. When the
(18:09):
garden charge was sure that everything was just right, he
would signal the warden, who would then turned the key
on the power panel. Three buttons on the panel will
light up, but only one of the buttons is wired
to actually deliver the death charge. Three men will simultaneously
push one button each and that way, none of them
(18:29):
knows who actually pushed the button that killed the inmate
in the chair. The power sent to the chair is
controlled automatically, so it delivers an exact charge for an
exact amount of time. The first is a five second
charge that delivers two thousand volts at five amps. That's
(18:51):
followed by a second surge of one thousand volts for
eight seconds. Here's how Peewee describes the moment he would
received the shock. In the first three seconds after the
buttons are pushed, my brain will be fried, my eyeballs
will explode, the blood of my arteries and veins will boil.
(19:14):
Then my lungs and guts will be cooked, and my
leg will be charred where the current comes out, like
my skull will be charged where it went in. The
theory is I won't feel anything but that first zapp
I damn sure hope the theory is right. After a
doctor rules Peewee dead, the prison official will issue a
(19:35):
statement to the press and public to say the sentence
was carried out. The guards will then wait until all
witnesses have exited the execution chamber before we removing the
black hood and prying the metal headpiece off of his
charred scalp. The next step for Peewee's body will be
the prison Morgue, where he will be subjected to an
(19:57):
autopsy to determine the cause of death. As Peewee said,
like it might could be something besides electrocution. It was
(20:18):
a Sunday night, and it was my first time taking
this particular prescription, an extended release sleeping pill. Turns out
it didn't mix well with my other medication. I lost Monday.
I don't remember waking up, I don't remember getting dressed.
I certainly don't remember driving. What I do remember is
(20:43):
arriving home Monday night, still in a daze, and falling
asleep almost immediately on the couch. I lost most of
Tuesday too. It wasn't until after my two hour commute
home that I noticed that the right front of my
car was damaged. M I don't know when or where,
(21:04):
but I had hit something hard, panic said in immediately.
I didn't know if I had hit another car. That
was bad enough. But then the thought came into my
head that I might not have hit something, but rather someone,
and that really made me worry. I didn't know what
(21:27):
I was gonna do or how or even where to
begin searching for whatever or whoever I had hit. Unlike
my nightmares, it wasn't something I had imagined. The damage
I was looking at was real. By the time I
(21:48):
was able to clear my head, it was Wednesday morning.
I looked at the missing trim pieces and the scratch
bumper and realized they were made by something very abrasive.
Brakes are concrete and probably not another vehicle, but I
didn't know for sure. I drove through the parking structure
that morning, slower than I ever had before, searching for
(22:11):
a car truck that had matching damage, a vehicle with
a new dent and tell tale blue paint scuffs that
matched my own. I was ready to write a note
of apology to the car's owner and except blame. And
that's when I saw it. As I drove up to
my usual level, I saw an all new mark on
the concrete wall ahead, a heavy black scuff mark with
(22:33):
dark blue paint streaks on either side. I stopped my
car just inches from the wall. The height of the scrape,
the color of the paint transfer, it all matched perfectly.
This was it, and I felt instant relief, knowing that
I hadn't hurt anyone else in my confusion. I had
simply brushed the wall two days earlier while making a
(22:56):
sharp left turn, and I never even realized it. I
was lucky this time, real lucky. The damage to my
car is still there, of course, and it's a daily
reminder to me that medications aren't the best way out
of this mess that I'm in. So what's better being
exhausted all the time and just dealing with it. We're
(23:18):
taking pills to help me sleep and then losing control
of my actions while forgetting several days in a row.
I stopped taking that medication. It's not worth the risk.
Timing is everything, and it seemed like Peewee was going
(23:38):
to dodge a bullet. On April, Peewee Gaskins was charged
with eight counts of murder, and he was also a
suspect and as many as thirty nine at this point,
just shy of A month later on a jury found
both Peewee Gaskins and Walter Neely guilty in the murder
(24:00):
of a man named Dennis Bellamy, and both were sentenced
to death. However, the sentence wouldn't stick because in November
the same year, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled South
Carolina's death penalty as unconstitutional. Both sentences were commuted to
life in prison, Still technically sitting on death row, but
(24:25):
no longer awaiting his date in the electric chair. Peewee
could have lived out his remaining years in prison. However,
in the following year, the death penalty ruled by the U. S.
Supreme Court was reversed, so it was legal once again
in the state of South Carolina. At the time, this
(24:48):
meant little to the already spared Gaskins, that is, until
he was found guilty of murdering fellow death row prisoner
Rudolph Tyner in Well in his cell and once again
awaiting a scheduled execution date, Peewee told his life story
to a journalist named Wilton Earl, who in turn wrote
(25:08):
The Condemned Man's Memoirs, who agreed upon the plan of
publishing Pewee's book in his own words after his execution.
At that point in his life, Peewee had nothing to
lose and nothing to hide, so it's an extremely graphic,
unfiltered look back at his entire life, including the neglect, abuse,
(25:33):
and countless rapes he endured as well as the rapes, mutilation,
and torture murders he inflicted on others. Peewee's book was
published a year after his execution on May one. An
audio cassette was included with the book when it was
initially released, and it contained excerpts from some of the
(25:56):
interviews the author recorded with Peewee imprison. Copies of the
original are very rare, but you can still find copies
of the recordings online. To hear Pewee's nightmares stories told
in his own voice is unsettling to say. The least
(26:17):
man will do so. I don't believe you will be
out stas mark. You kill somebody, but we don't give
you a borld. Brace yourself because what's next. I don't
even like to talk about. It's one of the most
horrific stories I've ever encountered Houston, Texas in the early
(26:42):
nineteen seventies and especially shocking story of power, manipulation and brutality.
Next Time on Insomniac and somni Acc is a production
of I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV, written and hosted
(27:04):
by Scott Benjamin and produced by Miranda Hawkins, Alex Williams,
Matt Frederick, and Josh Thain. Music composed by Makeup and Vanity,
set and cover by Trevor Eisler. Follow on Twitter and
Facebook at Insomniac Pod, on Instagram at Insomniac Podcast, and
at our website insomniac podcast dot com. For more podcasts
(27:26):
for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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