May 24, 2021 • 42 mins
Jim Beaty considers writing Pee Wee Gaskins' life story but weighs the potential danger with his wife and children.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Peewee Gaskin's closest friend in the world, Walter Neelye, folded
under police interrogation and led investigators to a field near Prospect,
South Carolina. He said there was a dead body there
and that Peewee had been involved. By the end of
the first day of scouring the field, police found six bodies,
(00:25):
and they would find more as they continued their search.
Numerous investigators, newspaper reporters, and people who interviewed Peewee will
help paint a fuller portrait of the murders and the
convoluted circumstances of the community in which Pee Wee committed them.
It's a serpentine story in which truth and friendship are
(00:48):
always in question. Why would somebody do something like this,
just murder a child. I was dealing with a veterate liar.
I was needing me a monster. But you don't cross him.
(01:09):
If you cross any pay Jim Lund dead. It's one
thing you got to remember some of God's children. I'm
not worth a damn from my heart, radio and doghouse pictures.
This is pee Wee. Gaskins was not my friend. I'm
(01:31):
Jeff Keating. Ira Parnell was one of the lead investigators
and a forensic expert with South Carolina's State Law Enforcement Division.
(01:52):
He was in the field soon after Walter Neely led
investigators to what would be later called Peewee's Burial Ground.
Doctor Saxon and Dr Prissy from the Medical University where
own site was was to help the exhamation. It took
several hours to get those first two exhumed, and then
(02:14):
we went located two more short distance away to the
left and two more short distance away to the right
front in each case too to the grave, all within
the space of probably thirty yards. The investigators will go
back and look at the mission person reports and see
if we could find out, you know, who's missing? Who
(02:35):
are we looking for. Ira Partnell's family served in law
enforcement for several generations, and his father, Bird Parnell, was
the Sumter County sheriff who arrested pee Wee Gaskins on
November My grandfather was a rural policeman and yet followed
(03:00):
him into law enforcement. Was elected sheriff in Somber County
in nineteen fifty two. He was shared for twenty eight
years and Songber my whole life. It was late to
the year I was born, so I never knew anything
but law enforcement. In fact that I cried and I
(03:20):
had to go to school. I couldn't do go to
the office and uh be the little chaff. So my
first dead body when I was seven, it wasn't surprising.
I were wound up a Sled officer that was contacted
by our second command. It s Led. Of course, I've
(03:42):
been known them since that was just a small child.
The Sled agents would come over some to canty to
look for liquor stills, and of course I'd right in
the middle of all that and right on Daddy's shoulders.
You know, we go, We'll go hunt in liquor stills
and drove them up or blowing up or whatever they
were doing. It's time. But anyway of contacted when they
(04:04):
wanted to notice, I would be interested in the positions
or having a job over there. Here's Dr Jim Batty
talking about the former sheriff's history with Peewee. Bird Parnell
had him in jail all the time for stealing dealings,
and Peewee said he was amazed when he learned that
Bird Parnell and I knew each other. I taught his
(04:27):
series I love to say that my association with Schriff
Bird Partneer was education. Pews was incarceration. Stealing dealings was
nothing compared to his arrest. When the authorities found Kim
Gulkin's clothes and Gaskin's trailer home, but the work was
just beginning searching the burial grounds not far from Peewee's trailer,
(04:53):
they called for all the help that they can get.
I was assigned to the firearms laboratory at Slide, which
part of our duties work to do crime scenes. So
me and my partner went down there and along with
you know, a handful of people from Florence County. By
the time they all go together, those probably thirty people
(05:14):
down in the corner of that field. And so we
were using body probes just to look for sauce spots
in the ground. You could start that probe in the
ground and if it was firmed and you were pretty
sure it hadn't been disturbed, but if you pushed a
little bit and it went all down, then you could
mark that spot to come back a little a little better. Later,
(05:38):
curiosity seekers slowly drove past the shallow graves, much to
the frustration of local residents. Who did their best to
make sense of the grizzly scene. The ladies in the
community down they would feed us. Somebody would have a
big butt of some cooking about every day because it
was in the wintertown and coal and we'd meet it
(05:59):
lunch stown. Leonard at the back of barn said, and
just have a good feed and everybody get together and
we talked about what we wanted to do, what we
had done. It just worked pretty well. On day one,
law enforcement found two bodies, Dennis Bellamy and his fifteen
year old brother, Johnny Knight. Here's Dr Jim Batty from
(06:22):
one of his many interviews with Peewee. Dennis Ballamy was
an acquaintance and the older half brother of John Henry Knight,
and Mrs Bellament was the mother that really opened the
case when the North Charleston police combed the neighborhood on
Calvert Street and talked to her that Dennis Bellamy was
(06:44):
simply on acquaintance. He was careful to tell me, for instance,
didn't never played pool with Dennis Bellamy. He and I
talked a lot about playing pool, and he said, I
want you to know, Mr Jim, I never played pool, never,
not not nary one time did I ever play pool
with dennist It was kind of a thing of honor
(07:05):
to be able to play pool with Peewee. He was
that good. Two brothers, Dennis Bellamy and Johnny Knight, were
buried in one grave and were the first bodies discovered
after Peewee's closest buddy, Walter Neely, cracked under police pressure.
But Dennis and Johnny, who were both part of an
(07:25):
auto theft ring with Pewee Gaskins, were just the beginning.
There were more victims to unearthed. They were buried in
the same grave, probably the one yards away from that
one was the next one. That one, I think. Diane
(07:46):
Neeleys Diane Bellamy Neely was Dennis and Johnny's sister and
Peewee's friend. She was also Walter Neely's common law wife.
She was buried in the same grave with her boyfriend
at the time, Avery Howard. Diane Bellamy had a real
problem with Peelee and told him that she wanted him
(08:11):
to straighten out some few things, and this and that
and the other thing, and pee Wee grew fed up
with her. Pee Wee knew Avery Howard from an earlier
prison stint and disliked the man. Dr Batty described avery
by sharing a story he heard from an episcopal priest
years earlier. He said, one thing you need to know
(08:34):
if you're ever going to do with church folks and
people in general. Do you want to approach it from
a minister standpoint? He said, it's one thing you got
to remember. Some of God's children are not worth a
damn And he was right, that's avery, Howard. Okay, So
(09:01):
those two were there and back off, and there the
twenty yards and so in another direction were next to
that one Jesse Judy and her boyfriend Johnny Sellers with
the next two bodies found stacked in a single grave.
Jesse was Peewee's former girlfriend and Johnny was a friend
(09:23):
who was part of the local theft ring after John
inter Night and Dennis Bellman. They were the most well
preserved as for us what we found that day. Who
actually would get fingerprints off of one of them. They
don't have been in the ground about six weeks and
it have been cold, so they were better preserved than
(09:43):
in your rest and rest and the pretty much just
clothes and bones. Remember, one of them had on with
a white flake for coup. Jesse Judy was one of
Pewee's favorites and a person, and he set off in
that he loved her and told her that more than
(10:04):
anybody else. And I think there were days that he
actually thought that Jesse Judy had a real heart, and
she really fell in love with Johnny Sellers and was
on her way, I think, to a happy life with him.
Johnny Sellers was divorced and he loved his two little
(10:26):
boys and he fell in love with Jesse Judy sincerely.
So he fell in with Peewee because Johnny always needed
money for the child supporting and and things like that.
Jesse Judy and her boyfriend Johnny Sellers were not the
last grapes uncovered that week. Here's Ira Parnell. You got
(10:51):
those suits. On the other side of the road was
where a little girl in the Mabel were buried, and
they were very shallow, wrapped in plash to cover that
with sawdust and stuff. The baby was actually just duffed
in the stumphold. When the river had come up, it
had washed the debris and dirt and stuff away from
the moment. You just see the line of the plastic
(11:14):
and stuff there that was twenty two year old Dorene
Hoped Empsey and her two year old daughter Robin Michelle.
Here's newspaper reporter Holly Gatling, who covered the story in
why would somebody do something like this, you know, just
(11:34):
murder of a little baby, a child? I think it
was much more profoundly disturbing for everybody, and my heart
goes out to these people. I always dealt with the
deceased person just being evidence, and I couldn't let them
be a person to me at that time. They would
(11:55):
be a result of somebody else's misdoing. And it was
part of my to find out first of all who
did worth it? Didn't know you know what happened, and
new did it? Little party, But it was uneasier way
to deal with thanks and looking at it as a body.
As the case unfolded, investigators discovered the eight victims they
(12:17):
found in that field were mostly young, poor, obscure, and
we're all friends or acquaintances of Peewee gaskets. Understandably, media
in focused on the horrors of the burial field in
his forty or so interviews with Peewee. Dr Batty's perspective
(12:39):
was far different than others would offer. Here he is
talking about the killer Peewee gaskets. He is so utterly fetching.
You listen to him, and you mesmerized. He's magnetic, He's
somewhat articulate, uneducated, and couldn't drink two sentences grammatically together
(13:03):
to save his life. But forgetting all that, you are
drawn to what he is saying. He's convincing. I'm not
sure that I believed what he was telling me, but
I wonder my my frame of mine, first of all,
was I was dealing with it with an inveterate liar.
(13:24):
I was needing with a monster who had killed more
people than anyone in the history of our state. So
anything that he tells me is I can take with
a grain of salt. And then I sit there and
I started listening, and my mind and spirit began to say,
what is this guy can mence me of something? This
(13:50):
is a story of two men who grew up in
the same area at the same time, and even worked
at the same factory, but whose lives would very front ways.
One became a mass murderer and the other became a
college professor. They met when the professor, who was also
an ordained minister, was hired to write the Killer Story.
(14:13):
It's a story about how their relationship developed in their
face to face and telephone interviews. My name is Jim Baby,
I prefer to be called Jim M. I need and
(14:39):
I lived in Brittle Beach and I was teaching at
Coastal Carolina University. A pleasant, happy, quiet life except for
the six children that we had where we lived a
block and a half from the ocean. I had a
church in near Anderson, and I had a church right
(15:00):
after seminary in Lagrange, Georgia, the tiny Presbyterian church out
in the country. But my heart was in literature, and
I've ultimately went back to graduate school, began teaching, and
earned a PhD. Jim is as unpretentious as Peewee was brazen.
(15:24):
His speech is slow, measured and a bit shaky, but
this is not entirely because we were talking about a
mass murderer. I'm feeling pretty good, considering I have been
battling uh lymphoma for two years and I'm conquering it,
whipping it. But sometimes it takes my breath away, so
(15:47):
to speak. As he tells it, one day in his
version of a Norman Rockwell, life was interrupted by a ring.
We had a peaceful, lovely, happy life that was interrupted
(16:10):
by a call one day from a whole college friend,
an attorney who's living at that time in Charleston. I
think it was a Friday afternoon, and I got on
the phone said hello. He said, I've got a project
that you don't want to pass over. H And I said, well,
(16:33):
what could that be? He said, well, I know that
you're a writer, and I want you to write the
life story of Peewee Gaskins. I said what. He said, Yes,
we want you to write the life of Peewee Gaskins.
I said, I'm not you man. I had finished a
(16:54):
dissertation and I really didn't want to write anything longer
than a grocery list. I said, okay, well I'll talk
to Anita, and well we'll see from here. Anita his
Jim's wife. The couple have been married over fifty years
(17:15):
and have six children. Jim had just finished his dissertation
and needed a job, but as we heard, Jim was hesitant.
His initial reservations weren't just about him needing a break.
He had concerns most people would. I did not enjoy
the gore. I was not interested in the murders, and
(17:39):
hadn't read much of that kind of literature before then.
So I really was not interested in the murders of
a mash murderer and set him that aside. I was
frightened from my family. I thought, what will this involve? Well,
(18:00):
I have to sit with this man. Well, I have
to be with him. And when I'm with him, will
I be protected? Will there be a petition between him
and me? These very practical things that quite frankly frightened me,
and so I was not an enthusiastic about the project.
(18:25):
Jim's hesitation was justified, especially considering his upbringing. My mother
was a housewife. She was minister's wife and mother to
us children. But my father was a minister. And that
was the most enjoyable thing to me about Treasurers. To
(18:46):
hear him speak in preaching. Oh, I loved it. He
was a marvelous speaker. I could feel Sunday coming on
about Friday afternoon because in our house on Sunday we
didn't read a newspaper and my mother was encouraged to
cook everything that she could. On Saturdays. I could not
(19:09):
listen to baseball on radio. We didn't have a television.
I could not listen to baseball on Sunday, said, I
would slip out into the garage to get in my
father's card listen to the games there until he caught me.
And I would also sit and look and my friends
(19:32):
playing in the field across the way. I was a youngster,
and it broke my heart that they were out there
playing on Sunday and I could not be with them.
It was not cruel, but it was rigid, and I
somewhat resented it over those years. Here's one of the
(19:55):
last reflections he shared about his father. He was intelligent.
I think it was the smartest person that I knew
up until my wife. Yeah, she's smarter than anybody I know.
My name is Anita law Baby, and you can call
me Anita. She has seventy eight years to Jim's eighty four.
(20:22):
They met when Jim was finishing his PhD. She worked
in the library and was pursuing a master's degree in English. Jim,
as he puts, it, was immediately taken with her. The
first time I saw Anita was in the graduate school library,
and she had fiery red hair, as red as you've
(20:47):
ever seen. And as she walked away from me. I
said five words, my, my, my, my, my mind. I
think that's six. But she was. She was beautiful young woman.
I went to Colemia was a cheerleader, which was probably
(21:07):
one of the most fun things I ever did in
my life, because I think I'm a born cheerleader groupie,
you know. And I loved it. It was wonderful, just fun.
Interviews together often went the way of gentle interruptions and
playful quips. After years of marriage, they are still in love.
(21:32):
When I visited with them, I would sometimes forget that
their story is intimately interwoven with a madman. I could
tell this story still lived inside them. Even though they
are authorities on the details of the case. They still
approached the topic of Peewee with tremendous humility and wonder
(21:54):
He was a fascinating character. He loved being the center
of attention, and he loved the fact that he intimidated people.
It seemed to me that it was kind of a game.
But you don't cross him. If you cross him, you pay.
Jim learned that he thought Peewee was his friend. The
(22:34):
proposal was on the table and debateies debated whether or
not Jim should take the opportunity to write the story
of Peewee Gaskins. I was fascinated at the thoughtom be
game and to publish the life of a lass murderer,
and I thought that this kind of person should be studied,
(22:56):
and I wanted to do that. Peewee gaskins defense attorney
sought Jim to write an account of his client's life,
of which was spent behind bars. Pee Wee had previously
been incarcerated for attempted murder, rape, in endangering a minor,
and auto theft, and now he was spending the rest
(23:17):
of his life in Central Correctional Institute in Columbia, South Carolina.
His attorney called Jim on a Friday in with the
offer and gave him the weekend to talk it over
with his family. From Friday afternoon until Monday morning, several
(23:37):
things changed, and one of the things was the family
meeting that we had on Friday night. So we were
around the table and I explained to them that I
had been offered the opportunity to write the life story
I'm a mass murderer. And the older children knew of
(23:58):
pee Wee Gaskins, and their fears were the same as mine.
Can he come out and get us, um, thanks, thanks
like that. So they were somewhat apprehensive, the younger ones,
especially Christian and Elizabeth at that time, we're very positive
(24:18):
on the writing of the book. In fact, Christian asked
when could he meet him? When could he see which
always fascinated me very much. I decided just to go
ahead and have a vote, making them think that they
had a vote in the process. They didn't, but they
didn't know it. Here's Mark Batty, one of their oldest sons,
(24:42):
recalling the family's initial reaction to the story. I was
very excited when I heard that Dad was going to
have this opportunity. I mean, if you're in Columbia, South Carolina,
you know who pee we Gaskins was at the time.
Any nervousness that anybody might have had, I was probably
tempered with the excitement. I personally wasn't too too concerned
(25:05):
about it in so far as the actual danger or
something like that. I wasn't real excited about how the
younger boys knew as much as they did. I don't
always know how much they knew, but it kind of
I was kind of protective of, you know, a little
psyche or something like that the age of his victims
(25:29):
used to bother me, especially the young girls. Dad explained
to me that, you know, these these are kids on
the edge, These are kids on the periphery. These are
marginalized individuals in many ways, and frankly, they just don't
have a whole lot of people to care about. But
after that family meeting, Anita and I have for the
(25:50):
whole weekend pondered and prayed and wondered about this. And
by nine o'clock Monday morning, and I told him that
s ah somewhat reluctantly, but with somewhat enthusiasm. Also, I
will take on the writing of the book. In fact,
I said, I won't have to meet him. Well, I,
you'll just give meed the research, what you know and
(26:13):
what you have. He said, I think we need to
meet uh next Friday in Colubia to meet Peewee. I
said to what he said, to meet Peewee, meet me
in the penitentiary parking lot at eleven and we'll have
an hour with Peewee. Of course I had to meet him,
(26:35):
but I was so naive. I didn't even know that
I would I would have to do that. Here's Jim
Baety Jr. He was seventeen years old when his dad
brought this story to the family. I think it's a
story that needs to be told, uh, and that should
(26:56):
be told from his perspective of having no the man
so well as a result of all of their contact.
The process of telling the story requires that you share
every side of the main character's life, and regardless of
(27:22):
how heinous these crimes are, you can point to some
things in Peewee's life that at least made these things possible. Uh,
And those those things have to be shared. That does
not exonerate or or or glorify what he has done
or what he did, but it does share the full
(27:45):
story of of Peewee and where his life ultimately took him.
I wanted to know about the life of this man.
How in the world could this man a year older
than I, grew up eighty miles apart, somewhat geographically and
(28:09):
environmentally the same people. Here I am blessed beyond my dessert,
with a family and a career in teaching, And here
was a man who grew up and became a mass murderer.
I wanted to know how in the world this came about?
(28:37):
With a combination of exuberance and fear. Jim drove to
Columbia to meet Peewee's attorney at CC's front gates. They
met in the parking lot, exchanged pleasantries, and turned to
the entrance. We go in, and I remember the barbed
(28:58):
wire that I've seen as a child. And then as
I entered the prison, I remember the very same gate
I'd seen before. It was like a nightmare. And we
go through the next gate and that iron on iron
finality hit me and I remembered I had been in
(29:19):
this place. I had been through these doors before. When
was it? It was visiting my maternal grandfather, who was
the warden of that particular prison when I was eight
years old, and he had a chauffeur whose name was Albert,
and he would come in a beautiful black Packard four
(29:45):
door sedan and I would sit in the backseat and
Albert would drive me to c C I to visit
my Grandpapa, I called him, and Grandpapa was a warden,
and the trans was I remember there was a kind
of front door that you go in, and then there's
(30:06):
a little hall and then you have these iron gates,
and I remember the closing of those gates, even as
a child, was so frightening to me because it was
so final and so loud, and they would bang them
closed on my way to see Grandpapa Wilson. Numerous times
(30:30):
during the forties, Jim was picked up by Alfred, a
prisoner working as his grandfather's chauffeur, and taken for an
afternoon visit at c c I, and for the first
of two times in his life, after dozens of visits,
his trips inside the prison came to an immediate halt.
(30:52):
To trustees. To Ben, who helped run the prison, went
into my grandpapa's secretary at lunchtime and as could they
see Warden Wilson, Superintendent Wilson whatever they called him, and
she said, no, I'm sorry, he's not in, but would
you like to see Captain Saunders And they said that
(31:13):
would be fine, so she took them down to Captain
Saunders office. They went in and emptied two revolvers into
Captain saunders chest and then killed themselves. So they missed
my grandpapa by ten minutes or he would have been
(31:35):
the victim of that particular murder. And now it was
and Jim Batty was back inside c C I on
a visit to meet South Carolina's Charles Manson. He got
chills as he walked through the iron doors again. M
(32:01):
the sound that I heard when I walked into prison
as an eight year old kid with Albert at my
side was the same sound that I heard thirty or
five years later, and it was absolutely electrifying. The finality
of the closing of those iron gates. And we proceeded
(32:26):
down the hall and I saw Peewee for the first time,
this tiny man standing by his chair with his hand
out to shake the lawyer's handing. By the way, he
had no handcuffs. I never once met with Pee Weee
(32:46):
when he was handcuffed, but everybody else in the room was.
We all sat down. Grady introduced me. Pee Wee was
very kind and responsive by the way, Um, Pee Wee, SA,
nice to meet you, Mr Jim. He didn't say Mr Baby,
Dr Baby, anything else. Only Mr Jim. There was only
(33:12):
one other time and my entire time with Peewee did
he ever address me as Mr. Baby. And that was frightening.
Jim felt the gravity of the situation the moment of
his first encounter with Peewee. During that visit, Pee Wee
(33:36):
and the attorney spoke about hearings and lawyers and judges
and documents and a lot of legal term and I
was fascinated with the fact that Peewee was a pretty
good jail house lawyer. In fact, Peewee wrote briefs for
prisoners and things that they were facing in the In
(34:01):
the prison, I was facing Peewee at a square table.
They were conversing, looking at each other, and I'm watching
Peewee and amazed at the subjects that they covered. And
when the visit closed talking about me and our family,
(34:22):
and Pee Wee was interested. I think he took to me.
He was certainly cordial and gracious, far more graceful than
I ever dreamed that that he would be. But at
the end of the conversation he spoke more directly to me.
(34:43):
He looks right straight through you. When Pee Wee looked
at you, you really looked at And that's what he
did with his piercing black eyes, fair fair skin, black
jet black hair, not a gray hair in his head.
The last day I saw him, Jim met with Peewee
(35:08):
and this attorney that day as an introduction, a way
to get Peewee familiar with Jim. Jim forever remembers his voice,
which matched his name. It was high and quick and fast.
He loves everything twice. Everything twice was amazing, but how
to high oars and and if he got excited, it
(35:29):
really got high. We left happily on good terms and
walking out of the prison, the attorney said, you have
to be approved by Peewee, and when pee Wee approves you,
then the prison people have to approve you, and then
when they approve you, you you can go there anytime, eight
(35:49):
to five. You don't have to wait for business hours.
You can go any time, just as often as the
lawyer would go. And he introduced me around to several
of the guards, and uh I was in. It was
ninety minutes back to his home in Myrtle Beach, and
Jim Batty was high on adrenaline from sitting in prison
with the meanest man in America. Jim's family anticipated his return.
(36:16):
They were actually waiting on me, and I knew that
I was on the way, and the older ones were
just thankful that I was alive, and the younger ones
were anxious to hear all that went on, and I
reported to them as much as I could. His family
juggled their anxiety and excitement. Anita was terrified, the kids enthralled.
(36:45):
It's not just a quick trip from Colombia and the beach,
and we couldn't wait to hear what happened and hear
the stories. But also it got you in a pit
of your stomach. I can remember now, I can even
feel it, a little bit of dread, a little bit
of are, a little bit oh my gosh, I could
do that have happened? How could he have done this?
(37:05):
And how could he still be around? But also how
fascinating he was, and how Jim cared about what made
him the way it was. The kids responded in such
different ways to this project. It became an influence on
our lives from that point on. PE's attorney some days
(37:28):
later call me and said, well, you're in. You passed
the test. I said, what do you mean. He said, well, Pee,
we likes you. I said, oh. He said, well you've
got the job. Congratulations, And by the way, you have
an appointment with him at eleven o'clock a week from today.
I said I do. He said yes. I said, God willing,
(37:51):
I'll be there now. Jim could visit the prison unaccompanied
any day or time he wanted. He we had approved
two or three days before. I was pretty nervous, so
I wrote out some questions things that I would ask
him in the first interview. I think I had twelve
(38:13):
and I knew that I could have an hour, hour
and a half something like that. So I went in
with my legal pad and we greeted. He was very friendly,
and I said, thank you very much for letting me
do this. I'm privileged to write your life. And he
started in and he talked about his childhood. He told
(38:37):
me how he was brutally abused by his mother's brothers
when it was a little boy. He says, look, I
want to set the record straight on some things, and
so many things out there that have been said about
me that are wrong. I want you to know what
they are and to make those things right. He said, Well,
the first is that I went to reform school on
(39:00):
a false charge. I said, you were innocent. He said,
I was innocent. When he was fourteen Sunday afternoon, he
supposedly um hit a teenage girl in the head with
an axe and he thought she was dead. He held
her a moment and then ran off. But he told
(39:21):
me that day that he saw it happen and that
he could not tell anyone who did it. I said,
pee Wee, why did you say that? And he said,
we can't go into that. Pee Wee spent five years
in reform school for attempted murder from thirteen to eighteen
(39:44):
years old. Jim must have been feeling fear and shock
and hearing a firsthand account of such a crime. It
could have turned another person away, but the writer and
Jim Batty listened for every detail. Right at the end
of the visit, we shook hands, and his handshake was
(40:07):
the firmished that I've ever shaken, and his hand was strong, firm,
but tiny, very very tiny. Jim drove ninety minutes back home,
a drive he would make more than forty times over
the next two years. And I was driving back to
(40:32):
Murty Beach, um our six children and Anita were waiting
to see, first of all, if I was going to
get back at all. Process was my first visit was Peewee,
and I reported to them that, uh, yeah. The only
time I was a little bit apprehensive in that visit
was when I noticed his thumbnails or at least a
(40:55):
good three quarters to an inch longer than all the
other nails. And he said, I let me tell you
about my nails. Said you about my nails. He said
that two guards in this prison that out to get me.
But he said, I'm gonna be ready for him when
they come. He said, let me show you what I mean.
He said, lean over here just a second. So I
(41:17):
leaned toward him, and he puts his hands up on
my head at his thumbnails, right in the outer edges
of my eyes, and I thought, oh my god. When
he's going on, he said, you see how easy it
would be for me just to plug them out. But
(41:38):
he said, that's why my thumbnails are so long. Pewee
Gaskins was not my friend. It's a joint production from
My Heart Radio and Doghouse Pictures, produced and hosted by
(41:59):
Jeff Keeping. Executive producers are Courtney Dfries and Noel Brown.
Written by Jim Roberts, Courtney Dufries and Terry James, Edit,
mix and sound designed by Jeremiah Kolani Prescott. Music composed
by Diamond Street Productions, Spencer garn and Ian Newberry. Special
thanks to Jim and Anita Baby. Additional thanks to the
University of South Carolina Moving Image research collections and the
(42:21):
University of South Carolina
Peewee Gaskin's closest friend in the world, Walter Neelye, folded
under police interrogation and led investigators to a field near Prospect,
South Carolina. He said there was a dead body there
and that Peewee had been involved. By the end of
the first day of scouring the field, police found six bodies,
(00:25):
and they would find more as they continued their search.
Numerous investigators, newspaper reporters, and people who interviewed Peewee will
help paint a fuller portrait of the murders and the
convoluted circumstances of the community in which Pee Wee committed them.
It's a serpentine story in which truth and friendship are
(00:48):
always in question. Why would somebody do something like this,
just murder a child. I was dealing with a veterate liar.
I was needing me a monster. But you don't cross him.
(01:09):
If you cross any pay Jim Lund dead. It's one
thing you got to remember some of God's children. I'm
not worth a damn from my heart, radio and doghouse pictures.
This is pee Wee. Gaskins was not my friend. I'm
(01:31):
Jeff Keating. Ira Parnell was one of the lead investigators
and a forensic expert with South Carolina's State Law Enforcement Division.
(01:52):
He was in the field soon after Walter Neely led
investigators to what would be later called Peewee's Burial Ground.
Doctor Saxon and Dr Prissy from the Medical University where
own site was was to help the exhamation. It took
several hours to get those first two exhumed, and then
(02:14):
we went located two more short distance away to the
left and two more short distance away to the right
front in each case too to the grave, all within
the space of probably thirty yards. The investigators will go
back and look at the mission person reports and see
if we could find out, you know, who's missing? Who
(02:35):
are we looking for. Ira Partnell's family served in law
enforcement for several generations, and his father, Bird Parnell, was
the Sumter County sheriff who arrested pee Wee Gaskins on
November My grandfather was a rural policeman and yet followed
(03:00):
him into law enforcement. Was elected sheriff in Somber County
in nineteen fifty two. He was shared for twenty eight
years and Songber my whole life. It was late to
the year I was born, so I never knew anything
but law enforcement. In fact that I cried and I
(03:20):
had to go to school. I couldn't do go to
the office and uh be the little chaff. So my
first dead body when I was seven, it wasn't surprising.
I were wound up a Sled officer that was contacted
by our second command. It s Led. Of course, I've
(03:42):
been known them since that was just a small child.
The Sled agents would come over some to canty to
look for liquor stills, and of course I'd right in
the middle of all that and right on Daddy's shoulders.
You know, we go, We'll go hunt in liquor stills
and drove them up or blowing up or whatever they
were doing. It's time. But anyway of contacted when they
(04:04):
wanted to notice, I would be interested in the positions
or having a job over there. Here's Dr Jim Batty
talking about the former sheriff's history with Peewee. Bird Parnell
had him in jail all the time for stealing dealings,
and Peewee said he was amazed when he learned that
Bird Parnell and I knew each other. I taught his
(04:27):
series I love to say that my association with Schriff
Bird Partneer was education. Pews was incarceration. Stealing dealings was
nothing compared to his arrest. When the authorities found Kim
Gulkin's clothes and Gaskin's trailer home, but the work was
just beginning searching the burial grounds not far from Peewee's trailer,
(04:53):
they called for all the help that they can get.
I was assigned to the firearms laboratory at Slide, which
part of our duties work to do crime scenes. So
me and my partner went down there and along with
you know, a handful of people from Florence County. By
the time they all go together, those probably thirty people
(05:14):
down in the corner of that field. And so we
were using body probes just to look for sauce spots
in the ground. You could start that probe in the
ground and if it was firmed and you were pretty
sure it hadn't been disturbed, but if you pushed a
little bit and it went all down, then you could
mark that spot to come back a little a little better. Later,
(05:38):
curiosity seekers slowly drove past the shallow graves, much to
the frustration of local residents. Who did their best to
make sense of the grizzly scene. The ladies in the
community down they would feed us. Somebody would have a
big butt of some cooking about every day because it
was in the wintertown and coal and we'd meet it
(05:59):
lunch stown. Leonard at the back of barn said, and
just have a good feed and everybody get together and
we talked about what we wanted to do, what we
had done. It just worked pretty well. On day one,
law enforcement found two bodies, Dennis Bellamy and his fifteen
year old brother, Johnny Knight. Here's Dr Jim Batty from
(06:22):
one of his many interviews with Peewee. Dennis Ballamy was
an acquaintance and the older half brother of John Henry Knight,
and Mrs Bellament was the mother that really opened the
case when the North Charleston police combed the neighborhood on
Calvert Street and talked to her that Dennis Bellamy was
(06:44):
simply on acquaintance. He was careful to tell me, for instance,
didn't never played pool with Dennis Bellamy. He and I
talked a lot about playing pool, and he said, I
want you to know, Mr Jim, I never played pool, never,
not not nary one time did I ever play pool
with dennist It was kind of a thing of honor
(07:05):
to be able to play pool with Peewee. He was
that good. Two brothers, Dennis Bellamy and Johnny Knight, were
buried in one grave and were the first bodies discovered
after Peewee's closest buddy, Walter Neely, cracked under police pressure.
But Dennis and Johnny, who were both part of an
(07:25):
auto theft ring with Pewee Gaskins, were just the beginning.
There were more victims to unearthed. They were buried in
the same grave, probably the one yards away from that
one was the next one. That one, I think. Diane
(07:46):
Neeleys Diane Bellamy Neely was Dennis and Johnny's sister and
Peewee's friend. She was also Walter Neely's common law wife.
She was buried in the same grave with her boyfriend
at the time, Avery Howard. Diane Bellamy had a real
problem with Peelee and told him that she wanted him
(08:11):
to straighten out some few things, and this and that
and the other thing, and pee Wee grew fed up
with her. Pee Wee knew Avery Howard from an earlier
prison stint and disliked the man. Dr Batty described avery
by sharing a story he heard from an episcopal priest
years earlier. He said, one thing you need to know
(08:34):
if you're ever going to do with church folks and
people in general. Do you want to approach it from
a minister standpoint? He said, it's one thing you got
to remember. Some of God's children are not worth a
damn And he was right, that's avery, Howard. Okay, So
(09:01):
those two were there and back off, and there the
twenty yards and so in another direction were next to
that one Jesse Judy and her boyfriend Johnny Sellers with
the next two bodies found stacked in a single grave.
Jesse was Peewee's former girlfriend and Johnny was a friend
(09:23):
who was part of the local theft ring after John
inter Night and Dennis Bellman. They were the most well
preserved as for us what we found that day. Who
actually would get fingerprints off of one of them. They
don't have been in the ground about six weeks and
it have been cold, so they were better preserved than
(09:43):
in your rest and rest and the pretty much just
clothes and bones. Remember, one of them had on with
a white flake for coup. Jesse Judy was one of
Pewee's favorites and a person, and he set off in
that he loved her and told her that more than
(10:04):
anybody else. And I think there were days that he
actually thought that Jesse Judy had a real heart, and
she really fell in love with Johnny Sellers and was
on her way, I think, to a happy life with him.
Johnny Sellers was divorced and he loved his two little
(10:26):
boys and he fell in love with Jesse Judy sincerely.
So he fell in with Peewee because Johnny always needed
money for the child supporting and and things like that.
Jesse Judy and her boyfriend Johnny Sellers were not the
last grapes uncovered that week. Here's Ira Parnell. You got
(10:51):
those suits. On the other side of the road was
where a little girl in the Mabel were buried, and
they were very shallow, wrapped in plash to cover that
with sawdust and stuff. The baby was actually just duffed
in the stumphold. When the river had come up, it
had washed the debris and dirt and stuff away from
the moment. You just see the line of the plastic
(11:14):
and stuff there that was twenty two year old Dorene
Hoped Empsey and her two year old daughter Robin Michelle.
Here's newspaper reporter Holly Gatling, who covered the story in
why would somebody do something like this, you know, just
(11:34):
murder of a little baby, a child? I think it
was much more profoundly disturbing for everybody, and my heart
goes out to these people. I always dealt with the
deceased person just being evidence, and I couldn't let them
be a person to me at that time. They would
(11:55):
be a result of somebody else's misdoing. And it was
part of my to find out first of all who
did worth it? Didn't know you know what happened, and
new did it? Little party, But it was uneasier way
to deal with thanks and looking at it as a body.
As the case unfolded, investigators discovered the eight victims they
(12:17):
found in that field were mostly young, poor, obscure, and
we're all friends or acquaintances of Peewee gaskets. Understandably, media
in focused on the horrors of the burial field in
his forty or so interviews with Peewee. Dr Batty's perspective
(12:39):
was far different than others would offer. Here he is
talking about the killer Peewee gaskets. He is so utterly fetching.
You listen to him, and you mesmerized. He's magnetic, He's
somewhat articulate, uneducated, and couldn't drink two sentences grammatically together
(13:03):
to save his life. But forgetting all that, you are
drawn to what he is saying. He's convincing. I'm not
sure that I believed what he was telling me, but
I wonder my my frame of mine, first of all,
was I was dealing with it with an inveterate liar.
(13:24):
I was needing with a monster who had killed more
people than anyone in the history of our state. So
anything that he tells me is I can take with
a grain of salt. And then I sit there and
I started listening, and my mind and spirit began to say,
what is this guy can mence me of something? This
(13:50):
is a story of two men who grew up in
the same area at the same time, and even worked
at the same factory, but whose lives would very front ways.
One became a mass murderer and the other became a
college professor. They met when the professor, who was also
an ordained minister, was hired to write the Killer Story.
(14:13):
It's a story about how their relationship developed in their
face to face and telephone interviews. My name is Jim Baby,
I prefer to be called Jim M. I need and
(14:39):
I lived in Brittle Beach and I was teaching at
Coastal Carolina University. A pleasant, happy, quiet life except for
the six children that we had where we lived a
block and a half from the ocean. I had a
church in near Anderson, and I had a church right
(15:00):
after seminary in Lagrange, Georgia, the tiny Presbyterian church out
in the country. But my heart was in literature, and
I've ultimately went back to graduate school, began teaching, and
earned a PhD. Jim is as unpretentious as Peewee was brazen.
(15:24):
His speech is slow, measured and a bit shaky, but
this is not entirely because we were talking about a
mass murderer. I'm feeling pretty good, considering I have been
battling uh lymphoma for two years and I'm conquering it,
whipping it. But sometimes it takes my breath away, so
(15:47):
to speak. As he tells it, one day in his
version of a Norman Rockwell, life was interrupted by a ring.
We had a peaceful, lovely, happy life that was interrupted
(16:10):
by a call one day from a whole college friend,
an attorney who's living at that time in Charleston. I
think it was a Friday afternoon, and I got on
the phone said hello. He said, I've got a project
that you don't want to pass over. H And I said, well,
(16:33):
what could that be? He said, well, I know that
you're a writer, and I want you to write the
life story of Peewee Gaskins. I said what. He said, Yes,
we want you to write the life of Peewee Gaskins.
I said, I'm not you man. I had finished a
(16:54):
dissertation and I really didn't want to write anything longer
than a grocery list. I said, okay, well I'll talk
to Anita, and well we'll see from here. Anita his
Jim's wife. The couple have been married over fifty years
(17:15):
and have six children. Jim had just finished his dissertation
and needed a job, but as we heard, Jim was hesitant.
His initial reservations weren't just about him needing a break.
He had concerns most people would. I did not enjoy
the gore. I was not interested in the murders, and
(17:39):
hadn't read much of that kind of literature before then.
So I really was not interested in the murders of
a mash murderer and set him that aside. I was
frightened from my family. I thought, what will this involve? Well,
(18:00):
I have to sit with this man. Well, I have
to be with him. And when I'm with him, will
I be protected? Will there be a petition between him
and me? These very practical things that quite frankly frightened me,
and so I was not an enthusiastic about the project.
(18:25):
Jim's hesitation was justified, especially considering his upbringing. My mother
was a housewife. She was minister's wife and mother to
us children. But my father was a minister. And that
was the most enjoyable thing to me about Treasurers. To
(18:46):
hear him speak in preaching. Oh, I loved it. He
was a marvelous speaker. I could feel Sunday coming on
about Friday afternoon because in our house on Sunday we
didn't read a newspaper and my mother was encouraged to
cook everything that she could. On Saturdays. I could not
(19:09):
listen to baseball on radio. We didn't have a television.
I could not listen to baseball on Sunday, said, I
would slip out into the garage to get in my
father's card listen to the games there until he caught me.
And I would also sit and look and my friends
(19:32):
playing in the field across the way. I was a youngster,
and it broke my heart that they were out there
playing on Sunday and I could not be with them.
It was not cruel, but it was rigid, and I
somewhat resented it over those years. Here's one of the
(19:55):
last reflections he shared about his father. He was intelligent.
I think it was the smartest person that I knew
up until my wife. Yeah, she's smarter than anybody I know.
My name is Anita law Baby, and you can call
me Anita. She has seventy eight years to Jim's eighty four.
(20:22):
They met when Jim was finishing his PhD. She worked
in the library and was pursuing a master's degree in English. Jim,
as he puts, it, was immediately taken with her. The
first time I saw Anita was in the graduate school library,
and she had fiery red hair, as red as you've
(20:47):
ever seen. And as she walked away from me. I
said five words, my, my, my, my, my mind. I
think that's six. But she was. She was beautiful young woman.
I went to Colemia was a cheerleader, which was probably
(21:07):
one of the most fun things I ever did in
my life, because I think I'm a born cheerleader groupie,
you know. And I loved it. It was wonderful, just fun.
Interviews together often went the way of gentle interruptions and
playful quips. After years of marriage, they are still in love.
(21:32):
When I visited with them, I would sometimes forget that
their story is intimately interwoven with a madman. I could
tell this story still lived inside them. Even though they
are authorities on the details of the case. They still
approached the topic of Peewee with tremendous humility and wonder
(21:54):
He was a fascinating character. He loved being the center
of attention, and he loved the fact that he intimidated people.
It seemed to me that it was kind of a game.
But you don't cross him. If you cross him, you pay.
Jim learned that he thought Peewee was his friend. The
(22:34):
proposal was on the table and debateies debated whether or
not Jim should take the opportunity to write the story
of Peewee Gaskins. I was fascinated at the thoughtom be
game and to publish the life of a lass murderer,
and I thought that this kind of person should be studied,
(22:56):
and I wanted to do that. Peewee gaskins defense attorney
sought Jim to write an account of his client's life,
of which was spent behind bars. Pee Wee had previously
been incarcerated for attempted murder, rape, in endangering a minor,
and auto theft, and now he was spending the rest
(23:17):
of his life in Central Correctional Institute in Columbia, South Carolina.
His attorney called Jim on a Friday in with the
offer and gave him the weekend to talk it over
with his family. From Friday afternoon until Monday morning, several
(23:37):
things changed, and one of the things was the family
meeting that we had on Friday night. So we were
around the table and I explained to them that I
had been offered the opportunity to write the life story
I'm a mass murderer. And the older children knew of
(23:58):
pee Wee Gaskins, and their fears were the same as mine.
Can he come out and get us, um, thanks, thanks
like that. So they were somewhat apprehensive, the younger ones,
especially Christian and Elizabeth at that time, we're very positive
(24:18):
on the writing of the book. In fact, Christian asked
when could he meet him? When could he see which
always fascinated me very much. I decided just to go
ahead and have a vote, making them think that they
had a vote in the process. They didn't, but they
didn't know it. Here's Mark Batty, one of their oldest sons,
(24:42):
recalling the family's initial reaction to the story. I was
very excited when I heard that Dad was going to
have this opportunity. I mean, if you're in Columbia, South Carolina,
you know who pee we Gaskins was at the time.
Any nervousness that anybody might have had, I was probably
tempered with the excitement. I personally wasn't too too concerned
(25:05):
about it in so far as the actual danger or
something like that. I wasn't real excited about how the
younger boys knew as much as they did. I don't
always know how much they knew, but it kind of
I was kind of protective of, you know, a little
psyche or something like that the age of his victims
(25:29):
used to bother me, especially the young girls. Dad explained
to me that, you know, these these are kids on
the edge, These are kids on the periphery. These are
marginalized individuals in many ways, and frankly, they just don't
have a whole lot of people to care about. But
after that family meeting, Anita and I have for the
(25:50):
whole weekend pondered and prayed and wondered about this. And
by nine o'clock Monday morning, and I told him that
s ah somewhat reluctantly, but with somewhat enthusiasm. Also, I
will take on the writing of the book. In fact,
I said, I won't have to meet him. Well, I,
you'll just give meed the research, what you know and
(26:13):
what you have. He said, I think we need to
meet uh next Friday in Colubia to meet Peewee. I
said to what he said, to meet Peewee, meet me
in the penitentiary parking lot at eleven and we'll have
an hour with Peewee. Of course I had to meet him,
(26:35):
but I was so naive. I didn't even know that
I would I would have to do that. Here's Jim
Baety Jr. He was seventeen years old when his dad
brought this story to the family. I think it's a
story that needs to be told, uh, and that should
(26:56):
be told from his perspective of having no the man
so well as a result of all of their contact.
The process of telling the story requires that you share
every side of the main character's life, and regardless of
(27:22):
how heinous these crimes are, you can point to some
things in Peewee's life that at least made these things possible. Uh,
And those those things have to be shared. That does
not exonerate or or or glorify what he has done
or what he did, but it does share the full
(27:45):
story of of Peewee and where his life ultimately took him.
I wanted to know about the life of this man.
How in the world could this man a year older
than I, grew up eighty miles apart, somewhat geographically and
(28:09):
environmentally the same people. Here I am blessed beyond my dessert,
with a family and a career in teaching, And here
was a man who grew up and became a mass murderer.
I wanted to know how in the world this came about?
(28:37):
With a combination of exuberance and fear. Jim drove to
Columbia to meet Peewee's attorney at CC's front gates. They
met in the parking lot, exchanged pleasantries, and turned to
the entrance. We go in, and I remember the barbed
(28:58):
wire that I've seen as a child. And then as
I entered the prison, I remember the very same gate
I'd seen before. It was like a nightmare. And we
go through the next gate and that iron on iron
finality hit me and I remembered I had been in
(29:19):
this place. I had been through these doors before. When
was it? It was visiting my maternal grandfather, who was
the warden of that particular prison when I was eight
years old, and he had a chauffeur whose name was Albert,
and he would come in a beautiful black Packard four
(29:45):
door sedan and I would sit in the backseat and
Albert would drive me to c C I to visit
my Grandpapa, I called him, and Grandpapa was a warden,
and the trans was I remember there was a kind
of front door that you go in, and then there's
(30:06):
a little hall and then you have these iron gates,
and I remember the closing of those gates, even as
a child, was so frightening to me because it was
so final and so loud, and they would bang them
closed on my way to see Grandpapa Wilson. Numerous times
(30:30):
during the forties, Jim was picked up by Alfred, a
prisoner working as his grandfather's chauffeur, and taken for an
afternoon visit at c c I, and for the first
of two times in his life, after dozens of visits,
his trips inside the prison came to an immediate halt.
(30:52):
To trustees. To Ben, who helped run the prison, went
into my grandpapa's secretary at lunchtime and as could they
see Warden Wilson, Superintendent Wilson whatever they called him, and
she said, no, I'm sorry, he's not in, but would
you like to see Captain Saunders And they said that
(31:13):
would be fine, so she took them down to Captain
Saunders office. They went in and emptied two revolvers into
Captain saunders chest and then killed themselves. So they missed
my grandpapa by ten minutes or he would have been
(31:35):
the victim of that particular murder. And now it was
and Jim Batty was back inside c C I on
a visit to meet South Carolina's Charles Manson. He got
chills as he walked through the iron doors again. M
(32:01):
the sound that I heard when I walked into prison
as an eight year old kid with Albert at my
side was the same sound that I heard thirty or
five years later, and it was absolutely electrifying. The finality
of the closing of those iron gates. And we proceeded
(32:26):
down the hall and I saw Peewee for the first time,
this tiny man standing by his chair with his hand
out to shake the lawyer's handing. By the way, he
had no handcuffs. I never once met with Pee Weee
(32:46):
when he was handcuffed, but everybody else in the room was.
We all sat down. Grady introduced me. Pee Wee was
very kind and responsive by the way, Um, Pee Wee, SA,
nice to meet you, Mr Jim. He didn't say Mr Baby,
Dr Baby, anything else. Only Mr Jim. There was only
(33:12):
one other time and my entire time with Peewee did
he ever address me as Mr. Baby. And that was frightening.
Jim felt the gravity of the situation the moment of
his first encounter with Peewee. During that visit, Pee Wee
(33:36):
and the attorney spoke about hearings and lawyers and judges
and documents and a lot of legal term and I
was fascinated with the fact that Peewee was a pretty
good jail house lawyer. In fact, Peewee wrote briefs for
prisoners and things that they were facing in the In
(34:01):
the prison, I was facing Peewee at a square table.
They were conversing, looking at each other, and I'm watching
Peewee and amazed at the subjects that they covered. And
when the visit closed talking about me and our family,
(34:22):
and Pee Wee was interested. I think he took to me.
He was certainly cordial and gracious, far more graceful than
I ever dreamed that that he would be. But at
the end of the conversation he spoke more directly to me.
(34:43):
He looks right straight through you. When Pee Wee looked
at you, you really looked at And that's what he
did with his piercing black eyes, fair fair skin, black
jet black hair, not a gray hair in his head.
The last day I saw him, Jim met with Peewee
(35:08):
and this attorney that day as an introduction, a way
to get Peewee familiar with Jim. Jim forever remembers his voice,
which matched his name. It was high and quick and fast.
He loves everything twice. Everything twice was amazing, but how
to high oars and and if he got excited, it
(35:29):
really got high. We left happily on good terms and
walking out of the prison, the attorney said, you have
to be approved by Peewee, and when pee Wee approves you,
then the prison people have to approve you, and then
when they approve you, you you can go there anytime, eight
(35:49):
to five. You don't have to wait for business hours.
You can go any time, just as often as the
lawyer would go. And he introduced me around to several
of the guards, and uh I was in. It was
ninety minutes back to his home in Myrtle Beach, and
Jim Batty was high on adrenaline from sitting in prison
with the meanest man in America. Jim's family anticipated his return.
(36:16):
They were actually waiting on me, and I knew that
I was on the way, and the older ones were
just thankful that I was alive, and the younger ones
were anxious to hear all that went on, and I
reported to them as much as I could. His family
juggled their anxiety and excitement. Anita was terrified, the kids enthralled.
(36:45):
It's not just a quick trip from Colombia and the beach,
and we couldn't wait to hear what happened and hear
the stories. But also it got you in a pit
of your stomach. I can remember now, I can even
feel it, a little bit of dread, a little bit
of are, a little bit oh my gosh, I could
do that have happened? How could he have done this?
(37:05):
And how could he still be around? But also how
fascinating he was, and how Jim cared about what made
him the way it was. The kids responded in such
different ways to this project. It became an influence on
our lives from that point on. PE's attorney some days
(37:28):
later call me and said, well, you're in. You passed
the test. I said, what do you mean. He said, well, Pee,
we likes you. I said, oh. He said, well you've
got the job. Congratulations, And by the way, you have
an appointment with him at eleven o'clock a week from today.
I said I do. He said yes. I said, God willing,
(37:51):
I'll be there now. Jim could visit the prison unaccompanied
any day or time he wanted. He we had approved
two or three days before. I was pretty nervous, so
I wrote out some questions things that I would ask
him in the first interview. I think I had twelve
(38:13):
and I knew that I could have an hour, hour
and a half something like that. So I went in
with my legal pad and we greeted. He was very friendly,
and I said, thank you very much for letting me
do this. I'm privileged to write your life. And he
started in and he talked about his childhood. He told
(38:37):
me how he was brutally abused by his mother's brothers
when it was a little boy. He says, look, I
want to set the record straight on some things, and
so many things out there that have been said about
me that are wrong. I want you to know what
they are and to make those things right. He said, Well,
the first is that I went to reform school on
(39:00):
a false charge. I said, you were innocent. He said,
I was innocent. When he was fourteen Sunday afternoon, he
supposedly um hit a teenage girl in the head with
an axe and he thought she was dead. He held
her a moment and then ran off. But he told
(39:21):
me that day that he saw it happen and that
he could not tell anyone who did it. I said,
pee Wee, why did you say that? And he said,
we can't go into that. Pee Wee spent five years
in reform school for attempted murder from thirteen to eighteen
(39:44):
years old. Jim must have been feeling fear and shock
and hearing a firsthand account of such a crime. It
could have turned another person away, but the writer and
Jim Batty listened for every detail. Right at the end
of the visit, we shook hands, and his handshake was
(40:07):
the firmished that I've ever shaken, and his hand was strong, firm,
but tiny, very very tiny. Jim drove ninety minutes back home,
a drive he would make more than forty times over
the next two years. And I was driving back to
(40:32):
Murty Beach, um our six children and Anita were waiting
to see, first of all, if I was going to
get back at all. Process was my first visit was Peewee,
and I reported to them that, uh, yeah. The only
time I was a little bit apprehensive in that visit
was when I noticed his thumbnails or at least a
(40:55):
good three quarters to an inch longer than all the
other nails. And he said, I let me tell you
about my nails. Said you about my nails. He said
that two guards in this prison that out to get me.
But he said, I'm gonna be ready for him when
they come. He said, let me show you what I mean.
He said, lean over here just a second. So I
(41:17):
leaned toward him, and he puts his hands up on
my head at his thumbnails, right in the outer edges
of my eyes, and I thought, oh my god. When
he's going on, he said, you see how easy it
would be for me just to plug them out. But
(41:38):
he said, that's why my thumbnails are so long. Pewee
Gaskins was not my friend. It's a joint production from
My Heart Radio and Doghouse Pictures, produced and hosted by
(41:59):
Jeff Keeping. Executive producers are Courtney Dfries and Noel Brown.
Written by Jim Roberts, Courtney Dufries and Terry James, Edit,
mix and sound designed by Jeremiah Kolani Prescott. Music composed
by Diamond Street Productions, Spencer garn and Ian Newberry. Special
thanks to Jim and Anita Baby. Additional thanks to the
University of South Carolina Moving Image research collections and the
(42:21):
University of South Carolina
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