June 14, 2021 • 44 mins
Pee Wee murders a mother and her biracial toddler. A woman finds out she had a sister she didn't know about, and the sister was one of Pee Wee's victims.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Jim Batty still believes that love conquers all, but his
faith was challenged when dealing with Peewee Gaskins and his
attitudes about race. Twenty five years prior before they met,
the U. S. Supreme Court outlawed school racial segregation in
the landmark case Brown versus the Board of Education. Fifteen
(00:23):
years prior, the US Congress passed the Civil Rights Act,
banning discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex,
or national origin. But change was slow in many parts
of the country, including South Carolina, and some people like
Peewee Gaskins, would never change. Most people we spoke to
(00:46):
were polite about his views on race, but there was
no mistaking it. Peewee Gaskins was a racist. The details
of some of the murders were particularly cold and cruel.
(01:07):
He killed doing and her baby because the father of
the baby was a black man. I know of three
victims who were black or fixed Raye. I think we
have to be taught to hate. I really really do.
(01:29):
From my heart radio at Doghouse Pictures, this is pee
Wee Gaskins was not my friend. I'm Jeff keating m.
(01:50):
I'm sure his environment and certainly his brutal uncles would
have taught him to think what he thought about black people,
and he learned it well. I think we have to
be taught to hate. I really really do. If someone
(02:11):
is taught hate and lives in an environment where racist
attitudes often prevail, that's a dangerous combination. Margaret O'Shea covered
the gascon story for the South Carolina newspaper The State.
Here she is talking about that environment. A lot of
(02:34):
what I know I can infer about South Carolina and
about rural South Carolina, in particular, at the time that
he was living in Florence County, it was an area
where the clan was and may still be active, although
greatly diminished. You don't read or hear much about the
(02:55):
Ku Klux Klan anymore, but the southern poverty laws and
knows that they do exist in South Carolina. Jennifer Hawes
is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter at the Post and
Courier newspaper in South Carolina, an author of the award
winning book Grace Will Lead Us Home, about the two
(03:17):
thousand and fifteen Emmanuel Church shooting in Charleston. Here she
speaks about the climate in South Carolina during the nineteen seventies.
A couple of years ago, we published a series called
Minimally Adequate that looked at South Carolina's education system, and
my piece of that series was looking at the history
of the state and why we have these racial disparities
(03:40):
today and how history plays forward into that. And it's
really interesting to me to find out that most of
the school districts in South Carolina did not desegregate till
nineteen seventy. Public segregated schools were declared unconstitutional in nineteen
fifty four's Brown Versus Board of Education Supreme Court ruling,
but they existed in South Carolina until nineteen seventy. White
(04:04):
residents and many communities created segregation academies, which were private
schools for white students, and many of those academies still exists.
They might have different names and they're not sold as
segregation academies, obviously, but you wind up with the system
where you have predominantly African American public schools and virtually
all white private schools, and that system still exists. Jim
(04:29):
Crow laws, enacted throughout the South, gave legal cover for
public and private racial separation. These laws were the contemporary
evolution of four hundred years of ensconcing white supremacy into law.
White water fountains and colored water fountains, white only restaurants,
segregated schools. This was the norm throughout the South and
(04:52):
other parts of the country. Slightly different circumstances led to
vastly different people. Pee Wee was a racist, mostly a
product of the Jim Crow South and his specific family environment,
and this led to violent racial acts. He killed a
woman for having a biracial child and being pregnant with another.
(05:16):
He dumped a black woman's murdered body in an open
field because she didn't warrant even the semblance of graves.
He gave his other victims, and he murdered a man
in prison, in part because he thought that justice system
was too slow to execute black men on death row.
(05:36):
These are difficult stories to tell and difficult stories to hear,
but they are true, and they had lasting effect on
the victims, families and on the babies. You know, the
crime itself, in my mind anyway, is not the story.
The story is the effect it has on everybody who's living.
(06:00):
We're talking about a crime in which people were killed,
So the issue was what happens after, what happened to
uh these two men's relationship, but also in my case,
what happened to the family members. There's fibers of the
people who survived domestic violence. The story is the effect,
not the crime itself. Many journalists who covered this story,
(06:24):
Cecil Chandler, Holly Gatling, Margaret O'sheay, and others understand exactly
what Jennifer means. Jim Batty knew this too, but it
would prove more difficult for him because he wasn't just
covering the story. He was living in as he interviewed
Peewee Gaskins regularly over a two year period, and some
(06:45):
of the stories were brutal. I think Pepe was taught
to hate and it certainly came out in his behavior
toward during I'm Seeing Her Baby. Jim is referring to
Doren Dempsey, who along with her two year old daughter Robin,
(07:07):
were found murdered in nineteen seventy five. Martha and Dix,
also known as Clyde, was someone else Pee Wee thought
deserved to die. Here's Tom Fowler from w i S
TV reporting on April nine, seventy seven. The sled official
he mentions in his report is Ira Parnell Ira was
(07:30):
working nearby with his father, Sumter County Sheriff Bird Parnell Peeweek.
Gask has told authorities that would find a body in
the creek near this pine tree fled and some County
Sheriff's investigators began looking at the creek this morning, but
they didn't find a body in the creek. On the
bank Folle a hundred feet away, they found skelptal remains.
(07:53):
Gaskin said it was a black woman twenty years old
called Clyde. Gaskin said he killed her with a poisoned
salt drink. Yeah, nice, found her sco back up a
dirt road and just thrown her outside. The road didn't
bear here at all. In fact, to look down in
(08:14):
the so what I thought was a rock that some
inmates from the Canty gang clear and brush is kind
of opened up things. So if you do a little
bit of work at bandoned there was just go and
was glad you wanted you just do that by the road.
(08:43):
According to a May four seven article in the state
newspaper written by Jerry Adams and Cathy Edwards, Martha and
Dix had been playing cards and laughing with her family
on the porch of their Brand Street home in Sumter,
South Carolina. The five at four, a hundred and fifty
five pound African American woman, was dressed, as she often was,
(09:06):
in men's clothing, an oversized button down shirt, slacks, and
a large belt buckle. She left in the early afternoon,
headed to the three sixty two club on Manning Avenue.
It was March nine two, and she was never seen again.
(09:29):
Her sister told reporters that Anne's friends called her Clyde
and that she was a lesbian who occasionally slept with men.
She would sometimes slip away to visit out of state friends,
but she would always call and stay in touch with
her family. After several days without hearing from her, her
mother called police to report her missing, but police would
(09:52):
later say they had no record of the call and
so they did not investigate. Peewee Gaskins was occasionally willing
to disclose the location of a murder victim's body when
he could get something in return. With Clyde, pee Wee
(10:12):
tried to cut a deal by revealing the location of
her remains. He directed Sheriff Bird Parnell's deputies to the
Concord area of eastern Sumter County. The search came up empty,
so the deal was off. Two months later, while testifying
in a trial unrelated to the murders of those eight
(10:33):
victims found in the field, Gaskins shocked the courtroom and
his very own attorneys by announcing, under oath and without prompting,
that he had murdered Clyde Dix and dumped her body
in a ditch. Two days later, sled investigator Ira Parnell
found the skull about thirty feet from where gascon Cetti
(10:54):
dumped her. Pee Wee. Gaskins would officially confess to killing
Martha and Dix. He slipped poison into her soda drink.
Although there are a few stories about his motives, the
most widely reported was that he wanted revenge because Clyde
(11:16):
was allegedly the one who supplied drugs to his niece,
Janice Kirby. Another motive was that Clyde had told some
people she was pregnant with his child, and he was
outraged at the rumor. She became one of his victims.
(11:39):
I understand that Peewee has told other people was she
was black, and I don't mix in with that. That's
not why I killed her though, I killed her because
she lied about me. But then he followed that statement
with a racist statement saying, she told people that she
(12:00):
was pregnant with my child. And I tell you one thing,
I ain't never done that with no black person. Peewee
Gaskins murdered Martha and Dix. There was no urgent police
search when she disappeared, no urgent search to find her body,
(12:20):
and there was no burial. She was just a poor
young black lesbian whose body was tossed in a ditch.
I know of three victims for if you can an
unborn child who were black or mixed race. The details
(12:43):
of some of the murders were particularly cold and cruel.
In the case of Clyde, one of the things that
was done to her was he gave her acid in
a Coca Cola and then he poured acid on her,
and that seemed a horrible way to go. Charles mcdou
(13:19):
was a social activist and former chairperson of the Student
Non Violent Coordinating Committee in He was in his first
year at South Carolina State College now University. On Thanksgiving
break with friends, so we went to something and as
we were driving home, the cops fools is open. No
(13:44):
big deal, So I didn't do anything. Total cop spools
asked some my license and registration stuff. Gave him that
and we're talking up said where are you from? Boy?
I think you got the license and to read, and
(14:07):
he hit me. Mind you, this was before the non
violent civil rights struggle, and I came from a tough
steel town and if somebody put their hand in your face,
you return the favor and kind So when the cop
hit me, I hit him, and before he hit the ground,
(14:33):
I was kicking him and stomping him about the head.
Next you, children, his partner jumped into the fray. So
it's these two cops and me fighting, and the cops
beat me bloody, broke my arm, busted my jaw. After
(14:57):
the cops would beat me, I was rest for the
first time in my life and charged with disturbing the
peace and disobeying. Officer took them to the hospital and
got me patched up. And then I went to get
on the train to go back to the school. I
(15:20):
want to get on train. The conductor said, all right,
get on back to the baggage car and says, I,
you know what is this baggage car? Nonsense? And it
seems that on every train in the South, there was
one car on the train for black people, the car
right behind the engines where the certain desks would come through.
(15:47):
And when that was field, you sit in the baggage car.
I said, no, no, no no, sport, not for my little
ten dollars and fifty cents. Do I ride with suitcases
mangie dogs? And that plenty of seats right here, and
I'm having one of them and said down, and was
(16:09):
re arrested for sitting in the white uh and violating
the laws of segregation. And once again, I'm back in
del six hours after minded jail and best where it
all began that afternoon in Sumter, South Carolina, that Thanksgiving weekend,
(16:37):
said Charles mcdouop for his years as an activist. He
led the s n c C immediately after college in
the years just before Representative John Lewis of Georgia. Charles's
early life was shaped in a steel town in Ohio,
where he learned to stand up for himself and persevere
virtues he would need to fortify after his painful introduce
(17:00):
auction to black life on the south side of the
Mason Dixon Line. That experience set Charles on a mission
to elevate the stature of black lives in America, particularly
in the Jim Crow South. And this was the same
Jim Crow South that formed pee Wee Gaskins and contributed
to his racism. That was a tough topic for Jim
(17:22):
Baty Well. My initial feeling his repulsion and I resented
it very very much, even though it was Peewee Gaskins.
I could not bear two two sense anytime there was
any mention of an African American person that there was hatred,
(17:44):
I could not abide that. But then I moved to
why how he had pee Wee and I were almost
the same age, he was a couple of years older,
we lived eighty miles apart in the state of South Carolina.
Why would he think? Has he done? And I think
(18:04):
the way I do? That it caused me to recall
racial tensions were high throughout the twentieth century, and that
included South Carolina. In nineteen sixty seven, a mysterious fire
burned down in All Black High School in Greenville on
homecoming night. No officials ever named cause, suspects, or motivation.
(18:28):
It was one of the dozens of unsolved arsons in
the state. The Orangeburg Massacre of nineteen sixty eight exposed
passions in a society with severe asymmetries of power and standards.
The owner of a bowling alley in Orangeburg, South Carolina,
(18:50):
refused to integrate his business. After a month of talks
with local officials and black leaders, the owner persisted that
he was not going to allow the black students to bowl.
On February five, n a group of students from South
Carolina State entered the bowling alley in a non violent
request for service. The students left peacefully after they were
(19:14):
asked to leave. More students arrived the next day and
were met by an all white police force. Daily protests
continued and tensions escalated until the night of February eight.
Students started a bonfire at the front of the campus
(19:34):
as a means of carrying on their twenty four hour
protest vigil. As police and firemen attempted to put out
that fire, someone through something large and it struck a patrolman.
Highway patrol officers began firing into the crowd of around
two hundred protesters. Seven people were injured and three were killed.
(19:56):
A formative event for the whole of South Carolina here
again as executive director of the Department of Juvenile Justice,
Freddie Pugh. I learned of the Orangeburg massacre during freshman
orientation at South Carolina State. It was a huge topic
(20:16):
in Orangeburg. All freshmen who build a freshman location thought
about it. And if you're a bulldog, you're very familiar
with Orangeburg maskater. Sadly enough, staying on in South Carolina's history,
it's kind of brought to the forefront for every income
in class at South Calina State. I wanted to physically
(20:37):
go see that bowl. You know that these students were
shot in here simply because us performed the bold Charles
mcdou became painfully aware of institutionalized racism on his first
day in the South. It wasn't nebulous, It wasn't merely
a way of thinking. Jim Crowe was the manifesto of
(21:00):
ordinances and policies set to perpetuate white supremacy by systematically
disenfranchising blacks. But Charles did not grow up in the South. Fortunately,
he was a resilient man and he had plenty of fortitude.
The brutal encounter with the police did not diminish his resolve.
(21:21):
After he was discharged from the hospital, he attempted to
catch a train back to school. As it turned out,
he too would have another encounter, and none other than Orangebrook,
South Carolina. It was there that his education into the
Southern rule of law resumed. Got back to Arinsburg, and
(21:43):
there's a garden in Arinsburg called at his Stone, But
it was between the train station and the campus, and
I was hurting from the beating, so I took a
short cut to get back to campus and was arrested
because it was against the law for black people to
(22:04):
be in a public party except on one day during
the week, and that was one of the days. So
I've been arrested for the third time in two days.
I learned very quickly how much was off limits. If
something said open to the public, the minute was closed
to black people, and you would be arrested if you
(22:27):
would go there. Orangeburg is ninety minutes west of Sumter.
Pee Wee openly expressed his discontent with the shifts and
race relations, especially sexual relations between races. There were all
kinds of ridiculous laws I learned about at around that time,
(22:47):
like it was against the law to look at a
white woman to look a white woman and her face.
It was a form of assault. The last states officially
to legalize into race marriage or South Carolina in November
and Alabama in two thousand, they amended their constitutions to
(23:08):
repeal clauses banning marriage of a white person with a
person of color, a full thirty years after the U. S.
Supreme Court case Loving versus Virginia in nineteen sixty seven.
Here's Philip hurt Coop. He was attorney for plaintiffs, Richard
and Mildred Loving, a white man an African American woman,
(23:29):
and their lawsuit against the State of Virginia. You have
for you today we consider the most odious of the
segregation laws and the slavery laws, and our view of
this law, and we hope to clearly show is that
this is the slavery law. Unable to wed in their
home state of Virginia, the couple married in Washington, d c.
(23:51):
When they returned home, they were arrested police sided Virginia's
anti missige nation law, known as the Racial Integrity Act
of nine four. Counselor R. D. Mcelwaine the third argued
for the states, the attitude which society has taught. Interracial marriages,
(24:11):
which in detailing is opposition says, causes a child to
have almost insuperable difficulties in identification, and that the problems
which the child of an interracial marriage basis are those
which no child can come through without damage to himself.
It is not infrequent that the children of intermarried parents
(24:33):
are referred to not merely as the children of intermarried parents,
but as the victims of intermarried parents and as the
models of intermarried parents. These are direct quotes from the
state of Virginia argued in court that separate was good
and in everyone's best interests, declaring that children of interracial
(24:54):
unions would suffer discrimination in comparison to children with parents
of the same race. South Carolina had similar language in
its constitution in order to uphold anti massignation as a
moral good. Peewee individually represented the lost causes behind these
(25:15):
state laws and all this systemic racism would manifest when
pee Wee decided he would be lynch mob for the law.
When he drowned Douring Dempsey, a nineteen year old pregnant
mother and her two year old biracial child, Michelle Robin.
(25:46):
Peewee Gaskins killed a pregnant mother, Doreen Dempsey and her
child in racially motivated murders. To understand dorene story, we
start with her sister, Barb Snyder. Barb was thirty one
and on her way to get a tattoo when she
learned that the man she called dad was actually her uncle,
(26:09):
who had adopted her when Barbe was a toddler. I
have an amended birth certificate which shows I'm born in
South Carolina. My original I have no idea. I've never
seen it. I was shocked by all of this because
I grew up not knowing I was adopted. Barbe's husband,
(26:35):
Chris Snyder, maintains a blog. They started to catalog Barbe's
family tree as it came into focus over the years
they've spent researching. Barb isn't confident that she could put
her story into words the way he can. She's a
bit shy and asked that Chris tell most of her story.
She grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and got a call
(26:56):
out of the blue one day from a woman claiming
to be her sister. Joy is the one that contacted
Barb and said, look, I'm your sister. You've been adopted.
So Joy was the first sibling that Barbed met. Barbe
was overwhelmed. Her adopted mother had died by the time
(27:18):
Joy called, so Barbed went to the man she called
dad her whole life. He ended up admitting, under pressure
that she and her brother John had been adopted as infants.
They swore then that they would never tell the children
about their birth parents. All the aunts and uncles went
along with the story they're adopted. Dad had to admit
(27:40):
as well that their biological dad was the guy they
had known as Uncle Jim, who had not been seen
for decades. He also knew her birth mother, Vivian, and
how to get in touch with her. Vivian and Jim
had five children, including Barbed, John and Joy. She had
four other children with three different men. Jim, Barb's biological
(28:04):
father left Pennsylvania thirty years prior to join his father
with the Amusements of America Carnival in Sumter, South Carolina.
Vivian enjoyed him on the road and they had an
on again, off again relationship. Here's Chris Snyder talking about Vivian.
(28:25):
She danced in Cleveland, and I'm sure she danced in
places in Pennsylvania, depending on what the carnival was doing
at the time. She not only danced with the carnival,
she would do bur lesque in the forties and fifties.
But there was a subculture there and it was different.
It was kind of seedy part of the carnival with
rides and games and things like that. And I figured
(28:47):
that this is the part of the carnival that they
were in, you know, like a strip club, almost on wheels.
This isn't a glamorous life, traveling with the carnival and stripping.
Just what they're doing to make some money. Vivian's father
in law made the costumes she wore on stage. He
(29:08):
was the carnival barker, step right up kind of stuff,
and he was a clown. Jim was the ticket taker.
Vivian had danced away up and down the East Coast
along the way. She had nine children with four different men.
Barb was Vivian's fourth child. We stayed in Sumter at
(29:32):
the motel there. That's where Vivian took me after I
was born, because that's where the Carney circuits stayed. A Winstern,
my grandfather used to manage the motel. They put me
in a drawer, and I guess that's where I slept
for the first two and a half months of my life.
(29:52):
When they would go on the road, she would leave
some of the kids with neighbors or whoever. In some
cases they were turn over to the state you know
has abandoned children. Sometimes they went into foster care for
a while. Vivian sister and husband raised Barbe as their own.
Soon after learning of her adoption, Barbe ended up getting
(30:14):
in touch with Vivian and went to meet her in
Chris wrote on the family blog that it wasn't exactly
a Hallmark Channel reunion. Vivian wasn't completely open with the details,
but she did agree to visit with Barbe and her
family for Christmas that year. Well, it started making things
(30:43):
make sense, you know when you look back at your
childhood and you look back at things and you go, oh,
it makes a little more sense now, and then you
look at pictures and you realize, wow, she should have
been a huge the pregnancy ballet nothing. He never questioned it.
(31:04):
As a kid. Barbe discovered that she was adopted back
in ninety four and started searching for her siblings, which
ended up taking quite a few years to locate everybody.
Joy knew where some of their siblings were and helped
Barb track down the others. Barbe ended up getting connected
to all of her siblings except the oldest, Doreen. One
(31:29):
observation that I can give you is that Vivian lived
her life that she was always the victim um. None
of this stuff was her fault. She would blame the
different men that she was with, and none of it
was her responsibility. Joy grew up with Vivian in Pennsylvania
and remembered her oldest half sister would come and visit
(31:51):
them sometimes in the summer. Doreen had come from South
Carolina up to Reading to visit and spent some time there.
Must have spent part of a summer there. And the
one thing that Joy remembers is that her sister, her
big sister, brought her a puppy, So it was kind
(32:12):
of a heartbreaking part of that whole story. Doreen grew
up for a while with Vivian near Sumter, but was
adopted by the Dempsey family at a young age. She
was around the carnival early and often. The Sumter newspaper
reported that Dorene Dempsey spent a year in the Episcopal
(32:34):
Church Home for Children. When she was thirteen, she had
some contact with her birth mother and met Pewee Gaskins
through Vivian. They all were around the carnival. She finished
ninth grade at mclauren Junior High School and was expected
to enroll in the local high school in nineteen sixty nine. Instead,
(32:57):
on the first day of tenth grade, Doren was married
and expected to get a job. Her husband abandoned her
three weeks later when he joined the army unannounced. She
joined the job's corps and was moved to Tongue Point
Training Center in Oregon. She left there after four months
and returned to Amusements of America, where her father worked.
(33:20):
It wasn't long after getting a carnival job that she
met Peewee Gaskins. They became friends and she moved into
Peewee gaskins home for several months. His heating and air
conditioning job kept him away from home while he traveled
the state, so eventually Doren got bored and moved out.
(33:42):
After Doren left, Gaskins met and married Sandy Snell, and
she was soon pregnant with their child. Doren reappeared, also
pregnant by a different man, and the two pregnant women,
Doreen and Sandy lived with Peewee Gaskins until his son
was born. Doren would relocate to a home for Unwedded
(34:02):
Mothers and Charleston to deliver her own baby. Here's a
need of baby talking about Doren's moved to a home
for unwed mothers late in her pregnancy. The building still exists.
It is a hospital, but it was part of the
Florence Critten In Homes for Unwedded Mothers that was started
(34:24):
for women from families who couldn't have their babies because
they were shaming to their families and had to go
somewhere to have the babies. But there was a huge,
huge fewer about them because they became sort of known
as adoption mills. Doreen wanted Michelle Robin to be her
baby because it didn't come into the story whether she
(34:45):
was pressured to give her up, but she had no
intention of doing that. From what Jim knows and what
Peewee found out, Peewee and Sandy went to visit Doreen
in the hospital after she delivered the baby. She named
Michelle Robin Dempsey. She called her Robin. When Peewee saw
(35:08):
the bi racial baby, all of his racial hatred emerged.
He was furious he had helped her mother. He had
helped her, given them gifts, given her a home while
she was pregnant. He told his attorney that he felt betrayed.
When Doren left the Home for Unwed Mothers, she was
(35:29):
not welcome back at Peewee's house. He sent her to
live with Sandy's brother for a while. She leaves that
house and moves in with Carl Sellers. He was part
of the car theft ring and had recently gotten out
of prison, and Peewee testified that people thought Doreen and
Carl should be together, and that's the way it was
apparently for a while. Carl Sellers how he escaped Peewee's rath,
(35:58):
I'll never know, but people ever bothered him, did time,
served some time in jail, but he was really kind
of an untouchable. He was just escaped everything and everybody.
The fatal die was cast when Carl learned that Doreen
was pregnant again. Carl was livid, so he and his brother,
(36:21):
Johnny Sellers, packed up Doreen, Robin and their luggage and
a car full of stolen televisions and drove up to
see Peewee unannounced she was pregnant again by the same father.
It's a fair statement to say that Peewee despised that
action and activity in Doreen's life. I think he loved
(36:43):
her at times, but he hated that behavior. Doreen and
the baby we're taken to Peewee's compound there in prospect
by the Seller's brothers. Johnny Sellers had taken them in
and he couldn't stand in him more so they simply
loaded him up with in the station wagon and they
(37:05):
simply put her in the car and took her to
pee Wee. Pee Wee didn't even know they were coming there.
The Seller's brothers brought Dorene Dempsey and Robin Dempsey to
pee Wee, not to kill her, because Johnny had let
her them stay with him. He had no idea that
(37:25):
what he was doing was bringing her and the baby
to their deaths. According to a deposition, Peewee told investigators, quote,
I told him I couldn't take care of her, and
one thing led to another, So me and Doreen walked
around the house. I was going to talk to her,
(37:47):
and she was about seven months pregnant at the time. Again,
and so I asked her who the daddy of the
kid was that she was carrying at the time, and
it was a black kid. End quote. Pee Wee drowned
Doreen in the pond behind his trailer. He left her there,
returned to the front of the house, took Robin from
(38:08):
the seller's brothers and told them to get going. He
took her around the house and drowned the two year
old beside her mother. He testified that he put the
bodies in his hearse for a short drive. He put
them into the ground as he had the rest of
(38:28):
the victims in the field, simply covered them with cutaway branches, leaves,
and such. He was near the creek that runs by
the fields. They were found wrapped in plastic. Solicitor Ken
Somerford asked Pee Wee. Quote, are you telling me that
the only reason that you killed Dorene and this baby
(38:48):
was because they didn't have a place to stay end quote.
Gaskins replied no, no, no. Somerford asked, well, why did
you kill Doreen and the baby. Gaskins replied, quote, well,
dren thought more of that than she did a white man.
End quote. He killed Dorene and her baby because the
(39:16):
father of the baby was a black man, and hearings
with sister some of her he did say, in fact,
he said clearly how he killed them, and some of
whom were getting mixed up to note they were killed
with a knife or with a gun when a rifle,
and he had to say, no, they were drownded. They
(39:37):
both were drownded. He told Jesse, Sandy, Carl, and Johnny
that he had put Doren and Robin on a train
to Pennsylvania. Her father, Jim, called Carl's house soon after,
looking for Dorene, and Carl told him the same story.
He never checked on her again. Peewee later reported that
(40:00):
he killed the toddler because she wouldn't have any kind
of real life growing up as an orphaned by racial baby.
The beautiful little girl, beautiful skin, all of it. I
can't read it or hear it without being completely done in.
I come as close to hating Peewee in that story,
(40:24):
and I do hate him. How could he talk that
way about that baby? That angel, the angel, the baby
Robin Dempsey, Michelle, Robin Dempsey. I love her name. A
beautiful baby daughter of During Dempsey, drowned by the hands
of the very same man, and I associate as heavy
(40:47):
as these deaths weighed on the babies, it was equally
painful for Chris and Barb Snyder to learn this part
of their story. It was two thousand two that finally
put the facts together to find out that Dorin had
been killed. Some of the siblings got together, we went
(41:10):
out to dinner. This was the first time this group
of kids had ever been together and their siblings and
they had never been together like this, And of course
Doreen's gone, so they all nine can never get together.
Barb and I came to this realization Robin would turn
(41:30):
fifty years old this year. That's hard for us to
think about because we've been looking at these pictures of
this toddler, and Robin actually is older than two of
her uncles. I got to the point where I really
felt that we needed to find out where Doreen was buried,
(41:51):
and there was no information about that anywhere, and I
decided to start reading all of the old articles, and
that's where I came up with Holly Gatling's name. There
were a couple of articles actually written about Doring, like
this is the person you know, this is what she
was like. And I decided to reach out to Holly
because she was the only one that I could still find.
(42:13):
It's interesting, I sometimes think this story is behind me.
And then I got an email from the husband of Doring,
Dempsey's half sister. They are looking for the remains. Where
is Doreen's body and the baby. They can't find a grave,
(42:37):
They can't find a paper trail for where the remains.
Maybe you know where they cremated. Are they in a
funeral home somewhere? She responded and was very helpful, put
me in touch with the acting sheriff, who I guess
had worked the case at the time. He put me
in touch with the acting coroner, who was very helpful
(43:01):
and called me back, but went through all of his
files and couldn't find any mention of what happened to
the remains after the trial, and suggested that I get
with the public records department. So that's kind of how
we got to where we are today. It seeks to
(43:22):
me particularly cruel to kill a baby, and to do
that just because the job was a mixed race. It's
just reprehensible to me that job was drowned along with
her mother solely for that reason. If this we know
(43:42):
that bothered me a great deal. Peee Gaskins was not
my friend. As a joint production from My Heart Radio
and Doghouse Pictures, produced and hosted by Jeff Keeping. Executive
(44:04):
producers are Courtney Dufries and Noel Brown. Written by Jim Roberts,
Courtney Duffries and Terry James edit NIX 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 University of South Carolina
Jim Batty still believes that love conquers all, but his
faith was challenged when dealing with Peewee Gaskins and his
attitudes about race. Twenty five years prior before they met,
the U. S. Supreme Court outlawed school racial segregation in
the landmark case Brown versus the Board of Education. Fifteen
(00:23):
years prior, the US Congress passed the Civil Rights Act,
banning discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex,
or national origin. But change was slow in many parts
of the country, including South Carolina, and some people like
Peewee Gaskins, would never change. Most people we spoke to
(00:46):
were polite about his views on race, but there was
no mistaking it. Peewee Gaskins was a racist. The details
of some of the murders were particularly cold and cruel.
(01:07):
He killed doing and her baby because the father of
the baby was a black man. I know of three
victims who were black or fixed Raye. I think we
have to be taught to hate. I really really do.
(01:29):
From my heart radio at Doghouse Pictures, this is pee
Wee Gaskins was not my friend. I'm Jeff keating m.
(01:50):
I'm sure his environment and certainly his brutal uncles would
have taught him to think what he thought about black people,
and he learned it well. I think we have to
be taught to hate. I really really do. If someone
(02:11):
is taught hate and lives in an environment where racist
attitudes often prevail, that's a dangerous combination. Margaret O'Shea covered
the gascon story for the South Carolina newspaper The State.
Here she is talking about that environment. A lot of
(02:34):
what I know I can infer about South Carolina and
about rural South Carolina, in particular, at the time that
he was living in Florence County, it was an area
where the clan was and may still be active, although
greatly diminished. You don't read or hear much about the
(02:55):
Ku Klux Klan anymore, but the southern poverty laws and
knows that they do exist in South Carolina. Jennifer Hawes
is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter at the Post and
Courier newspaper in South Carolina, an author of the award
winning book Grace Will Lead Us Home, about the two
(03:17):
thousand and fifteen Emmanuel Church shooting in Charleston. Here she
speaks about the climate in South Carolina during the nineteen seventies.
A couple of years ago, we published a series called
Minimally Adequate that looked at South Carolina's education system, and
my piece of that series was looking at the history
of the state and why we have these racial disparities
(03:40):
today and how history plays forward into that. And it's
really interesting to me to find out that most of
the school districts in South Carolina did not desegregate till
nineteen seventy. Public segregated schools were declared unconstitutional in nineteen
fifty four's Brown Versus Board of Education Supreme Court ruling,
but they existed in South Carolina until nineteen seventy. White
(04:04):
residents and many communities created segregation academies, which were private
schools for white students, and many of those academies still exists.
They might have different names and they're not sold as
segregation academies, obviously, but you wind up with the system
where you have predominantly African American public schools and virtually
all white private schools, and that system still exists. Jim
(04:29):
Crow laws, enacted throughout the South, gave legal cover for
public and private racial separation. These laws were the contemporary
evolution of four hundred years of ensconcing white supremacy into law.
White water fountains and colored water fountains, white only restaurants,
segregated schools. This was the norm throughout the South and
(04:52):
other parts of the country. Slightly different circumstances led to
vastly different people. Pee Wee was a racist, mostly a
product of the Jim Crow South and his specific family environment,
and this led to violent racial acts. He killed a
woman for having a biracial child and being pregnant with another.
(05:16):
He dumped a black woman's murdered body in an open
field because she didn't warrant even the semblance of graves.
He gave his other victims, and he murdered a man
in prison, in part because he thought that justice system
was too slow to execute black men on death row.
(05:36):
These are difficult stories to tell and difficult stories to hear,
but they are true, and they had lasting effect on
the victims, families and on the babies. You know, the
crime itself, in my mind anyway, is not the story.
The story is the effect it has on everybody who's living.
(06:00):
We're talking about a crime in which people were killed,
So the issue was what happens after, what happened to
uh these two men's relationship, but also in my case,
what happened to the family members. There's fibers of the
people who survived domestic violence. The story is the effect,
not the crime itself. Many journalists who covered this story,
(06:24):
Cecil Chandler, Holly Gatling, Margaret O'sheay, and others understand exactly
what Jennifer means. Jim Batty knew this too, but it
would prove more difficult for him because he wasn't just
covering the story. He was living in as he interviewed
Peewee Gaskins regularly over a two year period, and some
(06:45):
of the stories were brutal. I think Pepe was taught
to hate and it certainly came out in his behavior
toward during I'm Seeing Her Baby. Jim is referring to
Doren Dempsey, who along with her two year old daughter Robin,
(07:07):
were found murdered in nineteen seventy five. Martha and Dix,
also known as Clyde, was someone else Pee Wee thought
deserved to die. Here's Tom Fowler from w i S
TV reporting on April nine, seventy seven. The sled official
he mentions in his report is Ira Parnell Ira was
(07:30):
working nearby with his father, Sumter County Sheriff Bird Parnell Peeweek.
Gask has told authorities that would find a body in
the creek near this pine tree fled and some County
Sheriff's investigators began looking at the creek this morning, but
they didn't find a body in the creek. On the
bank Folle a hundred feet away, they found skelptal remains.
(07:53):
Gaskin said it was a black woman twenty years old
called Clyde. Gaskin said he killed her with a poisoned
salt drink. Yeah, nice, found her sco back up a
dirt road and just thrown her outside. The road didn't
bear here at all. In fact, to look down in
(08:14):
the so what I thought was a rock that some
inmates from the Canty gang clear and brush is kind
of opened up things. So if you do a little
bit of work at bandoned there was just go and
was glad you wanted you just do that by the road.
(08:43):
According to a May four seven article in the state
newspaper written by Jerry Adams and Cathy Edwards, Martha and
Dix had been playing cards and laughing with her family
on the porch of their Brand Street home in Sumter,
South Carolina. The five at four, a hundred and fifty
five pound African American woman, was dressed, as she often was,
(09:06):
in men's clothing, an oversized button down shirt, slacks, and
a large belt buckle. She left in the early afternoon,
headed to the three sixty two club on Manning Avenue.
It was March nine two, and she was never seen again.
(09:29):
Her sister told reporters that Anne's friends called her Clyde
and that she was a lesbian who occasionally slept with men.
She would sometimes slip away to visit out of state friends,
but she would always call and stay in touch with
her family. After several days without hearing from her, her
mother called police to report her missing, but police would
(09:52):
later say they had no record of the call and
so they did not investigate. Peewee Gaskins was occasionally willing
to disclose the location of a murder victim's body when
he could get something in return. With Clyde, pee Wee
(10:12):
tried to cut a deal by revealing the location of
her remains. He directed Sheriff Bird Parnell's deputies to the
Concord area of eastern Sumter County. The search came up empty,
so the deal was off. Two months later, while testifying
in a trial unrelated to the murders of those eight
(10:33):
victims found in the field, Gaskins shocked the courtroom and
his very own attorneys by announcing, under oath and without prompting,
that he had murdered Clyde Dix and dumped her body
in a ditch. Two days later, sled investigator Ira Parnell
found the skull about thirty feet from where gascon Cetti
(10:54):
dumped her. Pee Wee. Gaskins would officially confess to killing
Martha and Dix. He slipped poison into her soda drink.
Although there are a few stories about his motives, the
most widely reported was that he wanted revenge because Clyde
(11:16):
was allegedly the one who supplied drugs to his niece,
Janice Kirby. Another motive was that Clyde had told some
people she was pregnant with his child, and he was
outraged at the rumor. She became one of his victims.
(11:39):
I understand that Peewee has told other people was she
was black, and I don't mix in with that. That's
not why I killed her though, I killed her because
she lied about me. But then he followed that statement
with a racist statement saying, she told people that she
(12:00):
was pregnant with my child. And I tell you one thing,
I ain't never done that with no black person. Peewee
Gaskins murdered Martha and Dix. There was no urgent police
search when she disappeared, no urgent search to find her body,
(12:20):
and there was no burial. She was just a poor
young black lesbian whose body was tossed in a ditch.
I know of three victims for if you can an
unborn child who were black or mixed race. The details
(12:43):
of some of the murders were particularly cold and cruel.
In the case of Clyde, one of the things that
was done to her was he gave her acid in
a Coca Cola and then he poured acid on her,
and that seemed a horrible way to go. Charles mcdou
(13:19):
was a social activist and former chairperson of the Student
Non Violent Coordinating Committee in He was in his first
year at South Carolina State College now University. On Thanksgiving
break with friends, so we went to something and as
we were driving home, the cops fools is open. No
(13:44):
big deal, So I didn't do anything. Total cop spools
asked some my license and registration stuff. Gave him that
and we're talking up said where are you from? Boy?
I think you got the license and to read, and
(14:07):
he hit me. Mind you, this was before the non
violent civil rights struggle, and I came from a tough
steel town and if somebody put their hand in your face,
you return the favor and kind So when the cop
hit me, I hit him, and before he hit the ground,
(14:33):
I was kicking him and stomping him about the head.
Next you, children, his partner jumped into the fray. So
it's these two cops and me fighting, and the cops
beat me bloody, broke my arm, busted my jaw. After
(14:57):
the cops would beat me, I was rest for the
first time in my life and charged with disturbing the
peace and disobeying. Officer took them to the hospital and
got me patched up. And then I went to get
on the train to go back to the school. I
(15:20):
want to get on train. The conductor said, all right,
get on back to the baggage car and says, I,
you know what is this baggage car? Nonsense? And it
seems that on every train in the South, there was
one car on the train for black people, the car
right behind the engines where the certain desks would come through.
(15:47):
And when that was field, you sit in the baggage car.
I said, no, no, no no, sport, not for my little
ten dollars and fifty cents. Do I ride with suitcases
mangie dogs? And that plenty of seats right here, and
I'm having one of them and said down, and was
(16:09):
re arrested for sitting in the white uh and violating
the laws of segregation. And once again, I'm back in
del six hours after minded jail and best where it
all began that afternoon in Sumter, South Carolina, that Thanksgiving weekend,
(16:37):
said Charles mcdouop for his years as an activist. He
led the s n c C immediately after college in
the years just before Representative John Lewis of Georgia. Charles's
early life was shaped in a steel town in Ohio,
where he learned to stand up for himself and persevere
virtues he would need to fortify after his painful introduce
(17:00):
auction to black life on the south side of the
Mason Dixon Line. That experience set Charles on a mission
to elevate the stature of black lives in America, particularly
in the Jim Crow South. And this was the same
Jim Crow South that formed pee Wee Gaskins and contributed
to his racism. That was a tough topic for Jim
(17:22):
Baty Well. My initial feeling his repulsion and I resented
it very very much, even though it was Peewee Gaskins.
I could not bear two two sense anytime there was
any mention of an African American person that there was hatred,
(17:44):
I could not abide that. But then I moved to
why how he had pee Wee and I were almost
the same age, he was a couple of years older,
we lived eighty miles apart in the state of South Carolina.
Why would he think? Has he done? And I think
(18:04):
the way I do? That it caused me to recall
racial tensions were high throughout the twentieth century, and that
included South Carolina. In nineteen sixty seven, a mysterious fire
burned down in All Black High School in Greenville on
homecoming night. No officials ever named cause, suspects, or motivation.
(18:28):
It was one of the dozens of unsolved arsons in
the state. The Orangeburg Massacre of nineteen sixty eight exposed
passions in a society with severe asymmetries of power and standards.
The owner of a bowling alley in Orangeburg, South Carolina,
(18:50):
refused to integrate his business. After a month of talks
with local officials and black leaders, the owner persisted that
he was not going to allow the black students to bowl.
On February five, n a group of students from South
Carolina State entered the bowling alley in a non violent
request for service. The students left peacefully after they were
(19:14):
asked to leave. More students arrived the next day and
were met by an all white police force. Daily protests
continued and tensions escalated until the night of February eight.
Students started a bonfire at the front of the campus
(19:34):
as a means of carrying on their twenty four hour
protest vigil. As police and firemen attempted to put out
that fire, someone through something large and it struck a patrolman.
Highway patrol officers began firing into the crowd of around
two hundred protesters. Seven people were injured and three were killed.
(19:56):
A formative event for the whole of South Carolina here
again as executive director of the Department of Juvenile Justice,
Freddie Pugh. I learned of the Orangeburg massacre during freshman
orientation at South Carolina State. It was a huge topic
(20:16):
in Orangeburg. All freshmen who build a freshman location thought
about it. And if you're a bulldog, you're very familiar
with Orangeburg maskater. Sadly enough, staying on in South Carolina's history,
it's kind of brought to the forefront for every income
in class at South Calina State. I wanted to physically
(20:37):
go see that bowl. You know that these students were
shot in here simply because us performed the bold Charles
mcdou became painfully aware of institutionalized racism on his first
day in the South. It wasn't nebulous, It wasn't merely
a way of thinking. Jim Crowe was the manifesto of
(21:00):
ordinances and policies set to perpetuate white supremacy by systematically
disenfranchising blacks. But Charles did not grow up in the South. Fortunately,
he was a resilient man and he had plenty of fortitude.
The brutal encounter with the police did not diminish his resolve.
(21:21):
After he was discharged from the hospital, he attempted to
catch a train back to school. As it turned out,
he too would have another encounter, and none other than Orangebrook,
South Carolina. It was there that his education into the
Southern rule of law resumed. Got back to Arinsburg, and
(21:43):
there's a garden in Arinsburg called at his Stone, But
it was between the train station and the campus, and
I was hurting from the beating, so I took a
short cut to get back to campus and was arrested
because it was against the law for black people to
(22:04):
be in a public party except on one day during
the week, and that was one of the days. So
I've been arrested for the third time in two days.
I learned very quickly how much was off limits. If
something said open to the public, the minute was closed
to black people, and you would be arrested if you
(22:27):
would go there. Orangeburg is ninety minutes west of Sumter.
Pee Wee openly expressed his discontent with the shifts and
race relations, especially sexual relations between races. There were all
kinds of ridiculous laws I learned about at around that time,
(22:47):
like it was against the law to look at a
white woman to look a white woman and her face.
It was a form of assault. The last states officially
to legalize into race marriage or South Carolina in November
and Alabama in two thousand, they amended their constitutions to
(23:08):
repeal clauses banning marriage of a white person with a
person of color, a full thirty years after the U. S.
Supreme Court case Loving versus Virginia in nineteen sixty seven.
Here's Philip hurt Coop. He was attorney for plaintiffs, Richard
and Mildred Loving, a white man an African American woman,
(23:29):
and their lawsuit against the State of Virginia. You have
for you today we consider the most odious of the
segregation laws and the slavery laws, and our view of
this law, and we hope to clearly show is that
this is the slavery law. Unable to wed in their
home state of Virginia, the couple married in Washington, d c.
(23:51):
When they returned home, they were arrested police sided Virginia's
anti missige nation law, known as the Racial Integrity Act
of nine four. Counselor R. D. Mcelwaine the third argued
for the states, the attitude which society has taught. Interracial marriages,
(24:11):
which in detailing is opposition says, causes a child to
have almost insuperable difficulties in identification, and that the problems
which the child of an interracial marriage basis are those
which no child can come through without damage to himself.
It is not infrequent that the children of intermarried parents
(24:33):
are referred to not merely as the children of intermarried parents,
but as the victims of intermarried parents and as the
models of intermarried parents. These are direct quotes from the
state of Virginia argued in court that separate was good
and in everyone's best interests, declaring that children of interracial
(24:54):
unions would suffer discrimination in comparison to children with parents
of the same race. South Carolina had similar language in
its constitution in order to uphold anti massignation as a
moral good. Peewee individually represented the lost causes behind these
(25:15):
state laws and all this systemic racism would manifest when
pee Wee decided he would be lynch mob for the law.
When he drowned Douring Dempsey, a nineteen year old pregnant
mother and her two year old biracial child, Michelle Robin.
(25:46):
Peewee Gaskins killed a pregnant mother, Doreen Dempsey and her
child in racially motivated murders. To understand dorene story, we
start with her sister, Barb Snyder. Barb was thirty one
and on her way to get a tattoo when she
learned that the man she called dad was actually her uncle,
(26:09):
who had adopted her when Barbe was a toddler. I
have an amended birth certificate which shows I'm born in
South Carolina. My original I have no idea. I've never
seen it. I was shocked by all of this because
I grew up not knowing I was adopted. Barbe's husband,
(26:35):
Chris Snyder, maintains a blog. They started to catalog Barbe's
family tree as it came into focus over the years
they've spent researching. Barb isn't confident that she could put
her story into words the way he can. She's a
bit shy and asked that Chris tell most of her story.
She grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and got a call
(26:56):
out of the blue one day from a woman claiming
to be her sister. Joy is the one that contacted
Barb and said, look, I'm your sister. You've been adopted.
So Joy was the first sibling that Barbed met. Barbe
was overwhelmed. Her adopted mother had died by the time
(27:18):
Joy called, so Barbed went to the man she called
dad her whole life. He ended up admitting, under pressure
that she and her brother John had been adopted as infants.
They swore then that they would never tell the children
about their birth parents. All the aunts and uncles went
along with the story they're adopted. Dad had to admit
(27:40):
as well that their biological dad was the guy they
had known as Uncle Jim, who had not been seen
for decades. He also knew her birth mother, Vivian, and
how to get in touch with her. Vivian and Jim
had five children, including Barbed, John and Joy. She had
four other children with three different men. Jim, Barb's biological
(28:04):
father left Pennsylvania thirty years prior to join his father
with the Amusements of America Carnival in Sumter, South Carolina.
Vivian enjoyed him on the road and they had an
on again, off again relationship. Here's Chris Snyder talking about Vivian.
(28:25):
She danced in Cleveland, and I'm sure she danced in
places in Pennsylvania, depending on what the carnival was doing
at the time. She not only danced with the carnival,
she would do bur lesque in the forties and fifties.
But there was a subculture there and it was different.
It was kind of seedy part of the carnival with
rides and games and things like that. And I figured
(28:47):
that this is the part of the carnival that they
were in, you know, like a strip club, almost on wheels.
This isn't a glamorous life, traveling with the carnival and stripping.
Just what they're doing to make some money. Vivian's father
in law made the costumes she wore on stage. He
(29:08):
was the carnival barker, step right up kind of stuff,
and he was a clown. Jim was the ticket taker.
Vivian had danced away up and down the East Coast
along the way. She had nine children with four different men.
Barb was Vivian's fourth child. We stayed in Sumter at
(29:32):
the motel there. That's where Vivian took me after I
was born, because that's where the Carney circuits stayed. A Winstern,
my grandfather used to manage the motel. They put me
in a drawer, and I guess that's where I slept
for the first two and a half months of my life.
(29:52):
When they would go on the road, she would leave
some of the kids with neighbors or whoever. In some
cases they were turn over to the state you know
has abandoned children. Sometimes they went into foster care for
a while. Vivian sister and husband raised Barbe as their own.
Soon after learning of her adoption, Barbe ended up getting
(30:14):
in touch with Vivian and went to meet her in
Chris wrote on the family blog that it wasn't exactly
a Hallmark Channel reunion. Vivian wasn't completely open with the details,
but she did agree to visit with Barbe and her
family for Christmas that year. Well, it started making things
(30:43):
make sense, you know when you look back at your
childhood and you look back at things and you go, oh,
it makes a little more sense now, and then you
look at pictures and you realize, wow, she should have
been a huge the pregnancy ballet nothing. He never questioned it.
(31:04):
As a kid. Barbe discovered that she was adopted back
in ninety four and started searching for her siblings, which
ended up taking quite a few years to locate everybody.
Joy knew where some of their siblings were and helped
Barb track down the others. Barbe ended up getting connected
to all of her siblings except the oldest, Doreen. One
(31:29):
observation that I can give you is that Vivian lived
her life that she was always the victim um. None
of this stuff was her fault. She would blame the
different men that she was with, and none of it
was her responsibility. Joy grew up with Vivian in Pennsylvania
and remembered her oldest half sister would come and visit
(31:51):
them sometimes in the summer. Doreen had come from South
Carolina up to Reading to visit and spent some time there.
Must have spent part of a summer there. And the
one thing that Joy remembers is that her sister, her
big sister, brought her a puppy, So it was kind
(32:12):
of a heartbreaking part of that whole story. Doreen grew
up for a while with Vivian near Sumter, but was
adopted by the Dempsey family at a young age. She
was around the carnival early and often. The Sumter newspaper
reported that Dorene Dempsey spent a year in the Episcopal
(32:34):
Church Home for Children. When she was thirteen, she had
some contact with her birth mother and met Pewee Gaskins
through Vivian. They all were around the carnival. She finished
ninth grade at mclauren Junior High School and was expected
to enroll in the local high school in nineteen sixty nine. Instead,
(32:57):
on the first day of tenth grade, Doren was married
and expected to get a job. Her husband abandoned her
three weeks later when he joined the army unannounced. She
joined the job's corps and was moved to Tongue Point
Training Center in Oregon. She left there after four months
and returned to Amusements of America, where her father worked.
(33:20):
It wasn't long after getting a carnival job that she
met Peewee Gaskins. They became friends and she moved into
Peewee gaskins home for several months. His heating and air
conditioning job kept him away from home while he traveled
the state, so eventually Doren got bored and moved out.
(33:42):
After Doren left, Gaskins met and married Sandy Snell, and
she was soon pregnant with their child. Doren reappeared, also
pregnant by a different man, and the two pregnant women,
Doreen and Sandy lived with Peewee Gaskins until his son
was born. Doren would relocate to a home for Unwedded
(34:02):
Mothers and Charleston to deliver her own baby. Here's a
need of baby talking about Doren's moved to a home
for unwed mothers late in her pregnancy. The building still exists.
It is a hospital, but it was part of the
Florence Critten In Homes for Unwedded Mothers that was started
(34:24):
for women from families who couldn't have their babies because
they were shaming to their families and had to go
somewhere to have the babies. But there was a huge,
huge fewer about them because they became sort of known
as adoption mills. Doreen wanted Michelle Robin to be her
baby because it didn't come into the story whether she
(34:45):
was pressured to give her up, but she had no
intention of doing that. From what Jim knows and what
Peewee found out, Peewee and Sandy went to visit Doreen
in the hospital after she delivered the baby. She named
Michelle Robin Dempsey. She called her Robin. When Peewee saw
(35:08):
the bi racial baby, all of his racial hatred emerged.
He was furious he had helped her mother. He had
helped her, given them gifts, given her a home while
she was pregnant. He told his attorney that he felt betrayed.
When Doren left the Home for Unwed Mothers, she was
(35:29):
not welcome back at Peewee's house. He sent her to
live with Sandy's brother for a while. She leaves that
house and moves in with Carl Sellers. He was part
of the car theft ring and had recently gotten out
of prison, and Peewee testified that people thought Doreen and
Carl should be together, and that's the way it was
apparently for a while. Carl Sellers how he escaped Peewee's rath,
(35:58):
I'll never know, but people ever bothered him, did time,
served some time in jail, but he was really kind
of an untouchable. He was just escaped everything and everybody.
The fatal die was cast when Carl learned that Doreen
was pregnant again. Carl was livid, so he and his brother,
(36:21):
Johnny Sellers, packed up Doreen, Robin and their luggage and
a car full of stolen televisions and drove up to
see Peewee unannounced she was pregnant again by the same father.
It's a fair statement to say that Peewee despised that
action and activity in Doreen's life. I think he loved
(36:43):
her at times, but he hated that behavior. Doreen and
the baby we're taken to Peewee's compound there in prospect
by the Seller's brothers. Johnny Sellers had taken them in
and he couldn't stand in him more so they simply
loaded him up with in the station wagon and they
(37:05):
simply put her in the car and took her to
pee Wee. Pee Wee didn't even know they were coming there.
The Seller's brothers brought Dorene Dempsey and Robin Dempsey to
pee Wee, not to kill her, because Johnny had let
her them stay with him. He had no idea that
(37:25):
what he was doing was bringing her and the baby
to their deaths. According to a deposition, Peewee told investigators, quote,
I told him I couldn't take care of her, and
one thing led to another, So me and Doreen walked
around the house. I was going to talk to her,
(37:47):
and she was about seven months pregnant at the time. Again,
and so I asked her who the daddy of the
kid was that she was carrying at the time, and
it was a black kid. End quote. Pee Wee drowned
Doreen in the pond behind his trailer. He left her there,
returned to the front of the house, took Robin from
(38:08):
the seller's brothers and told them to get going. He
took her around the house and drowned the two year
old beside her mother. He testified that he put the
bodies in his hearse for a short drive. He put
them into the ground as he had the rest of
(38:28):
the victims in the field, simply covered them with cutaway branches, leaves,
and such. He was near the creek that runs by
the fields. They were found wrapped in plastic. Solicitor Ken
Somerford asked Pee Wee. Quote, are you telling me that
the only reason that you killed Dorene and this baby
(38:48):
was because they didn't have a place to stay end quote.
Gaskins replied no, no, no. Somerford asked, well, why did
you kill Doreen and the baby. Gaskins replied, quote, well,
dren thought more of that than she did a white man.
End quote. He killed Dorene and her baby because the
(39:16):
father of the baby was a black man, and hearings
with sister some of her he did say, in fact,
he said clearly how he killed them, and some of
whom were getting mixed up to note they were killed
with a knife or with a gun when a rifle,
and he had to say, no, they were drownded. They
(39:37):
both were drownded. He told Jesse, Sandy, Carl, and Johnny
that he had put Doren and Robin on a train
to Pennsylvania. Her father, Jim, called Carl's house soon after,
looking for Dorene, and Carl told him the same story.
He never checked on her again. Peewee later reported that
(40:00):
he killed the toddler because she wouldn't have any kind
of real life growing up as an orphaned by racial baby.
The beautiful little girl, beautiful skin, all of it. I
can't read it or hear it without being completely done in.
I come as close to hating Peewee in that story,
(40:24):
and I do hate him. How could he talk that
way about that baby? That angel, the angel, the baby
Robin Dempsey, Michelle, Robin Dempsey. I love her name. A
beautiful baby daughter of During Dempsey, drowned by the hands
of the very same man, and I associate as heavy
(40:47):
as these deaths weighed on the babies, it was equally
painful for Chris and Barb Snyder to learn this part
of their story. It was two thousand two that finally
put the facts together to find out that Dorin had
been killed. Some of the siblings got together, we went
(41:10):
out to dinner. This was the first time this group
of kids had ever been together and their siblings and
they had never been together like this, And of course
Doreen's gone, so they all nine can never get together.
Barb and I came to this realization Robin would turn
(41:30):
fifty years old this year. That's hard for us to
think about because we've been looking at these pictures of
this toddler, and Robin actually is older than two of
her uncles. I got to the point where I really
felt that we needed to find out where Doreen was buried,
(41:51):
and there was no information about that anywhere, and I
decided to start reading all of the old articles, and
that's where I came up with Holly Gatling's name. There
were a couple of articles actually written about Doring, like
this is the person you know, this is what she
was like. And I decided to reach out to Holly
because she was the only one that I could still find.
(42:13):
It's interesting, I sometimes think this story is behind me.
And then I got an email from the husband of Doring,
Dempsey's half sister. They are looking for the remains. Where
is Doreen's body and the baby. They can't find a grave,
(42:37):
They can't find a paper trail for where the remains.
Maybe you know where they cremated. Are they in a
funeral home somewhere? She responded and was very helpful, put
me in touch with the acting sheriff, who I guess
had worked the case at the time. He put me
in touch with the acting coroner, who was very helpful
(43:01):
and called me back, but went through all of his
files and couldn't find any mention of what happened to
the remains after the trial, and suggested that I get
with the public records department. So that's kind of how
we got to where we are today. It seeks to
(43:22):
me particularly cruel to kill a baby, and to do
that just because the job was a mixed race. It's
just reprehensible to me that job was drowned along with
her mother solely for that reason. If this we know
(43:42):
that bothered me a great deal. Peee Gaskins was not
my friend. As a joint production from My Heart Radio
and Doghouse Pictures, produced and hosted by Jeff Keeping. Executive
(44:04):
producers are Courtney Dufries and Noel Brown. Written by Jim Roberts,
Courtney Duffries and Terry James edit NIX 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 University of South Carolina
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