July 19, 2021 • 45 mins
Rudolph Tyner finally meets his maker. Jim's dream of writing his first novel is crushed. Pee Wee's jawin' comes back to haunt him.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Pee Wee Gaskins recorded several conversations he had with Tony
Simo about his unsuccessful attempts to fatally poison Rudolph Tyner.
Tony provided pee Wee with strychnine and oleander, but it
just made Tyner sick as a dog. He was on
borrowed time and running out of appeals. But Tony Simo
(00:25):
and pee Wee Gaskins would not wait for the courts
to work out the legal issues. They were going to
execute Tyner before the State of South Carolina ever got
to him.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
When Pee Wee murdered China, I stopped. I didn't do
anything else on him. I thought that I was going
to be accused as an accomplished to murder that pee
Wee had committed it.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
A little bit of dread, a little bit of horror.
Oh my gosh, how could do that have happened?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
And I froze. I was devastrated. What have I done?
Speaker 1 (01:11):
From iHeartRadio and doghouse pictures? This is pee Wee Gaskins
was not my friend. I'm Jeff Keating.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Earlier he had asked me to deliver the radio to
his son, which I did not on time, but I
did one day that we walked in. At the close
of the visit, he said, I want to ask you
a favor. He said, could you mailed me a package?
And I said what He said, I need fifty feet
of TV wire and you can go to any hardware
(01:53):
strown by, but I need fifty feet. Says. We have
an antenna on the top of the building. He said,
if I can wire the TV to that antenna, fifty
people can watch Sunday football, wrap it up in an
envelope and mail it to me here. They will examine
it and give it to me. I say, you really
(02:14):
think they'll let me do that? He said, I want.
We do it all the time. People send me things
all the time.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
So Jim went to the hardware store, bought the wire
and mailed it to CCI. Unbeknownst to Jim, it would
help pee Wee complete his murderous plan.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I had no idea that Peev was going to use
it for anything other than what he said, and that
was to connect to an antenna. It would enable fifty
people to watch television. And I thought, if I can
take this cable so that people can watch Sunday football
the same way I do. Little did I.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Know Jim Batty knew as much as anyone could about
South Carolina's most notorious mass murderer, and he was hopeful
his book, Pee Wee and Me would be a full
account of the meanest man in America. He was writing
a novel that aimed towards redemption. It wasn't going to
(03:19):
be like In Cold Blood, a book Jim taught on
occasion that was too sordid for Jim's storytelling approach. Jim
was optimistic that he could share some characteristics of pee
Wee that people often didn't see, like honesty and compassion.
But in reality, pee Wee rarely showed these traits. In fact,
(03:42):
pee Wee told them as much during their interviews together.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I said, pee Wee, would you ever lie to me?
Thinking you know, we're old buddies, we're old friends. He's
not going to lie to me. Don't need a lot
of me. And he thought for and he looked right
at me and said, yes, I would. I said, pee Wee,
you would lie to me? When he said without hesitating
(04:13):
half the time? He said without hesitating half the time.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
It had started in their first interview when Peewee said.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Look, I want to set the record straight on some things.
There have been 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, without hesitating. Half the time. I also think
(04:50):
that he had respect for me and was somewhat kind
to me.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Half the time, he said.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
If I can wire the TV to that antenna, fifty
people can watch Sunday football.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Half the time, pee Wee had a fellow prisoner named
James Brown delivered the plastic cup device to tyner cell
with instruction that he was to plug it into the
wire pee Wee had connected from his cell. Tyner yelled
(05:27):
into the vent towards Peewee's cell when he plugged it in,
and pe we.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Told him to hold it up to his ear, and
then he plugged his end into the one ten socket
and it went off. Ben te We pulled the wire
back the root, chopped it up, and witnesses.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
Say that he was weighing on his bed, saying what
was that.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
The explosion rocked the prison and caused a chaotic mess.
While Tyner was dying in his cell of rubble, inmates
yelled questions through their prison bars. Guards ran around assessing
the scene and pew Wee Gaskins laid their smiling on
his cot. Holly Gatling covered the Gaskin story from the
(06:15):
start and was the first to speak to Peewee after
the bomb exploded.
Speaker 6 (06:20):
I got a tip that there had been an explosion
at CCI, and I had his number and I called
him and I said, what's going on? And he said,
I need to call you back on a different phone,
and he did. He called me right back, and then
he said, you know, some bomb went off. And he said,
(06:43):
next thing you know, they'll be saying I did it.
They're probably going to accuse me of doing it. And
I thought that was a mighty strange thing to.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Say half the time.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Initially, when the report came in from law enforcement, there
was an opinion that Tyner had made a bomb out
of matchheads and it was trying to blow his way
out of his death row cell. But quickly the forensics
folks I think from the FBI found it was a
C four plastic explosive, and that's when the scrutiny and
the real investigation began.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Investigators considered Tyner had committed suicide since he'd been sick
several times recently, often looking ashen and gaunt. Even the
guards had noticed it. It's possible that by taking his
own life he would avoid the electric chair, but the
way he died was so extreme that the focus quickly
(07:47):
turned to homicide.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
He lived for a little while, but it was a
traumatic injury. They determined that somebody had murdered Tyner because
they found a shrapnel and a speaker embedded in his head.
His hand had been blown off, as if he was
holding something his hand up to his head at the
time it went off. It was C four explosive was
(08:10):
found and shrapnel I'm talking about nuts and bolts and
nails were found all over his body in his cell.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
The pictures are horrendous.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
So at that point a homicide investigation began and a
guy named al Waters, who was an investigator for the
Department of Corrections, heard what he thought was a solid
rumor that pee Wee had been involved.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Al Waters was the lead investigator and would later testify
at the trial. He was joined by sled investigator Tom Henderson,
who had a history with Gaskins in the prospect murders
that landed Gaskins in jail for life. To start, al
Waters had pee Wee sell searched and they all the
(09:00):
tools necessary to assemble a bomb, a soldering iron used
to attach a wire to plugs, and plenty of nuts,
bolts and screws to create shrapnel.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
He had melted a hole in the bottom of this
cup and put a female plug in it. That plug
was attached to a blasting cap, and surrounding that blasting
cap with c forx wosa, which was surrounded by nuts, bolts, screws,
any sharp piece of metal, and glued on the top
was a speaker like you get out.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
Of a radio.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
They also found a telephone jack, razor blades, marijuana, electrical cords,
and damingly thirty eight audio cassettes recorded audio from television programs,
recorded calls he made from the nearby prison payphone. He
recorded his family. Most importantly, he recorded his conversations with
(09:56):
Tony Simo, the man who hired him to kill Rudolph Tyner.
Was c four a cup and a wire.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
I found out from the local newspaper, and I was petrified.
I realized I mailed him the wire that he used
to murder Rudolph China, and I froze. I was devastated
for my own safety and my wife's safety at our
(10:28):
family said what have I done? Strangely enough, I did
not speak with anybody about that dilemma without fear except Anita.
I didn't go to any kind of law enforcement, and
(10:50):
I realized, what does this do with my interviews? What
does this do with our books?
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I didn't think about it around the time of murder.
To Jim with visited, I sled, but that visit came
hard on the heels of Tyner's murder, and.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
I immediately found out that I would never be able
to see people again because of what he had done.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
It was Sunday, September twelfth, nineteen eighty two, when the
bomb exploded into Tyner's head. Like the rest of the
outside world, Jim Batty learned about the story the next
day in the newspaper. He was shocked. He and Anita
talked about what to do. They decided to do nothing,
(11:38):
but they did prey on it.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
I felt some peace knowing that I was totally innocent.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
But then a while later, Jim Batty was.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Teaching a clash An English class at the Coastal Carolina University.
The doors of the classrooms have shunderedee windows, and I
noticed as I was ending my lecture, I think it
was on Shakespeare, and I noticed these two well dressed,
three piece suit gentlemen outside in the hall. Quite frankly,
(12:14):
I thought they were preachers of some sort, or maybe
used car salesman. I couldn't figure. As the classes dismissed,
the men come in and one of them I knew
that I'd seen before, and he flashed his badge inside
his coat and said, hello, Doctor Beatty. I'm Tom Henderson,
(12:36):
and I remembered Special Agent Tom Henderson of slid. He said,
you got a few minutes we'd like to talk with you.
Well again, like pee Wee's call, I turned a wider
shade of peel, and he said, could we go to
(12:57):
your office? And we did.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Jim's heart was racing, his hands were sweating. All those
what ifs he and Anita questioned during their late night
talks flashed in his mind as he led the authorities
to his university office.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And I had only one chair in my tiny office
in addition to my chair, and I offered it to
Tom and he said, no, I'll stand. The other gentleman sat.
I sat in my chair and Henderson said, Professor, did
you have occasion to mail a TV cable to pee
(13:38):
Wee Gaskins a month before he murdered Rudolf Tyner.
Speaker 7 (13:43):
I did.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
He said, did you know that pee Wee used that
to murder Tyner? I said, I did not know that.
He said, well, that is what he used, the wire
that you mailed him to murder Rudolf Tyner. Didn't say
anything else. I didn't see anything else. There must have
(14:05):
been silence for fifteen seconds. That was fifteen hours to me,
and he said, can I sit down and let's talk.
So his gentleman stood up. He then sat down and
spoke with me. He says, you know the trial is set,
(14:26):
you know when it will be and you will be subpoened.
And I said, well, who will supoena me? Will the
defense subpoena me? Will the prosecution send to me? He said,
We're not sure, but you will probably be subpoened, and
(14:46):
the gentleman left. I walked out of the office door
with him, and Tom Henderson and his partner moved down
the hall for a few steps, and I watched every step,
every movie of each foot on the carpet leaving, praying
that they would be gone forever. And as they stopped.
(15:09):
Henderson turned and smiled and said, by the way, I
said yes. He said, I'd love to take one of
your English classes. See you later. I walked back into
the office and called Anita.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
Then I was really scared because it.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Wasn't clear to me whether he'd be called as an
accomplice or to go testify.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I thought that he was going to tell me that
I was going to be accused as an accomplice to
a murder that we had committed.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Tyner was killed September twelfth, eighteen eighty two. In March
of nineteen eighty three, it took a month to see
the jury of eight women and four men for Peewee's
murder trial.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
It was very difficult to get a jury because you
know the question you ever heard about the Donald pee
wee guys said, yeah, what do you know about the
largest mass murder industry in the state? Well, could you
put that aside and you know, base your verdict on
the evidence in this case. And a lot of people
were very honest and said no. So it took us
several hundred jurors.
Speaker 5 (16:26):
To get twelve.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
The one guy said, could you consider giving them life
or would you give them electric? Chair, because that's what
we use back then. And this guy said no, no, no,
I wouldn't give them the electric chair. And I thought, well,
this is one we can maybe maybe use.
Speaker 5 (16:39):
He said no, I'd hang it.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
I mean how that went so, I don't remember three
hundred and something people we went through before we got
I think we had fourteen twelve and two alternates.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
With the jury selected the trial began. Prosecution was confident
in their case. They had a trove of evidence, and
they had James Brown, a star witness who delivered the
explosive to Tyer. As usual, Gaskins didn't fail to deliver
spectacle at his trial.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
I think he was a self promoter. I think he
had holed over a lot of people because their feeble
minds didn't understand that he was lying, that he was
bigger than this five feet would show. And I think
at the end of the day, this plan, this ridiculous
plan to blow up a guy on death row. I mean,
(17:34):
that's what ends up killing him. His sort of poetic justice.
This is an outsized crime by a little man. You know,
this guy was thinking all the time. He was crafty.
I wouldn't say he was brilliant, but He was a
very crafty guy. He was always working the angles, and
he would have gotten away with it. But for those recordings,
we'd never have any evidence. We hadn't had the recordings,
(17:54):
we wouldn't have gotten James Brown. Even if we had
James Brown, it'd be his word.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
Against pee Wee's.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
James Brown was on death row for a double murder,
so his word alone was suspect, even compared to Peewee's.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
James Brown killed two women and have sex with them
after they were dead. When I met him, he looked
like Robinson Crusoe. He had hair down to his waist,
a beard down to his waist. He looked disheveled, scraggly,
and I needed to get him prepared to testify. So
I bring him up to the courthouse every Saturday. Get
him some McDonald's which they couldn't get in prison, went
(18:32):
over his testimony with him, got him to cut his hair,
got him to shave his beard, got him a three
piece suit, regimental tie. He looked like a million dollars.
So I put James on the stand. He knocks it
out of the park.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
James Brown testified that Peewee had him take the plastic
cup to Tyne your cell. The cup was filled with nails, screws,
and metal. Brown said that right after the explosion he
went to gaskins sell and saw Gaskins pulling a wire
from the bottom vent in his cell. A few moments later,
(19:07):
he heard Gaskin's toilet flush. Gaskins came out of his
cell and went downstairs. He may have been on his
way to talk to Holly Gatling at that moment. That's unclear,
but prosecution was able to link Gaskins to a conspiracy
to cover up the murder with James Brown's assistants and
(19:28):
the hard evidence gathered in Peewee's cell.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
One of the things we confiscated during this trial was
a letter from Gaskins to James Brown. He instructed James
Brown to go to the Catholic priest and confess he
killed Tyner. Okay and Gascon's in the letter. Reasons we
put this evident, this letter into evidence, Reasons that if
(19:55):
you tell him you did it, my lawyers can call
him to the stand and he'll have to say that
somebody else confessed to him, but he can't say who
it was.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
I mean, the guy was him.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
He worked every angle of course, James Brown gave us
the letter, so that sort of ruined that plan.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Jack Swirling was Gaskin's defense attorney, and his only tactic
was going for reasonable doubt, convincing the jury that it
wasn't Peewee who made the bomb. Swirling attacked James Brown
while he was on the stand, so Harputlian had to
cross examine to counter Swirling's move.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Jack did a pretty good job of trying to instill doubt.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
I mean, reasonable doubt was the only.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Defense in the case, and that is to attack James
Brown to challenge his credibility.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
James's mother was sitting in the courtroom nervously watching her
son testify against pee Wee.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
So Jack Swrolling, who's defending Peewee, begins to attack him
for not really being pee Wee's friend of Pee we
want to Be. And so when I got back up
and I said, James, mister Swirling is intimated that you
were not friends with pee Wee.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
That's your pee we want to be? Is that true? No?
Speaker 4 (21:13):
I said, now, what was your real relationship with Peewee?
And I'll never forget His eyes bugged wide open, he
looked at me. He looked back at his mom and
he says, very quietly, we were lovers. See what I
can't hear you. I can't hear you, James, He said,
we were lovers, and the courtroom explodes in pandemonium. Swirling
(21:39):
explodes out of his chair and starts lundering towards the bench, screaming, objection, objection.
Speaker 5 (21:44):
Peewee, who's barely.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
I don't think he was five feet probably didn't weigh
a hundred and thirty pounds, grabbing onto Jack's coattail and
sort of being drug along with him, screaming, and then
pee Wee yells at Jack in this high pitched voice.
Jack Jack aske him who was on top.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Jim only hoped he would write a courtroom scene as
bold as Shakespeare's Winner's Tale or To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee. Only those heavyweights could fashion such a
picture with words. And now pee Wee's words would be
used against him. When the prosecution played the recordings between
(22:25):
Simo and Gaskins.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Pee Wee's recordings with Simo were devastating, devastating. You have
pee Wee planning it, talking to Cimo about what he needed,
how I was going to put it in a radio.
Speaker 5 (22:39):
He said.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
It didn't turn out to be a radio. He came
up with a more devious device. The forensics were that
he was holding a device made of a plastic cup,
the unbreakable plastic cup and the speaker and other debris. Shrapnel,
if you will, entered his head and body. It was
C four explosive, was consistent with what James Brown test
(22:59):
fight got from Tee Wee and delivered, which was consistent
with the recorded conversation.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
So was it a tough case?
Speaker 4 (23:07):
No, And we had the recording for Pee Wee, and
by the way, we hit ten murder convictions.
Speaker 5 (23:12):
I mean, this was not heavy lifting.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
It took eight weeks, but it was not the toughest
case I ever prosecuted by a long shot.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Hard physical evidence, testimony from an eyewitness, accomplice, courtroom drama,
sex between inmates. The whole Pee Wee Gaskin saga had
all the makings of a legal thriller, and the courtroom
didn't have to wait long for their verdict.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
As a practical matter, Pee Wee probably could not have
been prosecuted under the new death penalty law for crimes
committed prior to that going into effect. He probably never
could have gotten death again. The Tier case was the
only way he could get the death penalty. The jury
was out an hour before they found him guilty, and
they were out an hour when they act, just send
some death. I don't think they wrestled with either decision.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
When Jim Batty led investigators out of his office and
off the university campus, he hoped that he would never
see those guys again. He sweated, fretted, wished, and worried
that he was never called to testify, and his prayer
was answered. He didn't even go to the trial. He
(24:23):
was never approached again by authorities and was never charged
with anything. Investigators knew he had been an unwinning accomplice
to the murder. Here's Dick Carputlian in twenty twenty one
being told about the wire Jim Baty mailed to Peewee
in prison.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
I've always assumed because he had wirecutters and pliers, and
you named the tool, and there was plenty of wire
around where the show block was, I just assumed he
got it from somebody there.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
I never knew about Jim or the wire. No one
ever reported that to me.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Jim and Anitas slowly let go of their fears and anxieties,
but others were charged for their role in the assassination.
Jack Martin, a friend of Simo from Mural's inlet, Gotzimo
in touch with Jerald McCormick inside CCI, and he served
eighteen months for intimidation of a witness. Jerald Pop McCormick
(25:22):
still had twenty six years left of his thirty year
sentence for housebreaking, grand larceny, and burglary. He received a
five year sentence concurrent with his existing one. James Brown
was transferred to a Tennessee prison as part of his
deal with prosecutors. Of all the people involved in this
(25:43):
bizarre case, only Peewee Gaskins went to trial. Tony Simo
still awaited his fate. It seems most everyone was sympathetic
to the Moon's grieving sun.
Speaker 5 (25:58):
He seemed like.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
The most normal, all American guy in the world, just
had this obsession with avenging the death of his parents.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
You know, a jury I think.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Would have a hard time getting a unanimous verdict to
convict him of anything serious because all he did was
what we were trying.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
To do, and that was execute Tyner.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
And of course some folks, a number of folks who
looked at his conduct as a twoffer. Not only do
we get Tyner, we got Gaskets. The question is, would
you get twelve jurors to convict Tony Simo of something
that results in a lengthly prison sentence for him for
getting Pee Wee Gaskins to basically do what not basically
(26:39):
he executed a guy on death road. Now there is
the argument that he put officers lives in danger in
the getting C four into the Department of Corrections and
giving it to a homicidal maniac like Pee Wee. You
don't know what he's going to do with it, and
we just felt we talked, I mean I talked to
a number of people whose judgment I trusted about how
the community would treat him, and clearly we didn't want
(27:00):
to spend several weeks trying him on a very serious
charge and end up in a hung jury.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Tony Simo pled guilty to miss prison, making a bomb threat,
and conspiracy to commit murder. His wife, two daughters, plus
thirty or so family and friends were at the sentencing
when the judge said, quote to deter others from like behavior,
I'm going to incarcerate you. I know that you and
(27:29):
your family have gone through a lot and will continue to.
But we can't have people taking the law into their
own hands and exacting punishment end quote. He received concurrent
sentences of eight years. The community had a barbecue and
raffle and raised three thousand dollars to offset Simo's thirteen
(27:50):
thousand in legal fees. He served only six months and
was released to a halfway house for the remainder of
a sentence.
Speaker 5 (28:00):
He was contrite.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
He was ashamed, all the kinds of real emotions you
expect that of a very normal person.
Speaker 5 (28:06):
But at the same time, I think he was relieved
that Kinder was dead.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
One local resident told the Associated Press quote, A man
could only stand so much. I'd have done the same
thing as Tony if I could have end quote. Ira
Parnell puts it this way.
Speaker 8 (28:27):
I can't really blame Tony. People get distraught over things.
I might intended to do the same thing. I don't know,
but that would just be a bad spot to being.
But thankfully he didn't drum much time from it. I
think everybody else thought the same way. It was said
(28:49):
still real, wa I am.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
It was a sad story, and in nineteen eighty five,
two years after the trial, a TV movie called Vengeance,
the Story of Tony Simo began production with a two
million dollar budget. To Simo's dismay, South Carolina did not
allow criminals to profit from their crimes with movie, TV
(29:13):
or book deals. Therefore, his fifteen thousand dollars payoff was
given to Rudolph Tyner's family. Simo's life after the murder
was hardly idyllic. Problems with drug use and perhaps a
haunting sense of dread plagued him until two thousand and one,
when he suffered a fatal drug overdose. A newspaper in Orangeburg,
(29:39):
South Carolina, called The Times in Democrat, printed a statement
from his two daughters, who were then in their twenties.
No one will know what was in his mind Sunday night,
but we believe in his heart he did not see
a positive future. Jim Batty had been working feverishly on
(30:08):
his book before Peewe's bomb killed Tyner and blew up
Jim's dreams.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Well, what happens. I made him a wire to the prison,
and he blows a fellow and make his head off
of him. So so much for my hope of redemption.
My prayer was that through what I wrote and what
I had studied, and what I thought I had learned,
(30:35):
is that one child, one child would have been spared
from ever becoming another pee Week guessings. Rather than hold
this individual up as a monster, period hold him up
as a monster and see why and how we could
do otherwise with the four year old little boy. I'd
(31:00):
already finished the book, but I was editing, working a
good bid, writing a good bid. But when it fell,
when the project fell, I stopped it. When Pee Wee
murdered China, I literally dropped my pen. I stopped. I
didn't do anything else. There's no book, there's no hope
(31:23):
story ever being told.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
I was really frightened for Jim because an accomplice to murder.
My God, he really was an unwitting accomplice, which I thought,
when I had my wits about me, would keep him
from being charged because he was so innocent. Only now
do I see the connection between Jim's forgetting to take
(31:48):
the radio to Donnie Junior and maybe Pee Wee's conscious
setting Jim up in that last interaction exchange. I don't know,
but I mean that's think Pee Wee might have done,
because he did set people up, and he did take
a while to get his revenge if you disobeyed him,
so that might be a little bit extreme. I think
(32:10):
he really had affection for Jim, but who knows.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
In the rubble of Jim's relationship with Pee Wee, the
babies wondered if it had all gone sour When Jim
failed to promptly deliver the radio, pee Wee was definitely
upset by that.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
There was not one time, with the exception when I
knew Pee Wee was angry with me, that I did
not happily walk into that place to see him.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
I was looking forward.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
It was like going into a class to teach that
I was ready and I could not wait to get
from him what I was going to get about life
and living. And I think my guard was always down.
I don't have much of a g are and anything.
(33:03):
I was certainly duped by Pee Wee and being pulled
in as an accomplice. Absolutely I was. I thought I
was doing a good deed. I think that I became
one more piece of the puzzle that Pee Wee used
every opportunity that he had.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
All of us in the family lived that story with Jim.
There were nights when he'd come home and we couldn't
wait to hear what happened and hear the stories. But
also it got you in the pit of your stomach.
I can remember now, I can even feel it, a
little bit of dread, a little bit of horror, a
little bit of Oh my gosh, how could have that
have happened? How could that be? And how could he
(33:47):
have done this? And how could he still be around?
And how could my children be entering the phone on
Sunday and talking to this guy? But also how fascinating
he was and how Jim cared about what made him
the way he was.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
I do still.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Carry that today.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Whether or not the radio incident set Jim's fate will
forever remain a mystery, as with so much in this story.
But for Jim, the whole of the saga was worth studying,
worth researching, and worth telling.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
My mentality going in as far as writing this true
life novel was that I was equipped to do that,
although I had not tried it before, but I had
talked some true life novels, and I felt that the
pee Wee Gaskin's saga, or the story itself, needed to
(34:48):
be told. I could never get away from the necessity
of that being done for social reasons. There was something
there around this situation that I think the world needed
to be told because the world needed to correct it,
and I was in that world. I became more and
(35:13):
more confident that the task was necessary. And when he
murdered Rudolph Kina, it squashed my project, which of course
was my selfish concern. I was disillusioned. I didn't think
there was any good in Pee Wee. I realized that
(35:35):
I could not portray this man with any form of redemption,
none whatsoever. I completely gave up on the possibility of
my being a writer.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Jim found out that he was no more of a
friend of Pee Wee Gaskin's than any of his dead victims,
and in nineteen eighty three Peewee found himself on death
row again. Even from there, he was still able to
play games with people and implicate them in his brazen schemes.
(36:14):
Death penalty appeals are standard legal maneuvers for most convicts.
In South Carolina. Death sentences are automatically appealed. Through the
nineteen eighties, Peewee's defense team, led by Jack Swirling, filed
five different appeals, with dozens of various charges in each
(36:35):
each appeal was denied, and Peewee sat on death row.
Sometime after the Rudolph Tyner murder, Dick Harpoutlian joined up
with Jack Swirling and started a law firm. They practiced
together for years. Peewee was no longer in their legal lives,
(36:56):
but one day Dick was reminded of Peewee's incredible law audacity.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
I'm playing golf and I get a call from Chief Stewart,
chief of sweat, and said where are you? And I said,
when I'm playing golf. He said, and where's your daughter?
And I did not like the sound of that. He said,
we think there's a plot maybe to kidnap her. Will
send sweat agents there, and she was at home. So
by the time I got home, he had sweat agents there.
(37:24):
The story came out that pee Wee had met with
his son, little Donnie, and that Donnie had gone to
a friend of his and says his dad said the
kidnapped the solicitor's daughter or the governor's son, and that
he intended on kidnapping the sister daughter, who was four
years old.
Speaker 5 (37:41):
And he needed this young man to help him do it.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
And He told the young man that his dad's and
he asked his dad, what if he won't If I
kidnap her and he won't do what you want.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
Him to do, what do I do?
Speaker 4 (37:51):
And he said, we he shaild keep her in a
trunk and if he.
Speaker 5 (37:53):
Won't do it, kill her.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
What he was supposed to do was tell me to
have pee wee brought up to my office in the
court house.
Speaker 5 (38:01):
And this is the chilling part.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
Tee we knew somehow that I had a back door
to my office. That if I told the sweat agents
to bring him into my office and lead they didn't
know the door was there, they would leave and he
could just go out the back door. I mean, I
don't know how nobody knew that. So the kid, when
his son went and talked to another kid that that
kid immediately went to Sheriff Barnes, thank god, and so
(38:24):
they go out there. She was fine, my wife was fine.
And they had warrants out for Donnie for harstaft or something,
so they arrested him and took him into custody.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Brenda Chase was a new reporter for the Florence Morning
News when Donnie Gaskins was detained in the Florence County
Sheriff's office.
Speaker 9 (38:43):
It was just my second job out of college, covering
cops and courts and all things related to law enforcements.
We had some friends over at the Sheriff's office, one
who gave me a call and said, you're never going
to believe this, but we actually have pe Wee Gaskin's
son in the county jail right now. His name is Donnie,
(39:05):
and we've got him on a forty eight hour hold,
and he wants to speak to the media. Would you
like to come over here and talk with him? And
I was like absolutely. I thought I had arrived at
the big time, and I had only been there for
a few months, and I just thought, man, this is cool.
I'm getting the biggest scoop of the decade. And fortunately
(39:26):
the Florence newspaper was very very close to the county jail,
and so I ran across the street and they brought
him in. And he was so young looking. I believe
Donnie was twenty, not much younger than myself at that time.
He had never really had any time at all with
his dad because his dad had pretty much been in
(39:46):
jail his whole life. And it was so interesting talking
to him because it was almost like there was this
connection to pee Wee Gaskins through Donnie, but very little
time had he ever spent with his dad. So he
just talked about how he didn't believe all these stories
about his dad, and his dad could not have done this.
(40:06):
And then he was of course proclaiming his innocence that
he was not doing any of the things that they
said he was going to do. And so it was
just a very odd conversation. And it was through the
plexa glass at the county jail, and it was kind
of bizarre that this young young man, with absolutely no
idea of how secure his dad was being held, really thought, well,
(40:28):
we could get him out of jail. And then he
would say a few things that kind of led you
to believe that he really was trying. And then he
would of course remember, oh wait, I can't say that
because I'm not going to be guilty of this. So
it was kind of an odd conversation. You know, I
did feel a little bit sorry for Donnie. I don't
(40:49):
know that he ever had much of a chance. You know,
when you're growing up in that PD area of South Carolina,
everyone knew who pee Wee Gaskins was, so everyone knew
who his father was, as if he ever told them.
And I just don't think he stood much of a
chance coming into that local community with that last name
(41:09):
and that as a father. But I don't think he
had any kind of a chance growing up.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
So the cops held Donnie Gaskins for two days, but
the fear lasted longer for Dick harpoot Land.
Speaker 4 (41:26):
For the next two weeks, we lived with sweat agents
around our house. Outside our house, my daughter was in preschool,
and when she went to preschool, they had sweat agents
around there. I don't think the other parents appreciated it much,
but actually we stopped taking her over there after a
couple of days because it was just too much for
them to put their children at risk. So we lived
for a couple of weeks. Get up in the morning,
(41:47):
the sweat agents in the living room and around the
house out in the yard. You'll go to bed at night,
that's the last thing you see. It led me to
the conclusion I never want to live with Secret Service
protection or anything like that. So trucive, and it affects
your mentality about the world at large. In other words,
you look at the rest of the world as threatening.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Threatening. The reason Peewee Gaskins was not your friend is
there's always a gun or knife's edge threatening at your doorstep,
or your office or your daughter's preschool. Even though Dick
Harputlian was one of South Carolina's most well known prosecutors,
he was still tinged by Peewee's reach. The fear was real,
(42:35):
and his friend in law partner Jack Swirling, had his
own scare. Several years after Harputlian's kidnapped, Shock Swirling felt
the wrath of a former client. On June twenty seventh,
two thousand and two, Swirling, his wife, and daughter returned
(42:56):
home from an out of town trip. As they were
eating ham, two armed gunmen barged into their house and
bound the family with duct tape. After ransacking the place,
one of the massed assailants jammed a gun into Jack's
neck and demanded to be told where the money in
the house was. Swirling said he didn't have any at home.
(43:18):
The man knew Swirling's name, which added a level of
amazement to the whole ordeal. He yelled at Jack, I'm
going to give you one more chance where's the money
or I will kill you. Luckily, after they rummaged through
the entire house, the men left without killing anyone. Soon after,
(43:40):
James Causey was arrested and charged with numerous crimes, including kidnapping,
armed robbery, and burglary. It turns out that Swirling defended
Causey in two different trials. He got him a reduced
sentence in each case, but apparently Causey still held a
grudge that he had to go to jail at all.
(44:03):
He is still serving life without parole. Jack Swirling lives
with the memory of his family bound and held at
gunpoint in their own home. Dick Carpootlian lives with the
memory of gaskins kidnapping plot. Does Jim Batty worry about
his own involvement in Pee Wee gaskins last murder?
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Of course I worried about it. I'm worried about that now.
Speaker 7 (44:43):
Pee Wee Gaskins was not my friend. It's a joint
production from iHeartRadio and Doghouse Pictures, produced and hosted by
Jeff Keening. Executive producers are Courtney de Freeze and Noel Brown.
Written by Jim Roberts, Courtney de Freeze and Terry James
edit Nixon. Sound design by Jeremiah Kulani Scott. Music composed
by Diamond Street Productions, Spencer Garne and Ian Newberry. Special
(45:05):
thanks to Jim and Anita Baby. Additional thanks to the
University of South Carolina, Moving Image Research Collections and the
University of South Carolina
Pee Wee Gaskins recorded several conversations he had with Tony
Simo about his unsuccessful attempts to fatally poison Rudolph Tyner.
Tony provided pee Wee with strychnine and oleander, but it
just made Tyner sick as a dog. He was on
borrowed time and running out of appeals. But Tony Simo
(00:25):
and pee Wee Gaskins would not wait for the courts
to work out the legal issues. They were going to
execute Tyner before the State of South Carolina ever got
to him.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
When Pee Wee murdered China, I stopped. I didn't do
anything else on him. I thought that I was going
to be accused as an accomplished to murder that pee
Wee had committed it.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
A little bit of dread, a little bit of horror.
Oh my gosh, how could do that have happened?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
And I froze. I was devastrated. What have I done?
Speaker 1 (01:11):
From iHeartRadio and doghouse pictures? This is pee Wee Gaskins
was not my friend. I'm Jeff Keating.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Earlier he had asked me to deliver the radio to
his son, which I did not on time, but I
did one day that we walked in. At the close
of the visit, he said, I want to ask you
a favor. He said, could you mailed me a package?
And I said what He said, I need fifty feet
of TV wire and you can go to any hardware
(01:53):
strown by, but I need fifty feet. Says. We have
an antenna on the top of the building. He said,
if I can wire the TV to that antenna, fifty
people can watch Sunday football, wrap it up in an
envelope and mail it to me here. They will examine
it and give it to me. I say, you really
(02:14):
think they'll let me do that? He said, I want.
We do it all the time. People send me things
all the time.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
So Jim went to the hardware store, bought the wire
and mailed it to CCI. Unbeknownst to Jim, it would
help pee Wee complete his murderous plan.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I had no idea that Peev was going to use
it for anything other than what he said, and that
was to connect to an antenna. It would enable fifty
people to watch television. And I thought, if I can
take this cable so that people can watch Sunday football
the same way I do. Little did I.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Know Jim Batty knew as much as anyone could about
South Carolina's most notorious mass murderer, and he was hopeful
his book, Pee Wee and Me would be a full
account of the meanest man in America. He was writing
a novel that aimed towards redemption. It wasn't going to
(03:19):
be like In Cold Blood, a book Jim taught on
occasion that was too sordid for Jim's storytelling approach. Jim
was optimistic that he could share some characteristics of pee
Wee that people often didn't see, like honesty and compassion.
But in reality, pee Wee rarely showed these traits. In fact,
(03:42):
pee Wee told them as much during their interviews together.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I said, pee Wee, would you ever lie to me?
Thinking you know, we're old buddies, we're old friends. He's
not going to lie to me. Don't need a lot
of me. And he thought for and he looked right
at me and said, yes, I would. I said, pee Wee,
you would lie to me? When he said without hesitating
(04:13):
half the time? He said without hesitating half the time.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
It had started in their first interview when Peewee said.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Look, I want to set the record straight on some things.
There have been 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, without hesitating. Half the time. I also think
(04:50):
that he had respect for me and was somewhat kind
to me.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Half the time, he said.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
If I can wire the TV to that antenna, fifty
people can watch Sunday football.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Half the time, pee Wee had a fellow prisoner named
James Brown delivered the plastic cup device to tyner cell
with instruction that he was to plug it into the
wire pee Wee had connected from his cell. Tyner yelled
(05:27):
into the vent towards Peewee's cell when he plugged it in,
and pe we.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Told him to hold it up to his ear, and
then he plugged his end into the one ten socket
and it went off. Ben te We pulled the wire
back the root, chopped it up, and witnesses.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
Say that he was weighing on his bed, saying what
was that.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
The explosion rocked the prison and caused a chaotic mess.
While Tyner was dying in his cell of rubble, inmates
yelled questions through their prison bars. Guards ran around assessing
the scene and pew Wee Gaskins laid their smiling on
his cot. Holly Gatling covered the Gaskin story from the
(06:15):
start and was the first to speak to Peewee after
the bomb exploded.
Speaker 6 (06:20):
I got a tip that there had been an explosion
at CCI, and I had his number and I called
him and I said, what's going on? And he said,
I need to call you back on a different phone,
and he did. He called me right back, and then
he said, you know, some bomb went off. And he said,
(06:43):
next thing you know, they'll be saying I did it.
They're probably going to accuse me of doing it. And
I thought that was a mighty strange thing to.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Say half the time.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Initially, when the report came in from law enforcement, there
was an opinion that Tyner had made a bomb out
of matchheads and it was trying to blow his way
out of his death row cell. But quickly the forensics
folks I think from the FBI found it was a
C four plastic explosive, and that's when the scrutiny and
the real investigation began.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Investigators considered Tyner had committed suicide since he'd been sick
several times recently, often looking ashen and gaunt. Even the
guards had noticed it. It's possible that by taking his
own life he would avoid the electric chair, but the
way he died was so extreme that the focus quickly
(07:47):
turned to homicide.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
He lived for a little while, but it was a
traumatic injury. They determined that somebody had murdered Tyner because
they found a shrapnel and a speaker embedded in his head.
His hand had been blown off, as if he was
holding something his hand up to his head at the
time it went off. It was C four explosive was
(08:10):
found and shrapnel I'm talking about nuts and bolts and
nails were found all over his body in his cell.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
The pictures are horrendous.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
So at that point a homicide investigation began and a
guy named al Waters, who was an investigator for the
Department of Corrections, heard what he thought was a solid
rumor that pee Wee had been involved.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Al Waters was the lead investigator and would later testify
at the trial. He was joined by sled investigator Tom Henderson,
who had a history with Gaskins in the prospect murders
that landed Gaskins in jail for life. To start, al
Waters had pee Wee sell searched and they all the
(09:00):
tools necessary to assemble a bomb, a soldering iron used
to attach a wire to plugs, and plenty of nuts,
bolts and screws to create shrapnel.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
He had melted a hole in the bottom of this
cup and put a female plug in it. That plug
was attached to a blasting cap, and surrounding that blasting
cap with c forx wosa, which was surrounded by nuts, bolts, screws,
any sharp piece of metal, and glued on the top
was a speaker like you get out.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
Of a radio.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
They also found a telephone jack, razor blades, marijuana, electrical cords,
and damingly thirty eight audio cassettes recorded audio from television programs,
recorded calls he made from the nearby prison payphone. He
recorded his family. Most importantly, he recorded his conversations with
(09:56):
Tony Simo, the man who hired him to kill Rudolph Tyner.
Was c four a cup and a wire.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
I found out from the local newspaper, and I was petrified.
I realized I mailed him the wire that he used
to murder Rudolph China, and I froze. I was devastated
for my own safety and my wife's safety at our
(10:28):
family said what have I done? Strangely enough, I did
not speak with anybody about that dilemma without fear except Anita.
I didn't go to any kind of law enforcement, and
(10:50):
I realized, what does this do with my interviews? What
does this do with our books?
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I didn't think about it around the time of murder.
To Jim with visited, I sled, but that visit came
hard on the heels of Tyner's murder, and.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
I immediately found out that I would never be able
to see people again because of what he had done.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
It was Sunday, September twelfth, nineteen eighty two, when the
bomb exploded into Tyner's head. Like the rest of the
outside world, Jim Batty learned about the story the next
day in the newspaper. He was shocked. He and Anita
talked about what to do. They decided to do nothing,
(11:38):
but they did prey on it.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
I felt some peace knowing that I was totally innocent.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
But then a while later, Jim Batty was.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Teaching a clash An English class at the Coastal Carolina University.
The doors of the classrooms have shunderedee windows, and I
noticed as I was ending my lecture, I think it
was on Shakespeare, and I noticed these two well dressed,
three piece suit gentlemen outside in the hall. Quite frankly,
(12:14):
I thought they were preachers of some sort, or maybe
used car salesman. I couldn't figure. As the classes dismissed,
the men come in and one of them I knew
that I'd seen before, and he flashed his badge inside
his coat and said, hello, Doctor Beatty. I'm Tom Henderson,
(12:36):
and I remembered Special Agent Tom Henderson of slid. He said,
you got a few minutes we'd like to talk with you.
Well again, like pee Wee's call, I turned a wider
shade of peel, and he said, could we go to
(12:57):
your office? And we did.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Jim's heart was racing, his hands were sweating. All those
what ifs he and Anita questioned during their late night
talks flashed in his mind as he led the authorities
to his university office.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And I had only one chair in my tiny office
in addition to my chair, and I offered it to
Tom and he said, no, I'll stand. The other gentleman sat.
I sat in my chair and Henderson said, Professor, did
you have occasion to mail a TV cable to pee
(13:38):
Wee Gaskins a month before he murdered Rudolf Tyner.
Speaker 7 (13:43):
I did.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
He said, did you know that pee Wee used that
to murder Tyner? I said, I did not know that.
He said, well, that is what he used, the wire
that you mailed him to murder Rudolf Tyner. Didn't say
anything else. I didn't see anything else. There must have
(14:05):
been silence for fifteen seconds. That was fifteen hours to me,
and he said, can I sit down and let's talk.
So his gentleman stood up. He then sat down and
spoke with me. He says, you know the trial is set,
(14:26):
you know when it will be and you will be subpoened.
And I said, well, who will supoena me? Will the
defense subpoena me? Will the prosecution send to me? He said,
We're not sure, but you will probably be subpoened, and
(14:46):
the gentleman left. I walked out of the office door
with him, and Tom Henderson and his partner moved down
the hall for a few steps, and I watched every step,
every movie of each foot on the carpet leaving, praying
that they would be gone forever. And as they stopped.
(15:09):
Henderson turned and smiled and said, by the way, I
said yes. He said, I'd love to take one of
your English classes. See you later. I walked back into
the office and called Anita.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
Then I was really scared because it.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Wasn't clear to me whether he'd be called as an
accomplice or to go testify.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I thought that he was going to tell me that
I was going to be accused as an accomplice to
a murder that we had committed.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Tyner was killed September twelfth, eighteen eighty two. In March
of nineteen eighty three, it took a month to see
the jury of eight women and four men for Peewee's
murder trial.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
It was very difficult to get a jury because you
know the question you ever heard about the Donald pee
wee guys said, yeah, what do you know about the
largest mass murder industry in the state? Well, could you
put that aside and you know, base your verdict on
the evidence in this case. And a lot of people
were very honest and said no. So it took us
several hundred jurors.
Speaker 5 (16:26):
To get twelve.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
The one guy said, could you consider giving them life
or would you give them electric? Chair, because that's what
we use back then. And this guy said no, no, no,
I wouldn't give them the electric chair. And I thought, well,
this is one we can maybe maybe use.
Speaker 5 (16:39):
He said no, I'd hang it.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
I mean how that went so, I don't remember three
hundred and something people we went through before we got
I think we had fourteen twelve and two alternates.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
With the jury selected the trial began. Prosecution was confident
in their case. They had a trove of evidence, and
they had James Brown, a star witness who delivered the
explosive to Tyer. As usual, Gaskins didn't fail to deliver
spectacle at his trial.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
I think he was a self promoter. I think he
had holed over a lot of people because their feeble
minds didn't understand that he was lying, that he was
bigger than this five feet would show. And I think
at the end of the day, this plan, this ridiculous
plan to blow up a guy on death row. I mean,
(17:34):
that's what ends up killing him. His sort of poetic justice.
This is an outsized crime by a little man. You know,
this guy was thinking all the time. He was crafty.
I wouldn't say he was brilliant, but He was a
very crafty guy. He was always working the angles, and
he would have gotten away with it. But for those recordings,
we'd never have any evidence. We hadn't had the recordings,
(17:54):
we wouldn't have gotten James Brown. Even if we had
James Brown, it'd be his word.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
Against pee Wee's.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
James Brown was on death row for a double murder,
so his word alone was suspect, even compared to Peewee's.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
James Brown killed two women and have sex with them
after they were dead. When I met him, he looked
like Robinson Crusoe. He had hair down to his waist,
a beard down to his waist. He looked disheveled, scraggly,
and I needed to get him prepared to testify. So
I bring him up to the courthouse every Saturday. Get
him some McDonald's which they couldn't get in prison, went
(18:32):
over his testimony with him, got him to cut his hair,
got him to shave his beard, got him a three
piece suit, regimental tie. He looked like a million dollars.
So I put James on the stand. He knocks it
out of the park.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
James Brown testified that Peewee had him take the plastic
cup to Tyne your cell. The cup was filled with nails, screws,
and metal. Brown said that right after the explosion he
went to gaskins sell and saw Gaskins pulling a wire
from the bottom vent in his cell. A few moments later,
(19:07):
he heard Gaskin's toilet flush. Gaskins came out of his
cell and went downstairs. He may have been on his
way to talk to Holly Gatling at that moment. That's unclear,
but prosecution was able to link Gaskins to a conspiracy
to cover up the murder with James Brown's assistants and
(19:28):
the hard evidence gathered in Peewee's cell.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
One of the things we confiscated during this trial was
a letter from Gaskins to James Brown. He instructed James
Brown to go to the Catholic priest and confess he
killed Tyner. Okay and Gascon's in the letter. Reasons we
put this evident, this letter into evidence, Reasons that if
(19:55):
you tell him you did it, my lawyers can call
him to the stand and he'll have to say that
somebody else confessed to him, but he can't say who
it was.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
I mean, the guy was him.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
He worked every angle of course, James Brown gave us
the letter, so that sort of ruined that plan.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Jack Swirling was Gaskin's defense attorney, and his only tactic
was going for reasonable doubt, convincing the jury that it
wasn't Peewee who made the bomb. Swirling attacked James Brown
while he was on the stand, so Harputlian had to
cross examine to counter Swirling's move.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Jack did a pretty good job of trying to instill doubt.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
I mean, reasonable doubt was the only.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Defense in the case, and that is to attack James
Brown to challenge his credibility.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
James's mother was sitting in the courtroom nervously watching her
son testify against pee Wee.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
So Jack Swrolling, who's defending Peewee, begins to attack him
for not really being pee Wee's friend of Pee we
want to Be. And so when I got back up
and I said, James, mister Swirling is intimated that you
were not friends with pee Wee.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
That's your pee we want to be? Is that true? No?
Speaker 4 (21:13):
I said, now, what was your real relationship with Peewee?
And I'll never forget His eyes bugged wide open, he
looked at me. He looked back at his mom and
he says, very quietly, we were lovers. See what I
can't hear you. I can't hear you, James, He said,
we were lovers, and the courtroom explodes in pandemonium. Swirling
(21:39):
explodes out of his chair and starts lundering towards the bench, screaming, objection, objection.
Speaker 5 (21:44):
Peewee, who's barely.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
I don't think he was five feet probably didn't weigh
a hundred and thirty pounds, grabbing onto Jack's coattail and
sort of being drug along with him, screaming, and then
pee Wee yells at Jack in this high pitched voice.
Jack Jack aske him who was on top.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Jim only hoped he would write a courtroom scene as
bold as Shakespeare's Winner's Tale or To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee. Only those heavyweights could fashion such a
picture with words. And now pee Wee's words would be
used against him. When the prosecution played the recordings between
(22:25):
Simo and Gaskins.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Pee Wee's recordings with Simo were devastating, devastating. You have
pee Wee planning it, talking to Cimo about what he needed,
how I was going to put it in a radio.
Speaker 5 (22:39):
He said.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
It didn't turn out to be a radio. He came
up with a more devious device. The forensics were that
he was holding a device made of a plastic cup,
the unbreakable plastic cup and the speaker and other debris. Shrapnel,
if you will, entered his head and body. It was
C four explosive, was consistent with what James Brown test
(22:59):
fight got from Tee Wee and delivered, which was consistent
with the recorded conversation.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
So was it a tough case?
Speaker 4 (23:07):
No, And we had the recording for Pee Wee, and
by the way, we hit ten murder convictions.
Speaker 5 (23:12):
I mean, this was not heavy lifting.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
It took eight weeks, but it was not the toughest
case I ever prosecuted by a long shot.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Hard physical evidence, testimony from an eyewitness, accomplice, courtroom drama,
sex between inmates. The whole Pee Wee Gaskin saga had
all the makings of a legal thriller, and the courtroom
didn't have to wait long for their verdict.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
As a practical matter, Pee Wee probably could not have
been prosecuted under the new death penalty law for crimes
committed prior to that going into effect. He probably never
could have gotten death again. The Tier case was the
only way he could get the death penalty. The jury
was out an hour before they found him guilty, and
they were out an hour when they act, just send
some death. I don't think they wrestled with either decision.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
When Jim Batty led investigators out of his office and
off the university campus, he hoped that he would never
see those guys again. He sweated, fretted, wished, and worried
that he was never called to testify, and his prayer
was answered. He didn't even go to the trial. He
(24:23):
was never approached again by authorities and was never charged
with anything. Investigators knew he had been an unwinning accomplice
to the murder. Here's Dick Carputlian in twenty twenty one
being told about the wire Jim Baty mailed to Peewee
in prison.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
I've always assumed because he had wirecutters and pliers, and
you named the tool, and there was plenty of wire
around where the show block was, I just assumed he
got it from somebody there.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
I never knew about Jim or the wire. No one
ever reported that to me.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Jim and Anitas slowly let go of their fears and anxieties,
but others were charged for their role in the assassination.
Jack Martin, a friend of Simo from Mural's inlet, Gotzimo
in touch with Jerald McCormick inside CCI, and he served
eighteen months for intimidation of a witness. Jerald Pop McCormick
(25:22):
still had twenty six years left of his thirty year
sentence for housebreaking, grand larceny, and burglary. He received a
five year sentence concurrent with his existing one. James Brown
was transferred to a Tennessee prison as part of his
deal with prosecutors. Of all the people involved in this
(25:43):
bizarre case, only Peewee Gaskins went to trial. Tony Simo
still awaited his fate. It seems most everyone was sympathetic
to the Moon's grieving sun.
Speaker 5 (25:58):
He seemed like.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
The most normal, all American guy in the world, just
had this obsession with avenging the death of his parents.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
You know, a jury I think.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Would have a hard time getting a unanimous verdict to
convict him of anything serious because all he did was
what we were trying.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
To do, and that was execute Tyner.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
And of course some folks, a number of folks who
looked at his conduct as a twoffer. Not only do
we get Tyner, we got Gaskets. The question is, would
you get twelve jurors to convict Tony Simo of something
that results in a lengthly prison sentence for him for
getting Pee Wee Gaskins to basically do what not basically
(26:39):
he executed a guy on death road. Now there is
the argument that he put officers lives in danger in
the getting C four into the Department of Corrections and
giving it to a homicidal maniac like Pee Wee. You
don't know what he's going to do with it, and
we just felt we talked, I mean I talked to
a number of people whose judgment I trusted about how
the community would treat him, and clearly we didn't want
(27:00):
to spend several weeks trying him on a very serious
charge and end up in a hung jury.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Tony Simo pled guilty to miss prison, making a bomb threat,
and conspiracy to commit murder. His wife, two daughters, plus
thirty or so family and friends were at the sentencing
when the judge said, quote to deter others from like behavior,
I'm going to incarcerate you. I know that you and
(27:29):
your family have gone through a lot and will continue to.
But we can't have people taking the law into their
own hands and exacting punishment end quote. He received concurrent
sentences of eight years. The community had a barbecue and
raffle and raised three thousand dollars to offset Simo's thirteen
(27:50):
thousand in legal fees. He served only six months and
was released to a halfway house for the remainder of
a sentence.
Speaker 5 (28:00):
He was contrite.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
He was ashamed, all the kinds of real emotions you
expect that of a very normal person.
Speaker 5 (28:06):
But at the same time, I think he was relieved
that Kinder was dead.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
One local resident told the Associated Press quote, A man
could only stand so much. I'd have done the same
thing as Tony if I could have end quote. Ira
Parnell puts it this way.
Speaker 8 (28:27):
I can't really blame Tony. People get distraught over things.
I might intended to do the same thing. I don't know,
but that would just be a bad spot to being.
But thankfully he didn't drum much time from it. I
think everybody else thought the same way. It was said
(28:49):
still real, wa I am.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
It was a sad story, and in nineteen eighty five,
two years after the trial, a TV movie called Vengeance,
the Story of Tony Simo began production with a two
million dollar budget. To Simo's dismay, South Carolina did not
allow criminals to profit from their crimes with movie, TV
(29:13):
or book deals. Therefore, his fifteen thousand dollars payoff was
given to Rudolph Tyner's family. Simo's life after the murder
was hardly idyllic. Problems with drug use and perhaps a
haunting sense of dread plagued him until two thousand and one,
when he suffered a fatal drug overdose. A newspaper in Orangeburg,
(29:39):
South Carolina, called The Times in Democrat, printed a statement
from his two daughters, who were then in their twenties.
No one will know what was in his mind Sunday night,
but we believe in his heart he did not see
a positive future. Jim Batty had been working feverishly on
(30:08):
his book before Peewe's bomb killed Tyner and blew up
Jim's dreams.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Well, what happens. I made him a wire to the prison,
and he blows a fellow and make his head off
of him. So so much for my hope of redemption.
My prayer was that through what I wrote and what
I had studied, and what I thought I had learned,
(30:35):
is that one child, one child would have been spared
from ever becoming another pee Week guessings. Rather than hold
this individual up as a monster, period hold him up
as a monster and see why and how we could
do otherwise with the four year old little boy. I'd
(31:00):
already finished the book, but I was editing, working a
good bid, writing a good bid. But when it fell,
when the project fell, I stopped it. When Pee Wee
murdered China, I literally dropped my pen. I stopped. I
didn't do anything else. There's no book, there's no hope
(31:23):
story ever being told.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
I was really frightened for Jim because an accomplice to murder.
My God, he really was an unwitting accomplice, which I thought,
when I had my wits about me, would keep him
from being charged because he was so innocent. Only now
do I see the connection between Jim's forgetting to take
(31:48):
the radio to Donnie Junior and maybe Pee Wee's conscious
setting Jim up in that last interaction exchange. I don't know,
but I mean that's think Pee Wee might have done,
because he did set people up, and he did take
a while to get his revenge if you disobeyed him,
so that might be a little bit extreme. I think
(32:10):
he really had affection for Jim, but who knows.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
In the rubble of Jim's relationship with Pee Wee, the
babies wondered if it had all gone sour When Jim
failed to promptly deliver the radio, pee Wee was definitely
upset by that.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
There was not one time, with the exception when I
knew Pee Wee was angry with me, that I did
not happily walk into that place to see him.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
I was looking forward.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
It was like going into a class to teach that
I was ready and I could not wait to get
from him what I was going to get about life
and living. And I think my guard was always down.
I don't have much of a g are and anything.
(33:03):
I was certainly duped by Pee Wee and being pulled
in as an accomplice. Absolutely I was. I thought I
was doing a good deed. I think that I became
one more piece of the puzzle that Pee Wee used
every opportunity that he had.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
All of us in the family lived that story with Jim.
There were nights when he'd come home and we couldn't
wait to hear what happened and hear the stories. But
also it got you in the pit of your stomach.
I can remember now, I can even feel it, a
little bit of dread, a little bit of horror, a
little bit of Oh my gosh, how could have that
have happened? How could that be? And how could he
(33:47):
have done this? And how could he still be around?
And how could my children be entering the phone on
Sunday and talking to this guy? But also how fascinating
he was and how Jim cared about what made him
the way he was.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
I do still.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Carry that today.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Whether or not the radio incident set Jim's fate will
forever remain a mystery, as with so much in this story.
But for Jim, the whole of the saga was worth studying,
worth researching, and worth telling.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
My mentality going in as far as writing this true
life novel was that I was equipped to do that,
although I had not tried it before, but I had
talked some true life novels, and I felt that the
pee Wee Gaskin's saga, or the story itself, needed to
(34:48):
be told. I could never get away from the necessity
of that being done for social reasons. There was something
there around this situation that I think the world needed
to be told because the world needed to correct it,
and I was in that world. I became more and
(35:13):
more confident that the task was necessary. And when he
murdered Rudolph Kina, it squashed my project, which of course
was my selfish concern. I was disillusioned. I didn't think
there was any good in Pee Wee. I realized that
(35:35):
I could not portray this man with any form of redemption,
none whatsoever. I completely gave up on the possibility of
my being a writer.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Jim found out that he was no more of a
friend of Pee Wee Gaskin's than any of his dead victims,
and in nineteen eighty three Peewee found himself on death
row again. Even from there, he was still able to
play games with people and implicate them in his brazen schemes.
(36:14):
Death penalty appeals are standard legal maneuvers for most convicts.
In South Carolina. Death sentences are automatically appealed. Through the
nineteen eighties, Peewee's defense team, led by Jack Swirling, filed
five different appeals, with dozens of various charges in each
(36:35):
each appeal was denied, and Peewee sat on death row.
Sometime after the Rudolph Tyner murder, Dick Harpoutlian joined up
with Jack Swirling and started a law firm. They practiced
together for years. Peewee was no longer in their legal lives,
(36:56):
but one day Dick was reminded of Peewee's incredible law audacity.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
I'm playing golf and I get a call from Chief Stewart,
chief of sweat, and said where are you? And I said,
when I'm playing golf. He said, and where's your daughter?
And I did not like the sound of that. He said,
we think there's a plot maybe to kidnap her. Will
send sweat agents there, and she was at home. So
by the time I got home, he had sweat agents there.
(37:24):
The story came out that pee Wee had met with
his son, little Donnie, and that Donnie had gone to
a friend of his and says his dad said the
kidnapped the solicitor's daughter or the governor's son, and that
he intended on kidnapping the sister daughter, who was four
years old.
Speaker 5 (37:41):
And he needed this young man to help him do it.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
And He told the young man that his dad's and
he asked his dad, what if he won't If I
kidnap her and he won't do what you want.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
Him to do, what do I do?
Speaker 4 (37:51):
And he said, we he shaild keep her in a
trunk and if he.
Speaker 5 (37:53):
Won't do it, kill her.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
What he was supposed to do was tell me to
have pee wee brought up to my office in the
court house.
Speaker 5 (38:01):
And this is the chilling part.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
Tee we knew somehow that I had a back door
to my office. That if I told the sweat agents
to bring him into my office and lead they didn't
know the door was there, they would leave and he
could just go out the back door. I mean, I
don't know how nobody knew that. So the kid, when
his son went and talked to another kid that that
kid immediately went to Sheriff Barnes, thank god, and so
(38:24):
they go out there. She was fine, my wife was fine.
And they had warrants out for Donnie for harstaft or something,
so they arrested him and took him into custody.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Brenda Chase was a new reporter for the Florence Morning
News when Donnie Gaskins was detained in the Florence County
Sheriff's office.
Speaker 9 (38:43):
It was just my second job out of college, covering
cops and courts and all things related to law enforcements.
We had some friends over at the Sheriff's office, one
who gave me a call and said, you're never going
to believe this, but we actually have pe Wee Gaskin's
son in the county jail right now. His name is Donnie,
(39:05):
and we've got him on a forty eight hour hold,
and he wants to speak to the media. Would you
like to come over here and talk with him? And
I was like absolutely. I thought I had arrived at
the big time, and I had only been there for
a few months, and I just thought, man, this is cool.
I'm getting the biggest scoop of the decade. And fortunately
(39:26):
the Florence newspaper was very very close to the county jail,
and so I ran across the street and they brought
him in. And he was so young looking. I believe
Donnie was twenty, not much younger than myself at that time.
He had never really had any time at all with
his dad because his dad had pretty much been in
(39:46):
jail his whole life. And it was so interesting talking
to him because it was almost like there was this
connection to pee Wee Gaskins through Donnie, but very little
time had he ever spent with his dad. So he
just talked about how he didn't believe all these stories
about his dad, and his dad could not have done this.
(40:06):
And then he was of course proclaiming his innocence that
he was not doing any of the things that they
said he was going to do. And so it was
just a very odd conversation. And it was through the
plexa glass at the county jail, and it was kind
of bizarre that this young young man, with absolutely no
idea of how secure his dad was being held, really thought, well,
(40:28):
we could get him out of jail. And then he
would say a few things that kind of led you
to believe that he really was trying. And then he
would of course remember, oh wait, I can't say that
because I'm not going to be guilty of this. So
it was kind of an odd conversation. You know, I
did feel a little bit sorry for Donnie. I don't
(40:49):
know that he ever had much of a chance. You know,
when you're growing up in that PD area of South Carolina,
everyone knew who pee Wee Gaskins was, so everyone knew
who his father was, as if he ever told them.
And I just don't think he stood much of a
chance coming into that local community with that last name
(41:09):
and that as a father. But I don't think he
had any kind of a chance growing up.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
So the cops held Donnie Gaskins for two days, but
the fear lasted longer for Dick harpoot Land.
Speaker 4 (41:26):
For the next two weeks, we lived with sweat agents
around our house. Outside our house, my daughter was in preschool,
and when she went to preschool, they had sweat agents
around there. I don't think the other parents appreciated it much,
but actually we stopped taking her over there after a
couple of days because it was just too much for
them to put their children at risk. So we lived
for a couple of weeks. Get up in the morning,
(41:47):
the sweat agents in the living room and around the
house out in the yard. You'll go to bed at night,
that's the last thing you see. It led me to
the conclusion I never want to live with Secret Service
protection or anything like that. So trucive, and it affects
your mentality about the world at large. In other words,
you look at the rest of the world as threatening.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Threatening. The reason Peewee Gaskins was not your friend is
there's always a gun or knife's edge threatening at your doorstep,
or your office or your daughter's preschool. Even though Dick
Harputlian was one of South Carolina's most well known prosecutors,
he was still tinged by Peewee's reach. The fear was real,
(42:35):
and his friend in law partner Jack Swirling, had his
own scare. Several years after Harputlian's kidnapped, Shock Swirling felt
the wrath of a former client. On June twenty seventh,
two thousand and two, Swirling, his wife, and daughter returned
(42:56):
home from an out of town trip. As they were
eating ham, two armed gunmen barged into their house and
bound the family with duct tape. After ransacking the place,
one of the massed assailants jammed a gun into Jack's
neck and demanded to be told where the money in
the house was. Swirling said he didn't have any at home.
(43:18):
The man knew Swirling's name, which added a level of
amazement to the whole ordeal. He yelled at Jack, I'm
going to give you one more chance where's the money
or I will kill you. Luckily, after they rummaged through
the entire house, the men left without killing anyone. Soon after,
(43:40):
James Causey was arrested and charged with numerous crimes, including kidnapping,
armed robbery, and burglary. It turns out that Swirling defended
Causey in two different trials. He got him a reduced
sentence in each case, but apparently Causey still held a
grudge that he had to go to jail at all.
(44:03):
He is still serving life without parole. Jack Swirling lives
with the memory of his family bound and held at
gunpoint in their own home. Dick Carpootlian lives with the
memory of gaskins kidnapping plot. Does Jim Batty worry about
his own involvement in Pee Wee gaskins last murder?
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Of course I worried about it. I'm worried about that now.
Speaker 7 (44:43):
Pee Wee Gaskins was not my friend. It's a joint
production from iHeartRadio and Doghouse Pictures, produced and hosted by
Jeff Keening. Executive producers are Courtney de Freeze and Noel Brown.
Written by Jim Roberts, Courtney de Freeze and Terry James
edit Nixon. Sound design by Jeremiah Kulani Scott. Music composed
by Diamond Street Productions, Spencer Garne and Ian Newberry. Special
(45:05):
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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