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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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Peewee Gaskins recorded several conversations he had with Tony Siemo
about his unsuccessful attempts to fatally poison Rudolph Tiner. Tony
provided Peewee with strychnine and oleander, but it just made
Tiner sick as a dog. He was on borrowed time
and running out of appeals, but Tony Siemo and Pewee
(00:26):
Gaskins would not wait for the courts to work out
the legal issues. They were going to execute Tiner before
the State of South Carolina ever got to him. When
Pee Wee murdered China stopped, I didn't do anything else.
(00:48):
I thought that I was going to be accused and
accomplished to murder that pee Wee had committed it. A
little bit of dread, a little bit of horror. Oh
my gosh, I could have happened, and I froze. I
was devastrated. What have I done? From my heart radio
(01:12):
at Doghouse Pictures. This is pee Wee. Gaskins was not
my friend. I'm Jeff Keating. Earlier he had asked me
to deliver the radio to his son, which I did
(01:34):
not on time, but I did one day that we
walked in at the close of the visit, he said,
I want to ask your favor. He said, could you
mail me a package? And I said what He said,
I need fifty feet of TV wire and you go
to any hardware strowing by, But I need fifty feet. Says,
(01:56):
we have an antenna on the top of the building.
He said, if I and wire the TV to that antenna,
fifty people can watch Sunday football. Wrap it up in
an end book and mail it to me here they
will examine it and give it to me. I said,
you really think they'll let me do that? He said,
what We do it all the time. People send me
(02:18):
things all the time. So Jim went to the hardware store,
bought the wire and mailed it to c c I.
Unbeknownst to Jim, it would help he we complete his
murderous plan. I had no idea that Pepe was going
(02:40):
to use it for anything other than what he said,
and that was to connect to an antenna. They 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
know Jim Batty knew as much as anyone could about
(03:04):
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
be like In Cold Blood, a book Jim taught on
occasion that was too sordid for Jim's storytelling approach. Jim
(03:28):
was optimistic that he could share some characteristics of Peewee
that people often didn't see, like honesty and compassion. But
in reality, pee Wee rarely showed these traits. In fact,
Pee Wee told them as much during their interviews together.
(03:48):
I said, pee Wee, would you ever lie to me? Thinking,
you know, we'll all budds, we're all friends. He's not
gonna loud to me and need a lot of me.
And he thought first, and he looked right at me
and said, yes, I would. I said, Peewee, you would
lie to me? When he said without hesitating half the time,
(04:17):
he said without hesitating half the time. It had started
in their first interview when Peewee said, look, I want
to set the record straight on some things, and so
many things out there that have been said about me
that are wrong. I want you to know what they
are and to make those things right, he said, without hesitating.
(04:43):
Half the time, I also think that he had respect
for me and were somewhat kind to me. Half the time,
he said, if I can wire the TV to that antenna,
fifty people can watch Sunday football. Half the time, Peewee
(05:14):
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 Peewee had connected from
his cell. Tyner yelled into the event towards Peewee cell
when he plugged it in and bee We told him
to hold it up to his ear, and then he
(05:35):
plugged his end into the one TAN socket and it
went off. Vent ty We pulled the wire back the route,
chopped it up, and witnesses say that he was weighing
on his bed, saying what was that. The explosion rocked
the prison and caused a chaotic mess. While Tyner was
(05:58):
dying in his cell of rubble, inmates yelled questions through
their prison bars. Guards ran around assessing the scene, and
Peewee gaskins laid there smiling on his cot. Holly Gatling
covered the Gaskon story from the start and was the
first to speak to Peewee after the bomb exploded. I
(06:21):
got a tip that there had been an explosion at
C C I, 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 gonna accuse me of doing it. And I
thought that was a mighty strange thing to say half
the time. Initially, when the report came in from law enforcement,
(07:08):
there was an opinion that Tyner had made a bomb
out of match heads and it was trying to blow
his way out of his death row fell. But quickly
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. Investigators considered Tyner had committed
(07:28):
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 turned to homicide. He lived
(07:50):
for a little while, but it was a traumatic injury.
They determined that somebody had murdered Tyner because they found
a shrapnel include eating 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 seafo explosive was found
(08:11):
and shrapnel I'm talking about nuts and bolts and nails
were found all over his body in his cell. The
pictures are horrendous. So at that point a homicide investigation
began and a guy named al Waters, who was an
(08:32):
investigator for the Department of Corrections, heard what he thought
was a solid rumor that pee Wee had been involved.
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
(08:56):
Waters had Pee Wee sell searched and they on all
the tools necessary to as symbol a bomb, a soldering
iron used to attach a wire to plugs, and plenty
of nuts, bolts and screws to create shrapnel. He had
melted a hole in the bottom of this cup and
put a female plug in it. That plug was attached
(09:19):
to a blasting cap and surrounding that blasting cap with
sea for explosa, which was surrounded by nuts, bolts, screws,
any shark deise metal and glued on the top was
a speaker like you'd get out of a radio. They
also found a telephone jack, razor blades, marijuana, electrical cords,
(09:40):
and daming Lye thirty eight audio cassettes recorded audio from
television programs, recorded calls he made from the nearby prison
pay phone. He recorded his family. Most importantly, he recorded
his conversations with Tony Siemo, the man who hired him
to kill Rudolph Tyner. Was c four a cup and
(10:02):
a wire. 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.
(10:24):
I was devastated for my own safety and my wife's
safety and our family saying what have I done? Extrangely enough,
I did not speak with anybody about that dilemma without
fear except Anita. I didn't go to any kind of
(10:45):
law enforcement, and I realized, what does this do with
my interviews? What does this do with our books? I
didn't think about it around the time of murder until
Jim was is if by slid, But that visit came
hard on the heels of Tina's murder, and I immediately
(11:07):
found out that I would never be able to see
people again because of what he had done. It was Sunday,
September two when the bomb exploded into Tyner's head. Like
the rest of the outside world, Jim Batty learned about
(11:28):
the story the next day in the newspaper. He was shocked.
He and Anita talked about what to do. They decided
to do nothing, but they did prey on it. I
felt some peace knowing that I was totally innocent. But
then a while later, Jim Batty was teaching a class,
(11:52):
an English class at Coastal Carolina University. The doors of
the classrooms have slender, tiny 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, I thought
(12:14):
they were preachers of some sort, or maybe used car salesman.
I couldn't figure. As the class has dismissed. The men
come in and one of them I knew that I
had seen before, and he flashed his badge inside his
coat and said, hello, dr Baby, I'm Tom Henderson, and
(12:36):
I remembered Special Agent Tom Henderson of SLED. He says,
you got a few minutes we'd like to talk with you.
Well again, like Peewee's call, I turned a wider shade
of pale, and he said, can we go to your office?
(12:58):
And we did. Jim's heart was racing, his hands were sweating.
All those what ifs he and in need of question
during their late night talks flashed in his mind as
he led the authorities to his university office. And I
had only one chair in my tiny office in addition
(13:20):
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 wee
Gaston's a month before he murdered Rudolph Tiner. I did.
(13:44):
He said, did you know that Pee Wee used that
to murder Tiner? I said I did not know that.
He said, well, that is what he used, the wire
that you mailed him to murder Rudolph Tiner. Hedn't say
anything else. I didn't say 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 said, 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 supena me? Will the
defense supoena me? Well, the prosecution supon 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 store
with him, and Tom Henderson and his partner moved down
the hall for a few steps, and I watched every step,
every move mo of each foot on the carpet leaving,
praying that they would be gone forever. And as they stopped,
(15:08):
and 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. Then I was really
scared because it wasn't clear to me whether he'd be
(15:30):
called as an accomplice or to go testify. I thought
that he was going to tell me that I was
going to be accused as an accomplice to murder that
we had permitted. Tiner was killed September twelve, eighteen eighty two,
(16:02):
in March of night three. It took a month to
see the jury of eight women and four men for
Peewee's murder trial. It was very difficult to get a
jury because you know the question you ever heard about
Donald Pewee asaid, yeah, what do you know about the
largest master murder industry? To stay well, could you put
that aside and you know, base your verdicts on the
evidence in this case. And a lot of people were
(16:23):
very honest and said no. So it took a several
hundred jurors to get twelve. The one guy said, could
you consider giving him life or would you give an
electric chair because that's what we use back then, And
this guy said no, no, no, I wouldn't give an
electric chair, and I was thought, well, this is one
we can maybe maybe use. He said no, I had hanging.
I mean that's how that went. So I don't remember
(16:44):
three hundred and something people we went through before we
got I think we had fourteen twelve and two alderness.
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 Tyner. As usual, Gaskets didn't fail to deliver
(17:10):
spectacle at his trial. I think he was a self promoter.
I think he had hold 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,
it's just ridiculous plan to blow up a guy on
(17:32):
death row. I mean, 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 a brilliant, but he was a very crafty guy.
He's always working the angles, and he would have gotten
away with it. But for those recordings, we've never had
(17:53):
any evidence. We hadn't had the recordings, we wouldn't have
gotten James Brown. Even if we had, James Brown would
be his word against Peewee's. James Brown was on death
row for a double murder, so his word alone was suspect,
even compared to Peewee's. James Brown killed two women and
have sex with him after they were dead. When I
(18:13):
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 the prison, went over his testimony with him,
got him to cut his hair, got him to shave
(18:35):
his beard, got him a three piece suit, regimental tie.
He looked like a million dollars. So I put James
understand he knocks it out of the park. James Brown
testified that Peewee had him take the plastic cup to
time your cell. The cup was filled with nails, screws
and metal. Brown said that right after the explosion he
(18:59):
went to gas skin cell and saw Gaskins pulling a
wire from the bottom vent in his cell. A few
moments later, 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
(19:24):
a conspiracy to cover up the murder with James Brown's
assistance and the heart evidence gathered in Peewee cell. 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
(19:47):
tyger okay In Gaskins in the letter reasons we put
this evidence, this letter into evidence, reasons that if 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.
I mean, the guy was him. He worked every angle.
(20:09):
Of course, James Brown gave us the letters that sort
of ruined that plan. Jack Swirling was Gascon'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,
(20:30):
so harput Lean had to cross examine to counter Swirling's move.
Jack did a pretty good job of trying to instill doubt.
I mean reasonable doubt was the only defense in the case,
and that is to attack James Brown to challenge his credibility.
James's mother was sitting in the courtroom nervously watching her
(20:51):
son testify against Peewee. So Jacks Rowling, who's defending Peewee,
begins to attack him for not really being pee Wee's
friend of pee Weee want to be. So when I
got back up and I said, James, Mr Swirling is
intimated that you were not friends with the Peewee that
your pee Wee want to be. Is that true? No?
(21:13):
I said, Now, what was your real relationship with pee Wee?
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. What I can't
hear you. I can't hear you, James. He said we
were lovers, and the courtroom explodes in pandemonium. Swirling explodes
(21:39):
out of his chair and starts lundering towards bench, screaming, objection, objection. Peewee,
who's barely I don't think he was five. He probably
didn't weigh a hundred and thirty pounds, grabbing onto Jack's
cowtail and sort of being drug along with him and screaming,
and then Peewee yells at Jack in this high pitched voice. Jack,
Jack acid, who was on top. Jim only hoped he
(22:05):
would write a courtroom scene as bold as Shakespeare's Winner's
Tale or To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Only
those heavy weights could fashion such a picture with words.
And now Peewee's words would be used against him. When
the prosecution played the recordings between Seemo and Gaskins, pee
(22:29):
Wee's recordings with Semo were devastating, devastating. You have Peewee
planning it, talking to Semo about what he needed, how
I was going to put it in a radio. He said.
It didn't turn out to be a radio. He came
up with a more devious device. Forensics were that he
was holding a device made of plastic cup, the unbreakable
plastic cup and that speaker and other debris shrapnel if
(22:53):
you will, entered his head and body. It was C
four explosives. It was consistent with what James Brown testified
got from Teawe and delivered, which was consistent with the
recorded conversation. So was it a tough case. No, And
we had the recordings for Peewee, and by the way,
we hit ten part murder convictions. I mean, this was
(23:13):
not not heavy lifting. It took eight weeks, but it
was not the toughest case I ever prosecuted by a
long shot, hard physical evidence, testimony from an eyewitness, accomplice,
courtroom drama, sex between inmates. The whole Peewee Gaskin saga
had all the makings of a legal thriller, and the
(23:35):
courtroom didn't have to wait long for the verdict. 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 to death. The jury was out
an hour before they found him guilty, and they were
(23:56):
out an hour when the acts and ends of death.
I don't think they wrestled with either decision. When Jim
Batty lead 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.
(24:20):
He didn't even go to the trial. He was never
approached again by authorities and was never charged with anything.
Investigators knew he had been an unwitting accomplice to the murder.
Here's Dick harpoot Lean in two thousand twenty one being
told about the wire Jim Batty mailed to Peewee in prison.
(24:43):
I've always assumed because he had wirecutters and Clyres and
you named the tool, and there was plenty of wire
around where the cellblock was, I just assumed he got
it from somebody there. I never knew about Jim or
the wire. No one ever reported that to me. Jim
and Anitis lowly let go of their fears and anxieties,
but others were charged for their role in the assassination.
(25:07):
Jack Martin, a friend of Siemo from Mural's inlet, got
Siemo in touch with Gerald McCormick inside c c I,
and he served eighteen months for intimidation of a witness.
Gerald pop McCormick still had twenty six years left of
his thirty year sentence for house breaking, grand larceny, and burglary.
(25:29):
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 bizarre case, only Peewee Gaskins went to trial.
Tony Siemo still awaited his fate. It seems most everyone
(25:52):
was sympathetic to the Moon's grieving sun. He seemed like
the most normal, all American guy in the world, just
had this obsession with avenging the death of his parents.
You know, a jury, I think he would have a
hard time getting a unanimous verdict to convict him of
(26:12):
anything serious because all he did was what we were
trying to do, and that was execute Tyner. And of
course some folks, a number of folks who looked at
his conduct. Is a two fer. Not only do we
get Tyner, we got Gaskers. 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
(26:34):
pee wee Gaskins to basically do what not? Basically he
executed a guy on death road. Now there is the
argument that he put officers lives in danger in the
getting C four it into the Department of Correction and
giving it to a homicidal maniact like pee wee, you
don't know what he's gonna do with it, And we
just felt we talked, I mean, we talked to a
(26:55):
number of people whose judgment I trusted about how the
community would treat him, and clearly we didn't want to
spend several weeks trying him on a very serious charge
and end up in an jury. Tony Semo pled guilty
to misprision, making a bomb threat, and conspiracy to commit murder.
(27:16):
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 incarceerate you.
I know that you and 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
(27:38):
punishment end quote. He received concurrent sentences of eight years.
The community had a barbecue and raffle and raised three
thousand dollars to offset semost thousand in legal fees. He
served only six months and was released to a halfway
house for the remainder of the sentence. He was contrite.
(28:01):
He was ashamed, all the kinds of real good emotions
you expected of a very normal person. But at the
same time, I think he was relieved that China was dead.
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
(28:23):
Parnell puts it this way. I can't really blame tone.
People get distraught over things. I might intempted to do
the same thing. I don't know, but that would just
be bad by the being. But thankfully he didn't drow
(28:43):
him much time from it. I think everybody has thought
the same way. It was said. Still really ran. It
was a sad story, and in two years after the trial,
a TV movie called Vengeance The Story of Tony Siemo
began production with a two million dollar budget. To Seemo's dismay,
(29:08):
South Carolina did not allow criminals to profit from their
crimes with movie, TV or book deals. Therefore, his fifteen
thousand dollar payoff was given to Rudolph Tyner's family. Simo's
life after the murder was hardly idellic. Problems with drug
use and perhaps a haunting sense of dread plagued him
(29:31):
until two thousand and one, when he suffered a fatal
drug overdose. A newspaper in Orangeburg, South Carolina, called The
Times and 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
(29:52):
in his heart he did not see a positive future.
Jim Batty had been working feverishly on his book before
Pewee's bomb killed Tyner and blew up Jim's dreams. But
(30:15):
what happens. I'm merely mair to the prison, and he
blows a fellow and made his head off with it.
So so much for my hope of redemption. My prayer
was that through what I wrote, what I had studied,
and what I thought I had learned, is that one child,
(30:37):
one child would have been spared from ever becoming another
Peewee gascons. 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 a four year
(30:58):
old little boy. I had already finished the book, but
I was editing, working a good bit, writing a good bit.
But when it fell, when the project fell, I stopped it.
When we murdered China, I literally dropped my pen. Now
I stopped. I didn't do anything else. There's no book,
(31:22):
there's no whole book story ever being told. 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, we'd keep him from
being charged because he was so innocent. Only now do
(31:46):
I see the connection between Jim's forgetting to take the
radio to Donnie Jr. And maybe pee Wee's conscious setting
Jim up in that last interaction exchange. I don't know,
but I mean that's of think Peewee might have done,
because he did set people up, and he did take
a while to get his revenge if you disobeyed him.
(32:08):
So that made me a little bit extreme. I think
he really had affection for Jim, but who knows. In
the rubble of Jim's relationship with Peewee, the babies wondered
if it had all gone sour When Jim failed to
promptly deliver the radio. Peewee was definitely upset by that.
(32:29):
There was not one time was the exception. What I knew.
Pee Wee was angry with me that I did not
happily walking into that place to see him. I was
looking forward. 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
(32:51):
about life and living no thing. I think my guard
was always down. I don't have much people are on anybody.
I was certainly looped by Peewee and being poured in
as an accomplish. Absolutely I was. I thought I was
doing a good deed. I think that I became one
(33:17):
more piece of the puzzle that pee Wee used every
opportunity that he had. 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
(33:37):
can even feel it, a little bit of dread, a
little bit of horror, a little bit Oh my gosh,
I could do that have happened? How could that be?
And how could he 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
(34:01):
about what made him the way it was. I do
still carry that today. Whether or not the radio incidents
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.
(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 from true life novels, and I felt that the
Peewee Gaskin's saga, or the story itself, needed to be told.
(34:50):
I could never get away from the necessity of that
being done for social reasons. There was something that are
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 more
(35:14):
confident that the task was necessary. And when he murdered
Rudolph Kiner, 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 I
(35:35):
could not portray this man with any form of redemption,
none whatsoever. I completely gave up on the possibility of
my being a writer. Jim found out that he was
no more of a friend of pee Wee Gaskins than
(35:55):
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. Death penalty appeals are
(36:16):
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, fouled five different appeals with dozens
of various charges in each. Each appeal was denied, and
(36:37):
Peewee sat on death row. Sometime after the Rudolph Tyner murder.
Dick carput Lean joined up with Jack Swirling and started
a law firm. They practiced together for years. Peewee was
no longer in their legal lives, but one day Dick
(36:57):
was reminded of Peewee's incredible audacity. I'm playing golf and
I get a call from Chief Stewart, chief of swed
and said where are you? And I said, 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 sweed agents there,
(37:19):
and she was at home. So by the time I
got home, he had Sweed agents there. The story came
out that pe We had met with his son, little Donnie,
and that Donnie had gone to a friend to his
and says his dad said the kidnapped the solicitor's daughter
or the governor's son, and that he intended on kidnapping
(37:39):
the swister daughter, who was four years old, and he
needed this young man to help him do it. And
he told the young man that his dad, and he
asked the dad what if he won't if I kidnap her?
And he won't do what you want him to do?
What do I do? And he said we should keep
her in a drunk and if he won't do it,
to kill her. What he was supposed to do was
tell me to have pe we brought up to my
office in the court house. And this is the chilling part.
(38:03):
He we knew somehow that I had a back door
to my office. That if I told the swed agents
to bring him in my office and we they didn't
know the door was there, and they would wait and
he could just go out the back door. I mean,
I don't know how he nobody knew that. So the
kid went de soon went and talked to another kid
that that could immediately want to share Barnes, thank god,
(38:23):
and so they like there, she was fine, my wife
was fine. And they had warrants out for Donnie for
carset or something, so they arrested him and took him
into custody. Brenda Chase was a new reporter for the
Florence Morning News when Donnie Gaskins was detained in the
Florence County Sheriff's office. It was just my second job
(38:45):
out of college, covering cops and courts and all things
related to law. Enforcement. 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 Uwee.
Gaskin's son in the county jail right now. His name
is Donnie, and we've got him on a forty eight
(39:07):
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 the Florence newspaper was very, very close to
(39:29):
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 jail his whole life. And it was
so interesting talking to him because it was almost like
(39:52):
there was this connection to Peewee 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. 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 was
(40:15):
through the plexiglass 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, 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
(40:36):
can't say that because um, like not gonna 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 know that he ever had much of a chance.
You know, when you're growing up in that p D
area of South Carolina, everyone knew who Peewee Gaskins was,
(40:57):
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 and that as a father, but I
don't think he had any kind of a chance growing up.
So the cops held Donnie Gaskins for two days, but
(41:20):
the fear lasted longer for Dick harpoot Lean. For the
next two weeks, we lived with sweat agents around our
house and outside of our house. My daughter was a
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
(41:42):
much for them to put their children at risk. So
we lived for a couple of weeks. Get up in
the morning, 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. It is
so of Trusia, and it affects your mentality about the
(42:03):
world at large. There's in other words, you look at
the rest of the world is threatening. Threatening. The reason
Peewee Gaskins was not your friend because there's always a
gun or knife's edge, threatening at your doorstep, or your office,
or your daughter's preschool. Even though Dick harput Lean was
(42:26):
one of South Carolina's most well known prosecutors, he was
still tinged by Peewee's reach. The fear was real, and
his friend and law partner, Jack Swirling, had his own scare.
Several years after harput Leon's kidnap, Shock Swirling felt the
wrath of a former client. On June thousand and two, Swirling,
(42:54):
his wife, and daughter returned home from an out of
town trip. As they were eating hand Burgher's, 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
(43:16):
said he didn't have any at home. The man new
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, James Causey
(43:41):
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 cause he still held a grug
that he had to go to jail at all. He's
(44:03):
still serving life without parole. Jack Swirling lives with the
memory of his family bound and held at gunpoint in
their own home. Dick carput Lean lives with the memory
of Gaskin's kidnapping plot. Does Jim Batty worry about his
own involvement in Peewee Gaskin's last murder? Of course I
(44:27):
worried about it. I'm worried about that now. Pee Wee
Gaskins was not my friend. It's a joint production from
My Heart Radio and Doghouse Pictures, produced and hosted by
(44:49):
Jeff Keeping. Executive producers are Courtney DeFries and Noel Brown.
Written by Jim Roberts, Courtney DeFries and Terry James edit Nixon.
Sound designed by Jeremiah Kolani Escot. Music composed by Diamond
Street Productions, Spencer gard 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
(45:12):
South Carolina
Peewee Gaskins recorded several conversations he had with Tony Siemo
about his unsuccessful attempts to fatally poison Rudolph Tiner. Tony
provided Peewee with strychnine and oleander, but it just made
Tiner sick as a dog. He was on borrowed time
and running out of appeals, but Tony Siemo and Pewee
(00:26):
Gaskins would not wait for the courts to work out
the legal issues. They were going to execute Tiner before
the State of South Carolina ever got to him. When
Pee Wee murdered China stopped, I didn't do anything else.
(00:48):
I thought that I was going to be accused and
accomplished to murder that pee Wee had committed it. A
little bit of dread, a little bit of horror. Oh
my gosh, I could have happened, and I froze. I
was devastrated. What have I done? From my heart radio
(01:12):
at Doghouse Pictures. This is pee Wee. Gaskins was not
my friend. I'm Jeff Keating. Earlier he had asked me
to deliver the radio to his son, which I did
(01:34):
not on time, but I did one day that we
walked in at the close of the visit, he said,
I want to ask your favor. He said, could you
mail me a package? And I said what He said,
I need fifty feet of TV wire and you go
to any hardware strowing by, But I need fifty feet. Says,
(01:56):
we have an antenna on the top of the building.
He said, if I and wire the TV to that antenna,
fifty people can watch Sunday football. Wrap it up in
an end book and mail it to me here they
will examine it and give it to me. I said,
you really think they'll let me do that? He said,
what We do it all the time. People send me
(02:18):
things all the time. So Jim went to the hardware store,
bought the wire and mailed it to c c I.
Unbeknownst to Jim, it would help he we complete his
murderous plan. I had no idea that Pepe was going
(02:40):
to use it for anything other than what he said,
and that was to connect to an antenna. They 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
know Jim Batty knew as much as anyone could about
(03:04):
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
be like In Cold Blood, a book Jim taught on
occasion that was too sordid for Jim's storytelling approach. Jim
(03:28):
was optimistic that he could share some characteristics of Peewee
that people often didn't see, like honesty and compassion. But
in reality, pee Wee rarely showed these traits. In fact,
Pee Wee told them as much during their interviews together.
(03:48):
I said, pee Wee, would you ever lie to me? Thinking,
you know, we'll all budds, we're all friends. He's not
gonna loud to me and need a lot of me.
And he thought first, and he looked right at me
and said, yes, I would. I said, Peewee, you would
lie to me? When he said without hesitating half the time,
(04:17):
he said without hesitating half the time. It had started
in their first interview when Peewee said, look, I want
to set the record straight on some things, and so
many things out there that have been said about me
that are wrong. I want you to know what they
are and to make those things right, he said, without hesitating.
(04:43):
Half the time, I also think that he had respect
for me and were somewhat kind to me. Half the time,
he said, if I can wire the TV to that antenna,
fifty people can watch Sunday football. Half the time, Peewee
(05:14):
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 Peewee had connected from
his cell. Tyner yelled into the event towards Peewee cell
when he plugged it in and bee We told him
to hold it up to his ear, and then he
(05:35):
plugged his end into the one TAN socket and it
went off. Vent ty We pulled the wire back the route,
chopped it up, and witnesses say that he was weighing
on his bed, saying what was that. The explosion rocked
the prison and caused a chaotic mess. While Tyner was
(05:58):
dying in his cell of rubble, inmates yelled questions through
their prison bars. Guards ran around assessing the scene, and
Peewee gaskins laid there smiling on his cot. Holly Gatling
covered the Gaskon story from the start and was the
first to speak to Peewee after the bomb exploded. I
(06:21):
got a tip that there had been an explosion at
C C I, 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 gonna accuse me of doing it. And I
thought that was a mighty strange thing to say half
the time. Initially, when the report came in from law enforcement,
(07:08):
there was an opinion that Tyner had made a bomb
out of match heads and it was trying to blow
his way out of his death row fell. But quickly
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. Investigators considered Tyner had committed
(07:28):
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 turned to homicide. He lived
(07:50):
for a little while, but it was a traumatic injury.
They determined that somebody had murdered Tyner because they found
a shrapnel include eating 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 seafo explosive was found
(08:11):
and shrapnel I'm talking about nuts and bolts and nails
were found all over his body in his cell. The
pictures are horrendous. So at that point a homicide investigation
began and a guy named al Waters, who was an
(08:32):
investigator for the Department of Corrections, heard what he thought
was a solid rumor that pee Wee had been involved.
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
(08:56):
Waters had Pee Wee sell searched and they on all
the tools necessary to as symbol a bomb, a soldering
iron used to attach a wire to plugs, and plenty
of nuts, bolts and screws to create shrapnel. He had
melted a hole in the bottom of this cup and
put a female plug in it. That plug was attached
(09:19):
to a blasting cap and surrounding that blasting cap with
sea for explosa, which was surrounded by nuts, bolts, screws,
any shark deise metal and glued on the top was
a speaker like you'd get out of a radio. They
also found a telephone jack, razor blades, marijuana, electrical cords,
(09:40):
and daming Lye thirty eight audio cassettes recorded audio from
television programs, recorded calls he made from the nearby prison
pay phone. He recorded his family. Most importantly, he recorded
his conversations with Tony Siemo, the man who hired him
to kill Rudolph Tyner. Was c four a cup and
(10:02):
a wire. 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.
(10:24):
I was devastated for my own safety and my wife's
safety and our family saying what have I done? Extrangely enough,
I did not speak with anybody about that dilemma without
fear except Anita. I didn't go to any kind of
(10:45):
law enforcement, and I realized, what does this do with
my interviews? What does this do with our books? I
didn't think about it around the time of murder until
Jim was is if by slid, But that visit came
hard on the heels of Tina's murder, and I immediately
(11:07):
found out that I would never be able to see
people again because of what he had done. It was Sunday,
September two when the bomb exploded into Tyner's head. Like
the rest of the outside world, Jim Batty learned about
(11:28):
the story the next day in the newspaper. He was shocked.
He and Anita talked about what to do. They decided
to do nothing, but they did prey on it. I
felt some peace knowing that I was totally innocent. But
then a while later, Jim Batty was teaching a class,
(11:52):
an English class at Coastal Carolina University. The doors of
the classrooms have slender, tiny 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, I thought
(12:14):
they were preachers of some sort, or maybe used car salesman.
I couldn't figure. As the class has dismissed. The men
come in and one of them I knew that I
had seen before, and he flashed his badge inside his
coat and said, hello, dr Baby, I'm Tom Henderson, and
(12:36):
I remembered Special Agent Tom Henderson of SLED. He says,
you got a few minutes we'd like to talk with you.
Well again, like Peewee's call, I turned a wider shade
of pale, and he said, can we go to your office?
(12:58):
And we did. Jim's heart was racing, his hands were sweating.
All those what ifs he and in need of question
during their late night talks flashed in his mind as
he led the authorities to his university office. And I
had only one chair in my tiny office in addition
(13:20):
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 wee
Gaston's a month before he murdered Rudolph Tiner. I did.
(13:44):
He said, did you know that Pee Wee used that
to murder Tiner? I said I did not know that.
He said, well, that is what he used, the wire
that you mailed him to murder Rudolph Tiner. Hedn't say
anything else. I didn't say 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 said, 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 supena me? Will the
defense supoena me? Well, the prosecution supon 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 store
with him, and Tom Henderson and his partner moved down
the hall for a few steps, and I watched every step,
every move mo of each foot on the carpet leaving,
praying that they would be gone forever. And as they stopped,
(15:08):
and 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. Then I was really
scared because it wasn't clear to me whether he'd be
(15:30):
called as an accomplice or to go testify. I thought
that he was going to tell me that I was
going to be accused as an accomplice to murder that
we had permitted. Tiner was killed September twelve, eighteen eighty two,
(16:02):
in March of night three. It took a month to
see the jury of eight women and four men for
Peewee's murder trial. It was very difficult to get a
jury because you know the question you ever heard about
Donald Pewee asaid, yeah, what do you know about the
largest master murder industry? To stay well, could you put
that aside and you know, base your verdicts on the
evidence in this case. And a lot of people were
(16:23):
very honest and said no. So it took a several
hundred jurors to get twelve. The one guy said, could
you consider giving him life or would you give an
electric chair because that's what we use back then, And
this guy said no, no, no, I wouldn't give an
electric chair, and I was thought, well, this is one
we can maybe maybe use. He said no, I had hanging.
I mean that's how that went. So I don't remember
(16:44):
three hundred and something people we went through before we
got I think we had fourteen twelve and two alderness.
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 Tyner. As usual, Gaskets didn't fail to deliver
(17:10):
spectacle at his trial. I think he was a self promoter.
I think he had hold 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,
it's just ridiculous plan to blow up a guy on
(17:32):
death row. I mean, 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 a brilliant, but he was a very crafty guy.
He's always working the angles, and he would have gotten
away with it. But for those recordings, we've never had
(17:53):
any evidence. We hadn't had the recordings, we wouldn't have
gotten James Brown. Even if we had, James Brown would
be his word against Peewee's. James Brown was on death
row for a double murder, so his word alone was suspect,
even compared to Peewee's. James Brown killed two women and
have sex with him after they were dead. When I
(18:13):
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 the prison, went over his testimony with him,
got him to cut his hair, got him to shave
(18:35):
his beard, got him a three piece suit, regimental tie.
He looked like a million dollars. So I put James
understand he knocks it out of the park. James Brown
testified that Peewee had him take the plastic cup to
time your cell. The cup was filled with nails, screws
and metal. Brown said that right after the explosion he
(18:59):
went to gas skin cell and saw Gaskins pulling a
wire from the bottom vent in his cell. A few
moments later, 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
(19:24):
a conspiracy to cover up the murder with James Brown's
assistance and the heart evidence gathered in Peewee cell. 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
(19:47):
tyger okay In Gaskins in the letter reasons we put
this evidence, this letter into evidence, reasons that if 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.
I mean, the guy was him. He worked every angle.
(20:09):
Of course, James Brown gave us the letters that sort
of ruined that plan. Jack Swirling was Gascon'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,
(20:30):
so harput Lean had to cross examine to counter Swirling's move.
Jack did a pretty good job of trying to instill doubt.
I mean reasonable doubt was the only defense in the case,
and that is to attack James Brown to challenge his credibility.
James's mother was sitting in the courtroom nervously watching her
(20:51):
son testify against Peewee. So Jacks Rowling, who's defending Peewee,
begins to attack him for not really being pee Wee's
friend of pee Weee want to be. So when I
got back up and I said, James, Mr Swirling is
intimated that you were not friends with the Peewee that
your pee Wee want to be. Is that true? No?
(21:13):
I said, Now, what was your real relationship with pee Wee?
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. What I can't
hear you. I can't hear you, James. He said we
were lovers, and the courtroom explodes in pandemonium. Swirling explodes
(21:39):
out of his chair and starts lundering towards bench, screaming, objection, objection. Peewee,
who's barely I don't think he was five. He probably
didn't weigh a hundred and thirty pounds, grabbing onto Jack's
cowtail and sort of being drug along with him and screaming,
and then Peewee yells at Jack in this high pitched voice. Jack,
Jack acid, who was on top. Jim only hoped he
(22:05):
would write a courtroom scene as bold as Shakespeare's Winner's
Tale or To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Only
those heavy weights could fashion such a picture with words.
And now Peewee's words would be used against him. When
the prosecution played the recordings between Seemo and Gaskins, pee
(22:29):
Wee's recordings with Semo were devastating, devastating. You have Peewee
planning it, talking to Semo about what he needed, how
I was going to put it in a radio. He said.
It didn't turn out to be a radio. He came
up with a more devious device. Forensics were that he
was holding a device made of plastic cup, the unbreakable
plastic cup and that speaker and other debris shrapnel if
(22:53):
you will, entered his head and body. It was C
four explosives. It was consistent with what James Brown testified
got from Teawe and delivered, which was consistent with the
recorded conversation. So was it a tough case. No, And
we had the recordings for Peewee, and by the way,
we hit ten part murder convictions. I mean, this was
(23:13):
not not heavy lifting. It took eight weeks, but it
was not the toughest case I ever prosecuted by a
long shot, hard physical evidence, testimony from an eyewitness, accomplice,
courtroom drama, sex between inmates. The whole Peewee Gaskin saga
had all the makings of a legal thriller, and the
(23:35):
courtroom didn't have to wait long for the verdict. 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 to death. The jury was out
an hour before they found him guilty, and they were
(23:56):
out an hour when the acts and ends of death.
I don't think they wrestled with either decision. When Jim
Batty lead 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.
(24:20):
He didn't even go to the trial. He was never
approached again by authorities and was never charged with anything.
Investigators knew he had been an unwitting accomplice to the murder.
Here's Dick harpoot Lean in two thousand twenty one being
told about the wire Jim Batty mailed to Peewee in prison.
(24:43):
I've always assumed because he had wirecutters and Clyres and
you named the tool, and there was plenty of wire
around where the cellblock was, I just assumed he got
it from somebody there. I never knew about Jim or
the wire. No one ever reported that to me. Jim
and Anitis lowly let go of their fears and anxieties,
but others were charged for their role in the assassination.
(25:07):
Jack Martin, a friend of Siemo from Mural's inlet, got
Siemo in touch with Gerald McCormick inside c c I,
and he served eighteen months for intimidation of a witness.
Gerald pop McCormick still had twenty six years left of
his thirty year sentence for house breaking, grand larceny, and burglary.
(25:29):
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 bizarre case, only Peewee Gaskins went to trial.
Tony Siemo still awaited his fate. It seems most everyone
(25:52):
was sympathetic to the Moon's grieving sun. He seemed like
the most normal, all American guy in the world, just
had this obsession with avenging the death of his parents.
You know, a jury, I think he would have a
hard time getting a unanimous verdict to convict him of
(26:12):
anything serious because all he did was what we were
trying to do, and that was execute Tyner. And of
course some folks, a number of folks who looked at
his conduct. Is a two fer. Not only do we
get Tyner, we got Gaskers. 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
(26:34):
pee wee Gaskins to basically do what not? Basically he
executed a guy on death road. Now there is the
argument that he put officers lives in danger in the
getting C four it into the Department of Correction and
giving it to a homicidal maniact like pee wee, you
don't know what he's gonna do with it, And we
just felt we talked, I mean, we talked to a
(26:55):
number of people whose judgment I trusted about how the
community would treat him, and clearly we didn't want to
spend several weeks trying him on a very serious charge
and end up in an jury. Tony Semo pled guilty
to misprision, making a bomb threat, and conspiracy to commit murder.
(27:16):
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 incarceerate you.
I know that you and 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
(27:38):
punishment end quote. He received concurrent sentences of eight years.
The community had a barbecue and raffle and raised three
thousand dollars to offset semost thousand in legal fees. He
served only six months and was released to a halfway
house for the remainder of the sentence. He was contrite.
(28:01):
He was ashamed, all the kinds of real good emotions
you expected of a very normal person. But at the
same time, I think he was relieved that China was dead.
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
(28:23):
Parnell puts it this way. I can't really blame tone.
People get distraught over things. I might intempted to do
the same thing. I don't know, but that would just
be bad by the being. But thankfully he didn't drow
(28:43):
him much time from it. I think everybody has thought
the same way. It was said. Still really ran. It
was a sad story, and in two years after the trial,
a TV movie called Vengeance The Story of Tony Siemo
began production with a two million dollar budget. To Seemo's dismay,
(29:08):
South Carolina did not allow criminals to profit from their
crimes with movie, TV or book deals. Therefore, his fifteen
thousand dollar payoff was given to Rudolph Tyner's family. Simo's
life after the murder was hardly idellic. Problems with drug
use and perhaps a haunting sense of dread plagued him
(29:31):
until two thousand and one, when he suffered a fatal
drug overdose. A newspaper in Orangeburg, South Carolina, called The
Times and 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
(29:52):
in his heart he did not see a positive future.
Jim Batty had been working feverishly on his book before
Pewee's bomb killed Tyner and blew up Jim's dreams. But
(30:15):
what happens. I'm merely mair to the prison, and he
blows a fellow and made his head off with it.
So so much for my hope of redemption. My prayer
was that through what I wrote, what I had studied,
and what I thought I had learned, is that one child,
(30:37):
one child would have been spared from ever becoming another
Peewee gascons. 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 a four year
(30:58):
old little boy. I had already finished the book, but
I was editing, working a good bit, writing a good bit.
But when it fell, when the project fell, I stopped it.
When we murdered China, I literally dropped my pen. Now
I stopped. I didn't do anything else. There's no book,
(31:22):
there's no whole book story ever being told. 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, we'd keep him from
being charged because he was so innocent. Only now do
(31:46):
I see the connection between Jim's forgetting to take the
radio to Donnie Jr. And maybe pee Wee's conscious setting
Jim up in that last interaction exchange. I don't know,
but I mean that's of think Peewee might have done,
because he did set people up, and he did take
a while to get his revenge if you disobeyed him.
(32:08):
So that made me a little bit extreme. I think
he really had affection for Jim, but who knows. In
the rubble of Jim's relationship with Peewee, the babies wondered
if it had all gone sour When Jim failed to
promptly deliver the radio. Peewee was definitely upset by that.
(32:29):
There was not one time was the exception. What I knew.
Pee Wee was angry with me that I did not
happily walking into that place to see him. I was
looking forward. 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
(32:51):
about life and living no thing. I think my guard
was always down. I don't have much people are on anybody.
I was certainly looped by Peewee and being poured in
as an accomplish. Absolutely I was. I thought I was
doing a good deed. I think that I became one
(33:17):
more piece of the puzzle that pee Wee used every
opportunity that he had. 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
(33:37):
can even feel it, a little bit of dread, a
little bit of horror, a little bit Oh my gosh,
I could do that have happened? How could that be?
And how could he 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
(34:01):
about what made him the way it was. I do
still carry that today. Whether or not the radio incidents
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.
(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 from true life novels, and I felt that the
Peewee Gaskin's saga, or the story itself, needed to be told.
(34:50):
I could never get away from the necessity of that
being done for social reasons. There was something that are
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 more
(35:14):
confident that the task was necessary. And when he murdered
Rudolph Kiner, 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 I
(35:35):
could not portray this man with any form of redemption,
none whatsoever. I completely gave up on the possibility of
my being a writer. Jim found out that he was
no more of a friend of pee Wee Gaskins than
(35:55):
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. Death penalty appeals are
(36:16):
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, fouled five different appeals with dozens
of various charges in each. Each appeal was denied, and
(36:37):
Peewee sat on death row. Sometime after the Rudolph Tyner murder.
Dick carput Lean joined up with Jack Swirling and started
a law firm. They practiced together for years. Peewee was
no longer in their legal lives, but one day Dick
(36:57):
was reminded of Peewee's incredible audacity. I'm playing golf and
I get a call from Chief Stewart, chief of swed
and said where are you? And I said, 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 sweed agents there,
(37:19):
and she was at home. So by the time I
got home, he had Sweed agents there. The story came
out that pe We had met with his son, little Donnie,
and that Donnie had gone to a friend to his
and says his dad said the kidnapped the solicitor's daughter
or the governor's son, and that he intended on kidnapping
(37:39):
the swister daughter, who was four years old, and he
needed this young man to help him do it. And
he told the young man that his dad, and he
asked the dad what if he won't if I kidnap her?
And he won't do what you want him to do?
What do I do? And he said we should keep
her in a drunk and if he won't do it,
to kill her. What he was supposed to do was
tell me to have pe we brought up to my
office in the court house. And this is the chilling part.
(38:03):
He we knew somehow that I had a back door
to my office. That if I told the swed agents
to bring him in my office and we they didn't
know the door was there, and they would wait and
he could just go out the back door. I mean,
I don't know how he nobody knew that. So the
kid went de soon went and talked to another kid
that that could immediately want to share Barnes, thank god,
(38:23):
and so they like there, she was fine, my wife
was fine. And they had warrants out for Donnie for
carset or something, so they arrested him and took him
into custody. Brenda Chase was a new reporter for the
Florence Morning News when Donnie Gaskins was detained in the
Florence County Sheriff's office. It was just my second job
(38:45):
out of college, covering cops and courts and all things
related to law. Enforcement. 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 Uwee.
Gaskin's son in the county jail right now. His name
is Donnie, and we've got him on a forty eight
(39:07):
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 the Florence newspaper was very, very close to
(39:29):
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 jail his whole life. And it was
so interesting talking to him because it was almost like
(39:52):
there was this connection to Peewee 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. 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 was
(40:15):
through the plexiglass 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, 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
(40:36):
can't say that because um, like not gonna 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 know that he ever had much of a chance.
You know, when you're growing up in that p D
area of South Carolina, everyone knew who Peewee Gaskins was,
(40:57):
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 and that as a father, but I
don't think he had any kind of a chance growing up.
So the cops held Donnie Gaskins for two days, but
(41:20):
the fear lasted longer for Dick harpoot Lean. For the
next two weeks, we lived with sweat agents around our
house and outside of our house. My daughter was a
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
(41:42):
much for them to put their children at risk. So
we lived for a couple of weeks. Get up in
the morning, 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. It is
so of Trusia, and it affects your mentality about the
(42:03):
world at large. There's in other words, you look at
the rest of the world is threatening. Threatening. The reason
Peewee Gaskins was not your friend because there's always a
gun or knife's edge, threatening at your doorstep, or your office,
or your daughter's preschool. Even though Dick harput Lean was
(42:26):
one of South Carolina's most well known prosecutors, he was
still tinged by Peewee's reach. The fear was real, and
his friend and law partner, Jack Swirling, had his own scare.
Several years after harput Leon's kidnap, Shock Swirling felt the
wrath of a former client. On June thousand and two, Swirling,
(42:54):
his wife, and daughter returned home from an out of
town trip. As they were eating hand Burgher's, 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
(43:16):
said he didn't have any at home. The man new
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, James Causey
(43:41):
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 cause he still held a grug
that he had to go to jail at all. He's
(44:03):
still serving life without parole. Jack Swirling lives with the
memory of his family bound and held at gunpoint in
their own home. Dick carput Lean lives with the memory
of Gaskin's kidnapping plot. Does Jim Batty worry about his
own involvement in Peewee Gaskin's last murder? Of course I
(44:27):
worried about it. I'm worried about that now. Pee Wee
Gaskins was not my friend. It's a joint production from
My Heart Radio and Doghouse Pictures, produced and hosted by
(44:49):
Jeff Keeping. Executive producers are Courtney DeFries and Noel Brown.
Written by Jim Roberts, Courtney DeFries and Terry James edit Nixon.
Sound designed by Jeremiah Kolani Escot. Music composed by Diamond
Street Productions, Spencer gard 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
(45:12):
South Carolina
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