May 31, 2021 • 39 mins
The world of carnies is explored as Pee Wee sets up his plan to kill Avery Howard and Diane Bellamy Neeley.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Peewee Gaskins was a dangerous man, and Jim Batty discovered
firsthand how quickly the tone could change when interviewing a murderer.
During their first one on one conversation, Peewee told Jim
about his unusually long thumbnails and then demonstrated on his
face how they could be used as weapons. One minute,
(00:24):
he's in casual conversation, the next, a killer has his
fingernails on his eye sockets. Jim has told this story
many times over the past forty years, and he has
a stock reply when asked the obvious question, how could
you let this man who killed more than a dozen
people put his hands on your face? Many have asked,
(00:47):
how any world did you let him do that? I said, look,
you don't let Peewee Gaskins do anything. He does what
he wants to do, and he's much worse than the
uncle that you don't want hanging around. It's it's much
darker than that. People say, she's got to go, and
(01:08):
this is a plan, and that was to set up
for the Friday Night murderer. I didn't know much about
the people who worked the fair, but they weren't harder
than the people that I knew if you hold a
person in your mouth completely open, they can't screen from
(01:30):
my heart radio and doghouse pictures. This is Peewee Gaskins
was not my friend. I'm Jeff Keating. In spite of
(01:51):
the risks, Jim Batty not only went back to meet
with Peewee Gaskins at c c I after their first visit,
he soon agreed to weekly calls from the prison to
his home. I believe it was after the third visit
with Pee Wee I agreed that Pee Wee could call
our house on Sunday mornings, collect of course, And the
(02:14):
phone calls began, and they were answered, usually by two
of the younger children, and they would call me to
the phone after some conversation. But he called dozens of
times to a house on Sunday morning. Here's Jim's wife, Anita,
baby and Jim Jr. Describing the calls. Pee Wee would
(02:36):
call for Jim, but on the way to getting Jim
on the phone, the kids would be asked by him,
are you going to Sunday school? Are you listening to
your mom and daddy? Are you being good? It was
exciting to them a little bit scary, but it was
exciting because he was Daddy's friend, you know, But no,
(02:57):
he was not daddy friend. I do remember the calls,
but one that I remember specifically was hearing the voice
Peewee's voice for the first time, and then I had
a feeling of fear. But I remember just being nervous
about it and getting the phone out of my hands
(03:18):
and into Dad's hands as quickly as I could. His
older children were well aware what police found in the
fields during December of nine eight bodies, most of whom
were friends of Peewee until he killed them. One was
a woman he loved, another a pregnant mother and her
(03:40):
two year old daughter. There were business partners and three siblings.
Here's Mark Batty talking about his father's experience of interviewing
Peewee Gaskins while on assignment to write his life story.
If you want to go tell somebody, hey, my dad's
trying this book called pe Gaskins. I mean, if you're
(04:01):
in Columbus, South Carolina, you know who pee Wee Gaskins was.
At the time, with Jim's background as a literary professor
and with his sly sense of humor, the family had
confidence this would work out well. We had a lot
of fun. He would, you know, he would make a joke.
I remember he would imitate Peewee. Apparently Pee Wee said
(04:24):
everything twice, everything twice, and my dad would do that
all the time. I think that a Need and Dad
were pretty good about reminding us. You do remember he
is a killer, you know, you know, keep in mind.
But it was a very weird kind of razor's edge
kind of path here on. Sometimes when we were talking
about Pee Wee, uh like he was kind of part
(04:47):
of the family. But then at the same time, he's
much worse than the uncle that you don't want hanging around.
It's it's much darker than that, you know what I mean.
The family reason to be nervous. After all, Pee Weee
Gaskins spent over half his life in jail. He knew
how to work the system, and Jim knew he was
(05:10):
as charming as he was dangerous. Here's an excerpt from
an Associated Press article from July. Some believe he possesses
a brilliant criminal mind. To others, Gaskins has a keen
sense of humor and a friendly, entertaining personality. Few people
(05:33):
knew this duality better than Jim, who spent hundreds of
hours with Gaskins and members of his family. Jim was
interviewed for that article nearly thirty years ago, and in
it he says he's a complex person. He shows anger
and compassion almost at the same moment. Jim said that
(05:55):
Gaskins had a surprisingly good self image and that he
would brag about being a great lover. In fact, prison
officials would confirm that Gaskins did have a lot of
female pen pals. He certainly was not handsome, but he
was not grotesque, and he would offer the fact I'm
(06:16):
not much of a looker, but he said, I always
got my share speaking of the other female population. And
in the early going he told me I really wanted
to get something straight, and I said what would that be.
He said, well, I never raped nobody, never ever, not
(06:37):
one time, and then he very quickly, with a gleam
in his eyes, said I never had to. So people
was letting me know that he was quite a ladies
man watching him there in the prison, seated in the
vest area, and the women around eyes always fixed right
(07:00):
on it. And uh, that to me was quite remarkable.
Women may have been attracted to him, and men may
have done business with him. But in prison you watch
your back every day. Someone is almost certainly out to
get you, especially if you're Pee Wee Gaskins. Here's Jim
(07:21):
describing a dangerous encounter with fellow prison inmate Avery Howard
years earlier in c c I. Pee Wee first met
Avery uh in c c I years earlier in Colombia.
Avery Howard was your run of the mill thug. He
was dating Diane Bettermanely, who was married to Walter years before.
(07:46):
In the prison, there was the great setup that he
planned for Pee Wee. He always resented Peewee and wanted,
even when he was in prison, to take his place
if he could, in the place of leadership and respect.
And he decided that if he could set him up
(08:08):
and get him into trouble, that he could become the
big man in the cell, boxer to speed. So every
Howard's plan was to have Peewee go in business with him,
selling marijuana in the prison. So he told pee Wee
that he wanted to speak to him the next time
(08:30):
there's there's a recess out in the yard, and they
did and have we put some joints. Marijanna note on
the match beside him and said here, I'll sell you
these for five dollars, and I want you to let's
set up and going business. I can sell all the
marijuana if you can get me, and let's go in business.
(08:51):
And Pea he said, absolutely not keep your joints. I'm
not at least bit interested. And the bell rings and
it's time to go back in, and Peewee watches a
really even walk across the yard and as Peewee starts
back to guards comes straight to Peewee and said you
(09:11):
gotta be searched. And they searched him. Nothing emptied his pockets,
checked his underwear, no marijuana anywhere, So the setup did
not work. That afternoon late when the razor man comes by,
(09:34):
pee Wee says, will you take a message to Avery Howards?
And the guy said yes. He said, tell him to
look in his right pocket of his windbreaker and see
what he finds. And as the reason man is walking away,
Pewe says, just a minute, can I tell you one
(09:55):
more thing? Said tell him that. I said, if it
takes twenty years, and you don't know what I mean,
it would only take ten. Pee Wee ended up dealing
with Avery again when both were out of prison. It
(10:16):
was a small world, and when they met again, Avery
Howard had begun an affair with Diane Bellamy. Pee Wee
met Diane when she worked at the Amusements of America
Carnival in Sumter, South Carolina. According to Gascons, they were friends,
(10:37):
they were once lovers, and she was even part of
his theft ring. She ended up in a common law
marriage with Peewee's closest buddy, Walter Neely. Even though Diane
and Peewee were once close, their friendship took a bad turn. First,
there was the story about Walter and Diane's infant child.
(10:58):
Here's Anita baby. There's a story about the death of
his son. His baby. Diane Bellamy Neely was married to Walter.
I guess if they were married. She carried his name,
and their baby died from neglect, actually her Diane left
(11:22):
the baby alone in a bathtub and her other young
child turned on the hot water, and the baby died
from burn wounds. Law enforcement ruled it an accidental death,
but pee Wee would never forgive her for what he
saw as a sin committed against his best friend. Let
that baby dinah bathtub and Walter's son and it breaks
(11:47):
my heart because I love babies, and to think of
this guy, so fragile, who probably loved that baby. I've
thought many times of how he might have held the baby,
you know, and looked at him and said, this is
my son. And what the evidence says about Walter's limitations
and his mother's protection of him, and the betrayal of
(12:11):
Walter by Diane Bellamy Neely. And she was pretty much
a trollop, as my mother would say, and she was
unfaithful to him. Diane's youngest brother, Johnny Knight, was part
of the local theft ring and fell in love with
(12:33):
Wanda Snell. Johnny was on parole from reform school, where
he was serving time for auto theft. Wanda had been
living with her sister Sandy, who was married to Pee
Wee Gaskins at the time. The two young teens, Johnny
and Wanda, fell in love, got engaged, and we're having
plenty of sex at Gaskin's home. This arrangement went on
(12:56):
as perfectly normal until another boy named Charlie showed up
and broke up the engagement. Diane was livid that Charlie,
another carnival worker, would break up the relationship her brother
had with one to Snell, and it was her acting
out that anger that would cost Diane her life. Diane
(13:20):
Bellamy Neely was an absolutely recalcitrant member of the ring.
She did not listen to Peewee. She didn't bother about Peewee.
She could not have cared less on anything that pee
Wee told her to do. Her boyfriend in front of
(13:42):
her husband, Walter, and in front of Peewee was Avery Howard,
a person that Peewee had known in prison. Diane Bellamy
wanted John Henry Knight and wanted to be together. She
felt John Henry Knight was being left out. He was
fifteen and didn't have any kind of girlfriend at that point. Well,
(14:06):
Diane tells Peewee that she's going to go to the
law and report that Peewee is letting Wander and Charlie
Sheeley live in his house, which they were doing. This
would put a spotlight on Peewee in the eyes of
the law. Then Avery told him that Diane knew about
(14:30):
a murder he'd done and could talk if she wanted to. Well,
that's joy, No one should talk about his crimes. Peewee
came up with a plan. The first step was to
go to the carnival and get a recruit. Pee Wee
went to the midway the carnival area where Charlie was working,
(14:52):
and calls him over and says, are you ready to
go back to jail? So I says, what do you mean?
And then he told him how Diane was threatening to
do something about him and all of them, and Pee says,
she's got to go, and this is a plan, And
that was the set up for the Friday Night murdered.
(15:27):
The carnival in central South Carolina was more than seasonal entertainments.
It was a mainstay in the community. It coupled with
charities for fundraising events. Numerous people in this story worked
for Amusements of America, the company who owned the fair.
Peewee worked there over time, as did the large Snell
(15:47):
family and the Bellamies. It was entirely reasonable that Peewee's
first move when he was going to send Diane and
Avery to the grave was to drop by the carnival.
It was the perfect setting for the story. This is
Dominic Vivona. His family started Amusements of America in nineteen
(16:07):
thirty nine. So my family is the typical Italian immigrant family,
and my grandfather died when my father was eleven pneumonia.
So my uncle us ago our neighborhoods with an ice
cream truck and sell ice cream. He found out that
these carnival events were happening around the city with the
ferris wheel or a merry ground, and he should travel
(16:29):
and follow this carnival event and he should sell out
his ice cream truck. So I kind of figured out
that this was the way to go, follow this carnival
around the city and and have big sales with ice cream.
Over the next thirty years, the family venture became a
seasonal treasure. By the sixties and seventis they were very
well established on the eastern coast of the United States
(16:51):
from all the way to Canada. Eventually, Sumter County became
a base for all operations. Along with making money for
the Vona's Amusements of America brought business and revenue to
the communities where they set up shop. At the peak
of its season, the carnival employed roughly four people. But
(17:11):
there's a lot of history there with the muse American
Sumter over the years because they went back and back
there every year after the fair to do their there.
We call winter quarters work. You spend a lot of
money in local community over the winter, buying parts, paint lights, bearings,
and motor belts and all the help that you employed,
you know, just working doing the maintenance on the equipment.
(17:32):
So they became a pretty well known business entity in
the city of Sumter, which is not a huge city,
but in the it's a decent sized southern city. Here's
Anita and Mark Batty talking about the carnival from the
other side of the ticket booth. I went to the
fair as a child every year, sometimes with Hattie um
(17:57):
And and sometimes with friends of parents, and the Amusements
of America produced a fair and traveled it or toured
it all over small towns in South Carolina, and it
was really quite an exciting occasion. Then in high school,
I was cheering leading, We had dates and went to
the fair and that was a different kind of fun.
(18:19):
So it was always a thing in my life. We
went to the state Fair every year. I went to
Olympia Middle School, which is one half of a city
block from the fair grounds, and the first week of
fair we actually got out of school on a half day.
(18:40):
It was a big deal. Employees worked long hours at
minimum wage and were paid in cash. Most folks gave
the office address as their personal address. It was an
informal economy. There were no computers around to do background checks,
and it attracted a colorful crew of characters. Here's Dominic
(19:04):
Vevona to me, if this is a unique business, very unique,
special different, not for everybody to get all the type
of employees skilled unskilled. Some of them might have emotional
personal baggage and they're trying to either get away from
their families or whatever pass the day, want to disassociate from,
and or they're looking for a new adventure. Two types
(19:25):
of people work the carnival circuit. First you get the
folks that from the area and just want to work
the carnival and they come to the family, hire them
for the week and they get paid and they go
back to their their normal life after the fair ends.
And then you had the folks that want to travel
with you, that the carneys, official carneys, and they would
join you and they'd go to the next fair and
(19:46):
affair for that and so forth and get into the
routine and stay with you. They become lifers that you
could say carneys for life. I didn't know much as
a child about the people who worked the fair on
the rods. They would just really different from the people
on you and grew up with and lived around and
went to church with. They were sort of hard. That
(20:10):
was why I remember. I wouldn't have used that word
then because I didn't know how to describe it, but
they were harder than the people that on you. This
way of life provided a subculture of sorts. Folks lives
merged and bled into one another. Rules, standards or boundaries,
at least formal ones faded. There's not a lot of
(20:32):
time off in the sense that when you do have
time off, you're still in the Carnival family community. You're
not going to your house away from everybody else because
your house is with the other guy's house, which is,
you know, five feet away from you. When you have
a nine to five job at an office and you
close the door and you walk out of that building,
you go home, it's you might be entering a different world,
But in the Carnival uh, there is no different world.
(20:54):
Everybody's together and lives together, each together, works together. So
that's why you get that emily environment a family. This
is where Peewee set up shop. It was near perfect
cover for a predator, a marginal community existing in plain sight.
(21:15):
Workers were largely itinerant and turnover was high. The loud
games and colorful rides provided brilliant cover for any number
of stories. After investigators learned that there were many missing
persons associated with Pewee Gaskins, they soon discovered another common thread.
(21:37):
Several of them were Carneys, the Bellamies and the Sheeley's
and the Snells. Old Lady Snell worked the carnival circuit
for years and had at least three children, Sandy Snell,
who was Peewee's fifth wife, Ricky sixteen who worked in
the car theft ring, and Wanda Snell, who was fifteen.
(22:02):
The Snell family was prolific in our carnival business. There
was a family that they all just gravitated to the carnival.
And there was cousins, there was brothers, there was sisters,
and I don't know where that family was originally from,
but they just seemed to be a true Carney family
in the sense that all the relatives ended up getting
a job somehow, some way. Wanda's mother brought her with
(22:24):
her to work when she was two years old. The
culture meant that when children were born into this environment,
they became integrated and then perpetuated Carney life. So there
is much more freedom where you had kids actually grow
up on the carnival because there was not the push
from the states to keep all those kids in school
(22:46):
or be able to track them, I guess. So there's
much more growth from a child level actually on the
carnival as opposed to just having men and women as employees.
Wanda Snell began working at the carnival when she was
very young. At fourteen, she became pregnant for the first
time and had a miscarriage. She testified under oath to
(23:09):
having sex with Peewee that same year. Gaskins was forty
two years old at the time. Pee Wee prayed on
the young and vulnerable. Our story Remember started with a
missing girl, Kim Gilkins. Many of the stories involve young girls.
Wanda Snell later testified that Walter Neely bragged that he
(23:33):
and Peewee were contract killers, and that she witnessed Neelie
pulling a gun on Dennis Bellamy and threatened to kill
his entire family. Neelie's defense accused the prosecution of putting
up prostitutes against their clients, Walter's lawyer stating, in fact,
she slept with just about everyone I mentioned. The newspaper
(23:57):
described the young girl as buxom and detailed several of
her sexual partners. Kids grew up fast in the carnival,
Wanda met and dated John Henry Knight, another member of
Gaskin's posse and one of the bodies found in the
mass grave and prospect. Johnny was fourteen years old when
(24:18):
he started in Peewee's theft ring. He was half brother
to Diane and Dennis Bellamy. Authorities would learn that a
romance had sparked between Wanda and Johnny. The two crossed paths.
When Wanda was staying with Sandy and Peewee, Johnny Knight
would come around with stolen goods for Peewee to sell.
(24:43):
John Henry Knight was actually a member of the Peewee
gang and respected Peewee for the right reason and respected
him as an adult, respected him as a leader. He
was a fifteen year old that as Peewee said, it's
a shame that he had to die. Peewee hatched his
(25:08):
plan to get rid of Diane and went to see
Charlie Sheeley at the carnival. It's what Jim Batty calls
the Friday Night Murder. There are many versions of every
(25:34):
story involved in this sordid tale. A perfect example of
this are the murders of Diane Bellamy Neely and Avery Howard.
These two victims were found in Peewee's burial ground on
the second day of searching. Diane and Avery were having
a sexual affair out in the open in the spring
of At the time, as Walter Neely later testified, he
(26:00):
and Diane were in a common law marriage. Her affair
with Avery didn't seem to anger Walter, as his testimony documents,
but it sure piste off Peewee, who thought it was
embarrassing and unfair to Walter. Peewee manipulated the people around him,
and Walter was an easy target. In some instances, he
(26:23):
forced people into becoming accomplices to his crimes, leveraging their
silence with their complicity. Such was the case so many
times for Walter Neely. It was why Walter was spending
the rest of his life behind bars, As was the
case with Charlie Sheeley and Ricky Snell. Peewee straight up
(26:44):
got them to commit murder to cover up his other
murders and crimes. Pewee's incentive was that Diane and Avery
were threatened about jawing to the police with accusations of rape,
in dangering miners, and murder. At nineteen years old, Charlie
was risking his freedom by having a relationship with fifteen
(27:07):
year old Wanda Snell. He could get arrested on delinquency.
The account of the following murder is told by Jim
Batty and taken from sworn testimony given by Walter pee
Wee and Wan to Snell. Charlie Sheey, an ex marine strong,
(27:29):
could easy to lift a refrigerator all by himself. Charlie
was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for killing his father when
he was fifteen. He went into the marine soon after
a short stay in reform school at the Carnival. Pee
Wee gave Charlie the plan. He also gave him the
(27:50):
bony knife he stole from the Campbell soup factory. Pee
Wee told Charlie and Rickey that Diana and Avery were
going to be using the back room at a low
coal business for a midday sexual tryst. Pe We gave
them the key to the business and told him what
time they needed to leave by. He didn't want Diane
(28:10):
and Avery flaunting their affair in front of Walter any longer.
While Diane and Avery were inside Pee, we told Charlie
to show up with Wanda and Ricky Snell in the
car Pee. We wanted Ricky and Wanda Invold Wanders in
another car waiting in the distance. Charlie and Ricky left
(28:32):
Wanda in the car and got into the back seat
of Diane and Avery's car, the one Pee wee let
them borrow for their hook up and gotten into the
Avery Howard Diane Balmy nearly car and we're crouched in
the back seat no weapon except the campbell suit knife.
(28:55):
The couple comes out after their rendezvous. The roof light
in the car had been removed at that moment. The
two men come up out of the back seat. Charlie
Sheeley was a brute and he had the camel soup
knife and he choked Avery Howard in the driver's seat
(29:20):
and plunge the camel soup knife into his abdomen and chest.
While Rickie Snell is holding Diane Bellamy neely By the
throat with her mouth open. Pe Re instructed Ricky if
you if you hold a person's mouth completely open, they
(29:42):
can't scream, So he was holding her mouth completely open,
which she couldn't scream. And then when Charlie finished with Avery,
he put the knife to Diane Bellamy Neely. Ricky Snell
(30:03):
gets out of the car and goes to the other
car that wanders driving Charlie Sheey puts Diane by the window,
Avery Howard in the middle seat, and Charlie drive to
Walter Neely's house and Walter Neely comes out and gets
in the car. Wanda Snell and Ricky Snell get in
(30:28):
the back seat of the car and there's six people,
two dead in the front seat along with the driver,
three alive in the back seat. Walter asked him, did
y'all do it? Is Diane dead? And Ricky Snell said,
(30:50):
she's dead. I want to testify that she didn't directly
see the murders, but she did admit to being in
the car with two dead bodies heading for Peewee. Walter
(31:12):
testified that Diane's murder didn't upset him. He mostly just
felt sorry for her. It didn't bother me he said,
he talked about the strangest of car rides. We didn't
talk about nothing, mostly small talk. We just tried to
get up there as quick as we could. We went
out to Sam's place and saw Peewee. They drive to
(31:38):
Lake City. Peewee comes out, gets Charlie out of the
front seat, shoots both of the dead people again between
the eyes. Charlie gets back in the car. Pee Wee
follows them to a grave site, where they all dig
the grave except for Peewee. One claim that didn't match
(32:02):
up in their testimony was whether or not Peewee shot
Avery and Diane before they put the bodies in the ground.
Forensics showed that only Diane had been shot. At the
time of his testimony, Walter Neely was serving life in
prison as accessory to several murders. Pee we admitted to
(32:24):
it's nine seventy six when he's telling this story. His
admissions in Diane and Avery's murders followed Peewee's and Wanda Snells,
both of whom told the same story. One of the
lead investigators, Tom Henderson, laid into Walter, quote, did you
(32:44):
know Wanda snell took a lie detector test? At the
lie detector showed that she was lying, that the whole
story was a lie. She confessed the whole story was
made up end quote. Walter did not know this. Apparently,
p We got Wanda and Walter to tell the same
story about the Friday night Diane and Avery were murdered.
(33:06):
Walter played along because it was Peewee show. He said
he'd been riding in the car with his freshly murdered wife.
He followed the script that his friend laid out for him.
It was that simple to Walter. Wanda went so far
in her devotion to Peewee that she implicated herself in
the murders. Even as a teenager, she was a willing
(33:29):
cover an amazing degree of control and manipulation. Peewee would
wield as much everywhere he went as well. Law enforcement
never really believed the outlandish story about the Friday night
murder car ride. Too many details didn't add up. The
(33:49):
image of the car heading north to find Peewee bordered
on the tragic comical more than reality. The media ran
with that image, though, wrote and republished articles portraying the
grizzly scene. The questions investigators asked Peewee and Walter indicate, however,
that they were breaking apart from their story, they knew
(34:11):
where they were going when they questioned them. What Peewee's
defense attorney ultimately believed Peewee did to Diane and Avery
is backed up by forensic details pieced together by law enforcement.
(34:35):
Diane and Avery were threatening Peewee, trying to blackmail him
into paying for their silence. Pee Wee acted like he
was going to get them some money. It was all
part of the ruse, as he regularly did with other
people around him. He said he was going to give
them a car. Lots of cars moved through Peewee. They
(34:56):
could resell it if they wanted. It was stolen, so
it needed some title work, but they could have it
in exchange. They were to leave Walter alone and shut
up about his crimes. Pee Wee testified that he took
them to the field near Prospect to give them the car.
He ended up in a fight with Avery Howard as
he pulled his gun and Avery grabbed it and it
(35:18):
was thrown aside in the tussle. He kept a knife
strapped in an ankle holster all the time. It was
the boning knife he used to clean chickens when he
worked at the Campbell Soup factory. He pulled it out
and stabbed Avery several times. Diane tried to run, but
he stopped her shot and stabbed her. The sequence remains
(35:41):
a mystery. Tom Henderson questioned pee Wee about this account, saying, quote,
the bullet came out of Diane at the right side
of the midline, at the upper part of the teeth.
Doctor Sexton has examined thousands of killings. He's a lot
more experience with killing than you have, Peewee, and he
(36:03):
says the only way he knows that a bullet wound
could have got there is somebody stuck a gun. She
had a halter top on and said that somebody had
to stick that gun right up between her breasts, right
up under there, and pull the trigger for the bullet
to come out right there. End quote. Police contended that
she was raped. Pee Wee denied it. There was no
(36:25):
rape kit or further investigation. Her underwear were at her
ankles in the grave. Pee Wee said they were pulled
off as he dragged her body there. He covered it
with branches and leaves, went back to his trailer, and
Walter shown up soon thereafter, so pee Wee took Walter
(36:46):
and showed him his wife's dead body at top of
Avery's in their bramble covered grave. Walter neely wound up
murdering Dennis Bellamy. He knowingly concealed other Peewee murders as well.
Peewee bought Walter silence about his missing wife Avery. Howard
(37:08):
found himself involved in a bundle of lies starting years
earlier in c c I, when he tried to set
up Peewee for distribution in jail. True life butterfly effect.
You start lying and you never know where it may lead.
(37:35):
That's what makes Peewee's claims about killing Hitchhiker's sound bogus.
Random killing would waste energy that he needed to juggle
to manage real life bundles of lies that concealed rape,
child endangerment, racist motivated murders, murders for hires, killing an
underage family member and her friend. By involving people like
(37:56):
Wanda and Walter and others, Peewee tried to spread around
some of the weight that comes with managing all that.
His personality was dynamic, larger than life in a small frame.
Law enforcement from all over South Carolina newspaper and television
reporters Jim Batty. They all relate the same image of
(38:17):
Peewee's dynamism. That personality was also part of the management
of his day to day life of lies. For those
in his most immediate vicinity, it wasn't surprising at all.
It was horrifically logical. Many of them, those people in
(38:38):
his circle, those he talked to regularly, those he interacted with.
Many of these were implicated in his crimes in one
way or another. Pee Wee wanted to intimidate as many
people as he possibly could, and I earned that firsthand.
(39:16):
Pee Wee Gaskins was Not My Friend is a joint
production from My Heart Radio and Doghouse Pictures, produced and
hosted by Jeff Keeping. Executive producers are Courtney Dufries and
Noel Brown. Written by Jim Roberts, Courtney Dufries and Terry
James edit NIX and sound designed by Jeremiah Kolani Prescott.
Music composed by Diamond Street Productions, Spencer gard and Ian Newberry.
(39:37):
Special thanks to Jim and Anita Baby. Additional thanks to
the University of South Carolina, Moving Image Research Collections and
the University of South Carolina,
Peewee Gaskins was a dangerous man, and Jim Batty discovered
firsthand how quickly the tone could change when interviewing a murderer.
During their first one on one conversation, Peewee told Jim
about his unusually long thumbnails and then demonstrated on his
face how they could be used as weapons. One minute,
(00:24):
he's in casual conversation, the next, a killer has his
fingernails on his eye sockets. Jim has told this story
many times over the past forty years, and he has
a stock reply when asked the obvious question, how could
you let this man who killed more than a dozen
people put his hands on your face? Many have asked,
(00:47):
how any world did you let him do that? I said, look,
you don't let Peewee Gaskins do anything. He does what
he wants to do, and he's much worse than the
uncle that you don't want hanging around. It's it's much
darker than that. People say, she's got to go, and
(01:08):
this is a plan, and that was to set up
for the Friday Night murderer. I didn't know much about
the people who worked the fair, but they weren't harder
than the people that I knew if you hold a
person in your mouth completely open, they can't screen from
(01:30):
my heart radio and doghouse pictures. This is Peewee Gaskins
was not my friend. I'm Jeff Keating. In spite of
(01:51):
the risks, Jim Batty not only went back to meet
with Peewee Gaskins at c c I after their first visit,
he soon agreed to weekly calls from the prison to
his home. I believe it was after the third visit
with Pee Wee I agreed that Pee Wee could call
our house on Sunday mornings, collect of course, And the
(02:14):
phone calls began, and they were answered, usually by two
of the younger children, and they would call me to
the phone after some conversation. But he called dozens of
times to a house on Sunday morning. Here's Jim's wife, Anita,
baby and Jim Jr. Describing the calls. Pee Wee would
(02:36):
call for Jim, but on the way to getting Jim
on the phone, the kids would be asked by him,
are you going to Sunday school? Are you listening to
your mom and daddy? Are you being good? It was
exciting to them a little bit scary, but it was
exciting because he was Daddy's friend, you know, But no,
(02:57):
he was not daddy friend. I do remember the calls,
but one that I remember specifically was hearing the voice
Peewee's voice for the first time, and then I had
a feeling of fear. But I remember just being nervous
about it and getting the phone out of my hands
(03:18):
and into Dad's hands as quickly as I could. His
older children were well aware what police found in the
fields during December of nine eight bodies, most of whom
were friends of Peewee until he killed them. One was
a woman he loved, another a pregnant mother and her
(03:40):
two year old daughter. There were business partners and three siblings.
Here's Mark Batty talking about his father's experience of interviewing
Peewee Gaskins while on assignment to write his life story.
If you want to go tell somebody, hey, my dad's
trying this book called pe Gaskins. I mean, if you're
(04:01):
in Columbus, South Carolina, you know who pee Wee Gaskins was.
At the time, with Jim's background as a literary professor
and with his sly sense of humor, the family had
confidence this would work out well. We had a lot
of fun. He would, you know, he would make a joke.
I remember he would imitate Peewee. Apparently Pee Wee said
(04:24):
everything twice, everything twice, and my dad would do that
all the time. I think that a Need and Dad
were pretty good about reminding us. You do remember he
is a killer, you know, you know, keep in mind.
But it was a very weird kind of razor's edge
kind of path here on. Sometimes when we were talking
about Pee Wee, uh like he was kind of part
(04:47):
of the family. But then at the same time, he's
much worse than the uncle that you don't want hanging around.
It's it's much darker than that, you know what I mean.
The family reason to be nervous. After all, Pee Weee
Gaskins spent over half his life in jail. He knew
how to work the system, and Jim knew he was
(05:10):
as charming as he was dangerous. Here's an excerpt from
an Associated Press article from July. Some believe he possesses
a brilliant criminal mind. To others, Gaskins has a keen
sense of humor and a friendly, entertaining personality. Few people
(05:33):
knew this duality better than Jim, who spent hundreds of
hours with Gaskins and members of his family. Jim was
interviewed for that article nearly thirty years ago, and in
it he says he's a complex person. He shows anger
and compassion almost at the same moment. Jim said that
(05:55):
Gaskins had a surprisingly good self image and that he
would brag about being a great lover. In fact, prison
officials would confirm that Gaskins did have a lot of
female pen pals. He certainly was not handsome, but he
was not grotesque, and he would offer the fact I'm
(06:16):
not much of a looker, but he said, I always
got my share speaking of the other female population. And
in the early going he told me I really wanted
to get something straight, and I said what would that be.
He said, well, I never raped nobody, never ever, not
(06:37):
one time, and then he very quickly, with a gleam
in his eyes, said I never had to. So people
was letting me know that he was quite a ladies
man watching him there in the prison, seated in the
vest area, and the women around eyes always fixed right
(07:00):
on it. And uh, that to me was quite remarkable.
Women may have been attracted to him, and men may
have done business with him. But in prison you watch
your back every day. Someone is almost certainly out to
get you, especially if you're Pee Wee Gaskins. Here's Jim
(07:21):
describing a dangerous encounter with fellow prison inmate Avery Howard
years earlier in c c I. Pee Wee first met
Avery uh in c c I years earlier in Colombia.
Avery Howard was your run of the mill thug. He
was dating Diane Bettermanely, who was married to Walter years before.
(07:46):
In the prison, there was the great setup that he
planned for Pee Wee. He always resented Peewee and wanted,
even when he was in prison, to take his place
if he could, in the place of leadership and respect.
And he decided that if he could set him up
(08:08):
and get him into trouble, that he could become the
big man in the cell, boxer to speed. So every
Howard's plan was to have Peewee go in business with him,
selling marijuana in the prison. So he told pee Wee
that he wanted to speak to him the next time
(08:30):
there's there's a recess out in the yard, and they
did and have we put some joints. Marijanna note on
the match beside him and said here, I'll sell you
these for five dollars, and I want you to let's
set up and going business. I can sell all the
marijuana if you can get me, and let's go in business.
(08:51):
And Pea he said, absolutely not keep your joints. I'm
not at least bit interested. And the bell rings and
it's time to go back in, and Peewee watches a
really even walk across the yard and as Peewee starts
back to guards comes straight to Peewee and said you
(09:11):
gotta be searched. And they searched him. Nothing emptied his pockets,
checked his underwear, no marijuana anywhere, So the setup did
not work. That afternoon late when the razor man comes by,
(09:34):
pee Wee says, will you take a message to Avery Howards?
And the guy said yes. He said, tell him to
look in his right pocket of his windbreaker and see
what he finds. And as the reason man is walking away,
Pewe says, just a minute, can I tell you one
(09:55):
more thing? Said tell him that. I said, if it
takes twenty years, and you don't know what I mean,
it would only take ten. Pee Wee ended up dealing
with Avery again when both were out of prison. It
(10:16):
was a small world, and when they met again, Avery
Howard had begun an affair with Diane Bellamy. Pee Wee
met Diane when she worked at the Amusements of America
Carnival in Sumter, South Carolina. According to Gascons, they were friends,
(10:37):
they were once lovers, and she was even part of
his theft ring. She ended up in a common law
marriage with Peewee's closest buddy, Walter Neely. Even though Diane
and Peewee were once close, their friendship took a bad turn. First,
there was the story about Walter and Diane's infant child.
(10:58):
Here's Anita baby. There's a story about the death of
his son. His baby. Diane Bellamy Neely was married to Walter.
I guess if they were married. She carried his name,
and their baby died from neglect, actually her Diane left
(11:22):
the baby alone in a bathtub and her other young
child turned on the hot water, and the baby died
from burn wounds. Law enforcement ruled it an accidental death,
but pee Wee would never forgive her for what he
saw as a sin committed against his best friend. Let
that baby dinah bathtub and Walter's son and it breaks
(11:47):
my heart because I love babies, and to think of
this guy, so fragile, who probably loved that baby. I've
thought many times of how he might have held the baby,
you know, and looked at him and said, this is
my son. And what the evidence says about Walter's limitations
and his mother's protection of him, and the betrayal of
(12:11):
Walter by Diane Bellamy Neely. And she was pretty much
a trollop, as my mother would say, and she was
unfaithful to him. Diane's youngest brother, Johnny Knight, was part
of the local theft ring and fell in love with
(12:33):
Wanda Snell. Johnny was on parole from reform school, where
he was serving time for auto theft. Wanda had been
living with her sister Sandy, who was married to Pee
Wee Gaskins at the time. The two young teens, Johnny
and Wanda, fell in love, got engaged, and we're having
plenty of sex at Gaskin's home. This arrangement went on
(12:56):
as perfectly normal until another boy named Charlie showed up
and broke up the engagement. Diane was livid that Charlie,
another carnival worker, would break up the relationship her brother
had with one to Snell, and it was her acting
out that anger that would cost Diane her life. Diane
(13:20):
Bellamy Neely was an absolutely recalcitrant member of the ring.
She did not listen to Peewee. She didn't bother about Peewee.
She could not have cared less on anything that pee
Wee told her to do. Her boyfriend in front of
(13:42):
her husband, Walter, and in front of Peewee was Avery Howard,
a person that Peewee had known in prison. Diane Bellamy
wanted John Henry Knight and wanted to be together. She
felt John Henry Knight was being left out. He was
fifteen and didn't have any kind of girlfriend at that point. Well,
(14:06):
Diane tells Peewee that she's going to go to the
law and report that Peewee is letting Wander and Charlie
Sheeley live in his house, which they were doing. This
would put a spotlight on Peewee in the eyes of
the law. Then Avery told him that Diane knew about
(14:30):
a murder he'd done and could talk if she wanted to. Well,
that's joy, No one should talk about his crimes. Peewee
came up with a plan. The first step was to
go to the carnival and get a recruit. Pee Wee
went to the midway the carnival area where Charlie was working,
(14:52):
and calls him over and says, are you ready to
go back to jail? So I says, what do you mean?
And then he told him how Diane was threatening to
do something about him and all of them, and Pee says,
she's got to go, and this is a plan, And
that was the set up for the Friday Night murdered.
(15:27):
The carnival in central South Carolina was more than seasonal entertainments.
It was a mainstay in the community. It coupled with
charities for fundraising events. Numerous people in this story worked
for Amusements of America, the company who owned the fair.
Peewee worked there over time, as did the large Snell
(15:47):
family and the Bellamies. It was entirely reasonable that Peewee's
first move when he was going to send Diane and
Avery to the grave was to drop by the carnival.
It was the perfect setting for the story. This is
Dominic Vivona. His family started Amusements of America in nineteen
(16:07):
thirty nine. So my family is the typical Italian immigrant family,
and my grandfather died when my father was eleven pneumonia.
So my uncle us ago our neighborhoods with an ice
cream truck and sell ice cream. He found out that
these carnival events were happening around the city with the
ferris wheel or a merry ground, and he should travel
(16:29):
and follow this carnival event and he should sell out
his ice cream truck. So I kind of figured out
that this was the way to go, follow this carnival
around the city and and have big sales with ice cream.
Over the next thirty years, the family venture became a
seasonal treasure. By the sixties and seventis they were very
well established on the eastern coast of the United States
(16:51):
from all the way to Canada. Eventually, Sumter County became
a base for all operations. Along with making money for
the Vona's Amusements of America brought business and revenue to
the communities where they set up shop. At the peak
of its season, the carnival employed roughly four people. But
(17:11):
there's a lot of history there with the muse American
Sumter over the years because they went back and back
there every year after the fair to do their there.
We call winter quarters work. You spend a lot of
money in local community over the winter, buying parts, paint lights, bearings,
and motor belts and all the help that you employed,
you know, just working doing the maintenance on the equipment.
(17:32):
So they became a pretty well known business entity in
the city of Sumter, which is not a huge city,
but in the it's a decent sized southern city. Here's
Anita and Mark Batty talking about the carnival from the
other side of the ticket booth. I went to the
fair as a child every year, sometimes with Hattie um
(17:57):
And and sometimes with friends of parents, and the Amusements
of America produced a fair and traveled it or toured
it all over small towns in South Carolina, and it
was really quite an exciting occasion. Then in high school,
I was cheering leading, We had dates and went to
the fair and that was a different kind of fun.
(18:19):
So it was always a thing in my life. We
went to the state Fair every year. I went to
Olympia Middle School, which is one half of a city
block from the fair grounds, and the first week of
fair we actually got out of school on a half day.
(18:40):
It was a big deal. Employees worked long hours at
minimum wage and were paid in cash. Most folks gave
the office address as their personal address. It was an
informal economy. There were no computers around to do background checks,
and it attracted a colorful crew of characters. Here's Dominic
(19:04):
Vevona to me, if this is a unique business, very unique,
special different, not for everybody to get all the type
of employees skilled unskilled. Some of them might have emotional
personal baggage and they're trying to either get away from
their families or whatever pass the day, want to disassociate from,
and or they're looking for a new adventure. Two types
(19:25):
of people work the carnival circuit. First you get the
folks that from the area and just want to work
the carnival and they come to the family, hire them
for the week and they get paid and they go
back to their their normal life after the fair ends.
And then you had the folks that want to travel
with you, that the carneys, official carneys, and they would
join you and they'd go to the next fair and
(19:46):
affair for that and so forth and get into the
routine and stay with you. They become lifers that you
could say carneys for life. I didn't know much as
a child about the people who worked the fair on
the rods. They would just really different from the people
on you and grew up with and lived around and
went to church with. They were sort of hard. That
(20:10):
was why I remember. I wouldn't have used that word
then because I didn't know how to describe it, but
they were harder than the people that on you. This
way of life provided a subculture of sorts. Folks lives
merged and bled into one another. Rules, standards or boundaries,
at least formal ones faded. There's not a lot of
(20:32):
time off in the sense that when you do have
time off, you're still in the Carnival family community. You're
not going to your house away from everybody else because
your house is with the other guy's house, which is,
you know, five feet away from you. When you have
a nine to five job at an office and you
close the door and you walk out of that building,
you go home, it's you might be entering a different world,
But in the Carnival uh, there is no different world.
(20:54):
Everybody's together and lives together, each together, works together. So
that's why you get that emily environment a family. This
is where Peewee set up shop. It was near perfect
cover for a predator, a marginal community existing in plain sight.
(21:15):
Workers were largely itinerant and turnover was high. The loud
games and colorful rides provided brilliant cover for any number
of stories. After investigators learned that there were many missing
persons associated with Pewee Gaskins, they soon discovered another common thread.
(21:37):
Several of them were Carneys, the Bellamies and the Sheeley's
and the Snells. Old Lady Snell worked the carnival circuit
for years and had at least three children, Sandy Snell,
who was Peewee's fifth wife, Ricky sixteen who worked in
the car theft ring, and Wanda Snell, who was fifteen.
(22:02):
The Snell family was prolific in our carnival business. There
was a family that they all just gravitated to the carnival.
And there was cousins, there was brothers, there was sisters,
and I don't know where that family was originally from,
but they just seemed to be a true Carney family
in the sense that all the relatives ended up getting
a job somehow, some way. Wanda's mother brought her with
(22:24):
her to work when she was two years old. The
culture meant that when children were born into this environment,
they became integrated and then perpetuated Carney life. So there
is much more freedom where you had kids actually grow
up on the carnival because there was not the push
from the states to keep all those kids in school
(22:46):
or be able to track them, I guess. So there's
much more growth from a child level actually on the
carnival as opposed to just having men and women as employees.
Wanda Snell began working at the carnival when she was
very young. At fourteen, she became pregnant for the first
time and had a miscarriage. She testified under oath to
(23:09):
having sex with Peewee that same year. Gaskins was forty
two years old at the time. Pee Wee prayed on
the young and vulnerable. Our story Remember started with a
missing girl, Kim Gilkins. Many of the stories involve young girls.
Wanda Snell later testified that Walter Neely bragged that he
(23:33):
and Peewee were contract killers, and that she witnessed Neelie
pulling a gun on Dennis Bellamy and threatened to kill
his entire family. Neelie's defense accused the prosecution of putting
up prostitutes against their clients, Walter's lawyer stating, in fact,
she slept with just about everyone I mentioned. The newspaper
(23:57):
described the young girl as buxom and detailed several of
her sexual partners. Kids grew up fast in the carnival,
Wanda met and dated John Henry Knight, another member of
Gaskin's posse and one of the bodies found in the
mass grave and prospect. Johnny was fourteen years old when
(24:18):
he started in Peewee's theft ring. He was half brother
to Diane and Dennis Bellamy. Authorities would learn that a
romance had sparked between Wanda and Johnny. The two crossed paths.
When Wanda was staying with Sandy and Peewee, Johnny Knight
would come around with stolen goods for Peewee to sell.
(24:43):
John Henry Knight was actually a member of the Peewee
gang and respected Peewee for the right reason and respected
him as an adult, respected him as a leader. He
was a fifteen year old that as Peewee said, it's
a shame that he had to die. Peewee hatched his
(25:08):
plan to get rid of Diane and went to see
Charlie Sheeley at the carnival. It's what Jim Batty calls
the Friday Night Murder. There are many versions of every
(25:34):
story involved in this sordid tale. A perfect example of
this are the murders of Diane Bellamy Neely and Avery Howard.
These two victims were found in Peewee's burial ground on
the second day of searching. Diane and Avery were having
a sexual affair out in the open in the spring
of At the time, as Walter Neely later testified, he
(26:00):
and Diane were in a common law marriage. Her affair
with Avery didn't seem to anger Walter, as his testimony documents,
but it sure piste off Peewee, who thought it was
embarrassing and unfair to Walter. Peewee manipulated the people around him,
and Walter was an easy target. In some instances, he
(26:23):
forced people into becoming accomplices to his crimes, leveraging their
silence with their complicity. Such was the case so many
times for Walter Neely. It was why Walter was spending
the rest of his life behind bars, As was the
case with Charlie Sheeley and Ricky Snell. Peewee straight up
(26:44):
got them to commit murder to cover up his other
murders and crimes. Pewee's incentive was that Diane and Avery
were threatened about jawing to the police with accusations of rape,
in dangering miners, and murder. At nineteen years old, Charlie
was risking his freedom by having a relationship with fifteen
(27:07):
year old Wanda Snell. He could get arrested on delinquency.
The account of the following murder is told by Jim
Batty and taken from sworn testimony given by Walter pee
Wee and Wan to Snell. Charlie Sheey, an ex marine strong,
(27:29):
could easy to lift a refrigerator all by himself. Charlie
was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for killing his father when
he was fifteen. He went into the marine soon after
a short stay in reform school at the Carnival. Pee
Wee gave Charlie the plan. He also gave him the
(27:50):
bony knife he stole from the Campbell soup factory. Pee
Wee told Charlie and Rickey that Diana and Avery were
going to be using the back room at a low
coal business for a midday sexual tryst. Pe We gave
them the key to the business and told him what
time they needed to leave by. He didn't want Diane
(28:10):
and Avery flaunting their affair in front of Walter any longer.
While Diane and Avery were inside Pee, we told Charlie
to show up with Wanda and Ricky Snell in the
car Pee. We wanted Ricky and Wanda Invold Wanders in
another car waiting in the distance. Charlie and Ricky left
(28:32):
Wanda in the car and got into the back seat
of Diane and Avery's car, the one Pee wee let
them borrow for their hook up and gotten into the
Avery Howard Diane Balmy nearly car and we're crouched in
the back seat no weapon except the campbell suit knife.
(28:55):
The couple comes out after their rendezvous. The roof light
in the car had been removed at that moment. The
two men come up out of the back seat. Charlie
Sheeley was a brute and he had the camel soup
knife and he choked Avery Howard in the driver's seat
(29:20):
and plunge the camel soup knife into his abdomen and chest.
While Rickie Snell is holding Diane Bellamy neely By the
throat with her mouth open. Pe Re instructed Ricky if
you if you hold a person's mouth completely open, they
(29:42):
can't scream, So he was holding her mouth completely open,
which she couldn't scream. And then when Charlie finished with Avery,
he put the knife to Diane Bellamy Neely. Ricky Snell
(30:03):
gets out of the car and goes to the other
car that wanders driving Charlie Sheey puts Diane by the window,
Avery Howard in the middle seat, and Charlie drive to
Walter Neely's house and Walter Neely comes out and gets
in the car. Wanda Snell and Ricky Snell get in
(30:28):
the back seat of the car and there's six people,
two dead in the front seat along with the driver,
three alive in the back seat. Walter asked him, did
y'all do it? Is Diane dead? And Ricky Snell said,
(30:50):
she's dead. I want to testify that she didn't directly
see the murders, but she did admit to being in
the car with two dead bodies heading for Peewee. Walter
(31:12):
testified that Diane's murder didn't upset him. He mostly just
felt sorry for her. It didn't bother me he said,
he talked about the strangest of car rides. We didn't
talk about nothing, mostly small talk. We just tried to
get up there as quick as we could. We went
out to Sam's place and saw Peewee. They drive to
(31:38):
Lake City. Peewee comes out, gets Charlie out of the
front seat, shoots both of the dead people again between
the eyes. Charlie gets back in the car. Pee Wee
follows them to a grave site, where they all dig
the grave except for Peewee. One claim that didn't match
(32:02):
up in their testimony was whether or not Peewee shot
Avery and Diane before they put the bodies in the ground.
Forensics showed that only Diane had been shot. At the
time of his testimony, Walter Neely was serving life in
prison as accessory to several murders. Pee we admitted to
(32:24):
it's nine seventy six when he's telling this story. His
admissions in Diane and Avery's murders followed Peewee's and Wanda Snells,
both of whom told the same story. One of the
lead investigators, Tom Henderson, laid into Walter, quote, did you
(32:44):
know Wanda snell took a lie detector test? At the
lie detector showed that she was lying, that the whole
story was a lie. She confessed the whole story was
made up end quote. Walter did not know this. Apparently,
p We got Wanda and Walter to tell the same
story about the Friday night Diane and Avery were murdered.
(33:06):
Walter played along because it was Peewee show. He said
he'd been riding in the car with his freshly murdered wife.
He followed the script that his friend laid out for him.
It was that simple to Walter. Wanda went so far
in her devotion to Peewee that she implicated herself in
the murders. Even as a teenager, she was a willing
(33:29):
cover an amazing degree of control and manipulation. Peewee would
wield as much everywhere he went as well. Law enforcement
never really believed the outlandish story about the Friday night
murder car ride. Too many details didn't add up. The
(33:49):
image of the car heading north to find Peewee bordered
on the tragic comical more than reality. The media ran
with that image, though, wrote and republished articles portraying the
grizzly scene. The questions investigators asked Peewee and Walter indicate, however,
that they were breaking apart from their story, they knew
(34:11):
where they were going when they questioned them. What Peewee's
defense attorney ultimately believed Peewee did to Diane and Avery
is backed up by forensic details pieced together by law enforcement.
(34:35):
Diane and Avery were threatening Peewee, trying to blackmail him
into paying for their silence. Pee Wee acted like he
was going to get them some money. It was all
part of the ruse, as he regularly did with other
people around him. He said he was going to give
them a car. Lots of cars moved through Peewee. They
(34:56):
could resell it if they wanted. It was stolen, so
it needed some title work, but they could have it
in exchange. They were to leave Walter alone and shut
up about his crimes. Pee Wee testified that he took
them to the field near Prospect to give them the car.
He ended up in a fight with Avery Howard as
he pulled his gun and Avery grabbed it and it
(35:18):
was thrown aside in the tussle. He kept a knife
strapped in an ankle holster all the time. It was
the boning knife he used to clean chickens when he
worked at the Campbell Soup factory. He pulled it out
and stabbed Avery several times. Diane tried to run, but
he stopped her shot and stabbed her. The sequence remains
(35:41):
a mystery. Tom Henderson questioned pee Wee about this account, saying, quote,
the bullet came out of Diane at the right side
of the midline, at the upper part of the teeth.
Doctor Sexton has examined thousands of killings. He's a lot
more experience with killing than you have, Peewee, and he
(36:03):
says the only way he knows that a bullet wound
could have got there is somebody stuck a gun. She
had a halter top on and said that somebody had
to stick that gun right up between her breasts, right
up under there, and pull the trigger for the bullet
to come out right there. End quote. Police contended that
she was raped. Pee Wee denied it. There was no
(36:25):
rape kit or further investigation. Her underwear were at her
ankles in the grave. Pee Wee said they were pulled
off as he dragged her body there. He covered it
with branches and leaves, went back to his trailer, and
Walter shown up soon thereafter, so pee Wee took Walter
(36:46):
and showed him his wife's dead body at top of
Avery's in their bramble covered grave. Walter neely wound up
murdering Dennis Bellamy. He knowingly concealed other Peewee murders as well.
Peewee bought Walter silence about his missing wife Avery. Howard
(37:08):
found himself involved in a bundle of lies starting years
earlier in c c I, when he tried to set
up Peewee for distribution in jail. True life butterfly effect.
You start lying and you never know where it may lead.
(37:35):
That's what makes Peewee's claims about killing Hitchhiker's sound bogus.
Random killing would waste energy that he needed to juggle
to manage real life bundles of lies that concealed rape,
child endangerment, racist motivated murders, murders for hires, killing an
underage family member and her friend. By involving people like
(37:56):
Wanda and Walter and others, Peewee tried to spread around
some of the weight that comes with managing all that.
His personality was dynamic, larger than life in a small frame.
Law enforcement from all over South Carolina newspaper and television
reporters Jim Batty. They all relate the same image of
(38:17):
Peewee's dynamism. That personality was also part of the management
of his day to day life of lies. For those
in his most immediate vicinity, it wasn't surprising at all.
It was horrifically logical. Many of them, those people in
(38:38):
his circle, those he talked to regularly, those he interacted with.
Many of these were implicated in his crimes in one
way or another. Pee Wee wanted to intimidate as many
people as he possibly could, and I earned that firsthand.
(39:16):
Pee Wee Gaskins was Not My Friend is a joint
production from My Heart Radio and Doghouse Pictures, produced and
hosted by Jeff Keeping. Executive producers are Courtney Dufries and
Noel Brown. Written by Jim Roberts, Courtney Dufries and Terry
James edit NIX and sound designed by Jeremiah Kolani Prescott.
Music composed by Diamond Street Productions, Spencer gard and Ian Newberry.
(39:37):
Special thanks to Jim and Anita Baby. Additional thanks to
the University of South Carolina, Moving Image Research Collections and
the University of South Carolina,
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