DIG ME A GRAVE— Dick Harpootlian

The definitive true “Southern Gothic” account of the life, crimes, conviction, and execution of Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins, the charismatic, brutal, well-liked, remorseless South Carolina serial killer who was dubbed the Charles Manson of the South—written by the prosecutor who brought him to justice.
Of the hundreds of murder cases that noted South Carolina attorney Dick Harpootlian has prosecuted, one in particular haunts him. Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins was a serial killer and rapist, a master manipulator who claimed to have killed over 100 people and is known to have murdered over a dozen, including a toddler, and his own teenage niece. Yet it was on Death Row that he pulled off his most audacious murder—killing another inmate with a military grade explosive.
As personable as he was ruthless, Pee Wee defied easy categories. He killed to avenge minor slights as well as for pleasure, using any convenient method—including stabbing, shooting, poison, suffocation, and drowning. Evidence suggested he forced at least one victim to dig his own grave, stand in it, and be shot.
With escalating callousness, Pee Wee murdered acquaintances, friends, family members, and strangers. Yet within his North Charleston community he was well-liked—a family man who took neighborhood kids to the beach and hosted cookouts. Ice-cold within but outwardly charming, he joked with judges, reporters, and Harpootlian himself, but didn’t hesitate to hatch a plot to kidnap the prosecutor’s daughter in order to extort an escape.
Dig Me a Grave is a haunting look at a prolific, remorseless killer, as well as a provocative exploration of justice and the death penalty. DIG ME A GRAVE: The Inside Story of the Serial Killer Who Seduced the South—Dick Harpootlian

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
killers in true crime history and the authors that have
written about them. Geesy Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,

(00:30):
journalist and author Dan Zufanski.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Good Evening.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
The definitive, true Southern Gothic account of the life, crimes, conviction,
and execution of Donald p Wee Gaskins, the charismatic, brutal,
well like remorseless South Carolina serial killer who is dubbed
the Charles Manson of the South, written by the pros
who brought him to justice. Of the hundreds of murder

(01:04):
cases that noted South Carolina, attorney Dick Carpulian has prosecuted
one in particular haunts him. Donald pee Wee Gaskins was
a serial killer and rapist, a master manipulator who claimed
to have killed over one hundred people and is known
to have murdered over a dozen, including a toddler and

(01:25):
his own teenage niece. Yet it was on death row
that he pulled off his most audacious murder, killing another
inmate with a military grade explosive. As personable as he
was ruthless, Peewee defied easy categories. He killed to avenge
minor slights, as well as for pleasure, using any convenient method,

(01:51):
including stabbing, shooting, poison, suffocation, and drowning. Evidence suggested he
forced at least one vicar them to dig his own grave,
stand in it, and be shot. With escalating callousness. Peewee
murdered acquaintances, friends, family members, and strangers, Yet within his

(02:13):
North Charleston community he was well liked, A family man
who took neighborhood kids to the beach and hosted cookoats.
Ice cold within but owardly charming. He joked with judges, reporters,
and Harpoolian himself, but didn't hesitate to hatch a plot
to kidnap the prosecutor's daughter in order to extort and escape.

(02:40):
Dig Me a Grave is a haunting look at a prolific,
remorseless killer, as well as a provocative exploration of justice
and the death penalty. The book they were featuring this
evening is dig Me a Grave, The inside Story of
the serial killer who souod deuced the South With My

(03:02):
Special Guest prosecutor, defense attorney, and civil litigator. Dick Harputlian.
Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
this interview. Dick Harputlian, Well, thank you for having me.
Dan a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much,

(03:23):
and congratulations on this book. Tell us as you do,
as you're write in this book, how does a fierce
opponent of capital punishment become someone who puts a serial
killer to death by electrocution? Tell us about your legal journey.

Speaker 4 (03:39):
Well, it begins begins long before law school, long before
undergraduate school. I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina. You know, basically,
my dad was a World War Two pilot. I wanted
to be a be a pilot. When I got to Clemson,
I was an ROTC, very conservative member of the Young
Republican Party in nineteen sixty six. You know, I just

(04:02):
I felt at that point the death penalty really wasn't
a consideration. But when I got to college, you know,
in the late sixties, things began to change, and you know,
I didn't go advance to ROTC. My hair got a
little long, I started looking at I grew up in
a segregated community. I went to an all white public
high school because there was no integration. And as I

(04:23):
began to see things about our society and the fact
that I didn't notice that we were in segregation. I mean,
I didn't, you know, the fact that black folks couldn't
need at our restaurants or use our bathrooms and drink
from our water fountains really just was sort of the
way things were. But once I got off to college,
I began to see, you know, what was going on

(04:45):
nationally and in South Carolina because of segregation. There was
a horrible incident in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in nineteen sixty
eight where some kids from se State University are predominantly
African American universe, were shot and killed demonstrating to try
to integrate a bowling alley. I mean, that just just

(05:08):
blew my mind. And from that I began looking at,
you know, the war, which I've been very much in
favor of the war, being the Vietnam War, and questioning it,
questioning basically all the values that I brought to college
with me, And at that point, you know, I became,
I guess you'd call me a liberal. I was against
the war, I was against the death penalty. I very

(05:30):
pro environment the environmental movement was just starting. I read
a book called Silence Spring by Rachel Carson. I talked
about what pesticides were doing, and so I became liberal
and long hair and perhaps participated in utilizing some illegal
substance back then on occasion, or maybe more than that.

(05:54):
When I got to Well, I went to law school.
And when I went to law school, my idea was to,
you know, graduate, go work for legal aid. But in
the summer of nineteen seventy four, a guy named Jim
Anders was running against the twenty year incomb a DA
who I thought was just a horrible person, and he
won and he offered me a job, and I said,

(06:16):
you know, like Jim, I'm glad he got elected. I'm
going to work for legal aid, but I don't want
to be a prosecutor. I don't want to have any
business involving prosecuting people and putting him in jail. And
that system needs to change. And he convinced me that
changing it from the inside would be different. And so
I took that job in January of seventy five, and
the opportunity to try cases immediately seized my interest, and

(06:42):
I talked to my dad about you know, the morality
of the death penalty. He was a bomber pilot in
World War Two who went on the first two Berlin
raids from England, you know, horrendous casualties. And I said,
what did you bomb in Berlin? He said Berlin? I said, well, no, no,
what was the military target? He said Berlin And I said, well,
you know, that's schools and kids. He said, well, the
Germans were doing it to London. They were trying to

(07:03):
beat us in this omission, and we, you know, didn't
have the ability to sort of focus on a target.
And so the idea was to get the Germans to
pull their defenses back, their measure schmidtz back from the
coast so that we could do D Day and at worked.
But he said, I said, so, did you feel bad about,
you know, dropping bombs on children and whatever? And he said, well,

(07:27):
it was an act of self defense. It was an
act of self defense. And so as I looked at
these cases, and I prosecuted a number of death penalty
cases before Pee Wee Gaskins, they were cases. But Anders
made that decision what to go for if it was
what we call aggravating circumstances, they were technically liable to
be exposed to the death penalty. By the time we

(07:49):
got to Gaskins, nobody had been sentenced to death. And
so when Gaskins came up in eighty two, I was
the deputy swister in charge of putting it together, proscuting
it with Anders. You know, I looked at Gaskins, this
is the guy who was convicted of two death penalty cases.
In the mid seventies, the US Supreme Court came down

(08:12):
with the case called Furman versus Georgia, negating those death sentences.
Ten Somerford, the solicitor prosecutor over in Florence, brought his
lawyor and Gaskins in and said, look, I'm going to
prosecute you again for the death penalty, which he probably
could not have done, but it was unclear at that
point unless you confessed to me all the murders you'd committed,

(08:33):
and I'll give you life for each one of those. Now,
back then life carried a sentence. It was eligible life
sentence with eligible role in ten years. So Gaskins saw
that as an opportunity to live to fight another day,
and did a three day interview transcript of which I
have confessing to thirteen murders, and he was allowed to

(08:56):
plead to those for life with eligibility leave for parole.
And so when when I got the tiner case a
guy he executed hunt death row by blowing his head
off of the quarter poundery c four explosives it was,
it appeared to me that if not him, who and

(09:17):
it would be an act of self defense. The guy
has given mercy, death penalty is withdrawn. And then while
he's serving as the head trustee in the most secured
wing of the most secure facility in the state, he
takes it to bond himself to concoct a plan to
kill a guy on death row and does it and
gets away with it for a while. So if not him, who,

(09:40):
And again, if it's an act of self defense and
nobody was safe, nobody inmates guards anybody while he was breathing.
So that's I mean, it's it's in the and and
by the way, the mayhem and just absolute evil I
saw in those first year eight years as a prosecutor.

(10:01):
Just you just don't appreciate the savagery that man inflicts
upon man. I remember, very early in my career going
out to a crime scene where two guys that had
been released from a mental institution in California. You come
back here and kidnapped a woman cork at a convenience
store and tortured her, cut her breasts off, threw them

(10:23):
up in the trees, raped her, strangled her, and cut
her ovaries out and ate them. When you see that,
you realize, you know, there's got to be a god,
because there's definitely a devil, there's death. I mean, it's
just when you see that, and I saw it a
number of times, that kind of savagery, it moves you

(10:43):
closer to the position that some people need to be eliminated.
So that's that's my journey in a much abbreviated fashion.
But that's what gets you from fierce opponent to the
death penalty too. I'm not a fierce propos I think
it should be used rarely and only in those cases.

(11:05):
I mean, a kid goes into a seven to eleven
and panics and shoots somebody. Of course, now we have
life without parole. I mean, there's no evidence that he
poses a threat on an ongoing basis. Now there's always
the argument that, well, should we feed him for the
rest of his life and househimen clothing. That's a different argument.
And certainly you don't kill somebody because their continued life

(11:28):
is expensive for you. I think it's got to be
an act of self defense.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
Let's talk about the prime that got you involved in
the execution of pee Week Gaskins.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
That being of Tony Simo.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
Tell us about what happens and the ensuing Pee Week
Gaskins involvement.

Speaker 4 (11:50):
So in the early mid seventies, a guy named Rudolph
Tyner is living near Myrtle Beach. He's from New York.
He's come down and staying with a relative, and he's
probably not mentally He wasn't retarded, but he was or
as we say today, wasn't mentally handicapped. I guess retarded.
It's not a correct word, but back then we called

(12:13):
him not retarded. But he one night concocted a plan
to rob a store run by two people named Moon
Mister and Missus moon Bill and Murdy Moon, and they
were the parents of Tony Simo and the who was
a brick basically a brick mason. Very I mean I
say brick mason. He did very, very sophisticated brickwork, and

(12:38):
he lived with his wife and kids basically within I
don't know, two hundred feet three hundred feet of the store.
And his sister lived in that same little area in
that very close to the store. And one night he's
watching television and it's amazing, I can remember this. He
was watching Rio Bravo, which was a John Wayne movie.

(13:00):
While he watched it, he heard his dogs barking and
looked out and saw a young African American man he
knew Tyner. He saw Tyner walking down the street towards
the store, didn't think much of it, went back and
watched his movie, and then later on he gets a call,
you know, his parents have been shot, and he runs
up there and realizes that Tyner was the one that

(13:20):
did it and told the cops about what happened. They
went to Tyner's house, got the shotgun, he confessed, his
road with him, confessed, and basically he executed. He agreed
that the moons weren't resisting, they didn't go for a gun.
He just asked him for the money, and when they
weren't they hesitated. He shot both of them at point

(13:41):
blank range with a shotgun. So he's arrested, tried, convicted,
sentenced to death. That goes to the Supreme Court, our
Supreme Court, which reverses it based on comments made by
the prosecutor and closing argument. He's tried again and sentenced
to death. And by the way, on that second try,
while in the courtroom, Tony Simo, as they were leading

(14:03):
him out, jumped up and tried to strangle him. I
mean they had to pull Simo off of Tyner, right.
So he was very emotional about it. He felt guilt
about not having stopped Tyner or been curious enough to
follow Tyner whatever that night. So he's tried again since
to death and now he's on death row, and then
ninety'd been there for a while. By nineteen eighty two.

(14:26):
He Simo wanted him dead and was his patients had
been five or six years, his parents had been dead.
He wanted him dead. So he contacted a friend of his,
a guy named Jack Morton, who connected He said, you
know I want him dead? Is that you know somebody
you'd serve time? You got somebody at CCI's Central Correctional Institute.

(14:48):
They can do this. He said, oh yeah, I got
a guy. Let me connect you up with a guy
named pee Wee Gaskins the guys. I mean, he's serving
thirteen life sentences for thirteen murders, so obviously he has
to wherewithal. Now, pee Wee, when I say he was
a racist, he was more than just philosophically racist. One
of those thirteen murders was the killing of a pregnant

(15:08):
of a former girlfriend who was pregnant by a black
man and her half black, half white child, simply because
of the racial mixing. So he not only talked the talk,
he walked the walk of a stone cold Nazi racist.
Tyner was black. He had killed two white people, so
he fit the profile of somebody pee Wee would like

(15:31):
to see dead. And so they concocted a plan to
smuggle some poison in. And Simo had tried it on
a dog down at Myrtle Beach and killed him, so
they smuggled it in. Pee Wee had control of the
guy that delivered the food to death Row and would
deliver food to Tyner, and he began putting poison in

(15:52):
this food. And there's tape recordings, and pee Wee tape
it for some reason. Tape recorded all this conversations with
Simo retells him. It's just making him sick. It's just
making him sick. Tony says, well, you know, why don't
you get him to snort it. Pee Wee says, that
won't work. He says, but I tell you what will work.
You get me a quarter a stick of dynamite and
a blasting cap, and I'll put it in a radio

(16:14):
and give it to him. When when he turns that
thing on, listen for the boom. There won't be no
coming back on that. So and we're still not sure
how he did it, but he smuggled in a quarter
of a pound of military grade see four plastic explosive
and a blasting cap, and Pee Wee concocted this device

(16:35):
that was made out of an unbreakable prison puff plastic cup.
He melted a hole in the bottom of it with
a soldering iron. And by the way, he had a
toolbox since he's the head trustee. He fixed all the electrical,
all the plumbing, any problem. He was there. He was
they did it in the house. They wouldn't have to
pay somebody. So he had every screwdriver and so he

(16:56):
concocted this bomb. But putting the blasting cap and the
C four and having a connection through a male female
plug so he could just plug it in. And then
he glued a speaker on top of this cup this
glass it was plastic glass, tumble if he will, and
he had the guy delivering the food deliver it to Tyner.

(17:19):
They'd been yelling through back. Their cells didn't align exactly,
but they both had vents in the back that went
to this area between the cells, and pee wee and
Tyner'd be yelling back and forth each other by getting
them food or getting him a joint or whatever. He
was befriending him. So he had that delivered told Tyner
was an intercom so they wouldn't have to yell, and

(17:39):
he had Tyner plug it in from a wire he'd
run from his cell to Tyner's cell that had a
male plug on the end of it. Tell him pug
it in and asked him if you could hear him,
and Tyner said what he said, hold it up to years,
see if you can hear me. And then he plugged
his his end of it into a one ten in
his cell and it exploded and blew. You'll see the

(18:00):
book their autopsy pictures. Blew his hand off. We recovered
the speaker from inside his brain and I mean hell
of an explosion. And then he pulled the wire back,
cut it up, flushed it and was laying there on
his bed as people were rushing out down to see
what it was. Came out and acted acted bewildered. But

(18:20):
he tape recorded all those conversations with Simo and kept him.
And so a guy named Al Waters, an investigator at
the Department of Correction CCI, thinking there might be some truth.
I mean, when they're saying a guy at thirteen Prior
America conviction may have done it, he took it seriously.
So he put He went to Peewee Sell with some guards.

(18:42):
They told Pee Wee to strip. They took him naked
to another cell and then searched the cell. And there
are thirty five cassette tapes. A lot of it is
just weird stuff, like he had a proclivity for young girls.
Tape recorded a Tanya Tucker movie, just the audio, but
in there there was about thirty five minutes of conversations

(19:04):
with people, including Simo, about killing Tyner, and that was
impossible for him to overcome. But he he did all
kinds of things to try to deflect the blame on
the case. But when I got the case, we didn't
have the tapes, but Waters about a month later got
them in hand, and after that it was just putting

(19:25):
the pieces in place. The guy that delivered the bomb
was a guy named James Brown, white guy in his
mid thirties who we find out during the middle of
the trial was Peewee's lover, and by the way, he
was serving two life sentences for murdering two women. Jehovah's
witnesses had come to his house on a Saturday afternoon

(19:46):
while he was trying to watch football. He shot both
of them in the head and then had sex with
their bodies. No prior record, never been in trouble, just
snapped on a Saturday afternoon. That was Peewee's best friend
and lover. Sort of made sense. But the trial took
six weeks and was the longest criminal trial in the

(20:07):
history of the case, in the history of the state
until a couple of years ago when a guy named
Alec Murdah was tried and it took four days longer.
So and I participated in that case, is you know?
So I participated in the two longest criminal cases in
the history of the state. I guess that's I don't
know whether that's a Guinness Book of World Records stat

(20:29):
or not, but both of them are very long, and
both of them are very intense.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages along the way you write, and you had
mentioned Ken Somerford when you were doing the investigation of
pee Wee Gaskins. You requested in nineteen eighty two all
kinds of information from the Department of Corrections, and you

(20:54):
said it was a riveting read. So you found out
everything about pee Wee Gaskin, six wys and all of
the details before you said, you know what, I think
I got to speak to ten Somerford personally tell us
about that.

Speaker 4 (21:12):
Somerford, you know, was one of the older solicitors or
prosecutors in the state. I'd met him five or six
seven years before in just solicitor conferences and those sorts
of things. Was a gregarious, large, bigger than life guy
and had a voice. You know, all these old lawyers,
you know, been trying cases in the fifties and sixties.

(21:35):
That was before in the South anyway, there was any amplification,
electric electronic application nor no speakers, no microphones, so they
all were very loud, great voice, baritone voice, almost theatrical.
And I've seen Summer for several times. I actually saw

(21:56):
him once in the courtroom where he was talking to
a jury, and it was just Mesmer rising. So what
I figured out was those thirteen prior murders that he
pled to Somerford engineered that, and he not only engineered that,
but he got to know Gaskins and know a lot
more about Gaskins. And in that three day interview, a

(22:19):
stenographer took down every word and he asked him about
all kinds of things, including his background and wives, and
not just the murders. So that and I'm looking at
it right now. It's sitting on my desk, five hundred
page transcript that nobody else had. It was introduced in
the trial in eighty three and made an exhibit, and

(22:40):
I came into possession of it after his execution when
the cork was getting ready to throw everything out. But
Somerford clearly had Peewee's number convinced him to give him
this confession. He was again testifying about this in front
of the jury on the sentencing piece. Because it only
be relevant to the prior convictions for murder, relevant to

(23:01):
the aggravating circumstances that you have to show to get
the death penalty. But Somerford and talking to him, he
was mesmerizing in his discussion about Peewee and what you know,
Somerford and Sheriff Billy Barnes over there both had known
pee Weee long before his murders free occurred. He was

(23:22):
you know, he recognized rufer and mechanic. I met judges
whose houses he roofed, and so it wasn't just this
two dimensional guy. They all knew him. They knew some
of his wives, they knew where he was from, they
knew the people he knew. He could develop for me
the ability to understand this guy. And you know, again,

(23:46):
the largest mass murder or serial killer, whatever you want
to call him in the history of the state. No
one that I talked to that had dealt with him
expected I ever saw that one coming. He was so friendly,
gregarious and hail fellow, well met and just really and humble,
not arrogant anyway, You'd never think he was out killing

(24:08):
except for the fact you drow a purple horse, which
should have maybe indicated that something was awry. Somerford put
it all together for me and testified during the trial.
He was if I had to point to any one
reason or one witness that put pee Wee in the
electric chair, it was Ken Somerford.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
You talk about his innate charm, but also his background,
his disturbing background, but also that his homicidal tendencies were
recognized early on, probably around the age of thirteen, and
then you write about some of the dramatic crimes that

(24:53):
certainly reinforced that idea.

Speaker 4 (24:56):
Pee Wee grew up. I'm convinced when you read between
the lines, think his mother probably had male friends that
probably sexually abused him at a very young age. She
told authorities that he drank some turpentine when he was
a kid, and that's why he had these rages or
blackouts or whatever which she was describing. But at twelve

(25:19):
he had developed the ability to break in houses and
steal things. He had a next door neighbor who he
thought was out of town or somewhere, and he broke
in there to steal something, and their daughter, who I
think was ten or eleven or twelve, caught him, chased
him out of the house. He picked up an axe
and hit her in the head.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
He went.

Speaker 4 (25:37):
He was committed after being convicted of that as a
juvenile to what was the only reformative reformatory reformatory in
South Carolina at the time, the Florence Industrial School for
White Boys, where he slept in a dormitory with all
the other fifty boys. And clearly he writes even in

(26:01):
his book, he was sexually abused almost every night. Because
he was small and couldn't fend for himself. I think
whatever had begun in the abuse he went through early
that put the cap on it. He escaped eight times
while he was there. On one occasion a little boy
that went with him tried to stop him, and he

(26:23):
pulled out a butcher knife and basically just whacked that
kid's finger off when he was pointing at him or
trying to grab him. I mean, that's an age thirteen.
So when after these incidents, the superintendent of the facility
wanted him evaluated at the Statemental hospital, and in the
letter he indicated, I mean at the conclusion, you know

(26:46):
this young man has homicidal tendencies and basically said he
was going to kill one day. I mean, that's at
age thirteen, very predictably going to be a killer. Everybody
ignored it because he was so charming even as a kid.
Hard to believe. I mean, in the Gaskins I met
and talked to during the trial and even after the trial.

(27:08):
I mean, look, he used to send me Christmas cards.
I put him on death row. Oh my house, call
my office. I mean, this guy, he would work in
it every minute of the day. Twenty four to.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
Seven after this death penalty sentence for Pee Wee Gaskins,
you talk about your friend Jack Swirling, your best friend,
and you make a proposal over lunch during the trial.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Tell us about this proposal.

Speaker 4 (27:38):
Well, Jack had been working for a state senator named
Isidora Lurie since he'd gotten out of law school, and
he got out the year before me. So he got
out in nineteen seventy three. This is now nineteen eighty three.
I'd been working for Anderson seventy five. That's eight years,
and he was exhausted. That was my third death penalty
trial in like two years. Jack had been doing some

(28:00):
very very important, big murder cases. He was tired, and
neither one of us wasn't about the money. It was
about doing something you know different where we controlled. He was,
I mean, when you're working for somebody, you do what
they want you to do. When you if you had
some independent, independent ability to do what you want, when

(28:20):
you want, how you want, I think it would be
We thought it would be a good thing. And during
the swords the end of the trial, we said, you know,
when this is over, let's sit down and talk about
maybe doing something. It wasn't any commitment to doing something then,
but at some point, and again, I think the sign
of a great good lawyer. Great lawyers are lawyers that
can have lunch with eat with each other, even if

(28:43):
in the courtroom they're beating each other's brains out. And
Jack and I were friends, but you know, in the
courtroom that friendship had nothing to do with what we
were doing. So after the trial was over, a couple
months later we both agreed that I mean, my starting
salary the sitters officers ten thousand dollars a year. After
eight years, I was making forty thousand dollars a year,

(29:05):
whereas and I had plenty of friends out in private
practice were making you know, eighty percent more than that.
And you know, I wanted to own a house and
have a family, and you know, not just be a
public servant. Although I can tell you I loved prosecuting cases,
and when I came back as a solister eight years later,

(29:28):
I loved being the swister and the prosecutor. I think
it's God's work if you do it right. That's not
convicting everybody, but making sure justice is done. It is
a very satisfying, very satisfying vocation.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
You talk about that you and Jack Swirling, even though
you were adversaries in court. You could look at this
from a different perspective, but you say that you had
a friend or at least someone that you had a
pre existing relationship in court. This Noah Coburn tell us
about Noah Colburn's attitude towards your defense of a killer,

(30:05):
and Noah Coburn tell us about this story regarding his son.

Speaker 4 (30:09):
Well, well, Noah was a police officer that I'd worked
with in my eight years in the Swister's office prior
to leaving and going in practice with Jack. After Jack
had been in I've been in practice a few months.
A guy named Robert South pulled up next to a
police officer who was unbeknownst to everybody. First day on

(30:30):
the job, riding a traffic ticket, leveled a semi automatic
rifle out the window and basically blew his head off
and then took off. Apprehended quickly, and he came up
with some story about how a hitchhiker made him do it.
And we represented him in a death penalty case. And Noah,
it was Noah Cogrant's son, that was a police officer,

(30:51):
and he again and I worked together, and he was distraught,
understandably took angry and took some of that anger out
on Jack and I. And during the trial one night
we got a call from the swister da over in
that jurisdiction across the river from us, and said, look,

(31:13):
Noah was in a bar to night threatened to kill
you and Jack. When you come to court tomorrow you
might want to bring a gun. So now, if they
give your client the death penalty, that is indeed regrettable.
You getting the death penalty, however, is more than that.
We felt threatened. And look, I understand Noah. I mean again,

(31:35):
I'd been on crime scenes with him at three o'clock
in the morning, I'd had coffee with him. I knew
him and never met his son. But I mean, he
was a police officer I worked with a good bit
so that is understandable, regrettable, but again, if you're going
to be a defense lawyer, and I tell people this,
and especially they got questions during the Murdock case. John Adams,

(31:55):
the second president of the United States, defended the British
officers during the massacre that for him acquitted two were
convicted of Western crimes. Because it was his job, he
took an oath to do it. Abraham Lincoln represented twenty
There's a great book by Dan Abrams called Abraham Lincoln's
Last Trial or Lincoln's Last Trial about that and it

(32:17):
talks about the twenty murdered defendants he represented. And this
last trial was a murder defendant. It is a there's
a rich history in this country of lawyers representing people
that who they detest, even but that's the oath you took,
and it's the job you do. On either side you
should It's not about what you feel, it's about what

(32:39):
the law requires. You know, I understand that's a sophisticated,
complicated justification. And Noah, he knew his son had been
executed on the side of the road and he wanted
the guy that did that to die and if we
were in any way going to impede that, he hated
us for it. Understand it.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. Now, you write that as your practice grew,
calls from Pee Wee Gaskins were less frequent, But you
also talk about that your partner, Jack Swirling, represented another
person named Larry Jean Bell, which was not cell mates

(33:25):
but neighbors with Pee Week Gaskins. So you were enlisted
to go see Larry Jean Bell with a video camera,
tell us about this extraordinary experience, and you're run in
with Pee Week Gaskins.

Speaker 4 (33:38):
So Larry Jean Bell was arrested for a series of
kidnapping and sort of the classic serial killer young blond girls.
Blonde girls who he raped, orchard and duct take total
they suffocated, I think there were three of them. And
he was being held at CCI Central Correctional Institution, the

(34:01):
only prison basically the only prison in the state at
that point for men, I mean maxim security here in Columbia.
Jack undertook. I didn't. I wasn't going to. I mean
I can always say no, and I wasn't going to
represent a serial killer who kidnapped young girls. But Jack,
I mean that was his Bailey Wick. He represented many,
many different murders. But he was on vacation overseas and

(34:26):
Larry Jean Bells, the guards called, said he was decompensating.
He was babbling in his head against the wall. So
Jack called me and said, how about take this is
went back when video cameras were these big cumbers, not
like today, and so we had one. But I go
videotape and so a psychiatrist could look at it. I said, fine.
I went down there and he was in what's called

(34:49):
MDRC Maximum Detention Retraining Facility Seek Center. I'm sorry. And
it was something like out of Hannibal Lecter in the
sense that it was underground. They were cells, not very big,
but they were cells that were eight at eighteen foot

(35:09):
ceilings and they were the top probably foot strip across
the top was a window about eight inches wide. It
went light in but if when you were going into
it he walked by, it would just looked like some
sort of concrete pad out in the middle of this yard.
If you looked hard, you could see the windows and

(35:31):
it was surrounded by fence and barbed wire so or
razor wire so. But when you went down these stairs,
you realized these are cells again like from Silence to
the Lambs, except not glass, solid solid brick walls. And
they let me into Bell's cell and he was talking
to I believe. He told me he was Jesus who

(35:53):
was up in the corner having a conversation with him.
And so I videotaped that, and you know, at one
point said, oh, there's no there's an angel with him.
And then you know, and anyway, I did what I
was supposed to do, and I got ready to leave.
Guard comes over and says the inmate and the next
cell over wants to see you. I said, we who's that?
And he said, phe wee Gaskins? So I I said,

(36:14):
you know, and he'd been sending me Christmas cards and
again even from death row. I don't know how he
got a phone down there, but apparently they were taking
him to a phone. He could cont anybody to do anything.
The cell had a solid metal door with like bolts,
like something out of a dungeon movie. But when you
opened that there was a bar door. So they opened

(36:36):
the solid door and there's the bar door and Pee
wee standing behind it. And I don't quite know how
he knew that I was seeing wherey Jane Bell, but
he did. Maybe the guards told him. He said, greeted me, Hey, Dick,
how you doing? Pee Wee? Am doing fine? And he
had some colored pencils in his hand, and I said,
what you been doing? He said, well, I've been, he said,

(36:57):
I've been using my time to make these drawings. And
the drawings it was one of them, like Jack and Dick,
and it was an island and there was all kinds
of things. They weren't very good. They were pretty crude.
But you know, I told Peeve he said, what do
you think? He said? I said, yeah, you know, I'm
trying to be nice. I said, yeah, they're really good,

(37:19):
pee wee, really good. And he said do you think
they're worth anything? And this is where I not ashamed
of myself, but I probably should not have said this.
I said, pee Wee, I think there were something and
they're going to be worth a lot more real soon.
And he took a second, but then he realized what
I was talking about, and his brow furrowed, and then
that sort of friendly, warm guy that was there a

(37:42):
minute ago was gone. And he wasn't a scowl, but
it was a hard look. And I can remember thinking
at that moment, could he take that pencil, that sharp
pencil in his hand and throw it the ten feet
or fifteen feet between me and him through the bar
door and hit me in the eye and killed me?
Because I think he was thinking the same thing. He
was furious. So we closed the door and I left,

(38:04):
and that was the last conversation I had with Gassin.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
Now you go on in your career.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
You talk about the CBS broadcast the movie about Tony Simo.
We kind of like the particulars of it made him
out as a folk hero of sorts, but he was
actually You did him somewhat of a favor, understanding his
predicament and got a deal for him for only three years.
He would serve three years in pen and he came

(38:32):
out just about the time of the release of this movie.

Speaker 4 (38:35):
He said, Tony Simo was a tragic figure. Tragic He
obviously still blamed himself for the death of his parents,
and I don't believe a jury would convict him of
a murder or conspiracy to commit murder because he was
so sympathetic and all he I mean, the argument was
all he did was what we could not get done.

(38:56):
But we want I mean, he's done. He killed a
guy on death row, er conspired to a guy on
death row. So my sense, from trying many, many, many cases,
was that you might get a hung jury. I don't
know that I ever quit him, but you'd never get
a conviction. So he cut him a deal. And again
he was very tragic, very and he always cooperated, folly,

(39:16):
very apologetic. He did a few years and got out
and I'm told, as we put a point out in
the book, that he killed himself at some point. So
he never got over this, ever got over it.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
You talked about the state that you were in in
nineteen eighty three, not too healthy, smoking three packs of
cigarettes a day, lost some weight just with all the stress.
But in nineteen eighty seven, your daughter, you and your
wife Pam, your daughter Kate was born, right, and you say,
just shortly after that, you got a call at home.

Speaker 4 (39:52):
Who is this call from Gaston's called my house? My
mother was there. She comes, walks and says that mister
Gaston's on the phone for you. And I was furious.
I called, I picked up a pee. We you don't
ever call my house ever. He polted, Dick, I'm sorry,
I just wanted to talk and shoot the bull, and
I said, not here, not my house ever. And of

(40:13):
course he continued to call the office and talk to
Jack and me. But that's a office. It's a different thing,
not where my family is. And no, I was furious,
furious with him.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
You enter politics in nineteen eighty six. But then you say,
after fifteen years, Jim Anders steps down as solicitor, and
you say that this is something that you were very
interested in, and you joined this election and were successful.
Tell us about that election and his success.

Speaker 4 (40:44):
Well, again, probably the best experience of my life without
eight years is his deputy. But as his deputy, he
made the decisions, and I implemented him to be solicitor
and have the ability to, you know, set policy and
procedures and at the same time try cases. Was just
extraordinarily attractive to me. Now it meant a huge salary cut.

(41:08):
Because Jack and I were doing right well in private practice.
I was in a position where I thought we could
whether for a term or two, and I wanted to
do it. So I ran a Harvard, Harvard educated lawyer.
I went to Clemson, as I point out, and the
University of Southcolho Law School ran against me. And he

(41:28):
was very aera diite and very intellectual, had never prosecuted
a case, and I was little more earthy, if you will,
And I won, and it allowed me, in January of
nineteen ninety one to begin this process of reshaping the
office and focusing on different priorities than Jim had. He

(41:51):
was more focused on the spectacular crime. I felt we
needed focus on juvenile prosecutions in the sense that crew
In were being sentenced to Department of Juvenile Justice. I
thought that was wrong. Also being more selective on death
boalty cases. Again, my criteria was active self defense. He

(42:12):
went pretty much every time there was a technically qualified
death penalty, he went for it.

Speaker 3 (42:18):
Now, tell us about this development when Peewee's exhausted all
of his appeals and there's really no future for him,
despite his optimism at different times, there's just nothing left.
There's no hope for him to overturn his death penalty.
But you talk about a visit from his son, Donnie

(42:39):
Lee Gaskins at Broad River Correctional Center where he had
been transferred. Tell us about this interaction.

Speaker 4 (42:47):
So I get a call. I'm solister at the time.
I get a call from the head of our state
law Enforcement division asking me, do I know where my
four year old daughter is? Said, yeah, she's at preschool
and he said go get her, and I said why.
I said, well, we've had a threat, so go pick
her up, take her home. A bunch of sweat agents,

(43:09):
suck On Enforcement Division agents met me there. What they
had uncovered, and they had documented evidence, is that Gaskin's son, Donnie,
had visited him probably a week earlier, knowing that his
dad was getting ready to go be executed. I think
it was the final time he was going to see him,
and he asked Donnie to He said, you know, the

(43:31):
only way I can avoid this is if you do
this kidnap Harpoolian's daughter. Put her in the trunk of
a car, Paul harpoo In and ask and tell him
if he doesn't do exactly what you say, you're going
to kill her. And you tell him to have the
Department of Corrections bring me Gaskins up to his office. Now,

(43:56):
that would happen if I called down and said, I went,
Gascons my off stay bringing him to my office. I
could say, you know, post somebody outside the door and
just leave us here to talk for a minute. I
may consolve another murder or you know whatever. He hadn't
told us about before, and he knew I had a
back door. Nobody else knew that, not generally anyway that
he could walk right out of once he was in

(44:18):
my office, and they you know, he beat foothoos and
fancy free Remember now, this is the guy who's escaped
not only from juvenile of facilities, but from state courthouses
and jails across the state. So he had planned all
this out. So this guest, his son Gaskins, Donnie, talks
to a friend of his and recruits him to help,
and they're gonna get paid a thousand He's gonna pay

(44:39):
him a thousand dollars or something. That kid immediately goes
to the sheriff. Sheriff Billy Bares and tells him what's
going on. They scoop up Donnie, get a statement from
him detailing everything I've just told you, and of course
immediately got me to pick up my daughter. The problem was,
we know he talked to Donnie, we don't know who

(45:00):
else he may have talked to or communicated with or
sent a message to. So even though Donnie was kept
in custody. Oh, by the way, the little boy, that
a little young man that told about Donnie, sixteen year old,
seventeen year old kid. He was kept in custody for
the ten days two weeks before Gaskins was finally executed.
So think about this, this guy, I mean, on death row,

(45:25):
getting ready to meet his maker, and he's conniving to do,
you know, perhaps another murder. And I think that read
at that point, if I'd had any qualms, which I didn't,
if I'd had any qualms about his execution, they were
put to rest immediately. Well, I was invited to go
to his execution. I had the right to do that.

(45:46):
I didn't choose to because you know, I'm not him.
I don't like watching somebody die. I don't want to
participate at that level in somebody's death. So just horrendous.
Guy was when I say, a killing machine. Killing was
always his default.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
You're right that September nineteen ninety one, son of a
newspaper magnate enters the story Winston Earl Hall and ends
up interviewing Pee Wee Gaskins. What are some of the
kinds of things that pee Wee Gaskins admits to with
this journalist hall.

Speaker 4 (46:28):
Well, I think this Gaskins knew what wasn't going to
be printed to after his death, and so I think
he made up a lot of stuff.

Speaker 3 (46:35):
Some of it is.

Speaker 4 (46:36):
Consistent, but the vast majority of it is just braggadocio.
He claimed to have killed one hundred people. Again, there's
no evidence of that. And when he was given a
chance to get basically immunity at least no death penalty
or any murder that he confessed to Kenny Somerford, he
named thirteen, not one hundred. He talks about how he

(46:57):
portured some hitchhiker girl he picked up and cut her
nipples off and ate him, And I mean all kinds
of just horrendous stuff that there's no evidence of. Nobody's
ever found no in bragging about his talents of committing
grimes and getting away with him. So I think I
mean Wilton published it, I don't think, and knew it

(47:18):
would be published after Gascon's death, and you know Gaskins
would never subject any examination on those claims. So I
think it's you want to read the rantings and ravings
of a guy who got pleasure out of killing and
wanted to maybe fantasized about other kinds of killing. That
would be a book for you to read. You want

(47:38):
to know the story based on the facts, you need
to read my book.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
You right at the very end, and this whole contention
that somebody convicted of murder is still and sentenced to death,
is still very capable of another murder, And this is
a story very evident of that notion. But you talk
about his execution and the day of the execution and

(48:04):
the razor blade tell us just how dangerous this person
was right to the very end.

Speaker 4 (48:11):
Well, of course, the day of his execution, he's found
in his cell with his wrist slit. I mean, this
is classic Peewee. He thought if he could get them
taken to the infirmary off a death row, that he
would be able to or he'd have an opportunity to escape.
He very cleverly cut his wrists in a way that

(48:32):
would not result in him bleeding out. And he knew that,
and so they didn't take him the infirmary. The doctor
came to a cell and put some stitches in and
ultimately he talking to the assistant warden. I think Jim
Harvey that was there. Pee Wee said, well, you know,
I don't anybody get in trouble because Harvey want know

(48:53):
where he got a razor blade and he like immediately
coughed it up. He'd either had in his throat or
his stomach or something. He had the ability apparently to
keep a razor boy down his throat without cutting his
throat inside again. He you know, during the early days
when he was taking the slat officers to where he

(49:13):
buried bodies. On at least one occasion when they went
out there was nobody there. They saw a car probably
one hundred yards away idling. Obviously pee Wee had made
some plan or talk to somebody about him running across
that field and getting away, so he was always looking.
During the trial, he had been given valume every day

(49:36):
to take the calming down. He got a prescription for it.
He apparently rewarded them and took all of them at once.
And in the middle of the trial his head hits
the table. He's passed out again. He thought they'd take
him to the hospital. They didn't. They took him downstairs
that are very fortified holding cell where they had a
medic come in and determined that it wasn't a fatal overdose.

(49:58):
So he was always playing the angles very cunning and
again got away with like thirteen murders would have gotten
away with fourteen. If he hadn't taped, there'd be no
evidence against him. If you had not tape record to
do so those phone calls, Asimo incredible.

Speaker 3 (50:17):
You got a call after Peevie was dead and your
wife Pam hasked you can we get back to normal now?

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (50:28):
And I told her yes in so many words, But
I mean, what's normal? That's the problem. Once you've been
through this process. And I speaking to a group the
other day, I said, look, I spent my first eight
years as a lawyer going to murder scenes, going I
talk about someone in the book and seeing man, it
is worse again. If if you've seen what I saw,

(50:50):
it makes you believe in God even more because you
know there's a devil. Only this evil is so pervasive
that it's got to be somebody out there promoting are
sponsoring it. That changes you your ability to empathize. You
build a wall because if every time you go to
a murder scene, or every time you meet with the victims,

(51:10):
if it's a child that's dead, been killed. You you know,
if you if you don't build that wall, you're gonna
sit there and cry with them. You're not going to
do your job. And so I think it is things
going to be normal again. I don't think anybody that
does that job for long, for a number of years,
is normal again. And that's why I sympathize with police

(51:33):
officers who do things that are inexplicable. They just snap,
They just they've had enough of it, they've seen enough,
and somebody pushes the wrong button. I get it. Police
officers have work too many hours that I paid enough.
I know number of my friends that are cops that
work two jobs because they can't make enough money being
a cop incredible. It's a scandal. And then we expect

(51:57):
that when they when they do something excessive, we shouldn't be.
They're not getting enough suitep, they're not making enough money.
They're domestic. I mean virtually every cop I ever met
had been divorced or was getting divorced. They can't maintain
a personal relationship. It is horrendous what we have done
for law enforcement in this country.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
You write in the acknowledgments that January twenty fifth, two
thousand and twenty three, you walked into a courtroom in Walterboro,
South Carolina to begin a journey that would be watched
by tens of millions of TV viewers around the world
as head of the defense.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
Team for Alec Murdau.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
But until that Murda family hired you in twenty twenty one,
the Pee Week Gascons case was your real calling card.
So when it comes to this book, as many people
had asked, what took you so long to write about
Pee Week ASCs procrastination?

Speaker 4 (52:57):
No, well, lawyer, not an author. I mean that's not
And I've been pretty successful a practicing law, made a
few bucks and had fun doing it. Really, I've had
a stop and start over the last forty years of
you know, writing a chapter or writing several pages and
then going back and reading and saying this is this

(53:18):
is crap. What changed was when the pandemic came. I
was in our state Senate. It shut down, court shut down,
and I found myself with months of when I say
nothing to do. I can't work, I can't practice law
because there's no court to go to. I can't go

(53:38):
to the Senate because it's shut down. So I went
through the process of getting an agent and finding somebody
that could work with me on the book. I interviewed
half a dozen people, picked Shawn a Sale a Sale,
and he and I began that process of writing it.
There's a good synergy between us, and got sort of
an outline and then began filling it in the blanks.

(54:00):
And when the pandemic was over, most of the investigating
officers from from the seventies and the Tiner case was
still alive, we went around and interviewed them. They recorded
interviews with them to fill in the gaps, especially on
the previous thirteen murders, because I wasn't involved in those.

(54:22):
And once we had all that together, we began writing
more and filling in the gaps, and so we weren't done,
but we had sort of a good, almost finished product.
And then Murdoch came up. And you know, I'd tried
a murder case, a deathitely case on Court TV in

(54:43):
the nineties. You know, it was watched and maybe I
might get a call when I got back to the
office from a couple of people in Arizona or Michigan
or somewhere had watched it and want to suggest I
do this that or the other tell me I sucked
that day. But there was no I mean around here.
Everybody was kept up to date by local TV stations
and in the newspapers and may have watched it, but

(55:05):
no real ground swell of discussion. Murdoff made me realize
that there's people out there who are really really interested
in true crime and want to watch the trial and
want to God knows how many of them emailed us
with their take on this witness or that witness, but

(55:27):
I guess the realization came that morning, a week or
so into the case, when we're walking into the courthouse.
There's several people on the lawn in sweeping bags the
lawn in the courthouse, and I walked over to one
and I said, what are you doing? Where are you
from Kansas? In Otherland, Texas?

Speaker 2 (55:45):
What are you doing here?

Speaker 4 (55:46):
Want to be in the trial? I said, you know
it's on TV. You can watch it on TV. You
don't have they And one of them said to me,
I want to be a part of it. I want
to be one of those two hundred people that's allowed
in this morning. I want to be a part of it.
And as I talked to him, further in people during
the whole process. I remember watching the oj trial I

(56:07):
don't know how many years ago that was, and being
because I was a lawyer, being engaged in watching what
the lawyers are doing all that, and remember that case
was a huge viewership too. But I've never been involved
in anything like that. I realized this and since then,
this focus on through crime, the participation is just immense.

(56:29):
I'm doing an event Tuesday night when the book comes out.
Dawn Staley, who's the women's book basketball coach here at
the University of South Carolina, has won three national championships,
a beloved local celebrity and coach, is going to host
a discussion with me because she loves through crime. She

(56:53):
has come and sat through murder cases here. She writes
about it in her biography. There are people that are
hooked on that. Now I'm not hooked on it because
I don't need to read about it. I did it,
you know what I mean. I'm just I don't read
true grum I read. I like reading crime stories, but
I like reading fictional crime stories because well, there's more

(57:14):
of a who did it, Who's going to get caught
kind of thing. It made me realize when we got
out of Murdall, Sean and I finished it and found
a publisher, and you know, and by the way, it
takes about almost it's taken almost two years from submitting
it to a publisher to actually having it published. I mean,
it's a because you got to edit it and then

(57:35):
you know, they say, well you need to change this.
I mean, they're very helpful, but this is a process.
It takes a long time.

Speaker 3 (57:46):
Well, congratulations, you took the necessary time. I want to
thank you so much for coming on and talking about
your fascinating book, dig Me a Grave, The Inside story
of the serial killer who Seduced the South. Are those
people that might want to find out more about this.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
Is there a website or do you any social media?

Speaker 4 (58:04):
Well both, dig meagrave dot com is the website can
go to where you can read about it and purchase
it online if you wish. You know, if you go
to Dickharputlion dot com, you can find out more about me,
although not as much as isn't isn't as is in
the book. So I think I'm very proud of what
we've done, and I hope your listenership gets the book

(58:28):
and enjoys it.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
Yes, absolutely, Thank you so much. Dick Harpoutlian for dig
Me a Grave, the inside story of the serial killer
seduced the South.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
Thank you so much.