PEE WEE GASKINS THE SERIAL KILLER

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Inside the Criminal Mind podcast, where we analyze
some of the most notorious criminal cases with psychology and
criminology combined. Here's your host, doctor Carlos.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome back, folks. Today we talked about Donald pee Wee Gaskins, Junior,
was an American serial killer and rapist from South Carolina
who stabbed, shot, drowned, and poison more than a dozen people.
So let's take a look a little bit of his
background and see what we can find out. Remember, there's
three things we're usually looking for neurological impairments, so such
as head trauma, exposure to environmental toxins like remember Richard

(00:49):
Emirez's mom was exposed to chemicals in a boot factory
and those chemicals were known to cause neurodevelopmental issues for
pregnant women, and the babies are the pregnant women. She
was pregnant at the time she was working there. Neurodevelopmental
issues could impact that prefrontal cortex, that front part of
the brain which controls impulse, regulates emotion, controls aggression, anticipates consequences.

(01:14):
The other two things we're looking for psychological abuse, and
the final one would be psychosis of some kind. So
let's see his early life here. Donald Gaskins was born
in Florence County, South Carolina, the last stringing of illegitimate children.
Though Gaskins was small for his age and immediately gained
the nickname Pee Wee. As an adult, he was about

(01:34):
five four five five and weighed about one hundred and
thirty pounds. Gaskins's early life was characterized by a great
deal of neglect from his mother an abuse by a
male relative. Now I don't know what exactly the abuse was,
but we already have something of one of our three
criterias for serial killers. There's other criteria the factors that
play a role here. Most of the time the serial

(01:56):
killers who have been sexually or physically abused. See when
the child is sexually a physically abused, it has different
consequences and how they're developed and how they develop Compared
to neglect and emotional abuse. The emotional and neglect type
of abuse tend to create more internalizing behaviors, not all

(02:17):
the time, but most of the time. Internalizing behaviors are
depression and anxiety. The physical and sexual abuse tend to
have more external behaviors, and it's well as internal but
externalizing behaviors, typically things like aggression, anger, impulsivity. So let's
continue on. His mother apparently took little interest in him

(02:37):
that the first time he learned his given name, Donald
was read out in his first court appearance. Gaskins was
often described as a great manipulator and a con artist
who was street smart, with a keen sense of humor
and a friendly, entertaining personality. So this would already kind
of give us an indication of a possible psychopath, right member,
an anti social personality disorder is clinically defined. Is it

(02:58):
really charming? They're not manipulated, They do have some sleight
of empathy. Some might even call them a social path,
depending on how you want to play with those words,
because there's always debated. But a psychopath tends to have
four qualities, and two of the qualities to make them
separate from that clinical diagnosis of antisocial personality disorders that

(03:19):
psychopaths tend to be charming, manipulative, cunning. They also tend
to be callous and unemotional. So here we got the
charming possibilities and manipulative possibilities of Gaskins leading and so
are ready to possible psychopathy. When he was one year old,
Gaskins reportedly drank a bottle of kerosene, which caused him
to have convulsions until he was age three. In adolescens,

(03:42):
Gaskins engage in a violent crime spree with a group
of fellow delinquents, which included burglaries, assaults, and even a
gang rape. So we can see here, conduct disorders are
ready prevalent. Remember to get psychopathy or an antisocial personality disorder,
you didn't need to have oppositional defiant. We don't need
to have, but it usually starts off with app additional defiant.
Then you'll need to have conduct disorder, and those are

(04:04):
age ranged restricted. In other words, conduct disorder tends to
happen after twelve or thirteen till about seventeen. You can't
diagnose it after eighteen. It's it's an adolescent diagnosis eighteen
and olders. When you get the antisocial or psychopathy in
a non clinical sense under twelve, you're going to get
oppositional defiant disorder anyway, as we go on, At age thirteen,

(04:24):
Gastons was convicted for assaulting a young woman by hitting
her in the head with an axe once she caught
him breaking into her family home, so you can see
the violence already really high at this age. He was
sentenced to five years in a reform school where he
was regularly raped by his fellow inmates. So now we
have the abuse component. We don't have yet any neurological
impairment that I've seen. The kerosene wouldn't do that. Even

(04:46):
though at age three he is neurodevelopmentally still growing, his
brain's still maturing, we still don't know how that's going
to impact that. After escaping from the reform school, getting married,
and voluntarily returning to complete a sentence, Gaskins was released
in nineteen fifty one at the age of eighteen. He
briefly worked on a tobacco plantation, so he was arrested
in fifty three for attacking a teenage girl with a
hammer over in an insult. He was sentenced to six

(05:10):
years in prison in South Carolina. There, Gaskins earned his
fellow inmates respect by killing the most feared man in
the prison, Hazel Brazl, not making it up and when
Gaston's claim was self defense. As a result, Gascons received
an extra three years, but from that point on he
became the aggressor instead of the victim. Obviously he developed
a reputation. He escaped from prison in nineteen fifty five,

(05:34):
so just about a year and a half into it,
by hiding in the back of our garbage truck and
fled to Florida. This is where I think we definitely
have the psychopathy, very intelligent guy here where he took
employment with a traveling carnival. He was rearrested, remanded to custody,
and paroled in August of nineteen sixty one. Following his release,
gascons reverted back to committing burglaries and fencing stolen property.

(05:56):
Now I have done the broadcasts under my Forensic psych
podcast show which we talk more about criminological theories, a
whole host of different types of crimes and criminals. But
here what we have is a life course persistent offender.
According to Moffatt's theory, so you have two different types.
She says, you have a life course persistent which is

(06:16):
somebody who commits crime throughout their life. This is an
individual more than likely has been abused severely as a child,
has got psychopathy more than likely, or some other type
of disorder that really causes a lot of issues for
this individual. Compared to another one that's called adolescent limited,
and the majority are adolescent limited, meaning by the time
they get into their twenties early twenties, they either got

(06:38):
a job, they get into a relationship, something happens where
they age out of crime. So right now we're seeing
Gaskin's already I mean, he's already what is this. He's
about twenty eight at this point, and he's getting worse
following his release, as prisoners told you, two years after
his parole, he was arrested for the rape of a
twelve year old girl on the While awaiting sentence, Gaskins

(07:01):
was re arrested in Georgia and sentenced to eight years
of imprisonment. Upon as Willie as Gaskin moves to the
town of Sumter, Carolina. Now at this time, let's see
he was what was he's eighteen, nineteen fifty one, so
he was about thirty five. Gaskins would claim his first
non prison related murder victim who was a blonde female

(07:23):
hitchhiker he tortured and murdered in September eighteenth and nineteen
sixty nine before sinking her body in a swamp. So
we can see here's an organized killer. He targets somebody
who's a hitchhiking, so who knows if the family's missing
her and doesn't even know where she's at. And secondly
he tries to hide the body and his memoirs believe
it or not, all he claimed all I could think

(07:44):
about is how I could do anything I wanted to
her end quote. This hitchhiker was to be the first
of many he claimed to have picked up and killed
while driving around the coastal highways of the American South.
By the way, if you're listening to this on my
forensic psych podcast, you can go to Inside I had
the Criminal Mind podcast where I do these hopefully weekly

(08:05):
shows on serial killers. I've been a little busy the
last few months, but we're gonna get back on once
a week here. Now. Gaston's classified these victims as coastal kills,
people both men and women, who he killed purely for
pleasure an average approximately once every six weeks. That might
have some significance when he went hunting to quell his

(08:25):
feelings of bothersomeness, So he's really got what we call
low frustration tolerance. He's obviously very sensitive to insults, so
he probably had a very critical type of upbringing very
harsh criticism. Onside from the abuse, he would claim to
have tortured and mutilated his victims while attempting to keep
them alive for as long as possible so he was

(08:45):
sadistic he enjoyed watching them suffer. He confessed to killing
these victims using a variety of methods including stabbing, suffocation, mutilation,
and even claimed to have cannibalized them and that could
be just to scare people for more hyperbole. Gaskins later
fasted killing eighty to ninety victims, although his claims to
have committed any coastal kills have never been corroborated. A
lot of times these serial killers will lie about how

(09:07):
many people they killed. Gaskon's claims have committed coastal kills
every six weeks. He had contradicts his claim later in
the book by stating he felt the overpower and need
to seek out and commit a coastal killed by the
tenth date of each calendar month. He also specifically named
three further individuals whom he classified as serial murderers or
serious murders. I'm sorry, a couple by him of Eddie

(09:30):
and Birdie Brown twenty four and twenty years of age.
He claimed to have murder in seventy two and buried
behind the tenant house, the location Gaskins failed to precisely
pinpoint in his autobiography a man named Horace Jones, who
he claimed to have murdered in nineteen seventy four. There's
no evidence to support any of the claims made by
Gascons that he had committed any of the murders other

(09:51):
than that of Hazel Brazel and the fourteen victims listed,
So let's look at some of these victims. In nineteen
seventy Gaston's committed the first of a series of confirmed murders,
primarily people who mean you and kill for personal reasons.
His first confirmed victims were his own niece, age fifteen,
and her friend aged seventeen, both of whom he beat
to death. He claimed he was enraged at their drug abuse,

(10:12):
while others say he was a tempting to sexually assault them.
Considering his pattern of sexual assault rape, I wouldn't be
surprised he could have been still enrage with the drug abuse,
but also try to sexually assault him to punish them.
He poisoned Martha Ann Dick's age twenty either because she
claimed Peebe was the father of runboard child because she
was an alleged drug dealer. So he has some issue
with drugs, more than likely as associated somewhere in his upbringing.

(10:34):
At this point, he was already almost I was he
at this point nineteen seventy one, so he was twenty.
He was thirty eight at this point, and he's targeting
very young women. He also drowned Doreen Dempsey, aged twenty two,
and her two year old daughter in June of nineteen
seventy three. Gaskins had befriended Doreen several years prior was

(10:54):
angry upon hearing she had become pregnant. She had been
living with Gaskins, his friend Johnny Sellers, and his brother Carl.
They brought her to Gascon's home in Prospect and left
her there to speak with Gaskins about staying with him
for a short while while she was pregnant. In nineteen
seventy four, Gaskins shot his friend, the criminal associate, Johnny Seller's,
aged thirty six, So now we have a different m
O now, all of a sudden and the back of

(11:16):
the head and stabbed at death. Gaskins the girlfriend, Jesse,
who was twenty two. After Selah's astro money he was
owed from the sale of a stilem boat, Gaskins feared
sellers would reveal Gaskins was also involved in an auto
theft ring Jesse. Judy, the girlfriend, was murdered at the
same time because she could have told police about Gaskins.
In nineteen seventy five, Silas Yates, h forty five, was

(11:38):
murdered in February by either a karate chop to his
neck or a slit throat and a murder for higher scheme.
That's right. The forensics sellegeed was by a knife, but
Gaskins disputes this. Yates was at a dispute with his
girlfriends Suzanne Owens. She and her husband John paid Gaskins
fifteen hundred murder Yates. Thanne Neely twenty five, was separated

(11:59):
from her husband, who was one of Gaskins's closest friends
and criminal conspirator. On April tenth, nineteen seventy five, Gascons
stabbed to death Dianne Bellamine, shot her dead boyfriend, shot
dead her boyfriend, Avery Howard, aged thirty four. Again, Gaskins
murdered them because he was afraid they were going to
report him to the police. Kim Gallakin's, age thirteen, was
stabbed to death to keep her from telling police. Gaskins

(12:20):
had moved her from North Care, North Charleston without permission
and to keep her from telling police. She was sexually
abused by several men, including Gaskins. So you can see
he killed almost everybody he was involved with. He didn't
necessarily target people. His last confirmed kill was Rudolph Tyner
in nineteen eighty two. This is about what he was.

(12:40):
Almost fifty. Was on death row in prison for a
nineteen seventy eight double murder when he was murdered by
Gaskins on September twelve, nineteen eighty two. Tyner was appealing
his own death penalty Gaskins the Moon's Sun Actually hold
on for a second, I'm sorry. Tyner was appealing his
own death sent in, such as being convicted for rob
being a convenience store in killing stowners Bill and Myrtle

(13:02):
Moon the Moon Sun. Tony Simo hired Gascons for two
thousand to kill Tyner because, in Simo's view, the appeals
process was taking too long. Gascons obtained plastic plastic explosives
with a blasting clap and a long wire and oreos
created imitation intercom speaker that Tyner put his ear to
the test. Gaskins then detonated the makeshift bomb by plugging
the wire into a prison cell outlet. Gaskins was arrested

(13:27):
in November nineteen, nineteen seventy five, when a criminal associate
named Walter and Neely confessed to police that he had
acknowledge of Gaskins killing Dennis Bellamy and Johnny Knight. Neely
confessed to police and Gaskins had confided in him to
having killed several people who had been as missing people

(13:48):
during the five years. Neely led police land to land
near Gascon's home in prospect for police discovered the bodies
of eight of his victims. Gaskins tried on one charge
murder of May twenty four, nineteen sixty seventy six, found
guilty on May twenty eight, and sentenced to death, which
was later commuted to life in prison. As we mentioned,

(14:10):
he may committed a murder in nineteen eighty two. Gaskins
initially made several unsuccessful attempts to kill Tyner by lacing
his food and drink with poison, but he ended up
using the explosions the explosive I'm sorry. While on death row,
Gasons claimed to have committed one hundred murders, including that
of Peg Katino, the thirteen year old daughter of the

(14:32):
Senator State Senator of South Carolina, but most of these
murders have been widely disputed. Gaskins was finally electrocuted on
the electric chair September sixth, nineteen ninety one, hours after
he tried to kill himself by slitting his wrists. His
last words were, I'll let my lawyers talk to me.
I'm ready to go. Actually, I'll let my lawyers talk
for me. Sorry, I'm ready to go. End quote. So

(14:57):
you can see pee wee. Gaskins here had a lot
of the same recipes that we've seen for other serial killers. Abuse.
We don't get a whole lot in regards to the
type of abuse that he's suffered, but we do know
he did suffer that. We also have some issues with obviously, psychopathy.
I don't see anything with psychosis. It didn't seem like that.

(15:19):
He had definitely paranoid, so he had paranoia, which could
have been Again, it doesn't seem like it's schizophrenia or anything.
We don't see any of that coming out of there,
but we definitely have the paranoid and justifiably so. I mean,
most criminals are paranoid, especially if you're involved like he is.
He's got a lot of stuff going on. He was

(15:42):
supposedly sexually assaulted quite a bit when he was younger. Now,
there are some other stories about his youth that he
spent his time either accepting protection from other older children
exchange for sex, or attempting to escape. Eventually he escaped
that reform school that we talked, and when he got married.

(16:03):
I forgot to mention he was married a thirteen year old,
so he's stuck in that adolescence to stage. I don't
know if you can consider him a Heba phile. He
might be only attracted to adolescence, but I don't know
about that. His stepfather did beat him, we know that,
so physical abuse was there, so he has a lot

(16:25):
of the makings. Unfortunately, that's the story of Pee Wee Gaskins.