Table of Contents Monsters or Victims? 2
Donald Henry Gaskins: "The Meanest Man in America"
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5. Donald Henry Gaskins: "The Meanest Man in America"Pee Wee Gaskins was born Donald Henry Gaskins, Jr., to an unwed mother in rural South Carolina. He earned the name Pee Wee due to his small stature, and was frequently physically abused by many of his mother’s boyfriends throughout his young life. 
When Pee Wee was a young boy, he started to display violent behavior and never did well in school. Pee Wee spent much of his young life committing petty thefts, burglarizing homes and getting in school yard fights. When Pee Wee was 13, in 1946, he was interrupted by a girl he knew while he was burglarizing a home. Pee Wee wrestled an ax away from the girl, and hit her twice with it: once in the head and once in the arm. The girl survived, miraculously, and Pee Wee was sent to reform school at the South Carolina Industrial School for Boys until the age of 18 after being convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and intent to kill. While Pee Wee was in reform school, he was gang-raped and became the sex toy of older “Boss-Boys” who would protect him in exchange for sexual favors. How to describe Pee Wee in five words: Brutal, detached, pedophile, cannibal, and psychopath. Pee Wee murdered another woman and got in the prison again. There, he used his previous knowledge and, in short time he began most feared man in the prison. After he got out of the prison Pee Wee helped another inmate to break out of prison and later he found out that he was fooled because his assumed partner was plotting with the police so he got in the prison for the third time, at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta, GA, where Pee Wee became friends with mafia boss, Frank Costello, who named him “The Little Hatchet Man.” After Pee Wee was released from prison in August, 1961, he returned to Florence, SC, and started working in a tobacco fields. He continued his life of crime, by burglarizing and raping just like always. In 1962, he was arrested again for statutory rape of a 12-year-old girl, but escaped authorities and traveled to North Carolina, where he married a 17-year-old, who was, in his words, “old for my standards.” Within weeks, Pee Wee’s new bride turned him into police and he was convicted of statutory rape and sent to the Columbia penitentiary for six years. In November 1968, Pee Wee was paroled and swore he’d never go back to prison again.  In September 1969, Pee Wee picked up a female hitchhiker and started flirting with her. When she laughed at him, he beat her unconscious, raped, sodomized and tortured her then weighted her body and dumped her into a swamp, still alive. This was his first “Coastal Kill,” as he would later call them.
The “Coastal Kills” were murders of random people. These murders were the most terrifying because Pee Wee would subject his victims to insane methods of torture, sometimes for days. Sometimes, he would cannibalize their severed body parts while they watched and would force them to eat their own flesh. In November 1970, Pee Wee began his “Serious Murders,” which were the killings of close friends and family. His first “Serious Murders” were his own 15-year-old niece, Janice Kirby, and her friend, Patricia Alsobrook. Pee Wee offered the girls a ride home and took them to an abandoned house where he raped, beat and drowned the girls in different locations.  In his book, “Final Truth,” co-written with Wilton Earle, Pee Wee recalls his crimes as one would recall any normal memory of their life. Pee Wee boasts how he was able to pass lie detector tests with flying colors even though he was lying the entire time.
One of Pee Wee’s friends, 23-year-old Doreen Dempsey, an unwed mother of a 2-year-old girl, and pregnant, was planning to leave the area and asked Pee Wee for a ride to the bus station. Instead, Gaskins took her to a wooded area, raped her and killed her, but before he killed Doreen, he started fondling her 2-year-old daughter. Horrified by the sight, Doreen protested, and Pee Wee smashed her skull. Then, he raped and sodomized the baby girl, later describing it as the best sex of his life. By 1975, Pee Wee, by his own admission, had killed and disposed of over 80 people, during his “Coastal Kills.” He focused more on his “Serious Murders,” and in the same year, Gaskins was hired to kill a wealthy farmer from Florence County, Silas Yates. Yates’ ex-girlfriend, Suzanne Kipper, paid Pee Wee $1,500 to kill Yates, and one night, Pee Wee, Diane Neely, John Powel and John Owens conspired to kill Yates. Neely, Powel and Owens were all associates of Kipper’s, and Neely lured Yates out of his home while Pee Wee kidnapped and murdered him as Owen and Powel watched, then all three buried Yates’ body. Pee Wee continued killing and torturing other people he knew, including 13-year-old Kim Ghelkins, who, like so many others before her, resisted his sexual advances. Pee Wee began confiding in Walter Neely, and he soon became Pee Wee’s trusted friend after helping him kill and dispose of two heathens who tried to steal Pee Wee’s shop equipment. Pee Wee showed Walter where he disposed of the bodies of all the other people he had killed, approximately 181 according to Pee Wee, which, if it’s true, makes him the most prolific serial killer in American history. Neely eventually broke down and told police what he knew. Pee Wee was arrested and charged with nine counts of murder after police found the bodies of several of Pee Wee’s friends. Pee Wee was sentenced to death. While he was on death row, Pee Wee told his life story to a journalist by the name of Wilton Earle, and confessed to over 181 murders, including Margaret “Peg” Cuttino, the 12-year-old daughter of then SC senator James Cuttino, Jr. Pee Wee Gaskins was executed on September 6, 1991, at 1:10AM. He was the fourth person to die in the electric chair after the death penalty was reinstated in South Carolina. His last words were, “I’ll let my lawyers talk for me. I’m ready to go.” 
ConclusionIn the end, all we can conclude is that serial killers are human black holes. That they are so normal, so generic, so invisible, they terrify us because they mirror us. Henry Lee Lucas grimly proclaimed that "All across the country, there's people just like me, who set out to destroy human life." Many of them describe themselves as having a piece missing, something dead within. Not only are the victims "a blank" to the killer, as Lucas put it, they are blank to themselves. Killing others is not an attempt to fill the void, but to spread the void. To make the other into a lifeless object mimics the killers own lifelessness. The serial killer lives on the other side of our social boundaries. He is an embodiment of the darkness, desire, and power that we must repress within ourselves. He is not a creature of reason, but of excess and transgression and voracious appetites - selfish, carnal desire. He breaks the social rules that confine the rest of us- our outrage keeps the boundaries intact, while our curiosity can explore the dark recesses of our own repressed desires from a safe distance. He crosses the line into a world of mayhem and depravity. We recoil at their bloody antics, but remain transfixed.
Blanco, Juan, Ignacio. Joseph D. BALL. Web. 31 March 2013 http://murderpedia.org/male.B/b/ball-joseph.htm Douglas, John. The Mind hunte. New York: Pocket Books August 1, 1996. Print Douglas, John, et al. Crime classification manual, New York: Jossey-Bass; 2 editions September 11, 2006. Print Holmes R. Sex Crimes, New York: Sage Publications June 18, 2008. Print Marquis, de Sade. Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings. New York: Grove Press January 11, 1990. Print Mitchell, Hons, et al. The etiology of serial murder: towards an integrated model web. 04 March 2013 https://docs.google.com/viewer?+The+aetiology+of+serial+murder:+towards+an+integrated+model&hl=ro&gl=ro Montaldo, Charles. Characteristics of the Psychopathic Personality. Web. 04 March 2013 http://crime.about.com/od/serial/a/psychopaths.htm Osterburg, James and Ward, Richard. Criminal Investigation ed.6, New York: Anderson Publishing April 21, 2010. Print Robert J. Morton. Definition of Serial Murder. Web. 31 March 2013 http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murder/serial-murder-1#three Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 0.57 Mb. Share with your friends:
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