Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now.
For
$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. To make switching to the new Boost Mobile risk-free, we're offering a 30-day money-back guarantee. So why wouldn't you switch from Verizon or T-Mobile? Because you have nothing to lose. Boost Mobile is offering a 30-day money-back guarantee.
No, I asked why wouldn't you switch from Verizon or T-Mobile? Oh. Wouldn't. Because you love wasting money as a way to punish yourself because your mother never showed you enough love as a child? Whoa, easy there. Yeah. Applies to online activations. Requires port in and auto pay. Customers activating in stores may be charged non-refundable activation fees.
Jewelry can say many things on your wedding day. As a wedding band, it can say, this is a forever symbol of our forever love. As a gift to your wedding party, it can say, thanks for standing up there with us. Blue Nile can help you find the piece that says it all and says it beautifully with expert guidance and a wide assortment of jewelry of the highest quality at the best price. Go to BlueNile.com and experience the convenience of shopping Blue Nile, the original online jeweler since 1999.
Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did and how. Episode 192.
Tonight I bring to you, dear listener, I, serial killer star. Not a superstar, but a killer who surpasses the depravity and body count of more famous serial killer superstars such as Ted Bundy and BTK. Tonight's killer was born and bred American, living and operating in the great state of South Carolina. During his life of crime,
Tonight's subject tortured and murdered at least nine human beings, but are suspected of killing as many as one hundred. I'm, of course, talking about none other than Donald Pee-wee Gaskins, a.k.a. the meanest man in America. Enjoy.
As always, I want to publicly thank my elite TSK Producers Club. Their names are...
Kylie, Lance, Lisa, Lisbeth, Magic Man, Marilyn, Meow, Missy, Nick, Oakley, Operation Brownie Pockets, Robert O., Robert R., Russell, Sabina, Skortnia, Scott, Sputnik the Radio, Susanna, The Duggletons, Trent, Val, and Vanessa.
You are the backbone of the Serial Killer podcast, and without you, there would be no show. You have my deepest gratitude. Thank you.
I am forever grateful for my elite TSK Producers Club, and I want to show you that your patronage is not given in vain. All TSK episodes will be available 100% ad-free to my TSK Producers Club on patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast. No generic ads, no ad reads, no jingles. I promise.
And of course, if you wish to donate $15 a month, that's only $7.50 per episode, you are more than welcome to join the ranks of the TSK Producers Club too. So don't miss out and join now. Donald Henry Gaskins' start in life was perhaps the worst I have read about aside from the nightmare that was Eileen Wurno's childhood.
Absolutely every single factor that can be detrimental to the future of a child was handed to young Donald. He was born to a teenage unwed mother, Eula, aka Molly Parrott, on the 13th of March 1933, in the town of Manning, in Florence County, South Carolina. Now,
for my astute listeners with a penchant for history you might have noticed the year nineteen thirty three this was the epitome of the great depression in america south carolina was hit hard by the economic downturn
The state's agricultural industry was particularly affected as prices for crops such as cotton and tobacco fell sharply, and many farmers were unable to make a living. This led to widespread poverty and unemployment, as many rural residents were left without work or means of support.
In addition to the economic struggles, South Carolina was also dealing with the effects of the Dust Bowl, a period of severe drought and soil erosion that affected much of the Great Plains region. The dust storms and crop failures caused by the Dust Bowl added to the already difficult economic conditions in South Carolina and other states.
The federal government responded to the crises with a number of programs aimed at providing relief and support to those in need. The Civilian Conservation Corps, CCC, was established in 1933, which provided work and training for young men in areas such as forestry and conservation. The Works Progress Administration,
WPA, was also established in 1935, which provided jobs and economic stimulus through infrastructure projects such as road construction and building renovations. Whether the various state-led relief efforts helped is a matter of political debate that I will spare you, dear listener.
The fact remains that the effects of the Great Depression lingered in South Carolina and the rest of the country for several years. Shortly after his birth, Donald Pee-wee Gaskins was given the nickname Junior. When he grew older, he was given the unfortunate nickname of Pee-wee, which would both follow and haunt him throughout his life. It was not a nickname given in affection.
It was given due to his small size and stature, which he was teased for throughout his childhood. Here it is important to note that when people back seventy-plus years ago talk about teasing, it often was not a matter of light-hearted teasing, but outright violent bullying. Pee-wee's mother was an alcoholic who barely gave her youngest son and other children attention, discipline, or guidance.
His father, Mr. Gaskins, was an older, wealthy landowner who lived near Molly's family, worked on cotton and tobacco farms. Mr. Gaskins regularly paid Molly one dollar for sex. She became pregnant with Donald at age fourteen.
mr gaskins paid molly ten dollars a month and let her live in a shack with three rooms on his land to raise his and her children molly paid donald extremely little attention and let him for an extremely early age crawl around on the floor without supervision
this resulted in little donald aged one years old to drink almost a full bottle of kerosene he had gotten hold of he barely survived and had convulsions afterwards that stayed with him for over two years his father was a known drinker and gambler molly also picked up on these habits mainly the drinking
she would later train her son still not a teenager to mix drinks and bring them to her the couple would often engage in sex in front of donald when he was a child as he knew nothing about sex he at first thought mr gaskins was attacking his mother and tried to pull the pair apart
Later, he learned, at far too early an age, what his parents actually were doing, and he tried to pull them apart, as he thought it was disgusting to watch. They responded to this by mocking and laughing at him, continuing to have sex and taunting Donald while doing it. Molly and Donald continued living in the shack throughout his childhood. She also continued having sex for money,
in which she forced her son to watch pee-wee grew up with an army of so-called stepfathers who both physically and sexually abused him by a very early age donald gaskins grew to think being raped and molested was normal he simply did not know any other life
When Donald became old enough to attend school, he was mercilessly teased by the other students for his size and his nickname. He struggled to get along with the other children and did not have many friends. As a result, teachers would blame him for his negative interactions with other children and would also beat him for his behavior.
he was beaten by his schoolmates beaten by his parents beaten by strange men who bought sex from his mother and beaten by his teachers violence was all he knew when donald was ten molly married a field hand named hinnant hannah
Hannah also abused Pee-wee, like his other various stepfathers. It is difficult to ascertain what the abuse consisted of exactly, but considering the depravity of his mother, it is not unlikely that young Donald was regularly, anally and orally raped. Hinnant Hannah and Molly eventually had four children, two sons and two daughters.
Donald ended up quitting school at age 11, not that he had learned much. Going to school was something he hated almost as much as being home. So he very often hid out in the forest during school hours to avoid being beaten up and bullied. His own mother had also quit school very early at age 12 to work with her family.
As with most serial killers, there were good qualities to be found in young Donald Gaskins. Around town, he had a reputation for being good at repairing things. He would repair toys, fans, small appliances, and eventually cars. He loved to take things apart and put them back together again, to make them work.
After quitting school, Pee-wee started working in an auto garage at only twelve years of age. He was good at his job and earned a decent living for such a young age. This is where Ron Swanson of Parks and Recreations would have said, and I quote, "'Child labor laws are ruining this country.'"
Joking aside, Donald's stepfather made him quit his job at the auto shop and forced him to work in the cotton and tobacco fields instead. Young Donald had no choice in the matter, and very much like a slave, he did not get to keep any wages from the work, he started working as a farmhand. However, he would sneak away mainly at night to work on cars for extra money.
When he was thirteen, his life of crime began. He made friends with two other boys in town, Danny Smith and Henry Marsh. The group referred to themselves as the Trouble Trio, which is exactly what they got into. Donald found a small shack in the woods where the trio would convene and hide out.
Their crimes started out rather innocently, considering the ones Donald Gaskins would later commit. At this point in time, everyone called Donald peewee. He was so used to it that he did not use any energy stopping people from doing so. Probably it bothered him, but after so many years, it is incredible what people get used to.
The group began by stealing candy and cigarettes from vending machines. The trio soon escalated to becoming Peeping Toms and were discovered spying on a women's bathroom at a local church. In hindsight, this crime was probably what got the ball rolling for Pee-wee's eventual descent into absolute depravity.
Like many, if not most, serial killers, the severity of his crimes grew as time went by. As the boys became more and more interested in sex, their crimes escalated. They would break into houses and later sell their stolen items at yard sales, with the help of Danny Smith's father.
With this money, the trio was able to buy a car and drive to the nearby larger cities of Fort Jackson, Charleston, and Columbia to have sex with prostitutes. This continued on for several months until the boys grew even more sexually curious and wondered what it would be like to have sex with a virgin.
The trio attacked and gang-raped Henry Marsh's 13-year-old sister, Julie, multiple times. Henry, her brother, was an active participant in the rape. Julie told her mother what her brother and his friends had done to her. The boys were beaten by their parents as punishment. Soon after the trio attacked Julie, the Marsh and Smith families both moved away.
Considering what had happened, it was probably a decision taken by the parents to split up the very unhealthy trio of boys. This did not stop Pee-Wee from continuing on his downward spiral of criminal behavior. Pee-Wee strikes me as the culmination of a bad childhood combined with psychopathic personality disorder. As I have said before,
Many times on this podcast, the large majority of psychopaths are not serial killers. But most serial killers are psychopaths. In 1948, when Pee-wee was only 15 years old, he met a boy named Walt at a car shop where he was working. The two hit it off and began breaking into homes, stealing items and selling the goods.
Pee-wee also started stealing cars, repairing and repainting them, and selling them. This is something he continued throughout his life until his ultimate demise. In 1949, when he was only 16, Pee-wee and Walt broke into a house thinking no one was home. There they were met by a fellow 16-year-old girl who attacked Pee-wee with a hatchet. Pee-wee was able to get the hatchet away from her,
Then he hit her with it in the head, knocking her unconscious. Walt escaped from the crime scene and Pee-wee was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and intent to kill. During his trial the following year, Donald Gaskins reportedly heard his full name for the first time, as he had been called Pee-wee his entire life.
was found guilty and sent to the South Carolina Industrial School for Boys in Florence, South Carolina in 1950. It's that time of the year. Your vacation is coming up. You can already hear the beach waves, feel the warm breeze, relax and think about...
Work. You really, really want it all to work out while you're away. Monday.com gives you and the team that peace of mind. When all work is on one platform and everyone's in sync, things just flow. Wherever you are, tap the banner to go to Monday.com.
Millions of people have lost weight with personalized plans from Noom. Like Evan, who can't stand salads and still lost 50 pounds. Salads generally for most people are the easy button, right? For me, that wasn't an option. I never really was a salad guy. That's just not who I am. But Noom worked for me. Get your personalized plan today at Noom.com. Real Noom user compensated to provide their story. In four weeks, the typical Noom user can expect to lose one to two pounds per week. Individual results may vary.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. As a family man with three kids, I know firsthand how extremely difficult it is to make time for self-care. But it's good to have some things that are non-negotiable. For some, that could be a night out with the boys, chugging beers and having a laugh. For others, it might be an eating night.
For me, one non-negotiable activity is researching psychopathic serial killers and making this podcast. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's often near impossible to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever.
If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Everyone needs someone to talk to, even psychopaths, even your humble host. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp.
Visit BetterHelp.com slash SerialKiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash SerialKiller. When Peewee arrived at the reform school, he was met with hostility. Almost instantly, the other boys made fun of him for his nickname and size.
On his first day at the school, he was introduced to a boy known as Boss Paz. Paz was one of the main leaders at the school, an unknown bully. He informed Pee-wee that he would become his prison sweetheart. He further informed Pee-wee that he was to visit Paz every night so that he could be raped, or else he would be beaten and tortured mercilessly. Pee-wee refused.
which only resulted in Paz seeking him out, beating him, and violently raping him. The next night, Paz brought nineteen of his friends, and they all took turns anally raping Pee-wee. From then on, Paz would rape Pee-wee on a nightly basis.
There were only boys in the reform school, so rape was a common occurrence. Once Pee-wee was forced into being Paz's sweetheart, Paz would sell Pee-wee to other inmates for sex in exchange for cigarettes. After almost a year of constant sexual abuse and torment at the reform school,
Pee-wee and four other boys, who were also regularly raped by Paz and his followers, ran away from the school. The police caught the fugitives the next day while they were hiding in the woods. When the police officers weren't looking, Pee-wee was able to slip away and went straight to his old hideout in the woods near his family's home.
The freedom was short-lived, and he was found only two days later and sent back to the reform school. Back at the school, Pee-wee was punished in a very harsh way. For thirty days, he had his bare back whipped bloody. For three months, he would be forced to do hard labor, and for three months after that, he would be forced to be in solitary confinement.
The latter was reminiscent of being buried alive, so small and dark was the cell he was put in. Pee-wee usually liked being around other people, so solitary confinement was hard. On the other hand, Paws and his thugs could not reach him there, so he managed to serve out the sentence without too much trouble. When the three months' solitary sentence was up, Pee-wee returned back to the general population.
There, he continued to be raped and humiliated by Paws and his followers. On one occasion, he was forced to parade around in women's underwear in front of the other boys. Again, Pee-wee, along with one other boy, escaped from the reform school. This time, he managed to avoid capture and sought refuge at his nearby aunt's house, Molly Hanna's sister.
His aunt promised not to turn him back into the school if he stayed out of trouble and helped her around the house. Peewee was grateful for the opportunity and obeyed his aunt, who was the only positive mother figure he had ever known. After three months, his aunt convinced him to turn himself in and finish out his sentence as she did not want him to live the rest of his life on the run.
When he did turn himself in, he did not get any leniency from the reform school authorities. Once again he was sentenced to hard labor, whippings, and solitary confinement. One day, as one of the guards was whipping Pee-wee, he snapped and attacked the guard by punching the guard in the face and kicking him in the testicles.
Luckily, he was not immediately given further punishment. Instead, he was sent to a mental hospital for psychological evaluation. Shortly after arriving at the hospital, his appendix burst, and he had to have emergency surgery. When he was sent back to reform school, he was given lighter workloads, but the guards continued to whip him, and Paz continued his nightly rapes.
Being at the reform school was a living nightmare, a hell on earth for the young Pee-wee. For the third time, he managed to escape, this time alone. He was seventeen years old and found work for a travelling carnival. There he met thirteen-year-old Mary, whom he ended up marrying. The day after they were married, Pee-wee again turned himself in to the reform school.
He said that he did not want to live with his new teenage bride on the run. In 1951, Peavey finally finished up his sentence at the reform school. Upon his release on his 18th birthday, he went back to Mary. They moved in with her family, and he was able to get a job at a construction site and did car repairs. Mary was soon pregnant, and the couple moved to Georgetown, South Carolina.
There, Pee-wee got a government contract job lugging cypress trees in the swamp. They lived in Georgetown for several months until an old reform school friend of Pee-wee's called Slick offered him a job on a tobacco farm that he managed along with a three-bedroom house and a truck in Johnsonville, South Carolina. Pee-wee and Mary took the offer, which earned him more money than he had ever made before.
Their daughter, Shirley, was born soon after, on the 17th of April, 1952. While working on the tobacco farm, Peewee and Slick became involved in an insurance fraud scam where they were paid by various farmers to burn down their barns to collect insurance money. Slick was arrested later, in 1952, for arson, but did not turn Peewee into the police.
Slick was arrested. Another man took over the management of the farm, but allowed Peewee and his family to stay in the house which was on the farmland. The new owner's daughter knew that Peewee was involved in the various arsons. She kept threatening to turn him into the police. Peewee responded by hitting her in the head with a hammer until she became unconscious. But he did not kill her.
Peewee ran away to avoid arrest, but was caught several days later by police. He was charged with assaults with a deadly weapon, with intent to inflict bodily harm, and arson, as it was revealed he had helped Slick and others set the fires. He was sentenced to five years in prison at the South Carolina State Penitentiary in Columbia.
While in court for his sentencing, he called the judge a, quote, a son of a bitch and was given an additional year to his sentence. In 1953, at age 20, Peewee returned to prison to serve out his second term in his young life. During the first several weeks in prison, he became the sweetheart to another inmate, just like he had in his teenage years.
He had tasted freedom and happiness for a short while, but once again he found himself in hell. This time the inmate who forced himself upon Pee-wee was named Arthur, who raped Pee-wee nightly for six months. Not wanting to repeat his past, Pee-wee decided to prove the other inmates he was not one to be abused. Pee-wee came to the conclusion
that to stop the rapes he had to prove himself by killing the most powerful man in the prison, Hazel Brazel. Pee-wee made the murder look like he was defending himself from one of Brazel's attacks and was only sentenced to solitary confinement for a few months for the murder.
I have tried, dear listener, to find out exactly how Pee-wee committed this murder, but there are very few details to be found. Probably Pee-wee used a prison shank to stab the man to death. When Pee-wee was released from solitary, he was granted a new respect from the fellow inmates for having killed Brazell. The other inmates considered him to be a quote-unquote power man.
something Pee-wee greatly longed for. He was even given a young man to rape and torture, a so-called prison sweetheart for himself, which he greatly enjoyed. In 1954, Pee-wee learned that Mary was planning to divorce him. Soon after, he escaped from prison yet again in a garbage barrel. He was not able to save his marriage, and Mary divorced him later that year.
When he escaped from prison, he ended up at the Peppermint gas station owned by his cousin, David Gaskins. There he found the keys in the ignition of David's blue 1950 Pontiac and stole the car. He drove to Lake Wales, Florida, where he met Paz, who used to rape him at the reform school. Paz was able to get Pee-wee a job at the carnival where he worked.
Perhaps Paz felt bad for Pee-wee, or perhaps he saw something in Pee-wee that he now feared. Pee-wee traveled around with the carnival for several months and met two women. The first one he quickly married, a nineteen-year-old girl named Junie. But she left him a short while later, and he never saw her again.
The second was a woman named Betty Jean, who worked at the carnival under the stage name of Zina from Zanzibar. It is unclear if Pee-wee was the one who charmed her or the other way around. What eventually happened was that she convinced Pee-wee to help her quote-unquote brother escape from prison.
When authorities came knocking on the motel door they stayed at, Betty Jean and her actual husband, the so-called brother, was long gone, having left Pee-wee stranded without a car. Once again, Pee-wee was arrested and ended up in prison. This time, however, he did not take abuse from anyone. To prove his dominance, he cut off a fellow inmate's ear the first night in jail.
This earned him respect from the other inmates, but also an additional three months in prison. Peewee was also charged with grand theft auto and for crossing state lines with a stolen vehicle. This landed him in federal prison. There he met a very famous person, none other than the infamous mafia boss Frank Costello, godfather of the famed Genovese crime family.
Costello gave Pee-wee a nickname he liked much better, Little Hatchet Man. In 1961, at age 28, Pee-wee was finally released from prison. He moved back home with his mother and stepfather, but soon moved out and in with his cousin, Marvin Parrott, due to fights with his stepfather. Marvin rented a trailer from his uncle Dewey Parrott.
Due to his extensive criminal record, Peewee had a difficult time finding legitimate work. He went back to working as a mechanic and repainting cars. Later that year, he found a job working with a traveling ministry under Reverend George E. Todd as a driver.
While working with the preacher on the road, Pee-wee continued breaking into homes and selling the stolen goods like he had when he was younger. To say that Pee-wee was not a very religious man is probably an understatement. Pee-wee was short, but he was a real charmer when it came to talking to women, and he had no problem finding girlfriends.
In 1962, he married yet another teenager, 18-year-old Jerry Dolores. He also quit working for the traveling minister and started stealing and reselling the stolen goods full-time. Peewee had a very high sex drive, and he always felt a need to dominate and humiliate others, like he had been dominated and humiliated himself.
In September, the same year he got married, he raped a twelve-year-old little girl. He was quickly captured by police, and while waiting for the judge, he once again managed to escape authorities, this time by jumping out the window and stealing a police car. He drove straight to his mother's house. There he stole some money before driving off again.
For several months he stole cars, drove them for a while before dumping them and starting over. He stayed at various boarding houses and also sometimes slept outdoors. After a few months, he once more married a teenager, 17-year-old Lenny Oxendine. The marriage lasted only three months as he simply left her stranded at a motel, saying he was going out to buy some cigarettes.
His previous wife, Jerry Dolores, was surprised when Pee-wee showed up at her door. She knew he had raped a twelve-year-old little girl and was not happy about it. Somehow, and here I am really at a loss as to how on earth Pee-wee managed, but he charmed her enough for her to forgive him.
The pair moved to Florida, hoping Pee-wee again could land a job with the carnival. Pee-wee sought out Paz, but found out his old tormentor, now friend, had killed himself following the death of his wife and four children. As he could not get a job, Jerry told him she did not want to be married to a bum on the run and left him.
pee-wee was not much bothered and simply drove back to lenny who would not succumb to his charm she was furious and called the police when pee-wee was using the restroom he was quite surprised when he was greeted by police officers the moment he left lenny's house
This time he was sentenced to six years in jail for his escape, as well as statutory rape, since his marriage to Lenny was illegal. Peavy served four years of his sentence and was paroled for good behavior in 1968, age 35. When he was released and again could breathe the free air again,
Something bloomed inside him, something dark and wicked. His urge to kill.
Whoa, easy there. Yeah.
Need new glasses or want a fresh new style? Warby Parker has you covered. Glasses start at just $95, including anti-reflective, scratch-resistant prescription lenses that block 100% of UV rays. And they're also free to use.
Every frame's designed in-house, with a huge selection of styles for every face shape. And with Warby Parker's free home try-on program, you can order five pairs to try at home for free. Shipping is free both ways, too. Go to warbyparker.com slash covered to try five pairs of frames at home for free. warbyparker.com slash covered.
At Ashley, you'll find colorful furniture that brings your home to life. Ashley makes it easier than ever to express your personal style with an array of looks in fun trending hues to choose from, from earth tones to vibrant colors to calming blues and greens. Ashley has pieces for every room in the house in the season's most sought after shades. A more colorful life starts at Ashley. Shop in store online today. Ashley, for the love of home.
And with that, we come to the end of part one of the expose covering Pee Wee Gaskins. I hope you enjoyed listening to me telling it to you. Next episode, we'll continue this grim saga. So as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. What follows is a message to my dear Norwegian listeners in Norwegian.
So, as they say in Radioland, follow along.
