THE SAD AND SADISTIC TALE OF DONALD HENRY GASKINS

Article BY Cristo M. Sanchez

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'I have walked the same path as God, [and] by taking lives and making others afraid, I became God's equal. Through killing others, I became my own master. Through my own power, I come to my own redemption.'

This is the turbulent and horrific story of Donald Henry Gaskins – one of the worst serial killers in the history of America.

Standing at a diminutive 5 feet 4 inches, Donald Henry Gaskins claimed himself to have killed more than 100 human beings. And maybe it was just that - his size - that allowed him to get close enough to his victim without them suspecting foul play, before he showed them that his murderous thirst went way above his size.

 

(1931 – 1948) FAMILY, CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL AND ADOLESCENCE

Eulea Parrot - Donald Henry Gaskins’ soon to be mother - was a poor girl from a poor family.

At age 12, Eulea quit school (most probably forced to do so) in order to work alongside her family picking cotton and planting tobacco.

Times were bad; it was the middle of the Great Depression and as many as 12 000 workers were losing their job every single day.

The situation was not better for the Parrot family, and at age 14 Eulea began selling the only thing she had; her body. She was paid $1 a week to have sex with a wealthy and well-known man who loved to gamble and drink, as well young girls, known only as Mr. Gaskins.

Eulea soon became pregnant and Mr. Gaskins therefore upped her pay to $10 a month and allowed her to live in a small three-bedroom shack on his land when her son was born.

Donald Henry Gaskins was born on March 13th, 1933, in Florence County, South Carolina. He weighed only 4 pounds at birth and was given the nickname Pee Wee – a name that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Althought never being exclusive with each other, Mr. Gaskins and Eulea continued to engage in sexual activities after Pee Wee was born - often in front of young Pee Wee.
It is claimed that they [his mother and father] would laugh at Pee Wee while having sex and would push the child away when he tried to make them stop - something that can explain the twisted relationship he would have with to sex later in life.

Unfortunately for Donald, his mother had many different lovers in addition to Mr. Gaskins throughout his childhood and very few of them treated him any better than his own parents.

Eulea can be excused for her desperate act to sell her body in order to earn money and survive, but her reckless behavior when concerning young Donald is indefensible.
Young Donald was left to raise himself alone as his mother provided little to no supervision, and since many of the johns who’d visit Eulea were very disturbed individuals they would often abuse and/or sexually assault young Pee Wee. This physical abuse would last throughout his childhood.

The fact that his mother did little to protect him from her numerous lovers, planted the first pod that would grow into a pure hatred towards women later in life. One can wonder if Eulea was, in fact, the root to all of his later crimes (much like with Ed Kemper and his mother).

That Donald drank a bottle of kerosene when he was one year old, something that caused him to have regular convulsions until the age of three, didn’t help matters either.
Most probably because of the damage done by this ingestion of kerosene, Donald was tormented by regular night terrors throughout his childhood. The kerosene can also explain some of the mental instability he would suffer from as an adult - a suffering that he would learn to inflict onto others.

Life did not get easier when Donald started school, even though he was finally out of the house and away from the abusing hands of his mother’s disturbed clientele.
In school he was teased and beaten from the first day and would fight daily with both girls and boys, often because of his size.

When he finally told teachers about his discontentment with school and the pupil, he received a beating from them as well since they attributed him the blame for not getting along with the other children.

Eventually Pee Wee grew to hate school and would hide out in the woods all day instead of going to what was regular maltreatment. Unable to neither go home, nor attend school, Donald quit school at an early age. (It is claimed that he quit school both at age 8 and age 11.)

When Donald was 10 years old his mother finally found some stability when she married Hinnant Hanna, a field hand. But unfortunately for Donald, Hinnant continued in the tradition that all adults in his life had done up to that point and would also beat him. After marrying, Eulea and Hinnant would go on to have two more sons and two daughters, all of whom Hinnant also mistreated and beat regularly.

At age 12, Donald started working at an auto-garage and soon became known around town for his great ability to fix things. For a while it seemed like Donald had finally found something he was good at and could evolve within, but it would not last.

Despite the fact that Donald was a successful mechanic and was making good money - and maybe because of it - his step-father, Hinnant, made him quit his job at the garage, telling him that he needed him to work in the fields of the family farm. Donald did as told, but would occasionally sneak away to work on cars - that way making some extra money as well as doing something he felt he mastered.

When Donald Henry Gaskins was 13 years old he found a small shack in the woods. Excited by the finding, Donald soon brought his friends Henry Marsh and Danny Smith to the shack and together they named it “The Hideout”. The Hideout would be their club house; a kind of a safe home the three boys.

They soon began referring to themselves as the Trouble Trio and would steal candy and cigarettes from vending machines which they would enjoy in The Hideout.

That same year [1946], the Trouble Trio was caught peeping on girls while they used the women's outhouse. Each teen was given a severe beating by their parents, though Donald would later state that he was not sad for what they did, but only sad for that they were caught. He was showing clear signs of sociopathy at this point, though there was no one present who cared enough to notice or do anything about it.

 

(1948 - 1951) THE BEGINNING OF A LIFE OF CRIME AND LEARNING HIS OWN NAME

In 1948, Donald was 15 years old when the Trouble Trio, with help from Danny Smith's father, began breaking into homes in the area.

Selling what they stole at local yards, the three boys eventually accumulated enough money to purchase their own car. With a vehicle in their possession they began driving to Fort Jackson and Columbia, South Carolina, to buy prostitutes, but the fascination would not last.

No longer satisfied with having sex with prostitutes, the boys wanted to know what it felt like to have sex with a virgin, which led to the decision that would bring the end to the Terrible Trio.

One day, the three boys, after they hatched a plan in The Hideout, gang-raped Marsh's younger sister, Julie, multiple times.

After what must have been a torturous time, Julie ultimately told her mother what the boys had done to her. Mother Marsh told the parents of Donald Gaskins and Danny Smith and as punishment all three boys were beaten by their parents until they shed blood.

Soon after the rape, the Smith and Marsh families moved out of town and the Trouble Trio was split up. This did not deter Gaskins from continuing his crime spree on his own, though, as he continued to break into homes and rob people.

That same year, Donald met a new partner named Walt at a car shop and they soon made plans to break into homes together and sell the stolen goods for profit.

It was during one of these break-ins with Walt that they broke into a house that was not empty.

A 16 year old girl that Donald knew interrupted them and soon realized that the two men were robbing her family. Trying to protect her family, the young girl came at Donald with a hatchet, but he soon managed to get it away from her. With this same hatchet he had been attacked with, Donald hit her in the arm and head, causing her to lose consciousness.

Walt was able to get away from the robbery untouched, but Donald was caught and charged with assault with a deadly weapon and intent to kill.

It was in court, as he received his sentence, that Donald learned his birth name. Apparently his mother had taken so little interest in Donald when he was growing up that he first heard his name when it was read out loud in what would be his first of many court appearances.

As a result of his violent ways, Donald was sentenced to the South Carolina Industrial School for Boys until the age of 18. It was in this institution that he would continue to refine and fuel his intense hatred towards humans, in particular women.

It was still 1948, Donald's first night in the South Carolina Industrial School for Boys, when he was approached by one of the reform school so called "boss-boys". The boss-boys were the biggest and meanest boys; the ones who basically ran the reform school when the guards weren’t around.

Donald was told by one unknown boss-boy that he would be his "sweetheart" from now on and that he was expected to be in his bed ready for whatever he required every night unless he wanted to get a vicious beating.

When Donald Gaskins did not obey, he was gang-raped by the boss-boy and about 20 of his friends the following day in the showers.

Donald succumbed after the raping and spent the first year in reform school as the boss-boy's sweetheart, which meant that he would have to do sexual favors for him every night. The boss-boy would also sometimes "sell" Donald and have him do sexual favors to others in exchange for cigarettes or other goods.

After nearly a year of this violent and abhorrent sexual and emotional abuse, Donald and four other boys, who were also regularly raped by the boss-boy or by his followers, managed to escape from the institution.

They did not manage to get far, though, and the following day the police picked up all the escaped boys as they unsuccessfully hid in the woods. But when the officers that caught them were distracted, Donald managed to run away again and this time he ran straight for his old hideout.

He was ultimately found two days later and punished with lashings for a thirty day period, sentenced to three months of hard labor as well as three months in solitary confinement for this act.

The only upside of his punishment was that being in solitary confinement Donald no longer had to withstand the nightly raping sessions or be beaten by the boss-boy.
The delay of violence would not last long as when Donald was released from solitary confinement he continued to get raped by the same teens that tormented him earlier.

In 1949, when Donald was 16, he could no longer stand the constant abuse and decided to run away from the school yet again, but this time with only one other boy.

After escaping successfully, Donald went to his Aunt’s house, who agreed to let him live in her home as long as he managed to stay out of trouble and help around the house. It was the first time that Donald felt like he had anything remotely close to a mother-figure in his life and maybe because of that he managed to keep his word for longer than he ever had since he’d began his criminal career.

After three months living there, not committing any crimes, his aunt convinced Donald to turn himself in and finish his sentence so he would not have to live his life as a fugitive on the run. Donald obliged to his aunt's wish and was given solitary confinement and hard labor as soon as he arrived back in reform school. In addition to this, the guards would find excuses daily to lash him and punish him further.

One day after being punished for no particular reason yet again, Donald had enough and punched one of the guards in the face and the testicles. For this outburst Donald was sent to the state mental hospital for evaluation, but he would be in the state mental hospital for no longer than a day before his appendix ruptured and he was sent to a medical hospital.

After treatment of his appendix, and after no mental conditions were found, Donald was sent back to reform school where he was given light duty for three months.

Immediately following the three months of light duty, the guards, waiting patiently for their vengance, beat Donald every following day. And if that wasn't enough, being out of confinement he was again raped regularly by the boss-boy he "belonged" to. This led Donald to escape again - this time on his own.

After escaping successfully for a second time, he managed to acquire a job with a traveling carnival. It was here that he met 13 year old Mary. They fell in love and soon married thereafter. Not wanting to put Mary through a life on the run, he turned himself in to the police and finished his sentence.

After further torment in reform school – which continued to provide emotional scars that Donald would later use to inflict pain on others - Donald Henry Gaskins was finally released on March 13th, 1951, the day of his 18th birthday, but the damage had already been done.

Donald's stay at the South Carolina Industrial School for Boys definitely damaged young Donald severely and hardened him enough to become the monster he would grow up to be; a monster of a man that would become infamous.

 

(1951 – 1961) ADULT LIFE, FIRST MURDER AND PRISON LIFE

In 1951, 18 years old and out of reform school, Donald got a job at a construction site and did tree-shade repair on the weekends to make a few extra bucks. Life was not easy, but it was better than reform school - not that that helped Donald’s psychological downwards spiral.

When Donald and his wife Mary got pregnant, they moved to Georgetown, South Carolina, to live with Mary's family. While there, Donald got a goverment contract job to log cypress trees in the swaps.

They would remain in Georgetown for a few months until one of Donald's friends from reform school, who was called Slick, offered Donald and his wife work on his tobacco farm as well as a pick-up truck and a three bedroom house in Johnsonville, South Carolina. The offer was too good to pass up and they relocated.

Donald began working on the tobacco plantation as agreed, but the hard labor and low wage did little to motivate him to stay lawful and he soon got involved in insurance fraud with his partner Slick. Donald and Slick would collaborate with other tobacoo farmers to burn down their barns for a fee.

Soon enough people around the area began talking about the barn fires and Gaskin was suspected to be involved, though no one could prove it.

On April 17th, 1952, Donald's first daughter, Shirley, was born. Soon after the birth of his daughter things looked bleak when Slick was arrested for arson. Luckily for Donald, Slick remained loyal to his partner and did not turn him in.

Due to Slick's arrest someone else was put in charge of the tobacco fields, but in another stroke of luck, Mary, Donald and their first born were allowed to stay in the house.

But the luck would not last as trouble soon followed when the daughter of the new owner of the plantation confronted Donald about his reputation as the barnburner. The confrontation became heated and led Donald to hit the girl with a hammer, splitting the girl's skull and knocking her unconscious.

Afraid of being arrested, Donald fled, but was apprehended by the police and charged with assault with a deadly weapon with the intent to inflict bodily harm as well as being a part of the barn fires in the area.

Donald was initially sentenced to five years in the South Carolina State Penitentiary in Columbia, but after he lost his cool in court and called the judge a "son of a bitch" he received an additional year.

Prison life was not much different from his time spent in reform school as Donald was immediately assigned to sexual services by one of the prison gang leaders in exchange for protection. Being short and rather scrawny, he saw no other option than to accept the situation.

The inmate who now “owned” Donald was one called Author. Author was an inmate considered a “Power Man” by the others, and one who would not be messed with.
The “Power Men” were the inmates who had a reputation of being so brutal and dangerous that they were left alone; basically the prison-equivalent of a “boss-boy”.

But after Author beat and raped Donald for six months straight, Donald realized that the abuse would not stop unless he himself put an end to it. And the only way to do that, as well as to be able to survive prison life afterwards, was to become a Power Man himself. So Donald figured that he would have to kill a Power Man and he set his eyes on the worst of the worst of his fellow inmates – one even worse than Author – this was Hazel Brazell.

Donald's small size didn't make it an easy task to accomplish as he was outmatched by Hazel physically, but what he lacked in size he made up for in determination and malice.
Donald befriended Brazell and soon got on his good side. After a while, Donald managed to manipulate Brazell into a trusting relationship and when the time was right he slit Hazel Brazell’s throat, effectively killing him.

Using his size to his advantage, Donald managed to convince the correction officers that he had killed Brazell in self-defense and because of this received only a few months in solitary confinement.

When he was released from solitary, Donald was already someone to be reckoned with and was considered a Power Man. Because of his new role he was left alone by Author and was given his own inmates to beat and rape by fellow Power Men. Donald always claimed that he went easy on the boys he was given.

While Donald was serving time Mary sought to divorce him. Bent on saving his marriage, he escaped prison in garbage barrels.

Once out of prison, he fled into the thick surrounding woods and eventually made it to his cousin’s, David Gaskins, Peppermint Gas Station. There Donald found David's blue 1950 Pontiac with the keys still in the ignition and stole it.

By all accounts, Donald did not find his soon-to-be ex-wife Mary and went to visit his old carnival friend, Poss, who lived in Lake Wales, Florida, instead.

Still on the run and in need of money, Donald hit the road with Poss and his carnival. On the road Donald met Juney Alice Holden, whom he married even though he was still married to Mary.

This second marriage was not to last more than two weeks and Donald ended up driving Juney back to Lake Wales, where he rejoined the carnival and never heard from her again.

Donald then became involved with a carnival woman from the "girlie show" who went under the name Xena from Xanzibar, whose real name was Bettie Gates.

After becoming amorous, Bettie convinced Donald to take her to see her brother in Tennessee where he was jailed and needed to be bailed out. Infatuated by Betty, Donald agreed to help her brother out and they hit the road together.

Once in Tennessee, Bettie sent Donald to the jail where her supposed brother was incarcerated with a few packs of cigarettes for him. Doing as told, Donald delivered the cigarettes, but when he returned to the hotel he and Bettie were staying he found the room empty and soon realized, in a stroke of irony, that his stolen car had been stolen.
Bettie never returned to the hotel, but the next morning Donald was awoken by the police as one of the packs of cigarettes he had given Bettie's alleged brother had a razorblade which he had used to escape. It was then Donald found out that he had been thoroughly duped; Bettie's brother wasn't her brother at all but rather her husband, and he had helped him break out.

At first he attempted to convince the police that he was David Gaskins and that Bettie had stolen his car, but it did not take long for them to find out that he was an escaped convict.

Donald Gaskins was charged with being a fugitive from a penitentiary, as well as helping Bettie Gates' husband escape, and was returned to prison with an additional sentence of six months.

Back in prison his reputation as a Power Man began to get questioned by a few fellow inmates who had it in for him. Worried, and not willing to return to being beaten and raped, Donald stole a knife from the kitchen and sliced a prisoner's ear clean off. Though this act bought him an additional 3 months to his sentence, he regained his reputation and the other inmates realized that he was not to be messed with.

Later into his sentence, Donald was convicted of driving a stolen car across state lines by the FBI. For this he was tried again - this time in federal court - where he was sentenced to a total of three years, which he would serve in Atlanta, Georgia.

In federal prison in Atlanta, Donald befriended the reputed mafia boss Frank Costello, the Godfather of the Genovese crime family in New York. Frank Costello took a liking to Donald, gave him the nickname "Little Hatchet Man", and took him under his wing. The remainder of his time in prison would not be as complicated as it had been in the past because of his association with Costello.

 

(1961 – 1968) MARRIAGES, RETURN TO PRISON AND TROUBLESOME FEELINGS

On August 6th, 1961, Donald Henry Gaskins, 28 years old, was released from prison.
Free again, he returned to Florence, SC, where he moved in with his cousin, Marvin Parrott. Unable to find steady work, Donald went back to repainting cars, but he would not be able to stay away from trouble for long.

Trying to help and steer Donald in the right direction, Reverend George E. Todd gave Donald a job assisting his traveling ministry. This proved to backfire as being on the road gave Donald the perfect opportunity to break into homes in the different towns where the ministry traveled, making his crimes more difficult to trace as few would suspect a traveling ministry to be involved in burglaries.

Soon after returning to Florence, SC, Donald left the ministry and began looking for jobs where he could make better money.

In 1962, Donald Gaskins married for a third time, this time marrying 18 year old Jerri Deloris. This did nothing to stop his lust for crime and in September of that year Donald molested a 12 year old girl, Patsy, who lived near his mothers. Having a reputation already, Donald was quickly identified and arrested for statutory rape and was what referred to as knowledge of a child in those times.

While at the Florence County courthouse the deputy in charge of Donald removed his handcuffs when he sat waiting for his attorney and the prosecutor to arrive. Not missing his opportunity, Donald jumped out of a window and fell 30 feet down to the ground. Incredibly enough he was not injured in the landing and stole a Florence County car that had been left with the keys in the ignition.

After visiting his mother in order to get some money, Donald headed for Prospect, SC. There he ditched the car in a lake just off the highway and proceeded on foot towards the town of Dillon.

In Dillon, Donald stole a 1962 Ford Galaxie, and the following day he crossed the state line as he drove into North Carolina and the Lumbee Indian Reservation in Pembroke, where he stayed at a boarding house.

The next day Donald drove the stolen car to Charlotte, where he left it and caught a bus to Raleigh. In Raleigh (probably in another attempt to make the police lose track of him), he bought a 1949 Ford and drove back to Pembroke.

Donald's love interests were never lacking as he met his fourth wife in Pembroke. 17 year old Lumbee girl, Leni Oxendine, fell in love with Donald and they quickly got married, even though Donald was still married to Jerri Deloris. But the romance would not last as the 17 year old soon grew tired of married life, and after three months Leni told Donald that she was going to the store and never returned.

Feeling lonely after losing his fourth wife, Donald decided to contact his third wife, Jerri. Jerri was understandably very upset about the molestation of 12 year old Patsy and Donald having left her, but after some sweet talk she decided to give him a second chance.

Jerri and Donald met up and reconciled at an unknown location before heading to Lake Wales, FL, looking for Donald's old friend Poss to give him a job on the carnival again. But when they arrived, Donald was told that Poss had committed suicide at the funeral home after his wife and four children had died when a fire errupted in their trailer. This saddened Donald greatly, not the least because this meant that he could not get work at the carnival.

Feeling desperate (and probably unsure of what would come next), Jerri told Donald that she was not willing to be with a man on the run anymore and that she was going back home to South Carolina. This made Donald consider going back to Pembroke in order to find Leni again, but he agreed to drive Jerri home to South Carolina before he did.
As they drove across the state line into Georgia they heard sirens approaching from behind. Donald did his best to dodge the police, but the left front tire of his car blew out and the car spun into a marsh. Exhibiting more traits of his sociopathy, Donald left Jerri to drown in the car as he escaped on foot. Jerri Deloris was caught by the police, but soon released with no charges.

Donald hid out near the marsh for a while and managed to avoid being found by the police, who believed that he might have drowned. When night fell the police gave up their search in the area and Donald fled on foot.

After walking for a while he came up on train tracks, and using the sun for navigation he was able to follow the tracks south to Savannah.

At dusk, outside a small town north of Savannah, Donald reached a train yard where he climbed into an empty freight car. Finally able to rest, he slept all the way to Savannah.

In Savannah, Donald got himself new clothes and caught a bus back to Pembroke, NC, with the intention of going back to Leni.

Leni, who did not expect Donald to return, was not pleased to see him and soon began looking for a way to get rid of him. When she saw the story about a killer who had been thought to have drowned in the marsh near Savannah on television, she contacted the local police and told them that the allegedly drowned killer was living in her house.
The next morning Donald woke up to a deputy handcuffing him, and two days later he was extradited back to the country jail in Florence.

Back in Florence, after being on the run for nearly two years, he was sentenced to six years for the statutory rape charge and additional two years for his escape from the Florence County court house in 1964.

Back in the Central Correctional Institution in Columbia, he quickly regained his status as a Power Man, and would soon get an unexpected ally. Willis McDougald, the warden in the Central Correctional Institution in Columbia, believed very much in rehabilitation and not excessively punishing the prisoners. Because of this he saw it right to write a letter of recommendation to the Parole Board asking them to release Donald Gaskins based on his good behavior.

At least in part because of McDougald's letter, in November of 1969, Donald Henry Gaskins, 35 years old, was again paroled after having served four years of his eight year sentence. His release came with one condition: that he not step foot in Florence for two years.

Even though he woved never to return to prison, Donald would later state that he struggled with emotions that he referred to as "Them aggravated and bothersome feelings" that seemed to make him more inclined to criminal activity. Whether this was just an excuse, or if he did suffer from brain damage from his turbulent childhood is up for debate.

Free again, Donald managed to stay out of too much trouble to begin with when he found job as a roofer for a construction company in Sumter, SC. However he would do rework and paint jobs on stolen cars in the evenings and weekends and soon enough he was pulled into robbery again.

While doing one robbery alongside two teenage boys, the boys decided that they wanted to keep all the loot, as well as Donald's money, and turned their knives on him.
After being robbed, Donald, hungry for revenge, waited for the two young boys at their home with his .32 Beretta Automatic. With his gun pointed on them, he ordered the boys into the trunk of his car and drove them to a nearby swamp. By the swamp, with the boys pleading, he ordered them to hand over the stolen money and jewelry and instructed them to remove their clothes.

Naked, cold and pleading, Donald decided to let the boys live, but told them that if they ever crossed him again he would kill them for sure.

Even though he was not allowed within Florence County, Donald would still go into Florence on occasions, such as when his mother had family reunions. His first wife Mary and his daughter Shirley - who was now 17, married and with children of her own - lived in Florence as well, so he was often driving back and forth between counties, breaking the law each and every time he did so, but it was nothing compared to what was to come.

 

(1968 - 1975) THE BOTHERSOME PAIN AND THE BEGINNING OF SERIAL MURDER

Around the summer of 1968, Donald began experiencing more trouble from the feelings he would later refer to as a "bothersome pain". This bothersome pain, he explained, would begin in his testicles, travel up his spine through his stomach and finally settle in his head, behind his eyes, giving him intense migraines – and that's when a voice would appear.

This voice would encourage Donald to do horrendous acts, and if he found himself around Mary, his daughter, or other family he cared for, he would hurry up and leave as he did not want hurt any of them.

It is around this time that he began riding along the coastal highway that stretched from Myrtle Beach to Savannah on the lookout for hitchhikers, in particular women, in order to satiate his bloodlust.

Since the essence of his hatred and murderous fascination had been spawned by the women who had rejected him in the past, and he could not torture these women who had (in his eyes) treated him badly, he soon began to fantasize about punishing women in general.

Running the risk of returning to prison was a strong deterrent, but it would not be able to match his savage compulsions.

In September of 1969, he picked up a blonde female hitchhiker by the name of “Angie” in Pawley's Island. Waiting for a reason to release his pent-up misogynistic anger, Donald took the opportunity when she rejected and laughed at him after he propositioned sex.

In a fit of crazed rage, Donald beat “Angie” unconscious before he raped her, both vaginally and anally. But this was not enough to satisfy him. The fantasies of torture were too powerful to restrain and so he bit off her left nipple, stomped on her pubic bone and slid an eight inch dagger into her rectum, which he pulled towards the vagina until it sliced through.

About this murder he wrote in his memoir: "All I could think about is how I could do anything I wanted to her." As it is with most serial killers the main compulsion is power and control, and Donald was no exception.

Realizing that he couldn't leave “Angie” alive, he sunk her body with weights into a river near a swamp, where she drowned. Before he left her, he stole only her money, tossing the rest of her belongings in the river.

This murder was the turning point for Donald as he would later describe the brutal act as 'a vision' into the feelings that haunted him. With this murder he discovered that it satisfied his urges and it soon became the driving force of his life.

Six weeks after the first murder, Donald would repeat the horrific act. This happened after Donald had convinced himself that whenever his head begun to hurt and he heard the voice, it was a signal for him to kill.

In October of the same year, Donald met "Daisey" from Jacksonville who had been working in Myrtle Beach. Donald did the same things to "Daisey" that he had done to "Angie", before he also drowned her in a river near a swamp by weighting her down.
Donald would classify these killings as "coastal kills": People, both male and female, whom he killed in order to quench his feelings of "bothersomeness".

On these victims he worked on mastering the skill of torture - often keeping his mutilated victims alive for as long as possible – and murder.

Not usual to most serial killers – and something that most probably made it harder for the law to catch him – was the fact that he killed victims using a variety of methods, including stabbing, suffocation and mutilation. He even claimed to have cannibalized some of them, and going as far as stating that he forced his victims to participate in the eating of their own bodies, though this is unverified.

In total, Donald stated that he killed "eight to nine" such "coastal victims", although this has never been corroborated.

In his autobiography, Final Truth, Gaskins claims to have committed so-called "coastal kills" every six weeks. This, though, contradicts his own claim later in the book where he states that he felt an over-powering need to committ coastal kills by the 10th date of each month. Again it is up to speculation what is true concerning Donald's conflicting statements as there is not a lot of evidence to go by.

The first victims Donald considered to be his "serious murders" (people whom he knew and murdered for personal reasons, opposed to the random "coastal kills"), was his 15 year old niece, Janice Kirby, and her 17 year old friend, Patricia Ann Alsbrook.
On November 10th, 1970, he offered to drive the two drunk girls home from a bar. They accepted the offer, but soon understood that something was wrong when Donald drove them to his house instead of their homes. He told them that he was doing this in order to "sober them up" and help them clean up before he drove them home.

But soon after arriving at Donald’s house, Janice fell unconscious and Donald used the opportunity to flash his penis to Patricia. Horrified, Patricia attempted to flee, but she did not get far before he caught up to her.

With a gun in hand, Donald ordered Patricia to sit down and remain seated while he tried to sodomize his unconscious niece. The attempted rape ended up waking Janice and she began struggling against him.

While Donald was preoccupied with Janice, Patricia picked up a lamp which she used to hit him over the head with. Donald fell over clutching his head and the girls used the opportunity to run out of the house. But soon enough Donald caught up to the two girls as they were running down a dirt path that led into the woods. Again empowered by his gun, Donald ordered his niece and her friend into the trunk of his car and he drove them back home to his house.

Back home, Donald ordered Patricia to remove her clothes. While she followed his instructions, Janice again attempted to escape, but he stopped her by hitting her and knocking her unconscious.

Neither of the girls gave up without a fight, and Patricia tried to stop yet Donald again, this time by trying to hit him with a two-by-six, but she was unsuccessful and was knocked in the head by Donald's gun. With both girls unconscious, he handcuffed and raped them before he beat them to death.

He then carried the two girls to the trunk of his car and drove to an undisclosed location where he pushed Patricia's body into a septic tank. His niece, Janice, he dug a grave for and buried her body behind the old barn of Janice's tenants.

Donald had a cool down period of almost a month after the murder of his niece and her friend before he decided to kill again.

On December 18th, 13 year old Margaret Edwards "Peggy" Curtino, the daughter of State Senator James Cutino and grand daughter of the President of Clemson University Dr. Robert Poole, went missing.

The police soon began questioning possible suspects, including Donald Gaskins, but he was released once he proved he had an (unknown) alibi.

Twelve days later, Margaret's body was discovered in a wooden area right off highway 261 known as Manchester forest. Autopsy suggested that she had died from blows to the head as well as strangulation. Burn marks, which were possibly from cigarettes, covered her body, which shows that the 13 year old girl had likely been tortured before she was murdered.

The decomposition of the body suggested that she had been killed recently and most probably within the last five days, which suggested that she had been kept captive for a while before her death. These were all trademarks that matched Donald Gaskins – though the authorities had no way of knowing this at the time.

In an odd turn of events a 39 year old man named William Pierce – aka junior - a former truck driver from Swainsboro, GA, confessed to the murder. Even though none of the evidence suggested that William had been the killer, he was still sentenced to life for her murder.

Donald's parole was completed near the end of 1970, which meant that he could legally return to Florence County, and he got married for the fifth time on New Year's Eve.
At the time of their marriage, his wife was already three months pregnant and in June of 1970, she gave birth to his son, Donald Lee Gaskins.

With a son and a wife, Donald went back to work at a used-car lot where he helped rebuild cars that would later be sold. Even though he went back to a legal line of work, Donald also immediately found back to his old ways of stripping and repainting stolen cars - none of which could ease the pain in head and the strange voices only he could hear.

He would kill again, and frequently, and by the end of 1971 Donald had tortured and killed 11 women, including two 10th graders, Angie and Maria, who had dropped out of school to go find work in Florida.

After a most violent year, Donald had a cool down period that lasted until March 29th, 1972. That day, an Afro-American, drug-addicted, transvestite, named Martha Ann Dick – who was known as Clyde - who Donald liked to visit from time to time, pushed a joke too far and would pay for it with her life.

Clyde told Donald that she had been knocked up by him and joked about naming the baby Pee Wee Dicks, something Donald disliked enormously because he, ironically enough, disapproved of interracial babies and relationships.

Donald told her to meet him some time after six o'clock in his tenet's house. There he would give her some pills for the abortion - if she was in fact pregnant - and five dollars for oral sex.

The pills knocked her out quickly, and once she was unconscious Donald handcuffed her.

When Clyde woke up, she tried to get away but was beaten before Donald forced her to finish the bottle of unspecified pills. The amount of pills caused her to overdose and killed her.

Donald dumped her body into a drainage ditch.

In June of 1972, Donald committed his last verified murder of the year when he kidnapped 16 year old Anne Colberson from Atlanta. In his old tenant house, he tortured her for 96 hours before he smashed her head in from behind with a ball-peen hammer and buried her behind the same barn he had buried his niece Janice Kirby.

From here on, Donald would become completely unhinged as his murder rate continued towards a high and disturbing rate.

In October of 1973 Donald was 40 years old when he killed 19 year old Jackie Freeman after raping her. This is the first and only confirmed time that he delved into cannibalism as he ate a portion of her calf.

Sometime in the latter part of 1973, while living in Prospect, South Carolina, Donald purchased an old hearse and would joke with people at his favorite bar that he needed the vehicle in order to haul all the people he was killing to his private cemetary.
Around town he had a reputation for being explosive, but nobody considered him to be truly dangerous, even though there were some who knew that Donald was willing to commit murder for a (sic) reasonable reward.

Most people just thought he was mentally disturbed, however there were a few who liked him and considered him a friend.

One of these people who considered him a friend was his 23 year old neighbor, Doreen Dempsey.

In December of 1973, Doreen Dempsey was an unwed mother of a 2 year old baby girl, Robin, and was pregnant with a second child. Doreen was preparing to leave her house when Donald offered to drive her and Robin to the bus station. Thinking this was an amiable offer, Doreen accepted it, but once they got on the road Gaskins drove her to a wooden area instead. Hidden behind the thick brush and tree-packed woods, he violently raped and killed Doreen while her poor two-year-old daughter could do nothing more than cry. After killing Doreen, Gaskins moved on to her daughter, which he also raped and murdered (allegedly with a hatchet to the head). Donald’s daughter, Shirley, later stated that her father “could not resist raping the baby”.
He buried the two in the same grave.

Although Gaskins preferred female victims, it did not stop him from committing crimes on males he happened to come upon, something he proved on July of 1974, when he raped and murdered two young unnamed boys.

Later the same month, he killed 36 year old Johnny Sellers and 22 year old Jessie Ruth Judy after raping the both of them. Donald murdered them by tying them up with heavy chains before he threw them in a lake (presumably after either drugging or beating them) and watched as they struggled for air while they drowned.

By 1975, Donald Gaskins, who was 42 years old and a grandfather, had been killing steadily for six years and alleged to having killed more than 80 young boys and girls he found along the North Carolina highways.

His ability to get away with murder was mainly attributed to that he worked alone - something that would change in 1975 after Gaskins murdered three young people whose van had broken down on the highway.

The three people in question were two 20 year old college girls and one male. After he forced them to engage in group sex, he castrated the male and killed the two girls.
With the interior of the van tainted with blood, Gaskins needed help to refurbish it before he could sell it and therefore enlisted the help of his ex-con friend, Walter Neely, who moved in with him soon after.

In February of the same year, Donald broke his rule of working alone again when he was paid $1500 to kill Silas Yates - a wealthy farmer from Florence County. It was Suzanne Kipper, Yates’ jealous and angry mistress, who hired Donald for the job. Unable to turn down good money doing what he enjoyed, Donald accepted the offer.
In addition to two associates, John Owens and John Powell - who handled all correspondence and communication between Donald and Suzanne Kipper - Donald got help from his friend Walter Neely's ex-wife, Diane Neely.

On February 13th, they went through with the plan. Diane Neely lured Silas Yates out of his house by claiming that she had car problems and needed help. Once he was seated in the car, Donald appeared with a gun and kidnapped Yates. Joined by Owens, Powell and Diane, Donald drove Silas to an undisclosed location (presumably one of Donald’s favorite murder spots in the woods), where he murdered Yates while Powell and Owens watched.
Together the three men buried the wealthy farmer’s body.

Soon after the murder of Yates, Diane Neely and her boyfriend, ex-con Avery Howard, thought it was a good idea to try to blackmail Gaskins for $5000 in hush money. That Diane thought this was a good idea after knowing that Donald had killed Silas Yates in cold blood is astonishing.

Donald, playing it cool, agreed to meet with the pair and pay the sum they required. But soon after meeting up, Donald murdered and disposed of the pair in the same undisclosed location where they had met up.

Still thirsty for blood, Donald continued to feed his murderous appetite in September of 1975 when a neighborhood girl, Kim Ghelkins, caught his attention. Kim was 13 years old and did not appreciate it when Donald made sexual advances at her. Rejected by Ghelkins, Donald didn’t hesitate to murder her.

October proved to be no less drenched in blood when two local men, 15 year old Johnny Knight and 29 year old Dennis Bellamy, unaware of Gaskins' murderous temper, proceeded to rob him at his own repair shop.

In a state of rage, Donald soon tracked down the two young men and killed them before he buried them – again with the help of Walter Neely - alongside other locals he had murdered.

Donald obviously considered Walter Neely a trusted friend, a fact proven when he pointed out to Neely the various graves of other locals who he had murdered and buried there.

 

(1975 – 1991) INVESTIGATION, END OF THE MURDEROUS STREAK AND DEATH

The investigation into the disappearance of Kim Ghelkins was soon turning up quite a few leads; all pointing to Gaskins. Armed with a search warrant after the evidence was gathered, the authorities searched through Gaskins' apartment and uncovered clothes that had been worn by Ghelkins. After this find Donald was indicted for contributing to the delinquency of a minor and would be jailed until his trial.

With Donald locked up in jail and unable to influence or intimidate Walter Neely, the police increased the pressure on Neely to talk. It worked, and during an interrogation Neely broke down and led the police to Gaskins' private cemetery on land that he owned in Prospect. There, the police uncovered the bodies of eight of his victims. The bodies of Johnny Sellers, Jessie Ruth Judy, Avery Howard, Diane Neely, Johnny Knight, Dennis Bellamy, Doreen Dempsey and her child Robin were found in the graves.
They had him now.

On April 27th, 1976, after the coroner verified everything Walter Neely had told the police, Donald and Walter were charged with eight counts of murder.

On May 24th, 1976, the trial for the eight murders began, and no more than 4 days later Donald was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death by the electric chair. But in November of the same year his sentence was commuted to life with seven consecutive life terms after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty as unconstitutional.

In April of 1977, the trial for the murder of Silas Yates was set in motion and Suzanne Kipper, John Owens, John Powell and Donald Gaskins were all found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, though that meant little to Donald since he was already serving life.

By the end of April, knowing that he would not face the death penalty, Donald took the stand and confessed to every murder he was accused of, along with a few additional ones.

The death penalty was made legal again in South Carolina in 1978, but this did not affect offenders who had had their sentences commuted in the past so Gaskins had little to worry about, or so he thought.

Prison life was not hard for Donald - not as it had been in the past – as his reputation as a ruthless serial killer demanded respect from other inmates. Despite of this he let his murderous thirst and sense of loyalty get the best of him, which led Gaskins to make a dire mistake.

While incarcerated in the high security block at the South Carolina Correctional Institution, Gaskins agreed to kill fellow death row inmate Rudolph Tyner for Tony Cimo. Rudolph Tyner had received his sentence for killing an elderly couple named Bill and Myrtle Moon during a bungled armed robbery of the store they owned. What Tyner did not know was that Tony Cimo, who was Donald’s friend, was the son of Myrtle Moon and was now looking for revenge.

Gaskins initially made several unsuccessful attempts to kill Tyner by lacing his food and drink with poison, before he opted to use explosives to kill him. To accomplish this, Gaskins rigged a device similar to a portable radio in Tyner's death row cell and told Tyner this would allow them to communicate between cells. When Tyner followed Gaskins' instructions to hold the speaker (laden with C-4 plastic explosive) to his ear at an agreed time, Gaskins detonated the explosives from his cell. The plan worked as planned and the blast killed Tyner. Gaskins later said of this: "The last thing he [Tyner] heard was me laughing."

With yet another murder to his credit, Gaskins was tried for the murder of Rudolph Tyner, and with the death penalty reinstated he was sentenced to death.

In an attempt to stay out of the electric chair, Gaskins confessed to more murders, including the murder of Margaret "Peggy" Cuttino, but it proved to be to no avail as the state was unwilling to make a deal with him.

The prosecution already had William Pierce, whom they had gotten sentenced to life in prison for the crime of Cuttino. Despite of this, Gaskins' claims were investigated, but the authorities were unable to substantiate the details of his confession and investigators rejected Gaskins' confession to the murder, stating that he did it only to attract media attention.

If Donald Henry Gaskins’ unverifiable murder claims are indeed true, it would make him the worst killer in the history of America as he claimed to having committed between 100 and 110 murders.

During the last months of his life, Gaskins spent time dictating his memoirs into a tape recorder, as well as working with author Wilton Earl on his book, "Final Truth", which was published in 1993.

As his execution date grew closer, he became more philosophical about his life, about why he murdered and about his date with death. With this came the fear of dying.
For someone so little willing to appreciate the value of life of others, like a classic psychopath, Gaskins fought hard to avoid the electric chair and save his own skin.
On the day he was scheduled to be put to death, he slashed his wrists in an effort to postpone the execution. This time, however, Gaskins would not get away and he was stitched up and placed into the electric chair as scheduled.

His last words were, “I’ll let my lawyers talk for me. I’m ready to go,” and at 1:05 a.m. on September 6th, 1991, Donald Henry Gaskins was pronounced dead by execution.
The only family present at his execution was his son Donald Lee Gaskins.