Book about Pee Wee Gaskins: The Horrifying Confessions of a Death Row Inmate

Gaskins said his first non-prison-related murder victim was a blonde female hitchhiker whom he tortured and murdered in September 1969, before sinking her body in a swamp. In his memoirs, he said: "All I could think about is how I could do anything I wanted to her."[14] This hitchhiker was to be the first of many he said he picked up and killed while driving around the coastal highways of the American South. Gaskins classified these victims as "coastal kills": people, both men and women, who he killed purely for pleasure, on average approximately once every six weeks, when he went hunting to quell his feelings of "bothersome-ness".[18] He said he tortured and mutilated his victims while attempting to keep them alive for as long as possible. He confessed to killing these victims using a variety of methods including stabbing, suffocation, mutilation, and even said he cannibalized some of them.[18]

Gaskins later confessed to killing "eighty to ninety" such victims,[21] although his statements to have committed any "coastal kills" have never been corroborated. In his memoirs, Gaskins said he committed coastal kills every six weeks, yet contradicts this statement later in the book by stating he felt the overpowering need to seek out and commit a coastal kill by the tenth date of each calendar month.[22] He also specifically named three further individuals whom he classified among his "serious murders": an African-American couple he named as "Eddie and Bertie Brown" (aged 24 and 20 respectively) that he murdered in 1972 and buried "behind the Tenant House" (a location Gaskins failed to precisely pinpoint in his autobiography beyond once stating was a "shortcut to go around Columbia"),[23] and a man named Horace Jones (40), who he said was murdered in 1974.[24]

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Gaskins was an overt racist and he raped and drowned both Doreen Hope Dempsey, 22, and her two-year-old daughter, Robin Michelle Dempsey in June 1973. Gaskins had befriended Doreen Dempsey several years prior and was angry upon hearing she had become pregnant a second time with an African American man. She had been living with Gaskins's friend Johnny Sellers and his brother Carl Sellers in North Charleston, South Carolina. They brought her to Gaskins's home in Prospect, and left her there to speak with Gaskins about staying with him for a short time while she was pregnant. Upset that Doreen was having a second biracial child, Gaskins responded by walking her to his backyard pond where he drowned both the mother and her toddler.[25]

In June 1974, Gaskins shot his friend and criminal associate Johnny Sellers, aged 36, in the back of the head, and stabbed to death Johnny's ex-girlfriend Jessie Ruth Judy, aged 22, after Sellers asked for money he was owed from the sale of a stolen boat. Gaskins feared Sellers would reveal Gaskins was also involved in an auto theft ring. Jessie Judy was murdered at the same time because she could have told police about Gaskins's criminal activities, including murdering her boyfriend, Johnny Sellers.[25]

Diane Bellamy Neeley, age 25, was separated from her husband Walter Neeley, who was one of Gaskins closest friends and criminal co-conspirator. On April 10, 1975, Gaskins stabbed to death Dianne Bellamy and shot dead her boyfriend Avery Leroy Howard, aged 34. Among other reasons, Gaskins murdered Dianne Bellamy because she had threatened to report to police that Gaskins was allowing underage teenagers to have sex in his home. Avery Howard was murdered because he asked for money to pay attorneys and cover legal expenses following his arrest for fraud and auto theft. Gaskins worried Avery Howard would tell police about Gaskins's criminal activities.[25]

In the cases of Johnny Sellers and Jessie Ruth Judy, Diane Neely and Avery Howard, and Dennis Bellamy and Johnny Knight, a pattern that emerged was that the sources disagreed about the reasons behind the murders but agreed on the method of the murders. In all of these murders, Gaskins lured the people to the place of burial separately and shot them. The only contradiction to this is the newspaper account of the Neely and Howard murders, in which Gaskins stated that he gave a friend a knife and found the couple dead afterward. A theme that appeared several times throughout each of these murders is that Gaskins may have eliminated most of these people because they knew too much about any of his various criminal activities, but the extent to which this is true is debatable.

Just as the creators of Pee Wee used chose what information to use based on their particular purposes, often in history, when there is conflicting information about a particular event, historians must choose to use the available evidence that supports their point while either obscuring or explaining away other evidence that may contradict or weaken it. It is very important that this is kept in mind when examining any historical account. Not only is it possible that the author of a given account has obscured conflicting information, but it is also possible that conflicting evidence exists of which the author is unaware. As new evidence is discovered relating to a given historical event, old accounts are challenged and may need to be amended or rewritten completely. It is through this process that history is reevaluated and rewritten by each generation and is therefore a field that is very much alive and changing. Because history is always in a constant state of change, historical accounts should be read skeptically and should never be regarded as absolutely definitive.

My name is Henry Luther Capps III, but most people know me as Trey. I am a junior History and English double major in the South Carolina Honors College. This particular project was completed over the summer while I participated in the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program. I was the primary researcher and writer for this project and Dr. Bobby Donaldson from the History Department was my research advisor. I presented the research from this project at the Southeastern Association of Educational Opportunity Program Personnel Conference (SAEOPP) during the summer of 2012, where I placed third in the humanities division. Conducting this research gave me tremendous insight into the intensity of graduate-level research, which is valuable to me since I intend to enroll in graduate school following graduation in hopes of obtaining a Ph.D. and becoming either a history or English professor. I am hoping that the publication of this research will help improve my chances of getting into the graduate school of my choice. Presenting this research was also a valuable experience because it improved my confidence in speaking about my work in front of an audience. I have also conducted research with an Exploration Grant from the South Carolina Honors College and am currently conducting research under the Magellan Guarantee grant.

Titan Books Ltd, 1993. First Edition. Paperback. Good+ 1st print 1993 Titan Mondo paperback with photo section. Some spine and front cover corner creases to cover, one top corner page fold, tight and unmarked. Size: 106nx 172mm. 256 pages. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: Under 1 kilogram. Category: True Crime; True Crime Biographies; ISBN: 185286494X. ISBN/EAN: 9781852864941. Dewey Code: 364.15230973. The photos provided are of our own book, further photos may be arranged upon request. Inventory No: 088084. Good Condition. Item #088084 ISBN: 185286494X

Gaskins said he murdered his first victim in 1970 in Sumter County when his niece, Janice Kirby, ran away from home with her friend, Patricia Allsbrook. When Gaskins found the girls, "They was both under drugs bad. And I started in on 'em about it and we had a fight in there and I beat 'em to death . . . with my fist and hand."

While her friends waited in the car, Gaskins took Dempsey behind the house. "I was gonna talk with her, and she was about seven months pregnant at the time again, and so I asked her who the daddy of the kid was that . . . she was carrying right then, and it was another black kid from what she told me.

Gaskins said he told Judy he was going to kill her, but she "didn't have nary a word to say" because he'd told her that "hundreds of times." Gaskins said he was a little sorry about that murder because he'd been intimate with Judy, but he "stuck her in the heart" because he knew she'd be upset when she found out that Sellers was dead.

Gaskins said he gave his workshop key to Neely and Howard and his favorite boning knife to the friend who was about to be turned in for having sex with a 14-year-old girl. By his account, the next time he saw Neely and Howard, they were slumped in the front seat of a car, dead from stab wounds.

"I reckon really down deep, when you get to the bottom of it," he said, "why you have a little feeling towards everybody regardless of what . . . Going down deep, you get to thinking about it, why it still gets on your nerves and on your mind about it."

Rusty this is Mike Baker, I was best friends with David when we lived in Twin Oaks. David told me to read this article you wrote and I would say that you and David were very lucky. Years ago I was at a bar on Beech Mt. N.C. and I struck up a conversation with a guy from North Carolina and he asked me where I was from and I told him that I was from Summerville SC and he asked me how far it was from where Pee Wee Gaskins was from and I said some where around maybe 80 miles. He told me that he had purchased a book that Pee Wee told how he murdered, and did terrible things before killing them and he said that he only read maybe a quarter of the book and it upset him from what Pee Wee described that he through the book away. I think you and David are very lucky. David told me to read some of your other thing that you have written and I will. Hope to see you again someday. I enjoyed the article. Mike Baker

Carrie Lenoir was related to my husband. I have a picture of her standing beside the signin front of the store taken in May 1998. I also have a signed copy of the book she wrote about a murder in Sumter County. 2ff7e9595c