SERIAL KILLER: Donald 'Pee Wee' Gaskins

The killer who claimed he killed and tortured 80-plus unnamed hitchhikers while he worked in murder-for-hire schemes.

Donald Henry Gaskins was born in Florence County, South Carolina, to mother Eulea Parrott and an unnamed father. It’s said that he was the last in a string of “illegitimate” children, but all of their names have been restricted for privacy.

As he grew up, Gaskins was small for his age, and school bullies quickly started to call him “Pee Wee”, a nickname which caught on, but he absolutely hated. To put it into perspective, when Gaskins was finished growing, he was around 5ft 4in and weighed about 130 lbs.

His height could come from genetics, or it could be from the fact his mother was awfully neglectful of all the children. It is likely from a mixture of both. The neglect was reported to be so severe that Gaskins didn’t know his government name — Donald — until his first appearance in court at around 13.

To add to the neglect, Gaskins was also abused by an unnamed male relative.

The most notable event in Gaskins’s early life was when he was one and drank a bottle of kerosene or lamp oil. It caused him to have convulsions until he was three years old. All of this could have caused long-lasting effects on Gaskins.

Gaskins would be described from a young age as a “great” manipulator and con artist who was street-smart with “a keen sense of humour and a friendly, entertaining personality.”.

He began a ‘career’ in crime at a young age, joining a group of other adolescent kids to rob, assault and even rape people. At age 13, Gaskins received his first conviction for the assault of a young woman; he hit her on the head with an axe when she caught the gang breaking into her family home.

Gaskins was sentenced to five years at a reform school in Florence, South Carolina. While inside, the other boys would regularly rape him, and the staff were likely abusive. That is only an assumption, as it was prevalent in reform schools at the time.

It isn’t clear when or how, but at some point during the five years, Gaskins escaped the school, got married and voluntarily returned to finish his sentence. He would officially be released in 1951 at age 18.

Following his release, Gaskins worked on a tobacco plantation until he was re-arrested in 1953. He had attacked a teenage girl with a hammer after she allegedly insulted him. Gaskins was sentenced to six years at South Carolina Penitentiary.

Whilst inside the penitentiary, Gaskins would gain the respect of fellow inmates after killing the most feared man inside, Hazel Brazell. He claimed that the actions were done in self-defence which earned him an extra three years in jail for involuntary manslaughter.

Once again, Gaskins managed to escape imprisonment in 1955. He hid in the back of a garbage truck and fled to Florida, where he would continue running from the police through his work as he joined a travelling carnival. He would eventually be re-arrested and remanded to custody, getting paroled in August 1961.

After his release, Gaskins returned to the same crimes he committed at 13. It would lead to his third arrest after he raped a 12-year-old girl. He would try to avoid sentencing by fleeing to Georgia, but he would quickly get caught and sentenced to 8 years. He would be given parole once again in November of 1968.

This time he’d go back to working a legal job with a roofing company in Sumter, South Carolina. It would only last for a few years before Gaskins first claimed murder victims would occur.

Before getting into the confirmed victims of Donald Gaskins, we have to talk about the “Coastal Kills”. These are the primarily unnamed 80 to 90 people that Gaskins claimed to have killed throughout the years.

In some accounts, Gaskins claimed that he would go “hunting” for new victims every six weeks, but in others, he claimed he would seek out a new victim by the 10th of every calendar month.

Gaskins would say that the victims were both male and female hitchhikers; these victims he claimed to try and keep alive for as long as possible to inflict as much torture as he could. He would use multiple methods to murder the victim once he was “finished” with them. As far as I could find, Gaskins never said how he disposed of all his alleged victims aside from the first, whom he put in a swamp, and apparently, he cannibalized some of the others.

Gaskins claimed these killings started in September 1969 with a blonde female hitchhiker. This is the woman he apparently dumped in a swamp. She has never been identified, confirmed or found.

Three of his other “coastal kills” were of African American couple Eddie and Bertier Brown and of a 40-year-old called Horace Jones. Barely any details were given by Gaskins, and police again have not found these three potential victims.

Not much is known about the following confirmed victims, even down to the method of their deaths. Most of what is “known” comes from a biased point of view.

The first victims were on November 10th 1970; Gaskins’s niece Janice Faye Kirby (15) and her close friend Patricia Ann Alsbrook (17). Very little is known about either girl or their cases, which will be an infuriating theme throughout this whole case.

Two main theories get passed around about these murders.

Gaskins claimed that Janice and Patricia had run away together, and he found them intoxicated; some reports say on drugs, and others say alcohol. The underaged or illegal intoxication enraged Gaskins, and he beat Janice to death with his hands. Patricia died because she witnessed the murder.

He said he buried Janice in Prospect, which is near where she was found. Patricia was put inside a septic tank and then buried in Sumter, which is also where she was found.

The second, and to me more believable, theory is Janice and Patricia were hanging out together; Janice was drunk when Gaskins found them. Gaskins tried to rape the pair but failed for unspecified reasons. In a rage, he hit them both with the butt of a gun on their heads.

Janice was buried next to his house in Sumter; bodies were found there, but not Janice. Patricia was put into the house’s septic tank.

A mixture of both theories is likely the truth of the night, but as we only have a biased point of view, we are left to speculate.

Janice Kirby

Patricia Alsbrook

The next confirmed victim wasn’t until March 1971.

Martha “Clyde” Dicks (20) was described by their sister as a “lesbian that occasionally dated men”, dressed in men’s clothing, and preferred to be called Clyde. Some sources said they were trans and bisexual, but as Clyde is no longer with us, those facts about their identity will be lost to time.

Gaskins gave two reasons as to why he killed Clyde.

One. Gaskins said Clyde had partaken in a threesome with him and his wife. Clyde supposedly told Gaskins that they were pregnant with his child which.

Two. Gaskins said that Clyde was the drug dealer that supplied Janice and Patricia.

Either way, Gaskins claimed he poisoned Clyde, leading to their death. Once again, he never confirmed how he administered the poison. He had said that he laced their soft drink with photography acid, and in another story, he claimed to have forced them to swallow an entire pill bottle.

In June 1973, Gaskins murdered his supposed friend of a few years, Doreen Hope Dempsey (22), her daughter Robin Michelle (2), and her unborn baby. Again minimal is known about either of the deceased, and Gaskins gave different reasons for killing them.

First, he said that he was enraged that Doreen was pregnant by an African American man again. Robin was murdered for being mixed race. His defence argued this in court due to his “interactions with inmates” at Central Correctional Institute.

Second, Gaskins said that he killed them as he had no room in his and his wife’s home for them to live with. Doreen and Robin were living with Gaskins’s friend Johnny Sellers when they dropped them off outside Gaskins’s home.

Third, Gaskins set out to assault Robin but knew that inside prison, he wouldn’t have survived as a child predator.

It mostly documented that Doreen drowned in a pond on Gaskins’s property and Robin in a puddle nearby. Both were buried somewhere near the house.

In 1974, the friends Doreen and Robin lived with became Gaskins’ next victims. Johnny Sellers (36) and his ex-girlfriend Jessie Judy (22) were killed by Gaskins in an attempt to protect himself from someone being able to turn him into the police and from having to pay up the money he owed.

Sellers and Gaskins had robbed a house and stole a boat together, Gaskins selling everything they took before splitting the money with Sellers. With the promise of handing over the money, Gaskins lured Sellers out to Alligator Landing.

Gaskins shot Sellers in the back of the head with a rifle before luring Jessie out to the same area. He then stabbed her to death. Both were buried in Prospect.

I was sadly unable to find any pictures of Johnny and Jessie.

In 1975 Gaskins had six confirmed victims; all but one were done because Gaskins feared getting rightfully arrested for his crimes.

The first of these six murders was in February, and it was the one crime that wouldn’t have happened without the influence of Suzanne and John Owens. The married couple hired Gaskins to kill Suzanne’s ex-boyfriend Silas Barnwell Yates (45) for no other reason than he’s the ex.

It’s unclear what happened, but the most documented series of events are Silas was lured from his home by a woman, where Gaskins stabbed and cut his throat with a butcher’s knife. Gaskins then buried Silas in a grave he had dug before Silas had left his home.

There are contradicting points of the story throughout various sources. Some say that Gaskins dragged Silas out of his home rather than him getting lured out. Some say that Suzanne was there as a witness to the crime, while the rest disagree.

Gaskins also put the method he used to kill Silas in question by claiming to have strangled him, and then he karate-chopped him in the throat. This has been largely disproven as Silas’s body was recovered with a fatal laceration across his throat, forensically proven to have been done with a butcher’s knife.

In April, Gaskins targeted Diane Bellamy Neely (25) and her partner Avery Leroy Howard Jr. (34). It’s rumoured that Diane was the woman that lured Silas from his home and that Avery knew about some, if not all, of what took place that night in February. If Diane was the woman that led Silas to his death, Gaskins knew her through one of his close friends who was married to Diane. At the time of her death, the couple were separated.

Gaskins initially claimed he didn’t murder Avery or Diane; he said he left an armed but unnamed friend alone with the couple. This friend repeatedly stabbed them before Gaskins returned to the room. He then shot them both in the head for “good measure”. He later claimed that he shot and stabbed Diane and stabbed Avery before burying them both in Prospect.

Without meaning to sound like a broken record, Gaskins once again gave multiple reasons he killed Diane and Avery. He claimed that Diane was threatening to turn him in for statutory rape; it isn’t stated who the victim was.

He also said that Avery had convinced Diane to blackmail him for $5000 after she helped in Silas’s murder.

The third reason was that they knew too much about Gaskins’ criminal activities.

In any three, Diane and Avery died because Gaskins were terrified of the information that they held.

I was sadly unable to find any pictures of Avery.

The following confirmed murder doesn’t have a date or even month when it occurred; I can only say it happened between April and October. I believe it was during the summer months as Gaskins took the victim on a trip with his family to a cabin.

Kim Ghelkins (13) was repeatedly raped by Gaskins and a group of his friends not long before her death. Gaskins had groomed her and her family to the point that Kim’s family let her go on a vacation with Gaskins and his wife.

When it was time for Kim to return home, Gaskins walked her to a bus stop alone. Whilst on the deserted road, Gaskins stabbed and beat her to death before burying her near Silas.

October 10th, Gaskins’s final two victims from 1975 were Dennis Bellamy (27) and John Henry Knight (15). The pair of brothers were also Diane Neely’s brothers.

One theory as to why Gaskins decided to kill the brothers was after their sister was murdered, Dennis would spend much of his time getting drunk; while intoxicated, he would cause trouble outside of Gaskins’s house. The worst was when Dennis started a fight outside the house when Gaskins decided that killing him was the only solution to the easily resolvable problem.

Some say that Gaskins and Dennies stole some cars while Gaskins hid from suspicions in Kim’s case. They sold the car parts and split the money. In this theory, John only died because he went with Dennis to Gaskins’s house to collect the money.

The third and final theory was that Gaskins had promised to buy some stolen guns from Dennis, hiding them in the woods behind Gaskins’s house before the money transaction occurred. When Gaskins refused to pay up, Dennis went to confront him. Gaskins offered to return the guns to Dennis, luring him to the woodland spot while his younger brother remained at the house.

Regardless of the theory, Gaskins still lured Bellamy and John separately to a spot close to his home. He shot them both in the back of their heads before burying them.

I was sadly unable to locate a picture of either Bellamy or John.

November 14th 1975, was meant to be the end of Donald Gaskins’s murderous reign.

The police had arrested a criminal associate named Walter Neely. He told them all his knowledge of the murders of Dennis Bellamy and John Knight. He confessed that Gaskins had confided in him that he killed several people that were listed as missing over the past five years. Neely gave the same vague description of where they were buried as Gaskins had given him.

December 4th 1975, was the day that Neely walked the police to Gaskins’s front door, pointing out where eight of Gaskins’s victims were buried.

That day in November didn’t put an end to Gaskins because, in 1982, he committed one last murder. Someone outside of the prison hired him to murder a fellow inmate.

Rudolph Tyner (23) was on death row for the double murder of Bill and Myrtle Moon on March 18th 1978. They were survived by their son Tony Cimo. He thought the legal process was taking far too long and hired Gaskins for $2000 to speed things up.

Gaskins asked Cimo to send him a shoe with C4 implanted inside the shoe’s heel. Through this, Gaskins received a plastic explosive with a blasting cap, long wire and a radio speaker. He put everything together, making an imitation of an intercom speaker. Tyner put the speaker to his ear, and Gaskins detonated the bomb by plugging the wire into an outlet nearby.

Cimo would serve eight years for his role in the murder.

September 6th 1991, at 1:10 am, the world was rid of Donald ‘Pee Wee’ Gaskins through the use of an electric chair after he failed to commit suicide.