🩸 Pee Wee Gaskins: The Most Notorious Serial Killer in South Carolina History
- History, Haunts, & Hahas!
- Jan 31
- 4 min read
Donald Henry “Pee Wee” Gaskins Jr. — known as Pee Wee due to his small stature — is widely regarded as one of the most infamous serial killers in American history and the most notorious in South Carolina. Born and raised in rural South Carolina, his long criminal career spanned decades and encompassed murder, sexual violence, and shocking acts of brutality both outside and inside prison walls.
👶 Early Life and Origins of “Pee Wee”
Donald Henry Parrott Jr. was born on March 13, 1933, in Florence County, South Carolina, and grew up in extreme poverty and neglect. He was the youngest of several children born out of wedlock, and his small size — barely over five feet tall as an adult — earned him the nickname Pee Wee early in life.
His childhood was marked by neglect, abuse, and early encounters with crime. He committed burglaries and other violent offenses as a juvenile, landing in reform school and prison repeatedly.
🧟♂️ Criminal Escalation and Confirmed Killings
Gaskins’s path from petty crime to serial murder evolved over the 1950s and 1960s. After multiple prison sentences for burglary, assault, and statutory rape, he began killing regularly around 1970. His first documented murders included the beating deaths of his 15‑year‑old niece, Janice Kirby, and her friend Patricia Ann Alsbrook.
Police later discovered bodies buried on or near his property in Prospect, South Carolina, including several of his acquaintances. Eight victim remains uncovered by law enforcement in the mid‑1970s were linked to Gaskins during his first murder prosecution.
Gaskins was known to use multiple methods of killing, including stabbing, shooting, drowning, and poison — and sometimes used his victims’ trust to lure them to their deaths.
📊 Confessions and Claims
While Gaskins claimed he had killed up to 110 people, investigators only confirmed about fifteen homicides attributable to him with documentation during his lifetime.
💣 Murder Inside Prison: The Tyner Killing
Unusually among U.S. serial killers, Gaskins committed a murder while on death row. In 1982, he killed fellow inmate Rudolph Tyner by rigging a C‑4 explosive device disguised as a walkie‑talkie, which detonated when Tyner activated it after a staged promise of communication.
This execution‑style killing combined ingenuity and callousness and led to Gaskins being sentenced to death a second time — making him the only white man in South Carolina in the 20th century executed for killing a Black inmate.
📅 Legal Proceedings, Sentences, and Execution
Gaskins’s criminal exposure peaked in the mid‑1970s when an associate led police to buried bodies near his Prospect property. He was first convicted in 1976, but that death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment after South Carolina revised its capital punishment statutes.
After the Tyner murder, Gaskins was tried and convicted in 1983, earning a second death sentence. He was executed by electric chair at the Broad River Correctional Institution in South Carolina on September 6, 1991. His last words were reported as, “I’ll let my lawyers talk for me. I’m ready to go.”
🧠 Motives, Modus Operandi, and Personality
Gaskins did not fit the typical profile of serial killers who target strangers exclusively; he killed both acquaintances and strangers, including friends, family members, and hitchhikers.
He claimed his motives included punishment or “moral codes,” rarely showing remorse and rationalizing his violence even on death row. His crimes around South Carolina earned him labels like the “Meanest Man in America” and comparisons to Charles Manson in terms of notoriety.
Some investigators and prosecutors — including Richard “Dick” Harpootlian, who later wrote about the case — noted that Gaskins blended charisma and brutality, making him terrifyingly effective at gaining victims’ trust before killing them.
📍 Geography of Gaskins’s Crimes
Though his home base was in Prospect, SC (Florence County), Gaskins committed murders across a swath of rural South Carolina, including areas near Sumter and North Charleston during his criminal spree.
Local reports later connected him with “coastal kills” — attacks on hitchhikers along major roadways — though many of these claims remain unconfirmed criminally.
⚰️ Post‑Execution Discoveries and Legacy
Even decades after his execution, Gaskins’s crimes continue to surface in unexpected ways. In 2025, remains of one of his known victims — **Martha Ann Dicks (aka “Clyde”), murdered in the early 1970s — were rediscovered in storage at the College of Charleston before being properly identified and returned to family.
These discoveries illustrate how Gaskins’s violent footprint and the unresolved grief of victims’ families persist long after his death.
📚 Cultural Depictions and True Crime Interest
Gaskins’s story has inspired books and documentaries. Dig Me a Grave, an upcoming book co‑authored by attorney Dick Harpootlian and New York Times bestseller Shaun Assael, promises a prosecutor’s perspective on tracking and convicting Gaskins.
Earlier works and memoirs also delve into his life, criminal psychology, and chilling views from prison — though many posthumous accounts contain anecdotes that are debated by scholars and investigators.
🗝️ Why “Pee Wee” Still Haunts South Carolina
Gaskins’s notoriety stems from the breadth, brutality, and randomness of his crimes — from murdering family members to explosive prison homicide — and his continued presence in true crime literature and public memory.
At his death, he represented a convergence of violent opportunism, social neglect, personal pathology, and criminal ingenuity that serialized killers are seldom able to combine so completely. His legacy remains a grim touchstone in American true crime history.
📚 Citations
Donald Henry “Pee Wee” Gaskins biography and criminal history — South Carolina Encyclopedia.
Encyclopedia profile; confirmed murders, execution and criminal timeline — Wikipedia.
Regional and psychological accounts; attorney Dick Harpootlian book context — SC attorney Dick Harpootlian book release coverage.
Prosecutor Richard Harpootlian event and characterization of Pee Wee — Charleston Library Society event description.
Rediscovered victim remains and local forensic reporting — MyLoLowcountry coverage of bones found at College of Charleston.
Autobiographical and contextual materials on Pee Wee Gaskins crimes — Final Truth: The Autobiography of a Serial Killer.
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