Donald Henry "Pee Wee" Gaskins Jr. (born Donald Henry Parrott Jr.; March 13, 1933 – September 6, 1991) was an American serial killer and rapist from South Carolina who stabbed, shot, drowned, and poisoned more than a dozen people. Before his convictions for murder, Gaskins had a long history of criminal activities resulting in prison sentences for assault, burglary, and statutory rape. His last arrest was for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, 13-year-old Kim Ghelkins, who had gone missing in September 1975. During their search for the missing girl, police discovered eight bodies buried in shallow graves near Gaskins's home in Prospect, South Carolina.
In May 1976, a Florence County jury took only 47 minutes before finding Gaskins guilty for the murder of one of the eight victims, Dennis Bellamy, and sentenced him to death by the electric chair. That death sentence was overturned by the South Carolina Supreme Court in February 1978, and rather than face a new trial, Gaskins pled guilty to the murders of Bellamy and eight other friends and associates. He was given 10 concurrent life sentences, to be served at Central Correctional Institution (CCI) prison in Columbia, South Carolina.
While at CCI, Gaskins brutally murdered Rudolph Tyner, a fellow inmate on death row, using C4 explosive. After his conviction for killing Tyner, he received his second death sentence, which was administered in September 1991. Just before his execution Gaskins said he killed 110 people but, with few exceptions, these statements have been discredited by law enforcement and journalists who allege this was his attempt to gain notoriety. In his sworn testimony as part of a plea agreement to avoid trial for the murder of John Henry Knight, Gaskins was confirmed to have killed thirteen people between 1970 and 1975. Of the fifteen people total that he murdered during his lifetime, ten were under age 25 and six were teenagers.
Early life
Donald Henry Gaskins was born in Florence County, South Carolina, to Eulea Parrott, the last in a string of illegitimate children. Gaskins was small for his age and immediately gained the nickname "Pee Wee." As an adult, he was between and and weighed approximately .
Gaskins's early life was characterized by a great deal of neglect from his mother and abuse by a male relative. His mother apparently took so little interest in him that the first time he learned his given name—Donald—was when it was read out in his first court appearance. Gaskins was often described as a great manipulator and con artist who was "street smart", and with "a keen sense of humor and a friendly, entertaining personality."
When he was one year old, Gaskins reportedly drank a bottle of kerosene which caused him to have convulsions until he was aged 3. In adolescence, Gaskins engaged in a violent crime spree with a group of fellow delinquents which included burglaries, assaults, and a gang rape. At age 13, Gaskins was convicted for assaulting a young woman by hitting her in the head with an axe when she caught him breaking into her family home. He was sentenced to five years in a reform school, the South Carolina Industrial School for White Boys in Florence, where he was regularly raped by his fellow inmates.
After escaping from the reform school, getting married and voluntarily returning to complete his sentence, Gaskins was released in 1951 at the age of 18. He briefly worked on a tobacco plantation until he was arrested in 1953 for attacking a teenage girl with a hammer over an alleged insult. He was sentenced to six years' imprisonment at the South Carolina Penitentiary. There, Gaskins earned his fellow inmates' respect by killing the most feared man in the prison, Hazel Brazell, in what Gaskins claimed was self-defense. As a result, Gaskins received an extra three years in prison for involuntary manslaughter, but from that point on he became the aggressor instead of the victim. He escaped from prison in 1955 by hiding in the back of a garbage truck and fled to Florida, where he took employment with a traveling carnival. He was re-arrested, remanded to custody, and paroled in August 1961.
Following his release from prison, Gaskins reverted to committing burglaries and fencing stolen property. Two years after his parole, he was arrested for the rape of a twelve-year-old girl, but absconded while awaiting sentence. Gaskins was rearrested in Georgia and sentenced to eight years of imprisonment. He was paroled again in November 1968. Upon his release, Gaskins moved to the town of Sumter, South Carolina, and began work with a roofing company.