When Gaskins’s body shop was robbed, he killed the two men responsible and, once again, enlisted the help of Walter Neely to dispose of the bodies. While at the burial location, Gaskins showed Neeley the spots of the other graves of his victims.

Meanwhile, the police had independently linked Gaskins to the murder of Ghelkins. They eventually found some of the young girl’s clothes in Gaskins’s home. He was arrested, and Walter Neely cracked under pressure from the police during an interrogation. He told them where all of Gaskins’s victims were buried. The Redneck Charles Manson was finally caught.

After the police found eight bodies in Gaskins’s makeshift gravesite, he was charged with murder. He was found guilty of the murder of one of his blackmail victims, Dennis Bellamy, and he subsequently admitted to killing seven others. He was sentenced to death.

It is widely believed that Gaskins killed far more than eight people; he at one point bragged about the number being over 100, which would have made him South Carolina’s most prolific serial killer.

Related: Inside the Crimes and Mind of the Baton Rouge Serial Killer

After death penalty sentencing was changed by a Supreme Court case, Gaskins’s death sentence was mitigated to life imprisonment. However, two years later, South Carolina legalized the death penalty once again. If Gaskins had committed no further crimes, he would have simply remained in jail until his natural final day.

However, in 1982, Gaskins killed another prisoner, Rudolph Tyner, by blowing him up. Tyner was in prison for killing two people. A son of one of the victims, frustrated that Tyner would remain on death row possibly for years, paid Gaskins to expedite Tyner’s death sentence. Gaskins constructed a bomb and snuck it through Tyner’s cell. After Gaskins was convicted, he was sentenced to death for the second and final time.

Gaskins spent his final months telling writer Wilton Earle stories about his life, which were eventually turned into a memoir, Final Truth. In the memoir, he alleges that he killed dozens more, but none of the claims could be substantiated.

Before he was electrocuted, Gaskins cut his wrists with razor blades that he had previously swallowed. Some believed that it was an attempt to derail the day of his execution, while others thought that he was trying to end his life on his own terms.

We may never know the true extent of Donald Henry “Pee Wee” Gaskins, the “Hitchhiker Killer”, but his gruesome murders mark him as one history’s most dangerous serial killers.

Donald Henry Gaskins: The "Pee Wee" Killer

Get our eeriest tales and best book deals delivered straight to your inbox.

Follow Us

More from

Corporate

© 2021 OPEN ROAD MEDIA