Donald Henry "Pee Wee" Gaskins Jr. (born Donald Henry Parrott Jr.; March 1933 – 6 September 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 Gehlken, who had gone missing in September 1975. During their search for the missing girl, police discovered eight bodies buried in shallow graves near Gaskins' home in Prospect, South Carolina.
Background[]
Donald Henry Gaskins was born in Florence County, South Carolina, to Eulea Parrott. He was the last in a string of Parrott's illegitimate children. Gaskins was small for his age and immediately gained the nickname "Pee Wee." As an adult, he was between 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m) and 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m) and weighed approximately 130 lb (59 kg).
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 had "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 age 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 of 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.
Traveling the highways of the south, Gaskins took to repeating this pattern with multiple hitchhikers, both male and female. He said he stabbed, strangled, suffocated, and shot his victims, then mutilated and even cannibalized some. He regularly castrated the males, too. Gaskins called these slayings his “coastal kills” and, in time, he said he murdered “80 or 90” people in this manner.
Gaskins was executed on September 6, 1991, at 1:10 a.m. in the electric chair, hours after he had tried to kill himself by slitting his wrists. His last words were: "I'll let my lawyers talk for me. I'm ready to go."