Standing barely over five feet tall and weighing around 130 pounds, Donald Henry “Pee Wee” Gaskins looked nothing like the monster he was. Nicknamed for his small stature, the South Carolina native became one of the state’s most prolific and sadistic serial killers—known in some circles as the “Meanest Man in America” or the “Redneck Charles Manson.”
From the late 1960s into the mid-1970s, Gaskins distinguished between what he called his “coastal kills” (random hitchhikers and strangers he tortured for pleasure) and his “serious murders” (people he knew: friends, associates, and even family). Among the confirmed victims were his own 15-year-old niece, Janice Kirby, and her 17-year-old friend Patricia Ann Alsbrook, whom he beat to death. He also murdered pregnant Doreen Dempsey and her two-year-old daughter, among others whose bodies were later found buried in shallow graves near his property in Prospect, South Carolina.
Timestamps:
01:38 South Carolina’s Pee Wee Gaskins
05:36 Prison, Parole, and Early Killings
09:37 The Confirmed Victims Begin
19:05 Murders for Money and Silence
21:56 Kim Lyons and the Killings That Followed
26:13 The Graveyard and Gaskins’ Capture
28:28 Prison Murder Plot
33:59 Execution and Final Words