Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Meanest Man in America” Pt. 1: Donald Henry Gaskins

Episode Date: May 4, 2020

Between 1953 and 1982, Donald Henry “Pee Wee” Gaskins murdered at least 14 people, and claimed to have killed over 100. Gaskins began his crime spree early, and went from a young burglar and car thief in South Carolina to one of the most brutal serial murderers in U.S. history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort, which includes gas, bloating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes disqualification. discussions of violence, sexual assault, and murder that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Donald Pee-Wee Gaskins kept his head down as he swabbed the jailhouse kitchen with a mop.

He'd been on the inside for years, and by 1955, the 22-year-old knew what happened when inmates called attention to themselves. Especially ones as scrawny as him. So for weeks he'd kept to himself, steering clear of his fellow prisoners, and today was no different. He avoided eye contact as he mopped, focusing on a small puddle of mush oozing in a corner. But when he turned around to pick up his bucket, Gaskins slipped in the puddle and fell to the floor. The other inmates erupted in laughter, hooting and gasping like it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen in their lives. Gaskins felt himself flush, bright red, his heart pounding in his chest.

He breathed deep to keep himself from lunging at the guy closest to him. When the laughter died down, Gaskins went back to his mopping without saying a word. But as he passed the prep station, the glint of a small pairing knife on the counter caught his eye. Maybe there was something a man like him could do to get some respect, even from convicts twice his size. Maybe it was finally time to shut them all up for good. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson.

This is serial killers, a podcast original. Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today we're exploring the gruesome crimes of Donald Henry Gaskins, also known as the meanest man in America. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Parcast originals for free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. To stream serial killers for free on Spotify, just open the app and type Serial Killers in the search bar. At Parcast, we're grateful for you, our listeners. You allow us to do what we love. Let us know how we're doing.

Reach out on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. murdered at least 14 people between 1953 and 1982. Though he claimed that number actually stretched to over 100, this week we'll discuss Gaskin's troubled early life and how he went from a burglar and car thief to a brutal, serial murderer. Next episode, we'll take a morbid tour through the height of Gaskin's killing spree

and discuss the grisly prison murder that landed him on death row. Donald Henry Gaskins seemed cursed from birth. When he was only a year old, he reportedly drank from a bottle of kerosene in his mother's garage and began violently convulsing. The seizures didn't stop for two years, continuing periodically until 1936. According to Gaskins, his mother was indifferent to his condition. In later years, he characterized her as uncaring and neglectful. Though this may be true, it's important to note that most of the information we have about Gaskin's early life is from Gaskins himself,

specifically from an account he gave journalist Wilton Earl while on death row. Considering his history of violence and penchant for lying, it's likely that his story contained exaggerations, if not outright, fabrications. But one detail we do know for sure is that Gaskin's mother called him pee-wee from the time he was born. He was always smaller than the other boys in the South Carolina town where he grew up, and was frequently bullied for his size, even at home. Gaskins claimed that he was regularly beaten by a slew of his mother's boyfriends. The situation only got worse once he started elementary school, when his mother married Hin and Hannah.

Gaskins claimed that Hannah physically abused him constantly, just for the fun of it. It's likely that Gaskins felt helpless to stop the, this intense abuse. It may have driven him to seek out power in other ways. Gaskins adopted a new aggressive personality and joined forces with his best and only friends, Danny and Marsh. He found that a violent reputation provided him the best protection from bullies. And when Gaskins dropped out of school at age 11, the three boys began committing a string of burglaries and assaults together. They called themselves the Trouble Trio. With Danny and Marsh, he was a by his side, Gaskins felt invincible. The gang stole whatever they wanted and broke into as many

homes as they could. They even got help selling their ill-gotten gains from Danny's father, who encouraged their criminal activity. But Gaskins wasn't committing crimes solely for a tough reputation, or even just to make money. He simply loved violence and even found it sexually gratifying. One of Gaskins' strongest early memories was of going to the carnival with his mother, when he was young. There he stopped by the cage of a king cobra, which the carnival barker excitedly told him was the most dangerous beast on earth. As Gaskins watched, the barker dropped a rat in the cage and the cobra paralyzed his prey with a single bite. But then instead of eating it, the cobra simply turned and laid back down. Gaskins later said that watching the cobra kill just for the fun of it,

sexually aroused him, and the young boy had to clench his legs together to hide his embarrassment. Vanessa's going to take over in the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. Though it's possible Gaskins embellished this story and the years after it occurred, there's no doubt that violence and sexual gratification were inextricably linked for him, based on his later actions. In an interview, criminologist and professor David Wilson

described Gaskins as a cunning predator, who's quite clearly also a sexual sadist. But the fact that he began experiencing these desires so early may have primed him for the violent crimes he committed much later in life. A paper published in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling found that juvenile offenders with sexual sadism had a higher rate of recidivism than offenders without symptoms of sadism. In Gaskins' case, his sexual urges turned violent very young.

He claimed that all three members of the troubled trio had their first experiences with sex workers soon after they formed the gang when Gaskins was just 11. And two years later, when he was 13, Gaskins, Danny, and Marsh, raped Marsh's 13-year-old sister. After the attack, the traumatized girl ran straight. to her parents. And according to Gaskins, Marsh's mother was furious. She immediately contacted Gaskin's mother and stepfather to thoroughly punish the three boys.

Danny's father stepped in to protect his son from the other parents. But Gaskins and Marsh didn't have such luck. Instead, the adults dragged the two boys to a barn, where they stripped them and strung them upside down from a beam. Then, using belts and switches, they beat Gaskins and Marsh bloody, almost to death. When it was over, the adults cut the rope, and Gaskins and Marsh hit the ground hard. Unable to move, the two boys stayed there for hours until they finally managed to stand up. Convinced that his mother might kill him, Marsh ran away from home.

He was reportedly helped by Danny's father, who took both Danny and his mother. in Marsh and Skip Town. He apparently worried that news of the girl's rape would get out and lead to legal trouble. Gaskins, on the other hand, remained in South Carolina and continued his thieving all alone. But it wasn't long before he made another mistake. One afternoon, thinking a house was unoccupied, he attempted to break in through the back door. But when he stepped inside, he found a girl standing in the parlor. When he tried to run, she chased him with a house.

hatchet. A struggle ensued, and Gaskins ended up knocking her unconscious with the blunt end of the hatchet. Less than an hour later, he was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. The subsequent trial did not go his way. The judge could hardly believe Gaskins, at only 13 years old, had so brutally beaten the young girl. As punishment, he sentenced Gaskins to serve time at a nearby reform school until he turned 18. The Reform School essentially acted as a juvenile detention center. By day, he sometimes attended trade classes, like metalworking or woodshop, but mostly he was forced to dig trenches and do other forms of hard labor.

But by night, things were much worse. Gaskins claimed he was severely sexually abused for years at the school. He only ever grew to be five foot two, and because of his small stature, the larger boys easily took advantage of him. The abuse led him to escape several times, though his tastes of freedom were always brief. But on one of these jaunts in 1950, when he was 17, Gaskins managed to hide out for a few weeks with a sympathetic uncle of someone he knew from the Reform School. There, he met a 13-year-old girl named Mary.

Gaskins thought Mary was beautiful and immediately fell in love with her. He begged her to marry him, and she actually accepted. but only on the condition that he returned to the reform school to finish his sentence. He reluctantly agreed, but turning himself back in meant being punished for his escape. And so Gaskins spent the final few months of his sentence in solitary confinement, living for the single hour every Sunday when he got to see Mary. After he was released, 18-year-old Gaskins and 14-year-old Mary moved to Georgetown. a small municipality near the coast of South Carolina.

The young couple didn't have many options for their future life, and things looked even worse once Mary learned she was pregnant. Gaskins searched high and low for a job and finally found work at a tobacco farm thanks to another boy he knew from Reform School. But after a few weeks, Gaskins learned there was more to the job than met the eye. His friend from Reform School started whisking him away to nearby tobacco farms in the middle of the night.

Once there, they would quietly remove the harvested crop from the barns, then set the whole structure ablaze. As Gaskin's friend explained, the farmers paid him to burn down their barns in order to collect on the insurance. The payout included a premium for the tobacco, which was supposedly stored inside. But because Gaskins and his friend salvaged the crop before setting the fires, the farmer got paid for the same tobacco twice. Gaskins had no qualms with the scheme,

and the money was great. But just after his daughter was born in April of 1952, 19-year-old Gaskins got himself in far more trouble than just insurance fraud. One morning, according to Gaskins, while he was working in the barn, two of his boss's daughters came by to harass him. The girls mocked him for being short

and said their father was planning to turn him into police for their recent barn burnings. Gaskins couldn't take it. All his life he'd been called puny, and now these girls were rubbing it in his face while threatening to ruin his best source of income. He snapped. Gaskins grabbed a ball-pean hammer

and smashed it into one of the girl's skulls. She crumpled to the dirt. Well, the second girl ran off screaming, but he didn't bother chasing her. Instead, he'd jumped in a pickup and drove off, leaving his wife and infant child in a cloud of dust. Up next, Gaskins becomes a fugitive. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor about Zepbound,

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He didn't get far. After hiding out for a few days, he was arrested in the next town over. Luckily for him, the girly attack survived with a fractured skull. Though the judge didn't exactly go easy on Gaskins. He was sentenced to six years in prison for the assault. His 15-year-old wife, Mary, tried to comfort him with him. visits from his new infant daughter and home-cooked biscuits. But Gaskins felt lower than ever. Prison was even more violent than reform school.

And thanks to his size, Gaskins was once again treated like a dog. After six months of abuse, Gaskins decided he'd had enough. He realized that the only way he could stop the other inmates from targeting him was to command respect, just like he'd done in his days with the trouble trio. And since he wasn't ever going to be able to hold his own against these men twice his size, he knew he'd have to get the drop on someone instead. To that end, he hatched a plan to get rid of the toughest guy in jail, Hazel Brazel. But because Brazil was always surrounded by a crew of other inmates who acted as his guards,

it was no easy task. Gaskins sucked up to Brazil for weeks before he finally managed to get past his goons. Then one day, when Brazil was in his cell, Gaskins took his shot. He waited until Brazil was on the toilet, then slit his throat with a knife he'd stolen from the kitchen. Afterward, he sat calmly on Brazil's cot until the guards came to get him. As it turned out, the bloody plan worked even better than Gaskins had hoped. Not only did the other inmates stop abusing him, but he only got three additional years, added to his sentence for the murder.

As Gaskins later wrote, When our lawyers arrived, they all agreed that if anybody in the South Carolina state penitentiary needed killing, it was Brazil. But though Gaskins had done what he had to do to survive on the inside, it dashed his hopes of happiness outside of prison.

His wife, Mary, was disgusted by his actions. After sacrificing so much for Gaskins, she couldn't believe that he'd earned himself even more time behind bars. She'd had enough. In 1955, she filed for divorce. The breakup tore Gaskins apart. Mary had been the only one to stick by him

during the previous few years and may have been the only woman he ever loved. As Gaskins sat in prison, staring at the dank walls of his cell, his every thought turned to Mary and their daughter. After weeks of agony, He decided that he needed to break out of the pen as soon as possible. He didn't plan on crawling back to Mary.

He knew she'd turn him in and sent him straight back to jail. But he couldn't stay idle in prison where he had nothing to do except pine for his family. Within a few weeks, Gaskins came up with a plan. Using his newfound influence as one of the so-called power men in jail, he organized a team to help smuggle him out. After a little bribery and a lot of threats, Gaskins convinced the inmates who loaded up the garbage trucks every week to stuff him in one of the cans. Then he had them place him on the back of the truck right before it left the penitentiary. Due to the god-awful stench, the guards didn't bother to check every single bin before the truck left.

And so, Gaskins was able to ride out the front gate undetected. Keeping watch through a small peephole punched in the side of the can. He waited until the truck reached the highway. Then, a few miles later, after the truck pulled off at an exit ramp, Gaskins burst out of the can and jumped into a ditch on the side of the road. Making his way through the underbrush, Gaskins managed to get back to his hometown a few hours later. There, he stole his cousin's car and drove to Florida, hoping to lay low. Soon afterward, he found work in a traveling carnival where he helped run the games.

But after just a few months, Gaskins claimed he ran off with a contortionist. The pair then went to a motel room in Cookville, Tennessee. As they pondered what to do next, the contortionist asked Gaskins to do her a favor and bring a pack of cigarettes to her brother in the nearby prison. She explained she'd go herself, but she had a warrant out for her arrest. Gaskins was also wanted by police, but eventually agreed. He hardly batted an eye when he met her brother and saw that he didn't look anything like his new lover. When he got back to the hotel, the contortionist was long gone, along with his car.

Not long afterward, a swarm of police raided the room and arrested Gaskins for abetting the escape of an inmate. As it turned out, the contortionist's brother was actually her husband. In the carton of cigarettes Gaskins delivered had a razor blade hidden inside. Her husband had used the blade to threaten a prison guard and escape. Once in custody, the police discovered 22-year-old Gaskin's previous record and realized that the man they'd just arrested for aiding an inmate's escape was an escaped prisoner himself. Gaskin's cover was officially blown, and in the winter of 1955, he was sent back to state prison to serve the remains. of his sentence, but this time under heavy security.

This meant that Gaskins had no chance of another escape, but the strict watch on his cell at all hours also meant he wasn't abused like he had been in other prisons. Not having to fend off constant harassment meant Gaskins was able to keep to himself and serve out his sentence with little incident, and six years later, in August of 1961, he was released. Now, 28 years old, Gaskins had spent most of his adult life in prison. Once back on the outside, he felt lost and aimless. After struggling to find steady work for a few months, he met a roaming preacher who

took pity on him. The preacher offered Gaskins a job assisting him with his traveling ministry. Gaskins eagerly accepted, but he wasn't ready to go straight quite yet. Instead, he immediately said about using the preacher as a cover to commit a string of break-ins wherever they went. That year, the good minister went to small towns across South Carolina and introduced Gaskins to everyone he knew. Unbeknownst to him, Gaskins was using this information to figure out who best to rob.

He primarily targeted beach houses and vacation homes, since they were likely to be empty. Once the preacher moved on from a town, Gaskins would travel back in the dead of night and clean out anywhere that seemed vacant. The next day, he'd show up to services and help collect donations. After a year on the road, in 1962, Gaskins met a 17-year-old girl named Jerry in one of the small towns. Employing his sleazy charm and a slew of false promises, he convinced her to marry him. Jerry occasionally traveled with Gaskins and the minister, but for the most part, she stayed with her parents. This left Gaskins free to continue his thieving, only telephoning or visiting his new wife every couple of weeks. As always, Gaskins took advantage of his freedom in the most horrifying way possible.

In 1963, he turned his sights toward the 12-year-old daughter of a family friend named Patsy. Gaskins later claimed he'd known Patsy all of her life. which hadn't been very long. She knew him as a friend of her parents and trusted him as an adult. And Gaskins took advantage of that trust. One day while visiting his hometown with the preacher, 30-year-old Gaskins went by Patsy's home for a visit.

When he found her in the house alone, he convinced her to let him inside and then raped her. But when Gaskins heard two of Patsy's aunts' pull into the driveway, he panicked. He grabbed the girl and took off through the back window. The ants called the police, and soon a slew of cops showed up outside Gaskin's mother's house. Gaskins made Patsy hide in an armoire and pretend to be napping when the authorities entered his room. Apparently, his act wasn't convincing.

Within moments, detectives found Patsy stashed in the armor and arrested Gaskins for statutory rape. Once again, Gaskins had thrown away his first. freedom to commit impulsive violence. His decision to rape Patsy seemed to come almost out of nowhere, and he never explained exactly why he'd attacked her. Though Gaskins was both a victim and sexual abuser in prison, there was no obvious trigger which drove him to suddenly prey on an innocent girl, and perhaps that was the whole point. As sickening and difficult as it may be to believe, it's possible Gaskins was motivated purely by boredom and dissatisfaction with the state of his life. Though his job with the preacher and his new marriage provided him with some stability,

it likely wasn't very exciting for him. His robberies had become routine, and he hardly saw his wife, except during the occasional weekend. He was looking for some kind of stimulation, and Patsy happened to be a convenient and vulnerable target. In his interviews with child sex abusers, sociologist Dr. Douglas Pryor examined the motivations behind their crimes. During his research, he found that several of his subjects had the same complaint. They reported feeling trapped and smothered in their lives before they began their attacks. Dr. Pryor writes, one offender reached what to him was an emotional low. He wanted some excitement in his life and apparently molesting children seemed to provide that for him.

Gaskins' perverse quest for excitement led him to commit more and more despicable acts with little concern for his victims or the law. But when the law did catch up with him, Gaskins was willing to go to any lengths to avoid punishment. A week after his arrest, when police took him to the courthouse to stand trial. They made a critical mistake. While in the waiting room, the officer's unshackled Gaskins for just a moment. As soon as he was free, he bolted and dove out an open window without looking down. He fell two stories before landing in a clump of tall hedges surrounding the building. He then sprinted to the parking lot, where Gaskins claimed he found a car with the key still in the ignition.

After stopping by his parents' home to grab some cash, Gaskins fled to North Carolina. He'd been hoping to find work there at a carnival he'd toured with years before. But they'd change their travel schedule, and Gaskins had no idea how to find them. Instead, he settled on renting a room at an out-of-the-way boarding house where he laid low for the next few months. He'd ditched the stolen car he was driving, and using the cash he'd taken from his parents' house, he bought a junker. Once he was sure the police weren't on his tail, Gaskins turned his mind to other matters, mainly his nagging loneliness. Gaskins was desperate for company, so after he arrived in North Carolina, he set about finding himself yet another wife. Two months later, Gaskins approached a 17-year-old girl named Lenny at a local hardware store.

He charmed the teenager, and the relationship escalated quickly, not long after they met. they were married. But 30-year-old Gaskins wasn't interested in true companionship. He'd only married Lenny to trick her into bed. And once he decided he was through with her just a few months later, he left town and drove on to Charlotte. There, he contacted his second wife, Jerry. After some convincing, Jerry agreed to meet Gaskins in Savannah, Georgia.

Two days later, the pair headed to Florida. For the first couple of days, they were like, newlyweds again. They talked, laughed, and enjoyed their time on the road together. But after only a few days, Jerry realized Gaskins had no job, no place to live, and no plans whatsoever. Most likely, Gaskins had lied to Jerry over the phone to convince her to meet him. When she found out the truth, she demanded to go home. Gaskins reluctantly agreed to take her back to Savannah. But it was a small act of decency that he'd soon. soon regret. On the way back to Georgia, a traffic cop tried to pull Gaskins over for speeding,

and he panicked. He knew if he pulled over he'd be sent back to prison. He also knew if he tried to flee and they caught up to him. It'd be even worse. But Gaskins was a betting man. So, he put the pedal to the floor. When we return, Gaskins tries to outrun the law. Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavah Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right.

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Now back to the story. In 1963, just as 30-year-old escaped convict Donald Gaskins sped past the floor Georgia state line. A police car pulled up behind him and flashed its lights. A wanted criminal, Gaskins knew he'd be arrested once he gave the officer his name. Instead, Gaskins floored it, weaving through the traffic on the highway as fast as his junker car could move. His wife, 18-year-old Jerry, screamed in the passenger seat. Gaskins ignored her and focused on driving. But nothing he did shook the traffic cop. As Gaskins, Gaskin's old car got up to 85 miles per hour. It started to rattle and shake.

He struggled to keep the wheel from rocking, but couldn't hold it for long. His left front tire blew out and Gaskins lost control. The car began fish-tailing and nearly tipped over. Gaskins turned the wheel hard and swerved off the road, straight into a swamp. Dazed from the crash, it took him a few moments to steady himself. But the adrenaline from the drive, Chase was still pumping and he wasn't ready to give up yet. In the rear view, he saw the police car pulled to the side of the road. Gaskins crawled out the window and slid into the murky water. The officers yelled to Jerry to put her hands up and walk back towards them. Then he army crawled away as fast as he could, away from the road.

Gaskins hoped the cops wouldn't pursue him through the swamp until backup arrived. After all, He wasn't looking forward to navigating the stinking, snake-infested water himself. With that in mind, he did his best to put distance between himself and the police before they started chasing him down. Luckily for Gaskins, the sun went down soon after the crash, making it easier for him to hide. He trudged through the mud until the sun rose the next morning, and he happened upon some railroad tracks running through the wetland. Following the tracks, Gaskins' fight.

finally found a patch of dry ground and laid down in the grass. By that point, he was so thirsty, he even drank some of the stinking swamp water. After a while, when still no train had come, Gaskin started walking again until he came upon a rail yard. He crept around until he found a train he hoped was going in the right direction and hopped on board. There, he curled up in the corner of a box car and fell asleep. When he woke up, the train was stopping at a station in Savannah, a lucky break. He slipped into town and bought some new clothes. Then he took a series of buses back to the boarding house where he'd been staying with his third wife, 17-year-old Lenny.

The owner of the house told Gaskins that she'd seen him on the news. Everyone, including Lenny, knew he'd run off with his previous wife, Jerry. Apparently, some reports claim that it even died running from the police when his car, crashed into the swamp. So Lenny, betrayed and distraught, had left the boarding house. For some incomprehensible reason, Gaskins thought that it would be a good idea to call Lenny. Perhaps he thought she'd be relieved that he was still alive, but she was less than pleased when he showed up on her doorstep. Gaskins spent close to an hour spinning a series of absurd lies in an attempt to win her back. He claimed that he'd been sick, and the VA hospital had only

called Jerry because her contact information was on his veteran's records. It's not clear why Lenny thought Gaskins was a military veteran, but that was his bogus explanation at the time. We also don't know how he explained away his car chase with the cops, but regardless, whatever he told Lenny, she didn't buy it. Instead, she pretended to forgive him in the moment, and the two spent the night together. But when Gaskins woke up the next morning, there were five police officers standing over his bed. She'd blown his cover. For the third time, Donald Gaskins was hauled off to jail.

And a few weeks later, the 31-year-old was finally convicted for raping 12-year-old Patsy. He was sentenced to eight years in prison, including two years for his latest escape. Gaskins, of course, was dreading prison. But when he was brought back to the South Carolina Penitentiary, He saw things had changed. The inmates in charge did things more quietly now, and the abuse was less prevalent than it had ever been before. Even so, the people with the toughest reputation still reigned supreme. And considering the length of Gaskins' rap sheet by that point, his position on the inside was more than comfortable.

When he considered his situation, Gaskins decided things could be a lot worse. He figured he had little chance of escaping again. of escaping again. And since he had a relatively cushy spot in the prison hierarchy, his best strategy would be to play it cool and hope for an early release. Over the next four years, Gaskins did his best to be a model inmate. He was respectful to the guards and kept his violence to a minimum. Eventually, he leveraged his special treatment to get a meeting with the warden in 1968. Gaskins convinced the warden he was a changed man and begged for his recommendation so he could get paroled early.

In reality, Gaskins' previous four years had been nothing but a carefully choreographed act. He had no intention of going straight after his release. But whatever he said was convincing enough for the warden. He agreed to give his recommendation, and in November of 1968, 35-year-old Gaskins was paroled. Gaskins was overjoyed to be free. He vowed to himself that he was. never be sent back to jail again. But apparently, that didn't mean he was going to stop committing crimes, only that he would be more careful not to get arrested in the future. Immediately after

being released, he found work stripping and refitting stolen cars for resale. To keep up his cover, he also got a part-time job as a roofer. He used the money to rent out an old barn where he did his off-the-book's auto work. It wasn't long before Gaskins' expanded his operation and started fencing other kinds of stolen property. And the more he looked for trouble, the more he found it. While trying to negotiate a price for some stolen silverware, Gaskins was robbed by the pair of thieves who were selling it. They'd hardly driven away before he started plotting his revenge. Gaskins tracked them back to their home, jumped out of his car, and pointed a Beretta handgun at their backs. The two men hurriedly apologized,

but Gaskins wasn't ready to forgive them just yet. Instead, he ordered them into the trunk of his car, and the two terrified men crammed themselves inside. Gaskins drove them down dirt roads and threw the backwoods for miles. When he finally let them out, the men had no idea where they were. Gaskins then took everything they had by gunpoint, including their clothes. He drove off, leaving them naked. in the middle of nowhere and laughed all the way home.

Gaskins let those two men live, but he wasn't often in such a forgiving mood. Over the next few months into 1969, he found his appetite for violence was growing. Outwardly, he had everything he could have hoped for. He was making good money stripping cars, and there was relatively low risk of getting caught. For the first time in years, he wasn't on the run from the law. But despite his relative success and stability, he was more unhappy than ever. He often found himself getting irritated at the slightest inconvenience. His temper flared frequently, and sometimes he even scared himself.

In his own words, Gaskins said, I got edgy and upset and mean as a cotton-mouthed moccasin and a gallon-sized mason jar. Every once in a while, Gaskins made the short drive back to his hometown to visit his mother. But at times when he felt his rage bubbling to the surface, he deliberately stayed far away from home, worrying he'd do something he'd regret. Instead, he took to going on long drives up and down the state highway and picked up female hitchhikers. Once they were in the car, he'd solicit them for sex. If they refused, he kicked them out of the car. Later, Gaskins found himself fixating on the women who turned him down.

As his stress grew and his anger burned hotter, Gaskins fantasized about torturing them. He projected his insecurities onto the women, imagining that they'd spurned his advances because they thought they were too good for him, or that they were somehow special. As we've discussed, it's evident that Gaskins was a sexual sadist, but what was becoming increasingly clear was that his violent desires were likely connected with deep-seated feelings of inadequacy. abused for years because of his short stature, Gaskins always felt he had something to prove. Fear of rejection and repressed rage prevented him from truly getting close to anyone.

Instead, he used people like tools, a means to an end, and wound up consumed by intense loneliness. In his paper on sexual sadism, Dr. Willam H.J. Martens writes, Extreme loneliness may lead to internal hardening, social and moral numbing, indifference, and anger, while deep shame and feelings of inferiority and extreme vulnerability, in combination with panic and fear of being left alone again, might generate sudden sadistic attacks. This could explain why Gaskins' rage intensified after he got out of prison in 1968. Objectively, he was in better circumstances than he'd ever been. been, but he had no real companionship, and soon his isolation began to merge with his lingering

feelings of inadequacy. These feelings may have been the driving force behind his rage over the women he believed rejected him, and the catalyst to his increasingly violent fantasies. Gaskins began to feel what he described as a knot in his stomach, and every day it wound tighter. Soon the pain got so bad, Gaskins wondered why he drove down the highway at all. He knew that at best the trip settled his nerves for a few days, but before long he was back on the road again, looking for another hitchhiker. As 1969 wore on, he became more and more prone to sadistic fantasies about torturing and sexually abusing the women who dared to reject him. The pressure in his gut grew so intense, he was on the verge of exploding.

It was only a matter of time until he killed again. Each hitchhiker he picked up brought Gaskins closer to the edge, and once he crossed the line, he'd never be able to stop. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back Thursday with Part 2 of Donald Gaskins. We'll explore the horrific killing spree that earned him the nickname, The Meanest Man. in America. You can find more episodes of serial killers

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Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler and is a Parcast Studios original. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, sound design by Brian Gallup, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden, and Freddie Beckley. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Terrell Wells, with writing assistance by Abigail Cannon,

and stars Greg Polaro. Olson and Vanessa Richardson. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

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