Donald Henry Gaskins: The Meanest Man In AmericaJake ZimmersPsychologyNovember 12, 2012Period 7

Early Life

•Born on March 13, 1933 in Florence County, South Carolina.

•Mother was not married at time of birth; lived with several men during his childhood; these men would sometimes beat Gaskins just for being around; stepfather beat him regularly when he married Gaskins’s mother.

Early Life cont.•During school, he obtained the nickname

“Junior Parrott” due to the small frame of his body.

•The insanity at his home soon followed him to school; he fought everyday with other students, and was always punished by the teachers.

•Gaskins quit school when he was 11, and worked at a garage and on the family farm; internally, he had a strong hatred for people, especially women.

Early Life cont.• Donald joined a group called “The Trouble Trio”, and

would participate in such heinous activities as burglarizing homes and paying for prostitutes in nearby cities; locally, the three would rape young boys, and made sure they would not tell the police by threatening them.

• The trio stopped after they were caught gang-raping one of the member’s younger sister. He, along with the other boys, were beaten after the incident occurred.

• While burglarizing a home when he was 13, the girl who lived at the home was truck in the head and arm with the ax she used to attack Gaskins; after the incident, Gaskins went to Reform School, where he was sexually abused, trying to escape multiple times with the help of “Boss-Boy”; in exchange, Boss-Boy would offer sex to Gaskins.

Adult Life

•Gaskins escaped reform school and joined a traveling carnival. While with the carnival, he married a 13 year old girl.

•He then turned himself back in, and was released from reform school on his 18th birthday.

•Gaskins had no children, and was not a loner, due to his relationship with The Trouble Trio.

Motives

•Donald Gaskins had plenty of motivation to commit his heinous acts. He was abused, both physically and sexually, as a child, not to mention his mother didn’t care about him. He was further sexually abused when he was in reform school and later in prison. If that didn’t have an affect on him, I don’t know what did.

Methods

•One key method used in his killings was torture. Gaskins would make his victims participate in the eating of the severed body parts, and would make the mutilated victims suffer for days by keeping them alive.

•His notable victims were women. However, he also killed boys; by 1975, he had killed over 80 boys and girls along North Carolina highways.

What led to Parrot getting caught?

•Walter Neely, Gaskins’s accomplice, confessed to and showed police his personal cemetery. Prior to that, the clothing of one of Donald’s victims, 13-year-old Kim Ghelkins, was found in his apartment.

Sentence: Death•Although he murdered roughly 100 people, a

jury found him guilty of the murder of Dennis Bellamy on May 24, 1976. The sentence was death. The sentence was eventually changed to life in prison after the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional in South Carolina. In 1978, the death penalty came back. While having no effect at first, Gaskins murdered an inmate for money, receiving the death sentence yet again. He was executed on September 6, 1991 at 1:05 A.M. by electricution.

Why are Serial Killers tough to catch?

•What makes serial killers tough to catch is looking for the obvious. Serial killers blend in with society; they could be everyday people like you and me.

•The mask of sanity- hiding their actual emotions.

Characteristics of crime scenes?•What are the four type of crime scenes?

They are Organized, Disorganized, Mixed and Atypical. Characteristics of each are listed on the proceeding slides.

Organized Crime Scene• Planned offense.• Body is transported.• Body is hidden.• Controlled conversation.• Demands submissive victim.• Weapon or evidence is missing.• Victim is a targeted stranger.• The victim is personalized.• Crime scene reflects control.• Restraints are used.• Aggressive acts are done before death.

Disorganized Crime Scene• Body is left at the scene of death.• Spontaneous offense occurs.• Evidence or weapon is present.• The location or victim is known.• Body is left in view.• The victim is depersonalized.• Sexual acts occur after death (necrophilia).• Minimal conversation is had.• Minimal use of restraints.• Crime scene is sloppy.• Sudden violence occurs to the victim.

Mixed Crime Scene

•Two offenders are present.•A previous crime is planned and

interrupted.•The act is staged.

Atypical Crime Scene- The scene can’t be classified by the data available.•Decomposed remains.•A crime data base is used to find similar

crime scenes.

Surprising?

•I must say it was surprising to discover that Gaskins raped all these young boys. It’s hard to fathom that he could do that not only with The Trouble Trio, but also on his own; it was disgusting.

•Something else that was surprising was the death penalty being brought back, and Donald wasn’t on it at 1st. He had to kill another man in prison to be back on death row.

References

•http://murderpedia.org/male.G/g1/gaskins-donald-henry.htm

•http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/tick/1b.html

•http://members.tripod.com/~serialkillr/serialkillersexposed/crimescenes.html