Donald Henry Gaskins Jnr

Death Watch

After prolonged investigation, a grand jury indicted Gaskins and Tony Cimo for Tyners murder, along with inmate go-betweens Jack Martin and Charles Lee. Charges against Lee were dismissed after another convict, James Brown, claimed he took the explosive cup to Tyners cell without knowledge of its purpose. (Brown was never charged.) Prosecutor James Anders tried Gaskins separately, calling Ken Summerford as a witness to display photos of Pee Wees other victims, and Judge Dan Laney sentenced Gaskins to die.

Tony Cimo, more sympathetic than Gaskins in court, received a 25-year prison sentence with parole eligibility after 30 months. He served the minimum and returned to Murrells Inlet, where he died from a prescription drug overdose on June 10, 2001.

Gaskins, meanwhile, spent the first three years of his new sentence not on Death Row, but in a rat-infested isolation unit. His attorneys appealed the confinement in 1985, but lawmen cited reliable information that Gaskins planned to have cronies kidnap the prosecutors child and bargain for his release. Only after his petition for release from solitary was rejected did police determine the report was an empty threat. A year later, freed from solitary after the isolation unit was condemned as unfit for human habitation, Gaskins found Death Row a lot nicer than his previous quarters. In 1990, Gaskins and the states electric chair were moved again, this time to the Broad River Correctional Institute outside Columbia.

Gaskins filled his last months with an art scam, tracing cartoon characters for sale to collectors of Death Row memorabilia, and dictating his memoirs on tape for author Wilton Earl (published as Final Truth in 1993). As death approached, Pee Wee waxed philosophical. I truly dont mind dying, he wrote. Ive lived a damned full and good life.

In fact, he decided, it was even better than that. I have walked the same path as God, Gaskins raved. By taking lives and making others afraid, I became Gods equal. Through killing others, I became my own master. Through my own power I come to my own redemption..

He was even optimistic about his date with the chair, telling Earls tape recorder, When they put me to death, Ill die remembering the freedom and pleasure of my life. Ill die knowing that there are others coming along to take my place, and that most of them wont never get caught.

There was no escape for Pee Wee, though. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal in June 1991, clearing the way for Gaskins to be executed in September. Hours before his date with Old Sparky, Gaskins slashed his arms from wrists to elbows with a razor blade he had swallowed days earlier, then regurgitated in a futile effort to postpone death. Prison medics stitched his wounds in time for Gaskins to meet his fate at 1:05 A.M. on Sept. 6, 1991.