FIRST MARRIAGE

Gaskins was 18 years of age when he married for the first time. Approximately a year later, he became the father of a baby girl. He took a job on a tobacco plantation. While working there, he began to make money from local farmers by burning buildings so the owner could collect the insurance money. During that year, he attacked a teenage girl with a hammer, claiming the girl had insulted him. Other reports indicate that the girl had identified him as the “barn burner” who had burned her father’s property. He was arrested for attempted murder. Gaskins was found guilty and sentenced to six years in the South Carolina State Penitentiary. In addition to all his other self-caused problems, his wife divorced him while he was in prison.

FIRST PRISON

Gaskin decided that he had to establish himself as a very bad person in order to survive prison. While incarcerated, in 1953, he murdered another inmate, the rugged and tough, Hazel Brazell, by slashing his throat. He claimed he did it to earn a meaner reputation among the other inmates. It appeared to work; prison life for Gaskins became much more bearable following the murder. The legal proceedings surrounding the murder found that the murder was done in self defense. Another three years was added to his sentence.

ESCAPE

In 1955, Gaskins rode out of prison on the back of a garbage truck! His escape was a success and he headed to Florida, where he took a job with a traveling circus. This situation didn’t last long for Gaskin, he was located, re-arrested and re-incarcerated. In August of 1961, he received a parole.

After he completed his prison term, he was freed, during this time he remarried. He resorted to committing burglaries and fencing stolen property to make a living. It was two years after being released from prison that he was arrested for raping a twelve year old girl. While he was awaiting sentence, he escaped, but was caught in Georgia and sentenced to eight years.

In November of 1968, he was paroled from prison. He then moved to the town of Sumter, South Carolina to start work for a construction company.

It was in September of 1969 that Gaskins picked up his first hitchhiker on a coastal highway and killed him. This became a pastime, driving around the coastal highways of the South, picking up hitchhikers and murdering them. In later years, he described these as his coastal kills, of which he claimed eighty to ninety, though the exact number is unknown. It was estimated that he killed one person every six weeks from this time until 1975. He later claimed to have tortured most of the victims before killing them and even cannibalizing some!

In addition to his coastal kills, he had what he referred to as his serious murders. These were people that he knew personally, who had in one way or another incurred his wrath. The first two of his serious murders was his own fifteen year old cousin, Janice Kirby and her friend Patricia Ann Alsbrook, 17. Gaskins beat Patricia Alsbrook to death while attempting to sexually molest the two girls in Sumter, South Carolina.

Other murders followed, some because someone had mocked him, another because he owed Gaskins money and another because he stole from him. He was even paid to kill some victims. Gaskins usually simply shot his serious murder victims and buried the bodies in various places around the South Carolina coast.

In the winter of 1975, while being questioned about possible criminal activity involving his friend, Gaskins, Walter Neeley, told police of having witnessed Gaskins murder two men, twenty-eight year old Dennis Bellamy and fifteen-year-old, Johnny Knight. Gaskins also confided in Neeley that he had killed several people that were on the missing persons lists.

On November 14, 1975, Gaskins was arrested. On December 4, 1975, he led police to the burial spots of eight of his victims on land he owned in Prospect, South Carolina.