The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (33 page)

“like hot lead” in his stomach and groin. The only one more for contempt after Gaskins cursed him. In release came through violence, and Gaskins committed prison, Pee Wee was soon commandeered for sex by the first of many random, recreational murders in Sep-one of the cellblock “power men,” until he cut the tember 1969, torturing and disemboweling a female rapist’s throat. Murder charges bargained down to hitchhiker he picked up along the Carolina coast, manslaughter earned him another nine years, to be dumping her mutilated body in the ocean south of served concurrently with his previous sentence.

Georgetown, South Carolina.

Henceforth, Gaskins would mentally divide his slayings into “coastal kills” (committed for sadistic pleasure, victimizing strangers of both sexes) and “serious murders” (involving victims who were personal

acquaintances). On death row, decades later, he estimated that he had committed 10 “coastal kills” by October 1970, with his first “serious murders” occurring one month later. The November victims were his own niece, 15-year-old Janice Kirby, and a girlfriend, 17-year-old Patricia Alsbrook, both of whom he raped and murdered at the Sumter mobile-home park where he lived. Gaskins buried them out in the country, revealing Alsbrook’s grave in a 1976 bargain with prosecutors to save himself from the electric chair.

(Two years later, in another death-row deal, Gaskins pretended to give up Kirby’s remains, but he feared discovery of other corpses buried nearby, actually directing searchers to the grave of a victim planted near Columbia in 1973.)

Once Gaskins got the hang of it, his homicides prolif-erated at a dizzy pace. One murder, the December 1970

torture-slaying of 13-year-old Peggy Cuttino, was blamed on convict William Pierce, serving life for a similar slaying in Georgia; Gaskins admitted the crime in 1977, but embarrassed prosecutors have thus far refused to exonerate Pierce in that case. His “coastal kills” continued on a monthly basis, more or less, while victims of his “serious murders” included criminal accomplices, personal enemies, and neighborhood Donald Gaskins directs officers to where his victims are acquaintances who aroused Gaskins sexually. One of buried. (Wide World API)

the worst such cases, in 1973, involved the rape-slayings
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of 23-year-old Doreen Dempsey (eight months pregnant Before he died, Gaskins completed work on a grip-at the time) and her 20-month-old daughter Robin.

ping (if ungrammatical) autobiography, including an (Gaskins later described raping the infant as the best estimate of his final body count. Ignoring his first and sexual experience of his life.) Through it all, Gaskins last murders committed in prison, Gaskins tabulated 31

took comfort in the fact that he was “one of the few

“serious murders” (including 14 victims found by that truly understands what death and pain are all police and 17 still buried in three South Carolina coun-about. I have a special kind of mind that allows me to ties) and 80 or 90 “coastal kills,” for a total in the give myself permission to kill.”

neighborhood of 110 victims. Since Gaskins never Gaskins would later describe 1975 as his “killingest”

learned the names of his “coastal” victims, remaining year, climaxed with his arrest for trafficking in stolen deliberately vague on the dates of their murders and cars. An accomplice in several of his “serious murders,”

locations where their bodies were dumped, the final Walter Neely, “got religion” that December and turned tally is impossible to verify. By the same token, how-state’s evidence, leading detectives to eight buried vic-ever, there is no clear reason to dispute his claim, and tims. Indicted on eight murder charges, Gaskins faced even if the “coastal” body count was overestimated by trial in May 1976 on only one count, for the 1975 slay-100 percent, Gaskins still qualifies as one of America’s ing of Neely’s ex-brother-in-law, Dennis Bellamy. Con-most prolific serial killers of modern times.

victed on May 24 and sentenced to die, Gaskins was irate when Neely received a life sentence for the same murder one week later by claiming he had been “con-GECHT, Robin

See “CHICAGO RIPPERS”

trolled” by Pee Wee against his will.

With seven more indictments hanging over him,

Gaskins began negotiating for his life, pointing police
GEIN, Edward Theodore

toward more graves in return for leniency. He need not Ed Gein may be America’s most famous murderer, have bothered, since the U.S. Supreme Court invali-although his name is seldom heard and barely recog-dated South Carolina’s death penalty statute in Novem-nized today. Four decades have passed since he first ber 1976, his sentence automatically commuted to life made headlines, but Gein is still with us in spirit. His imprisonment.

A month later, detectives were after Gaskins once crimes inspired the movie Psycho and its sequels, spin-again, this time for the murder of Silas Yates, a 45-yearning off in later years to terrify another generation as old Carolinian who allegedly offered Gaskins a murder The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. While other slayers contract in 1975. Pee Wee killed Yates instead, and have surpassed Gein’s body count, America has never Gaskins was tried on that charge (with three marginal seen his equal in the field of mental aberration.

accomplices) in April 1977, receiving his second life Gein was born August 8, 1906, at La Crosse, Wis-sentence.

consin, but his family soon moved to a farm outside South Carolina’s death penalty was reinstated by Plainfield. His father held jobs as a tanner and carpen-1978, and Gaskins struck another bargain with prose-ter when he wasn’t working the farm, and Gein’s cutors, agreeing to turn up more bodies and submit to a mother emerged as the dominant parent, settling most three-day grilling under sodium pentothal, in return for family decisions on her own. Devoutly religious, she a signed-and-sealed promise of exemption from the warned her two sons against premarital sex, but Gein chair. That spring found him sentenced to a total of recalled that she was “not as strong” in her opposition nine life terms; no charges were filed in the cases of five to masturbation. Ed’s father died in 1940, and his other murders he confessed, since the existing sentences brother Henry was lost four years later while fighting a removed all hope of parole.

marsh fire. His mother suffered a stroke that same year, That might have been the end for Pee Wee Gaskins, and a second one killed her in 1945 following an argu-but he couldn’t keep his nose clean, even in prison. In ment with one of her neighbors. Alone at last, Gein 1982 he accepted a contract to kill death-row inmate nailed her bedroom shut and set about “redecorating”

Randolph Tyner, wiring an explosive charge to Tyner’s in his own inimitable style.

radio and detonating it with fatal results on September From childhood, Gein had been ambiguous about

12. A relative of Tyner’s original victim, who arranged his masculinity, considering amputation of his penis on the contract, was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but a several occasions. With pioneer transsexual Christine sympathetic judge made him eligible for parole after 30

Jorgenson much in the headlines at the time, Gein con-months. Gaskins, for his part, was sentenced to die, his sidered transsexual surgery, but the process was costly final appeal rejected in June 1991. He was electrocuted and frightening. There must be other ways, he thought, three months later, on September 6.

of “turning female” on a part-time basis.

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later, the shell casing would be matched to a pistol found in Gein’s home.)

On November 16, 1957, 58-year-old Bernice Wor-

den disappeared from her Plainfield hardware store under strikingly similar circumstances. There was blood on the floor, a thin trail of it leading out back where the victim’s truck had last been seen. Worden’s son recalled that Gein had asked his mother for a date, and on the day before she disappeared Ed mentioned that he needed antifreeze. A sales receipt for antifreeze was found inside the store, and deputies went looking for their suspect. What they found would haunt them all for the remainder of their lives.

Inside a shed, behind Gein’s house, the headless body of Bernice Worden hung from the rafters, gutted like a deer, the genitals carved out. A tour of the cluttered house left searchers stunned. Worden’s heart was found in a saucepan on the stove, while her head had been turned into a macabre ornament, with twine attached to nails inserted in both ears. Her other organs occupied a box, shoved off to molder in a corner. Deputies surveyed Edward Gein in custody (Wide World API)

Gein’s decorations and his “costumes,” counting skins from 10 skulls in one cardboard drum, taking hasty inventory of implements fashioned from human bones.

Between 1947 and 1954, Gein haunted three local In custody, Gein readily confessed the Hogan and cemeteries, opening an estimated 40 graves in his noc-Worden murders, along with a series of unreported turnal raids. He might remove whole corpses or settle grave robberies. Confirmation of the latter was for choice bits and pieces; a few bodies were later obtained by opening three graves: in one, the corpse returned to their resting place, but Ed recalled that there was mutilated as described by Gein; the second held no were “not too many.” Allegedly aided in the early days corpse at all; a casket in the third showed pry-marks, by “Gus,” a simple-minded neighbor, Gein continued but the body was intact, as Gein remembered.

excavations on his own when his assistant died. At On January 16, 1958, a judge found Gein incompe-home, he used the ghoulish relics as domestic decoratent for trial and packed him off to Central State Hospi-tions. Skulls were mounted on the bedposts, severed tal at Waupun, Wisconsin. A decade later, Ed was skullcaps serving Gein as bowls. He fashioned mobiles ordered up to trial, with the proceedings held in mid-out of noses, lips, and labia and sported a belt of nipples November 1968. Judge Robert Gollmar found Gein around the house. Human skin was variously utilized innocent by reason of insanity and sent him back to for lamp shades, the construction of waste-baskets, and Waupun, where he died of respiratory failure on July the upholstery of chairs.

26, 1984.

The choicer bits were specially preserved for Gein to Gein willingly confessed two murders and was tried wear at home. For ceremonial occasions, such as danc-for one, but were there others? And if so, how many?

ing underneath the moon, he wore a woman’s scalp and Brother Henry was suggested as a likely victim, by face, a skinned-out “vest” complete with breasts, and Judge Gollmar, inasmuch as there was no autopsy or female genitalia strapped above his own. By “putting investigation of his death. However that may be, there on” another sex and personality, Gein seemed to find a is a stronger case for murder in the disappearance of a measure of contentment, but his resurrection raids man named Travis and his unnamed male companion, eventually failed to satisfy a deeper need.

last seen at the time they hired Ed Gein to be their hunt-On December 8, 1954, 51-year-old Mary Hogan dising guide. One victim’s jacket was recovered from the appeared from the tavern she managed in Pine Grove, woods near Plainfield, and while Gein professed to Wisconsin. Authorities found a pool of blood on the know the whereabouts of Travis’s body—blaming his floor, an overturned chair, and one spent cartridge from death on “a neighbor”—police never followed up on a .32-caliber pistol. Foul play was the obvious answer, the case.

and while deputies recall Ed Gein as a suspect in the The search of Gein’s home also turned up additional case, no charges were filed at the time. (Three years organs, removed from two young women, that could
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GEOGRAPHY

not be matched to existing cemetery records. Judge world’s total population, has produced 76 percent of all Gollmar suggests that one likely victim was Evelyn known serial killers in the 20th century (closer to 85

Hartley, abducted from La Crosse on a night when percent since 1980). Granted, Americans got a late start Gein was visiting relatives two blocks from her home.

in the business of serial murder—the first known preda-A pool of blood was found in the family garage after tor from ancient Rome had been dead for more than she vanished, with the trail disappearing at curbside.

1,800 years when Columbus found the West Indies; Mary Weckler was reported missing a short time later ERZSEBET BÁTHORY died in custody three years after the from Jefferson, Wisconsin; a white Ford was seen in Jamestown Colony was established in Virginia—but the area. When searchers scoured Gein’s property they whatever they lacked in timing, the New World settlers found a white Ford sedan on the premises, though no made up in zeal.