March 13, 1933 - Donald Henry Gaskins
Operating largely in rural South Carolina over several decades, Gaskins managed to kill repeatedly across a range of methods and circumstances before authorities fully grasped the scale of his crimes. His ability to continue killing even after incarceration — engineering the death of a death-row inmate through explosives — distinguished him from most other convicted killers of his era. The breadth of his methods and the length of his criminal record made him one of the more extensively documented serial killers to emerge from the American South.
From Wikipedia
Donald Henry "Pee Wee" Gaskins Jr. (born Donald Henry Parrott Jr.; March 13, 1933 – September 6, 1991) was an American serial killer and rapist from South Carolina who stabbed, shot, drowned, and poisoned more than a dozen people. Before his convictions for murder, Gaskins had a long history of criminal activities resulting in prison sentences for assault, burglary, and statutory rape. His last arrest was for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, 13-year-old Kim Gehlken, who had gone missing in September 1975. During their search for the missing girl, police discovered eight bodies buried in shallow graves near Gaskins' home in Prospect, South Carolina.
In May 1976, a Florence County jury took only 47 minutes before finding Gaskins guilty for the murder of one of the eight victims, Dennis Bellamy, and sentenced him to death by the electric chair. That death sentence was overturned by the South Carolina Supreme Court in February 1978, and rather than face a new trial, Gaskins pleaded guilty to the murders of Bellamy and eight other friends and associates, as well as a burglary charge. He was given 10 concurrent life sentences, to be served at Central Correctional Institution (CCI) prison in Columbia, South Carolina.
While at CCI, Gaskins murdered Rudolph Tyner, a fellow inmate on death row, using C4 explosive.
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