Richard Gaskins Murder Case

In 1951, Gaskins was released from reform school and he and his wife Marry decided to move in with her parents in Georgetown, SC. Donald was able to land a job working construction after reform school but quickly found a better job in Georgetown at a logging company. Donald eventually decided he would work on a tobacco farm in Johnstonville, SC. He was offered the job by an old friend from reform school who promised him a three-bedroom house and a pick-up truck. Gaskins and his friend wanted to make some extra money so they started committing insurance fraud. The two men would burn down someone’s farm for a free and the farmer could collect the insurance. Gaskins friend was eventually caught but Donald never was. His friends’ tobacco farm

For the first six months in prison he was raped and assaulted by other inmates. Donald decided he had had enough and was going to become a power man. To become a power man Donald would have to kill another power man that was feared by other inmates. He chose an inmate named Author who had been raping Donald since he got to prison. Donald was able to make the murder scene look like self-defense and because it was believed that he acted in self-defense he was sentenced to only a few months in solitary confinement. After he was released from solitary he was never raped or assaulted in prison again and the other inmates showed him respect. By 1955, Donald’s wife Marry decided that she wanted to end her marriage with him. To try and prevent her from doing so Gaskins escaped from prison by hiding in garbage barrels. After he escaped he was unsuccessful in finding Marry but met a women named Juney Alice Holden and the two would immediately get married. Donald married Juney despite still being married to his first wife (Kirby, Wolford, and Hayward, pg.

In 1969, Donald would commit his second murder in Pawley’s Island. He picked up a women hitchhiker named Angie and shortly after raped her and when he was finished he stabbed her with a knife and then dumped her body into a river (Kirby, Wolford, and Hayward, pg. 6). Gaskins would go on to kill thirteen people between 1969 and 1975. His murders would include seven women, five men, and a two-year-old girl. He committed his final murder in 1982, when he was paid to assassinate a fellow inmate on death row (Capps, pg.1). Gaskins was violent when he murdered his victims and liked to use rape as a weapon of fear. He also enjoyed using bondage and torture on his victims to create fear. He often used violent techniques to kill his victims such as bashing in their heads. Gaskins knew how to dispose a body and would either dump them in a river or dig them a grave (Kirby, Wolford, and Hayward, pg.