1. Donald Henry Gaskins: The
Meanest Man In America
Jake Zimmers
Psychology
November 12, 2012
Period 7

2. Early Life
• Born on March 13, 1933 in Florence County,
South Carolina.
• Mother was not married at time of birth; lived
with several men during his childhood; these
men would sometimes beat Gaskins just for
being around; stepfather beat him regularly
when he married Gaskins’s mother.

3. Early Life cont.
• During school, he obtained the nickname
“Junior Parrott” due to the small frame of his
body.
• The insanity at his home soon followed him to
school; he fought everyday with other students,
and was always punished by the teachers.
• Gaskins quit school when he was 11, and worked
at a garage and on the family farm; internally, he
had a strong hatred for people, especially
women.

4. Early Life cont.
• Donald joined a group called “The Trouble Trio”, and
would participate in such heinous activities as burglarizing
homes and paying for prostitutes in nearby cities; locally,
the three would rape young boys, and made sure they
would not tell the police by threatening them.
• The trio stopped after they were caught gang-raping one of
the member’s younger sister. He, along with the other
boys, were beaten after the incident occurred.
• While burglarizing a home when he was 13, the girl who
lived at the home was truck in the head and arm with the
ax she used to attack Gaskins; after the incident, Gaskins
went to Reform School, where he was sexually abused,
trying to escape multiple times with the help of “Boss-
Boy”; in exchange, Boss-Boy would offer sex to Gaskins.

5. Adult Life
• Gaskins escaped reform school and joined a
traveling carnival. While with the carnival, he
married a 13 year old girl.
• He then turned himself back in, and was
released from reform school on his 18th birthday.
• Gaskins had no children, and was not a loner,
due to his relationship with The Trouble Trio.

6. Motives
• Donald Gaskins had plenty of motivation to
commit his heinous acts. He was abused, both
physically and sexually, as a child, not to
mention his mother didn’t care about him. He
was further sexually abused when he was in
reform school and later in prison. If that didn’t
have an affect on him, I don’t know what did.

7. Methods
• One key method used in his killings was torture.
Gaskins would make his victims participate in
the eating of the severed body parts, and would
make the mutilated victims suffer for days by
keeping them alive.
• His notable victims were women. However, he
also killed boys; by 1975, he had killed over 80
boys and girls along North Carolina highways.

8. What led to Parrot getting caught?
• Walter Neely, Gaskins’s accomplice, confessed to
and showed police his personal cemetery. Prior
to that, the clothing of one of Donald’s victims,
13-year-old Kim Ghelkins, was found in his
apartment.

9. Sentence: Death
• Although he murdered roughly 100 people, a
jury found him guilty of the murder of Dennis
Bellamy on May 24, 1976. The sentence was
death. The sentence was eventually changed to
life in prison after the death penalty was ruled
unconstitutional in South Carolina. In 1978, the
death penalty came back. While having no effect
at first, Gaskins murdered an inmate for money,
receiving the death sentence yet again. He was
executed on September 6, 1991 at 1:05 A.M. by
electricution.

10. Why are Serial Killers tough to catch?
• What makes serial killers tough to catch is
looking for the obvious. Serial killers blend in
with society; they could be everyday people like
you and me.
• The mask of sanity- hiding their actual
emotions.

11. Characteristics of crime scenes?
• What are the four type of crime scenes? They are
Organized, Disorganized, Mixed and Atypical.
Characteristics of each are listed on the
proceeding slides.

12. Organized Crime Scene
• Planned offense.
• Body is transported.
• Body is hidden.
• Controlled conversation.
• Demands submissive victim.
• Weapon or evidence is missing.
• Victim is a targeted stranger.
• The victim is personalized.
• Crime scene reflects control.
• Restraints are used.
• Aggressive acts are done before death.

13. Disorganized Crime Scene
• Body is left at the scene of death.
• Spontaneous offense occurs.
• Evidence or weapon is present.
• The location or victim is known.
• Body is left in view.
• The victim is depersonalized.
• Sexual acts occur after death (necrophilia).
• Minimal conversation is had.
• Minimal use of restraints.
• Crime scene is sloppy.
• Sudden violence occurs to the victim.

14. Mixed Crime Scene
• Two offenders are present.
• A previous crime is planned and interrupted.
• The act is staged.

15. Atypical Crime Scene- The scene can’t
be classified by the data available.
• Decomposed remains.
• A crime data base is used to find similar crime
scenes.

16. Surprising?
• I must say it was surprising to discover that
Gaskins raped all these young boys. It’s hard to
fathom that he could do that not only with The
Trouble Trio, but also on his own; it was
disgusting.
• Something else that was surprising was the
death penalty being brought back, and Donald
wasn’t on it at 1st. He had to kill another man in
prison to be back on death row.

17. References
• http://murderpedia.org/male.G/g1/gaskins-
donald-henry.htm
• http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_kill
ers/notorious/tick/1b.html
• http://members.tripod.com/~serialkillr/serialki
llersexposed/crimescenes.html