Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast · Blue Ewe Media

419: Serial Killer Pee Wee Gaskins w/ Dick Harpootlian

·1 hr 8 min·4 clips

Jail calls show Gaskins asking for “one electric cap” and dynamite to build a bomb.

1. Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast centers this episode on Pee Wee Gaskins, the South Carolina serial killer behind Dick Harpootlian’s book Dig Me a Grave. 2. Guest Dick Harpootlian is a South Carolina courtroom advocate, former state senator, and ex-district attorney whose 30 years of trial work put him on the Gaskins case. 3. The episode asks how Gaskins moved from a local roofer and mechanic to a man Harpootlian calls the most prolific killer in South Carolina history. 4. Harpootlian says the book grew out of stories he had told for years, then expanded during the pandemic when courts and the South Carolina Senate shut down. 5. He credits Shauna Sale with turning his factual outline into a readable book and bringing “Technicolor” to what he had written in “black and white.” 6. Harpootlian says Gaskins had a disarming public image in Sumter and Florence, where people knew him as a small man with a hearse and a joke for every situation. 7. He says Gaskins told people he drove the purple hearse “to haul bodies around,” and many neighbors treated that as bad humor instead of a confession. 8. Harpootlian describes Gaskins’s childhood violence, including an attack on a 12-year-old neighbor with an ax after a burglary. 9. He says the Florence Industrial School for White Boys exposed Gaskins to repeated sexual assault, eight escape attempts, and an early recommendation for state mental-hospital evaluation. 10. Harpootlian says Gaskins later learned manipulation skills in a Florida carnival, including lock-picking and deception. 11. He says Gaskins preferred very young girls, married six times without divorcing, and treated murder as a solution to problems. 12. Harpootlian recounts Gaskins telling him in court, “You like killing,” after watching him prosecute the case. 13. He says that line made him think about the death penalty and helped explain why he declined to attend Gaskins’s execution in 1991. 14. The guest says Gaskins’s killings were often tied to race, drugs, sex, or fears that a victim knew too much. 15. Harpootlian says Gaskins used vulnerable people around him, including Walter Neely and other runaways, parolees, and damaged companions. 16. He says the book treats the victims as human beings from rough backgrounds in rural South Carolina, not as abstractions. 17. Harpootlian’s delivery is legalistic, anecdotal, and blunt, with long answers shaped by courtroom memory. 18. The interview moves back and forth between book discussion, trial detail, and specific murder cases, with inserted audio from jail calls. 19. People interested in South Carolina history, courtroom testimony, and serial-killer cases will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting a light true-crime recap without legal detail may want to skip it.

As heard by us

A steady true-crime conversation that favors motive, memory, and courtroom context over spectacle.

Dick Harpootlian approaches the Pee Wee Gaskins case with a lawyer's eye, keeping the focus on race, drugs, and the fear of what people knew around the violence.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a calm, inside look at Dick Harpootlian's take on the Pee Wee Gaskins case and the book behind it.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast