♪ Gavin Jackson> Welcome to This Week in South Carolina .

I'm Gavin Jackson.

This week we talk with former state senator, former solicitor and now author, Dick Harpootlian, about his new book, "Dig Me a Grave: "The Inside Story of the Serial Killer "Who Seduced the South."

Senator, welcome to the show.

Fmr.

Sen Dick Harpootlian> Well, thank you for having me.

Gavin> So, Senator, we have your book here.

It's a fascinating read, and it gives a lot of background on this horrific experience that the state went through back in the 70s and 80s.

Kind of give us the background of this story, who Pee Wee Gaskins was.

How he came to this notoriety and what you want to explore in this book.

>> Pee Wee Gaskins was a guy that grew up in the, in the Pee Dee, Lake City, Florence prospect, an area that if you're from over there, you know where that is.

If you're not, it's just, what people, most people would say behind the pine curtain.

I mean, it's, lots of swamp, lots of lots of very little pine forest.

But Pee Wee grew up, in a pretty dysfunctional home.

He was, probably abused as a child.

But, would have just ended up being some sort of juvenile delinquent, but some part of his psyche went in the dramatically wrong direction.

At age 12, He, a little girl caught him breaking in the house, her house, and she chased him, and he grabbed an axe and hit her in the head with it.

Almost killed her.

And he was put in the juvenile facility at the time, called the Florence School for White Boys.

This was in the 40s, and there were, there were no juvenile reformatories for African-American kids, but and this was a horrendous place where, all the kids slept in one big room.

And so when the door was locked at night, the smallest, like... Pee Wee was called Pee Wee because he was tiny as a child.

As a grown man, he was like 5'3" weighed probably 110 pounds.

But he was sexually abused.

Escaped or attempted escape eight times, cutting off the finger of a little boy that tried to stop him on one occasion.

The, the interesting thing is we were able to get a copy of, a letter written by, the superintendent of that facility to a mental facility, they sent him to, stayed here on Bull Street, which, was the state mental facility back then, in which he describes him as a disturbed young man with homicidal tendencies who will certainly kill.

I mean, that's at age 14.

Gavin> Jeez.

>> And, and, you know, as he progressed, he had a, just a extraordinary ability to ingratiate himself and befriend people.

He had an engaging personality.

I was sort of the victim of that, during the trial, before the trial and after the trial We got him the death penalty.

He was, he, he, his personality allowed him to galvanize around him a, a group of misfits, runaways, ex-cons, carnies, and on occasion, he'd kill 1 or 2 of them, if they thought he thought they crossed him or, if he thought there was some downside to them still breathing.

And so he ended up, ...don't, we won't go through all the details, ended up confessing in the late 70s, to 13 murders.

And he was sentenced to life on each one of those.

Eligible, eligible for parole in ten years back then, but he went to CCI down on the banks of the Congaree River, which was built, parts of it, were built in the 1840s.

It was, I spent a lot of time down there, and I can tell you it was something out of a bad, you know, Gavin> You witnessed like a, someone getting stabbed there during a tour, right?

I mean, like- Dick> In law school, in law school, They took...CCI was... so oppressive.

It was, it was like.

Gavin> Like your old school prisons, like Shawshank Redemption.

Yeah.

Dick> Or George Raft in, in some sort of, 1930s prison movie.

I mean, that's the feel and the smell, I might point out.

You could smoke back then.

They got one shower a week.

So, it had this overwhelming odor when you walked in.

I used it when I had to go down there on investigations I'd put Vicks in my nose, <Yeah.> Because the smell was just so onerous, but, And I did see a guy get his throat cut on a tour, through CCI.

It would have been 1972.

<Yeah.> But- Gavin> A precursor for your career, let's just say that.

Dick> Absolutely, and, Gaskins, when he got to CCI, he, he had been a mechanic, a roofer, an electrician.

He had all these skills.

So they made him the chief trustee for cell block two, which contained death row and a bunch of other, a bunch of other inmates.

And he utilized, again, very affable.

He had soldering irons.

He had screwdrivers.

He had tools...I have the toolbox that he had, all these access to all these things when, a guy named, Tony Cimo, whose parents had been brutally murdered, by a guy named Rudolph Tyner in Horry County, Tyner was sentenced to death and was on death row, and Cimo was just bereft.

He wanted Tyner dead.

Tyner had been tried, sentenced to death, reversed, tried, sentenced to death.

And so he talked to a friend of his and said, "I want him dead.

"Do you have anybody you know at CCI that can get it done?"

"As a matter of fact, I do."

Gavin> Because, because Pee Wee was a contract killer throughout his career too?

Dick> On and off.

<On and Off, yeah.> Dick> Yeah.

I mean.

Gavin> Even though he tends to admit it, then doesn't tend to admit it.

Dick> Well, and we know he killed, his later girlfriend, Suzanne Kipper's boyfriend, for a thousand dollars.

So, he admits to that.

Kipper admitted to that.

So we know he has, had, did do it for money from time to time.

I don't think he got money for this.

<Yeah.> I think he accepted the task for two reasons.

He was a horrible racist.

Tyner was Black.

The Moons, he killed.

Cimo's parents were White.

And of course, when you read the book, you see, there was a there's one of his old girlfriends showed up, pregnant by a Black man with a mixed race child.

And, of course, he drowned her and beat the two year old to death with a hammer.

So he really had strong feelings about race.

And so that was part of it.

Secondly, it was the challenge.

If he could, he'd kill a guy on death row.

And so through a pretty convoluted process, he smuggled in a quarter of a pound of C-4 plastic explosive, a blasting cap, rigged up a bomb, had it delivered to Tyner, blew his head off.

Would have gotten away with it, but for the fact, that he tape recorded all his conversations with Tony Cimo.

And those were discovered in a shakedown by a guy named Al Waters, who did a hell of a job on the case, Department of Corrections.

So he gets caught, we try him, and he's sentenced to death, in 1983.

In the meantime, I left the solicitor's office, got...ran for solicitor in 1990 when my old boss, Jim Anders retired.

Was in the solicitors office... I was the solicitor in 1991, in Richland and Kershaw.

And, two weeks before his execution, he tried to get his son to kidnap my four year old daughter and hold her hostage to get me to have him brought up to the courthouse where he thought he could escape.

Gavin> Scheming till the end.

And we'll talk about that, Dick.

And that was a great, you know, summary right there.

But one of the best summations I thought of the book, is your opening to chapter 12, which is titled theft, adultery, wife swapping, jealousy.

And that's a quote from Ken Summerford, who was the prosecuting solicitor in that 1976 trial.

So if I can have you just read this opening paragraph, which I think really kind of sums it up pretty well, in a disturbing kind of way.

Dick> It's disturbing.

(Gavin laughs) As I've mentioned, the cops I knew were fascinated by Pee Wee.

They were veterans of wars in the streets, had seen killing in all it's shades.

They were experts in the hows and whys of murder.

But Pee Wee was something different, an uneducated child of the Low country, who'd internalized the collision of the 1950s and 60s and come into the 70s as a hybrid sociopath, at once righteous and racist, calm and deranged, moral and unapologetically, ethically unscrupulous.

The cops I knew would psychoanalyze him all day long.

But they come no, no closer to figuring out what drove him.

He was a redneck nesting doll, one deadly personality hidden inside the other.

Gavin> I mean, what do you think drove him, though at the end of it all this.

I mean, it's, it's hard to pinpoint.

Was it just to like... pride or the ability to like you said, when it came to death row and the challenge?

Dick> I think was the challenge, you know, telling sort of demonstrates what drove him was prior to his execution, he met with a guy, and wrote a book called, "The Final Truth."

It was published after his death.

It was supposed to be published after his death, where he claimed to have killed 100 people, 100 women and men, and what I mean, far more than the 14.

And so he wanted to be known as the worst of the worst.

He wanted, I mean, people that knew him were scared of him.

Five foot two, five foot three, skinny little guy, 120 pounds.

Gavin> High pitched voice?

>> High high pitched voice.

Why, why would you be scared of somebody like that, except that he killed with reckless abandon.

He had a penchant for underage girls.

Married, he was married.

Well, when I say married, six times.

He had marriage ceremonies six times.

Can't find a divorce.

(laughs) So, And some of them were many of most of them were underage.

One of them was 14.

Gavin> Yeah.

This was just fascinating and insightful, but it reads like a soap opera at times of sad, sad lives.

Like you're talking about this crew of misfits that he's with, people that cross him, he kills, but he's also super charming, which is kind of fascinating because it's not like he's deranged, but it's just that he's, oh, all of a sudden my only solution to this problem is just to kill someone instead of just working through it like a normal person would.

Dick> That, and I think the most shocking thing about the murders were they were so spontaneous.

Not only was the victim surprised they were getting killed.

<Yeah.> You know, to some extent, I think Pee Wee, surprised himself by just reacting immediately.

I mean, almost without any planning.

And, I mean, what's the would not have gotten caught on any of those murders except, one of his relatives told the police.

If they, if she had not, he'd still be out there killing.

Gavin> Yeah, because a lot of people couldn't believe it in that area.

But also people just go disappearing and they don't think twice about it.

And some of these cases, it was kind of surprising.

Dick> Again, they were, none of these people were, from what we would call, stable homes.

Many of them were runaways or, people that were, you know, out on parole and avoiding, you know, still committing crimes.

So, it, it, I mean, you could call him a "Redneck Manson" because he had this cult around him that, that that were both fearful and idolized him.

They passed women around, you know, like they were, a glass of water.

I mean, no morality.

Although he had his, you know, no race mixing, and no drugs were very vehement about drugs.

But other than that, I guess, killing, adultery, stealing, raping <all the others> all that was all that was still on the table.

Gavin> Dick, throughout the first part of your book, you are chief deputy prosecutor.

You're recapping these proceedings and investigations around this conviction in the 70s.

Then we jump to 1983 when you open chapter 16 by recounting how all this has just taken a toll on you.

You say, "...weight loss, three packs of Winstons a day," wondering quote, "...what the hell I was going to do "with the rest of my life."

A lot going on here.

So how consuming was this for you?

I mean, what was what was the day to day?

Was this always just in the back of the mind when you weren't actively working on these cases?

Or how did this fit into your life?

Dick> Well, I think, you know, I'm a kid back then, a kid that got out of, Clemson, where I, you know, was the longhaired antiwar, pro civil rights, I mean, I, marched in Martin, Martin Luther King's funeral.

I saw Bobby Kennedy there.

I got...tried to get involved in politics.

He was dead by June of '68.

I brought Jane Fonda to Clemson to speak back when she was "Hanoi Jane".

So, on the, on the extremes of liberalism in college.

Got out, went to law school.

Some friends and I had a, what we used to back then called an underground newspaper called Osceola here.

I worked on that, but always sort of a social agenda of, liberal progressive.

I don't know what you call it today.

Back then, it was just sort of anti-establishment.

And so when Jim Anders ran for solicitor in 1974 against a 24 year incumbent, the, the, what does, Trump call it?

The, what's the...what's his term for the press?

Gavin> Fake news.

>> What?

Gavin> The fake news.

Dick> Fake news or the, what, what do they you got a word for it.

But anyway, the mainstream press, wouldn't give him the time of day.

We ran running articles, and we began supporting him simply because we, not that we loved him, but we hated Ford.

So, he got elected.

Knew I was graduating law school, offered me law school, offered me a job as a no.

I got a job at legal aid.

I won't have to get a haircut, you know.

And he said that, and plus, you know, the system, in my opinion, is corrupt, some liberal crap trap.

You know.

And, he said, "No, no, you come work for me "and we'll change it from the inside."

So I took the job.

And by the way, it paid 10,400 dollars a year, which was a- Gavin> That's legislative salary, right there.

Dick> Big money back then.

So... And when I started, I quickly tried my first case, and I loved it.

I mean, I love the ability to get in front of 12 people that couldn't get up and walk out when I started talking to them and- Gavin>-a the captive audience Dick> The capital and the gain.

So... all that was great until I started doing pretty much nothing but homicides.

<Yeah.> And I'd go out and some of them were counted in the book on homicide scenes where the death, devastation, dismemberment.

You can't take that home.

And so you become your sympathy gene.

Your, your empathy gene begins to atrophy.

And it's just, that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Somebody chopped her head off, but you know what?

It- Gavin> It kind of gets desensitized, >> You, know, and the cops.

I mean, look, I have nothing but admiration for police officers because they deal with that in a much more graphic way than a solicitor showing up on the scene.

<Oh yeah> I mean, they've got to deal with it day to day, but it does... atrophy your ability to emotionally handle, handle it.

And by the end of Gaskins, I was, it was a six week trial, the longest criminal trial in the history of the state, until recently.

And, I was just exhausted.

Jack Swerling was the defense attorney.

He and I had gone to Clemson together.

He was working for Senator Isadore Lourie, you know, and we both said if we're going to work this hard, we should do it for ourselves.

And so we went out to practice, in practice together in 1983.

And did great until I ran for solicitor in '90.

Gavin> And to, to that extent, Dick, like where you're talking about how you've interacted with these murderers over your career and the desensitizing aspect of that.

You also mentioned in the book that you always could tell that a murderer was always a little off, but that was in the case for Pee Wee, which is kind of surprising, because the man did drive a hearse around the Pee Dee, at times carrying actual dead bodies in the backseat.

So, I guess, in your, in your way in this book, I mean, you're a defense attorney as well now.

You kind of do a good job in the way of maybe showing his charm, because you do show that we are starting to like, maybe empathize with him a little bit, but then all of a sudden, you're in his sights, your daughter's in his sights.

I mean, like, all of a sudden that changes.

I mean, you see the dichotomy of Pee Wee Gaskins?

Dick> Well, you know, Gaskins, I say this to people, I'd never was on a first name basis with any defendant.

The first hearing we had, Gaskins walked into the courtroom for his bond hearing, It wasn't a bond hearing.

It was some sort of early hearing.

Oh, arraignment in telling him we're going to go for the death penalty.

And as he walked by me, hands manacled, waves and says, "Hey, Dick, how you doing?"

And your reflexive I mean, if somebody sticks their hand out to shake your hand, you shake their hand when somebody says, "Hey, Dick, how you doing?"

You know, my response is, "Okay, Pee Wee, how about you?"

Of course, he's getting ready to be arraigned (chuckles) on a death penalty case.

Yeah, I wasn't doing that in a facetious.

I mean, it was just common courtesy.

From that point forward, for the 3 or 4 months that it took to do this case, every time we were in a hearing, every time we were in a room together It was, "Hey, Dick.

How are you doing?"

"Okay, Pee Wee.

How about you?"

Or, and we're kind of seen in, in the courtroom at lunch one day, where we had, sort of a, banter back and forth about, I mean, he basically said that I was a killer like him.

And I got to tell you, that bothered me.

Bothered me for a long time.

I don't think I'm bothered by it anymore.

But, look, if you do death penalty cases and I prosecuted 14 or 15 death penalty cases, individuals.

Some of them were co-defendants and I've defended two.

But if you prosecute those, you don't have to be a you should not be a death penalty, fervent cult advocate.

I mean you're, you're advocating this person should no longer breathe and you better have a damn good reason for it.

Other than just the circumstances of that case.

In my opinion, you've got to show that the circumstances of that case at the minimum, show they're going to be a ongoing danger.

Gaskins... 14, number 14, after he's already been given a break.

I mean, that's, that's, If not Pee Wee, who?

Gavin> Yeah.

To that extent, can you talk about at that time how the US Supreme Court decision on how to, to use the death penalty affected the cases?

Dick> So Pee Wee was tried and sentenced to death and in, I guess, Florence County.

Summerford.

And back then, my first death penalty case it's talked about in the book, you picked a jury, put the evidence up.

If they were convicted, the jury could recommend mercy.

Otherwise, the automatic sentence was death.

The US Supreme Court, in a case called Furman versus Georgia in the mid 70s, said, no, you can't do that.

You've got to have a bifurcated trial where the jury has to consider, are they guilty or not guilty?

And then they separate, trial on whether or not the death penalty is appropriate considering certain statutory mitigating and aggravating factors.

So Pee Wee's conviction, I mean, sentence for death were vacated.

Kenny Summerford convinced him and his lawyer that he could be retried for the death penalty.

I don't think he could, but Summerford offered him a deal.

Tell me about every murder you've done, not just the two that we convicted you on, and you will not get the death penalty for those.

And so he confessed to 13 murders.

And I've got, I mean, he was, it was interesting.

He was actually giving Sodium Pentothal and, and examined and I've got the transcript of that.

And it's fascinating reading.

And most of the details that we have of these murders are from his lips.

Gavin> And they're buried, they were buried throughout the Pee Dee too.

And I worked in Florence for four years before I came to Columbia.

And, you know, when you talk about Alligator Road and you talk about Lake City, I mean, it's all very vivid.

And, I think you do a good job illustrating who this guy really was, because I had only ever heard, you know, he drove a hearse around, he was crazy, blah, blah, blah.

But then you show this other aspect of him.

I mean, he sent you a Christmas card every year.

Dick> Sent me a Christmas card called my house.

Yeah.

And I, you know, my mom answered the phone and, I'll never forget.

She walks in.

We're having lunch.

She said, there's a Mr.

Gaskins on the phone for you.

I went berserk.

I said, Pee Wee, you don't call my house.

Now, by the way, he's on death row at that time.

How did he get access to a phone to call my house?

So I just jumped him and he said, "Okay, Dick.

Okay."

But he used to call the office because Jack was his defense attorney, Swerling.

and I was the prosecutor, he'd call the office and talked to both of us all the time.

And he did drawings.

He sent a bunch of them to Jack.

There's one of Jack and Dick.

I don't think they were good, but they were done by a serial killer, so I guess they've got some value.

But, (Gavin laughs) But, he sent Christmas cards.

He, And when we talked to him on the phone, he was very, again, very engaging, very friendly.

We'd joke a little bit.

I mean, Gavin> But, then all of a sudden, he wants to kidnap your daughter, and all of a sudden, you see the stone cold killer that he really is underneath all of that.

Dick> The kidnapping, the attempt to kidnap my four year old daughter, whatever feelings I had about him were immediately, you know, extinguished as to whether or not he was salvageable or, have any regrets about him getting the death penalty.

We had...agents living with us for two weeks.

My daughter was shipped out of state for a while.

When I got the call from Chief Robert Stuart at close to midnight, that Pee Wee was dead, a weight was lifted off my shoulders.

I mean, I felt... because we didn't know he had somebody else out there trying to do this.

So, I mean, I'm not saying I was glad he was dead, but I felt that his death marked a difference in my life going forward.

Gavin> And we have less than five minutes, Dick, I want to ask you, did you think this book maybe helped to exorcize some demons for you or maybe revisiting this and then contrast that with your recent case with Alec Murdaugh?

I mean, do you see similarities?

Do you see, I mean, did it bring back anything for you.

I'm just trying to see any correlation in some sense, obviously two different cases.

Dick> Well, they're two different cases, but, but, writing the book relieved me of some of the feelings.

And they're, I mean, I try to, tried to spell them out.

It's hard to be, you know, open about your emotions.

But I tried to spell them out.

And it, it did relieve me of a lot of those, those demons that haunted me for so many years.

The Murdaugh case, which I believe we're going to get a chance to try again.

But the Murdaugh case was a totally different animal.

Defense, had all kinds of twists and turns.

And, but it the reason I finished this book, was that experience.

I had no idea there was that kind of interest in true crime.

And it's been amazing.

Gavin> So we can expect a Murdaugh book, maybe?

Dick> You can expect a Murdaugh book.

Absolutely.

Jim Griffin and I talked about it.

We think we have a viewpoint that has not been shared in anything that's been done about it.

And we're looking forward to getting to a point where we can write it and release it.

Gavin> And there's been a lot around that case too, you know, TV shows, movies, etc.

We're talking about books here, but this is all under the whole industry of true crime.

Obviously, you're, you're in it.

That's your, your, your career.

But what's your take on that?

I mean, I think you've been to some conventions, Maybe, you interact with these people.

I mean, it seems like a fine line, like I'm not very much into the true crime podcast.

I think it's kind of odd, you know, like people watch 48 Hours or Dateline.

They get so spun up on this stuff.

I mean, how do you walk that line?

Because I think you did a good job in this book where you don't go to overly descriptive on all this, this horror.

You give us just enough with this, which is just enough to see.

I mean, we don't need all the gruesome details, in a sense.

Dick> I think there are people, There are a couple reasons.

One, some people are just interested in gore and interested in the whole how did they do that?

But I think the bulk of the people I met are interested in they look at the facts and they want to make their own decision about who did it.

Were they guilty or not?

On Murdaugh, we get emails every day from people telling us why they believe he's not guilty and giving us their And I mean, you can watch the whole trial.

<Yeah.> I mean, you can see all the evidence in the courtroom, which for your viewers, that's not all the evidence there is, but all the evidence that came out during the trial.

<Sure.> And so they're, a lot of them are just really, really, really- Gavin> -Armchair lawyers.

Dick> Armchair lawyers or armchair detectives or, want to make sure that, that, that what they saw was fair.

No, I mean, Pee Wee's not much doubt about how he did it and deserved to die.

Gavin> But it's a fine line, really, to, to talk about and glamorize it.

Dick> Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Gavin> All right.

Well, Dick.

That's Dick Harpootlian.

He's a former solicitor, a former state senator, now author of the book "Dig Me a Grave: "The Inside Story of the Serial Killer "Who Seduced the South" We're talking about Pee Wee Gaskins.

That's on sale starting in mid-December.

So, Dick... Dick> Well, you can go ahead and preorder.

Gavin> Preorder now?

Yeah.

Dick> Right now.

You can go online.

Gavin> Get that pitch in.

Dick> digmeagrave.com And, you can order it on your favorite online service, and preorder it and you'll get it on December 16th.

<There you go.> And, I'm going to be traveling the state.

<Okay.> Starting that week, be in Florence, be in Charleston.

Gavin> That'll be fascinating in Florence.

Yes.

Dick> Be here, and I think we're trying to get into Greenville, that week.

So it's the week before Christmas, and everybody knows every one of your members of your family, want the Christmas gift of a serial killer book.

Gavin> Precisely, that little conversation around the Christmas table.

That's Dick Harpootlian.

Thank you so much, Dick.

And thank you for watching.

For South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well, South Carolina.

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