A Serial Killer and His Prosecutor

 by Paula Gail Benson

When I was growing up in South Carolina, the name Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins was known and feared as a serial killer who charmed his victims and had no remorse for the atrocities he committed against them. When his death penalty conviction was overturned (due to the state’s statute being held unconstitutional), he pled guilty to dozens of murders to receive life sentences.

Later, when the death penalty was statutorily reinstated, he was serving time in the state’s Central Correctional facility. He took a bribe to kill another prisoner. When poisoning did not work, he smuggled in an explosive. That death was the crime for which he was executed.

Prior to his own death, he wrote with Wilton Earle, Final Truth: The Autobiography of Pee Wee Gaskins. Gaskins told reporters and others that he killed more than one hundred people. That number has not been proven.

Gaskins’ crimes and trials are examined in Richard A. Harpootlian’s Dig Me a Grave: The Inside Story of the Serial Killer Who Seduced the South (written with Shaun Assael) (released December 16, 2025, with the audio version read by Harpootlian). You may recognize Harpootlian’s name. He’s a lawyer in Columbia, S.C., and recently served in the State Senate. He began his career as a prosecutor, then became a defense attorney, most recently representing Hunter Biden and Alex Murdaugh.

Harpootlian prosecuted Pee Wee Gaskins and, in doing so, found himself in a unique relationship with the killer. Pee Wee, known to be a master manipulator, called Harpootlian by name and greeted him when they were together. Following the trial, Pee Wee continued the relationship by sending Harpootlian Christmas cards. As Pee Wee’s execution neared, he tried to have Harpootlian’s four-year-old daughter kidnapped.

What is so fascinating about Dig Me a Grave is that it is not only Pee Wee’s story, but also Harpootlian’s. The chapters change the viewpoint from one to the other, contrasting their backgrounds and their approach to the trial.

Harpootlian spoke to the Capitol Crimes Chapter of Sisters in Crime about the book and his experience with Pee Wee. He talked about how the killer could display a very likable personality. One day when they were eating lunch together, Pee Wee had been teasing him. Harpootlian took the opportunity to tease Pee Wee back, and saw a change occur in his face and eyes. Suddenly, the congenial companion had angered. Harpootlian knew he had to get Pee Wee to display that anger in the courtroom so that the jury members would understand why they needed to convict him.

If you have an interest in true crime and history, this is a book you do not want to miss. It contains difficult scenes but gives real insight into how a serial killer’s mind works and how a prosecutor prepared for the trial.

Richard A. Harpootlian

What true crime books do you recommend?

Real Crimes to Inspire Your Next Mystery

By Jen Dodrill

 As a fellow mystery writer, I know the pain of staring at a blank page, wondering where to begin. After watching so many real-life crime stories, I’ve wondered, “What if?” What if I used an actual crime to inspire me? How could chilling, bizarre, and unsolved mysteries be turned into a piece of fiction?

 This idea is nothing new for writers. The Lindbergh kidnapping inspired Murder on the Orient Express. Psycho came out of Ed Gein’s horrific crimes. And one of my personal favorites, Jaws, was inspired by shark attacks that happened in 1916 off the New Jersey coast. I know, it’s not a mystery, but what if …?

 Typically, I write cozy mysteries, which have mild to no gore and sex. Some of these stranger-than-fiction crimes are twisted and not something that would work for a cozy. Or maybe they could. A little adaptation, some creative license, and ta-da!

 If you decide to turn a true crime into a mystery – gritty noir, cozies, or thrillers – think about these things:

·       Research the real crime and look for ways to change it for fiction

·       Consider what location/setting you want to use

·       Decide your characters’ backgrounds

·       Modify your characters' ages

·       Delve into your characters’ secrets

·       Explore the what-ifs, the twists and turns life can take

Here are five real-life cases that you can use as a springboard:

1. The Isdal Woman (Norway, 1970)

In 1970, a partially burned body of a woman was found in a remote valley in Bergen, Norway. No one knew who she was, and the items that were discovered had their labels removed. Questions: Was she a spy? A criminal? A victim of something darker? Consider setting your mystery in a small town with similar circumstances to the real crime. Maybe your protagonist is a local journalist who realizes the murdered woman wasn’t the first … or the last.

2. The Murder of Julia Wallace (Liverpool, 1931)

William Wallace received a message to meet a potential client at a fake address. When he returned home, he found his wife brutally murdered. Wallace was arrested, convicted, and then acquitted. Questions: The perfect alibi? Or, a perfect frame job? Consider incorporating modern technology into the story, such as a spoofed phone call, GPS tampering, or a deepfake alibi. Or, flip the POV—tell it from the perspective of the real killer who thinks they got away with it.

 3. The Circleville Letters (Ohio, 1970s–90s)

Residents of Circleville began receiving threatening, anonymous letters detailing their secrets. One woman’s husband died in a suspicious crash involving tampered brakes. A suspect was arrested, but the letters continued to be sent while he was in prison. Questions: Who was the letter writer? One person, or many? Secrets are often used to blackmail people—layer in modern touches, such as anonymous emails, burner phones, or deep web message boards.

 4. The Tamám Shud Case (Australia, 1948)

A man was found dead on Somerton Beach. A scrap of paper reading “Tamám Shud” (“it is ended” in Persian) was discovered in his pocket and was traced to a rare book in a stranger’s car. A phone number and a sequence of letters were found in the back of the book. Questions: Was the man a spy? Who did the phone number belong to? Think about weaving this cryptic message into your story. Your protagonist might be a cryptologist studying conspiracies.

 5. The Boy in the Box (Philadelphia, 1957)

The body of a young boy was found in a box in the woods. No one came forward to claim him. Despite facial reconstructions, national press, and decades of investigation, the case went cold until DNA matched him to a family in 2022. Still, how he died remains murky. Questions: Why was this child abandoned, and who covered it up? Consider using genealogy to identify the victim. The detective must unravel what happened and determine why an entire neighborhood kept it quiet for decades.

These ideas are narrative seeds: the strange timing, the anonymous threats, the eerie symbolism. As writers, we can ask, “What if?”

• What if the wrong person went to prison?

• What if the murder was never meant to be solved?

• What if the killer is still alive—and watching?

 In real life, crimes aren’t always solved. Closure doesn’t always happen. However, in fiction, the writer gets to decide who lives, who dies, and who pays for their actions.

 Happy plotting—and remember, truth really is stranger than fiction.

 

Bio:

Jen Dodrill is living out her dreams on the pages of her books, bringing readers compelling stories of inspiration and hope for both good and bad times. 

Her first book, Birds Alive! An Empty-nesters Cozy Mystery was released in 2024. Book #2 in the series, Where’s the Quetzal, came out in February 2025. Book #3, No Egrets, will be published in 2026. Jen has co-authored a novella collection, Trinity Sands Beach Club, with Deborah Sprinkle and Sharon H. Carpenter, which was released June 17, 2025.

For more information about Jen and her books, check out her blog: https://jendodrillwrites.com/.

 

Crime News

Although actual crimes have been the inspiration for much of crime fiction, some real crimes would not make believable novels.

A twenty-five year old man in Delaware who was suspected of shoplifting was stopped by police officers.  He was walking with his two children. Asked to put his children down, he eventually complied after slipping something into his eight-month-old son’s diaper.  An examination revealed the diaper held 16 packets of heroin.  Police did not believe the infant was at fault. 

A high school junior in Suwannee, Georgia was detained after a wild spring break party.  Police officers looking for the location of a loud party noticed the intoxicated minor carrying two beers.  The teenager tried unsuccessfully to hide the alcohol.  Instead of answering questions, he hit one of the cops and tried to run away.  He added substantially to the crimes he could be charged with.  Sometimes doubling down on stupidity just does not pay off.

A woman who worked at a Kansas medical center came into the employee credit union carrying her infant.  She identified herself and made a withdrawal from her account.  She hung around for a few minutes, returned to the teller window and announced she was holding up the credit union.  She demanded money, but what she got was an arrest.  Are infants encouraging crimes?  (See above) No, I don’t think so.

An eleven-year-old Spanish student trying to avoid having his father attend a parent-teacher conference sent his father a text message claiming he had been kidnapped while taking out the trash.  His father, a police officer sent out a nation-wide alert.  The boy was found hiding at a house his parents owned.  I think the boy’s father should have been suspicious of when the boy said he voluntarily took out the trash. 

Recently in the United Kingdom a young man dressed as a penguin walked out of a convenience store with a case of beer he did not pay for.  He was caught on film by a security camera.  His elaborate disguise did not hide his identity.

A man ordered a $10.00 meal at Denny’s. After he ate, he realized he was $9.00 short of the bill.  First he offered the cashier a bag of marijuana in trade.  When that didn’t work he loudly tried to sell his drugs to other customers.  Sometimes honesty does not pay. 

A woman in Florida threw a surprise birthday party for her boss.  The costly celebration aroused suspicion.  After investigation it was learned that she had been skimming from the company for ten years.  Try to do something nice for someone…

Two detectives in Florida were arrested for breaking into city hall. Their explanation was that they had to use the restroom and the one in their part of the police station was “nasty.”  According to a news source they “didn’t recognize the severity of the situation.”

A man in Florida, apparently not well acquainted with elevators, pulled a knife on an elderly woman in an elevator.  He then walked into the closed door.  Although he escaped arrest, he was caught on camera.  He is now a YouTube celebrity. 

 Have your read about other Napoleons of crime?

Living with Murder Years Later

The other day, I was sitting in traffic, waiting for the light to turn, when I noticed a bumper sticker on a pickup truck the next lane over.

SOMEONE I LOVED WAS MURDERED!

Yep, that’s what it said, in big, bold red letters, on a pollution-decayed white background. On the truck’s back window was one of those personalized “In loving memory” decals you see with someone’s name and date of death all stylized in a fancy script.

Michaela McClelland. 6-17-1998

Being the curious sort that I am, I Googled the case the second I was back in front of a computer. On June 17, 1998, 11-year-old Michaela was struck repeatedly with a hammer. Her 24-year-old baby sitter, Richard Benedict, was arrested the next day and eventually went to jail for the crime.

The whole thing sounds horrible—drug use, sexual advances and theft also came into play—but it also doesn’t sound much different from something we’d see in any number of our favorite mysteries and thrillers.

Which made me think about the man in the pickup truck.

I don’t know if he was Michaela’s father, brother, uncle, grandfather, friend… he could’ve been any of those things (all I saw was a hairy man arm hanging out the open driver’s side window). No matter who he was in relation to her, he clearly loved Michaela and is still carrying a torch for her, if his vehicle is any indication.

We write and read all the time about family members of victims. They are sometimes minor characters, only mentioned in passing. Other times, they can be a main character, out for the truth and vengeance. No fictional reaction seems to be exactly the same, though there’s always some form of grief, sadness, shock and anger in the mix.

But what happens when the murder isn’t confined to the pages of a book? What if it’s real life and 16 years later, you’re still wearing the pain of the ordeal on your sleeve, or the bumper of your pickup in rush hour traffic?

When writing, do you think about the future and how your story still sits on the survivors’ hearts?

You Can’t Fix Stupid

I haven’t watched television in decades with the exception of some PBS shows for which I’d buy the videos and a couple of shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer that my youngest son inveigled me into watching on DVD with him. (He used to require Buffy-watching as his payment for help fixing my computer problems.) This wasn’t one of those judge-y things where someone lets you know that they’re too intellectually superior to watch what everyone else is watching. It was simply a matter of priorities. I made the choice of writing over television back when I was trying to carve out regular time to write.

After eight years in another state at grad school, that youngest son is back home living with us for a while until he pays off some debt and moves into his permanent abode. With him, he brought a big-screen TV and Netflix—and the same desire to have me watch his favorite shows along with him. So I’ve been watching more TV in the past few weeks than in the past ten years.

He likes some of the true-crime docudramas like Disappeared and Hardcover Mysteries. Hardcover Mysteries, in particular, has appealed to me since it features actual mystery authors discussing actual murder cases that have fascinated them. David Baldacci, Lisa Scottoline, Sandra Brown, Linda Fairstein, Sara Paretsky have all discussed in detail real-life cases, along with interviews of the actual law enforcement officials who investigated the cases.

Over and over, the authors have said, “If I used that in one of my novels, my editor would tell me to rewrite it because it’s too farfetched.” And they’re right. Some of the things these murderers do are so bizarre and over-the-top that they could never be used in a book that’s trying to be believable fiction. But recently on one of these shows a chief of police said something that goes to the heart of why it’s hard to just use a real murder as a basis of a mystery or thriller without major fictional changes. He said, “The real reason people kill other people and commit other major crimes is that they’re stupid. I’ve seen it again and again. They’re so stupid that murder looks like an easy solution to whatever problem they’re dealing with. And that’s why they get caught and end up in prison. I don’t know what you can do about it, though. You can’t fix stupid.”

I think he’s probably right on the mark here. Our local Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime brings in law enforcement officials, private investigators, prosecutors, defense lawyers, you name it. (Here you see a photo of our own Warren Bull being handcuffed and leg-cuffed by the head of the U.S. Marshals Service in our region during one of those programs.) If someone plays a role in investigating, enforcing, or trying criminal cases, we’ve had them visit and talk to us about what they’ve encountered in their careers—and we’ve heard that police chief’s words echoed again and again. Most people become criminals and murderers because, in one way or another, they’re stupid. Even or especially the ones who think they’re being smart about it.

I can’t write mysteries about people who commit murder because they’re stupid, however. Sometimes in the field of noir, you can base a book on hapless, dumb murderers, but you can’t do it often, or you’ll lose your readers. Readers want a real antagonist, someone with brains and abilities, not someone like one of these real murderers who commit murder because they can’t think of any other options or they think it will be an easy out. Much as I try to research meticulously and make my books as realistic as possible, I have to violate reality and have intelligent killers who are a true match for my protagonists and pose the real danger that they might get away with heinous crimes.

Many years ago, a law enforcement official whose name I no longer remember, said at a writers conference I attended that, nine times out of ten, murderers were caught and convicted because of stupid mistakes, and he’d come to believe that was because really smart people found other, less dangerous ways to deal with whatever problems they encountered than murder. But that won’t work for crime writers because we can work wonders on plot and characterization, but even we can’t fix stupid.

Have you read mysteries you enjoyed where the murderer was not so bright?

Finding Fiction in the Strangest Truth

They say truth is stranger than fiction.

Which is both annoying and wonderful when your job is to come up with fake crimes.

Writing mysteries is pretty much like hoping to show up to the world’s largest prom without the same dress/hair/shoes/makeup as any other girl there. There’s plenty of personalization involved, but even if you create everything from scratch, chances are that someone next door or three states over has come up with some aspect, large or small, that’s similar if not totally the same to your brilliant idea.

So, even though you’ve got all sorts of moving parts: murder, motivation, victim, criminal, setting, plot, secondary plot and characters, etc., it’s still hard to do something that’s totally not been done before.

Which is why I’m going to tell you to find inspiration in something that has been done before.

Something in real life.

For a long time, I’ve kept a file of true-life horrible things that happen. And bits and pieces of those crimes might show up in my stories someday, whether I plan for them to be there or not. I figure, even if these ideas just stay in my file for years, at least reading about those crimes has taught me something about how murders are committed or investigated or both. And those are two things that we all need to not only get our fictional murders correct, but also understand how to create a satisfying conclusion to them.

This week, I added the following story to my file. It’s the tale of a husband and wife, each of whom shot and killed their families out west before marrying and moving to the Missouri Ozarks. For more than 30 years, both got away with the crimes. Until the present day, when their murderous pasts finally caught up with them — shocking family, friends, and neighbors. (It also shocked fellow blogger Warren Bull, who also mentioned this same story this week.)

It’s real life, but can’t you just see the whole thing unfolding beautifully in a mystery or thriller? The 

Horrible Secrets of Alice and Gerald: Book 1.

So, though you can think of something totally fresh and new, it doesn’t hurt to keep tabs on those real-life stories that are just so strange they might make for great fiction. And hey, shows like Law & Order use real-life crimes as the basis for their episodes all the time, so why can’t you?

What’s the best true-life story you’ve heard that might make a great mystery?