Good morning,







Quote of the day:


“I inherited a violin and a painting. They turned out to be a Rembrandt and a Stradivarius. Unfortunately Rembrandt made lousy violins and Stradivarius was a terrible artist.”


                              Tommy Cooper






This edition will not contain local news. I added the biography of one of the most evil people this area of the United States has ever produced. I have sent this bio out before but it is good that we read about how evil people can become. There is a time line history section that will follow.






                  Biography of Donald Gaskins






Donald Gaskins was born in Manning, South Carolina on March 13, 1933. His mother was not married when Donald was born but she had several live-in boy friends most of which treated Donald with distain and administered regular beatings. Finally Donald’s mother did get married and this man also beat Donald and step-brothers and sisters systematically. His mother did little if anything at all to prevent these beatings. Donald was a small person which brought him even more distain when attending school where he got the nickname “Peewee” and that moniker stayed with him the rest of his life. The violence he experienced at home did not slow down at school. He was constantly fighting with both girls and boys who harassed him about his size and then the principal would give him a paddling for fighting. He quit school at the age of 11 and began a life of dealing with stolen cars and “chop shop” auto parts. He struggled with the hatred of people in general and women in particular probably because his Mother did not protect him. His real passion was torturing and killing anyone he felt like, even down to infants. He was not above cannibalism either. He began a life of cruising the back roads of rural low country South Carolina and kidnapping anyone that suited his fancy and tortured and kill them in the most unspeakable manner. He started his life of crime with one of his cousins at the age of 13. They broke in and burglarized several homes in the community. His cousin got scared and left the area but that did not slow down Pee-wee. He was caught in the act of burglarizing a home by a girl that he knew who came at him with an axe. Peewee was able to get the axe away from her and struck her in the head and arm before running way. The girl lived and named Peewee as the burglar. He was sent to the South Carolina Reformatory for Boys to stay until he was 18. Again because of his small stature he was repeatedly raped until he fell under the wing of the meanest son-of-a-bitch in there nicknamed “Boss-Boy”. Boss Boy protected Peewee in return for sex when he wanted it. This inflamed him to the boiling point. During his stay in Reform School he had escaped and joined a small carnival and ended up marrying a 13 year old but decided to turn himself in to do the rest of his time. He was released at the age of 18 a walking time-bomb. He found a job on a tobacco farm and could not resist but to find a way to quick but illegal money. He organized a gang that offered to burn tobacco barns that were not making money for the owners in return for a fee. Peewee’s gang gained popularity with the tobacco farmers. One day the daughter of one of the tobacco farmers accused Peewee as being the “Barnburner” whereupon he went crazy as hell and hit the girl on the head with a hammer splitting her skull. He then went to a real prison which was another world than reform school. He was immediately assigned the sexual partner of the alleged worst bad-ass in there, a man named Hazel Brazell. Peewee figured out that the only way he could gain any peace was to make himself be recognized as a “Power Man” or a brutal killer. He gained Brazell’s confidence and one night Peewee cut his throat. After this, nobody fooled around with Peewee. One day in 1955 he found out that his wife had filed for divorce and he wigged out, escaped, stole a car and went to Florida and joined a small carnival. He married again but that union lasted only two weeks. He became involved with another woman named Betty Gates in the carnival who persuaded Peewee to take her to Cookeville, Tennessee and bail out her “brother” from jail. The two made their way to Cookeville and Peewee went into the jail, delivered the money and a carton of cigarettes. The three went to a hotel and Peewee went to sleep and when he awoke Betty, her “brother,” who turned out to be her husband and the car were gone leaving Peewee dangling in the wind. The money was not bail money, and the carton of cigarettes held a razor blade by which Betty’s husband used to make good an escape. The police quickly found out that Peewee was an escaped prisoner himself and he was returned to prison and received and additional nine years. Since he drove a stolen car across state lines it became a Federal offense and that offense sent him to the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta. While there he met mafia boss Frank Costello who called Peewee “my little hatchet man” and offer him a job after he was released. Peewee was finally released in 1961 and returned to Florence, SC and took a job in a tobacco farm but just could not resist and began burglarizing home once again. He finally became the driver and assistant to a traveling minister and that allowed him to burglarize home in different areas making it difficult to detect. In a short time span he had re-married twice. Both brides were under age and the second wife turned him in for statutory rape. He was convicted and went to a prison in Columbia, SC and was released 1968. This is the beginning of a bloodbath seldom equaled in history. Peewee had mentioned many times about the “troublesome and aggravating” feelings he had all of his life. He found out what it meant on day in September of 1969 when he picked up a girl hitchhiker who laughed at him when he propositioned her for sex. She should not have done that because Peewee exploded in anger, raped and sodomized her then beat her to the point of death. He then put a weight around her waist and threw her into a swamp where she drowned. After this episode, Peewee said that now he knew what it would take to assuage the “troublesome and aggravating” feelings...torture and murder. By 1975 Peewee had honed his skills in torture and was able to keep his victims alive in agonizing pain for days and had tortured and killed over 80 boys and girls. He sometime cannibalized and dined on a person’s flesh in the victim’s presence or forced them to join him. He considered his highway murders as “recreational” murders and the murder of his friends and acquaintances as “serious murders”. By this time he was living in Prospect, South Carolina and drove around town in a hearse stating that he needed one to take his victims to different burial places. Everyone thought he was joking and a little bit disturbed but eventually they found out what monster he was. There was a young girl living in town that had a two year old child out of wedlock and was pregnant. This girl had decided to leave town and start a new life and asked Peewee for a ride to the bus station. Peewee did not take them to the bus station but out into the woods and raped both the girl and her two year old daughter, killed them and buried them together. Not only did he murder for fun, he was an acknowledged hired assassin. Peewee took a job to assassinate a wealthy farmer. The farmer’s girl friend is the one that had hired Peewee and he did not disappoint. After the murder, two people and the girl friend notified Peewee that they wanted $5,000 hush money. Peewee agreed and met them at a designated place and he killed and buried all three. Eventually one of Peewee’s associates broke down under police pressure and took the cops to Peewee’s personal graveyard where the remains of 8 people were uncovered. He was tried and convicted of 8 counts of murder and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to 8 life sentences after the US Supreme Court declared the death penalty as being unconstitutional. Peewee, knowing that he would never see daylight again and would not be executed, accepted an assassination assignment of one of the inmates. This inmate had murdered a man and his wife and their family was not happy with the mandatory life sentence and hired Pee wee to kill him. Incredibly, Peewee was able to convince this inmate that he had a radio that if you held it close to your ear you could hear what the other inmates were saying in the other cells. He said “All you have to do is hold the radio real close to your ear and plug it in”. As you probably have guessed by now it was not a radio, it was a bomb and nearly decapitated this guy. By then the death penalty had been reinstated in the state of South Carolina and Peewee got the death penalty for this indiscretion. While awaiting his execution he talked at length with a writer that was going to do his biography. During these interviews he admitted to at least 100 murders, be they “recreational”, “serious” or for hire. As his execution date drew near, Peewee became more and more philosophical. He said that for a while he felt he has been even with the power of God since he could kill or let live at will. In the final days he tried to cheat the execution by slashing his wrists but the guards stopped him. At 1:06a on September 6, 1991 with stitches in his wrist, this monster’s heart ceased to beat after a losing duel with “Old Sparky” the electric chair. I wonder where he is today.






               This date in history February 3






1781   Earlier in December of 1780, Patriot General Nathaniel Greene had tasked Polish engineer Thaddeus Kosciusko with designing a boat that could be used convey troops across the unpredictable Yadkin River in North Carolina regardless of its condition. Kosciusko made an exploratory canoe trip down the Yadkin and the Pee Dee Rivers and came back and designed and helped build boats for that special purpose. If ya’ll remember previous lessons, British General Charles Cornwallis defeated the North Carolina Militia at the Battle of Cowan’s Ford and British Colonel Banastre Tarleton’s Dragoons had beaten up on the same militia at the Battle of Tarrant’s Tavern, now that militia and other soldiers under the command of Greene join near Salisbury, NC and head for the Dan River in Virginia and safety. The only problem was that the Yadkin River was severely flooded because of a thunderous rainfall on February 1 and British General Cornwallis’ army of 16,000 is perilously close. So on this date Greene ordered his army into the boats designed by Kosciusko and successfully cross the Yadkin but then very last remnants of Greene’s army are shelled by Cornwallis’s artillery from the opposite bank. With no boats, Cornwallis must move his army to the city of Shallowford and wait for the water to abate low enough to cross. He did not get across until February 7 and by then Greene and his army was far enough ahead to make it to the Dan River safely.






1959   A musical group was on a “Winter Tour” when their tour bus broke down near Mason City, Iowa. Their next stop was Moorhead, Minnesota so the band leader charters a four place single engine Beechcraft Bonanza to take him and two others on to Moorhead. One this date, the plane crashed soon after takeoff killing all aboard. In addition to the pilot, the passengers were Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and John “The Big Bopper” Richardson. Holley and his band The Crickets, had just recorded “That’ll be the Day” a few days before. Valens was riding the crest of his hit “La Bamba” and Richardson had recorded the hit “Chantilly Lace”. Richardson had the flu and had talked another musician out of his seat on the plane. The musician that gave up his seat was Waylon Jennings.






1865   Earlier the journalist Horace Greeley had suggested that a meeting between the Union and Confederacy might bring a truce and the end to the bloodshed and recommended that a member of Lincoln’s advisory committee from Maryland, Francis Blair, should set up the meeting. Blair obtained the permission of Lincoln to prepare the location of the meeting and it becomes Hampton Roads, Virginia. On this date Abraham Lincoln met with the Confederate Secretary of State Alexander Stephens. Stephen asks for concessions and Lincoln says there will be no concessions that all those states in rebellion will rejoin the Union and comply with all of their laws. As you might suspect, since Lincoln knew the Confederacy was just a few days from defeat, he did not have to concede anything. And he was right, two months later the war ended at Appomattox Court House Virginia with the surrender of CSA Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.






1780   In 1760 Barnett Davenport was born in rural Connecticut. When he reached an appropriate age he joined the Patriot army and was with George Washington at Valley Forge and fought at Fort Ticonderoga. In the waning days of the Revolutionary War he became a boarder in the home of Caleb Mallory and his family also living in rural Connecticut. On this date, for reasons known only to Davenport, he slaughtered everyone in the Mallory house. He beat Caleb to death, shot his wife and daughter, set the house on fire killing Mallory’s two grandchildren. If this would have happened today, people would be saying is was a post-war syndrome. But in those days criminals were perceived as basically good people that had lost their way. Bur after this outrage, people’s attitude changed to that there were people out there that are basically evil. That attitude is still with us to this day.






1953   On this date French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau published his landmark book The Silent World. This book and Cousteau himself had opened our eyes to man’s responsibility for the stewardship our earth’s oceans and the beings therein. He also almost single-handedly created the sport of SCUBA diving. In the early years a free diver was very limited to the depth and length of stay under water. Then in 1943 Cousteau and inventor Emile Gagnan created the Aqua-Lung and the sport and industry of underwater exploration was born. He also helped invent underwater cameras and photography and the discovery and exploration of shipwrecks grew exponentially. In 1963 Cousteau gave us the book The Living Sea which turned out to be another milestone in the science of oceanography. Cousteau himself was a participant in the discovery of many ancient shipwrecks which is as thrilling today for me as it was for Cousteau at the moment of discovery. Cousteau died in 1997 leaving the world with a legacy that probably will never be matched.






1889   This is a story about Myra Belle Shirley that was born in Carthage, Missouri in 1848. Young Myra received a substantial education and be came very proficient on the piano. Her father was an innkeeper in Carthage but his business went to hell with the outbreak of the Civil War so the family moved to Texas. It was here that she met up with and had a relationship with the infamous Cole Younger who was a member of the James-Younger gang. It was soon thereafter she brought into this world a daughter she named Pearl. Most people believe that Cole was the father but it was probably Jim Reed, another member of the gang. She became the common-law wife to Reed and had no problem with his profession and indeed helped him in rustling cows and horses in the Dallas area. In 1874 Reed was killed in a gunfight so she drifted into the Oklahoma Indian territory and organized a gang of rustlers. She could be seen riding around velvet dressed and plumed hats. She hooked up with a handsome Creek Indian named Sam Starr and she became known as Belle Starr. She stayed with Sam for 10 years but he was killed in a gunfight with a member of his own gang. Very soon after that she took up with another Creek Indian name Jim July, 15 years her junior. They were captured and did five or six months in the joint but after release began their old tricks again. In 1889 she was summoned to Fort Smith, Arkansas to face charges of cattle rustling. So she and her boy friend Jim headed east to Fort Smith but changed their minds and turned around and headed back west. Soon after two shotgun blasts hit Belle in the back and she died instantly. The culprit was never found.






Born today:






1821   English born Elizabeth Blackwell. Elizabeth immigrated to the US and became the first female doctor in history. She said “If society will not admit to women’s free development, then society must be remodeled.” I have a male friend that has a female as his doctor. He told me that she had examined him for hemorrhoids. This is a severe case of over-confidence.






1826   English economist Walter Bagehot. He said “The reason there are so few good books written is that those that write don’t know anything.” Hey Walter, all you have to do these days is write book about a unique diet that will make people lose weight and you are successful.






1830   British Prime Minister Robert Cecil. When describing Edwardian England he said “It was consider virtuous to not be involved in a scandal or get a venereal disease.” Edwardian times must have been a lot of partying.






1918   US comic Joey Bishop. He said “I have a wonderful doctor. In 1955 I could not afford an operation, so he touched up the x-rays.” Joey went to that great stage in the sky in 2007.






1969   Florida State quarterback Casey Weldon. Casey was to attend a fancy sit-down dinner and was told he would be seated beside Ringo Starr. Casey said “Who is she?” Casey, shut up.






  Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow