R.J. Parker - The Serial Killer Compendium

Murder, Arrest, Release

While he was in prison, Gaskin’s committed his first murder. He slashed the throat of another inmate, Hazel Brazell. His reasoning for killing Brazell was to earn a reputation so that the other prisoners would fear him. He only got an additional three years added on to his sentence however as he claimed it was in self-defense. Just two years later, in 1955, he escaped prison by hiding out in the back of a garbage truck and fled to Florida. He was arrested again but eventually paroled in 1961.

Subsequent Murders

After his release, Gaskins went back to his petty crimes, stealing and breaking into businesses. He was arrested again in 1963 for the rape of a twelve-year-old girl and sentenced to eight years in the pen. He was released in 1968 after serving only five of those years and swore that he would never go back to prison again. Gaskin then moved to the town of Sumter where he worked as a laborer with a construction company. In September of 1969, Gaskins began his killing spree.

In September 1969, The Redneck picked up a female hitchhiker and started flirting with her. When she laughed at him, he pounded her unconscious, raped, sodomized, and tortured her; he then threw her into a swamp, still alive. This was the first of his so-called ‘Coastal Kills.’ He later referred to the Coastal Kills as the random killing of people in which, prior to killing, he sometimes enjoyed torturing his victims for days. He would at times cannibalize their dismembered bodies while they watched and force them to eat their own flesh.

He was not what the FBI would refer to as an organized killer. He had no preference; he would kill children, women, and men, but in November of 1970, Gaskins commenced what he would call his ‘Serious Murders’ of people he knew, such as family and friends. His niece, Janice Kirby, fifteen, and her friend, Patricia Alsobrook, seventeen, were the first victims of his Serious Murders. He took the girls to an abandoned house where he beat and raped them before drowning them.

Gaskins later bought an old hearse while living in Prospect, South Carolina. When asked why he bought a hearse he once said, “I kill so many people I need a vehicle to haul all the bodies to my private cemetery,” but of course the person he said it to did not take him seriously. He did have friends, and one was Doreen Dempsey, twenty-three, a pregnant single mom of a two year old. She asked Gaskins for a ride to the bus station as she was moving to another town. Gaskins took her to a wooded area instead where he started fondling the little two year old girl. When Doreen tried to stop him he smashed her skull, raped and sodomized the girl, and then raped and killed Doreen. He later said to authorities that it was the best sex he’d had in his life.

Suzanne Kipper paid Gaskins $1500 to kill Silas Yates, a wealthy farmer in Florence County, and he agreed. One night, Gaskins and a few of his ex-con friends, John Power, John Owens, and Diane Neely, planned and killed Yates, after which they buried his body. Shortly afterward, Diane Neely and her boyfriend, Avery Howard, attempted to blackmail Gaskins for $5000, or they would inform about the Yates’ murder. Gaskins killed both Howard and Neely and dumped their bodies.

Gaskins had another friend by the name of Walter Neely who helped Gaskins kill and dispose of two men who had attempted to steal from him. Gaskins showed Neely where he disposed of all the bodies he had killed, which he said totaled 181 people. Walter Neely eventually could not stand knowing that all those people were killed and went to the police.

Arrest, Conviction

After authorities obtained search warrants, they discovered nine bodies of several of Gaskins’ family and friends. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, but in November of 1976 his sentence was changed to life in prison when the South Carolina General Assembly death sentence rule of 1974 was altered to conform to the United States Supreme Court’s guidelines for the death penalty.

After being in prison for six years, Gaskins committed another murder that earned him the title of ‘Meanest Man in America.’ An inmate named Rudolph Tyner had once killed an elderly couple named Myrtle and Bill Moon during a robbery of their store that the Moon’s owned. Gaskin was hired as a hitman by Tony Cimo, the son of Myrtle Moon, to kill Tyner, which he did on September 2, 1982. Rather craftily, Gaskins’ rigged a device similar to a small radio in Tyner’s cell and told him that they would be able to communicate back and forth, but when Tyner held the speaker to his ear as Gaskins instructed him to do, the small device exploded as it contained a charge of C4. Gaskins later said that, “The last thing Tyner heard was me laughing.”

By this time, the death penalty was reinstated in the state of South Carolina.

Execution

While Gaskins was on death row he confessed to 181 murders. Whether he can be believed or not, we may never know. At 1:10am on September 6, 1991, Gaskins was electrocuted. His last words were, “I’ll let my lawyers talk for me. I’m ready to go.”

Gary Ridgway

The Green River Killer

Victims (49 confirmed, confessed to 71)

Background

Gary Leon Ridgway was born on February 18, 1949 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Mary and Thomas Ridgway. He has two brothers, Thomas Jr., and Gregory.

As a youngster, Ridgway witnessed several violent disagreements between his overbearing mother and his father. Ridgway was a bed wetter, which is common in serial killers, and his mother would often humiliate and demean him in front of friends and family because of it. He had mixed feelings of sexual attraction towards his mother as well as annoyance. He was also not very bright as a child, testing at an IQ of only 82. He performed below academic standards for his age and had to repeat at least one grade twice.

When Ridgway was sixteen years old he led another boy into the woods where he stabbed him in the back and punctured his liver. Ridgway laughed as he left, and said, “I always wondered what it would be like to kill someone.” Luckily, the boy survived.

Ridgway joined the U.S. Navy at twenty, shortly after marrying his high school sweetheart, Claudia Barrows, who was nineteen at the time. He was sent overseas to Vietnam where he spent a great deal of time with prostitutes and contracted gonorrhea. Although it irritated him, he did not bother using condoms and continued to have unprotected sex with them. Meanwhile, back home, his wife was also unfaithful and within a year their marriage ended.

After returning home from Nam, Ridgway met and married Marcia Winslow, but he could not prevent himself from being unfaithful to her either. He continued to frequent prostitutes even though, while doing so, he professed to be religious. He would go to church on Sunday, and preached the bible door to door; he would often cry after sermons, and annoy people at his work regarding the bible. While portraying this self-righteous religious persona, he would participate in sexual deviations with prostitutes and always wanted Marsha to have sex with him in public places. Regardless of all of this, his wife gave him a son, Matthew, in 1975.

Murders

It is believed that from 1982 to 1998, Ridgway took the lives of seventy-one women, but that number could be much higher. He was dubbed ‘The Green River Killer’ in the early 1980s when his first five victims were found in the Green River near Seattle in the state of Washington.

Most of Ridgway’s murders were prostitutes he’d picked up. He’d show them a picture of his son, take them to a secluded area or just to his truck, have sex with and then strangle them. Initially, he would strangle them using his hands, but found that when they fought back they would scratch or mark him, so he began to use a ligature instead.