pee Wee Gaskins

Good evening and welcome to forgotten killers, sorry I'm a bit late this week I had a run in with a dog and my hand got in the way lol.

so this evenings post is about a man named Pee Wee Gaskins

Pee Wee Gaskins at the time of his arrest 

So lets start at the beginning, Born Donald Henry Parrot Jr on march 13th 1933 in Florence county,south Carolina he was the last born in a string of illegitimate children. He was small for his age which earned him the nickname pee wee and he had a hard upbringing, a neglected child who at age 1 drank a bottle of kerosene which caused him seizures up until the age of three his mother barely spoke to him let alone looked after him, in fact his mother took so little interest that pee wee didn't learn his birth name of Donald until his first court appearance aged 17. Very little is known about his childhood other than the neglect and that he left school aged 11 to work on cars at a local garage. when he was a teenager he started to become a frequent visitor at the local police station for minor misdemeanours, his first court appearance was with friends who he met at the garage, a gang of boys just like him, they called themselves the terrible trio and together they committed robbery, assault and gang rape, he was sent to reform school after this arrest.

As a small teenager Gaskins was regularly raped by the other inmates, he eventually escaped and joined a travelling carnival where he met a 13 year old girl and they got married. Gaskins then turned himself over to police to finish his sentence at reform school (why? I don't know)

After his release Gaskins went to work on a tobacco plantation, he had just turned 18 and seemed to be going straight but this did not last long Gaskins was arrested again in 1953 after attacking the plantation owners daughter when she found gaskin burning down the barns although she did not know Gaskins was doing this with her fathers consent for insurance fraud, Gaskins cracked her head open with an axe, the girl survived and he was sentenced to 6 years in prison. It is unknown what happened in his first marriage but she divorced him in 1955 and Gaskins would marry again but this only lasted two weeks, it is known that Gaskins had a child but with whom is unknown.

Back inside pee wee earned the respect of the other inmates by killing the most feared man in the prison Hazel Brazell, he was given an extra 3 years but now Gaskins had turned from the victim into the aggressor. Donald escaped prison again in 1955 hiding in a garbage truck and again joined a travelling carnival, this didn't last long as Gaskin was rearrested later that year.

Now we come to the years when nothing was heard of Donald Gaskins, for the next 14 years Gaskins seemingly got on with his life until 1975 in Prospect Connecticut when a criminal associate of Gaskins went to the police claiming he witnessed him killing a young man aged 28 and a teenage boy aged 15, he had also confided in the man that he had killed many more people who had been listed as missing over the past five years. The associate of Gaskins led police to where he claimed Gaskins had buried the bodies

Gaskins owned land in Prospect and he drove a hearse with a bumper sticker saying 'I haul dead people'

it is reported that Gaskins bragged that he needed the hearse to move the bodies of people he had killed to his own private graveyard but not much notice was taken of him.

The hearse Gaskins drove

After his arrest Gaskins led police to his land in Prospect where they found the bodies of 8 of his victims (it is claimed there are many more) most of his victims were women who he would rape and murder in woodland near to him, it is also said that he ate some of his victims flesh but this is not confirmed.

Gaskins leading police to the bodies on his property

Police digging up Gaskins land to recover the bodies of 8 victims

Donald 'pee wee' Gaskins was found guilty on 8 counts of murder and sentenced to death, this was later committed to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a change in the law which angered Gaskins. In 1982 Gaskins killed again in prison, he murdered a death row inmate after he was hired by the son of the mans victims, Gaskins tried many ways to kill him including poisoning his food and drink but none of them worked until he rigged a portable radio with explosives (how he got all of this I do not know!) he told the man they could talk to each other between their cells with the radio and agreed an exact time to talk that evening, at the arranged time Gaskin detonated the explosives killing the inmate, he later said that the last thing the death row inmate heard was him laughing. Gaskins was tried again for murder and again sentenced to death, this was an historic case as it was the first time a white man had been convicted and sentenced to death for killing a black man. While he waited on death row Gaskins claimed to have killed around 110 people including the 13 year old daughter of the then state of senate senator.

Gaskins was finally executed in September 1991 by electric chair his last words were 'I'll let my lawyers talk for me, I'm ready to go'

It is not known exactly how many victims Gaskins killed but he is known as one of the worst serial killers in south Carolina history, his victims were mostly young women who came to a grisly end at the hands of Gaskins and even prison couldn't stop his murderous tendencies.

Well I hope you enjoyed this weeks instalment of Forgotten Killers, if you did please follow my blog ready for next weeks instalment.

you can also follow me on Instagram forgottenkillersonig for my daily serial killer facts.

see you next week and keep safe.

 

  

Good evening everyone and welcome to Forgotten killers.

Tonight I will be telling the tale of Karl Denke, the cannibal of Ziebice.

This is the only picture of Karl Denke taken after his death.

Karle Denke was born in February 1860 in Munsterberg in the kingdom of Prussia, now in Poland.

 He was raised on a farm and little is known about his childhood except that he was a shy, quiet and soft spoken child who was difficult to raise, at the age of 12 Denke ran away from home. He graduated high school though and got an apprenticeship as a gardener, he made a life for himself from this. At 25 Denke's father passed away and although the farm and property was left to his older brother (who's name I could not find anywhere!) he left Denke a sum of money which he invested in land and began farming like his family before him, this however didn't last long Denke failed and had to sell the land. With the money he had left Denke brought himself a house but again this didn't end well when inflation forced him to sell up once again but Denke refused to move off the property and lived in a small apartment adjoining his old house.

The small apartment that Denke moved into after selling his house.

Denke made a living from the shop he had purchased with the money left over from the sale of his farm, he sold meat and was a popular man in the town of Ziebice as it is now know, he was well liked and volunteered at his local church as a cross bearer and organist, he was affectionately referred to as 'Papa' but in 1906 he quit his duties at the church and concentrated on his shop.

 In 1909 a woman who worked at a local slaughter house was found dead, consequently a man named Eduard Trautman was found guilty of her murder and sent to prison.15 years later in 1924 a homeless man was found in the street with a large gash to his head he was taken to the local authorities where he named his attacker as Karl Denke he claimed Denke offered him a warm meal and a bed for the night only to be attacked by Denke with an axe, the man was lucky to escape. Karl Denke was arrested and after police searched his home the gruesome truth of his seemingly ordinary life was uncovered. Denke's home was full of human remains, bones  meat and skin, he also kept a ledger of people, presumably of those he had killed, the local girl from the slaughter house name was on the list and after all those years in prison Eduard Trautman was finally cleared and released.

Police pieced together what they had found at Denke's home and concluded his first victim was in 1903, since then it was unknown how many victims there were except those written in the ledger which totalled 30 but the amount of bones and body parts in Denke's home would make the total much higher, it was also concluded that Denke had sold human flesh in his meat shop as well as consuming it himself hence the name the cannibal of Ziebice. Denke had picked his victims from the most unfortunate and vulnerable group of people the homeless and the poor, very few were missed and even if they were reported to the police it wasn't high on their priorities looking for  missing homeless men! he would offer them warmth and food then bludgeon them with his axe, cut up the body and store it in his pantry.

The tools Denke used to kill and butcher his victims

A report of some of what police found in Denke's home consisted of

16 femurs

15 medium sized long bones

4 pairs of elbows

1 pair of upper shin bones

1 pair of lower arms with hands attached

1 pair of upper arms

2 shoulder blades

8 pairs of heel and ankle bones

120 toes

65 feet

and 150 pieces of ribs

Just some of the human remains found in Denke's house

Karl Denke hung himself 2 days after he was arrested so the people of Ziebice will never know what drove a seemingly ordinary well liked man to carry out such horrific crimes, little is known about his private life, he never married and the saying 'you never know what goes on behind close doors' is quite apt in this case whatever his reasons the little town in Poland will always bear the scars of the cannibal of Ziebice,

KARL DENKE.

I hope you all enjoyed my second instalment of Forgotten killers, please follow my blog and check out my Instagram page    Forgottenkillersonig     where I dish out daily facts on some of the more well known serial killers out there. I will be posting weekly so see you next time on Forgotten Killers, stay safe :)

                                                                                                                                                                

Good evening 🙂 and welcome to my first forgotten killer blog, tonight I will be telling the story of       BELA KISS.

Bela Kiss

He was a handsome guy right 

So firstly I have to say as serial killer names go Bela Kiss has to be up there with the best!

Kiss was born in 1877 to Janos Kiss and Verona Vorga (another fabulous name) in Izsak, in Austria/Hungary as it was known then and sadly that is all that is known about his family and childhood.

So we move on to 1900 when kiss moved to Cinkota which was then on the outskirts of Budapest, he worked as a tinsmith and it was believed that this is when Kiss took up his hobby of astrology and later on occult practises. By 1912 Kiss had been married twice and again little is known about either woman except that his second wife who he had two children with left him for her lover, taking the children with her. It was shortly after this that Kiss hired a housekeeper Mrs Jakubec who later told how her employer corresponded with many women during her time working for him, Kiss would correspond with women through adverts in the newspaper offering his service as a matrimonial agent meaning he would find these women husbands for a small fee of course, he also offered fortune telling and responded to adverts from women looking for a husband, these women he brought home but his housekeeper claimed to have never seen any of the women Kiss brought to the house.

Kiss was liked in his neighbourhood but never looked to become friendly with his neighbours or anyone else for that matter, when one of his neighbours noticed Kiss collecting large barrels in his garden he asked him about them, Kiss responded that he was stockpiling gasoline for the approaching war and no more was said about them, we move on to 1914 when Kiss was conscripted to fight in WW1, he left his house in the care of the loyal Mrs Jakubec and Bela Kiss was never seen again in his hometown of Cinkota.

                                                    Bela Kiss's house in the city of Cinkota

In 1916 police in Budapest received a call from a landlord who was complaining about a large number of barrels being left on one of his properties, his tenant of course was Bela Kiss and although Mrs Jakubec was still caretaking the house and paying the bills with money left by Kiss the landlord wanted them removed from the house. when police arrived in Cinkota the local constable informed them that Kiss's neighbour had told him about the gasoline and asked if he could bring some soldiers to help remove the drums as they needed the gas for their vehicles. when the soldiers began to open one of the barrels to check it was in fact gas they were met with a foul odour, the barrel was opened fully and inside they found the body of a woman pickled in alcohol and in the foetal position, the police from Budapest immediately called for backup and DC Nagy was sent to lead the investigation. 

Nagy ordered the rest of the barrels to be opened ignoring the protests of Mrs Jakubec the housekeeper,

a woman's body was found in each barrel and a thorough search of the house revealed 24 more bodies 23 females and 1 male.

                                                             The barrels in Kiss's garden

All of the victims had been strangled and on each body 2 puncture holes in the neck had been found, the blood had also been drained from each of them giving cause to Kiss's nickname the phantom vampire, it is not known if Kiss drank the blood but because of his connections with the occult police including DC Nagy believed he was a practising vampire.

DC Nagy immediately ordered an arrest warrant for Kiss which was sent to the army and police forces throughout Europe, the faithful Mrs Jakubec was of course arrested but claimed no knowledge of what was in those barrels or the bodies hidden in the house, Kiss had also left her a large amount of money in his will which further incriminated her but she led police to a secret room at the bottom of the house that Kiss had forbidden her to enter. Mrs Jakubec was released without charge as there was no evidence connecting her to these murders (I personally believe she knew or suspected what her employer was up to) Police broke down the secret door and found a room filled with rows and rows of bookcases with a small desk in the corner, the books were all about poison and strangulation, on the desk DC Nagy found hundreds of papers of correspondence between Kiss and women advertising in the newspaper, the oldest letter was from 1903 leading police to believe there may have been many more victims. Kiss had offered to marry many of these women most of whom were middle aged and had money, it was clear Kiss had been defrauding them and 2 of his victims had started court proceedings against him which were of course dropped when these women along with others Kiss had corresponded with disappeared. Kiss had wooed these women (I love that word wooed) promised them marriage then took money from them fraudulently either before or after he killed them.

At the end of 1916  DC Nagy had received word that Kiss was recovering in a hospital in Serbia, police were sent to the hospital but by the time they arrived Kiss had long gone leaving a dead soldier in his bed! Numerous sightings of Kiss were reported over the coming years, in prison for burglary in Romania, died of yellow fever in Turkey, joined the French foreign legion then absconded but none of these tips led to Nagy finding Kiss. 

The last reported sighting of Kiss was in 1932 in New York but this was never confirmed. Bela Kiss's fate and the number of his victims will never be known but for the people of Cinkota they will always remember the phantom vampire.

                                                                    DC Charles Nagy

                                                                     lead investigator

References,

The novel hill house written by Gopi Kottoor was inspired by Kiss's life.

The bloodsucking zombies wrote a song 'Bela Kiss'

The German horror movie 'the kiss of a killer' was a biography of Kiss's crimes.

So that is the tale of Bela Kiss, I hope you've enjoyed this article,if not hey I tried ;) you can follow me on Instagram ForgottenKillersonig where I dish out gruesome, crazy and downright weird daily facts on some of the more famous serial killers out there. If you did enjoy this post please follow my blog and look out for my next instalment of Forgotten Killers, goodnight and stay safe!

 

  

welcome

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog Forgotten Killers.

I have a keen interest in all things serial killers, history and writing /poetry so I thought I'd combine them all and create a blog 😀 

There are so many serial killers out there that everyone has heard of but I wanted to share with you the stories of Forgotten serial killers, from the 17th to 20th century, the ones you've never heard of, so please look out for my upcoming blogs and follow me on Instagram forgottenkillersonig where I dish out bizarre, creepy and downright yucky daily facts about many famous killers.

I would like to add that I am not a fan of these people, I don't idolise them or have pictures of them on my wall (just on my phone lol) and although my writing is quite light hearted I never forget what these people have done or their victims x