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Meanest Man in America


Donald Henry Gaskins, Jr. (March 13, 1933 - September 6, 1991) was an American serial killer, possibly connected to over 200 murders.

Born in Florence County, South Carolina, Gaskins spent most of his youth in and out of reform school and later prison. Gaskins’ small, slight build (hence his nickname) made him a target for physical and sexual abuse in prison. 

He eventually killed a highly regarded prisoner while the man was defecating, transforming him into a jailhouse legend for the rest of his stay.

In 1969, after being released from prison, Gaskins got back to killing at an alarming rate. He made a distinction between people he found while driving around the roadways of the American South that he killed for pleasure, and people he knew that he killed for specific reasons. 

Gaskins also had a thriving business fencing stolen cars. He operated his fencing business out of several properties around the Carolinas, where he murdered most of his victims. His other favourite hunting grounds were the coastal highways, where every six weeks, he went hunting to quell his feelings of “bothersome-ness.”

His total number of victims might well have been over 200, but law enforcement sources found it impossible to verify all of his claims. In his autobiography, Final Truth (published posthumously), Gaskins wrote that he had “a special mind” that gave him “permission to kill.”

In the early 1980s, Gaskins was named the “Meanest Man in America” for killing another inmate while in maximum security, a crime for which he was sentenced to death. He was executed on September 6, 1991.

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