Full Title
Final truth: The Autobiography of a Serial Killer by Donald Gaskins and Wilton Earle.
Having read thousands of books throughout my life, none has left me feeling as troubled and disturbed as this uncensored account by a journalist of the memoir of serial killer Donald Gaskins known as “Pee Wee Gaskins”.
Wilton Earle gained Gaskins trust by listening to his account of his crimes with objectivity and a complete lack of judgment. This approach allowed Gaskins own voice to be heard, not only by Earle, but by later readers. Earle’s account is based on tapes recorded by Gaskins as an inmate on death row, during a period of fifteen months, sometimes with Earle present, and at other times by himself in his cell.
Given the imminence of his death due to multiple convictions, Gaskins felt no need to censor his account of his past, including his joy in inflicting pain and slow, horrific deaths upon his countless victims. His sole, nonchalant defense of his acts lay in his statement that he had been born “with a special kind of mind which gives myself permission to kill”.
Although his mother seems never to have beaten or been verbally cruel to him, after her husband left her, she seems to have ignored his needs in order to maintain relationships with a series of men who he was told to regard as “step-daddies”. In fact, so brief was the stay of many of them that Gaskins simply addressed them as “Sir”, rather than bothering to learn their names. The majority of these men were bullies. After Gaskins death post-mortem examinations indicate that, at some point, he was struck on the head, or struck down, by one or more of his mother’s partners, to the point of developing brain injuries.
When Gaskins left home his primary male influences were those eager to teach him the best strategies for breaking and entering homes, and the most valuable items to steal. Juvenile offenses led to reformatories where Gaskins learned that respect was based on control, rooted in violence. Lessons learned in this setting prepared him for the criminal career which would end in his death. By degrees, he became more deeply involved in the prison environment.
Between prison sentences, strategizing his next crime, he resorted to the advice given him by his mentors in the federal prison system, and then acted upon this knowledge. The most painful aspect of this book lies in Gaskins’ lack of remorse, even when killing his niece, for sheer gratification.
At the end of his account, I felt frustration at my own and societies lack of solutions to the waste of so many lives, including that of the twisted Donald Gaskins. The correction system, as it stands, is a quagmire of quicksand. The deeper any offender sinks, the greater his knowledge becomes, until he is almost certain to drown in its depths of hopelessness. If only a way could be found to halt this process before it becomes overwhelming.
