Dick Harpootlian, a prominent defense attorney and a former state senator and former solicitor, who prosecuted cases in Richland and Kershaw counties, is out with a new book today called “Dig Me a Grave: The Inside Story of the Serial Killer Who Seduced the South.” It’s about notorious South Carolina serial killer Donald "Pee Wee" Gaskins, who was put to death in 1991 for killing another inmate, Rudolph Tyner, though he was serving life sentences for other murders.
MAAYAN SCHECHTER, HOST: Harpootlian joins me in studio. Thanks so much for joining me.
DICK HARPOOTLIAN: Thank you so much for having me.
SCHECHTER: Why was it so important for you to write this story now?
HARPOOTLIAN: I've been thinking about writing it for 40 years and got serious about it during the pandemic because the Legislature wasn't meeting, the law practice, which the courts had shut down. So I had a huge amount of time. Got an agent, interviewed a bunch of writers, and hired Shaun Assael, who is a New York Times best-selling writer, and began the process .And it's an interesting and difficult process to write a book.
But after (Alex) Murdaugh, it appeared to me there was an interest in true crime. That's understated. And so we finished it. I think I'm very proud of what we did, and it's gotten good reception.
SCHECHTER: You knew "Pee Wee" in a very professional sense as a prosecutor. But he also became somewhat entangled with you on a personal level. He would write you letters. He would call you by your first name. He even plotted to kidnap your then-toddler daughter. This is someone who actively wanted to ruin your life at the end of his life.
HARPOOTLIAN: I've prosecuted hundreds of murder cases. I never had a defendant call me by my first name or me respond to that. But "Pee Wee" was such an affable, hail, fellow, well-met kind of guy and would engage you. There's an episode in the book that happened during the trial where he's just getting in my head about (saying), I'm like him, I'm a killer. I'm going to kill him.' And (he was) unique. (I) got Christmas cards from him, letters. He never missed a chance to try to make me have a relationship with him. So, I guess maybe he thought I'd regret killing him or in some way would help him leverage his way out of the the electric chair. And, again, two weeks before he was to be executed, he had a plot hatched to kidnap my 4-year-old daughter and hold her hostage until I arranged for him to slip away.
SCHECHTER: Did you ever have any thought that maybe that's (helping Gaskins avoid execution) even an option for you?
HARPOOTLIAN: Well, as the book shows, I've wrestled with the death penalty my entire life. I think there are cases in which, as my dad and I talked about, it's appropriate when it's defensive. This person needs to be eliminated from society as a self-defense mechanism. "Pee Wee" was serving 13 life sentences for horrible, horrible murders, eligible for parole in 10 years. And then, just as a personal challenge, takes this contract to kill a guy on death row. If not him, who? So, no, I regret the taking of any life, but his particularly needed to be ended.
SCHECHTER: You hear this from a lot of authors who feel like, especially after years of writing, they feel like it's been a very therapeutic process for them to get everything out. Did you feel that way about this book writing experience?
HARPOOTLIAN: To some extent, yes. I regret the way we killed Gaskins in the electric chair. I didn't go primarily because "Pee Wee" liked killing people, and I think he liked watching people die. So for me to go to his execution would put me, as he said, you know, he's called me a killer, I like killing him. Well, no, that's not it. But the therapeutic effect of writing the book was to put those questions after you read, after I reviewed everything again and what he did and what I did, I'm fully satisfied we did the right thing.
SCHECHTER: He's pretty well known in the state of South Carolina, perhaps not so much out of South Carolina. He doesn't have a Netflix special for example.
HARPOOTLIAN: Yet.
SCHECHTER: Yet. Perhaps this book is the launch of that. What should people know about "Pee Wee?" What do you think would surprise them most about him?
HARPOOTLIAN: What a really nice guy he was to everybody around him. I've gotten a number of calls from people. I talked to a guy last week, who called me and said, you know, "Pee Wee" worked as a roofer. And his father was a roofer that worked with "Pee Wee," and that "Pee Wee" would come by and pick him up sometime, kids in the neighborhood, and ride him around in his purple hearse when they were 7 or 8 years old. And we now know, of course, he was transporting the bodies of those 13 people he killed in the hearse to the swamp to bury them. And, yet, everybody, the disbelief, that this guy could be a killer. Tiny guy, 5-foot-2, maybe weighed 140 pounds. Now, I've seen occasionally that demeanor change into something scary. Kids liked him, people in the neighborhood. At least one judge who came by the courtroom, "Pee Wee" had put the roof on his house and they (would say), "Hey judge. Hey 'Pee Wee.'"
SCHECHTER: Are people still coming out of the woodwork now that your book is about to come out?
HARPOOTLIAN: Absolutely. I get a call a week from somebody that knew him, knew his family before he was arrested on all the murders. Those are the most amazing things. People that just say, I can't believe, based on my memory, that he killed anybody, and yet he was a killing machine.
SCHECHTER: Your book is out Dec. 16. Dawn Staley, coach of the University of South Carolina women's basketball team, is helping you kick off your launch. She's moderating, and she's known to be a true crime junkie. You've sort of embraced this true crime fandom, and obviously there's still interest in this story. You wouldn't have written about it if not. And you've been involved in, let's say, one of the biggest true crime stories
in the state. What is it about these cases, these characters, these stories where people obsess over them, where they travel out of state to go see a six-week trial?
HARPOOTLIAN: (Defense attorney) Jack Swerling and I defended a guy in Newberry on a death penalty case back in the 90s, and Court TV covered it gavel to gavel for two weeks. It was a case involving the son of the state's Episcopal bishop, killing the daughter, his wife, the daughter of a state senator, Jim Lander. And when we get back to the office at night, there'd be a call or two calls from some guy in Arizona, maybe criticizing or commending. I remember one from Wichita, Kansas, saying, "You screwed it up today." I got covered, don't get me wrong, there was daily coverage in the media here, but not a national phenomenon. What I never anticipated and didn't realize was the impact of social media. Back then there was Court TV and three networks, maybe CNN, but now it's just a plethora, if you will, of places for people to get this news. If you watch a trial live and then you have commentators come on and say, well, this means that and this means that, it allows the audience to participate.
One morning, first morning, I remember walking up to the courthouse to go in (to defend Alex Murdaugh) on the Murdaugh case where I saw sleeping bags out on the lawn. I stopped the guy and said, "Where are you from?" He said, I think he said Texas. And I said, "Well, what are you doing here?" He said, "Well, I drove here. I want one of these 200 seats." You know, they first come first serve seats. I said, "You know it's on television, right? You can watch it on TV." And this isn't like a sports event where you want to be there. And he said, "No, I want to be part of this. I want to be part of this." So just sitting in the courtroom, he was so interested in watching it in 3D, not 2D, and not being focused on just what the camera was focused on. He wanted to watch the interaction between, I guess, (defense attorneys) Jim (Griffin) and I and Phil (Barber) sitting there with Alex or the prosecutors, or maybe even people in the courtroom, the dynamics of it. So that is, in some sense, an obsession, but they're interested in it from a participant standpoint. It's a genre that, unlike criminal fiction, where you read it and try to figure out who done it, if you will. I mean, in the Murdaugh case, I think it's still a mystery who done it. That's my opinion.
I turned on Court TV the other day to see something they were running on Murdaugh, and they were live with a woman who left her two children in a car and died, they're running that trial. And the commentators were talking about whether she'd get convicted of murder or manslaughter or not guilty. And they were dissecting it in a way maybe I would do if I was, because of 50 years of doing trials. I don't think they were as good as I would have been. But everybody wants to be an armchair judge, lawyer, whatever, and analyze how this is going. And you can do it.
SCHECHTER: That's attorney Dick Harpootlian, whose new book, "Dig Me a Grave," about serial killer "Pee Wee" Gaskins is out today. Thank you so much for speaking with me.
HARPOOTLIAN: Thank you.
Editor's Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
