Dwayne Deveraux is a character in Killer in the Holy City, a novel that former Detective Mark Gado and I wrote about a serial killer in Charleston. Charleston is known as the “Holy City” because of its unique religious tolerance from colonial times. Deveraux is a good-looking, polished real estate lawyer. He is also a suspect in a series of murders. Why would he be a suspect in the murders of wealthy women whose bodies were displayed in sexually degrading poses? Because he hates and defiles the women who put their trust in him. When Deveraux’s girlfriend threatened to leave him, he put drops of acid on the head of her baby girl. He threatened her with what he would do if she left him. He’d ruin her face and the face of her daughter with acid.
Recognizing that I had managed Court TV’s Crime Library, readers questioned me. Had I had made up that incident? Did I know of a case like that? Was Deveraux really just a pseudonym for a real man? Every time I reviewed that section of Killer in the Holy City, tears came to my eyes. Why? Because it is a true story. One that still upsets me to the core.
The Truth Behind the Fiction
During my Crime Library years, I spent a year in my spare time researching South Carolina’s most notorious serial killer, Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins. Pee Wee was incredibly brutal to his female conquests. He liked to threaten a girlfriend by shoving a loaded gun inside her vagina. And, he did exactly what Dwayne Deveraux did to his girlfriend’s child. Pee Wee never carried out his threat to destroy the faces of his girlfriend and her daughter. He simply killed his former girlfriend. The act of murder was Pee Wee’s favorite resolution to any threat of betrayal. While Dwayne Deveraux and Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins are from vastly different socioeconomic levels, a monster is still a monster.
Mugshot: Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins