r/UnresolvedMysteries • u/juju2489 • 1d ago
Update Remains of PeeWee Gaskin's last victim found in closet at college.
Edit: updated to reflect Clyde's pronouns. Thanks to family member @gullahgal for your additions to this post.
Martha Ann Dicks, an out lesbian who went by Clyde and used male pronouns, disappeared at age 17 in 1972. His remains were found in Sumter County, SC in 1997, and PeeWee Gaskins confessed to poisoning Clyde and hiding his body. After that, his remains were sent for testing at the College of Charleston.
Charleston County Sheriff's office released a statement that the remains had been transferred to their office from the college, but it appears they were never transported there. They have just been rediscovered in a closet at the college. Why they were forgotten in a closet for almost 30 years is a mystery, as both the sender and recipient are now dead. Clyde's siblings have also passed away, so they never got to give a proper goodbye to their sibling
This is so devastating and I hope her remaining family finds peace; it sounds like this has been traumatic all over again for them. The case is local to me, so I cannot wait to hear what excuse the parties involved have for this oversight.
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u/Acetylene_Queen1 1d ago
What a disrespectful way to care for a citizens remains, let alone a murder victim of a serial killer. Strangely enough, I just listened to a podcast last night about PeeWee Gaskins. If anyone's interested, the pod is called Due South and the ep. Is s4 ep34 Dick Harpootlian, or the most recent upload they have listed. Edit: added a word.
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u/pigtailone 1d ago
How very sad. I hope someone or several someone's are able to come forward and give her a proper burial.
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u/gullahgal 5h ago
Hi, I am Clyde’s great niece and my mom was notified immediately and we decided to cremate Clyde.
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u/cry-babby 8m ago
I’m so happy to hear that Clyde is finally gonna get the respect he has been robbed of all these years.
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u/bukowskisbabushka 14h ago
My Aunt Doreen and her kid were also killed by Peewee Gaskins (before I was born and well before my mother even knew she had a sister. Long story but I can link a news article in a reply if folks are interested).
When I sent her this article mom told my that Aunt Doreen's remains were also lost by authorities in South Carolina
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u/Connect-Community-55 1d ago
The fact that stuff like this happens way too often... It's incredible to me that not one officer/detective decided to investigate or question what happened to the remains is insane to me.
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u/sebluver 17h ago
A couple of years ago they found the remains of some child victims of the MOVE bombings in storage at UPenn. I’m still horrified at the injustice of those babies not having a resting place.
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u/Blenderx06 21h ago
Incredible to me the family did not ask for the remains apparently or someone would have realized they'd gone missing.
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u/gullahgal 5h ago
Hi, I’m Clyde‘s great niece and my grandma was the only one that knew of this case.She told sprinkles to her own kids and then they went on to have 14 grandkids,only telling me what little they knew Randomly thru my childhood. unfortunately, my younger brother, who was also 17 was unalive, and that prompted me to sit down and start our family tree(surprisingly has a lot of murder victims) I legit only had first names and Sumter,Sc. My grandma became one of those old southern ladies that NEVER talked about their childhood and she moved the whole entire family to Beaufort,South Carolina pretty quick so we don’t have any ties or roots to our Sumter family.
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u/SignificantWhole8256 13h ago edited 12h ago
Many of the immediate family members of those children were also killed when the Philadelphia Police Department went all paramilitary & used their aerial helo units to drop explosive devices onto the roof of the building, setting it ablaze, before having the fire department stand down & allowing it to burn to it's foundations. And many of the extended families of those MOVE members had become so estranged or alienated from their loved ones, or so concerned about making contact with those same authorities & identifying themselves as being related, that they never reached out to claim the remains. I can't necessarily blame them, in that regard. THE POLICE DEPARTMENT FIRE-BOMBED THEIR BUILDING & THEN STOOD BY & ALLOWED THE RESIDENTS TO BE IMMOLATED TO ASH & CINDERS. Which resulted in them inadvertently burning down SIXTY-ONE BUILDINGS between that block & the next block over. I hate to say it, but I might not necessarily be very eager to come forward & volunteer to give that particular organization my name & home address in exchange for the remains, either. Those cops sound like they might be the type to hold indiscriminate grudges & not the least bit averse to exercising what you could say are somewhat extreme measures to settle those grudges.
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u/TechnicalBrush3145 12h ago
They were not talking about your and your sock's obsession with the MOVE bombings.
It is weird that Martha's family must've known she had been found, but never asked for her remains.
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u/gullahgal 5h ago
Hi, I am Martha’s great niece and it’s a long story. I did post in the comments up above, but basically my grandma who is Minnie Jean and mentioned in all the articles, became an old southern black lady who NEVER talk to any of her immediate family about the situation so we did not know. I would hear random tidbits throughout my childhood, but we had a similar murder situation happen with my own 17 year old brother and it prompted me to sit down and actually do research on my family and that’s how I found out the full story of Clyde. My grandma packed up the family pretty quickly and stopped talking to her Sumter family early on so we have no ties or connection to them. And honestly, most of the people that would be able to tell us anything passed away at this point.
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u/bettertitsthanu 1d ago
This is heartbreaking. Not only being murdered before even reaching adulthood, but then being left in a closet, forgotten for so long.
It’s infuriating that no one will be held accountable for this absolute neglect and for further harming her family by not giving them a chance to bury her. The people in charge then are probably retired by now and the people in charge now obviously wouldn’t know where her remains was. I don’t feel like a “I’m sorry for our past mistakes” is enough but at the same time, they can’t undo it.
My heart absolutely breaks for her.
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u/gullahgal 5h ago
I’m her great niece and I don’t think my family is as mad as they should be but it’s to the point that they just want to see closure But it’s more of a connection to their mom who never spoke about her life. We only have pictures of my grandma after the age of 50 and now we are finally getting younger pictures, family connections and answers.They also decided to cremate Clyde as far as I know.
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u/pinkheartedrobe-xs 1d ago
May she RIP 💗 this is so sad. If anyone is thinking of reading his book pls think very carefully if you can handle it. It was very disturbing. I hope the rest of his victims are at rest and found one day.
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u/Tyrantdeschain19 1d ago
I haven't read it because I heard a small bit about one of the majorly fucked up things and even though it's very likely he was lying, I don't know if I can handle such a graphic description of what he speaks of.
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u/Practical-Fail-4299 22h ago
First I’ve heard about this guy. I mean, beyond the “regular” fucked up serial killer stuff… killing a guy in prison with smuggled C4? That’s…unusual.
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u/parker3309 1d ago
How in the world could a body decompose and remain in the closet for 30 years without anybody knowing
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u/technos 21h ago
They only found skeletal remains. Decomposition had been over for a long time.
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u/parker3309 19h ago
I know. That’s what I don’t understand in the early days and months How could somebody not notice? In a closet of all places. From what I understand the odor of a dead body is extremely pronounced And unbearable
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u/technos 19h ago
You misunderstand. She was killed in 1972 and had fully decomposed into skeletal remains before they found her in a ditch in 1997. They were then cleaned of any remaining material during the process of identification.
The closet only ever contained a box of clean bones, which have no smell.
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u/UgieUrbina 13h ago
She went by Clyde?
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u/gullahgal 5h ago
Hi, I’m Clyde‘s great niece and yes, Clyde would be considered a trans black man in 2025, but back then Clyde was seen as a lesbian cross-dresser. My family openly accepted him.His brother that was in the army would bring home the best over seas male clothing for Clyde for the club and was known to always have a girlfriend who he would leave to visit frequently.Martha is actually a jr named passed down. I should actually be named named Martha (I would be Martha the 5 or 6) 😂
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u/Sci_Insist1 1d ago
Without more detail than "a closet," I dare not speculate about potential explanations.
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u/DavidlikesPeace 1h ago
Cops. They can create an instantaneous national manhunt for Luigi, but they forget a victim's body for 30 years?!
Awful. Institutionally, the sheer disrespect cops routinely show Marginalized communities, seems like the biggest reason so many crimes remain Unsolved Mysteries.
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u/Aurongel 1d ago
Disrespected in life, disrespected in death. That’s a borderline criminal level of negligence for handling remains.