Happy Valentine's Day to you,
Mysterylover & all you sleuthers
working this case and others.
But for you working this case let me just :blowkiss::blowkiss:
As background reading for this case, let me recommend:
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/classics/peggy_cuttino/index.html
Another case that happened in Sumter, but in 1970. It will give insight into the community, LE, etc.
Besides, it's a fascinating story.
justthinkin: Fascinating story and what an eye opener! There should be a Movie ?
It answered the questions about why "our Jock" case goes unsolved...imo
The following are a few interesting things I Learned: Read the entire article to learn even more! just my opinion!
Howard Parnell was a funeral director/mortician by trade and was made Coroner by means of politics and being the nephew of Sheriff Byrd Parnell.
Margaret "PEG" Cuttino was a beautiful 13 yr. old girl murdered, raped and sodomized, in 1970, in Sumter, that looked a lot like our Jane Doe.
On the day Margaret disappeared, she walked down the street by the YMCA building, which was under construction on a vacant lot alongside her sister's school.
One of the men working on the building was Pee Wee Gaskins.
Then, thought to be a small-time hood and part-time police INFORMANT... Gaskins later found to be a serial murderer..
Things changed after LE pinned her murder on a young male with an IQ of 70.
The sheriff had been in office 20 something years..He could do no wrong, then this thing broke.
People started questioning the sheriffs case.
For the first time at lunch counters and coffee shops the people of Sumter started using the word "cover-up".
Junior Pierce claimed that he had been threatened, bordering on torture if he didn't confess to Peg's murder. Those allegations, gained greater strength among the people of Sumter years later when Sheriff J.B. "Red" Carter from Baxley, Georgia, was convicted in federal court for his part in a drug-trafficking scheme in GEORGIA.
In 1977, Donald Henry "Pee Wee" Gaskins, the South's worst serial killer, and was standing trial for a murder in Florence County, made the shocking announcement that he, not Junior Pierce, had abducted and killed Peg Cuttino.
QUOTE:
In the 1970s, Young was the assistant solicitor who prosecuted Gaskins in the Florence case.
When Young finally showed up at the Medical University of S.C., "they took me to a parking garage in the basement, (where there were) all these rows and rows of files.
I inventoried them, I went through them one by one, figuring that maybe something was out of place.
The only drawer, the only drawer in the ENTIRE group that was MISSING was the one containing (the samples drawn from the body of) Peg Cuttino."
To some, there could be a thousand innocent explanations for the missing files. They could have been destroyed by FIRE, as were other state records, they could have fallen victim to one of the many hurricanes that wreak havoc on that part of the country, they might have even have been accidentally discarded,
victims of the changes that have taken place in file management over the years.
But Young says he remains suspicious.
The way he sees it, the missing files are a pretty strong indication that "somebody's trying to impede my investigation of this.".....Young says he also believes that a second set of slides were sent directly to SLED, the state's equivalent of the FBI, and that they too have mysteriously vanished.
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MY conclusion after reading about Pegs rape/ murderers files and sample slides missing: Why would anyone go to the trouble of destroying the sperm samples that still had tails, IF the murderer was either PeeWee Gaskins or Junior Pierce?
