Kill and Kill Again

Did he call again?
We had pooh-poohed the Dedmond thing, and this is what kept him calling. He called four days later to tell me about some items Mrs. Dedmond had with her and where to find them. I told him, "This thing has to stop. Let's get together." He said, "No, they are going to have to kill me like the dog that I am." That was at nighttime. The next morning, the sheriff calls to say he has gotten another one. This was an African-American girl on her way to school. He picked her up on the roadside on his way to work. He threw her in the trunk, but her sister got a good look at the car and gave a description to police. Our paper put out a description of the car. That was the Buckson girl, Opal Diane Buckson, 14.

How did he kill his victims?
He stabbed Buckson. He had to [because she fought back]. The others he choked with his belt. He would strangle them and rape them, in that order. He told me that "fat and ugly women, they don't need to fear me, and the men don't need to fear me either." [All his victims were attractive young women.]

How was Martin caught?
Two citizens were out looking around, and they spotted a car matching the description. The car took off and he gave them the slip, but they got the license-plate number. It went on another couple of days, but the police pretty much decided it was him and had their eye on him. [The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division] and the local authorities kept a close watch on the car. They were gathering evidence and came to the conclusion he was the Gaffney strangler. They arrested him one morning at the mill. He was tried, convicted, and went to prison. While in prison, he had a little disagreement with another prisoner. They liked the same guy. He was stabbed and killed by the other prisoner, and that's the end of the story.

Why did he wait so long after the Dedmond killing in 1967 to commit the other three murders in 1968?
He attended the Dedmond trial, and that had a lot to do with him doing the other murders. He was upset with the miscarriage of justice, and that was the crowning blow. He turned from his good side to his bad side.

What's known about the new spree-killer suspect, Patrick Burris?
We don't know that much about Burris yet, but he had a 25-page rap sheet from Maryland, Florida, West Virginia, North Carolina—all those places. He had been convicted of armed robbery in North Carolina and served time until April. He was on work release, but he had immediately left. That is why [the Gastonia Police Department] was looking for him for a parole violation. That's why they went to the house. The two people he was with, he had just met a few days earlier in a bar. He apparently was just going around with no motive, just wanted to kill someone, and whoever ran up on him, he did. The gun was not registered to him. The auto wasn't registered to his name. He took some stuff off several victims, but he didn't get much. It all happened in the same time frame, in the afternoons.

Why do you think your small town has been terrorized by these two series of killings? Is it just bad luck?
The first one was a Gaffney native. The second one is pure bad luck. [Burris] has no connection to Gaffney. He just happened to go up Highway 11. Highway 11 is the scenic highway off I-85. If he came up, like it seems, from Gastonia, it would be natural to go off on Highway 11, and all of [the murders] were on or just off 11. If he'd gone up on 5, he would have gotten people in Blacksburg, or on 74, it'd have been Shelby or Kings Mountain.

Any chance there's a connection to your giant peach water tower, the Peachoid?
If we thought it did, we'd drain that sucker. But we didn't have it the first time.

© 2009