Two-year-old Robin Michelle Dempsey and her 23-year-old pregnant mother, Doreen Hope Dempsey, were reported missing from Johnsonville, South Carolina, on June 28, 1973. They had been living with Donald Henry Pee Wee Gaskins at Ropers Crossroad.

Gaskins later confessed to drowning both Robin and Doreen in a pond, placing their bodies in the back of a hearse he drove, and burying them near Johnsonville, about a mile from graves containing six of his other victims. Testimony at legal proceedings identified Gaskins’ stated hatred of racial mixing as a motive because Robin was of mixed descent and Doreen was pregnant with a child fathered by a Black man; Gaskins later claimed he had fabricated that motive and that his true intent had been to sexually assault the child.

Gaskins was convicted of multiple murders and received nine life sentences; he was executed in 1991. Does anyone have memories or information about Robin, Doreen, or the Johnsonville area in 1973 that could add context to this case?