By Bandi Brock
Elmendorf Texas was a quiet little town in 1936. Businesses were growing and so was the population. For one man Joe Ball, business was doing great. Joe was a 40 year old man with a built
. He usually had a stern look on his face that kept onlookers liking yet fearing whatever his abilities might be. Joe owned his own Tavern know then as The Sociable Inn. The place kept pretty busy and entertainment was nothing short of playing piano and cock fights.
Joe had lots of help running the place and keeping up with it. His hired side-man was a black man named Clifton Wheeler. He was usually the one left to do all the dirty work and he did it without question out of fear. Joe had hired plenty of beautiful barmaids to work also. Many men said they went to the tavern just to see the young ladies. Things were run smoothly.
Joe, one day had decided to change things up a bit, add a little more excitement to the place and with that he dug a big hole out back of the bar and filled it with water. He then built a large wooden fence around it and put five alligators inside. One large and four small. This would be his best idea and the crowds came running in just to see the act’s Joe put on. Joe was known to throw small animals inside the gator pit and the people would watch the gators gobble them up. The animals usually consisted of cats and dogs. A newspaper in San Antonio would later write about an onlooker saying Joe had thrown in a kitten and watched as the kitten screamed and the gators jaws crushed it in two. Seconds later Joe tossed in a puppy.
So for Joe this was the entertainment he’d always wanted. He was making more money than ever and the crowds kept coming and coming. Joe also had several lovers at this point in his life. The first was Minnie Gotthard or Big Minnie as most called her, she was 22 years old. Most people admit to not liking her very much but she helped Joe run the bar and kept things in order. Next there was Hazel Brown another 22 year old who worked for Joe. He had to try and keep his relationship with her away from the public so it never got back to Minnie. Then there was Dolores Goodwin another young waitress of Joe’s. Things went smoothly for awhile until finally it just fell apart. Minnie had gone to Joe one day and revealed to him that she was pregnant. Joe was furious because this would mess up his plans with the other women in his life. So Joe and Minnie went to the beach where Joe pulled out a gun and shot her in the temple and then relied on Clifton to dig the shallow grave and bury her. There was one problem solved. The next problem would be Hazel who told Joe she had met someone else and was leaving. Joe again reacted in a nasty way. It wasn’t until a couple days after Hazel disappeared that her parents contacted police. Joe had told the police she just left in the middle of the night. Truth would later reveal from Clifton that Joe had killed her and stuffed her body in a barrel. Joe then threatened Clifton to help him take the barrel and go dig a grave. Joe and Clifton sat out in the woods most of that night dismembering her body with a small saw and upon cutting her head off Joe set it on fire beside the grave. Now there were two problems solved. The next was Dolores who married Joe. Soon after the marriage she had gotten into a near fatal car accident causing the loss of her left arm. Some have rumored that the gators bit it off but none the less she disappeared 3 months later. Although Dolores did resurface some years later in California.
Although these were really the only known women close to Joe there were several other bar maids and customers that had disappeared over a two year period. Joe kept an axe in the back of the bar later found by police covered in blood and human hair. One neighbor of Joe’s had actually come over one evening to complain about the awful stench coming from the gator pond and he saw Joe cutting up a human body and feeding it to his pets.
After a lot of disappearances and weird happenings at the tavern the police were trying to fill in some clues. But that would prove to be very difficult and Joe always had a way of telling really good stories and so the police would always move on.
Then one day Joe’s neighbor had spoken up and told police what he saw. They called in the Texas Rangers and they paid Joe a visit. Strange as it was though the rangers walked into the bar and asked Joe to come with them for questioning. Joe agreed but insisted first he close the bar. He poured a beer and chugged it down. Then he hit the no sale sign on his register and grabbed the gun inside the drawer. Putting it to his heart he didn’t say one word and pulled the trigger. One fatal shot and it was done.
Later Clifton would reveal to police that Joe had threatened him with his life if he didn’t help him with his crimes and even admitted to helping Joe feed body parts to his gators. The police had investigated the gator pit but couldn’t prove any of the rotting meat to be human. They only found the bodies of Minnie and Hazel which leaves the rest of the disappearances to still remain a mystery. Clifton only got jailed for two years for his help in the crime. Joe still remains a feared legend in Elmendorf Texas and no one will ever forget Joe Ball the alligator man.
This feature ran in Serial Killer Magazine and is reproduced as Bandi Brock wrote it. It was redirected to the archive’s other Joe Ball article during a cleanup and has been restored to its own page; the two share a subject and no text.
On the part of the story the headline rests on: the account of victims being fed to the alligators behind the Sociable Inn comes from Clifton Wheeler, Ball’s handyman, after Ball shot himself when officers came to question him in September 1938. No human remains were recovered from the alligator pit. Wheeler led officers to the buried remains of Hazel Brown, and that recovery is the physical evidence in the case. The number of women Ball is said to have killed has never been established, and the figures repeated in later retellings are not court findings.