Ball, Joe
Born in 1892, Joe Ball was a one-time bootlegger and tavern owner at Elmendorf, Texas, near San Antonio. In the 1930s, Ball ran the Sociable Inn, distinguished by its lovely waitresses and alligator pit out back, where Joe would daily entertain his patrons with the ritual of feeding time. He seemed to have a problem keeping waitresses — and wives — but the variety was part of what made Ball’s establishment so popular. There was a darker side to Joe, however, and according to reports from other residents of Elmendorf, Ball sounded anything but sociable.
One neighbor, a policeman by the name of Elton Crude, was threatened with a pistol after he complained about the stench emitted by Joe’s alligator pool. (The smell, Ball normally explained, was due to rotting meat he used for ‘gator food.) Another local was so terrified of Ball that he packed up his family one night and fled the state, without a word of explanation.
In September 1937, worried relatives reported Minnie Gotthardt’s disappearance to authorities in Elmendorf. The missing 22-year-old had been employed with Ball before she dropped from sight, but under questioning the tavern keeper said that she had left to take another job. Police were satisfied, until another waitress — Julia Turner — was reported missing by her family.
Ball’s answer was the same, but this time there were problems, since the girl had failed to take her clothes along. Joe saved the day by suddenly remembering an argument with Julia’s roommate; Turner had been anxious to get out, and Ball had given her $500 for the road.
Within a few short months, two other women joined the missing list; one of them, Hazel Brown, had opened up a bank account two days before she disappeared, then “left” without retrieving any of the cash. Texas Rangers entered the case, compiling a roster of Ball’s known employees over the past few years.
Many were found alive, but at least a dozen were permanently missing, along with Joe’s second and third wives. Ball stood up well under questioning, but his elderly handyman cracked, reporting that he had helped Ball dispose of several female corpses, acting under threat of death when he fed their dismembered remains to the alligators. From the safety of his new location, Joe’s ex-neighbor joined the litany, describing an evening in 1936 when he had seen Ball chopping up a woman’s body, tossing the fragments to his hungry pets.
The Rangers had enough to win indictments, but they needed solid evidence for a conviction. On September 24, 1938, they dropped by the Sociable Inn to examine Joe’s meat barrel, and Ball realized the game was up. Stepping behind the bar, he rang up a “No Sale” on the cash register, drew a pistol from the drawer, and killed himself with one shot to the head. His handyman was later jailed for two years, as an accessory after the fact, while Joe’s alligators were donated to the San Antonio zoo.
