Joseph Ball was born in Elmendorf, Texas on January 7, 1896. He spent much of his childhood on solitary pursuits, hiking and fishing in the wilderness alone, uninterested in spending time with his siblings or other children. In his teenage years, he developed a proclivity towards guns and spent many an hour practicing his marksmanship skills. This would undoubtedly prove invaluable to Joe as he enlisted in the Army shortly after the start of World War I. He was soon sent to the front lines in Europe and served for two years until receiving an honorable discharge in 1919.

When Joe Ball returned from the war it was assumed that he would become involved in one of the many lucrative family businesses started by his father Frank. The Balls had a cotton factory, a booming real estate business, and even owned a general store. And Joe did, in fact, work for his father for some time but he soon became disillusioned with this prospect. He desired to make his own money and stand on his own two feet. The way Joe elected to go about this was by becoming a bootlegger.

Joe would travel about the countryside in his Model A Ford, running the illegal whiskey and beer that was in high demand during the prohibition years. He hired an African-American man by the name of Clifton Wheeler to assist him in his bootlegging endeavors. Apparently, Joe wasn’t especially kind to Wheeler and made him do most of the labor. Wheeler would later recount how when Joe got drunk he’d fire his pistol at Wheeler’s feet demanding that he dance the jitterbug for Joe’s entertainment. Wheeler would also eventually incriminate Joe in two murders, but not until after Joe Ball was deceased.

After the repeal of prohibition, Joe decided to stay in the business of booze and he opened up a saloon just outside Elmendorf on what is now Highway 181 called the Sociable Inn. Although the majority of the townsfolk felt that Joe was the type of character to be avoided, his bar patrons seemed to like him just fine. After all, Joe Ball served stiff drinks, employed a piano player, and even hosted the occasional cockfight. In addition, Joe Ball built an alligator pit with a ten-foot-high fence behind his bar. He stocked this man-made pond with one large alligator and four smaller ones. He would charge people to watch as he feed the gators small animals like opossums, raccoons and even cats and puppies! This alligator pit would be at the heart of much of the controversy surrounding Joe Ball in the years to come. But more on that later.

Another attraction at the Sociable Inn was the rather comely waitresses that Joe Ball had a penchant for hiring. Unfortunately, none of these waitresses ever seemed to stick around for very long. Joe explained this away by claiming these were the kind of girls that were just passing through town and looking to make a quick buck before moving on. This explanation seemed to sit well enough with everyone, for a while at least.

In 1934, Joe took up with a woman from Seguin by the name of Minnie Gotthardt, or “Big Minnie” as she was known. Minnie helped Joe with the bar as well, becoming his business partner as well as lover. Their relationship lasted for a good three years until Joe became taken with a much prettier and younger waitress in his employ, one Dolores “Buddy” Goodwin. Ironically, Dolores was quite enamored with Joe as well despite the fact that Joe had once hurled a bottle at her that shattered upon her face and left a nasty scar from her eye to her neck. And then, just a year later, Joe fell for another of his waitresses, a girl by the name of Hazel “Schatzie” Brown. Now old Joe was juggling three women at once, every one of which worked with him at his bar.

In the summer of 1937, Minnie Gotthardt went missing. When Minnie’s friends and family inquired as to her whereabouts Joe claimed that she had left town in shame after birthing a black baby. Soon after Minnie’s disappearance Joe wed Dolores Goodwin. After their marriage Joe revealed to Dolores that Minnie had not, in fact, run off, but that he had shot her to death and buried her body on a nearby beach. Dolores thought that Joe was just talking tough and really didn’t believe he had actually committed the murder. In January of 1938 Dolores lost an arm in a near fatal car crash, although rumors abounded that one of Joe’s gators had actually bit it off. Whatever the case, Dolores soon went missing right along with Minnie, as did Hazel soon after.

Minnie’s family started asking questions again in the summer of 1938, and even contacted the Bexar County Sheriff’s office to assist them in finding Minnie. Joe was questioned in her disappearance but was soon dismissed as a suspect due to a lack of evidence.

It wasn’t long, however, before another family was contacting the police in an effort to find their daughter, 23-year-old Julia Turner, who had been another one of Joe’s waitresses. When initially questioned Joe claimed that Julia had left town abruptly citing personal problems for her hasty departure. However, when authorities searched Julia’s apartment they found her clothes and possessions all still there. Upon presenting this fact to Joe’s attention he amended his previous statement by telling police that Julia had wanted to get away from her problematic roommate quickly and that he had lent her $500 for traveling expenses.

Two more of Joe’s waitresses went missing over the course of the next few months, and police were beginning to get very suspicious of Joe Ball. After all, nearly every waitress in his employ had disappeared without a trace. But whenever Joe was brought in for questioning he stuck to his story claiming that all these girls had simply skipped town. Without any evidence or witnesses, the authorities really had nothing to go on.

Then in September of 1938 the police got a break. A former neighbor of Joe’s, who had actually left town and moved to California out of fear of Joe, came forward and claimed that he had seen Joe Ball hacking up a human corpse and feeding the chunks of meat to his alligators. At the same time, a Mexican-American man contacted Bexar County deputy sheriff John Gray to tell him about a barrel that had been left by Joe behind Joe’s sister’s barn. The man told authorities that the barrel smelled like something dead was inside. Upon arriving at Joe’s sister’s farm, authorities found the barrel was gone but Joe’s sister corroborated the story of the barrel.

After these new developments, authorities went calling upon Joe Ball once again. This time, however Joe must have known the gig was up. When deputies John Gray and John Klevenhagen told Joe they were taking him to San Antonio as a suspect in the disappearances of so many women, Joe calmly asked the deputies if he could close up his bar first. The deputies agreed, but as they sat waiting at the bar, Joe poured himself a beer, downed it, and then rang up a “NO SALE” on his cash register. From the open register drawer Joe produced a pistol, briefly threatening the deputies with it before turning the gun on himself. Joe Ball died by a single self-inflicted gunshot wound to the heart.

After Joe’s death authorities went through the Sociable Inn with a fine-toothed comb. They found rotting meat around the gator pit and an axe covered with blood and hair. Everyone assumed that Joe had murdered his victims and feed them to the gators. However, none of the rotting meat was found to be human, and the only two bodies that the authorities ever found, those of Minnie and Hazel were found buried far from Joe’s bar.

Clifton Wheeler was the man who revealed to police the locations of the two bodies, Minnie on the beach just like Joe had told Dolores, and Hazel’s dismembered corpse out in the wilderness. Wheeler claimed that Joe had forced him at gunpoint to help him dismember and inter Hazel’s body. They then burned her head on a campfire. Wheeler told police that Joe killed Hazel because she had fallen in love with another man and was threatening to tell police her suspicions about Joe’s involvement in Minnie’s murder. Wheeler claimed that Joe had murdered Minnie because she had become pregnant and he felt that would inter with his relationship with Dolores. Wheeler claimed he had no knowledge of Joe ever killing anyone else.

Strangely enough, Dolores actually turned up in San Diego, very much alive. She had left Joe to make a new start. Another of the “missing” waitresses turned up as well just two weeks later in Phoenix, Arizona.

And so while it remains unclear as to how many victims Joe actually claimed or whether or not he actually ever fed anyone to his gators, Joe Ball remains an apocryphal figure in Texas folklore to this very day. As for Joe’s gators, they were donated to the San Antonio zoo, where they lived out the remainder of their days as a tourist attraction.