All Hallow on the Eve 2026 - Unknown True Crimes - Joe Ball the Alligator Man
A woman in Texas is looking for work, steady work. She doesn't have many skills and isn't acquainted in many trades, but she considers herself a simple, self-determined individual in need of pay. The year is 1896, and the state of Texas is still fresh just having been established in 1845, nearly five decades later.
She finds a local bar in San Antonio, run by a man by the name of Josheph Douglas Ball, and he willingly hires her as a barkeep at his establishment. The place seems well-enough off at first glance, with an alligator pond out back hosting five different alligators in which the tourists can watch and interact with. And for the most part it seems like a fine establishment, until one night comes around...
Joe Ball asks her to come into the backroom for a meeting concerning her work ethics at the bar. She doesn't think much of it and gladly accepts his invitation. After all, he is the owner of the bar and whatever he says carries meaning behind the business. So, she accepts.
Little does she realize that it would be her last night living in San Antonio, Texas...
Her name is plastered in every text of tomorrow's headlines, though she is unaware of this fact. That's because she was killed, murdered by the same man who employed her. You see, Joe Ball wasn't just a barkeep and business owner, he had malicious plans of his own.
And that alligator pond that he had out in back, well, rumors were spreading before the murders that Joe was feeding his scaled friends street cats and orphaned dogs before hiring, capturing, containing, and ultimately killing not one, but two separate women. Both women who were hired as barkeeps at his establishment.
Although certain testimonies by an accomplices state otherwise, rumor has it that both women's bodies were disposed of or fed to the five alligators living in Ball's pond nearby...
When reports of the two women had gone missing circulated with the police, two officers arrived on scene at Ball's bar. It was there while being questioned that Joe Ball had pulled a handgun from the register, aimed it to his head and fired. He was dead on site, with both officers petrified by the act.
This left Clifford Wheeler, a handyman and coconspirator to Ball's crimes, left alive and arrested. Wheeler had admitted outright to aiding Ball in the disposal of both women, only ever claiming that two women were murdered under Ball's employment. Certain evidence states (in the case of the second woman Hazel Brown, the first victim being Minnie Gotthardt) that Joe Ball may have felt a level of insecure jealousy. Afterall, Minnie was very flirtatious with a continuous patron at the bar, and Joe may have felt resentment towards her. The same could be said for Hazel, as she allegedly showed no immediate interest towards Ball, not inside of work nor outside.
It seems like Joe Ball with his lowly alligator pond outback, and his misogynistic murders involving women whom he had hired had signified a distasteful trust in the opposite sex, met at the extreme. Based on photographs and other short stories on the man, he seemed insecure at best, with his worst aspirations becoming the better of him.
If he had not been caught early on, he would've hired and killed more innocent women looking for decent work around Texas. And if he had not chosen the coward's route, he might've been a terrific study into the mind of a man more willing and able to enact a sense of personal justice on two women (or more) who had probably denied his advances and had treated him like a boss more than a partner.
Though, it's truly hard to tell or say where Joe Ball would lie in today's realm of thought. The best news from this endeavor is that Ball's five alligators were donated to the San Antonio Zoo.
Tobe Hooper, who we have discussed in the prior All Hallow on the Eve "Scissorman" article, and director of the infamous "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974) was inspired to direct his film "Eaten Alive (1976) by Joe Ball's murderous workings. An American death-metal band by the name of Macabre had also written a song titled "Joe Ball Was His Name" while inspired by the case.
It is important to note that Joe Ball was involved in World War 1 as an American soldier and had brought back some demons along the way.
As the writer of this article, I have no notion or experience in being a soldier during any World War, especially the worst one which was the first. With that said, I'm sure that Ball himself had some demons, and that his daily functions in the everyday world were not enough to keep him from committing such horrific acts.
Yet PTSD or otherwise, there's no excuse for killing a person outside of the battlefield, especially if said person is an American citizen at best. And at worst it still shouldn't matter...
You don't bring war home with you...
That's what makes Joe Ball an insidious killer. Even as a veteran having witnessed unspeakable evils and possibly have committed some himself during the war, he chose to come back to his homeland and reenact those same said evils on a community of likeminded individuals, two women of which trusted him the most. Not only for a paycheck, but for a substantial and timely place to work, for themselves, family, or else.
Joe Ball was a simple man driven to the brink of madness, so much that he committed the ultimate sin and took his own life through the guilt and fear he had experienced when the police had arrived at his place of business. As a veteran, he might've done some good for our country during the war. But while travelling back home and creating a name for himself, the only names he'll ever be known by are "the Alligator Man", "the Butcher of Elmendorf", or "Bluebeard of South Texas.
And that will be his legacy, unchanged, unbroken...
All Hallow on the Eve 2026 - Unknown True Crimes - Joe Ball the Alligator Man
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