Texas Monthly On… by Texas Monthly

Author:Texas Monthly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2007-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

February 2000

TWO BARMAIDS, FIVE ALLIGATORS, AND THE BUTCHER OF ELMENDORF

Did Joe Ball Really Do What

Everyone Says He Did?

MICHAEL HALL

“The squawling [sic] kitten flopped into the pool. A big alligator lifted its jaws, closed like a vice, and the screaming cat was bitten in half. ‘There’s more to come, my pets!’ Big Joe Ball shouted, as the drunk-crazed crowd roared in appreciation. And he next tossed a puppy into the bloody pool!!”

—from a vertical file in the San Antonio Public Library

IN THE PHOTOGRAPH JOE BALL pauses on a beach, wearing one of those old-fashioned bathing suits. His right hand grips an open whiskey bottle at his belly, as if between sips, and his left holds what appears to be a pair of binoculars. He’s standing barefoot in white sand next to weedy brush, like the kind that grows in the dunes along the Texas coast. He’s handsome in a roguish way and looks at the camera with either a squint or a sneer—it’s hard to tell which. If you didn’t know Joe Ball’s history, you might think he was just another old-time party boy, a genteel William Faulkner look-alike whooping it up. If, however, you’ve heard the legend of Joe Ball, his close-cropped hair and cramped face make him appear sordid, murderous. He looks like, on this day or one like it, he could get his girlfriend drunk, entice her to look off into the distance, shoot her in the head, bury her in the sand, and then return home to his bar, his waitresses, and his alligators. And that is just what Joe Ball did.

Michael Hall He was a bootlegger and a gambler, a scion of the richest family in tiny Elmendorf, about fifteen miles southeast of downtown San Antonio. He was, they say, a ladies’ man who had his way with the waitresses at his bar, and when they got pregnant, he got rid of them. Sometimes by alligator. When deputy sheriffs finally caught up with him, in September 1938, they dug up the dismembered corpse of one of his barmaids, dug up the girlfriend in the sand, and hauled away the gators. Ball became known as the Blue-beard of Texas, the Butcher of Elmendorf, and Alligator Man, and his story—told and retold in various newspapers, true-crime magazines, and books—caught the fancy of anyone who was ever fascinated by how low people could go, how much deeper the pit of human infamy could be dug. It was impossible to figure the final death count, so many women had come and gone through Ball’s doors over the years, but the total was at least five. Seven or eight. Twelve. Twenty. Twenty-five. This, it would seem, makes Joe Ball one of the first modern serial killers.

The facts in Ball’s story vary wildly with the source, from the number of victims to the names of the principals to what the witnesses saw. This is especially so online, where Web sites like the Wacky World of Murder and Homicidal Heroes treat Ball as if he were an early rock star, the Chuck Berry of serial killers.

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