An educated man with a degree from the University of Texas, Joe Ball rejected his family's offers of employment in their many lucrative businesses. Instead he began life after school as a bootlegger before buying a saloon called The Sociable Inn near Elmendorf, Texas, sometime in the late 1920's. It wasn't long before Ball added a strange attraction to the place, a large cement alligator pond, inviting customers outside to watch the alligators fight over raw meat or live cats or dogs that Ball tossed into the pit.

The flesh-eating animals served more than an entertainment purpose however. They were also put to use disposing of some of his beautiful barmaids and girlfriends, including two wives. Many of the women may have been pregnant. Though some authorites suspected there was something add about the way that the women disappeared without a word, noone really dared challenge the intimidating Texan. The local constable was threatened with a handgun for even lightly approaching the subject of the missing girls and a poor neighbor who accidently interupted Ball dismembering a victim near the pit was so frightened by Ball that he fled to California and never mentioned the incident until long after the mystery was solved.

On September 24th, 1948, a Texas Ranger and his men arrived at The Sociable Inn to confront Ball about the missing women. Ball's only reply was to pull his revolver, put it to his own head, and kill himself. His handyman, Clifford Wheeler, admitted to aiding Ball in the disposal of a few bodies and directed authorties to the bodies of barmaid Hazel Brown, stuffed in a barrel waiting to be fed to the alligators, and Minnie Gotthard, inexplicably buried in a shallow grave. Wheeler claimed Ball had murdered as many as twenty women, though it couldn't be proved for certain given that Ball's pets disposed of any recognizable remains.