At the time this book was published, Christopher Molleda served in the very law enforcement agency mentioned in this book. On October 15, 2015, he completed fifteen years with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office. Christopher has had duties as a jailer, bailiff, patrolman, and detective, and currently serves as a patrol supervisor.

He resides in Bexar County and has earned his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice administration from Park University. Molleda also holds a master’s degree in criminology from Texas A&M University at Commerce. His career in law enforcement has inspired him to write about crime and legends in his community. He himself is a veteran of the United States Army and has lived in Texas all his life, with the exception of his time in the service. He hopes to write more crime novels to show how crimes are investigated and to help give closure to victims’ families, taking care not to glorify acts of evil in this world.

FICTION/TEXAS

Christopher Molleda

Legend of the Gatorman: A Tale Inspired by True Events Involving a Serial Killer in South Texas

XLibris, 978-1-5144-1127-8, 216 pages paperback (hardcover and ebook also available), 216 pages

October 14, 2015

Almost any place in the world has legends, scary stories, and unsolved mysteries.

Christopher Molleda’s Legend of the Gatorman is Texas crime fiction tied closely to some true and rumored horror events in the 1930s. Names and various other details have been changed, but Molleda’s novel closely tracks the infamous case of a Bexar County serial killer named Joe Ball, also known as “The Alligator Man” and the “Butcher of Elmendorf” (Elmendorf is a small community seventeen miles southeast of downtown San Antonio).

Ball killed two women and possibly up to twenty more, and may have murdered some rivals and people who owed him money as well. He kept alligators in a pit and was said to have disposed of bodies by hacking them up and feeding them to his “pets.”

In Legend of the Gatorman, the central character, Joe Black, returns home to rural Bexar County suffering from what now would be called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In one of World War I’s final battles, his three closest buddies had been killed near him while attacking German positions.

Soon after the war, during a drunken, angry outburst in a San Antonio speakeasy, Black breaks a prostitute’s nose, causes damage to a room, and is dragged before a mob boss. To save his life, Black must pay $1,000 or produce and deliver twenty gallons of illegal whiskey (Prohibition had just become U.S. law in 1919).

With secret help from two of his family’s farm hands, Joe sets up a still and produces whiskey that pleases the gangsters. Rather than kill him, they become customers, and he soon achieves financial success. Indeed, outsiders unknowingly describe Black only as “a World War I veteran, a respected businessman, and came from a well-known family in Bexar County.” Behind the scenes, however, he descends into a darker life as “a gangster, gambler, womanizer, drug dealer, bootlegger, and murderer.” And deadly rages come easily, “fueled by depression, alcohol, and some even say, narcotics,” Molleda writes.

Molleda’s book deserves sharper editing, particularly in its initial chapters. The writing seems flat, and some sentences contain needless repetitions. Also, there are time problems. For example, Black returns home from World War I Europe “by airplane, boat, and train.” Yet, American infantry soldiers were not moved around in aircraft until closer to World War II. Also, Molleda has a young Bexar County deputy sheriff, who had been adopted as an infant, discover in 1988 that his mother had been murdered by Black and possibly fed to his alligators. The problem is that the crime happened in the 1930s. The deputy now would be pushing toward retirement age, not “young.”

The later chapters, however, become more engrossing as we meet young women desperate for jobs during the Great Depression and see why they would continue working at Joe’s new bar and dance hall, even after witnessing his evilness.

We also are drawn into the interactions of several police officers and agencies as they try to build a case with enough evidence against Joe Black. And we see what happens once they attempt to arrest him.

At the book’s conclusion, the author provides an appendix containing summaries, photographs, and references related to the real life and death of Joe Ball and a few of his victims.

Legend of the Gatorman needs more development. But it provides intriguing glimpses into the life and crimes of a rage-driven killer and into the desperation of several young women who have almost no other choice except to keep working and hope they won’t be Joe Black’s next victim.

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