Socialites getting to this wild story! A man died from a heart attack after trying to bury the body of his girlfriend who he had just strangled to death in his backyard, according to police.
Edgefield County Sheriff Jody Rowland told local outlets that a man identified as Joseph McKinnon had in talks told a neighbor in Trenton, S.C., that he was digging a hole in his yard for a water feature to enhance his garden. However, when a different neighbor subsequently spotted McKinnon, 60, laying face-down and motionless beside the pit on Saturday morning, police were immediately called.
When Edgefield County EMS responded to a call of an unresponsive man laying in his yard and found the man dead next to the fresh grave. “We get there and determine that he apparently has had a heart attack,” Rowland says. “No trauma to his body.” While looking for his significant other, Rowland says “We continued to investigate the yard and this huge garden. The house had been freshly cleaned, but we were able to identify blood in the house that tested as hers. That took us back to the pit he was digging.” From there, they found the body of 65-year-old Patrica Ruth Dent in the pit. Police strongly believe that McKinnon attacked the woman in their home by strangling her to death. They also believe he then wrapped her in trash bags before dumping her body in the grave.
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She had been hit in the face, but that was certainly not a death blow,” he says of Dent. “The autopsy proved she had died of strangulation. His autopsy proved he died of a massive heart attack.” He confidently added,
“He attacked her, killed her, put her in the pit, and he died covering her up.”
Since there was no history of domestic abuse between the couple, and said his department had logged no previous incident calls to the Tanglewood Drive address, Rowland says the incident registers as “very out of the ordinary, very unexpected.” As of results of their findings and outcome, he says, “this case is over.”
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