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60-year-old Joseph Anthony McKinnon was found dead in his yard by officers with the Edgefield County Sheriff’s Office in South Carolina after they received reports of an unresponsive man. While investigating his death and trying to notify his next of kin, they found the body of 65-year-old Patricia Ruth Dent “in a freshly dug pit.”
Police had their suspicions about what happened, and the autopsies confirmed what they were thinking; police say Dent was strangled to death, then McKinnon died from a heart attack while burying her. Authorities say he had previously dug the hole, then strangled Dent inside the home and dragged her body to the hole.