Talk About Instant Karma! Man Dies of a Heart Attack While Trying to Bury Girlfriend's Dead Body!

A Trenton, South Carolina man was found dead in his yard over the weekend after he told his neighbors he was gardening.

Officers from the Edgefield County Sheriff's Department in South Carolina responded to a 911 call at about 10:00 a.m. Saturday morning about an "unresponsive man" laying in the yard of his Trenton home — about 25 miles north of Augusta, Georgia. The neighbor attempted to do CPR but had no luck in reviving the man.

When Emergency Medical Assistance arrived they found Joseph McKinnon, 60, dead in his yard.

"Mr. McKinnon had no signs of trauma and natural causes were suspected," Edgefield County Sheriff Jody Rowland and Edgefield County Coroner David Burnett wrote in a joint statement

What they found next, shocked everyone!

Authorities searching for McKinnon's live-in girlfriend, Patricia Ruth Dent, 65, tried to reach her at her workplace, only to learn that her co-workers had been texting Dent with no response since 7:30 a.m., "which was extremely not like her," Edgefield County Sheriff Jody Rowland says.

"Everybody was already concerned before we even got there."

Deputies returned their focus to the couple's residence.

"We continued to investigate the yard and this huge garden," Rowland says. "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."

"We got down in the pit and started digging around," he says. "We uncovered it enough that we found black garbage bags."

When opened, the bags revealed a body bound with tape, and a forensics team was called in. "It really took off then," says the sheriff.

Autopsies were performed on both Dent and McKinnon on Monday and their findings have been released. Dent, who suffered trauma to her face, died of strangulation and McKinnon died of a heart attack.

Rowland says the incident registers as "very out of the ordinary, very unexpected." He knew of no history of domestic abuse between the couple, and said his department had logged no previous incident calls to the Tanglewood Drive address.

"Basically," he says, "this case is over."

Talk about your instant karma!