A 60-year-old man who strangled his girlfriend died of a heart attack while burying her body in their South Carolina backyard, investigators said.
Deputies found Joseph Anthony McKinnon's body Saturday after neighbours called and reported an unconscious man in a yard in Trenton, the Edgefield County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
As they investigated McKinnon's death, deputies found a body wrapped in trash bags in a freshly dug hole and determined it was his girlfriend, Patricia Ruth Dent, 65, investigators said.
![The coroner determined that McKinnon died of cardiac arrest. Photo / Twitter](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/GQV3LVM76V6FV2DA46INJJ5WSE.png?auth=5fb84d38855dc8fc5e2ee87bb877554c624dfeaeec3eb21513fcbd647946e888&width=16&height=9&quality=70&smart=true)
An autopsy on Dent determined she had been strangled and neighbours told officers they saw McKinnon digging a hole in his yard the day before, deputies said.