Muck Ruling at Bally's $1/3 NL

[PennDisc]

This happened a few nights ago at Bally's in AC.

One loose horrible player had been open-raising from all positions with hands like A5o or K9s. He opens under the gun for $20 with a stack of about $200. I am in middle position and I look down to find AKo and after a couple folds, I say "all-in" and push my $140 or so forward a bit. As it turns out, the player to my right had not acted yet. The dealer waves me off and motions for this player's action. He raises to $100. He was fairly solid for preflop raises (although a loose limper). While he could just be trying to get heads up with the bad player, I sensed that it was at best a coin flip, but given that he'd seen me say all-in already and still raised to $100, I believed I was even worse than that. I fold, and the dealer takes my cards and mixes them into the muck. All folds to the bad player who calls the $100.

Now, at this point, one old guy who was not involved in the hand calls for a ruling on my verbal all-in. The floorperson comes over and asks the dealer for the sequence of events. He says that since I verbally declared all-in, I am held to that action, but then upon seeing that my cards were accepted into the muck by the dealer, he says that my fold will have to stand since I don't have cards.

The raiser to my right (Tom) also made a comment that he might be "saving me" with his raise, leading me to believe that he wanted me to fold for my own sake. I believed this for a few reasons: (1) We had been friendly throughout the night and were privately chatting about when we'd get a hand to take down a couple of the bad players. All things being equal, he said he'd rather take the other players' stacks. (2) The original loose raiser had about $60 more than me, and it seemed likely that he'd fold for the second raise, so Tom would win more money taking his stack than mine, given that he wouldn't get both.

What is the right ruling here? Should they go into the muck for my cards and hold me to my verbal call / let my fold stand / add my stack to the pot as dead money? Also, is the old guy out of line asking for a ruling on a hand he's uninvolved in (it's not a tournament) and which neither participant in the hand is very interested in getting a ruling on? Am I wrong for trying to throw away AKo before the flop in the first place?