In order to address the question of how Elvis Presley died, it’s necessary to give some background information, and explain the circumstances surrounding his death.
Brief Background
Elvis Aaron Presley was born in 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi and died in 1977 in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of 42.
In 1967, following an eight-year courtship, he married Priscilla Beaulieu in a civil ceremony at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, They had one daughter, Lisa Marie, who was born, co-incidentally, in the same city in which her father died.
Elvis and Priscilla separated in 1972, following mutual accusations of infidelity, and were divorced the following year.
The death of Elvis
Elvis’ life and career as a singer and actor has been chronicled in countless books, articles, and documentaries.
This article, however, is not about his life, but rather about his death, and the mystery and conspiracy theories surrounding it.
Presley, in his latter years, was a barely recognizable version of “The King of Rock and Roll” who had characterized the vibrant gyrating stage performer he once was.
The journalist, Tony Scherman, describes that by early 1977, “Elvis Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self. Hugely overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopoeia he daily ingested, he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts.”
Off stage, Elvis confined himself almost entirely to his room and his spiritualism books. Presley’s cousin, Billy Smith, recalled how Presley would sit in his room frequently gripped by paranoid obsessions that reminded Smith of Howard Hughes
On June 26, 1977, Elvis Presley gave what was to be his final concert at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.
A book entitled “Elvis: What Happened?” written by the three former bodyguards, exposed in detail Presley’s years of drug misuse. Elvis offered money to the publishers not to publish. He did not succeed, and so it was revealed that he suffered from multiple ailments: glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, each aggravated—and possibly caused—by drug abuse.
One version of how Elvis died was that, on the afternoon of August 16, 1977, his fiancee, Ginger Alden, discovered him unresponsive on his bathroom floor.
Attempts to revive him failed, and death was officially pronounced at 3:30 pm at Baptist Memorial Hospital.
The coroner recorded the cause of death as cardiac arrhythmia. However, the attending physicians deliberately omitted the fact that what had apparently caused Elvis’ heart to beat irregularly – and then stop – was an overdose of prescription drugs.
These drugs included codeine, Valium, morphine, and Demorol, to name a few. Vernon Presley, Elvis’ father, had the complete autopsy report sealed, and it will remain sealed until 2027.
However, his personal doctor claimed that Elvis died of chronic constipation.
The debilitating problem caused the singer severe problems, according to Dr George Nichopoulos, Elvis’ doctor for the last 12 years of his life.
The doctor, who attempted to resuscitate Elvis on the day of his death, said that it wasn’t until the autopsy that he realized how severe the constipation had been.
“After he died we weren’t sure [of his cause of death] so I continued to do some research and I had some doctors call me from different places and different med schools that were doing research on constipation and different problems you can get into with it.”
He said that, at one time, he had offered Elvis a colostomy, to remove part of his bowel, but Presley’s pride caused him to reject the treatment.
Dr Nichopoulos thinks that if Elvis had undergone the treatment he might still be alive today.
But, then again, there are some people who assert that Elvis Presley IS alive!
And they are firm in that belief, notwithstanding that Elvis was buried on August 14 1977 in the Forest Hill Cemetery, alongside his mother. Following an attempt to steal the singer’s body, Presley and his mother were reburied in Graceland’s Meditation Garden on October 2 1977.
However, rumors persist that he faked his death in order to live a peaceful life. There are claims of discrepancies in the details on the death certificate.
In the 1980’s and 1990’s, there were rashes of sightings in various places including Kalamazoo, Michigan and Ottawa, Canada.
So, who’s body was in the coffin? Not Elvis! The somewhat far fetched explanation is that it wasn’t a body at all – just a wax dummy.
So, did Elvis Presley die, or not?
Has Elvis “left the building?”
What do you think? You can share your thoughts simply by using the comments feed below.
