Inside Elvis Presley’s death from autopsy mystery to gruesome health woes | Celebrity News | Showbiz & TV
Speedway: Elvis Presley stars in trailer for 1968 film
Elvis Presley is revered around the world as he left a gaping hole in the fabric of rock ’n’ roll history back in 1977. On August 16 that year, he was found unconscious on his bathroom floor by his girlfriend Ginger Alden. Attempts to revive him were unsuccessful and he was later pronounced dead, but the original autopsy has never been released to the public.
The Caught In A Trap hitmaker would have marked his 88th birthday today but sadly died of a heart attack at the age of 42 at his Graceland home in Memphis, Tennessee.
But a mystery has shrouded the King of Rock and Roll’s death for almost 50 years after his family remained tight-lipped on the results of his autopsy and the original results have never been released to the public but reportedly will be shared in 2027.
He was found in his bathroom and was pronounced dead when he got to the hospital and shipped immediately to the morgue, where an autopsy was carried out that very afternoon.
Elvis Presley died aged 42 and was found at his Graceland home in Tennessee (Image: Getty)
His official cause of death, given by the coroner three days later, was listed as “hypertensive cardiovascular disease with atherosclerotic heart disease”.
Express.co.uk takes an inside look into the Jailhouse singer’s health woes from complaints of being constipated for months to his body being covered in sores.
According to reports, Elvis suffered several complaints and he was found unconscious on the bathroom floor by his girlfriend Ginger face down in front of the toilet, after collapsing from his sitting position. When paramedics arrived he was already dead, so cold he had turned blue.
Ginger has since recalled the horrifying details of that fateful day, writing in her memoir, Elvis and Ginger, how she had stood “paralysed” upon discovering the late musician.
Elvis Presley with girlfriend Linda Thompson in 1976 (Image: Getty)
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“Elvis looked as if his entire body had completely frozen in a seated position while using the commode and then had fallen forward, in that fixed position, directly in front of it,” she said.
Ginger, who was just 21 at the time, continued: “His arms lay on the ground, close to his sides, palms facing upward.
“It was clear that, from the moment he landed on the floor, Elvis hadn’t moved.”
“I gently turned his face toward me,” she wrote. “A hint of air expelled from his nose.
“The tip of his tongue was clenched between his teeth and his face was blotchy. I gently raised one eyelid. His eye was staring straight ahead and blood red,” she added.
Elvis Presley pictured in Hawaii with Ginger Alden who found the star in his bathroom (Image: Getty)
Elvis Presley was said to indulge in junk food and enjoyed eating cheeseburgers (Image: Getty)
Dan Warlick, chief investigator for the Tennessee Office of the State Chief Medical Examiner, attended the autopsy and fuelled the popular theory that Elvis died while straining to go to the toilet.
He once said: “Presley’s chronic constipation – the result of years of prescription drug abuse and high-fat, high-cholesterol gorging – brought on what’s known as Valsalva’s manoeuvre. Put simply, the strain of attempting to defecate compressed the singer’s abdominal aorta, shutting down his heart.”
A post-mortem found a compacted stool that was four months old in his bowel.
In addition, the singer was said to have indulged himself with a poor diet that consisted of splurging on cheeseburgers while locked in his room.
Elvis Presley’s autopsy results will reportedly be released in 2027 (Image: Getty)
Elvis also suffered from vertigo, back pain, insomnia and eye infections – and was taken to hospital in a semi-coma in 1973, suffering from severe respiratory distress.
He also had a swollen face and distended abdomen, along with a bleeding ulcer and hepatitis.
Towards the end of his life, Elvis is said to have weighed 350 pounds – more than 25 stone. The on-screen star required a full-time nurse and, according to some reports, refused to take a bath for the entirety of 1975, which caused sores to develop all over his body.
It was also suggested the singer’s drug use contributed to his death toxicology reports identified a whole host of pharmaceutical drugs in his system – including codeine, which was 10 times the prescribed amount.
14 drugs in total were found in the report, including morphine, diazepam, and several barbiturates.
In 2013 an incident was brought to light amid claims it all stemmed back to a serious head injury the star suffered in 1967.
Prominent California physician Forest Tennant suggested that tripping over a television cord and knocking himself out on the edge of the bathtub may have triggered a progressive autoimmune inflammatory disorder.
At the time, little was understood about auto-immune conditions, but these days Elvis displayed similar symptoms from chronic pain, irrational behaviour, obesity and enlarged and diseased organs including heart and bowels.
In 2016 Garry Rodgers, a retired homicide detective and forensic coroner, told the Huffington Post that with those findings in mind, he would have attributed Elvis’ death to a heart attack.
He said: “I’d have to classify Elvis’ death as an accident. There’s no one to blame – certainly not Elvis. He was a severely injured and ill man.
“There’s no specific negligence on anyone’s part and definitely no cover-up or conspiracy of a criminal act.
“If Dr. Forrest Torrent is right, there simply wasn’t a proper understanding back then in determining what really killed the King of Rock and Roll.”