SHOCK ELVIS DEATH COVER-UP!
A prominent doctor insists it wasn’t drugs that killed The King
Elvis Presley didn't die from a heart attack or drug overdose, but from a brain injury he sustained 10 years earlier that eventually led to his death on August 16, 1977.
This is the claim that has recently resurfaced from prominent Californian physician Dr Forest Tennant, who viewed Elvis' sealed autopsy report, a document that's been kept a secret by the US government at his family's request since his death.
The report is set to be released in 2027, though medical professionals have been permitted to review the findings over the years, including Dr Tennant, who cited the report in 1981. At the time, he was defending Elvis' doctor, George Nichopoulos, accused of overprescribing medication to the singer at the time of his death.
CAUSE OF DEATH
Dr Tennant claims The King did not die from “hypertensive heart disease” as was cited by Memphis medical examiner Dr Jerry Francisco on his death certificate, but from a serious head injury he sustained a decade earlier in 1967, which made his immune system start to fail – leading to health issues that killed him.
In 1967, Elvis tripped over the cord of a TV set in a Hollywood hotel room, knocking himself out on the bathtub. Dr Tennant claims that after viewing his autopsy results – which he shared in a 2013 medical paper – he suspects the head injury Elvis sustained caused brain tissue to dislodge and travel into his bloodstream, causing his immune system to reject the foreign body.
This, in turn, could trigger hypogammaglobulinemia, an immune system disorder that can give rise to a raft of considerable health issues.
PLAGUED BY ILL HEALTH
In the late 1960s, Elvis suffered from a range of serious health concerns, including chronic pain, diabetes, insomnia, vertigo and high blood pressure – a condition he was hospitalised for in 1975, where it was discovered he also suffered from high cholesterol and a condition called megacolon, whereby the large intestine becomes swollen and can allow toxins to flood the body.
‘Elvis did not die from hypertensive heart disease’
Elvis also had emphysema at the time of his death, although he never smoked. He was just 42 when he was found face-down on the bathroom floor of his Graceland home, appearing to have fallen from his toilet. It was believed he suffered a heart attack, and an autopsy showed he had a cocktail of drugs in his system, which may have contributed to his death.
The star took a huge array of drugs later in life – in the 1981 court case it was asserted that in the first eight months of 1977 alone, Elvis was prescribed “10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines, and narcotics: all in Elvis' name”.
According to sources, the singer, who weighed 159kg at his death, would regularly barricade himself in his bedroom for months at a time, gorging on trays of cheeseburgers.
As a result of his diet, he suffered chronic constipation, which gave rise to the theory that Elvis may have passed away after straining on the toilet.
Dan Warlick, chief investigator for the Tennessee Office of the State Chief Medical Examiner, who attended the autopsy, gave weight to this theory, explaining that the strain could have “compressed the singer's abdominal aorta, shutting down his heart”.