Is Elvis Dead or Alive?

If DNA analysis is sufficient to identify a person and to genetically relate him to someone else, then there is powerful evidence showing that Elvis Presley survived his own death.

We never thought we would ever consider the plausibility of Elvis’ existence down to the present time, but we follow the evidence where ever it leads, no matter how uncomfortable.  Although we respect the corpus of work left by Presley, we certainly could never understand the adulation and screaming which met his appearances, which leaves us without emotional motivation for sustaining hopes of  Elvis living today.

An article by a probate attorney practicing in Detroit, Michigan, Andrew Mayoras, caught our attention since the subject of death and identity would be part and parcel of his typical line of work, giving him a certain amount of presumption in his analyses on the subject of paternity and survival as related to the Presley affair. His approach was a welcome relief from some of the gaudier efforts to prove Elvis' existence.

Mayoras introduces the protagonist in the story, Eliza Presley, who discovered at the age of 13 that she was adopted, and who later met her natural mother who gave her a false lead in finding the identity of her natural father. Later married, Eliza and her husband were startled by the striking similarity between their 3 year old son and Elvis Presley at a comparable age.

Meanwhile, another respectable figure, board certified psychiatrist Dr Donald Hinton published a book about his patient Jesse who was none other than Elvis Presley in the flesh. Jesse was the name of Elvis’ still born brother.

According to Hinton, the reasons for Elvis’ Houdini act were to seek treatment for severe pain and to escape threats against himself and his family. Unfortunately, Hinton suffered a number of credibility problems when Elvis failed to reintroduce himself in 2002 as promised. But having credibility problems is not the same as being a liar.

In addition, the DEA, the Missouri State Board of Healing Arts, the Missouri Attorney General, and others, tried Hinton for malpractice resulting in the revocation of his medical license on the grounds of mail order fraud involving the prescription of drugs to a person the doctor never met. That person would be Jesse.

Jesse then wrote a letter to the Attorney General soliciting lenience for the doctor and denying the mail order fraud. After submitting the letter to certified graphologist Shirley Mason, the Attorney General and DEA dismissed charges against Hinton on the basis of her emphatic assertion that the letter matched precisely known examples of Presley’s hand writing. As an expert court witness in other graphological matters, Mason volunteered to testify  to her findings about Presley in court.

In a subsequent lengthy investigation by Fox 8 News, journalist Suzanne Stratford of Cleveland reported that Hinton passed a lie detector test related to questioning about his famous client.

Mayoras mentions other evidence indicating that Elvis did not die including the misspelled middle name on his tombstone and a picture certified by Kodak showing a person bearing a strong resemblance to Presley. Going farther afield, others have noted anomalies in his social security records, military records, and bank accounts showing activity belonging to a living person.

When Stratford investigated the Presley story, she got a coup – a DNA sample from Jesse himself. Unfortunately it did not lead to any resolution of the identity of Jesse because Lisa Presley refused to provide a sample of her DNA on some rather flimsy grounds.

Eliza, never at all thinking that Elvis was alive, continued her paternity quest through Elvis collector David Collins who urged her to contact Stratford. Fox 8 News submitted the Jesse DNA sample to a Canadian lab for analysis after a lot of negotiated wrangling with Eliza. The results were dramatic to say the least.

Later Eliza contacted Elvis paternal cousin Donna Presley Early, who through the interest of Eliza’s children, sent them locks of her hair. After a series of events and non-events, Eliza submitted the hair samples to a lab for analysis which returned results in October 2000 stating that she was indeed related to Donna, giving her a great leap in her quest to discover her father.

The lab also confirmed that there was a possibility of Elvis being her father, and if not Elvis, then a close relative. This was enough motivation to lead Eliza to Graceland, especially since her birth mother lived across the street from the Presley mansion in the late 1950s, leading to intriguing possibilities about Elvis' paternity.

While there she met Lois Smith Black, Elvis’ maternal aunt, and her daughter Brenda. Lois willingly supplied DNA samples, while Eliza had to pull a CSI style stunt by grabbing the cigarette butts of Brenda. Yet much more time would elapse before Brenda could request DNA testing, which occurred in conjunction with the research efforts of Fox 8 News around 2008.

 

The results revealed that Elvis was not Eliza’s father but that they were half siblings, leaving the inescapable conclusion that Vernon Presley was her father. By this point, Eliza was open to the possibility that Elvis was still alive, when through a contact named Bern, Jesse asked about her Aunt Louise, a name which only the real Elvis could possibly know. That was the moment – regardless of DNA – that she knew Jesse’s identity.

Additional DNA testing revealed that Eliza’s DNA matched Brenda’s and Lois’. Even more astounding was the DNA match from an envelope Jesse returned to Eliza in July 2008 because not only did it match Eliza’s but it also matched the 2002 sample from Jesse exactly. The DNA testing yielded a virtual family reunion demonstrating the genetic relationship among Brenda, Lois, Donna, and Elvis. It is now more of legal formality than necessity to have Vernon's DNA.

The conclusion was that not only were Eliza and Elvis related, but that Elvis was alive because the Jesse samples matched.

Mayoras provides a technical review of the evidence which Eliza’s legal counsel availed to him. While he believes that the evidence is persuasive, he would like to nail it with Lisa Presley’s DNA. Eliza has managed to force open the estate of Vernon Presley, from which Mayoras would like to see an exhumation of Vernon’s body to fully conclude the paternity claim.

From our vantage, the evidence is conclusive and we believe that careful detective work could produce a Lisa Presley DNA sample which would wrap up of the mystery. In the mean time we are willing to cautiously conclude that Elvis Presley is alive – at least as of 2008.

The implications of this discovery are staggering, a topic which we save for another blog post.

Reference
Andrew Mayoras, http://www.probatelawyerblog.com/2010/02/the-elvis-presley-conspiracy-is-elvis-alive.html
 

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