Introduction
The Alleged Murder Mysteries of Elvis Presley
In early August 1977, Elvis Presley and his girlfriend Geng Geer were recuperating at home while preparing for his next performance. Early in the morning of the 16th, someone rushed in and found Elvis lying on the bathroom floor with no signs of life. An autopsy showed that the cause of death was severe cardiac arrhythmia combined with a drug overdose, leading to sudden death from a heart attack.
Elvis Presley, who rose to fame at the age of 20, was the most influential pop music icon of the 20th century. His music transcended racial and cultural boundaries, blending country music, blues, and hillbilly rock. This fusion sparked a global rock-and-roll revolution, earning him the title “the Father of Rock and Roll.”
After Elvis’s mother learned of the news, she was devastated and passed away immediately.
That afternoon, Elvis’s father, Eldian, announced his son’s death, shocking the entire world.
In the presence of nearly 100,000 fans, Elvis was buried in the garden behind his mansion in Tupelow. To prevent fanatical admirers from disturbing the grave, Eldian ordered Elvis’s coffin to be sealed with concrete.
Four days after Elvis Presley was buried, a woman named Catherine arrived in Tupelow with a child about three years old. She claimed that the child belonged to Elvis Presley and declared that she would inherit his estate.
Eldian knew Catherine. She had once been a bass player during Elvis Presley’s era and was beautiful and alluring. Eldian ordered the servants to escort them into the living room.
Unexpectedly, the next morning, when a servant went to call Catherine for breakfast, he discovered that Catherine and the child were dead in the guest room bed, stabbed in the chest. Eldian immediately called the police.
When the Memphis police arrived, they found that Catherine was dead and her child had suffered a fatal stab wound to the heart. There were no signs of a struggle at the scene. Only three fingerprints and one shoeprint were recovered.
A Series of Strange Events
Initially, the police suspected Eldian, Elvis’s father, as the possible culprit. Elvis had left behind an inheritance worth nearly 300 million US dollars, along with tens of millions in annual royalties. The police believed Eldian might have feared Catherine claiming the enormous estate and therefore had her eliminated.
However, after comparison, the fingerprints and shoeprints did not match Eldian or any other family members. A few days later, a police officer accidentally noticed that the shoeprint at the scene resembled a pair of “Elvis Presley Edition” Nike sneakers, specially produced for Elvis Presley.
The fingerprints collected from the crime scene were then compared with Elvis Presley’s fingerprints in the database. Shockingly, they matched exactly—the right thumb, index finger, and middle finger of Elvis Presley.
The Memphis police were stunned. Elvis Presley was clearly dead, so how could his fingerprints appear at the scene of the murder of Catherine and her child?
The investigation was divided into two directions. First, experts were consulted to determine whether identical fingerprints could exist in the world. Specialists explained that fingerprints are formed through genetics, environment, mental state, and other factors, making it impossible for two people to have identical fingerprints.
Second, investigators explored whether someone could impersonate or replicate Elvis’s fingerprints. The conclusion was that forging fingerprints was virtually impossible due to their extreme complexity and microscopic details invisible to the naked eye.
Since the strongest evidence pointed to Elvis Presley himself and no other suspects could be identified, the case reached a dead end.
At the height of this dilemma, police received another report from Eldian’s family: Kostya, Elvis Presley’s nephew, had been murdered. He became the fourth family member to die after Elvis Presley.
In 1973, Elvis Presley had publicly announced that since he had only one daughter, he had adopted Kostya as his son.
Police investigations revealed that Kostya was killed in the same manner as Catherine and her child and was then dragged to Elvis’s grave. Following the blood trail back to Kostya’s bedroom, police once again discovered Elvis Presley’s fingerprints and shoeprints.
While shoeprints could be forged, fingerprints could not. What was happening? Had Elvis risen from the grave to kill his own family? Or had Elvis never truly died?
Rumors spread that police intended to exhume Elvis’s grave, triggering fierce opposition from his fans. As a result, the Memphis police abandoned the plan.
The Final Revelation
On March 24, 2013, Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis Presley’s only daughter, unexpectedly met Templeway, her father’s close friend and author of Elvis Presley: A Biography of Elvis Presley. She told him that she had something important to reveal.
Lisa Marie explained that her mother, Priscilla, had recently passed away from illness. After her mother’s death, Lisa Marie felt compelled to uncover the truth behind the strange events following her father’s death, so that he would no longer be wronged.
She told Templeway that Elvis and Priscilla had fallen in love at first sight, but Priscilla was only 14 years old at the time. Her grandfather, a former lieutenant in the U.S. Special Forces stationed in Germany, looked down on Elvis when he was still unknown and forced them to separate.
Seven years later, they reunited. By then, Elvis was world-famous, leaving her grandfather no reason to oppose their marriage. They married on May 1, 1967, and Lisa Marie was born the following year. However, due to Elvis’s demanding global performance schedule, the relationship deteriorated, and her parents divorced when she was five. Lisa Marie lived with her mother.
After Elvis’s death, Lisa Marie and her grandfather Eldian naturally became the primary heirs to Elvis’s estate.
Fearing that his granddaughter might suffer losses during the inheritance process—and because Elvis had died without leaving a will—her grandfather secretly cut off three of Elvis’s fingers during burial and preserved them in formalin. His original intention was merely to use the fingers as proof of Elvis’s identity to protect certain assets that required fingerprint verification.
Unexpectedly, Catherine appeared with her children. To prevent Catherine and her children from competing with Lisa Marie for the inheritance, the grandfather hired killers to murder Catherine and her child, deliberately leaving Elvis’s fingerprints and shoeprints at the scene to mislead the police.
The police were indeed deceived, and the case fell into a stalemate. From then on, whenever someone appeared who might challenge Lisa Marie’s inheritance, the grandfather hired people to eliminate them—eventually sparing not even Eldian himself.