MIRROR
Elvis Presley’s sudden death left fans heartbroken and unsurprising, many were curious about his untimely passing and how it all ended so quickly for the King of Rock and Roll. The Jailhouse Rock singer, who died on August 16, 1977, at the age of just 42, was discovered face down on the bathroom floor of his Graceland home with his pyjama bottoms around his ankles.
But mystery still swirls around those final moments, after Elvis’s family decided to remain tight-lipped about the results of his autopsy for 50 years. Experts have spoken out about their differing views on the exact cause of his death, but what’s known for certain is the last decade of his life saw the Mississippi legend’s health take a dramatic hit.
After years of drug abuse and a diet of junk food, the once slender and sporty star weighed in at 25 stone, having spent months barricaded in his bedroom indulging in cheeseburger platters. His condition was so fraught that he was in need of a full-time nurse, and as he reportedly refused to bathe throughout 1975, causing him to develop sores across his body. As a result of his horrendous diet, he suffered from chronic constipation and a post mortem found he had compacted stool that was four months old sitting in his bowel. The singer was also on a cocktail of drugs and had been prescribed almost 9,000 pills, vials and injections in the seven months before his death.
It was his girlfriend Ginger Alden who found the rock and roll star’s body horrifically laying on the floor of his bathroom. Of the distressing scene, Ginger, who was just 21 at the time, wrote in her memoir: “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. 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.”
