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The Elvis Presley Conspiracy (Part I): Is Elvis Alive?
One of my favorite lines from the movie Men in Black was:
It all began in the early days of the Probate Lawyer Blog, when I came across a Memphis newspaper story about a woman claiming that she was the secret half-sister of Elvis and that she had the DNA to prove it. How did she get the DNA? From Elvis, because he was alive. She had sued to re-open the Estate of Vernon Presley (Elvis' father) to prove that Vernon was her father.
And, of course, in my first article about the case, I didn't take her very seriously. Elvis is alive? Yeah, right. Like almost everyone who heard about it, I scoffed. I snickered. I went about my day.
Fast forward a few months ... I received an email from the alleged half-sister, Eliza Presley. She directed me to a website that had a lot of information explaining her DNA evidence. I emailed back and asked Eliza for a copy of the DNA reports, so I could see them for myself. Eliza politely said she was unable to send them to me because of the ongoing court case.
But, I had seen enough that I thought I may as well keep an open mind. Hey, stranger things have happened, right? Here's my second article about the case, where I said I was rooting for Eliza. I mean, how cool would it be if she was right, and Elvis really was alive?
The feedback I received from that article was surprising. Many people contacted me because of it. Most of them were very supportive of Eliza and proclaimed that the truth would come out ... and it would shock the world. I also received a few anti-Eliza emails, as well as a couple of phone calls, from people who vehemently (and quite aggressively) swore that Eliza was a big fraud and destined to land in jail.
In the meantime, Eliza Presley contacted me again. I've interviewed her by phone, at length, along with her forensic investigator that helped her track down evidence for her case, as well as her attorney. Her lawsuit is indeed proceeding, although slower than they'd like it to for a number of reasons.
Getting the Estate of Vernon Presley reopened was the first step. That alone was a big accomplishment, because no Presley Estate had ever been reopened, despite the number of people claiming to be related to Elvis. And it now appears that the court case will be coming to a head in the near future.
Throughout these interviews, I've found Eliza to be very open and honest with me. And yes, she even agreed to share a copy of the DNA reports with me. She said that she chose to share them with me because, as an independent attorney experienced in estate disputes, as well as being an author and blogger in this legal area, I could write about the reports in an objective fashion. I agreed to do so, but only on the condition that whatever opinions I wrote about the reports would be my own, whether Eliza agreed with them or not. Eliza was comfortable with that.
And so, she sent me the DNA reports. I have read and analyzed the DNA reports and other evidence she sent me, as well as a lot of other information about the great "Elvis Conspiracy" that I found on-line.
And, I have to say, the information has been nothing short of fascinating.
So, do I believe Eliza? Do I really think that Elvis is alive? Is he really her half-brother?
The Background
After Eliza Presley shared her DNA evidence with me, as well as the story about how she got it, I spent some time digging around to see what else was out there to corroborate or contradict her story. Eliza's claim is that she's the daughter of Vernon Presley, the father of Elvis. But she bases her claim, in part, on evidence from a man who Eliza believes actually IS Elvis Presley, still alive. Eliza says she never suspected Elvis might be alive when she began her journey.
Rather, according to Eliza, she only wanted to find out who her father was. Eliza was 13 when she learned that she was adopted as a baby. Several years later, Eliza met her birth mother, who gave Eliza the name of a man who was supposedly her father. But when Eliza contacted him, he was adamant he wasn't her father and didn't even know her mother in 1961. Eliza had to look elsewhere.
Later in life, she and her husband at the time had been shocked, when seeing pictures of Elvis as a young child, how much he looked like their three-year-old son, Andrew. Eliza knew that her birth mother had lived across the street from Elvis at Graceland shortly after he bought it in 1957-58 and had been friends with his family [see picture of Elvis and Eliza's birth mother and aunt].
Eliza's husband even suggested that Elvis may have been the father, because she shared a family resemblance ... not to mention the fact that Eliza was the only one of four children given up for adoption.
So Eliza had wondered for some time if she could be the daughter of Elvis. But she never bought into the whole "Elvis is alive" movement when she started her search.
People who believe that Elvis did not die on August 16, 1977 like to point to a book published in 2001 and written by a board-certified psychiatrist named Dr. Donald Hinton. He wrote it with a mysterious co-author named "Jesse." Dr. Hinton claimed Jesse was actually Elvis, having faked his death with the help of his manger, Colonel Tom Parker. "Jessie", by the way, was the name of Elvis' identical twin brother who was stillborn.
According to Dr. Hinton, Jesse had to get away from the life of Elvis for several reasons, primarily because of his poor health and due to threats against him and his family. Col. Parker agreed to help because he could earn lots of money from doing so, Dr. Hinton said. Indeed, Elvis has been at or near the top of Forbes' list of the highest earning dead celebrities for years.
Dr. Hinton said he treated Jesse for nearly six years for pain management due to his arthritic condition and other medical problems. He claimed that Jesse opened up to him and told him of his true identity. His book included many handwritten letters by Jesse and said it was Jesse's way of re-introducing himself to the world.
There were a few problems with Dr. Hinton's story. One was that he promised in the book that Elvis/Jesse would reveal himself to the world in 2002. Obviously, that never happened.
Another was that the book led to an investigations of Dr. Hinton for mail fraud, by the Missouri Attorney General's office, as well as by the DEA, and by the Missouri State Board of Healing Arts for illegally prescribing medications to a patient he had never met in person. Dr. Hinton actually surrendered his ability to prescribe medicine and was placed on 5 years probation by the medical board.
But the Dr. Hinton investigation did lead to an interesting place. When Dr. Hinton came under attack, his patient, Jesse, wrote a letter to the Attorney General supporting Dr. Hinton and refuting the mail fraud claims. He included the following in his letter:
Mason worked for the Kansas City Bureau of Investigations for many years, successfully using graphology as evidence in criminal court cases. Shirley Mason reported that she compared the Jesse letter, and other documents written by him, to past letters written by Elvis. So what did she have to say about it?
Not only did they match, Mason wrote, but she would testify in court, under oath, that Elvis "has to be ALIVE." She felt the handwriting was "UNMISTAKABLE". The Attorney General's office dismissed the charges against Dr. Hinton and the DEA never brought charges against him.
Here's a website by Linda Hood-Sigmon, who is a friend of Jesse, showing copies of the Jesse letter and the Mason report.
Hood-Sigmon is one of the biggest proponents of the "Elvis is alive" theory and has a great deal of evidence on her website. She points to this picture of Jesse and says it was taken on a visit to Lisa Marie Presley so he could see his grandchildren.
She states that the controversial photograph marks the first time Jesse met his grandson, Benjamin Storm, in 1994.
But Hood-Sigmon and others who say Elvis is alive do have many vocal critics. Here's an example of a recent article written by one who tries to debunk some of the evidence that Elvis didn't really die. But, he doesn't address any DNA evidence in his article or the Mason report. Instead, he summarily concludes that "one side has no facts and no evidence" and as such, there shouldn't even be a debate.
Others see it differently. In fact, because of Dr. Hinton's book, a television reporter in Cleveland, Suzanne Stratford, began investigating.
She interviewed Dr. Hinton on camera and analyzed the evidence, including the Mason report, a picture taken 6 months after the funeral of what looked like Elvis peering through a screen door (and certified by Kodak), and the fact Elvis' tombstone lists his middle name as "Aaron" when official records show his true middle name to be "Aron". [See the pictures below on this point]. Stratford also reported that Dr. Hinton had passed a lie detector test they had administered.
And there's more. Stratford reported she was contacted by Jesse. She asked for, and received, a sample of Jesse's DNA, in 2002, so it could be tested. FOX 8 News did in fact test the DNA sample against known "control" samples of Elvis, including a 1975 liver biopsy sample and tissue from his autopsy. The problem was that they didn't match.
But again, another interesting turn. Not only did the "Jesse" sample not match the other two samples, but they didn't match each other. In other words, Elvis' autopsy tissue did not match the liver tissue from 1975.
So where did the autopsy sample come from? Does this mean that Elvis' autopsy was faked? Maybe. Stratford also interviewed cousins of Elvis who said that the body at the funeral looked like it was made out of wax, rather than being real.
But, of course, there's only one person alive (other than Jesse, of course) who can definitively prove or disprove that Jesse is Elvis ... Elvis' daughter. FOX 8 News contacted Lisa Marie Presley's representatives and asked for a sample of her DNA to find out the truth. She declined.
The FOX 8 News video stories are available on YouTube. Here's the one from 2008 that summarizes Stratford's investigation up until the Eliza Presley case. Her previous investigation stalled in 2004, until Eliza Presley contacted her 2008. Apparently, an Elvis collector, David Collins, repeatedly suggested that Eliza get in touch with Stratford when Eliza had contacted him as part of her search for Elvis' DNA to test against her own for paternity.
At first, Eliza didn't contact Stratford, still thinking that Elvis couldn't actually be alive. But, then she did reach out to Stratford, hoping to test her DNA against other Elvis samples FOX 8 News had.
In 2008 Stratford interviewed Eliza Presley as part of her ongoing investigation. FOX 8 News sent the 2002 sample it had received from Jesse to a lab so that it could be tested against Eliza's DNA evidence.
Eliza's journey
I know, this all sounds crazy. Elvis can't really be alive, can he? So he's been in hiding for more than 30 years, without the world finding out? How can that be?
And while we're at it, who really did shoot JFK ... and what happened in Roswell, New Mexico?
Yes, it all sure sounds like conjecture and speculation. There have been conspiracy theories floating around for years, but where is the hard evidence?
Well, Eliza Presley says she has it. But she didn't gather it to prove that Elvis was alive. Instead, she only wanted to find her father. So how did she get this evidence?
Eliza had never been an Elvis fan, but her youngest kids were. They had spoken to Elvis' cousin, on his father's side, Donna Presley Early, when Eliza contacted her from a website. Donna had authored books about her memories of Elvis and Eliza wanted to buy a copy of each for her kids. Donna sent the books to Eliza's children, ages 6 and 10 at the time, in July of 1999.
When her youngest child spoke with Donna, she had asked if Donna could send her something that belonged to Elvis. In her young mind, if you were a cousin of Elvis, of course you could. Donna Presley then sent Eliza's children a sealed envelope with strands of her hair in it.
Eliza was shocked when she saw the envelope, realizing what Donna had enclosed. She knew because a single red hair strand was sealed halfway out of it. She remembered a conversation with Donna where she had joked that her hair color was courtesy of Ms. Clairol. They'd been discussing the premature graying that was a Presley family trait. Eliza locked away the unsealed envelope, unsure what to do with it.
Then Eliza had a cancer scare in 2000. She decided it was time to really start trying to find her father again, because what happened if she died and neither she nor her children ever knew the truth?
So, after researching how DNA worked and looking for a lab, Eliza shipped Donna's envelope along, hoping it could shed some light. Eliza refers to this initial testing as her "jumping off point". Either it was going to show something useful to confirm her suspicions or prove that she was very wrong in ever thinking that she was related to Elvis Presley.
The lab sent the results in October of 2000. They showed that Eliza was, in fact, related to Donna Presley. When she questioned the people from the lab further, they told her that Elvis could possibly be her father. They also said if her father was not Elvis, it was someone very close to him, genetically.
Eliza knew that Elvis never had any (living) male siblings. It never occurred to her that Elvis' father might also be her father. But, she had her jumping off point.
Between the suggestive, but inconclusive Donna Presley Early DNA test, and the fact that her birth mother lived near Elvis and had been friendly with him, [see newspaper image of Elvis with Eliza's mother, Flo Clark], Eliza was determined to proceed with her quest to find the truth.
In March of 2001, Eliza and her family traveled to Graceland. Through a mutual friend, a meeting was arranged with Lois Smith Black, Elvis' maternal aunt (related through marriage). Lois' daughter, Brenda, lived with her -- and Brenda was a blood relative of Elvis (his maternal cousin). Eliza asked if Brenda would contribute a sample of her DNA so she could have it tested --- after showing both Lois and Brenda her DNA testing with the Presley side of the family.
Later that night, Brenda unexpectedly left, without saying if she'd cooperate or not. But her mother, Lois, was sympathetic to Eliza. She asked if DNA could be taken from cigarette butts like on TV.
When Eliza answered that it could, Lois pointed to the ashtray her daughter had been using that night. She stated that it was her house, so that was her trash too. She put them in an envelope for Eliza and sealed it. Lois also gave her own sample (a cheek swab) to prove that Brenda was really her daughter.
For years, Eliza did nothing with the Brenda sample. Between her divorce, moving to Washington, medical problems and financial limitations, her search stalled again while the DNA samples stayed locked away in a safety deposit box.
Several years later, Eliza picked up the trail again. This time it was not a cancer scare, but a close call on a snowy highway in February of 2004. Once again, she could have died without knowing the truth.
Eliza tried, unsuccessfully, to track down DNA either from Elvis' daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, or from Elvis himself. She contacted several collectors of Elvis memorabilia, hoping for a match. However, after asking how viable DNA from an item which pre-dated 1977 would be, she was informed that there would be many concerns, such as cross contamination, and it would probably not be worth the cost of testing, much less purchasing the various items.
For years, her efforts were in vain. She says she kept "ending up back at square one".
But then, in early 2008, collector David Collins convinced her to contact the FOX 8 TV News reporter, Suzanne Stratford. He had initially suggested Eliza contact Stratford in 2007, but Eliza didn't because she didn't buy into the "Jesse" story at the time. Eliza spoke to Stratford but had to wait several weeks for approval from FOX 8 News before proceeding.
They then gave Eliza the green light. She submitted her DNA sample, plus the the Donna sample, to a lab in Canada that specialized in DNA testing of even old objects. Eliza contacted FOX 8 News to get permission to test against an older sample they had from a former friend of Elvis, who owned a swatch from a blood-stained pair of jeans that he claimed had belonged to Elvis.
Unfortunately, the blood sample was too contaminated to work. So Eliza then asked to test against the "Jesse" sample. Fox 8 News sent that sample to the same Canadian lab. And the initial testing showed that Jesse was not Eliza's father (it was the only test she'd requested). But, the DNA revealed a much closer relationship than two unrelated people. So Eliza asked the lab if they could do further testing.
And what happened this time? The results . . . (drum roll please) ... a match! The FOX 8 News sample from Jesse in 2002 showed a half-sibling relationship with Eliza in April of 2008. Additionally, the lab reported that the Jesse sample also matched the Donna Presley Early sample (which in turn had matched Eliza as well).
By then, Eliza accepted, for the first time, that this "Jesse" person had to be Elvis -- the Elvis Presley. So she had to speak to him. She needed to tell him that he had a sister and find out if their father, Vernon Presley, ever knew of Eliza's existence.
Eliza was able to get through to a man who went by the name "Bern" (who was featured in the Dr. Hinton book from 2001). Bern passed messages between Eliza and Jesse.
In one of their conversations, Bern said he was instructed by Jesse to ask Eliza about her Aunt Louise, whom Elvis had known from his Graceland days in the late 50's and early 60's. Eliza realized Bern was speaking to the actual Elvis. Eliza had only given the name Elizabeth (Presley), rather than her birth name (Alice Tiffin). No one but the real Elvis could ever have known who her aunt was, especially since the only name that "Bern" knew her by at that point was Elizabeth.
Eliza was stunned. She says she knew at that instant -- even if she had no DNA proof -- she'd have known it was in fact Elvis Presley she was dealing with.
The problem at the time was that Eliza couldn't do anything with this knowledge. Eliza had been required to sign a non-disclosure agreement with FOX 8 News about Jesse's DNA sample from 2002. This meant she couldn't tell anyone of the DNA results without the approval of FOX 8 News. At that point, she did not care. She felt she knew the truth finally, even if she couldn't go to court with it.
But Jesse was there to help (whether intentionally or not). In the first package she sent to Jesse, Eliza included a small note card that was blank on the inside. She attached a post-it note asking if Jesse would fill it out and mail it back to her, with a pink envelope that Eliza had self-addressed & stamped. [See picture at top, but note that the "Elvis Presley" signature was pre-printed on the envelope.] It took Jesse so long to return it to her that she'd forgotten about it.
Three months later, the pink envelope came back, in late July of 2008. Eliza did not hesitate sending it to the Canadian lab. She had to know if it really came from Jesse/Elvis. A couple of weeks later, she got her answer.
The pink envelope was found to have been lick-sealed by the same person that had submitted the cheek swab DNA sample, back in 2002, to Suzanne Stratford at FOX 8 News. Eliza was overwhelmed, but elated at the news. This meant that she too now had Jesse's DNA profile and the constrictions of her agreement with FOX 8 News no longer applied.
The last piece of the puzzle was to send in those cigarette butts from Brenda Smith. Once again, the lab results came back positive. Brenda Smith did indeed match Jesse as a first cousin, just as Donna's had against Jesse's and Eliza's own had to Donna's sample way back in 2000.
In other words, according to Eliza Presley, her own DNA sample matches Jesse's, which in turn matches the samples both from Elvis' paternal cousin as well as his maternal cousin. Plus, her own sample also matches Elvis' paternal cousin.
No one alive could match these, Eliza says, but Elvis himself. Someone had to be the offspring of the union between Gladys and Vernon for this to happen. Elvis is that offspring, and Jesse had to be Elvis.
When Eliza explained all this to me, I found it interesting. But, as a lawyer, I wasn't prepared to believe anything (especially this outlandish) without seeing the reports myself.
So, when Eliza and her attorney in Memphis finally agreed to allow me access to all of the DNA reports, as well Eliza's supporting evidence, I was able to form my own opinion.
What did they show? And what do I think about them?
What does it all mean?
Many people have contacted me wondering about the final installment in The Probate Lawyer Blog's coverage of Eliza Presley and her efforts to prove she's telling the truth about The Elvis Presley Conspiracy. Here are the prior installments to refresh your memory. I promised I would share my personal thoughts about Eliza's DNA and other evidence.
Now I am able to report that I have read all of Eliza's reports from the Paleo-DNA Laboratory in Ontario, Canada, which analyzed the DNA. In fact, it's only one of many labs that have examined the DNA at different times. But it's the only lab to have issued reports about all the various samples.
This Paleo-DNA lab reports show:
The matching number of "loci" determines if there is a genetic match of kinship. The closer the relationship between people tested means more "loci" will match. Each person would match himself or herself 100%, and no one else (unless there was an identical twin).
With these reports, there are way too many matching "loci" for all of this to be a coincidence.
These reports show that Eliza and the person now referred to by many as "Jesse" are half-siblings, and Jesse in turn is biologically related to the known cousins on both sides of the family tree to Elvis Presley. Because Elvis never had any full siblings (other than a twin, Jessie, who was stillborn), no one else could match cousins on both sides but Elvis himself.
Think about it -- who else is related that close to your cousins on both sides of your family? Only you and your siblings. Even your children and parents wouldn't match as close because they only share half of your DNA.
And I'm not the only one who read the reports and came to this conclusion. Suzanne Stratford did another report for FOX 8 TV News about Eliza's DNA evidence, which you can watch here. This report concludes that the samples do match.
Eliza also sent the results to another independent DNA company to verify the results. The lab owner, Dr. Donald Yates, said publicly that the DNA supported Eliza's claim and that Jesse had to be Elvis. And yes, he said, this means that Elvis is alive. Here's a Memphis newspaper article about it.
Does this mean the world is ready to believe Eliza?
Not quite yet. Elvis' death is a "truth" that has been accepted for more than 30 years. Eliza is literally trying to rewrite history. She's going to need absolute, undeniable proof before she can garner widespread acceptance. But, she's spent too many years of her life battling those who don't want the truth to come out to stop now.
While the evidence I've seen is strong and compelling, I believe the public will need to see something more direct and concrete to prove a conspiracy this strong. Relying on blind samples provided by cousins, outside of the court process, is not enough to change the history books.
There are only two ways to do so.
One would be for Lisa Marie Presley to come forward and provide a little saliva for a DNA test. The attorney for Elvis Presley Enterprises said in the past that Lisa Marie won't, because once she does it for one person, then she'll have to do it for everyone claiming to be related to Elvis.
The problem with that excuse is that Eliza is the only one who has ever presented enough evidence to convince a judge to reopen a Presley Estate. No one else has gotten that far.
Second, if Lisa Marie provides her DNA once, there would be a record of it and she wouldn't have to ever submit it again. The one sample could be tested against anyone claiming to be related to Elvis. So why not do it?
So far, she refused to cooperate when asked by the FOX TV News team in Cleveland, even though it would have quickly ended this entire debate. In fact, Lisa Marie moved to London shortly after Eliza Presley's lawsuit was refiled last August.
Eliza tells me that she will try to compel Lisa Marie to provide her DNA through the ongoing court case, but if Lisa Marie remains in Europe, that's not going to happen.
Which means there is only one other option to conclusively expose the conspiracy to the world. Vernon's grave would have to be exhumed and his body tested. And while they're at it, Elvis' grave should be opened as well.
I know, it sounds very distasteful, and I've asked Eliza about doing that very thing. She doesn't want to do it, unless she absolutely has to. When I first asked her about that possibility, she said it was "unthinkable".
I for one believe there is no choice if Eliza wants to prove she's telling the truth ... unless Lisa Marie Presley changes her mind and donates a little saliva.
Exhuming bodies of famous people for DNA testing has been done before. Here's an article I wrote about famed football player George "The Gipp" Gipper. His body was exhumed for testing because of people claiming to be heirs.
In the book I co-wrote with Danielle Mayoras, Trial & Heirs: Famous Fortune Fights!, we include the story of Sonny Bono. A sample was taken from his body for paternity testing, based on a claim of someone who said he was Bono's secret love-child.
Will Eliza's journey come to this? We'll have to see. Eliza Presley's court case is back on track and scheduled to come to a head this summer. Hopefully, Lisa Marie will reconsider her position and not force Eliza to do what she really doesn't want to do -- seek court permission to exhume Vernon's body.
Until that moment comes, we have to examine the evidence that's there. Is the DNA evidence foolproof? No. While Dr. Yates and others are prepared to say, under oath, that it's definitive, there is the issue of proof in terms where the samples came from.
Eliza can establish the chain of custody showing how she obtained the samples. But for people to accept it, they have to believe her tale about how she got the DNA.
In other words, what if she's making the whole thing up? That's something I've thought about at length (I am a lawyer, after all). If Eliza invented all of this, and the DNA isn't from Presley relatives but is really from her own cousins, and none of them are Elvis relations, then all of the following would have to be true:
Not to mention the fact that if this was all a master scheme to defraud the public, through a court proceeding, why would they have done it knowing that it would be so easy for their plan to fall apart? Elvis Presley Enterprises simply has to march into court with the DNA of Lisa Marie, or either one of the two cousins tested for that matter, and they could prove in a snap that it's not true ... unless, of course, it IS true.
In other words, if this was a fraud, it would be so easy for the "Presley" camp to disprove it that no one would think they could get away with it Yet no one has come forward in the court case to stop Eliza.
I'm sorry, but I just don't buy how they could have pulled all this off if it was a giant scam. As hard as it was for me to believe, as an attorney, that Elvis may actually be alive, I find it much more believable that all this evidence is legitimate than Eliza and several others having engineered this entire scam years ago, knowing that it would involve testing of DNA.
But again, no one will believe it for certain unless Lisa Marie Presley cooperates or Vernon's body is exhumed.
That will silence all the doubters. There would be no way to fake that DNA.
Stay tuned until this summer. That's when the real fun begins.
http://www.probatelawyerblog.com/2010/02/the-elvis-presley-conspiracy-is-elvis-alive.html
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One of my favorite lines from the movie Men in Black was:
Agent Jay (Will Smith): You do know that Elvis is dead, right?
Agent Kay (Tommie Lee Jones): No, Elvis is not dead. He just went home.
That line has been running through my mind an awful lot lately.Agent Kay (Tommie Lee Jones): No, Elvis is not dead. He just went home.
It all began in the early days of the Probate Lawyer Blog, when I came across a Memphis newspaper story about a woman claiming that she was the secret half-sister of Elvis and that she had the DNA to prove it. How did she get the DNA? From Elvis, because he was alive. She had sued to re-open the Estate of Vernon Presley (Elvis' father) to prove that Vernon was her father.
And, of course, in my first article about the case, I didn't take her very seriously. Elvis is alive? Yeah, right. Like almost everyone who heard about it, I scoffed. I snickered. I went about my day.
Fast forward a few months ... I received an email from the alleged half-sister, Eliza Presley. She directed me to a website that had a lot of information explaining her DNA evidence. I emailed back and asked Eliza for a copy of the DNA reports, so I could see them for myself. Eliza politely said she was unable to send them to me because of the ongoing court case.
But, I had seen enough that I thought I may as well keep an open mind. Hey, stranger things have happened, right? Here's my second article about the case, where I said I was rooting for Eliza. I mean, how cool would it be if she was right, and Elvis really was alive?
The feedback I received from that article was surprising. Many people contacted me because of it. Most of them were very supportive of Eliza and proclaimed that the truth would come out ... and it would shock the world. I also received a few anti-Eliza emails, as well as a couple of phone calls, from people who vehemently (and quite aggressively) swore that Eliza was a big fraud and destined to land in jail.
In the meantime, Eliza Presley contacted me again. I've interviewed her by phone, at length, along with her forensic investigator that helped her track down evidence for her case, as well as her attorney. Her lawsuit is indeed proceeding, although slower than they'd like it to for a number of reasons.
Getting the Estate of Vernon Presley reopened was the first step. That alone was a big accomplishment, because no Presley Estate had ever been reopened, despite the number of people claiming to be related to Elvis. And it now appears that the court case will be coming to a head in the near future.
Throughout these interviews, I've found Eliza to be very open and honest with me. And yes, she even agreed to share a copy of the DNA reports with me. She said that she chose to share them with me because, as an independent attorney experienced in estate disputes, as well as being an author and blogger in this legal area, I could write about the reports in an objective fashion. I agreed to do so, but only on the condition that whatever opinions I wrote about the reports would be my own, whether Eliza agreed with them or not. Eliza was comfortable with that.
And so, she sent me the DNA reports. I have read and analyzed the DNA reports and other evidence she sent me, as well as a lot of other information about the great "Elvis Conspiracy" that I found on-line.
And, I have to say, the information has been nothing short of fascinating.
So, do I believe Eliza? Do I really think that Elvis is alive? Is he really her half-brother?
The Background
After Eliza Presley shared her DNA evidence with me, as well as the story about how she got it, I spent some time digging around to see what else was out there to corroborate or contradict her story. Eliza's claim is that she's the daughter of Vernon Presley, the father of Elvis. But she bases her claim, in part, on evidence from a man who Eliza believes actually IS Elvis Presley, still alive. Eliza says she never suspected Elvis might be alive when she began her journey.
Rather, according to Eliza, she only wanted to find out who her father was. Eliza was 13 when she learned that she was adopted as a baby. Several years later, Eliza met her birth mother, who gave Eliza the name of a man who was supposedly her father. But when Eliza contacted him, he was adamant he wasn't her father and didn't even know her mother in 1961. Eliza had to look elsewhere.
Later in life, she and her husband at the time had been shocked, when seeing pictures of Elvis as a young child, how much he looked like their three-year-old son, Andrew. Eliza knew that her birth mother had lived across the street from Elvis at Graceland shortly after he bought it in 1957-58 and had been friends with his family [see picture of Elvis and Eliza's birth mother and aunt].
Eliza's husband even suggested that Elvis may have been the father, because she shared a family resemblance ... not to mention the fact that Eliza was the only one of four children given up for adoption.
So Eliza had wondered for some time if she could be the daughter of Elvis. But she never bought into the whole "Elvis is alive" movement when she started her search.
People who believe that Elvis did not die on August 16, 1977 like to point to a book published in 2001 and written by a board-certified psychiatrist named Dr. Donald Hinton. He wrote it with a mysterious co-author named "Jesse." Dr. Hinton claimed Jesse was actually Elvis, having faked his death with the help of his manger, Colonel Tom Parker. "Jessie", by the way, was the name of Elvis' identical twin brother who was stillborn.
According to Dr. Hinton, Jesse had to get away from the life of Elvis for several reasons, primarily because of his poor health and due to threats against him and his family. Col. Parker agreed to help because he could earn lots of money from doing so, Dr. Hinton said. Indeed, Elvis has been at or near the top of Forbes' list of the highest earning dead celebrities for years.
Dr. Hinton said he treated Jesse for nearly six years for pain management due to his arthritic condition and other medical problems. He claimed that Jesse opened up to him and told him of his true identity. His book included many handwritten letters by Jesse and said it was Jesse's way of re-introducing himself to the world.
There were a few problems with Dr. Hinton's story. One was that he promised in the book that Elvis/Jesse would reveal himself to the world in 2002. Obviously, that never happened.
Another was that the book led to an investigations of Dr. Hinton for mail fraud, by the Missouri Attorney General's office, as well as by the DEA, and by the Missouri State Board of Healing Arts for illegally prescribing medications to a patient he had never met in person. Dr. Hinton actually surrendered his ability to prescribe medicine and was placed on 5 years probation by the medical board.
But the Dr. Hinton investigation did lead to an interesting place. When Dr. Hinton came under attack, his patient, Jesse, wrote a letter to the Attorney General supporting Dr. Hinton and refuting the mail fraud claims. He included the following in his letter:
Sir, I don't know if you believe in my continued existence or not, but if I continue to expose myself like I did in the book, I will be eliminated very easily. Pure and simple as that.
The Attorney General's office had the letter analyzed by a special type of handwriting expert, Shirley Mason, who was a certified graphologist. Graphology is commonly used by the FBI and throughout Europe, but is not universally accepted.
Mason worked for the Kansas City Bureau of Investigations for many years, successfully using graphology as evidence in criminal court cases. Shirley Mason reported that she compared the Jesse letter, and other documents written by him, to past letters written by Elvis. So what did she have to say about it?
Not only did they match, Mason wrote, but she would testify in court, under oath, that Elvis "has to be ALIVE." She felt the handwriting was "UNMISTAKABLE". The Attorney General's office dismissed the charges against Dr. Hinton and the DEA never brought charges against him.
Here's a website by Linda Hood-Sigmon, who is a friend of Jesse, showing copies of the Jesse letter and the Mason report.
Hood-Sigmon is one of the biggest proponents of the "Elvis is alive" theory and has a great deal of evidence on her website. She points to this picture of Jesse and says it was taken on a visit to Lisa Marie Presley so he could see his grandchildren.
But Hood-Sigmon and others who say Elvis is alive do have many vocal critics. Here's an example of a recent article written by one who tries to debunk some of the evidence that Elvis didn't really die. But, he doesn't address any DNA evidence in his article or the Mason report. Instead, he summarily concludes that "one side has no facts and no evidence" and as such, there shouldn't even be a debate.
Others see it differently. In fact, because of Dr. Hinton's book, a television reporter in Cleveland, Suzanne Stratford, began investigating.
She interviewed Dr. Hinton on camera and analyzed the evidence, including the Mason report, a picture taken 6 months after the funeral of what looked like Elvis peering through a screen door (and certified by Kodak), and the fact Elvis' tombstone lists his middle name as "Aaron" when official records show his true middle name to be "Aron". [See the pictures below on this point]. Stratford also reported that Dr. Hinton had passed a lie detector test they had administered.
And there's more. Stratford reported she was contacted by Jesse. She asked for, and received, a sample of Jesse's DNA, in 2002, so it could be tested. FOX 8 News did in fact test the DNA sample against known "control" samples of Elvis, including a 1975 liver biopsy sample and tissue from his autopsy. The problem was that they didn't match.
But again, another interesting turn. Not only did the "Jesse" sample not match the other two samples, but they didn't match each other. In other words, Elvis' autopsy tissue did not match the liver tissue from 1975.
So where did the autopsy sample come from? Does this mean that Elvis' autopsy was faked? Maybe. Stratford also interviewed cousins of Elvis who said that the body at the funeral looked like it was made out of wax, rather than being real.
But, of course, there's only one person alive (other than Jesse, of course) who can definitively prove or disprove that Jesse is Elvis ... Elvis' daughter. FOX 8 News contacted Lisa Marie Presley's representatives and asked for a sample of her DNA to find out the truth. She declined.
The FOX 8 News video stories are available on YouTube. Here's the one from 2008 that summarizes Stratford's investigation up until the Eliza Presley case. Her previous investigation stalled in 2004, until Eliza Presley contacted her 2008. Apparently, an Elvis collector, David Collins, repeatedly suggested that Eliza get in touch with Stratford when Eliza had contacted him as part of her search for Elvis' DNA to test against her own for paternity.
At first, Eliza didn't contact Stratford, still thinking that Elvis couldn't actually be alive. But, then she did reach out to Stratford, hoping to test her DNA against other Elvis samples FOX 8 News had.
In 2008 Stratford interviewed Eliza Presley as part of her ongoing investigation. FOX 8 News sent the 2002 sample it had received from Jesse to a lab so that it could be tested against Eliza's DNA evidence.
Eliza's journey
I know, this all sounds crazy. Elvis can't really be alive, can he? So he's been in hiding for more than 30 years, without the world finding out? How can that be?
And while we're at it, who really did shoot JFK ... and what happened in Roswell, New Mexico?
Yes, it all sure sounds like conjecture and speculation. There have been conspiracy theories floating around for years, but where is the hard evidence?
Well, Eliza Presley says she has it. But she didn't gather it to prove that Elvis was alive. Instead, she only wanted to find her father. So how did she get this evidence?
Eliza had never been an Elvis fan, but her youngest kids were. They had spoken to Elvis' cousin, on his father's side, Donna Presley Early, when Eliza contacted her from a website. Donna had authored books about her memories of Elvis and Eliza wanted to buy a copy of each for her kids. Donna sent the books to Eliza's children, ages 6 and 10 at the time, in July of 1999.
When her youngest child spoke with Donna, she had asked if Donna could send her something that belonged to Elvis. In her young mind, if you were a cousin of Elvis, of course you could. Donna Presley then sent Eliza's children a sealed envelope with strands of her hair in it.
Eliza was shocked when she saw the envelope, realizing what Donna had enclosed. She knew because a single red hair strand was sealed halfway out of it. She remembered a conversation with Donna where she had joked that her hair color was courtesy of Ms. Clairol. They'd been discussing the premature graying that was a Presley family trait. Eliza locked away the unsealed envelope, unsure what to do with it.
Then Eliza had a cancer scare in 2000. She decided it was time to really start trying to find her father again, because what happened if she died and neither she nor her children ever knew the truth?
So, after researching how DNA worked and looking for a lab, Eliza shipped Donna's envelope along, hoping it could shed some light. Eliza refers to this initial testing as her "jumping off point". Either it was going to show something useful to confirm her suspicions or prove that she was very wrong in ever thinking that she was related to Elvis Presley.
The lab sent the results in October of 2000. They showed that Eliza was, in fact, related to Donna Presley. When she questioned the people from the lab further, they told her that Elvis could possibly be her father. They also said if her father was not Elvis, it was someone very close to him, genetically.
Eliza knew that Elvis never had any (living) male siblings. It never occurred to her that Elvis' father might also be her father. But, she had her jumping off point.
Between the suggestive, but inconclusive Donna Presley Early DNA test, and the fact that her birth mother lived near Elvis and had been friendly with him, [see newspaper image of Elvis with Eliza's mother, Flo Clark], Eliza was determined to proceed with her quest to find the truth.
In March of 2001, Eliza and her family traveled to Graceland. Through a mutual friend, a meeting was arranged with Lois Smith Black, Elvis' maternal aunt (related through marriage). Lois' daughter, Brenda, lived with her -- and Brenda was a blood relative of Elvis (his maternal cousin). Eliza asked if Brenda would contribute a sample of her DNA so she could have it tested --- after showing both Lois and Brenda her DNA testing with the Presley side of the family.
Later that night, Brenda unexpectedly left, without saying if she'd cooperate or not. But her mother, Lois, was sympathetic to Eliza. She asked if DNA could be taken from cigarette butts like on TV.
When Eliza answered that it could, Lois pointed to the ashtray her daughter had been using that night. She stated that it was her house, so that was her trash too. She put them in an envelope for Eliza and sealed it. Lois also gave her own sample (a cheek swab) to prove that Brenda was really her daughter.
For years, Eliza did nothing with the Brenda sample. Between her divorce, moving to Washington, medical problems and financial limitations, her search stalled again while the DNA samples stayed locked away in a safety deposit box.
Several years later, Eliza picked up the trail again. This time it was not a cancer scare, but a close call on a snowy highway in February of 2004. Once again, she could have died without knowing the truth.
Eliza tried, unsuccessfully, to track down DNA either from Elvis' daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, or from Elvis himself. She contacted several collectors of Elvis memorabilia, hoping for a match. However, after asking how viable DNA from an item which pre-dated 1977 would be, she was informed that there would be many concerns, such as cross contamination, and it would probably not be worth the cost of testing, much less purchasing the various items.
For years, her efforts were in vain. She says she kept "ending up back at square one".
But then, in early 2008, collector David Collins convinced her to contact the FOX 8 TV News reporter, Suzanne Stratford. He had initially suggested Eliza contact Stratford in 2007, but Eliza didn't because she didn't buy into the "Jesse" story at the time. Eliza spoke to Stratford but had to wait several weeks for approval from FOX 8 News before proceeding.
They then gave Eliza the green light. She submitted her DNA sample, plus the the Donna sample, to a lab in Canada that specialized in DNA testing of even old objects. Eliza contacted FOX 8 News to get permission to test against an older sample they had from a former friend of Elvis, who owned a swatch from a blood-stained pair of jeans that he claimed had belonged to Elvis.
Unfortunately, the blood sample was too contaminated to work. So Eliza then asked to test against the "Jesse" sample. Fox 8 News sent that sample to the same Canadian lab. And the initial testing showed that Jesse was not Eliza's father (it was the only test she'd requested). But, the DNA revealed a much closer relationship than two unrelated people. So Eliza asked the lab if they could do further testing.
And what happened this time? The results . . . (drum roll please) ... a match! The FOX 8 News sample from Jesse in 2002 showed a half-sibling relationship with Eliza in April of 2008. Additionally, the lab reported that the Jesse sample also matched the Donna Presley Early sample (which in turn had matched Eliza as well).
By then, Eliza accepted, for the first time, that this "Jesse" person had to be Elvis -- the Elvis Presley. So she had to speak to him. She needed to tell him that he had a sister and find out if their father, Vernon Presley, ever knew of Eliza's existence.
Eliza was able to get through to a man who went by the name "Bern" (who was featured in the Dr. Hinton book from 2001). Bern passed messages between Eliza and Jesse.
In one of their conversations, Bern said he was instructed by Jesse to ask Eliza about her Aunt Louise, whom Elvis had known from his Graceland days in the late 50's and early 60's. Eliza realized Bern was speaking to the actual Elvis. Eliza had only given the name Elizabeth (Presley), rather than her birth name (Alice Tiffin). No one but the real Elvis could ever have known who her aunt was, especially since the only name that "Bern" knew her by at that point was Elizabeth.
Eliza was stunned. She says she knew at that instant -- even if she had no DNA proof -- she'd have known it was in fact Elvis Presley she was dealing with.
The problem at the time was that Eliza couldn't do anything with this knowledge. Eliza had been required to sign a non-disclosure agreement with FOX 8 News about Jesse's DNA sample from 2002. This meant she couldn't tell anyone of the DNA results without the approval of FOX 8 News. At that point, she did not care. She felt she knew the truth finally, even if she couldn't go to court with it.
But Jesse was there to help (whether intentionally or not). In the first package she sent to Jesse, Eliza included a small note card that was blank on the inside. She attached a post-it note asking if Jesse would fill it out and mail it back to her, with a pink envelope that Eliza had self-addressed & stamped. [See picture at top, but note that the "Elvis Presley" signature was pre-printed on the envelope.] It took Jesse so long to return it to her that she'd forgotten about it.
Three months later, the pink envelope came back, in late July of 2008. Eliza did not hesitate sending it to the Canadian lab. She had to know if it really came from Jesse/Elvis. A couple of weeks later, she got her answer.
The pink envelope was found to have been lick-sealed by the same person that had submitted the cheek swab DNA sample, back in 2002, to Suzanne Stratford at FOX 8 News. Eliza was overwhelmed, but elated at the news. This meant that she too now had Jesse's DNA profile and the constrictions of her agreement with FOX 8 News no longer applied.
The last piece of the puzzle was to send in those cigarette butts from Brenda Smith. Once again, the lab results came back positive. Brenda Smith did indeed match Jesse as a first cousin, just as Donna's had against Jesse's and Eliza's own had to Donna's sample way back in 2000.
In other words, according to Eliza Presley, her own DNA sample matches Jesse's, which in turn matches the samples both from Elvis' paternal cousin as well as his maternal cousin. Plus, her own sample also matches Elvis' paternal cousin.
No one alive could match these, Eliza says, but Elvis himself. Someone had to be the offspring of the union between Gladys and Vernon for this to happen. Elvis is that offspring, and Jesse had to be Elvis.
When Eliza explained all this to me, I found it interesting. But, as a lawyer, I wasn't prepared to believe anything (especially this outlandish) without seeing the reports myself.
So, when Eliza and her attorney in Memphis finally agreed to allow me access to all of the DNA reports, as well Eliza's supporting evidence, I was able to form my own opinion.
What did they show? And what do I think about them?
What does it all mean?
Many people have contacted me wondering about the final installment in The Probate Lawyer Blog's coverage of Eliza Presley and her efforts to prove she's telling the truth about The Elvis Presley Conspiracy. Here are the prior installments to refresh your memory. I promised I would share my personal thoughts about Eliza's DNA and other evidence.
Now I am able to report that I have read all of Eliza's reports from the Paleo-DNA Laboratory in Ontario, Canada, which analyzed the DNA. In fact, it's only one of many labs that have examined the DNA at different times. But it's the only lab to have issued reports about all the various samples.
This Paleo-DNA lab reports show:
- Eliza and "Jesse" are "1.6 x 10 [to the fifth power] times more likely to be half-siblings as compared to an untested, unrelated person of the general population. These statistics indicate that these two individuals are likely to be biologically related as half-siblings sharing one parent." The report shows a match of 9 out of the 13 "loci" tested.
- The likelihood of Jesse being Eliza's father is zero (apparently 11 out of 13 matching "loci" is needed for that).
- Jesse and Brenda Smith [the recognized maternal first cousin of Elvis] are 418 times more likely to be related than someone from the general population, suggesting they are biologically related. 6 out of 13 "loci" match.
- Jesse and Donna Presley [the recognized paternal first cousin of Elvis] are 45.7 times more likely to be related than the general public, again indicating they are likely to be biologically related. 5 out of 9 "loci" match.
- Eliza and Donna Presley are 31.95 times more likely to be related, so once again, they are likely to be related. 5 out of 9 "loci" match.
- The 2002 FOX TV Jesse sample was a 100% match with the 2008 Jesse sample (the pink envelope sent to Eliza). All 13 out of 13 "loci" match.
The matching number of "loci" determines if there is a genetic match of kinship. The closer the relationship between people tested means more "loci" will match. Each person would match himself or herself 100%, and no one else (unless there was an identical twin).
With these reports, there are way too many matching "loci" for all of this to be a coincidence.
These reports show that Eliza and the person now referred to by many as "Jesse" are half-siblings, and Jesse in turn is biologically related to the known cousins on both sides of the family tree to Elvis Presley. Because Elvis never had any full siblings (other than a twin, Jessie, who was stillborn), no one else could match cousins on both sides but Elvis himself.
Think about it -- who else is related that close to your cousins on both sides of your family? Only you and your siblings. Even your children and parents wouldn't match as close because they only share half of your DNA.
And I'm not the only one who read the reports and came to this conclusion. Suzanne Stratford did another report for FOX 8 TV News about Eliza's DNA evidence, which you can watch here. This report concludes that the samples do match.
Eliza also sent the results to another independent DNA company to verify the results. The lab owner, Dr. Donald Yates, said publicly that the DNA supported Eliza's claim and that Jesse had to be Elvis. And yes, he said, this means that Elvis is alive. Here's a Memphis newspaper article about it.
Does this mean the world is ready to believe Eliza?
Not quite yet. Elvis' death is a "truth" that has been accepted for more than 30 years. Eliza is literally trying to rewrite history. She's going to need absolute, undeniable proof before she can garner widespread acceptance. But, she's spent too many years of her life battling those who don't want the truth to come out to stop now.
While the evidence I've seen is strong and compelling, I believe the public will need to see something more direct and concrete to prove a conspiracy this strong. Relying on blind samples provided by cousins, outside of the court process, is not enough to change the history books.
There are only two ways to do so.
One would be for Lisa Marie Presley to come forward and provide a little saliva for a DNA test. The attorney for Elvis Presley Enterprises said in the past that Lisa Marie won't, because once she does it for one person, then she'll have to do it for everyone claiming to be related to Elvis.
The problem with that excuse is that Eliza is the only one who has ever presented enough evidence to convince a judge to reopen a Presley Estate. No one else has gotten that far.
Second, if Lisa Marie provides her DNA once, there would be a record of it and she wouldn't have to ever submit it again. The one sample could be tested against anyone claiming to be related to Elvis. So why not do it?
So far, she refused to cooperate when asked by the FOX TV News team in Cleveland, even though it would have quickly ended this entire debate. In fact, Lisa Marie moved to London shortly after Eliza Presley's lawsuit was refiled last August.
Eliza tells me that she will try to compel Lisa Marie to provide her DNA through the ongoing court case, but if Lisa Marie remains in Europe, that's not going to happen.
Which means there is only one other option to conclusively expose the conspiracy to the world. Vernon's grave would have to be exhumed and his body tested. And while they're at it, Elvis' grave should be opened as well.
I know, it sounds very distasteful, and I've asked Eliza about doing that very thing. She doesn't want to do it, unless she absolutely has to. When I first asked her about that possibility, she said it was "unthinkable".
I for one believe there is no choice if Eliza wants to prove she's telling the truth ... unless Lisa Marie Presley changes her mind and donates a little saliva.
Exhuming bodies of famous people for DNA testing has been done before. Here's an article I wrote about famed football player George "The Gipp" Gipper. His body was exhumed for testing because of people claiming to be heirs.
In the book I co-wrote with Danielle Mayoras, Trial & Heirs: Famous Fortune Fights!, we include the story of Sonny Bono. A sample was taken from his body for paternity testing, based on a claim of someone who said he was Bono's secret love-child.
Will Eliza's journey come to this? We'll have to see. Eliza Presley's court case is back on track and scheduled to come to a head this summer. Hopefully, Lisa Marie will reconsider her position and not force Eliza to do what she really doesn't want to do -- seek court permission to exhume Vernon's body.
Until that moment comes, we have to examine the evidence that's there. Is the DNA evidence foolproof? No. While Dr. Yates and others are prepared to say, under oath, that it's definitive, there is the issue of proof in terms where the samples came from.
Eliza can establish the chain of custody showing how she obtained the samples. But for people to accept it, they have to believe her tale about how she got the DNA.
In other words, what if she's making the whole thing up? That's something I've thought about at length (I am a lawyer, after all). If Eliza invented all of this, and the DNA isn't from Presley relatives but is really from her own cousins, and none of them are Elvis relations, then all of the following would have to be true:
- Jesse would have to be "in on it," because his DNA matches Eliza's -- so they really are half-siblings.
- That would mean either she or Jesse would have had to track the other down, despite their age difference, because Eliza was adopted as a baby and didn't know she had a brother.
- They would have also had to track down cousins from both sides of Jesse's family, which again would have been tough because Eliza was adopted.
- The would-be-scam would have been started back in at least 2001, because that's when the Dr. Hinton book about Elvis being alive was published.
- The scammers would have had to fool Suzanne Stratford and her bosses at FOX 8 TV News (unless they're in on it, of course), because they never would have done the stories if they thought Eliza and Jesse were committing fraud.
- They would had to have fooled Dr. Yates and his DNA company, as well as Shirley Mason (the graphologist), among many others -- not to mention the Missouri Attorney General.
Not to mention the fact that if this was all a master scheme to defraud the public, through a court proceeding, why would they have done it knowing that it would be so easy for their plan to fall apart? Elvis Presley Enterprises simply has to march into court with the DNA of Lisa Marie, or either one of the two cousins tested for that matter, and they could prove in a snap that it's not true ... unless, of course, it IS true.
In other words, if this was a fraud, it would be so easy for the "Presley" camp to disprove it that no one would think they could get away with it Yet no one has come forward in the court case to stop Eliza.
I'm sorry, but I just don't buy how they could have pulled all this off if it was a giant scam. As hard as it was for me to believe, as an attorney, that Elvis may actually be alive, I find it much more believable that all this evidence is legitimate than Eliza and several others having engineered this entire scam years ago, knowing that it would involve testing of DNA.
But again, no one will believe it for certain unless Lisa Marie Presley cooperates or Vernon's body is exhumed.
That will silence all the doubters. There would be no way to fake that DNA.
Stay tuned until this summer. That's when the real fun begins.
http://www.probatelawyerblog.com/2010/02/the-elvis-presley-conspiracy-is-elvis-alive.html
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Elvis faking his death stories were very popular in the late 1980s along with his supposed secret daughter by that Lucy DeBarbin lady. I guess EP is living in Jamaica with Jimi Hendrix & Tupac, lol.
