Explains in a cogent timelime the step by step progression of how the person passes from life to death and how their lifestyle and personal conduct contributed to their demise.
#autopsy #artist #music #tv #elvis presley
#autopsy #artist #music #tv #elvis presley
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Good evening. Elvis Presley died today. He was 42. He was found at his home in Memphis, not breathing.
00:09His road manager tried to revive him. He failed. A hospital tried to revive him. It failed.
00:16His doctor pronounced him dead at 3 o'clock this afternoon.
00:22Elvis Presley was the king of rock and roll.
00:26His meteoric rise to fame in the mid-50s made him one of the world's first international superstars.
00:34He sold an estimated 1 billion records.
00:39But at 3 p.m. on the 16th of August, 1977, Elvis Presley is pronounced dead,
00:46having been found lying unconscious on the bathroom floor of his Memphis home, Graceland.
00:51He is just 42.
00:55The sudden and unexplained death of one of the most famous men on the planet immediately sparked speculation.
01:02And his death is still shrouded in mystery.
01:06Elvis was not a well man, and I'm staggered at a number of possible causes of death.
01:11Most of his organs were about twice the size they should have been.
01:14He was severely constipated, and he was taking numerous prescription drugs.
01:19The challenge here is to try and understand which of these ultimately killed Elvis Presley.
01:26World-renowned forensic pathologist, Dr. Richard Shepard, has been conducting high-profile autopsies for more than 25 years.
01:37He was the expert witness at the inquest into the deaths of Princess Diana, victims of the 9-11 attacks,
01:44and the Bloody Sunday Inquiry.
01:47These are the medical papers relating to Elvis' autopsy, and together with other information I've gathered,
01:53they provide numerous clues as to how Elvis lived his life, and they also unlock the reason for his untimely
02:00death.
02:02Just a few hours after Elvis was pronounced dead, an autopsy was carried out on his body.
02:09But with the world's media waiting for an answer, the results were announced before the post-mortem had even finished.
02:17Basically, it is a natural death, and due to the cardiac arrhythmia, which is an irregular beating of the heart.
02:25Almost everyone dies as a result of a cardiac arrhythmia that precedes the ultimate stopping of the heart.
02:31The key question is, what causes the arrhythmia?
02:35Nearly 40 years on, myths and legends still surround the death of Elvis Presley.
02:41But what really happened during the final hours of his life?
02:484 p.m., 15th of August, 1977.
02:52Graceland in Memphis.
02:57Elvis wakes up next to his 21-year-old fiancée, Memphis beauty queen, Ginger Olden.
03:04He's now entering the last 24 hours of his life.
03:09Beginning his day late in the afternoon is typical of Elvis' upside-down lifestyle.
03:16The following day, he is due to start a gruelling 12-day tour.
03:20His record sales are dwindling, and despite earning millions, Elvis is in financial trouble.
03:2850% of his earnings go to his manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
03:34Touring is now the only way for Elvis to remain solvent.
03:41For someone who needed to be physically fit for a demanding stage performance, he wasn't in the best of shape.
03:48Although we have no record of the post-mortem weight, he was estimated to weigh at least 220 pounds, 15
03:55and a half stone.
03:55And at 5 foot 11, that gave a BMI of 31, which is in the obese category.
04:01The other thing shown at the autopsy was that he had a high cholesterol, which is associated with obesity.
04:09In the last few years, Elvis has battled with his weight.
04:14But when he started putting that weight on, I started worrying about him a whole lot.
04:19Elvis, he wasn't a food connoisseur type of guy.
04:22You know, he liked the normal southern type foods.
04:26Elvis loved low-fiber, high-cholesterol, high-fat dishes.
04:31He reportedly ate everything from fried chicken and cheeseburgers to giant peanut butter, jam and bacon sandwiches.
04:39He had a full staff to make him this stuff 24 hours a day, so he could indulge himself food
04:45-wise whenever he wanted.
04:48Elvis Aaron Presley was born in the deep south of America in 1935.
04:54His parents brought him up on southern home cooking and the traditional gospel music he grew up to love.
05:01Well, when I first met him, we were 12 years old at Humes High School in this music class.
05:06I didn't know what it was, but I said, this guy's a little different.
05:10In 1954, rock and roll was born when a 19-year-old Elvis Presley took the world by storm with
05:17his first hit,
05:18That's All Right, Mama.
05:21Music would never be the same again.
05:24Elvis' persona did change once he stepped on that stage.
05:27He was sort of a different guy, and he shocked me a little bit because I didn't know he had
05:31it in him like that.
05:33Elvis went on to have 18 number-one singles and sold an estimated 1 billion records.
05:39If Elvis Presley sang on the stage in front of you, you thought he was singing to just you.
05:45That is a gift.
05:46He was a beautiful man.
05:48And I never have seen a picture that did justice to the way he really looked.
05:56But by the time he got into his 40s, Elvis was showing clear signs of physical and mental decline.
06:02The iconic images of Elvis always show the quiff of jet black hair, but the autopsy reveals that it had
06:09in fact been dyed.
06:10When I examined Elvis Presley's scalp, the first quarter inch of his hair was white.
06:19Chief medical investigator, Dan Warlick, played a key part in Elvis Presley's autopsy.
06:26Not only was he one of the first people to attend the death scene, he also helped the pathologist to
06:31examine and dissect the singer's body.
06:33If his hair was being dyed jet black, or what I call Elvis black now, but if he'd let his
06:39hair grow out unattended, it would have been white.
06:44White as snow.
06:46Thank you, dear. I love you, too.
06:49At 42, you may have expected Elvis to have had a few grey hairs, but the fact that he is
06:55completely white is quite extraordinary.
06:56There are two possible reasons for this.
07:00Firstly, there may have been a genetic predisposition to early grey, and the second is stress.
07:06And it's likely that it's a combination of the two.
07:11Memphis, around 8pm, 15th August 1977.
07:17Elvis' friends and employees, known as the Memphis Mafia, are gathering at his house, Graceland.
07:24The next evening, they will all hit the road for the upcoming tour, but Elvis will never make it on
07:29stage.
07:32Also staying that night is his 9-year-old daughter, Lisa Marie, from his marriage to Priscilla Presley, along with
07:39his father, Vernon.
07:42I remember his comment, you see all of this and what we have to do, I've got to take care
07:47of this so everybody can keep doing what they're doing.
07:50He had large responsibilities.
07:54Elvis financially supported many of his extended family and friends, some of whom lived with him at Graceland.
08:00On top of that, he also employed five maids, a physician, nurses, cooks, security guards, personal hairdressers, and a pilot.
08:11Elvis' checking account when he died was a little bit over $1 million.
08:15People say, wow, he's only got $1 million. Where did all that money go?
08:19He gave away Cadillacs, and, you know, he gave me two Cadillacs, and paid for two operations.
08:24He was a very giving person, very generous to a fault, and if he knew that you needed something, but
08:30you were afraid to ask him, he would volunteer to give it to you.
08:34He truly did enjoy giving these gifts and watching the reactions.
08:37When it comes to the money, though, he had a lot of people going out on tour with him, and
08:43so he was singularly responsible for bringing in the money.
08:48This financial burden weighed heavily on Elvis, and to keep Graceland and his entourage going, he had to keep working.
08:58Looking at the reports, I'm not sure that Elvis was fit enough to go back on the road.
09:03In particular, the internal examination throws up some interesting findings.
09:07Elvis' liver was fatty, sometimes known as fatty metamorphosis.
09:13A fatty liver is a marker that it's not working correctly.
09:16The fat that should be processed by the liver is becoming stuck within the cells.
09:22His liver looked really big, but it did not look diseased, and it did not turn out to be diseased
09:28under microscopic inspection.
09:31Elvis' liver may not have been actually diseased, but it was spectacularly large.
09:36At 3,500 grams, it's twice the normal weight of a human liver.
09:41And it's been a long time since I've seen a liver that's so large.
09:46The commonest cause of such a large liver is someone who is chronically abusing alcohol and drinking a litre or
09:52more of spirits a day.
09:54Elvis had kind of a mental stigma when it came to alcohol.
09:59He just thought it was not something he wanted to get into.
10:03And one of the reasons that Elvis didn't drink was that he saw how people behaved on alcohol,
10:09and there was a lot of alcoholism in his family.
10:12If I exclude alcohol, there are a number of other possible causes for a fatty liver.
10:17And the next most common is drug abuse.
10:20He didn't do cocaine, he didn't do marijuana, he didn't do all the hard drugs,
10:25but he was addicted to prescribed medication.
10:29Well, I think there was a suspicion that Elvis had been heavily involved in drugs.
10:35I think some of them thought he might, in fact, overdose at some point and die from it.
10:40So could the abuse of prescription drugs have led to the death of the king of rock and roll?
10:48On the 16th of August, 1977, the king of rock and roll, Elvis Presley,
10:54was found dead on the floor of his Graceland bathroom in Memphis, Tennessee.
11:00The world was shocked by the sudden passing of this icon.
11:05He was just 42 years old.
11:10Now, leading forensic pathologist Dr. Richard Shepard is investigating Elvis Presley's autopsy,
11:17piecing together the last hours of his life to reveal the real reason for his mysterious death.
11:23Based on the medical documentation, Elvis was clearly not a well man.
11:28But I can see no immediate cause for his death.
11:32He was obese, probably as a result of his poor diet.
11:36He also had an extraordinary large liver that may have been contributed to by his poor diet,
11:41but that change in the liver may also have been caused by drug abuse.
11:4910.30pm, 15th of August, 1977.
11:56Elvis has painful toothache, and despite it being late at night, he decides to visit the dentist.
12:04Being Elvis Presley means that everyone is at his beck and call 24-7.
12:11Elvis did have an unusual lifestyle in that he would stay up all night and sleep all day.
12:17In the music and entertainment world, it just gets started at night, and then they got to wind down.
12:25So it was his style.
12:27It was easier for Elvis to get around, because in daytime, he would start riots and stuff,
12:33and crowds would gather real quickly, and he'd get trapped and have to sign a million autographs.
12:39But avoiding being mobbed by fans was not the only reason for his nocturnal lifestyle.
12:45Elvis suffered from chronic insomnia.
12:49I have here the toxicology report, which shows there are staggering nine different prescription drugs
12:55in Elvis' body at the time of his death, and four of them were commonly used to treat insomnia.
13:02It wasn't unusual in the 1970s for someone to be taking one sleeping pill at night.
13:07However, to be taking four was unusual.
13:11But the problem is, they're all highly addictive.
13:14Elvis thought that because it was prescribed medication, that it wouldn't hurt him.
13:19And he did have a hard time sleeping, so he'd take sleeping pills.
13:23One morning at 2 o'clock when he called me, just a few days before he died,
13:28and asked me to come out to the house.
13:31And I went in, and I said, what's the matter, honey?
13:36And he said, I can't sleep.
13:38And I just reached over, and I put my hand on his arm, and I said, okay.
13:43And finally, about 6.30, he said, I think I'm okay now.
13:50Sleeping pills work by depressing the central nervous system,
13:54causing you to become drowsy and possibly fall asleep.
13:58Normally, any one of these pills would send a person to sleep.
14:02But over time, Elvis had built up tolerance that meant that he had to take more to go to sleep.
14:09Elvis had a history of disrupted sleep, going back to his childhood.
14:14But at the tender age of 23, his insomnia intensified when his world was shattered.
14:22He was really, seriously destroyed because his mother passed away.
14:27In fact, he went and got an article of her clothing, and he held it close to his heart.
14:31He cried for two days, continuously crying.
14:36But I'd never seen a guy that tore up about his mother passing away.
14:41He doted on his mother.
14:42He adored his mother, and that was evident in every conversation we had.
14:48And I think that he felt like he almost couldn't go on without her.
14:55Elvis' mom, if she had not passed on early, there was a very, very good chance that Elvis would be
15:02alive today.
15:02You've got an intense loss and an intense gap in somebody's life, and he would have been struggling with how
15:09to fill it,
15:10and he would have used any vice he could that was around that he felt would feed that loss.
15:19But sleeping pills weren't the only pharmaceuticals that Elvis was taking.
15:25In the toxicology report, I can see that he is taking a drug called diazepam, also known as Valium,
15:30which is a very common anti-anxiety drug.
15:34He's also taking amitriptyline, which is a drug used to treat depression.
15:39And the presence of the combination of these two suggests a man who is suffering from severe anxiety and depression.
15:48Studies have shown that, you know, when you have disrupted sleep, it can lead to all kinds of physiological and
15:55psychological problems,
15:56such as anxiety, and people have suffered from depression when they don't get enough sleep.
16:01And if he was experiencing insomnia and then having this lifestyle that meant he was up all night,
16:08it would have completely affected his mood.
16:11At 12.28am, Elvis returns to Graceland from the dentist, possibly with painkillers.
16:19Fan Robert Call takes the last photo of Elvis alive.
16:23Elvis has around nine hours to live.
16:34When I look at the toxicology report, I can see that Elvis has the painkiller codeine in his bloodstream.
16:38Normally, I wouldn't be too concerned, but it's present at dangerously high levels.
16:43And this drug present at such high levels indicates that he must have been in considerable pain.
16:49But toothache wasn't the only painful ailment Elvis was suffering from.
16:55He was hiding an excruciating secret behind his legendary dark glasses.
17:02Looking at the medical reports, I can see that Elvis was suffering from an agonising eye condition known as glaucoma.
17:09Glaucoma occurs when the drainage tubes within the eye become blocked, and the pressure rises, and it causes very severe
17:17pain.
17:18The severe pain in his eyes, and he's got toothache, might be the reason why he's taking so much codeine.
17:27So here's a man taking a large number of medications, from sleeping pills to painkillers,
17:32all of them with a sedative effect, and all of them depressing the central nervous system.
17:38It's really a wonder that he even managed to get out of bed.
17:422.15am.
17:45Elvis calls his personal physician, George Nacopoulos, known as Dr Nick.
17:52Mumbling and incoherent, he manages to ask Dr Nick for more medication, including painkillers.
17:59The loyal physician duly writes out a prescription.
18:05I have here a copy of the prescription that was given by Dr Nick to Elvis the night before he
18:11died.
18:12It's a strange mixture of medications, but what's particularly interesting is that two of them are amphetamine-type drugs,
18:19dexedrine and bifetamine, essentially legal forms of speed.
18:23Neither of these drugs was present in Elvis' body when he died.
18:27However, the presence of these drugs leads me to believe that Elvis needed these stimulants
18:32to counteract the effects of all the sedative drugs that he was taking.
18:36He'd take sleeping pills, but then he started taking too many of them.
18:39And then when he woke up the next day, he'd have to take pills to wake up, you know, and
18:45that took a toll on him.
18:47Looking at the medical evidence, it's clear that Elvis was using these drugs to be able to function.
18:52Downers to go to sleep and uppers to wake up again.
18:55We now know that it's incredibly dangerous to use drugs in this way,
19:00and it causes long-term psychological and physical damage.
19:04I think it went from, I need these to control my life, to these are in control of me.
19:09But he may not have recognised when that happened to him.
19:14Elvis may have been using multiple prescription medications to regulate his lifestyle,
19:19but other than codeine, they are present in fairly small amounts.
19:24None of them on their own are life-threatening.
19:27However, there was one drug in Elvis' system which was potentially lethal.
19:34The report shows that the strongest, most dangerous drug that Elvis was taking was Demerol,
19:39also known as mepiridine or pethidine.
19:41And this has an opiate effect similar to heroin.
19:44And this is a drug that directly affects the brain to control pain.
19:50Demerol is extremely potent and is usually only prescribed in hospitals to people suffering from serious injuries.
19:57So why was Elvis taking it?
20:01After the death of his mother, 16 years before,
20:05the second great tragedy of his life was the divorce from Priscilla in 1973.
20:11As a result, he became depressed and rapidly put on weight.
20:16It may have been another sense of loss in his life, you know, after his mother and these various things.
20:21But I think what may have hurt him more was the fact that another man came in and took Priscilla
20:26away from him.
20:28I think it was a male pride and a male ego thing where people were looking and saying,
20:33wow, Elvis Presley lost his wife.
20:35But the divorce is also thought to be linked to his addiction to the powerful sedative Demerol.
20:41Demerol is an incredibly powerful drug.
20:44And by taking it, it might have made Elvis feel disorientated and dizzy.
20:48It's a drug that's associated with addiction and in overdose even with death.
20:52However, the drug isn't present in his bloodstream.
20:55It's only present in his liver and kidneys.
20:57So he's not taken it in the last 24 hours in his life.
21:00So Demerol has not played a direct part in Elvis's death.
21:063 a.m. Elvis calls his stepbrother Rick Stanley and asks him to pick up a prescription.
21:13Elvis was hiding yet another secret.
21:16He was obtaining prescription drugs from multiple sources.
21:20Dr. Nick was a good doctor.
21:22The two bad doctors, they would send stuff to Graceland and the people at Graceland would give it to Elvis.
21:27But Dr. Nick found out about it.
21:28So he would call us and we would go out late at night.
21:32We take the stuff out of the pills and we put sugar in there.
21:35But Elvis caught on to that because it wasn't taking care of him.
21:39If Elvis didn't get what he wanted from Dr. Nacopoulos, he would just get it from somewhere else.
21:43And so Dr. Nacopoulos said, well, I'm going to stay around and I'm going to try to control this.
21:47People find it extremely hard to say no to Elvis Presley.
21:51He controlled his physicians and told them exactly what to prescribe for him.
21:56The exclusive focus is getting what I need to help me to keep going and a state of denial that,
22:05you know, you're actually abusing the drugs and you will do anything to get hold of it.
22:09He would have a bad show because he was slurring his words or had movement problems.
22:16He would forget lyrics, which he handled well because he would laugh it off and the crowd would think, okay,
22:22we're in on the joke, we get it.
22:24But it really wasn't a joke and he was in bad shape for those last few years.
22:294 a.m., 16th of August, 1977.
22:33Elvis has just hours left to live.
22:37Most people in Elvis' home, Graceland, are probably fast asleep, including his father, Vernon, and daughter, Lisa Marie.
22:45Elvis, however, is wide awake.
22:48Bizarrely, he has decided to play a game of racquetball.
22:52His cousin, Billy Smith, and wife, Jo, are woken up to play.
22:57Elvis has decided playing racquetball would keep his weight down and get him fit.
23:02The pressure is on.
23:04He's due on stage in Portland, Maine, the next night to start his tour.
23:09I think going back on stage gave him incentive and desire to lose the weight and get back in shape.
23:15But it was a little too late.
23:184.30 a.m.
23:20Whilst Elvis' intentions for playing racquetball were good, the effect on his body was not.
23:27Playing racquetball would certainly have helped Elvis lose weight and get fit.
23:32But the autopsy shows that his heart was somewhat enlarged.
23:35And the arteries to his heart were narrowed by over 50% by fat deposition in their walls.
23:42This is a disease known as atherosclerosis, and it's commonly associated with high cholesterol in the bloodstream.
23:50And we know that Elvis suffered from that cholesterol.
23:54This build-up of material in the walls of the blood vessels prevents blood getting through to the organ and
24:00stops it working so efficiently.
24:02And that's particularly the case with the heart.
24:06So Elvis was obese, he had raised cholesterol, and he had a bad heart.
24:11And this means that any exercise or fitness regime should have been very carefully planned.
24:194.35 a.m.
24:21Elvis heads to his piano room with his cousin Billy, wife Jo, and his fiancée Ginger.
24:29Ever the showman, he can't resist entertaining the group on the piano.
24:34That was the last two songs he ever sang.
24:37Billy said that he sang Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, the old Willie Nelson song, and he sang Unchained
24:42Melody.
24:50Around 5.00 a.m., Elvis heads up to bed.
24:53On the way, he finds his daughter, Lisa Marie, is still awake.
24:59He tucks her into bed and kisses her goodnight.
25:17Back in his room, Elvis calls Rick demanding more sleeping pills.
25:24Rick delivers the first packet and Elvis tries to fall asleep.
25:31The only regret that I have looking back on my time with Elvis was the fact that I wasn't able
25:36to step up and help him.
25:38You try to help a person, and he don't want you to, you hit the road.
25:42The door slams in your face.
25:44And so when people went to him and said, you know, you're unhealthy, you need to do something about your
25:49health, take some time off.
25:50But Elvis lived his life largely with the notion that it's my life, I'm in control.
25:58Thanks for your input, but no thanks.
26:02Still awake at 7 a.m., Elvis calls Rick for a second packet of pills.
26:08But this, too, fails to send him to sleep.
26:14About an hour later, he asks for a third pack.
26:26Despite the number of pills Elvis may have taken, he still can't sleep.
26:31And it isn't just the insomnia that's keeping him awake.
26:35Reports suggest he was also suffering from severe abdominal pain.
26:40At 9 a.m., he heads to the bathroom.
26:45Ginger goes back to sleep unaware that the king of rock and roll could be just moments away from dying.
26:53From the medical information, we already know that many of Elvis' internal organs were abnormal,
26:59and some were about twice their normal size.
27:01And the same is true of the colon, or the large bowel.
27:05When we look at it, the normal size should be about 3 inches.
27:09Elvis' was distended to about 5 inches.
27:11And it was full of grey, chalk-like material.
27:16He couldn't have had his bowel open for several days.
27:18And this would have been very uncomfortable or, frankly, painful.
27:23And this potentially dangerous problem had been known about.
27:28He had all that clay in there, and I don't think he could have passed.
27:32I think it would have taken some significant, significant medical intervention just to clear that out.
27:37Dr. Nacopoulos tried to get the doctors in Memphis to operate on Elvis and reduce his colon.
27:44They said, we're scared to operate on Elvis.
27:45He's a superstar, man.
27:47If something happens, we could really be in trouble.
27:49So they wouldn't operate.
27:51They tried to do it with medication, and it wasn't working.
27:54It got worse and worse.
27:56When you take opiate painkillers like codeine and some antidepressants,
28:00it can have an effect on the digestive system, causing it to slow down.
28:04In other words, the normal, regular motion of the bowel becomes disturbed,
28:09and the bowel becomes distended with faeces, causing it to stretch.
28:13And we can see that that has happened to Elvis,
28:16and he's clearly suffering from an extreme case of constipation.
28:219.05 a.m.
28:23By now, Elvis is likely to be experiencing extreme discomfort and no movement in his bowels.
28:32He was reading a book, and it was not the type of book that you would fall asleep while you
28:37were reading.
28:38It focused on sexual positions in relation to zodiac signs.
28:46At some point, Elvis collapses on the floor.
28:55He was laying on his left side, with his knees pulled up, not in a fetal position,
29:01but right knee over the left knee on the floor, and his head against the floor.
29:13At around 2 p.m. in the afternoon,
29:16Ginger wakes up to find that Elvis hasn't returned from the bathroom.
29:22Elvis?
29:27Elvis?
29:30He's been alone for around five hours.
29:36Oh, my God!
29:38Elvis!
29:38Oh, my God!
29:40Ginger finds him unresponsive.
29:42He's not breathing.
29:45Lindsay!
29:46Come on!
29:47She immediately sounds the alarm and calls downstairs for help.
29:55An on-duty maid sends up Alstrada,
29:57one of Elvis's security guards,
29:59and his road manager, Joe Esposito.
30:05They turn Elvis over,
30:07but his body feels stiff and cold.
30:10His face and neck have turned blue.
30:15They try to perform CPR,
30:17but Elvis's jaw is too stiff,
30:19and his mouth won't open.
30:22I think that Joe and Al were seeing the very early signs of rigor mortis.
30:26Rigor mortis is the stiffening of the muscles
30:28that occurs because of a chemical change within them,
30:31and it starts three or four hours after death.
30:34So, in retrospect,
30:36I think it's clear that Elvis was dead when they walked into the bathroom.
30:39However, they were quite right to commence CPR
30:42because they couldn't be sure.
30:45Elvis's father, Vernon, also hears the commotion
30:47and runs into the bathroom.
30:51Vernon was distraught.
30:53He saw what was going on.
30:54You know, he was saying, you know,
30:56please don't die, please don't die.
30:57He saw the condition of Elvis,
31:00and he had to have known that this wasn't going to end well.
31:05Lisa Marie had come up
31:06and was trying to look into the bathroom
31:08and saying, what's wrong with my daddy?
31:10And Ginger stopped her.
31:172.33 p.m., paramedics arrive at Graceland.
31:26Despite the fact that Elvis has no pulse or blood pressure,
31:29the paramedics also attend CPR.
31:34When that fails,
31:36they rush him to Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis,
31:38where they continue repeatedly to try to revive him.
31:44And I walked into the emergency area.
31:48It was so evident to me
31:51that he had been gone for so long.
31:54They were doing CPR.
31:57I said, please stop.
32:00Don't do this to him.
32:03How could they not tell he was dead by looking at him?
32:06I could when I walked in the door.
32:10At around 3 p.m. on the 16th of August, 1977,
32:15Elvis Presley is pronounced dead.
32:18The world warns the shocking passing of the king of rock and roll.
32:24Elvis Presley died today.
32:26He was 42.
32:27He was found at his home in Memphis, not breathing.
32:31At that moment, I felt like somebody just stabbed me with a red-hot knife in my heart.
32:36I never had a feeling like that in my life.
32:38I was just shaking all over, and everybody was crying.
32:42Mr. Presley ran up to me, and he hugged me.
32:43And he said, George, we've lost him.
32:45I've lost my son.
32:46You've lost your best friend.
32:48It was just the saddest scene I'd ever seen in my entire lifetime.
32:54I was stunned.
32:57I was totally stunned.
33:02Why didn't we see this?
33:05How sick he really was.
33:07And when you see somebody all the time, you don't realize.
33:13He was such a strong influence in my life.
33:16And you always thought of him being bigger than life, and that he would always be there for you.
33:23It was a very sad day.
33:26Elvis Presley's autopsy was performed on August 16, 1977, at 7 p.m.
33:33But before it was even finished, with the world's media waiting for news, a statement was unusually released.
33:40There were a thousand people outside the hospital by then, and all the news medias and news outlets wanted to
33:46know what had happened.
33:47They announced that an autopsy had been performed.
33:51We were actually still performing it.
33:53And then Dr. Francisco stepped forward and announced that, well, we have determined that Elvis Presley died of a sudden
33:59cardiac arrhythmia.
34:01Basically, it is a natural death, and due to the cardiac arrhythmia, which is an irregular beating of the heart.
34:09And I know that that took the Baptist Hospital pathologists by surprise, and that they were very unhappy with that.
34:17It may well be that Elvis suffered a cardiac arrhythmia before he died, but a cardiac arrhythmia can't, on its
34:24own, be a cause of death.
34:27And it's impossible to diagnose an arrhythmia once someone has died and their heart has stopped beating.
34:32So the key question here is, what was it that caused Elvis' heart to stop beating?
34:44Dr. Richard Shepard has been thoroughly investigating Elvis Presley's medical documents and key evidence from his autopsy.
34:52I've so far established that Elvis was abusing a number of prescription drugs, including antidepressants, strong painkillers and sedatives.
35:00He was suffering from bouts of insomnia.
35:03He had an enlarged liver and suffered from coronary artery disease.
35:06He had pain in his teeth and his eyes, and he was severely constipated.
35:13However, I still haven't managed to identify exactly what caused his death.
35:20In instances of sudden death that occur in the bathroom, one of the first things pathologists look for is a
35:26pulmonary embolus.
35:27Pulmonary embolus is a blood clot that travels up from the veins in the leg and becomes lodged in the
35:33arteries and the lungs and causes sudden death.
35:37It's known there's an association between a pulmonary embolus and people having a desire to go to the toilet.
35:44So the fact that Elvis collapsed when he was clearly been sitting on the toilet made the pathologists suggest this.
35:51They looked and they found no evidence of a pulmonary embolus.
35:56So can the medical and death scene evidence combine to shed any light on what did happen in the fatal
36:01missing minutes and hours when Elvis was alone in the bathroom?
36:06The public perception is that he died of an overdose because Dr. Nacopoulos just wrote him scads and scads of
36:13prescriptions for anything he wanted.
36:17The toxicology report does show that Elvis was taking multiple prescription drugs.
36:23But when Chief Medical Investigator Dan Warlick went to the scene at Graceland, he found no trace of pills in
36:29the bathroom.
36:33That struck me as suspicious.
36:36I think some of them thought he might, in fact, overdose at some point in time.
36:41So there were contingent plans on how to handle that when and if he did overdose and kill himself.
36:49But whilst Dan Warlick failed to discover any sign of prescription drug abuse,
36:54he was able to make some startling observations from the place of death that helped reveal why and how Elvis
37:00died.
37:03Where he was found that I was able to put myself in the same position that his body was based
37:11upon moisture on the floor where his mouth had lost some fluids onto the floor.
37:18My feet were 40 inches away from the bottom of the commode, which he was sitting on when he died.
37:24But this position in which Mr. Presley was in, he had taken at least two full steps away from the
37:31commode before he collapsed.
37:33I've seen many, many cases of drug overdoses and also of people who've died from heart attacks.
37:38And I think the fact that Elvis got up and staggered away from the loo is very important.
37:45When people die from a drug overdose, it commonly leads to respiratory depression, resulting in deprivation of oxygen to the
37:52brain.
37:52And so they may slip into unconsciousness.
37:55And if they're sat on the toilet, they may simply slump to the ground right next to it.
38:00But the fact that he'd stood up from the loo and knocked over the bottles and dropped his book, he'd
38:05staggered, fallen, suggests to me that he may have been going to seek help.
38:10And so he had an awareness of some disturbance or pain or abnormality.
38:15And to my mind, that suggests that this was a cardiac event.
38:20Dr. Shepard has found further evidence to support the theory that Elvis' death was not directly related to drugs.
38:28Elvis had a spectacularly enlarged liver.
38:31It could have been caused by the multiple prescription drugs that he was abusing.
38:36It could have been associated with his poor diet and his high level of cholesterol.
38:40But there's another reason for a liver being this enlarged, and that's if the heart is failing and there's a
38:46backlog of blood getting blocked and engorging the liver.
38:52Crucially, Elvis had severe narrowing of the archeries that supplied his heart.
38:57They were blocked off by fatty deposits known as atheroma.
39:02But there was another problem with Elvis' heart, and that was that it was greatly enlarged, most probably due to
39:08long-term high blood pressure,
39:10causing the muscle to get thicker to pump the blood at the higher pressure around the body.
39:16And Elvis' heart was so big, it was 520 grams, when a normal man's heart is only 350.
39:25Shows how serious the situation was, and how likely it was going to be that he suffered a cardiac event.
39:34Dr. Shepard has discovered that there were so many things wrong with Elvis,
39:38that he was on the cusp of collapsing and dying at any moment.
39:44So as Elvis sat on the loo, straining to defecate, naturally he would have raised the pressure within his abdomen
39:52and within his chest.
39:54And this would have resulted in a known physiological change called the Valsalva manoeuvre.
40:01The Valsalva manoeuvre is anything actually that increases the pressure in the abdomen and the chest,
40:06and it can be straining to defecate, it could be childbirth, it can be clearing your nose when diving.
40:12The point is the pressure increases, and it reduces the blood returning to the heart through the vena cava,
40:20the main artery from the lower part of the body.
40:23And the chance of an abnormal cardiac event are greatly increased.
40:31Straining to go to the toilet when he was constipated, caused the change in blood flow,
40:37caused his heart to fail at that moment, and he collapsed, and he died.
40:48It obviously was Elvis' time to leave.
40:51Was it a pretty picture?
40:52No.
40:54But I bet he's having a great time up in heaven today.
41:00Elvis Presley will always be remembered as the greatest entertainer that ever lived.
41:05He sold one billion records.
41:08Nobody in the history of the record business has sold one billion records.
41:13He asked me one night,
41:14Do you think people will remember me?
41:17I said, Oh yeah baby, they're going to remember you.
41:23And I think he will always be remembered with love and giving.
41:31And he gave until he couldn't give anymore.
41:37Let me know you need another chapter.
42:03And he was really the one before.
Comments