Elvis Presley was pronounced dead at 42 in August 1977 while at his famed home in Graceland, Memphis. This came about four years after his split from Priscilla Presley, and he had moved on with then-21-year-old Ginger Alden at the time.
Ginger was the first to set eyes on the “Heartbreak Hotel” crooner, who lay motionless next to the toilet seat with “his arms on the ground, close to his sides, palms facing upward.” Ginger, who was Elvis’ fiance, gave details about the horrific moment in her 2014 memoir, Elvis and Ginger: Elvis Presley’s Fiancée and Last Love Finally Tells Her Story.
Ginger Alden recalls Elvis’ death
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Upon seeing her unconscious lover on the bathroom floor, Ginger immediately turned him over to find the “tip of his tongue was clenched between his teeth and his face blotchy.” According to the chief investigator for the Tennessee Office of the State Chief Medical Examiner, Dan Warlick, Elvis likely died while straining on the toilet seat.
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In Warlick’s words, the force with which Elvis tried to defecate compressed his abdominal aorta and shut down his heart. Coroner Joseph Davis also corroborated the report while debunking claims that Elvis died due to a drug overdose. Davis explained that dying from drugs would have been preceded by a state of slumber, but instead, the singer “pitched forward onto the carpet, his rear in the air, and was dead by the time he hit the floor.”
Elvis was not one to prioritize his health, especially in the final decade leading to his death. To keep up with shows and high demand for his talent, he often relied on drugs like opioids and sedatives such as barbiturates and benzos. He hardly worked out and would often stuff himself with bizarre food combinations and fatty meals like deep-fried biscuits, sausage patties, fried bacon, up to four scrambled eggs, and a lot of butter.
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His weight skyrocketed, and he began to develop sores around his body and refused to bathe for months regardless. Elvis preferred to rot in bed with high-calorie fast food, which led to chronic constipation, with stool that lasted up to four months in his bowels till he passed away. The singer was in and out of the hospital for diseases such as megacolon, emphysema, jaundice, bleeding ulcer, hepatitis, hypogammaglobulinemia, and a few more diseases. His final performance at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis saw him a shadow of his former fit self, with his body swollen and weak— about two months later, Ginger would find him lifeless in his mansion.
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