How did Elvis die?
The following article originally appeared in the Salt Lake City Tribune on January 29th, 1978: Toxicologists based at the University of Utah have completed laboratory studies of autopsy specimens from the body of Elvis Presley and have found that 11 drugs were present in the singer’s system at the time of his death, The Tribune has learned. All of those drugs were consistent with medical treatment, said the director of the Center for Human Toxicology, Dr. Bryan S. Finkle. He spoke to The Tribune in an exclusive interview. The Center had been called in to provide a third toxicological analysis of typical autopsy specimens from Presley’s body. He reported, “We have not detected any drug in Elvis that doesn’t have a medical rationale to it – only agents prescribed for perfectly normal, rational medical reasons.” Dr. Finkle said the singer had not been drinking prior to his sudden death, which reportedly was blamed on an erratic heartbeat, last Aug. 16. Efforts by the Tribune to obtain a c
On August 16, 1977, at his Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, Presley was found lying on the floor of his bedroom’s bathroom by his fiancee, Ginger Alden, who had been asleep. A stain on the bathroom carpeting was found that indicated “where Elvis had thrown up after being stricken, apparently while seated on the toilet. It looked to the medical investigator as if he had ‘stumbled or crawled several feet before he died’.”[84] He was taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital, where at 3:30 P.M. doctors pronounced him dead. Presley was 42 years old, and when he died, “he weighed 159 kilograms” (350 pounds).[85] Elvis Presley funeral procession. Elvis Presley funeral procession. At a press conference following his death, one of the medical examiners declared that he had died of a cardiac arrhythmia from an intake of a large amount of drugs. Rolling Stone magazine devoted an entire issue to Presley (RS 248) and his funeral was a national media event. [12] Hundreds of thousands of Presley fa
