Elvis Presley’s autopsy results were sealed for 50 years, but experts have been able to glean some insight into the King of Rock and Roll’s tragic death in 1977

Elvis Presley’s sudden death left his legions of fans devastated and grappling with the mystery of how the King of Rock and Roll’s life ended so abruptly.

The icon was found unresponsive, lying face down on his Graceland mansion’s bathroom floor, his pajama bottoms around his ankles on August 16, 1977. In his final months, Elvis packed on three and a half stone, his health faltering at an alarming rate.

Once celebrated for his magnetic stage presence and chart domination, by the end, Elvis struggled to even get out of bed, burdened by excess weight, struggling with constipation, consumed by paranoia and depression. He had been prescribed almost 9,000 pills, vials and injections in the lead-up to his death.

Elvis Presley’s death left fans distraught ( Image:Michael Ochs Archives)

Yet, the true cause of death for Elvis’ death remains shrouded in mystery; the Presley family has kept the autopsy results under wraps for 50 years. Despite this silence, medical professionals have voiced their theories, some citing a significant previous injury as a possible culprit.

Ginger Alden, Elvis’ then-girlfriend who discovered him that fateful day, recounted the harrowing discovery in her memoir, depicting the chilling scene: “His arms lay on the ground, close to his sides, palms facing upward. It was clear that, from the moment he landed on the floor, Elvis hadn’t moved. I gently turned his face toward me.

“A hint of air expelled from his nose. The tip of his tongue was clenched between his teeth and his face was blotchy. I gently raised one eyelid. His eye was staring straight ahead and blood red.”

An autopsy conducted the same day was immediately sealed, igniting rampant speculation about the cause of death. Dan Warlick, the Tennessee Office of the State Chief Medical Examiners chief investigator, supported the widely held belief that Elvis died from a heart issue while on the toilet.

Warlick claimed: “Presley’s chronic constipation – the result of years of prescription drug abuse and high-fat, high-cholesterol gorging – brought on what’s known as Valsalva’s maneuver. Put simply, the strain of attempting to defecate compressed the singer’s abdominal aorta, shutting down his heart.”

The autopsy was immediately sealed ( Image:Getty Images)

Contrary to some beliefs that an overdose was to blame, the 1994 reopened investigation led by coroner Joseph Davis painted a different picture. Davis surmised: “The position of Elvis Presley’s body was such that he was about to sit down on the commode when the seizure occurred. He pitched forward onto the carpet, his rear in the air, and was dead by the time he hit the floor.

“If it had been a drug overdose, [Elvis] would have slipped into an increasing state of slumber. He would have pulled up his pajama bottoms and crawled to the door to seek help. It takes hours to die from drugs.”

The autopsy results are set to be revealed in 2027, but until then, the most significant insight into the star’s mysterious death has come from renowned California physician, Forest Tennant, who reviewed the report while defending Elvis’ doctor, Dr. George Nichopoulos, who was later acquitted of over-prescribing drugs.

Tennant found a major clue in the full-body deterioration of Elvis, with nearly every organ suffering from poor health. As a young man, Elvis had been incredibly fit, playing football and practicing martial arts. He did start abusing drugs including amphetamines, opioids and sedatives as a teenager and is known to have had a terrible diet.

However, for Tennant, that wasn’t enough to explain the extensive list of ailments that plagued the rock star from the late 1960s onwards. First, he complained of vertigo, back pain, insomnia, eye infections and headaches, and in 1973 he was rushed to hospital in a semi-coma and found to be suffering from jaundice, severe respiratory distress, marked swelling of his face, distended abdomen, constipation, a gastric, bleeding ulcer and hepatitis.

Elvis died at his home ( Image:Michael Ochs Archives)

Fans still have questions about what happened ( Image:Getty Images)

He was hospitalized again in 1975 with high blood pressure, high cholesterol and a condition called megacolon, whereby the large intestine becomes distended and can allow toxins to flood the body. He also had at least four near-death overdoses that left him unconscious and in need of resuscitation, and his heart was double the normal size.

Despite never having smoked, Elvis also suffered from emphysema. Forest believes that all of these diseases in his stomach, liver, lungs, heart, spine, eyes, and bowel can be traced back to a severe head injury he sustained in 1967, which triggered a progressive autoimmune inflammatory disorder.

In a 2013 medical paper, Forest shared his theory that when Elvis tripped over a television cord and knocked himself out on the bathtub, the injury was so severe that it caused brain tissue to dislodge and enter his bloodstream. His body identified this as foreign matter and produced antibodies to destroy it, triggering hypogammaglobulinemia, an immune system disorder.

At the time, little was known about autoimmune conditions, but today they are recognized as causing many of the symptoms Elvis displayed, including chronic pain, irrational behavior, obesity, and enlarged and diseased organs like hearts and bowels.

In 2016, Garry Rodgers, a retired homicide detective and forensic coroner, told the Huffington Post that considering these findings, he would attribute Elvis’ death to a heart attack caused by heart disease and drug use, both resulting from an autoimmune disease sparked by a brain injury.

He stated: “I’d have to classify Elvis’s death as an accident. There’s no one to blame – certainly not Elvis. He was a severely injured and ill man. There’s no specific negligence on anyone’s part and definitely no cover-up or conspiracy of a criminal act. If Dr. Forrest Torrent is right, there simply wasn’t a proper understanding back then in determining what really killed the King of Rock and Roll.”