Post by Admin on Jul 15, 2009 20:16:30 GMT -5
Dick Grobb suggesting something happened at Graceland 1 hour prior to Elvis' death.
Just hours after Elvis Presley was pronounced dead in a Memphis hospital, a sobbing Vernon Presley turned to his son's bodyguard with a heartfelt request: investigate how his son died.
And for the last 25 years Richard Grob claims to have made a startling discovery.
After interviewing dozens of people, the former Toledo policeman alleges that Elvis' girlfriend, Ginger Alden, found his body on a bathroom floor but failed to call for help right away.
Instead she tipped off a tabloid newspaper.
It wasn't until nearly an hour later that she actually asked for assistance, claims the former bodyguard. And by the time the ambulance arrived, the singer's body was cold.
Mr. Grob says he still doesn't know whether his beloved boss was breathing when his girlfriend found him.
The former Tennessee beauty pageant queen long has denied the ex-bodyguard's claims, calling them “evil lies” and “deplorable.” She even has raised factual errors the former policeman wrote in his own biography.
But as more than 35,000 people visit Memphis this week to observe the 25th anniversary of Elvis' death, the allegations continue to spark debate, divide fans, and raise questions about the demise of one of America's pop culture icons.
The story of the legendary entertainer consistently has centered on his abuse of prescription drugs - narcotics, amphetamines, and sedatives - that dominated his life for years.
On the day his crumpled body was discovered in his Graceland mansion - Aug. 16, 1977 - at least 11 such drugs were in his blood stream, including four that were not to be mixed with others, tests showed.
But the accusations by Mr. Grob, the onetime chief of security, raise an entirely different set of questions into a death that has been steeped in mystery for a generation. To this day, no official autopsy report was ever released, the “official” cause of death listed as heart failure.
Over the last two months, fans have been logging onto Internet chat rooms to weigh into the controversy.
“This is a huge issue,” says former Elvis fan photographer Sandi Miller. “It raises the whole question about whether Elvis could have been saved.”
At the center of the issue is Mr. Grob, a lanky, chain-smoking, 63-year-old DeVilbiss High School graduate who has been a controversial figure in the Elvis world. His critics say he has tried to cash in on the king's popularity by making wild accusations and selling questionable memorabilia.
Others say he was a favorite of the fans who are still searching for answers to the early demise of the king of rock and roll.
Since the release of his self-published book, The Elvis Conspiracy?, in 1996, Mr. Grob has been a guest speaker at Elvis fan conventions and other events, delivering his message.
On Wednesday the man who once carried a Toledo police badge will join other members of Elvis' inner circle in Memphis for a special round table: Conversations on Elvis.
He will also be the master of ceremonies for a special event in Portland, Maine, on the anniversary of Elvis' death, Aug. 16 - the city where Elvis was to perform his next concert before he died.
Just like the man he guarded a quarter century ago, Mr. Grob likely will be surrounded by his own fans, signing autographs.
TRAVEL-MEMPHIS
A quarter century after his death, Elvis remains an enormous figure in international pop culture - a rags-to-riches singer whose success in modern music is unequaled. It is estimated that a billion of his records have been sold worldwide - more than any other artist.
A re-mixed version of his 1968 tune “A Little Less Conversation” just became the No. 1 song in England, pushing Elvis ahead of The Beatles in top songs in the United Kingdom.
“His music started a revolution that began years before the Beatles,” says Darwin Lamm, publisher of Elvis International Forum. “He gave American music an identity it never had.”
Said close friend Joe Esposito: “Once you met him, you were never the same.”
For Richard Grob, this was especially true.
The son of an army officer, he spent most of his life in Middle America: Born in Sandusky, he lived for three years in Germany before his parents moved to Toledo in 1949.
While the future king was being raised in Memphis, the future bodyguard was growing up in the shadows of Willys Park, watching people test drive the Jeeps rolling off the assembly line.
Tragedy struck two days after his 12th birthday: His father, Richard, was killed by mortar fire in Korea. He would miss the elder man's influence, but his own life “developed into a military-type regimentation,” he says.
DeVilbiss yearbooks list just two activities for him between 1954 and 1957: hall guard and cafeteria guard.
During his junior year, a new singing sensation, Elvis Presley, made two appearances in the Toledo Sports Arena - singing “Hound Dog” and other tunes - but Mr. Grob says he skipped the shows in 1956 because he “wasn't crazy about his early music.”
A year after high school, Mr. Grob was accepted into the Air Force Academy as the son of a deceased war veteran. But he lasted nearly eight months before dropping out, records show - a tenure that would later give ammunition to his critics.
He returned to Toledo and eventually joined the police force in 1962 - beginning a career in law enforcement that spanned two decades. He began by driving a patrol car, and within two years he earned a commendation after he and a partner arrested three unruly teens at a Highland Park dance without provoking a riot of 300 youths.
He would use those same crowd control skills years later in much larger venues guarding the world's most famous singer.
Longing for a warmer climate, Mr. Grob - married, with two young daughters - joined the Palm Springs police department in 1965.
Two years later he drew a chance assignment: keeping crowds away from a private home where Elvis and his wife, Priscilla, were honeymooning.
While sitting in a patrol car in front of the house on a sweltering May afternoon, the 28-year-old policeman was surprised by a visitor. “This guy walks up and he has a glass of lemonade in his hand, and he says, `Officer, I bet you're thirsty. Mind if I sit with you?' It was Elvis.''
They sat for an hour, talking about police work - a fascination with the then 32-year-old entertainer until his death.
Later, Mr. Grob invited Elvis to the police range for target practice, and Elvis soon offered him a job, says the former policeman. He accepted - at first, part-time.
The job was Mr. Grob's ticket to an exclusive entourage for the rock and roll king. But he joined the team at the time that Elvis was changing from the wholesome southern boy who sweetly sang “Love Me Tender” to a man who was losing an insidious battle to drugs.
By 1970, a growing addiction to sedatives and other medications and a tumultuous marriage were dominating Elvis' life, according to biographers. And no one, not even his new bodyguard, could stop him.
While on tour, Elvis was shadowed by his physician, George Nichopolous, who dispensed thousands of pills a year to his patient - including painkillers like Dilaudid and Demerol.
Because of concerns over Elvis' drug use, Mr. Grob says he joined others in giving Elvis placebos - sugar or other harmless pills.
“I believe more than anything else, he was mentally addicted to certain things,” Mr. Grob says, adding he doesn't like to talk of Elvis' drug intake. “I still can't say he abused drugs.”
It's one of the many differences between Mr. Grob and other members of Elvis' inner circle, including Elvis' close cousin Billy Smith, who long have said that by this time Elvis was hopelessly hooked on prescription drugs.
His cousin said in the 1995 book Revelations from the Memphis Mafia that in Elvis' waning years, he was becoming “a Howard Hughes” figure - refusing to bathe, and staying in his room for days. “He'd be so depressed, he'd just go through hell,” noted his cousin.
Mr. Grob says much of the descriptions of his old friend were “exaggerated,” preferring instead to tell stories about the fun-loving Elvis who hammed for the cameras at Mr. Grob's wedding to his second wife in 1970.
Still, at times, the security had to keep a close watch on the singer when he would fire bullets into furniture and television sets.
While Elvis was grossing $130,000 a concert, his advance team was forced to cancel at least seven appearances in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe after 1973 - three for drug-related problems.
“By 1976, he really started to show the affects of drugs,” says Jerry Osborne, the Seattle author who wrote the book The Complete Elvis. “His weight gains, cancelled shows, in and out of the hospital” were obvious to critics.
After sitting through a performance in Las Vegas in December, 1976, former Memphis newspaper columnist Bill Burk wondered “why the king of rock 'n' roll would subject himself to possible ridicule by going onstage so ill prepared.”
“One walks away wondering how much longer it can be before the end comes.”
ARTS-ELVIS
Elvis Presley performs in a 1973 concert. The King of Rock and Roll died Aug. 16, 1977, in his Graceland mansion.
AP Enlarge
On Aug. 16, 1977, Elvis was preparing for a 10-city concert tour to begin the next day.
During the early morning, he met with Mr. Grob to go over the final security details of the tour.
They talked off and on until about 5:30 a.m., he says, with Elvis taking time to play racquetball. “He was very happy, very upbeat,” recalls Mr. Grob.
About 4 a.m., Elvis' stepbrother, Rick Stanley, carried six Dilaudid tablets to the singer, along with other “power packs' of painkillers and sedatives.
Sometime after 5:30 a.m., Elvis retired to his bedroom with his 21-year-old girlfriend, Ginger Alden.
But the singer was unable to sleep and called at 8 a.m. for more medication. About 30 minutes later, Elvis' Aunt Delta Mae brought three more sedatives.
The next five hours would prove to be the most critical of the singer's life - yet to most experts, no one knows precisely what happened.
Ginger Alden said that sometime after his aunt brought the sleeping pills, Elvis went to his expansive bathroom to read because he couldn't sleep.
She said she woke up about 2 p.m - 51/2 hours after Elvis' aunt delivered the drugs- and noticed the singer was not in bed.
She said she phoned a girlfriend and then called her mother, Jo Alden, who worked at the Internal Revenue Service in Memphis.
About 2:20 p.m., Ginger Alden said she knocked on the bathroom door; no one answered, so she looked inside.
Elvis was lying in a fetal position on the floor, with his face embedded in the thick, shag carpeting, his cheeks puffy and slightly discolored. When she tried to rouse him, he didn't move.
She said she immediately called downstairs to tell whoever was on duty to come upstairs. Within minutes, several people rushed to the bathroom to try to revive him, including show assistant Joe Esposito. “But I knew,” he says, “he was gone.”
Presley-s-Toledo-bodyguard-raises-questions-about-death-4
Richard Grob, in this 1997 photo, shows off his book "The Elvis Conspiracy" and the unreleased record that he says Elvis signed over to him but which RCA said is not in Presley's voice.
Enlarge
A grieving Vernon Presley wanted answers.
How did his son die at the age of 42? It didn't seem possible, he told cousin Billy Smith and others. Fearing Elvis may have been the victim of foul play, he asked Mr. Grob to look into his son's death.
“Vernon was grasping at straws,” Mr. Grob says. “He was a father who lost his son unexpectedly.”
But what the former policeman discovered in his investigation was different from what others had documented later in books.
His focus was on the girlfriend, Ginger Alden, in a chilling interpretation of events that are still debated today.
Mr. Grob claims that based on his initial interviews, Miss Alden awoke at 1:30 p.m., after hearing a thump. He theorizes that she rose from bed and found Elvis in the bathroom, but didn't call her help.
Instead she made two phone calls.
This was verified, he says, from the maids who heard a thump and saw the lights blink downstairs on the phone bank at 1:30 p.m., showing a call from Elvis' room. “It made absolutely no sense, because everyone was supposed to be sleeping,” he says.
Mr. Grob claims that Miss Alden called her mother and then phoned the National Enquirer to tell the paper to stay tuned: Something big was going down at Graceland.
Finally, at least 50 minutes after she found her lover's body, she called for help.
Ten minutes later, after the ambulance arrived and was driving out the gates - with Elvis inside - Mr. Grob says Miss Alden picked up the phone to call the tabloid again: Elvis is dead.
Mr. Grob, who was not at Graceland, noted from his interviews that it appeared that Ginger was completely dressed by the time the alarm was sounded and “showed no emotion.” He also noted in his book, The Elvis Conspiracy?, that “there were no tear marks on Ginger's face observed by anyone.”
The bodyguard claims in his investigation that Ginger Alden and her mother secretly had been negotiating a deal with the National Enquirer at the time of the death - accusations the family has denied.
When he released his book six years ago, many fans were enraged at Miss Alden, writing letters to fan clubs and other publications.
Ginger Alden, married and living on Long Island, N.Y., says the accusations are not true.
“I want to say that there was never - ever - any phone call made by me to anyone dealing with any type of publication on the day that I found Elvis' body,” she said in a prepared statement to The Blade. “I loved Elvis with all my heart.”
She referred to Mr. Grob's conclusions as “very deplorable,” and “maliciously fabricated.”
She says she agreed to a talk to the National Enquirer for $35,000 about Elvis, but it was after his death, not before.
Mr. Grob says he drew his conclusions after interviewing Jim Kirk, a former freelance reporter for the National Enquirer, who was living in Memphis and who received the first call from Graceland about 1:30 p.m.
In a transcribed interview with Mr. Kirk - included in Mr. Grob's book - Mr. Kirk admitted the person who called him was a woman who sounded like Ginger Alden, but she did not identify herself.
He said he had met her previously when she was a reigning Miss Mid South and had seen her on other occasions in Memphis.
Mr. Kirk, now an engineer and residing in Maryland, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.
Mr. Grob says his conclusions were supported by a girlfriend of another National Enquirer reporter, who confided to her about Ginger Alden's alleged calls. But he says she spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In his book, the former bodyguard concludes it was “possible if not probable” that Elvis could have lived if someone had responded to him more quickly. He says carpet fibers were found in Elvis' nose, indicating he may have been still breathing after he hit the floor.
Still, that cannot be corroborated.
Despite a court challenge, Elvis' family sealed the 44-page autopsy report in which his estimated time of death is reported.
Conflicting stories abound about other issues.
Ginger Alden and her family have always maintained that Elvis was going to announce his engagement to Miss Alden at the end of the 10-city tour. Indeed, he even gave her an 11-carat diamond that was removed from his ring.
But Mr. Grob and others, including Elvis' longtime friend Charlie Hodge, say the opposite: He was getting ready to break up with her.
As far as the phone calls from Graceland, a former Tennessee journalist who covered the singer's death says that someone called from Graceland that morning - tipping off the National Enquirer - but it was a male's voice.
“I've researched this, and I talked to the National Enquirer people many times,” said the former reporter, who asked not to be named, “and people have always told me it was a male, not a female.”
Mr. Grob says he believes his sources of information were credible, and that the facts can be “backed up, certainly investigated and corroborated.”
Before Mr. Grob's book was published in 1996, he was chatting with fans a block from Graceland when an elderly woman rushed to him and wagged her finger. It was Ginger Alden's mother, and she wasted no time criticizing the former policeman about comments he was making to fan clubs about his investigation.
“It just made me so mad,” recalls Jo Alden, now in her 80s. “This is a girl who didn't do anything to hurt Elvis. She loved him.”
By the time the 665-page The Elvis Conspiracy? was released, it immediately began stirring debate among the fans - many who were incensed by the allegations of Ginger turning a cold shoulder to her lover.
But the book has inaccuracies that have placed Mr. Grob on the defensive. In his own biography, he compares himself to his father by saying: “I received only one Silver Star to his four and only one Purple Heart to his four as an example.” But according to his own military records, he was never in combat, nor did he serve in a war for which those medals are awarded.
Records show he left the Air Force Academy in 1959 before his first year and joined the reserves until his discharge as an airman second class in 1964. He wrote in the jacket of his book he had been an officer.
Mr. Grob says he's aware of “misconceptions” by what was written but declined to comment. “I'm not going to dignify this with a response,” he says. “I dealt with this years ago.”
The questions didn't stop there.
In 1995 he tried to sell what he says was a rare, unreleased recording that Elvis gave him at Graceland. The recording was even signed “To Dick.” A Las Vegas auction set the minimum bid at $50,000 for the song, titled “Just Let Me Make Believe.”
But RCA didn't believe it.
Despite a signature purporting to belong to the singer, RCA - the co-owners of Elvis' other recordings - warned that the voice in the song did not belong to the famous singer. And the song never sold at the auction.
Mr. Grob did make money on the song in 1996, but that has been mired in controversy. German businessman Max Schaeffers says he bought the rights to the tune from Mr. Grob for $15,000. But Mr. Grob counters that the businessman bought only temporary rights that have expired.
At that same auction, Mr. Grob offered a musical illustration - again signed “To Dick” from Elvis. But before the bidding started, someone pointed out the print was created after 1980, years after Elvis died.
One of Elvis' closest friends, Joe Esposito, says he was at the auction, and then warned the operators the signature was a fake. “It wasn't the real deal, and I told them so,” he says.
Mr. Grob says he was duped, because he purchased the piece from a man in California who swore the item was signed by Elvis. “I got my money back,” he claims. He says it's unfair that he's forced to defend himself.
Now living comfortably in Las Vegas with his fourth wife, he says much of the controversy swirling around him is coming from supporters of Ginger Alden.
“They have attacked me,” says the father of three grown children. “I get e-mails from people with no names. My wife gets e-mails about me. ...I haven't begun to deal with these people yet.”
He left Graceland in 1979 and worked as a sales consultant with Honeywell, working in California and Nevada, as well as traveling on the Elvis speaking circuit.
Now semiretired, Mr. Grob says he has remained true to the memory of Elvis.
Supporters say Mr. Grob is one of the few members of Elvis' inner circle who has never revealed the personal details of his former employer.
“Others made money doing that. Dick never did,” says Elvis disc jockey Steve Christopher.
But Mr. Grob's biggest claims from his investigation 25 years ago remain unproven.
To Charlie Hodge, one of Elvis' closest friends, no one will ever know whether Mr. Grob's theories are true. “Only two people will ever know that,” he says. “Ginger and God.”
www.toledoblade.com/frontpage/2002/08/11/Presley-s-Toledo-bodyguard-raises-questions-about-death.html
Just hours after Elvis Presley was pronounced dead in a Memphis hospital, a sobbing Vernon Presley turned to his son's bodyguard with a heartfelt request: investigate how his son died.
And for the last 25 years Richard Grob claims to have made a startling discovery.
After interviewing dozens of people, the former Toledo policeman alleges that Elvis' girlfriend, Ginger Alden, found his body on a bathroom floor but failed to call for help right away.
Instead she tipped off a tabloid newspaper.
It wasn't until nearly an hour later that she actually asked for assistance, claims the former bodyguard. And by the time the ambulance arrived, the singer's body was cold.
Mr. Grob says he still doesn't know whether his beloved boss was breathing when his girlfriend found him.
The former Tennessee beauty pageant queen long has denied the ex-bodyguard's claims, calling them “evil lies” and “deplorable.” She even has raised factual errors the former policeman wrote in his own biography.
But as more than 35,000 people visit Memphis this week to observe the 25th anniversary of Elvis' death, the allegations continue to spark debate, divide fans, and raise questions about the demise of one of America's pop culture icons.
The story of the legendary entertainer consistently has centered on his abuse of prescription drugs - narcotics, amphetamines, and sedatives - that dominated his life for years.
On the day his crumpled body was discovered in his Graceland mansion - Aug. 16, 1977 - at least 11 such drugs were in his blood stream, including four that were not to be mixed with others, tests showed.
But the accusations by Mr. Grob, the onetime chief of security, raise an entirely different set of questions into a death that has been steeped in mystery for a generation. To this day, no official autopsy report was ever released, the “official” cause of death listed as heart failure.
Over the last two months, fans have been logging onto Internet chat rooms to weigh into the controversy.
“This is a huge issue,” says former Elvis fan photographer Sandi Miller. “It raises the whole question about whether Elvis could have been saved.”
At the center of the issue is Mr. Grob, a lanky, chain-smoking, 63-year-old DeVilbiss High School graduate who has been a controversial figure in the Elvis world. His critics say he has tried to cash in on the king's popularity by making wild accusations and selling questionable memorabilia.
Others say he was a favorite of the fans who are still searching for answers to the early demise of the king of rock and roll.
Since the release of his self-published book, The Elvis Conspiracy?, in 1996, Mr. Grob has been a guest speaker at Elvis fan conventions and other events, delivering his message.
On Wednesday the man who once carried a Toledo police badge will join other members of Elvis' inner circle in Memphis for a special round table: Conversations on Elvis.
He will also be the master of ceremonies for a special event in Portland, Maine, on the anniversary of Elvis' death, Aug. 16 - the city where Elvis was to perform his next concert before he died.
Just like the man he guarded a quarter century ago, Mr. Grob likely will be surrounded by his own fans, signing autographs.
TRAVEL-MEMPHIS
A quarter century after his death, Elvis remains an enormous figure in international pop culture - a rags-to-riches singer whose success in modern music is unequaled. It is estimated that a billion of his records have been sold worldwide - more than any other artist.
A re-mixed version of his 1968 tune “A Little Less Conversation” just became the No. 1 song in England, pushing Elvis ahead of The Beatles in top songs in the United Kingdom.
“His music started a revolution that began years before the Beatles,” says Darwin Lamm, publisher of Elvis International Forum. “He gave American music an identity it never had.”
Said close friend Joe Esposito: “Once you met him, you were never the same.”
For Richard Grob, this was especially true.
The son of an army officer, he spent most of his life in Middle America: Born in Sandusky, he lived for three years in Germany before his parents moved to Toledo in 1949.
While the future king was being raised in Memphis, the future bodyguard was growing up in the shadows of Willys Park, watching people test drive the Jeeps rolling off the assembly line.
Tragedy struck two days after his 12th birthday: His father, Richard, was killed by mortar fire in Korea. He would miss the elder man's influence, but his own life “developed into a military-type regimentation,” he says.
DeVilbiss yearbooks list just two activities for him between 1954 and 1957: hall guard and cafeteria guard.
During his junior year, a new singing sensation, Elvis Presley, made two appearances in the Toledo Sports Arena - singing “Hound Dog” and other tunes - but Mr. Grob says he skipped the shows in 1956 because he “wasn't crazy about his early music.”
A year after high school, Mr. Grob was accepted into the Air Force Academy as the son of a deceased war veteran. But he lasted nearly eight months before dropping out, records show - a tenure that would later give ammunition to his critics.
He returned to Toledo and eventually joined the police force in 1962 - beginning a career in law enforcement that spanned two decades. He began by driving a patrol car, and within two years he earned a commendation after he and a partner arrested three unruly teens at a Highland Park dance without provoking a riot of 300 youths.
He would use those same crowd control skills years later in much larger venues guarding the world's most famous singer.
Longing for a warmer climate, Mr. Grob - married, with two young daughters - joined the Palm Springs police department in 1965.
Two years later he drew a chance assignment: keeping crowds away from a private home where Elvis and his wife, Priscilla, were honeymooning.
While sitting in a patrol car in front of the house on a sweltering May afternoon, the 28-year-old policeman was surprised by a visitor. “This guy walks up and he has a glass of lemonade in his hand, and he says, `Officer, I bet you're thirsty. Mind if I sit with you?' It was Elvis.''
They sat for an hour, talking about police work - a fascination with the then 32-year-old entertainer until his death.
Later, Mr. Grob invited Elvis to the police range for target practice, and Elvis soon offered him a job, says the former policeman. He accepted - at first, part-time.
The job was Mr. Grob's ticket to an exclusive entourage for the rock and roll king. But he joined the team at the time that Elvis was changing from the wholesome southern boy who sweetly sang “Love Me Tender” to a man who was losing an insidious battle to drugs.
By 1970, a growing addiction to sedatives and other medications and a tumultuous marriage were dominating Elvis' life, according to biographers. And no one, not even his new bodyguard, could stop him.
While on tour, Elvis was shadowed by his physician, George Nichopolous, who dispensed thousands of pills a year to his patient - including painkillers like Dilaudid and Demerol.
Because of concerns over Elvis' drug use, Mr. Grob says he joined others in giving Elvis placebos - sugar or other harmless pills.
“I believe more than anything else, he was mentally addicted to certain things,” Mr. Grob says, adding he doesn't like to talk of Elvis' drug intake. “I still can't say he abused drugs.”
It's one of the many differences between Mr. Grob and other members of Elvis' inner circle, including Elvis' close cousin Billy Smith, who long have said that by this time Elvis was hopelessly hooked on prescription drugs.
His cousin said in the 1995 book Revelations from the Memphis Mafia that in Elvis' waning years, he was becoming “a Howard Hughes” figure - refusing to bathe, and staying in his room for days. “He'd be so depressed, he'd just go through hell,” noted his cousin.
Mr. Grob says much of the descriptions of his old friend were “exaggerated,” preferring instead to tell stories about the fun-loving Elvis who hammed for the cameras at Mr. Grob's wedding to his second wife in 1970.
Still, at times, the security had to keep a close watch on the singer when he would fire bullets into furniture and television sets.
While Elvis was grossing $130,000 a concert, his advance team was forced to cancel at least seven appearances in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe after 1973 - three for drug-related problems.
“By 1976, he really started to show the affects of drugs,” says Jerry Osborne, the Seattle author who wrote the book The Complete Elvis. “His weight gains, cancelled shows, in and out of the hospital” were obvious to critics.
After sitting through a performance in Las Vegas in December, 1976, former Memphis newspaper columnist Bill Burk wondered “why the king of rock 'n' roll would subject himself to possible ridicule by going onstage so ill prepared.”
“One walks away wondering how much longer it can be before the end comes.”
ARTS-ELVIS
Elvis Presley performs in a 1973 concert. The King of Rock and Roll died Aug. 16, 1977, in his Graceland mansion.
AP Enlarge
On Aug. 16, 1977, Elvis was preparing for a 10-city concert tour to begin the next day.
During the early morning, he met with Mr. Grob to go over the final security details of the tour.
They talked off and on until about 5:30 a.m., he says, with Elvis taking time to play racquetball. “He was very happy, very upbeat,” recalls Mr. Grob.
About 4 a.m., Elvis' stepbrother, Rick Stanley, carried six Dilaudid tablets to the singer, along with other “power packs' of painkillers and sedatives.
Sometime after 5:30 a.m., Elvis retired to his bedroom with his 21-year-old girlfriend, Ginger Alden.
But the singer was unable to sleep and called at 8 a.m. for more medication. About 30 minutes later, Elvis' Aunt Delta Mae brought three more sedatives.
The next five hours would prove to be the most critical of the singer's life - yet to most experts, no one knows precisely what happened.
Ginger Alden said that sometime after his aunt brought the sleeping pills, Elvis went to his expansive bathroom to read because he couldn't sleep.
She said she woke up about 2 p.m - 51/2 hours after Elvis' aunt delivered the drugs- and noticed the singer was not in bed.
She said she phoned a girlfriend and then called her mother, Jo Alden, who worked at the Internal Revenue Service in Memphis.
About 2:20 p.m., Ginger Alden said she knocked on the bathroom door; no one answered, so she looked inside.
Elvis was lying in a fetal position on the floor, with his face embedded in the thick, shag carpeting, his cheeks puffy and slightly discolored. When she tried to rouse him, he didn't move.
She said she immediately called downstairs to tell whoever was on duty to come upstairs. Within minutes, several people rushed to the bathroom to try to revive him, including show assistant Joe Esposito. “But I knew,” he says, “he was gone.”
Presley-s-Toledo-bodyguard-raises-questions-about-death-4
Richard Grob, in this 1997 photo, shows off his book "The Elvis Conspiracy" and the unreleased record that he says Elvis signed over to him but which RCA said is not in Presley's voice.
Enlarge
A grieving Vernon Presley wanted answers.
How did his son die at the age of 42? It didn't seem possible, he told cousin Billy Smith and others. Fearing Elvis may have been the victim of foul play, he asked Mr. Grob to look into his son's death.
“Vernon was grasping at straws,” Mr. Grob says. “He was a father who lost his son unexpectedly.”
But what the former policeman discovered in his investigation was different from what others had documented later in books.
His focus was on the girlfriend, Ginger Alden, in a chilling interpretation of events that are still debated today.
Mr. Grob claims that based on his initial interviews, Miss Alden awoke at 1:30 p.m., after hearing a thump. He theorizes that she rose from bed and found Elvis in the bathroom, but didn't call her help.
Instead she made two phone calls.
This was verified, he says, from the maids who heard a thump and saw the lights blink downstairs on the phone bank at 1:30 p.m., showing a call from Elvis' room. “It made absolutely no sense, because everyone was supposed to be sleeping,” he says.
Mr. Grob claims that Miss Alden called her mother and then phoned the National Enquirer to tell the paper to stay tuned: Something big was going down at Graceland.
Finally, at least 50 minutes after she found her lover's body, she called for help.
Ten minutes later, after the ambulance arrived and was driving out the gates - with Elvis inside - Mr. Grob says Miss Alden picked up the phone to call the tabloid again: Elvis is dead.
Mr. Grob, who was not at Graceland, noted from his interviews that it appeared that Ginger was completely dressed by the time the alarm was sounded and “showed no emotion.” He also noted in his book, The Elvis Conspiracy?, that “there were no tear marks on Ginger's face observed by anyone.”
The bodyguard claims in his investigation that Ginger Alden and her mother secretly had been negotiating a deal with the National Enquirer at the time of the death - accusations the family has denied.
When he released his book six years ago, many fans were enraged at Miss Alden, writing letters to fan clubs and other publications.
Ginger Alden, married and living on Long Island, N.Y., says the accusations are not true.
“I want to say that there was never - ever - any phone call made by me to anyone dealing with any type of publication on the day that I found Elvis' body,” she said in a prepared statement to The Blade. “I loved Elvis with all my heart.”
She referred to Mr. Grob's conclusions as “very deplorable,” and “maliciously fabricated.”
She says she agreed to a talk to the National Enquirer for $35,000 about Elvis, but it was after his death, not before.
Mr. Grob says he drew his conclusions after interviewing Jim Kirk, a former freelance reporter for the National Enquirer, who was living in Memphis and who received the first call from Graceland about 1:30 p.m.
In a transcribed interview with Mr. Kirk - included in Mr. Grob's book - Mr. Kirk admitted the person who called him was a woman who sounded like Ginger Alden, but she did not identify herself.
He said he had met her previously when she was a reigning Miss Mid South and had seen her on other occasions in Memphis.
Mr. Kirk, now an engineer and residing in Maryland, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.
Mr. Grob says his conclusions were supported by a girlfriend of another National Enquirer reporter, who confided to her about Ginger Alden's alleged calls. But he says she spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In his book, the former bodyguard concludes it was “possible if not probable” that Elvis could have lived if someone had responded to him more quickly. He says carpet fibers were found in Elvis' nose, indicating he may have been still breathing after he hit the floor.
Still, that cannot be corroborated.
Despite a court challenge, Elvis' family sealed the 44-page autopsy report in which his estimated time of death is reported.
Conflicting stories abound about other issues.
Ginger Alden and her family have always maintained that Elvis was going to announce his engagement to Miss Alden at the end of the 10-city tour. Indeed, he even gave her an 11-carat diamond that was removed from his ring.
But Mr. Grob and others, including Elvis' longtime friend Charlie Hodge, say the opposite: He was getting ready to break up with her.
As far as the phone calls from Graceland, a former Tennessee journalist who covered the singer's death says that someone called from Graceland that morning - tipping off the National Enquirer - but it was a male's voice.
“I've researched this, and I talked to the National Enquirer people many times,” said the former reporter, who asked not to be named, “and people have always told me it was a male, not a female.”
Mr. Grob says he believes his sources of information were credible, and that the facts can be “backed up, certainly investigated and corroborated.”
Before Mr. Grob's book was published in 1996, he was chatting with fans a block from Graceland when an elderly woman rushed to him and wagged her finger. It was Ginger Alden's mother, and she wasted no time criticizing the former policeman about comments he was making to fan clubs about his investigation.
“It just made me so mad,” recalls Jo Alden, now in her 80s. “This is a girl who didn't do anything to hurt Elvis. She loved him.”
By the time the 665-page The Elvis Conspiracy? was released, it immediately began stirring debate among the fans - many who were incensed by the allegations of Ginger turning a cold shoulder to her lover.
But the book has inaccuracies that have placed Mr. Grob on the defensive. In his own biography, he compares himself to his father by saying: “I received only one Silver Star to his four and only one Purple Heart to his four as an example.” But according to his own military records, he was never in combat, nor did he serve in a war for which those medals are awarded.
Records show he left the Air Force Academy in 1959 before his first year and joined the reserves until his discharge as an airman second class in 1964. He wrote in the jacket of his book he had been an officer.
Mr. Grob says he's aware of “misconceptions” by what was written but declined to comment. “I'm not going to dignify this with a response,” he says. “I dealt with this years ago.”
The questions didn't stop there.
In 1995 he tried to sell what he says was a rare, unreleased recording that Elvis gave him at Graceland. The recording was even signed “To Dick.” A Las Vegas auction set the minimum bid at $50,000 for the song, titled “Just Let Me Make Believe.”
But RCA didn't believe it.
Despite a signature purporting to belong to the singer, RCA - the co-owners of Elvis' other recordings - warned that the voice in the song did not belong to the famous singer. And the song never sold at the auction.
Mr. Grob did make money on the song in 1996, but that has been mired in controversy. German businessman Max Schaeffers says he bought the rights to the tune from Mr. Grob for $15,000. But Mr. Grob counters that the businessman bought only temporary rights that have expired.
At that same auction, Mr. Grob offered a musical illustration - again signed “To Dick” from Elvis. But before the bidding started, someone pointed out the print was created after 1980, years after Elvis died.
One of Elvis' closest friends, Joe Esposito, says he was at the auction, and then warned the operators the signature was a fake. “It wasn't the real deal, and I told them so,” he says.
Mr. Grob says he was duped, because he purchased the piece from a man in California who swore the item was signed by Elvis. “I got my money back,” he claims. He says it's unfair that he's forced to defend himself.
Now living comfortably in Las Vegas with his fourth wife, he says much of the controversy swirling around him is coming from supporters of Ginger Alden.
“They have attacked me,” says the father of three grown children. “I get e-mails from people with no names. My wife gets e-mails about me. ...I haven't begun to deal with these people yet.”
He left Graceland in 1979 and worked as a sales consultant with Honeywell, working in California and Nevada, as well as traveling on the Elvis speaking circuit.
Now semiretired, Mr. Grob says he has remained true to the memory of Elvis.
Supporters say Mr. Grob is one of the few members of Elvis' inner circle who has never revealed the personal details of his former employer.
“Others made money doing that. Dick never did,” says Elvis disc jockey Steve Christopher.
But Mr. Grob's biggest claims from his investigation 25 years ago remain unproven.
To Charlie Hodge, one of Elvis' closest friends, no one will ever know whether Mr. Grob's theories are true. “Only two people will ever know that,” he says. “Ginger and God.”
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