DNA Test Confirms Dead Homeless Man was Elvis Presley – Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
DNA tests have confirmed that a homeless man found dead beneath an overpass in San Diego was Elvis Presley.
The Truth:
This claim is a hoax.
A report by the fake news website Empire News sent social media abuzz with a bogus report that a homeless man in San Diego had turned out to be Elvis Presley:
“Earlier this month, an 80-year-old, homeless, white-bearded man was found deceased under an overpass in San Diego, California. Nobody knew the man’s name, but friends referred to him as Jessie, so investigators decided to try DNA testing with hopes that something would pop up in the nationwide DNA database. What popped up on the computer screen in the high-tech lab stunned everyone. The DNA results of ‘Jessie Doe’ were an exact match to the one and only, Elvis Aaron Presley.”
The story was quickly shared nearly 100,000 times on Facebook, and many users believed that Elvis Presley had been found alive and well nearly 40 years after his supposed death. Unfortunately, Empire News is a fake news website, according to its disclaimer.
Conspiracy theories that Elvis Presley faked his own death and went into hiding have persisted for decades. That started a short time after Elvis was buried in August of 1977. It was believed that Elvis’s middle name was spelled “Aron” but appeared on the headstone as “Aaron.” The misspelling led many to speculate that Elvis wasn’t actually buried there, but it turned out that Elvis’s name was legally spelled “Aaron.” He had tried to legally change it to “Aron” at some point to match the name of his stillborn twin, Garon, but didn’t follow through, the Telegraph reports.
After Elvis’s death, his estate tried to hide his prescription drug abuse from the public, which also fueled speculation of a coverup. A doctor close to Elvis told reporters that Elvis had died from heart failure, which doctors who conducted the autopsy knew wasn’t true, Salon reports.
That’s been enough to fuel decades of speculation that “The King” was alive and well.