Memphis magazine, March 1980
It looks like something straight out of Watergate. It is Friday, January 18, 1980, and the Memphis City Council Chamber has been transformed. Rows of television cameras and banks of lighting equipment line the front of the room. Some of the cameramen are wearing open shirts and gold chains around their necks, while most of their solemn subjects are in stiff three-piece suits. The atmosphere is tense, the crowd dead silent.
Sitting in the center of this spectacle is Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, the affable doctor with the hesitant drawl and electric white hair. He is facing what must be the most crucial hearing of his life, one that will rule on his very competence as a physician. It hasn’t been a good week. “Dr. Nick” (as friends and patients call him) has admitted to the State Board of Medical Examiners that his most famous patient, Elvis Presley, was a medical drug addict, to whom he prescribed literally thousands of uppers, downers, and in-betweeners over the past several years – 12,000 doses in the last twenty months of Elvis’ life, alone.
During the week of the hearing, Nichopoulos has painted a far different picture of the King of rock and roll than the image his fans have clung to since Elvis died. He depicts Presley as a ranting drug addict who had been detoxified at least three times, the first as early as 1973. Elvis’ insatiable and uncontrollable demand for drugs – almost all prescribed substances – was more than Dr. Nick could handle. He has testified that he tried substituting placebos and vitamins for the drugs, but Elvis had studied the medical literature and couldn’t be fooled. Nichopouolos has insisted that he valiantly tried to stem Presley's voracious appetite for drugs; he has also admitted that he failed.
As Friday’s hearing recesses for lunch, one of the spectators in the third row is clearly pleased about what has transpired during the week. For Charles Thompson, it has, in many ways, been a week of vindication. Thompson is a former Memphian now working as a producer for the ABC News program 20/20. He was largely responsible for initiating an investigation in July of 1979 into the questions surrounding the death of Elvis Presley two years earlier. It now appears likely that had the investigation by ABC never taken place, the story of Elvis drug habits would have remained largely a subject of speculation, rather than public record.
Thompson has felt for months that the story goes even further. It is his contention, and that of ABC News, that at the very least, Elvis Presley’s drug abuse contributed to his death, and the drugs in his body may well have killed him directly. This assertion bluntly challenges the official conclusion, reached by Shelby County Medical Examiner Dr. Jerry T. Francisco, that Elvis died from heart disease.e
During the Nichopoulos hearing, much of what ABC reported in its first 20/20 program on the Presley case has been confirmed. Now, on the final day of the hearings, it begins to look as though Thompson is going to achieve his long-sought goal: the release of the late singer’s autopsy report. He is confident that Dr. E. Eric Muirhead, chief of pathology at Baptist Memorial Hospital and head of the team that performed Presley’s autopsy, will take the stand. Thompson is ecstatic. “It’s already starting to come out,” Thompson says of the closely-guarded, secret report. “They’ve already said more this week than I ever knew. They have [Elvis] being admitted for detoxification in 1973. I never knew it went back that far. THey’ve also admitted publicly that he was a medical drug addict. They haven't said anything that disagrees with out first report last September. By this afternoon, when Dr. Muirhead testifies, the autopsy will have to come out.”
Sources Thompson considers very reliable have told him that the Baptist autopsy team concluded that Elvis’ death resulted from polypharmacy, the interaction of several drugs with resultant toxic effects. Jerry Francisco has steadfastly maintained that drugs played “no role whatsoever in Elvis’ death.” But because of a loophole in Tennessee law, Francisco has never been forced to make that autopsy a matter of public record. In a separate lawsuit, ABC has been trying to force the issue, but, as Charlie Thompson observes before the afternoon session begins, “If this thing goes like I think it will, that lawsuit will be moot. The autopsy is going to come out this afternoon, barring any difficulties. I think it will speak for itself.”
As he ponders the event that he expects to transpire in only a few moments, Thompson munches on a roast beef sandwich and muses about the week’s previous events. “The real travesty about this whole thing is that it is basically a local story; it should have been covered by the local press. But the plain fact is that iw wasn’t covered locally. ABC should have never had to come here to break the story open .But if we hadn’t, I wonder if we would be sitting here right now.”
Almost six months before the Nichopoulos hearing, on a blistering July morning, Charlie Thompson was standing in the air-conditioned chill of the Commercial Appeal morgue, watching as E.B. Blackburn, managing editor of the paper, fiddled with the large padlock on a green plywood cabinet. The lock yielded and Blackburn hoisted out two large boxes filled with bulging envelopes. It was the newspaper’s complete clip file on the late Elvis Presley; each of the twenty-odd envelopes represented one year of the King’s life under a microscope.
Every newspaper has a morgue – the tomb-like library that houses several lifetimes of once-hot news stories now forgotten – but it is usually off-limits to all but staff members. Blackburn had made an exception in letting Charlie Thompson enter the guarded room, perhaps because Thompson came to the rescue of Joseph Shapiro, a Commercial Appeal reporter who ran into some trouble in Tupelo while covering the 1978 racial trouble there. Maybe Blackburn felt he owed Charlie one, especially since Thompson once worked for the Commercial Appeal as a reporter himself. Blackburn stationed Thompson at a small table with a typewriter, then left him with the pile of clippings spread out like leaves waiting to be raked.
When Thompson had first learned of Presley’s death on August 16, 1977, he figured that “by night they would say it was drugs.” Though Thompson thought it peculiar when drugs were ruled out in October of that year, he was too busy with other projects to pursue the story further.
Shortly after Elvis’ death, THompson joined ABC News as a producer, working with Geraldo Rivera on the news program 20/20. In the two years since the pair teamed up, their subjects have cut a broad swath – from corruption in a coal mining company to the slaughter of wild horses to the rampages of the Texas Banditos motorcycle gang. But Thompson freely admits that his passion has always been for crime stories, murder mysteries, unsolved riddles. His thick gray hair belying the fact that he is only 38, Thompson correctly describes his looks as “average,” and credits this nondescript appearance with helping him avoid the occasional death threats he has received during his years as an investigative reporter. Thompson projects intensity: he peppers conversations with rapid-fire questions, his blood pressure is on the high side, and he often gets headaches when he is immersed in a story.
What brought Thompson to Memphis in the middle of July was his desire to do a “top-to-bottom investigation on Elvis.” A year before, on the first anniversary of Elvis’ death, Rivera had reported on the seedy commercialism that had blossomed after Elvis died, but the report didn’t mention any controversy surrounding the official verdict of Elvis’ death. As the second anniversary approached, Thompson hoped to answer, once and for all, the questions of drug involvement in Presley’s demise. He confesses that he came here mainly on a hunch. “ I didn’t know if I could even find enough for fifteen minutes on 20/20,” he says. “I didn’t have anything.”
Before he arrived in Memphis, Thompson had spent three weeks reading every book he could find on Elvis, in an effort to get a clearer picture of the kind of life the man led. It was this quest for information that led him to the Commercial Appeal morgue. As he poured through the stacks of old photographs and clippings, Thompson jotted notes on a yellow legal pad, recording “who was who and what happened when.”
At eleven o’clock that morning, Thompson opened a plain, white envelope and pulled out what looked like lab reports. As he examined the material more closely, he realized that the material was a complete toxicological report on Elvis Presley, prepared by Bio-Science Laboratories of Van Nuys, California. The lab had been sent blood, urine, and tissue samples by Baptist Hospital, which, at the time of Presley’s death, had no toxicology lab of its own. Thompson assumed that the full Bio-Science report had already appeared in the Commercial Appeal, but he wanted to get a copy of the report for his own reference. The copy machine was broken, however, so he casually placed the envelope aside. He had no idea how pivotal to his investigation this document would soon become.
The copy machine was still broken the next day, so Thompson took the report downstairs to make the copies. ON the way back, Thompson stopped at Beth Tamke’s desk to ask her about the toxicology data. Tamke had obtained the report from an unnamed source and portions of its contents had been quoted in a series of articles she wrote in October of 1977. The series had been the first to connect Elvis’ death with drugs. When Thompson spoke with Tamke, she informed him that the full Bio-Science report had never been published. Thompson was surprised, but the full significance of this revelation “didn’t sink in until much later.”
Thompson left the Commercial Appeal offices and headed straight for Baptist Hospital; the scene that followed could have come from a Columbo episode. Thompson located a doctor he had known in hte past and persuaded the man to accompany him in the hot sun to a nearby parking lot. When they reached his car, THompson opened the trunk and huddled with the doctor in the semi-darkness under the lid. Thompson produced a flashlight and the toxicology report from his briefcase. He didn’t reveal who the tests were for, but as he held the flashlight in position, Thompson asked the doctor for his opinion of the data. After studying the report for a few minutes, the physician, a specialist in internal medicine, laid the report down and raised up into the bright sunshine. “Jesus Christ, it’s obvious,” he said, incredulously,” the son of a bitch died of drugs.” That was all Charlie Thompson needed to hear.
Thompson left the parking lot and drove to the home of James Cole, his wife’s brother. Cole was a former Commercial Appeal report also, and Thompson had enlisted his aid in the Elvis case as soon as he got to Memphis. About two o’clock that afternoon, Cole’s phone rang It was E. B. Blackburn. He had learned that THompson had a copy of the toxicology report, and he wasn’t pleased. “Blackburn told me during the conversation that it was a confidential report that should have been filed separately,” Thompson remembers. “He said that I’d better destroy my copy. I asked him if the documents were real and he said they were ‘absolutely real.’ He wanted me to shred them. He said, ‘Here, I’m tearing mine up right now.’ But I told him that I didn’t think there would be any trouble with the reports. I wasn’t about to tear them up.
“He started telling me I was wasting my time, that Presley didn’t die of drugs, that they went through it all before and they couldn’t prove anything. Then he told me that if I went on and did the story, it would bring all the irresponsible people from the New York Times and the BBC into town. I thought to myself, ‘Jesus, what does that make me?’”
Blackburn, however, disputes this account of the conversation. “Charlie THompson and I had a very brief conversation and I certainly never called anyone irresponsible,” he says. “I have no desire to get into any dispute with ABC or any other arm of the media. We pursued the story [of Elvis’ death] as far as we could go at the time. We were the first news agency to ever hint that drugs were involved. We did print that toxicology data and we tried to get the autopsy, but we ran into all the walls that everyone else has since run into. I’m satisfied that we pursued the story at the time as far as we could. I can’t begin to tell you why ABC developed such a late interest in it.”
Beth Tamke, who has since been reassigned to the paper’s “Action, Please” column, refuses to discuss the matter now. “I’ve kept my mouth shut for three years, and I’m not going to start talking now,” she says. “I’m an employee here, and I fulfill my duties and that’s as far as I go.”
Blackburn’s concern about the report reinforced Thompson’s feeling that it was definitely worth checking further. He dispatched Geraldo Rivera to the West Coast to confirm the authenticity of the report with Bio-Science. He began seeking the opinions of various toxicologists, pathologists, and pharmacologists on the role drugs might have played in Presley’s death. All of these experts said that based on the toxicology report, evidence for a drug-related death was certainly strong; some said overwhelming.
In addition to checking out the toxicology report, Thompson also began interviewing members of the Presley entourage. He talked extensively with Marty Lacker, once Elvis’ best man, who described his own drug addiction in the years before he dropped out of the Presley scene. As Thompson interviewed more and more Presley confidants and associates, a pattern of heavy drug use by the singer and those around him began to emerge. By the middle of August, Thompson felt he was onto a major story.
The original 20/20 deadline for the story had been August 16, 1979, the second anniversary of Elvis’ death. As the date approached, it was obvious that the story could never be finished in time. Thompson got an extension until September. He still wasn’t sure just how much he had, but CHarlie Thompson knew one thing: he had a story.
While Thompson spent much of August tracking down figures from Elvis Presley’s past, Jim Cole could often be found in the shadowy confine of his attic office, usually talking on the telephone. It is a snug room, with a low, angular ceiling and tiny windows; it doubles as a storage area. Mismatched tables and chairs, piled with old pictures and bric-a-brac, clutter the corners. When he talks on the phone, Cole often props his feet on a child’s large rocking horse that sits next to his desk.
Cole bears little resemblance to CHarlie Thompson. The physical differences are obvious – Cole is mustachioed and balding. Thompson is thick-haired and clean-shaven – but it is Cole’s relaxed manner, set off against the frenetic energy of his brother-in-law, that clinches the contrast. Cole pauses frequently during conversations, searching for the correct word or phrase, collecting and measuring his thoughts. He confesses that he is uncomfortable with the “stridence that is so frequently a part of broadcast journalism.” He has no desire to work for ABC full-time.
Cole has been working as a freelance writer since he left the Commercial Appeal in 1977, shortly before Elvis’ death. He has pursued a number of writing projects since that time, including a novel that is still in progress. But since the Elvis case began, he has had little time for anything but his work for ABC News. It was more than familial ties that led Charlie Thompson to ask for Cole’s help in the investigation. Cole had worked the court beat for several years, and his familiarity with the labyrinth of document files downtown came in handy as the case progressed.
In addition to pouring through court files, Cole also talked with local pharmacists about the Presley case. During one of these visits, two weeks after Thompson had found the toxicology report, Cole got wind of the fact that an audit of prescription records was being conducted by the Tennessee Healing Arts Board. He had never heard of this agency, so he called Nashville to find out what was going on. In the dimness of his hideaway office, Cole now sat with his feet perched on the hobbyhorse, waiting for Jack Fosbinder, the board’s chief investigator, to come to the phone.
Cole began the conversation by explaining ABC’s interest in the case to Fosbinder. Fosbinder confirmed that an audit was indeed in progress, and Cole asked what period the audit covered. Fosbinder told him that it was only for the first six months of 1979. “Well, you know, Jack, we’ve found out an awful lot about drugs in this Elvis business,” Cole said. “In fact, we suspect Elvis may have died a drug death. Maybe you should look back into 1977.” Fosbinder thanked Cole for the tip and assured him that they would look into some of the 1977 records. “Oh, and by the way,” Cole added, “I sure would appreciate any kind of break you can give us when you decide to file a complaint against any of the doctors involved. We’d sure like to get first crack at this story.” Fosbinder said he would do what he could.
Cole hung up the phone and took his leg off the rocking horse. As he watched it bob up and down, he was unaware that the tip he had just given the board would be a crucial one. The board had apparently never intended to look back to 1977 in its investigation until Cole phoned. During the next few weeks, its investigators would uncover hundreds of prescriptions for controlled drugs, all written for one patient: Elvis Presley. While the board had already found some irregularities in prescriptions for some of Dr. George Nichopoulos’ other patients during 1979, Presley’s case would turn out to be the worst by far.
Cole’s involvement with the board later led Nichopoulos’ attorneys to claim that ABC had encouraged the board to initiate the investigation, presumably to spice up ratings for the upcoming broadcast. It is a charge that Cole now vigorously denies. “The audit was already in progress; all I did was suggest where they might look. Besides, the facts are still the facts.”
A couple of days after his conversation with Fosbinder, Cole went to the Prescription House on Madison to talk with its owner, pharmacist Irving Jack Kirsch. The Prescription House is a cluttered little drug store. Its front window is lined with old-fashioned apothecary jars filled with green and blue colored water. On the wall in front of the store’s prescription counter is a large, hand-lettered sign: “This store does not stock Dilaudid, Sopor, Quaalude, or Preludin.” A small couch and a table covered with old magazines practically fill the entire room. Three walls are crammed with an assortment of cold remedies, laxatives, and mouthwash, but Jack Krisch’s main business has always been prescriptions.
While Jim Cole was researching probate records from the Presley estate, he had run across a bill for $142.00 from the Prescription House, dated the day before Presley died. Jack Kirsch had been Cole’s own pharmacist a few years before and Cole knew him well. On that visit in August, however, Cole didn’t come to get a prescription filled. The two men talked about several things, especially Krisch’s relationship with George Nichopoulos, whose own office is directly across the street. Finally, Cole mentioned the $142.00 bill. He remembers the conversation well. “Jack’s explanation was that Elvis was about to go on a concert tour just before he died, and some people from Graceland had come to the Prescription House to buy everything from eye wash to corn plasters for the tour,” says Cole. “So I asked him if he knew where Elvis had been getting all his drugs. He rattled off this long list of pharmacies, mostly in the Graceland area, but he didn’t say anything about his own store.”
Cole called Jack Fosbinder again and passed along the information, together with some names of members of the Presley retinue. When the board checked these stores out, however, they found very little. “The results weren’t too good,” Cole recalls. “Everyone we interviewed had said the same thing: that drug use was rampant at Graceland and everywhere else Elvis went. We were pretty sure by that time that Nichopoulos was involved to some degree, but we couldn’t pin down the pharmacies that were being used; that was our missing link. By the end of August we were pretty puzzled.” In the first week of September, Cole was still confused. As he would soon learn, the “missing link” had been so close, he couldn’t even see it.
September 6 was another scorcher. The ABC cameramen were feeling every degree as they waited on the steaming black asphalt parking lot outside the gray concrete building at Madison and Evergreen that housed Dr. George Nichopoulos’ office. Charlie Thompson and Jim Cole paced around their rented station wagon as the two cameramen and a production assistant assembled a few pieces of video equipment. Inside the building, Geraldo Rivera was talking with Dr. Nichopoulos, trying, for the seventh time since he came to Memphis, to persuade him to be interviewed on videotape. This time, Dr. Nick yielded. “Okay,” said Nichopoulos,” you bring in your cameras. Rivera hurried outside.
With his flowing brown hair and Latin features, Geraldo Rivera doesn’t look any more like Charlie Thompson than Jim Cole does. But, like Thompson, Rivera is as tight as a coiled spring when he’s on assignment. On the 20/20 team, Rivera serves primarily as writer, editor, and on-camera personality; Thompson sticks to investigations, research, and production tasks. But these duties frequently overlap, and no boundary lines are imposed as far as responsibilities are concerned. As Rivera puts it, “We do whatever it takes to get a story.”
The 20/20 crew had come straight to Nichopoulos’ office from an interview with the investigators from the Tennessee Healing Arts Board. During that interview, RIvera, Thompson, and Cole found most of the missing pieces to their story. The investigators had revealed that formal charges were going to be brought against Dr. Nichopoulos. Ironically, they had also given ABC the name of the man who had filled many of Dr. Nick’s prescriptions for Presley; it was none other than Jack Kirsch, the man who had “helped” Jim Cole by supplying the names of errant pharmacies. Cole was shocked. “Kirsch had purposely steered us away from himself. I couldn’t believe it, but everything just fell together after we knew that.”
As Rivera ran out to eh camera crew waiting in the parking lot, Thompson frantically asked him what had happened inside. “I told Nichopoulos he basically had a choice,” Rivera quipped. “He could either sit down and talk to me like a gentleman, or I would wait outside his office and stick a microphone in his face and he could say, ‘No comment.’” The cameramen grinned at this as they hustled the equipment inside.
Nichopolous’ office is relatively small, and there wasn’t much room for the six-man team that crowded in and started setting up lights and microphones. A bas-relief of an ancient Greek physician treating a patient juts out from one wall, making the office seem even smaller. On another wall is an autographed photograph of Elvis that reads: “To my good friend and physician, Dr. Nick. Elvis Presley.” As the camera was moved into position, Rivera explained to Nichopoulos what areas he wanted to cover. “I basically want to know some of the things about your treatment of Elvis’ different medical problems,” said Rivera. Nichopoulos stared straight ahead. After an embarrassing silence, he finally responded: “Well, we really can’t get into that too far.” The cameraman signaled Rivera: they were now rolling.
Rivera began with background questions. How long had Dr. Nick been Presley’s physician? How long had he known the late singer? How would he describe Elvis’ general health? Jim Cole later described Nichopoulos’ manner during the interview as “bizarre.” It was like he was in sort of a daze,” Cole recalls. “He was very slow in reacting to the questions. It kind of gave me the creeps.”
Fifteen minutes into the interview Rivera dropped his bombshell. “Isn’t it true that you prescribed 5,000 doses of narcotics to Elvis Presley in the last twelve months of his life?” asked Rivera. (The board would later set the figure at 12,000 in the last twenty months). Nichopoulos was stunned. “No, I don’t believe that is true,” he said haltingly. “Are you denying it?” demanded Rivera emphatically. “Yes, I am,” Dr. Nick replied. His voice was almost a whisper.
Rivera then pulled out a scrap of paper, about the size of a prescription form. He asked once more if Nichopoulos was sure he hadn’t prescribed huge doses of narcotics to Presley. Nichopolous said nothing. As Cole later described it, “I believe Dr. Nick thought Geraldo was actually holding a prescription. In fact, he still believes to this day that we brought stolen prescriptions with us to the interview. He never asked Geraldo if the piece of paper was a prescription. If he had, I don’t think Geraldo would have lied about it. But Geraldo did ask the questions with great authority and insistence. I can see how Nichopoulos could have had the impression that we had some prescriptions with us.
After this exchange, Nichopoulos took off his microphone. I”ve got a lot to do and I’m sure you fellow do, too. So I think we ought to sort of cut this thing off right now.” Dr. Nick never raised his voice, but it was clear from the curtness of his remark that the interview was over. Thompson and Cole, who had been sitting on the floor the whole time, slowly stood up. The camera crew, however, walked over and began shooting footage of the photo of Elvis on the wall. Nichopoulos acted as if he were alone in the room. “I expected him to say, ‘I told you guys to get out,’” Cole later remarked. “But he never said a word.” The crew finally shut down the camera. As he was walking out of the office, Rivera turned to Nichopoulos and thanked him for the interview. Nichopoulos never looked up.
As the crew huddled in the parking lot, Thompson said, “Okay, let’s go across the street and get Kirsch.” But Cole wanted to talk with Kirsch first. “Let me go over and explain to him what’s going on,” he said.
This is THompson and Cole’s account of what happened next: Cole ran across the street and went into the tiny store. After brief pleasantries, he said, “Jack, we found out that most of the prescriptions for Elvis were filled right here. I had no idea that was the case. We’d like to get your comments.” “What, on camera?” asked Kirsch, startled. “Yeah, that’s right,” said Cole. Kirsch bristled: “Uh-uh, no way!” Cole tried to explain. “I’m sorry to bring it up, Jack, but you gave me the impression that these prescriptions were filled at other places, and that’s just not the way it is.”
As Cole was speaking, the camera crew pressed in, camera rolling. “Is that thing on?” Kirsch asked nervously. No one answered and Kirsch left the prescription area, heading for the restrooms in the back. Rivera and the camera crew followed. It was like a game of tag; Rivera and the cameramen were giggling like school boys. Even Kirsch managed a beleaguered chuckle as he finally said, “All right, all right, hell, let’s get out front and do it there.”
Kirsch defended himself in the interview by saying that he felt nothing was amiss in filling the prescriptions for Presley. He maintained that since they had been written by a physician, he didn’t question them. He then said he never believed they were all going to Elvis, anyway. At that point, THompson interrupted: “You know, Jack, that’s not really a very convincing answer. It doesn’t put you in a very good light.” Cole tried to help. “Jack, can’t you at least put it into a philosophical context,” he suggested. “ You know, that we’re all led to believe that doctors can do no wrong, and that sort of thing?” They began the interview again, but Kirsch stuck with his original explanation. “We were trying to make Jack look as good as we could,” Cole later explained. “Even though he’d misled me on the prescriptions, he had been very helpful in some other areas. But it really was a devastating interview. THere wasn’t much we could do.” (Kirsch now faces a separate investigation by the Tennessee Board of Pharmacy).
With the three interviews in hand, Thompson and Rivera knew they had their story. They went back to New York that weekend to put the program together in time for Thursdays’s broadcast. Jim Cole stayed in Memphis to try and keep everything under wraps; no one else knew about Nichopoulos being charged, and ABC wanted to scoop the local and national press. But it didn’t work out that way. “It was Tuesday, two days before the telecast, and I went out to play some golf for the first time since the whole thing had started back in July,” says Cole. “While I was onthe course, the story [about the Healing Arts Board’s investigation] broke in Nashville. I was really dejected about it. But, as it turned out, it was terrific promotion for the program.”
Even without the Nichopoulos scoop, the 20/20 program that aired on that Thursday evening brought the entire controversy out into the open more unflinchingly than any report had done before. In the hour-long program, ABC charged that officials, including the medical examiner, had covered up the fact that Elvis presley’s death was certainly drug-related, if not indeed caused by the drugs in his body on that fateful night. Two experts, one a forensic pathologist and one a clinical pharmacologist, testified that based on the toxicology report prepared by Bio-Science, there was strong evidence that Presley’s death was drug-related. A member of the Baptist autopsy team said that, in his opinion, Presley’s heart disease had been minor. Excerpts from interviews with members of Presley’s entourage gave accounts of the drug horror stories that had gone on at Graceland and elsewhere for years.
After the program aired, Jerry Francisco called a press conference to again defend his original findings, but it seemed that without the vital autopsy report, the debate would drag on forever.
So it was, on that Friday afternoon in January, more than five months after the lawsuit to obtain the autopsy had been filed, more than four months after the Elvis program had aired on 20/20, that Charlie Thompson found himself in the City Council chambers, about to get his hands on the autopsy report he had so long sought. It was looking more and more as if the report would be discussed that very afternoon. And if those results were as he believed, that would suit Charlie Thompson just fine.
It is now Saturday, January 19, 1980, and the verdict is in at the City Council chambers: Dr. George C. Nichopoulos has been found guilty of ten counts of overprescribing controlled drugs; one of the ten counts relates to Elvis presley. He is stripped of his license to practice for three months and placed on three years’ probation. Dr. Nick slowly shakes his head; the camera crews begin dismantling their equipment. It’s over.
Charlie Thompson looks slightly deflated...the autopsy report never came out after all. During Friday afternoon’s session, Chancellor D.J. Alissandratos intervened in the board hearing and ruled that testimony concerning the autopsy could not be allowed because of the threat of legal action by the Presley family. The issue will have to be decided by ABC’s own lawsuit. It will take weeks, maybe months before the legal questions are resolved once and for all. Thompson can only shrug his shoulders: “We came so close.” A woman rushes up to Thompson and Rivera, shaking her fist at the pair. “You bloodsuckers!” she screams. “You took one of the best doctors in this city away from us. I hope you’re happy.” She storms up the aisle, as the entire ABC crew gapes after her.
It has now been six months since Thompson first came to town, hoping to get fifteen minutes for 20/20. In that period, much has happened. It can’t be denied that, regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit, regardless of the exact cause of Elvis’ death, if ABC had never pursued its investigation, the revelations of ELvis’ massive prescription drug habit (as well as the doctor and pharmacist who facilitated that habit) might never have become public. Until ABC came to town, it seemed that in all corners the case was closed.
“There’s a bigger story involved here,” says Rivera. “I think this has supported our feeling that licensed physicians are the primary pushers of narcotics in this country. It’s not the black man with his collar up, standing on the corner in Harlem. The doctors who were treating Elvis were allowed to continue doing business as usual for more than two years after he died. If his death had been fairly, accurately, and objectively reported, these investigations would have started back in 1977.”
“What people have overlooked is that what we did in this story was put together information that has been obtainable for two years,” says Cole. “We interviewed a number of people who were quite willing to talk; they’d simply never been approached before.”
“People always think these things are easy, that you just sail in and, because you’re great big ABC News, you just bowl people over,” adds Thompson. “But it really always gets back to slogging it out, going to the records. You never have an advantage. I’ll say this: I’ll probably never run into another case where a local newspaper [the Commercial Appeal] was so close and could have done such a good job with a news story. They just blew it.”
Thompson gets ready to pack up and head back to his home outside Washington, D.C. He hasn’t seen his family for two weeks. But ABC’s lawsuit will soon come to trial...Thompson will be back. He is also turning his sights toward determining the motivation behind what he still feels was a definite cover-up. According to Thompson’s sources, when the Baptist autopsy team met with Vernon Presley and told him that his son died a drug death, Jerry Francisco, who was present at the time, said he was in”basic agreement” with that finding. Yet, only three days later, he officially ruled drugs out in the case. Rivera and THompson wanted to know why.
“Something very dramatic happened between the 18th of October and the 21st of October, 1977,” Geraldo Rivera says firmly. “We aren’t positive what it was yet; at least, we’ve been unable to prove anything. It might be something as benign as the sentiment that Presley meant a lot to this community and the dead should be let lie. But it might well be something more malevolent.
“I know this much: we are going to see this thing through until it’s over...until we can determine exactly what killed Elvis Presley.”
