Lisa Marie Presley’s death Thursday was eerily similar to those of a long line of her relatives, including dad Elvis — which an author has blamed on a genetic curse from the marriage of the King’s first-cousin grandparents.
Elvis’ only child was just 54 when she died Thursday, reportedly after suffering a cardiac arrest at home in Calabasas, California.
Her dad, the king of rock ‘n’ roll, had also died of heart problems in 1977, at the even tragically younger age of 42. His twin, Jesse, was stillborn.
Elvis’ death had already been compared to that of his mother, Gladys Smith Presley, 19 years earlier — also from heart failure and at the age of just 46. Some of her siblings also died in their 40s.
However, these “shocking similarities” are not mere coincidences, according to author Sally Hoedel — who more than two years ago laid out her theory that Elvis was “destined to die young.”
“Elvis’ maternal grandparents were first cousins,” Hoedel wrote of Robert Lee “Bob” Smith and Octavia “Doll” Smith, who married in 1903.
“It was that union some 30-something years before Elvis’ birth that dictated his short life” as well as others in the family, Hoedel stated, blaming it on the family tree where “branches got tangled.”
“Creating Elvis took a rare DNA combination that was not supposed to happen. It was not supposed to survive — and the consequences of that have long been ignored,” she wrote.
According to Hoedel’s book, the deaths were the result of Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, a genetic condition passed through generations.
“It is known from Elvis’ autopsy that he was ‘a carrier’ for this disorder,” the Michigan-based author wrote, stressing that it “can have debilitating outcomes, even as a carrier.”
Such “genetic complications” then “impacted [Elvis’] entire life,” Hoedel wrote — saying it “led to poor health, impacted brain function, compromised bodily functions and damaged organs.”
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While it was written more than two years before Lisa Marie’s death this week, Hoedel noted that the King’s daughter had complained of similar ailments as her dad suffered, specifically intestinal problems that she said often left her “chronically constipated.” Elvis also suffered from bowel issues.
Elvis’ health woes may well have been why he started popping pills, Hoedel suggests, leading “to an addiction to the very thing that had helped him.”
“Often he is dismissed as just another rock ‘n’ roll drug addict,” the author said — while suggesting that instead his “fate was set on the morning he was born.”
“It would be gross negligence to assume that the marriage” of his first-cousin grandparents “did not impact America’s king, Elvis Presley,” she wrote.
“Elvis certainly was a victim of his own DNA,” she concluded her book, saying it left him — and other members of the family — “destined to die young.”