On the 17th of August, 1977, the world woke up to the news that the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, had been found dead at his Graceland home in Memphis, Tennessee, aged just 42.
While Presley’s official cause of death was stated as cardiac arrest, a new book by Elvis biographer Bobby Roy Rodgers claims there were more sinister forces at play.
The man behind these dark forces was not some CIA assassin, but Malta’s own King of Rock and Roll, Freddie Portelli.
In his book, titled The Death of the King: The Freddie Portelli Connection, Rodgers alleges that, over a 10-year period, the Maltese singer used voodoo magic to drain away Presley’s singing talents and, eventually, his life force.
“While working at the Dockyard in the early 60s, budding young musician Freddie Portelli befriended a Haitian sailor who worked on the French oil tanker MV Joli Mensonge. It was from this seaman that he learned to practise voodoo. He became adept at both white and black magic, although he seemed to have a preference for the latter, often putting minor hexes on his authoritarian foreman.
When it came to music, Portelli was not particularly talented. His father is said to have told him he played guitar like an arthritic octopus, while one friend compared his singing voice to “a faulty vacuum cleaner falling down a flight of stairs.”
That all changed in 1963. When Elvis Presley was at the height of his powers, releasing hit after hit, Portelli travelled to Nashville, Tennessee to watch The King live in concert. He was mesmerised by what he saw and heard. After the gig, Portelli managed to sneak into Presley’s dressing room and steal his comb.
Rodgers claims that, upon returning to Malta, Portelli used hair from the comb to create a voodoo doll bearing Elvis’s likeness.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Portelli developed a rich, soulful baritone voice.
Before every gig, he would kiss the voodoo doll, telling his bandmates it was his lucky charm. In actual fact, he was siphoning Presley’s musical skills into his own body with black magic.
“It’s no coincidence that Freddie Portelli and his band produced their best-known songs like Viva Malta and Mur Ħallini at the exact same time that Elvis decided to focus on Hollywood films and soundtracks, most of which were panned by critics. As Portelli grew stronger, Elvis lost his spark,” Rodgers writes.
The author even suggests that the chorus of Mur Ħallini shows Presley may have been aware he was under some kind of spell.
“I believe Portelli was also able to read Presley’s mind. Think about it – ‘Mur ħallini. Itlaq ‘l hemm, għax dejjaqtni ma nafx kemm. Ħallini!’ (‘Leave me alone. Go away because you’re really bugging me. Leave me alone!’)… Could Portelli have made a song out of his victim’s anguished thoughts?”
Some of the lyrics from Elvis’s own 1969 hit Suspicious Minds seem to lend credence to the theory:
“Caught in a trap. I can’t walk out…”
“Why can’t you see what you’re doing to me?”
“We can’t go on together with suspicious minds.”
Could the later song You Were Always On My Mind also have been a clue?
As the years progressed, Portelli not only continued to sound more like Presley – he also started to look increasingly like him.
“Whenever someone pointed out the resemblance, Portelli would laugh it off, joking that maybe it was Presley that was copying his look.”
And while Portelli remained slim despite eating 10 pastizzi and five litres of Kinnie a day, Presley inexplicably ballooned even though he exercised every day and ate mostly spinach and bulgur wheat, only ever indulging in the occasional friend banana, peanut butter and bacon sandwich.
Portelli’s curse on Presley would eventually take its final toll on that fateful day in 1977. Physically weak, mentally slow and severely overweight, The King collapsed while on the toilet at his home, and never regained consciousness.
At the time, it was widely believed that Presley’s abuse of stimulants and barbiturates, which he had started using during his military service, had played a big part in his death. But Rodgers believes otherwise.
“In the report of the first autopsy carried out on Elvis shortly after his death, the coroner specifically states that drugs did not cause the heart attack, and he was right. It was a fatal combination of two separate events that ultimately finished him off.
“Firstly, Presley was desperate to get rid of the parasitic demon he believed had possessed him for so long. In a last-ditch attempt to remove him once and for all, he tried to defecate him out.
“At that very moment, 9000 km away in Malta, Freddie Portelli’s dog, Priscilla, had gotten hold of his prized voodoo doll and began vigorously licking its face, which had the same effect as when her master kissed it. The combined strain on Presley’s colon and the draining of what was left of his soul was too much for his already frail body to handle.”
Rodgers adds that, as Presley breathed his last breath, Priscilla the dog briefly became the world’s best canine singer.
After Elvis’s death, Portelli could no longer suck the life force out of his victim. Nevertheless, he continued to have a successful career in Malta, becoming one of the country’s most beloved sons.
“In a sense, the conspiracy theorists who say Elvis is still alive are kind of right. It’s just that he’s living inside a 75-year-old Maltese crooner.”
Rodgers also has a theory as to what Portelli’s famous crypic catchphrase ‘Il-Kbir Għadu Ġej (the best is yet to come) actually means.
“I think he’s planning to use his voodoo powers to resurrect Elvis Presley as a zombie for one final concert before he himself retires, in which the pair will perform a duet at the festa of his hometown, St Paul’s Bay.
Order The Death of the King: The Freddie Portelli Connection by Bobby Roy Rodgers on Amazon.
