No question about it: Elvis Presley was an American -- heck, an international -- icon. Tens of thousands of people attended his funeral, and for years his fans tried (in vain) to figure out what happened to his hearse. Luckily, Scott and Ben tracked down the answer.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with car stuff from house stuff Works dot Com. I'd welcome to car stuff. I'm Scott and I've been as always. Scott and I are joined by our super producer, Noel the hound Dog Brown and most important to you, which makes that car stuff. And I'm wearing my blue suede shoes too. You are wearing your blue suede shoes. Now that's not an everyday thing for you, right, Scott? In a special occasion, definitely a special occasion church here, maybe a birthday party, sure, like at a nice J C. Pennies. You know, I don't know if I have you ever ever seen anybody in blue suede shoes? I have, but you know I'm from Tennessee, so I have to match, right. Yeah. I have seen some people, uh, wearing some blue suede shoes before. I have yet to see somebody in an all blue suede outfit, though I am sure those exist. Is likely out there somewhere. Yes, and I have been to Graceland as a wee tyke that I don't remember too much of it, really, Okay? That okay, You've answered one of my questions. I was gonna ask you real, yeah, I was gonna ask you if you ever been there, because I've never ventured over there now, you know, I wonder what it would be like going back as an adult, because you know, so many things that you do when you're a kid seem entirely different when you're an adult, from watching a film to visiting a theme park or memorial. Sure, you probably had you couldn't really grasp what you were looking at there. You couldn't understand what you were seeing. Probably if you're really really young. I don't know how what age you were. I mean nineteen it was. How how old do you think you were? Just roughly well, gosh, we moved up. We moved around the age of eight, so I was younger than eight, and it's probably maybe six seven. But the thing there is, when you're a kid, if your parents are taking you to museums or places where figures of note used to live, and one of the first things that you notice and remember about the place is that it's just like a house with a bunch of velvet ropes that you can't cross. Sure, and you weren't like you weren't really looking to see. Uh, just what makes up the jungle room, or or how opulent the bathroom was there, or anything like that. Right, I wasn't walking with a guy booking hands going interesting at seven whatever? Okay, I get it. I probably shouldn't take another visit back and just and see what you think. Hey, you should you should go to while we're on the way. We can make a road trip of it. Definitely, it seems like it's close enough to us that we could do that. I think so. By now, ladies and gentlemen, if you haven't read the title of this podcast, and why would you spoil the fun? Uh, you may think you know what our episode is going to be about today, but I'm not sure you know. I think this is this is kind of a left field one for us, you know what. I'll be honest. You can read the title. There's so there's other stuff going on in this story. As always, it seems like recently when we've been you know, kind of researching a topic, digging up some information. Uh, it just takes us in so many different direct and um, and the focus of this one really is whatever became of Elvis Presley's first That's that's Truely, We're gonna get to it I promise you we we have the definitive answer. We know what happened to it, but we're not gonna get to it straight away, not right away, as as is our typical routine here. I guess because we've got a lot of information. I think, where do you want to start with all this? Because I've got a couple of sidebars that I think are pretty interesting. Um there's some speculation about what happened that I want to talk about just before we tell you what actually happened to it, which again, we do have the answer. Yeah, we do have the true answer. And um man, maybe we should just kind of set the scene because wait, you know, how about this, Let's let's do something else. Okay, why is this even important? Why are we been talking about this today? Because? Um, who really cares? What? You know? Herst Elvis Presley was was, you know, given his last ride in? I mean, does it really matter? I mean, he's he's in there for just a couple of minutes. Oh, come on, there's a symbolism too, I guess, yeah there is. But think about I mean, there's gonna be celebrity hearses all over the place, right, I mean, the chance that you know some plays out in Hollywood, California has got a hearse that has carried countless celebrities in it. I mean likely, it's likely there. I mean I would think that like the Burbank area, Hollywood Hills, that area. So what makes this one so special? Why is there so much injury around this this hearse? And it's got an interesting tale that goes along with it. Yes, and we will will start with just a couple of dates, just to catch everybody up if for some reason you are not familiar with the person we're talking about. Elvis Pressley was born in nineteen thirty five. Uh, world famous American senior actor. You may have heard him at times called the King of rock and roll or simply the King. Uh. And if you are from the U s. You definitely know about him. Heck, I would have a hard time believing someone doesn't know about him. However, despite his legendary status, Mr Pressley did pass away in August of nineteen seventy seven, which is kind of where our story today starts. Yes, we've already talked about Elvis with his his car collection. Did some of his eccentricities right? Because he really wasn't he really was truly eccentric, the way he would just buy you a cadillact well to do that. And then he also had other like he would shoot his cars, and he just he had quite a temper on him. And it seemed like, like we said, he seems like a fun guy to know, really, I mean the Shenanigans that he and his his group would get up, the kind of guy he could have a beer with. Yeah, exactly right. I forget the name of his group. I'll have to remember that as we talk. Yeah, yeah, I'll think of it as we're as we're going through here. But yeah, so, so we're talking about nineteen seventy seven and a particular vehicle and why it's why it's kind of something that we want to focus on today because there's there's some lare out there about what happened to it, and you wouldn't think that would happen, but people try to. You know, he became such a celebrity, um, you know, during his life and then even after his his you know was untimely passing and seven there were you know, numerous reported Elvis sightings all the way through present day really well until recently, I guess and on islands or whatever. And of course all of his uh you know, the memorabilia. Everything is so um um collectible these days, yeah, and it wasn't so much in nineteen seventy seven. So the car that was used to you know, to take him to the to the graveyard really wasn't anything that anybody particularly wanted at the time. It was just another car in the fleet of vehicles that this uh, this funeral service offered. Um, I don't know where, I don't We're getting scattered here. Let's start this way. Let's focus on the car. Let's do that. Okay. So this car at the time was brand new. It was a white nineteen seventy seven Miller Meteor Landau traditional Cadillac Hearse. If you have not heard our earlier episodes that touch on hearses, please to do, by all means check them out, because there's some fascinating stuff here. So we've got that. We've got the hearse right, the one hearse that's a Cadillac and in white of course, white, of course, of course, and leading the charge are the leading the procession rather is a silver Cadillac limousine. But that's not the only limousine in the entourage. Right, Oh no, this is this is a huge entourage. And if you haven't seen the the Elvis Presley funeral, the film footage of this, you might want to just check out a clip of it, because it's pretty impressive. Really, sixteen white Cadillac limousines carrying mourners, uh you know, to the cemetery from uh you know, the ceremony that happened to Graceland, um down the street and and their mourners lining the pathway the entire way. We're talking eighty thousand people that line the streets. Thousands. I mean, that's unbelievable. This is what a big deal this was. I mean, he was a huge pop star at the time, and I would I would say that I think in the time, just after his death even became more popular. I think, Um, it seems that way. But again, eighty thousand people um the line this this final route I guess, you know, from Graceland to to the place called the Forest Hill Cemetery in Memphis, and um, okay, here's here's how how enormous the ceremony was. I guess. Um, now, they had to remove all those flowers that were at Graceland and bring them with them to the cemetery for the second part of the ceremony. It took one hundred vans five hours to move the flowers, the flowers alone from Graceland to the to the cemetery and the CEO of ftd Um, I forget the guy's name. I think it was Bud something, Bud Lepinski, I think it was. Um. He flew to Memphis to personally handle what they called the flower problem that was going on there. Yeah, amazing, So this is a really big deal. I mean a lot of people turned out. Um um. It was just a uh a well covered news story at the time. Right, people that that's a larger funeral attendance than some members of royalty have. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, And this is just people that just showed up and they weren't really invited to the ceremony or anything. It was just people that lined the street as the procession procession went past. And uh, you know, there's so much that goes on around this whole thing. There's uh, um, vigils being held at the Graceland. Sure, there's of course, you know, some people are let into view Elvis's body while he's there. Uh, there's a lot going on around the death of Elvis, and it all happens within about two or three days again mid August of nineteen seventy seven. Right, that viewing stuff was primarily for celebrities like the Kennedy's or James Brown. However, interesting fact here, the the police department actually had a code specifically for Elvis sightings. Right, They had like a one hundred for um, homicide or two hundred for something else, and three hundred was the code for an Elvis side range, isn't it now. They did allow some of the just general populace to come in and see him as well, but very limited. I think. You know, people were lined up for so long that you know, if you were not right there when the gates open, you probably didn't get in to see them see him. Rather, um, what is a strange thing to do though? I mean, to be there and then to suddenly at the gates open and you're invited in for a viewing of of your right, that's exactly right. So I think there's one thing, there's a sidebar here that we need to talk about before we get much farther. And um, maybe to tell me which one you want to hear. First, there's a there's an interesting story that goes along with the vigil that evening the evening of the funeral. There's also a sidebar that has to do with other horses that have kind of been in the news recently. Let's do the vigil first and then the other horses. Okay, let's do that. So we'll talk about the vigil first, um, and then we'll go onto some of these other horses that have kind of been the news recently. I think it's worthwhile mentioning. Alright, So this is a kind of a strange bit of history that is often ignored when we're talking about the vigil and a huge gathering of people outside the gates of Graceland the night of the of the funeral. Oh yeah, that's right. Hundreds of people, right, I think they're like three hundred or so, depending on where you read, uh the you know, the accounts go from like I think two fifty or something like that. But the hundreds of people holding an all night vigil in front of the you know, Elvis's mansion there Graceland. And this is in how what's this would be August I believe at eighteenth in the nineteen seventy seven and among the mourners were three um individuals that we're talking about right now. Alice over to her, Juanita Johnson and uh and Tammy Bater and they were aged nineteen, nineteen and seventeen, respectively. And uh so they're outside the gate there and they're talking with us in policemen, I think some you know, local authorities, and they hear some screeching tires behind them, and someone just plows right into the crowd, going like fifty miles per hour something in a in a nineteen sixty three white Ford. Um, Now, this is crazy. The guy, um it was apparently driving south on Elvis Presley Boulevard, but he turned off onto into some lots on the right, and he turned back around and to head north and drove straight into the crowd intentionally. Now they found out this guy was drunk eventually, because he tried to run from the police about a block later, but he struck two two of them. Alice and Juanita both died on the scene and Tammy Uh lived. She was this is a horrible bend. She was drug underneath the car for like a block, but lives. She's she's the one who survived. And the reason I'm telling you all this is because this this story takes another twist as well. So she survived this and was in a coma for like three weeks and had brain surgery and all kinds of stuff like this happened to her, bad bad stuff. When she wakes up from the coma, Uh, there's a guy there who Um, a guy on the phone. Brother. His name is um Donald Batty, Donald Donald Beatty. Now Donald Beatty is important because the night of that accident, there was a sort of famous photo that was taken and he is one of the first responders on the scene. There he's helping her out. Now it's Tammy laying on the ground. It's not too graphic or anything. He's laying on there on the ground and he is I believe he's touching her knee. And there's another good samaritan who's there helping her, but he's closer up by her head, you know, he's talking to her. And all right, So again she wakes up and Beatty is there. He's on the phone. Um, and I guess she said, he just kept calling me, kept pestering me, she said, So I'm reading this news story what happened later and this this is where it takes another twist. Um. So she had undergone brand surgery, you know, all this other stuff, and and she accepted Beatty's invitation to come and visit her because you know, he had helped her out at the scene. So she said it reorse but um along with some other family members from Arizona, and she said it was a mistake. Now looking back, I wasn't thinking clearly, um My. Um, the guy he starts to almost harass her over you know, at the hospital. Well she's still at the hospital. And afterwards, and he goes so far as to follow her from like where where she lives. He follows her from city to city. So you know, the accident happened in Tennessee. She lived in Arizona, I guess, with with family. Um or maybe she was she lived in Missouri, I guess, but she had been in Arizona to stay with family. Then she moved back to um, Missouri, her home, and then he went with her. He moved back with her, Um, you know, not with her, but near her. And then she moved to Indiana. And then he moved to Indiana. And yeah, they said, okay, that the the finally the family got together and said, no, we're buying you a one way ticket. And they did. They bought this guy one way ticket to air back to Arizona. And they thought that was the end of his this twisted romantic pursuit. As they and he was saying things to her like and the reason that they were upset was not only the following her and stalking her. Um, he's saying things like, you know, you should marry me, you had in fact, you really should marry me after what I did for you at the accident scene. He's saying like, you owe me, you owe me your life. Yeah, that's kind of what he's saying. Right. So, so as as she improves, as her condition improves, uh, she realizes that his only role in assisting her at the crime scene was he he like knelt by her and I think he put his hand on her knee. The other guy was the one who really helped her out. He was just there. He even he just happened to be there. So she realized that he didn't necessarily help. And then when he moved back to Arizona, you know, the family gave him this this trip back to Arizona, and I promised we're getting back to her a minute. But um, this is all car related, right somehow? Um So, a guy claiming to be a U. S. Marshall shows up at her home and asked her to sign a petition asking the Arizona governor to pardon Batty. Now she doesn't know anything about this, and she says, well, no, I'm not going to sign that. I don't know for what. For what. He has been arrested for murder in Arizona like a thirteen year old girl. And so this is a bad guy. And she said, when I think about this now, like the stocking that went on after this this whole thing happened, Um, he could have flipped at any minute. He could have you know, flipped the switch and and overpowered me. It could have been over for me as well. Um. So she narrowly escaped that. I think her family did a good job, you know, realizing what was going on there. But this guy was on death row and he was actually put to death for that murder in Arizona shortly after you know, he had been involved with uh with um Tammy Bader talked about Double Jeopardy. She was dragged under the car for a block and then I guess spent the next what months years after that, years on the run from this guy. I think the murder happened in eight four, so that was seven years later. So she spent about seven years being harassed by him and then kind of out of touch with him for a long long time. And of course he was in prison on death row. And not to be not to be flippant, but it does remind me of one of those, uh, one of those famous quotes the police director E. Winslow Chapman at the time of the at the time of Elvis's funeral and death, said, uh, I'm afraid we're gonna have people trying to get into the mall's limb tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. There's nothing like an Elvis fan. And he was saying this in the context of multiple strange behaviors by fans of Pressley after after Pressley passed on and was interred um, including you know, people getting drunk and running up shirtless or even new to try to vault over the gates of Graceland or to break into the tomb. One interesting thing about the sidebar there with the with the drunk driver at the funeral is It reminds me of a novel recently recently published by Stephen King, who I know is not for everybody, but he has some good car related horror stories, and he had this one that came out recently called Mr. Mercedes, which is more like a detective crime book than it is horror. There's nothing supernatural really in it, uh as far as I know, but in that in that story, Mr Mercedes is the name of a killer who drives through a procession of people. Yeah, it just seems like and I just mentioned that in case somebody's interested in reading some detective fiction. But Christine, you could read Christine. I mean you could read Christine. There's also from a Buick eight, which is another evil car thing, but not quite the same. They're different kinds of evil cars. It's just strange how surreal the entire situation was surrounding Elvis's hearse. And I know that was a little bit off track there, but I found it so interesting that all that was going on, and then as I just found this little bit of you know, like a side note typically and in the in the story of like what happened that evening, and then it goes on to this tale that lasts all the way up until um, what year was at two thousand and eleven, I think when he was finally put to death. Of this guy, so it was like twenty seven years later, very very strange. So let's let's talk before we get into the speculation and again the definitive answer to the mystery of Elvis's hearse. It's time for a word from our sponsor and we are back. Uh, let's talk about some of those other celebrity hers. And now there's other celebrity hearses that have been on the news, and it doesn't happen too often, but this does happen. Um. In two thousand eleven in North Carolina, man sold the hearse that was used for Dale Earnhardt's seniors funeral. He's old on Craigslist for eight thousand, eight hundred dollars UM, and I think he said he immediately regretted the decision to get rid of it. Um. The it was a nineteen The car itself was a nineteen nineties six Lincoln Town car. Hearse UM had a hundred and fifteen thousand, one hundred fourteen miles in the odometer as as they said it in his Gelatanic article. And the new owner almost immediately tried to sell it honey Bay for one point five million dollars. So he buys it for you know, eight thousand, eight hundred bucks. He puts it on eBay immediately for one and a half million dollars. It did not sell. No, he didn't sell. And if it did sell, it didn't sell for one and a half million. I'll tell you that, um. And then there was also this, Now that was the real deal. That was that was the one that really was used in that funeral, But there was a fake JFK funeral hearse that was also put on eBay for one and a half million dollars as well another one that failed to sell. But see see what I mean here that this is like this, This is kind of a big business. I guess if you have something like this, you could make quite a bit of money. Not a million and a half as no one's paying that obviously, But if you attach a famous name to a vehicle, oftentimes that vehicles sell for a lot more. I mean, celebrity owned cars sell for a lot more money than a car of the same make and model. Absolutely in better condition. Yeah, exactly right. And so you know this, uh, this JFK. Funeral Hurst that you can look up the story about that, you know, the fake and how somebody faked it. Um. Also you know, this reminded me of them the hot Rod Hurst that we talked about recently, the nineteen sixty seven Boothill Express. You remember that one, which that was at the Peterson Museum in the in the basement, and that one. The reason that one is maybe famous, I guess, but more for one they made it into a hot rod, which is are but it was supposed to have carried a James Gang member to the Boothhill Graveyard in Tuston, Arizona. The guy's name was Bob Younger allegedly allegedly. Yeah, that's right. And see it adds value to it though. That's why that hers stands out in people's mind as being somewhat historically significant. Yeah and if okay, so I'm gonna be maybe a little bit abstract here, but one thing that's interesting at least us about society today here in the West where we live is that the role that once upon a time would have been taken up by you know, heroes of stories or mythological figures or real life saints, things like that. Celebrities occupy all those roles at once now and just the way that saints would have relics or reliquaries. Now celebrities after they pass away. Um. First off, if they're famous enough, no one wants to admit that they passed away. Right, the doesn't the legend go that Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, um, who else, Jimmy Hendrix um and uh Michael Jackson are all living in a in a time share somewhere some islands, somewhere remote island. Right. But this, this idea that there's some sort of um, non tangible spiritual importance to things that famous people possessed, is kind of crazy because you start to see the bizarre things that people will do for them, But then also you start to see the bizarre stories that tend to coalesce around these things. I've been thinking this ever since we did our very first episode on a Cursed Car, which was James Dean's cursed Porsche, right, and whether or not it was an actual curse. Now it just full disclosure for everybody I don't know about, I don't know about you know, but Scott, I know that you and I aren't really the kind of people who buy into that stuff, not me, but but it is interesting nonetheless, especially when we start talking about what happened to this hearse because speculation ran wild, it did, and you know that's before we got the true answer, and which we're getting to. We're gonna the true answer here in just a minute. But the speculation is kind of interesting to read and there's some good, you know, opinions, here's some good thoughts. Uh So some of these uh, some of these people that wrote into the site, and I think that um, I gathered the stuff from a site called Elvis Elvis Cadillacs, and uh, it had some comments from people I don't know if they were gathered from elsewhere, you know, these were you know, kind of uh combined into one article here for for the Elvis Cadillac site or not. But um some of the comments from the Professional Car Society members were pretty interesting because these are people that have a deep interest in hearses and they know a lot about them, they know how many of them are out there, really, which is another factor that we haven't really talked about yet, but we will get to Um, here's an opinion of a member by the name of Bernie de Winter. And you know, first of all, Bernie describes, uh, you know, the the purse itself, and you know that it was, Um, I think we talked about it was in the seventies seven Miller meteor land out traditional Cadillac curse and it was the first the new downsized Cadillac curses, the new chassis design. UM. I don't know if the King would like that being in a smaller caddy. No, it doesn't sound like him anyway. It's still a big hearse as a huge hearse. Um. But his opinion, and this is just the generalization of what he says here. It's a long, long article. But Um, the cost was the was the big factor in this one. He says, the hearse itself was not particularly desirable. Uh. The chassis change led to a higher load floor. Um, it's something like five or six inches higher than the previous design. So that meant that you had to lift the casket the body five or six inches higher, which is not easy when you're talking about something in the ways, you know, like nine hundred pounds combined. It's it's very very difficult. Um. Also the annual demand for cattle. Because of this change, you know, the annual demand for Cadillac commercial chassis went from something like two thousand units or more per year or two about nine hundred units per year. Um. He says, with all the goofiness of the safety and pollution standards at the time, new American car prices were going up constantly at a time when people were used to moderate consistency from year to year. This is this is important. We talked about this a lot. There's a point in our history where things just skyrocketed where um, you know, it doesn't It didn't seem to keep up with the standard rate of inflation. It just went it went up, up, up, up, Like cars just continue to get more and more expensive because of what they're adding. So he says, in you know, the cost of new car prices in general, we're going up. It was causing sticker shock with the general public. So you can imagine what that would do to the price of a new Hearse because it was about thirty thousand dollars for one of these at the time. They were talking about mid nineteen seventies and thirty thousand dollar car. I haven't done the conversion or anything. But that was a lot of money back then, um, And downsize hearst prices held up far better on the used vehicle market for far longer than the older cars did, so it was a comparatively long time before any downsized horses finally found their way out of service with the mortuary. So he's saying that the mortuary probably hung onto this thing for a long time. Again, this is a speculation about what happened, not really what happened, um. And he says other factors to consider would be that in August of nineteen seventy seven, that was the first major meat of the Professional Car Society and it was held in Cincinnati, Ohio. And prior to that point, horses at a car show were really kind of unacceptable. I mean, they were there, but they were on the outskirts. They weren't the the featured item. It was seen as kind of I guess, morbid and undignified. Yeah, and you know, again, Elvis memorability was not quite as popular back then as it was now. You know, it wasn't as collectible at the time. And uh again, grand if this thing held his value, you know, even years later, people just weren't gonna pay it, so cost. It keeps coming back to cost. And there's another one here that mentions UM. Another another PCs member. His name is Dennis Goth and Dennis mentions that UM. The Elvis funeral was directed by the Memphis Funeral Home and SCI, which stands for Service Corporation International UM the most specific, non vague name. Yeah, I guess, And I can tell you about se SEI in just a minute. It's it's pretty interesting company, but they he is. He says that they're a very large consolidator of funeral home properties. They own literally thousands and thousands of funeral homes and cemeteries across the world. I'll tell you numbers in just a minute. Just how the biggest company is UM. He says that UM, he thinks his opinion of what happened here, because before in speculation was that it probably just got lost in the shoffle. There's so many of these cars out there, there's nothing really to distinguish this one from any other person to fleet. And I'll have an argument against that in just a but UM. He says that SCI was notorious in those years for keeping their cars until they fell apart. Now, this was back in the seventies. Um, he said. Memphis Funeral Home is a high volume firm, and so they have a lot of funerals there, and they have quite a fleet of identical cars. So all these all these horses that we're talking about, there maybe ten or fifteen or twenty other cars exactly like it. What what sets us one apart um? He says, I wonder if after a few years anyone even remembered which one of those verses actually carried Elvis to his grave or from the hospital, or from the funeral home to Graceland. Uh, you know, there's there's other trips that were made as well, so you know, they each had their own role, I guess. So that's his ideas that maybe they maybe it was just lost in the shuffle, and maybe it could be a barn find or a junkyard. Yeah, and you would think, well, how is that possible? How do you lose a hearse in the shuffle? Well, as I said, you know, this company, this s c i UM Service Corporation International, is founded in the nineteen sixty two by a guy named Robert waltrip and Um in Houston, right, Yeah, in Houston, Houston Texas and it was it was started with just a single location. He inherited a funeral home from his family somewhere in Houston, and he began this, this SCI, which is the world's largest funeral home and cemetery chain anywhere. I mean, it's it's enormous. They've they've they've somehow remained invisible to the public even though they're this large. I mean, you probably don't know that you have an SCI funeral home in your city, but you probably do because despite the innocuous name like Service Corporation International, they could be selling anything, right. Uh, this company is in almost all fifty states. They're like forty three states, Um, most of Canada, there in eight Canadian provinces and Puerto Rico. Yeah, parts of Australia I think are looking at them as well, and they're trying to branch out into Britain, France, Mexico, you mentioned Mexico, Hong Kong, Taiwan. Uh, this is a big company. It's it's I think it's well over billion dollars in annual sales. Uh. They handle in America. In the United States, they handle one in every eleven funerals, which is quite a bit yeah, all to say that it is completely feasible, it's completely plausible that they would have left or lost a single hearse. Yet now they have fleets of hearses in different cities and they go from from place to place, and you wouldn't know this, uh, you know if you're not in the in the business. I guess and I read about this, you know, in kind of a trade journal. Um in that they will assume, like not assume, but I guess they will. They will appear as if they are part of the small town funeral home when they go there. They will even go so far as to change the metal plaques that are on the vehicle with you know, they slide into a slot and they have a row after row of these in different cities. Um, they may have anywhere from you know, fifth different funeral homes down to just a couple if it's a small town. But they are. But the idea is that they're able to be on call for anything that happens anywhere at any time, and they have a large staff. Um. It just it helps out. It's it's a very efficient way to do it. And again you don't really know that it's happening when they're there. You know, there's there's little subtle things that you can look for, like a lapel pin that says s c I um. But that's about it. And I think only the topics X where that so you would know that, you know, those people aren't aren't actually members of that small town funeral home. Um. So all this leads into the idea that you know that one hearse that one horse that carried Elvis could be lost in the shuffle in a town as big as Memphis, Tennessee, that that seems completely plausible. However, that is not the case. And now that you have heard some of the speculation, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to reveal to you the definitive answer the actual fate of the nineteen seven Cadillac curse. They carried Vis Presley to his grave. Yeah. And the thing is that, you know it was so simple. I mean, this guy wrote in and said I know exactly what happened because it was there. I was there. Yeah, I'm the guy, and uh, it's so straight. I don't know exactly where this original post came from because it's been it's been copied several different places, but I found it a place called uh, it's called find a Death dot Com. And it just has the interesting history of a lot of celebrities, you know, the celebrity deaths, and Elvis is one of those, and this story popped up for that and again as far as speculations where it went. This is the this is the real deal, and we we are close to this place. This place is just down the road from us. Really the place we're gonna talk about. Um, here's the story and I'll read it. We can stop any time to talk if you want. The guy says, my name is Chuck Houston. I'm president of Houston Brothers, Incorporated, a funeral car dealer in Marietta, Georgia, and I've been to this place. I've talked about this place in our previous podcast, the graveyard of horses in the back, you know the older ones. Yeah, like, um, alright, so funeral I'm a funeral car dealer in Marietta, Georgia. Around four I was the last person to drive the hearst that carried Elvis to his grave. Our company, then known as Crane S and S Sales, which my father owned, bought sold least in traded cars with s C. I so that's the place I just told you about. That's why that was this corporation. So he again he bought and traded cars with him, and he did so for many years. And he originally sold the new car to s c. I. So he knew this car personally, he had association with it. He says, we came back into possession of Elvis's Hearst when Memphis Funeral Home updated their rolling stock. And there's a way that they know that in just a moment, I'll tell you and people people were kind of tracking which hearst was associated with Elvis. I'll tell you how that happens. But he said, we were loaning the Hearst to a funeral home in South Florida until their new vehicle was ready for delivery. My father was reluctant to loan the car out. He wanted to hang onto it. It's the only car he ever wanted to keep in his fifty years of business. So there's something special about this one to his father, was a prize purse in his collection. He says. The funeral home in Florida was one of the biggest customers and needed a white on white loner desperately Elvis's hearse happened to be the only white horse on our on our lot, and another employee myself, both of us about twenty one at the time. We were going to drop off the car and then spend a few days of spring break in Fort Lauderdale. Alright, so he's taking Elvis's hearst to spring break in Fort lauder Tell you about a road trip. So they leave around what seven pm? Yea, seven pm. They're headed towards Miami on and around ten o'clock says, we ran out of gas just north of Valdos to Georgia. Amateurs. Yeah, so that's the extreme southern end of Georgia. And he says, what what was odd is that a tank of gas in those days would carry you from Marietta, Georgia to the Live Oak exit in Florida with gas left in the tank. Now that's a clue right there, that'll tall you. So he says that was based on the many, many cars with my friends and I delivered to the to the South Florida area and there were early nine so there are no strangers. Yeah, and let me be clear that I'm joking when I'm saying amateurs. These guys are by no means amateurs. Oh no, no, not at all, um so he So, therefore, we never checked the gas gates until we were in the vicinity of Live Oak, and of course they ran out before they got the live Oak. Yeah, this is all a clue. Here's what's going on. After running out of gas, we walked about two miles to the next exit, bought a can and some gas, and started back up the you know, the northbound return ramp towards the Elvis hearst. So, after running out of gas, he says, they walked two miles to the next exit, and they bought a can and some gasoline. They started back up the north bound return ramp towards Elvis's Hearse. But before they got to the highway, sheriff from Lounge County stopped them, asked him where they were going and called him a cap right, and so he says, we gotta go in again and headed for the gas station to fill her up. We're heading south. We're on our way. Just as the way station comes into sight, the engine cuts off. I dropped during the neutrol while traveling around sixty five miles per hour and turned the ignition when I did, fire shot out from under the hood on both sides. I eased her to the shoulder next to the way station return ramp, and my friend and I jumped from the hearse as the fire engulfed the front end of the car. Oh Man, scary. So there's a tail that's huge fuel lea, that's why it has to be fire shooting out from both under like both sides of the hood. Yeah, and it somehow got in contact with the you know, the hot exhaust and caused a fire. So and it's over at that moment, it's over. I mean, it's it's done with at that point, you're right. My friend and I met at the rear of the car that they scrambled out and realized all of our possessions were in the rear of the hearse and the doors were locked. We couldn't get back into the front to retrieve the keys. Do the do the fire having already spread, A truck driver appeared with the fire extinguisher, but it was just too late. Neither of us wanted to get close with the fear of that the hearse would blow up, so we stood stood by and watched as Elvis's hearst went up in flames. A fire truck finally arrived and all they could say was the rear quarter panels, the rear door and bumper. Yeah, man, that's that's something. So the place called Twin Lakes Towing picked the hearse up around two o'clock in the morning and head and carried it to their lot, and the d O T enforcement officer carried us to the local Ramada inn. And so we find the rest of the story here. The next morning, the kids call a cab over to this Twin Lakes place. They wait for the record to show up from Marietta. While they're waiting at the towing company, all this guy can think of, I'll check to think of as they burned up Elvis's hearse, and that his dad is going to kill Oh, no, kid, I mean, this is the this is the only one in his dad's as he said, his dad's fifty years of service that he kept, that he wanted to keep, that he wanted to hang onto, probably for the rest of his life. Um. So now it's gone. And of course here is a year old headed down to spring break. Big big trouble, right, um, But you know, I mean, clearly it wasn't his fault. Nothing to really happen. I mean, it was just a mechanical failure, right. Yeah. And uh again that goes back to, you know, the allegations that s c I was riding their cars to the grounds. Yep, I guess so. And he says, to kind of wrap this up, he says, the remain sat on our back lot, which is on Highway forty one, which is also called Cob Parkway, which is where I went and visited that, as I said, that graveyard of horses. Um. He sat on the back lot until nine when it was finally put through a car crusher and hauled off. My friend and I sat there and watched as it was crushed. The same guy from the road trip. Yeah, and he says, and he says, other than the then the hearse was um identifiable by a number on the lower right hand side of the rear window. He says, I can't remember that number at the moment right now, but I want to say it was number seven. The number, whatever it was, is visible on some of the footage of Elvis's funeral. Uh, this is the one. There's one scene in particular where the hearse is turning left where it's plainly visible. The number sticker was still on the vehicle the day it was crushed, so it matched. They knew it matched when they had it. They knew that it was the one. And they had also kind of been monitoring this one because clearly his dad had some kind of um, you know, association with us. He wanted to keep it, he wanted to hang onto it. Um Again, he says, out of the thousands of Hearses that my father has sold over the years, this one was special. We always said that Elvis didn't want his first end up in South Florida, and so it didn't know. That's it, I mean, as plain as that is. I mean that's what happened. I mean it was just burned up and that was it. But this is interesting because I don't know if if other people along the way of claim to have owned the hearse that carried Elvis Presley, because you've got to assume that there's a whole fleet of cars that look identical to that that came from the Memphis area, from s c I, and people probably you know, would say, well, I wonder if this was the one. I wonder if that was the one. But they knew this one and apparently it was number seven fleet from from that specific region, from that specific company, and they again they had uh not a tight hold on it, but they knew which one it was, and and he somehow arranged to get it back, and then this fate befell it. I guess. So if you're on eBay, friends and neighbors and so very close to buying what purports to be Elvis Presley's hearst, be warned to be aware all is not what it seems. Uh this is this is a very strange episode two because I was surprised to find all the detective work that people were doing online to figure out what actually happened to this, because it seems it seems so strange. Right in our modern age, where it's super easy to take a picture of anything and we obsessively document everything, it's strange to remember that this is one of the only periods in human history where that ever happened, uh, the human species, if you look at it as a whole our track record, we're very good at losing stuff, not just cars. We've lost cities, civilizations, civilizations. We are very good at losing things. But but to borrow a phrase from somewhere else. Now more than ever, it is possible to find these lost things. Right, So, if you have any lost vehicle of yesteryear that you'd like us to look into, or any mysterious disappearances, I'll tell you, guys, honestly, we love this stuff. Yeah, let me tell you, I know we we kind of started this podcast off with some non car stuff or sort of like a tan gentally related car stuff, but we got around to the hearse tail and and along the way, when I was reading about Service Corporation UM International, I'll tell you that that place is pretty fascinating. And if we dig into the fleets of vehicles that they own, uh, there might be something there. I mean, who else owns thousands of hearses and thousands of limousines and thousands of you know, suburbans that are intended to carry bodies and things like that. It's it's a fascinating industry. And when I was reading about how careful they are about not letting it be known that they're kind of this this huge, huge corporation that's running small town funeral homes, and how careful they are about making sure that the family doesn't know that that it's very seamless in the way that it's it's done. Sure fascinating because people don't want to People don't want to associate the death of a loved one with some big corporation, right. People want to have, for lack of a better word, a mom and pop kind of experience, a personal experience, individual care. Yeah. And if you've seen that show, oh, what's it called Scott six ft under HBO, one of that show is about a family that runs their own family mortuary and our funeral home. And uh, one of the big antagonistic things is this other company that wants to take over them in all but name, and uh, it's it's strange. It's a story that a lot of people don't know, and I would hazard to say a lot of people would be interested in hearing it really is. I mean, I was reading about it and I had to I had to pull myself away from that because it was fascinating, but I had to do more work on the podcast. I had no idea. Yeah, yeah, it's really fascinating. So if you wanted to dig into a service corporation international, at some point, we can with our fleets of vehicles, because I would imagine that upkeep on stuff like that is is very difficult, tough to manage all that, and when do you decide to decide when to pull stuff out of rotation? Right, because if you think about it, the service requirements for a hearse are vastly different, right in comparison to something like an ambulance or trucking fleet. Right, each one of the custom vehicle, each one, Yeah, every hearse is a custom vehicle, and they do short stints of service. You're not going to see a You're not typically going to see a hearse or a funeral procession driving across the country. But it's a it's like a work beat. I mean it's in a in a way, it's a work vehicle. Yeah, lots of time idling. So I wonder if there's a considerations, you know what, there's a lot to talk about. Maybe we should maybe we should let us know what you think as always, well, maybe enjoyed is not the right word. But we hope this story fascinated you as much as it fascinates us, And tell us what you'd like to hear about in an upcoming episode, especially if you have a missing car. You'd like us to try to track down will play detective. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter. You can check out every episode we've ever done at car Stuff Show dot um, and you can email your ideas to us directly. We are car stuff at how stuff work dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics is at how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think, send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. M