Copyright © 2009 Brett Wallach
All rights reserved, Wild Child Publishing.
"Mr. Allman, I am about to tell you the most remarkable tale that you've ever heard. But every word of it is true." I nodded as a sign for him to get on with it and smirked with Philadelphia cynicism. "In late 1934, Gladys Presley went to see her family physician in Tupelo, Mississippi for a routine prenatal checkup. Her doctor then told her for the first time that she was to give birth to twins in early January."
"Elvis and his stillborn brother, Jesse Garon?"
He looked at me with admiration. "Very good, Mr. Allman. Not everyone knows about Jesse Garon Presley. Anyway, as I am sure you also know, Vernon and Gladys Presley were, to say the least, very poor, and the country still struggled in the midst of The Great Depression." I nodded again. "When Gladys Presley learned she was due to have twins, it seems that she panicked. The Presleys could barely afford one more mouth to feed, let alone two. She cried to her young physician, a Dr. Milton Josephs and told him of their financial predicament. The good doctor was neither displeased nor surprised at her reaction. He informed Mrs. Presley that the black market for white babies remained strong despite the hard economic times...
"When Mrs. Presley betrayed her disgust with the very notion, Dr. Josephs commiserated with her, suggesting that it might just be better for the Presleys to have one child, with a nice nest egg to boot, than attempt raising two children born into poverty. Dr. J insisted that only the two of them would ever know about it. He'd contrive a foolproof story of a stillborn birth, and that would be that.
"Dr. Josephs had done his legwork even before Gladys came into his office that day. He informed Mrs. Presley that a trust fund of five thousand dollars would be set aside for the baby she chose to keep. Mrs. Presley expressed concern about her other baby's future, but the doctor assured her that a well-off, educated and very nice couple from Philadelphia would be raising the child."
My jaw had already hit the battered bar. "So Jesse Garon Presley didn't die on January 8th, 1935?"
"No, Mr. Allman. And we strongly believe that he is still alive, probably still in the Philadelphia area."