This day in WND history: Elvis has left the cemetery?

Elvis has left the cemetery?

Aug. 15, 2002: An FBI informant involved in a plot to steal Elvis Presley’s body shortly after the rock idol died claimed the Presley family staged the grave-robbing to persuade Memphis officials to move him from the public cemetery to Graceland, now a $15 million-a-year tourist attraction, a veteran FBI agent told WND.

The late Vernon Presley, “the King’s” father and executor of his estate at the time, wanted his son buried on the mansion grounds, but it was in an area not zoned for burials.

So three weeks after Elvis died of a heart attack, he had lawyers for the Presley estate petition the Memphis Shelby County Board of Adjustment for a zoning variance. They cited what they called an attempted theft of Presley’s body several days earlier and the expense of round-the-clock security.

Three men were arrested Aug. 29, 1977, near the Forest Hill Cemetery