by PL

“Good, we’ll start blasting her [Ginger Alden] and change it around so it doesn’t look too good, you know…”

Who said it? Well, Dick Grob said it, of course, referring to a Ginger Alden story/interview for The National Enquirer. And thus began the broad, never-ending attack on Ginger. We are nearly 44 years down the line and fans are still falling for this Grob “conspiracy” nonsense.

In 1979, Grob threw together the skeleton version of 1995’s “The Elvis Conspiracy?” In 1990, Dr. Nichopoulos wrote a “notice of intent to publish” regarding a book tentatively titled, “The Memoirs of George C. Nichopoulos, MD.” In both works, there are suspicions and allegations introduced pertaining to the actions and behavior of Ginger Alden on August 16, 1977, and both authors were obviously pulling from the same bag of tricks. How else to explain two people, who were admittedly friends, coming up with the same charges and scenarios that paint Ginger in such a negative light? Safe bet that Grob’s work informed Nichopoulos’s work, the notion of which I have addressed elsewhere, but let’s take a look at a few more questionable claims by both.

In Grob’s book synopsis/proposal, the author lays out an account of Ginger’s actions that day, and he bases some of the details of this account on the Memphis Police Department investigative report. In that report, the investigators describe their interview with Ginger (and several others) at Graceland later that afternoon. If we compare the MPD interview information with Grob’s allegations we find that the latter does not align with what we see in the report. However, just prior to addressing the MPD report, Grob gets the ball rolling with the opening salvo of his character assassination:

Look at the wording here: “Ginger’s mother was looking for some kind of money to save her home.” As many Elvis fans know, one of the go-to arguments in the anti-Ginger crusade is that Jo Alden, Ginger’s mother, had sued the Presley estate after Elvis’s death because Elvis had promised the Aldens an amount of money to be used for paying off the mortgage on the Alden home. Without going into the details of the case, the lawsuit was based on the promise Elvis made, and it was a legitimate claim. The legal effort was not to screw the estate out of a million dollars, it was to receive the amount of money (less than $40k) that Elvis had promised, and that Jo Alden had relied upon. The reliance is the key. Ultimately the Aldens lost the case after an appeal by the estate, but only because of the timing of the reliance. And the estate couldn’t have been too upset about the situation, since Vernon gave the Aldens two checks for the pool and landscaping work on August 25, 1977. The suit was file in February 1978.

Anyway, the wording by Grob is intended to suggest that the Alden family was trying to scam the estate out of some money, since “looking for some kind of money” is an extremely negative and judgmental way to describe what the Aldens were actually doing. There is a huge difference between making something right via the legal system and “looking for some kind of money.” Unfortunately, this slanted view by Grob later poisoned the Elvis community against Ginger and her family.

Quick question: Any Elvis fans ever scream and cry over the lawsuit Joe Esposito and Dr. Nichopoulos filed against Elvis over the racquetball court business venture? No, because there are two standards; one applies to Ginger, the other applies to everyone else.

Next, we have this:

Consider the following:

Grob in this passage quotes the MPD report, as the quotation marks clearly indicate. However, there is no such quote in the MPD report.

In the MPD report, Ginger states that she was awakened by Elvis, and at that time he told her he was going to the bathroom to read. In Grob’s account, he writes that Ginger was “fast asleep” when Elvis took his book and headed to the bathroom. This is not what Ginger said in the MPD report.

In the passage above, Grob writes that “according again to that same police report” Ginger woke up once and saw that Elvis was not in bed, and she then went back to sleep (Grob’s negative phrasing is, “paid no attention to it”). Grob then says, again, according to the MPD report, that Ginger woke up a second time, and then a third time, and then woke up a fourth time when she heard a “loud noise.” According to Grob, it was at this time, at the fourth wake-up, that she checked on Elvis. In the MPD report, however, Ginger told the investigator that Elvis woke her up and told her he was going into the bathroom to read; she woke up again later and saw that Elvis was not in bed, and then woke up again later at which time she went to the bathroom to check on Elvis.

Remember, Grob said he is quoting the MPD report, and yet he has Ginger waking up four times, when in fact she describes waking up only three times: when Elvis told her he was going to the bathroom, a second time, and then a third time when she checked on him. Why did Grob add another wake-up? I think we know.

Grob writes that according to the MPD report Ginger awoke the fourth time (by his count) due to a loud noise, and because of this noise she decided to investigate. However, there is nothing about a “loud noise” in the MPD report. It is interesting that Grob would concoct this “loud noise” story and initially attribute it to Ginger, and yet years later he attributed the “loud noise” story to one of the maids (none of whom he interviewed). Why would he shift the “loud noise” claim to someone else? I think we know.

And, nowhere in the MPD report does Ginger say she found Elvis “over on the floor.” She says she found him “slumped over” on the floor of the bathroom.

In this passage, from a later section of the synopsis, Grob states that Ginger discovered Elvis’s body at 11:30am, at which time she called James Kirk of The National Enquirer. But Kirk himself says this call was placed to him at 1:30pm.

1977: Kirk says a female called reached him at 1:30pm. He thought the caller was Ginger.

1979: Grob says that Kirk told him he received this call at 11:30am.

Why did Grob move this alleged call two hours back?

This is all a flat-out lie. An unbiased and disinterested observer, paramedic Ulysses Jones, stated without reservation or doubt that Ginger was not showered, was not “fresh,” her hair was not “made up,” and she was dressed in the clothing she had obviously slept in.

Pay attention to the wording Grob uses here: “dressed,” “fresh,” “showered,” “made up her hair,” “put on her make up.”

Note that Grob’s hit job has now dragged into the mix Joe Esposito, Al Strada, and Charlie Hodge. Grob has also brought in James Kirk. However, none of the claims Grob attributes to these four people is true as they pertain to Ginger Alden. And by citing three alleged supporters of his claim (Joe, Al, and Charlie), one can draw a negative inference that there is a reason Grob doesn’t cite anyone else. Omitting opposing views is part and parcel of the hit job.

This is false. Grob spoke to none of the household staff. To a casual observer, Grob has now brought six people into his efforts to damage Ginger’s character and integrity. If one were to read only Grob’s assertions here, a reasonable (though faulty) conclusion is that at least six people have signed on to Grob’s account and his allegations against Ginger.

Let’s switch gears here and look at the way Grob’s charges later infected the narrative as presented by Dr. Nichopoulos (1990). Up to this point, Grob’s claims were not published anywhere, so it’s a safe bet that Grob provided these bits and pieces to Nichopoulos for his proposed book.

From “The Memoir of George C. Nichopoulos, MD,” intent to publish:

In this passage written by Dr. Nichopoulos, supposedly 10+ years after Grob’s synopsis, we see that Nichopoulos alleges that Ginger was “unmoved” by the sight of her fiancée unconscious on the floor. (Note that he acknowledges she was his fiancée.) He then goes on to say that Ginger took time to dress, fix her hair, and apply a fresh layer of make-up, and that she was concerned about her appearance. Now, there were no eyewitnesses during this timeframe in Elvis’s upstairs suite, so what is Nichopoulos’s evidence for these claims? Remember the terms Grob used?

Grob used these terms: “dressed,” “fresh,” “showered,” “made up her hair,” “put on her make up.”

What terms does Nichopoulos use?

“Dress,” “fix her hair,” “fresh layer of make-up.”

Identical? No. But it’s obvious where Nichopoulos came up with this story. So now we have seven people poisoned with this illogical Grob nonsense.

And the word “apparently”? She was “apparently” unmoved…? Apparently…to whom…?

(We won’t even mention the other mistakes in this paragraph, nor the claim that Joe waited at least 30 minutes to call an ambulance.)

And finally:

Here, Nichopoulos jumps on the “gold digger” bandwagon and states, as fact, that Ginger was, “known to have another love interest,” and that she stayed with Elvis, “in order to secure her future and that of her family.” Hmmm, where could Nichopoulos have heard this garbage before?

A few years after Nichopoulos penned the outline of his memoir, Grob published the first of his thick piles of paper, “The Elvis Conspiracy?” About fifteen years later, Nichopoulos published his memoir. While neither work was available to the public prior to 1995, it is clear that the groundwork for the hit job against Ginger Alden was in place early (going back to 1977), and for many years, and gained steady traction as more of these folks knowingly passed along Grob’s nonsensical and defamatory claims. As noted earlier, the seven people named above were dragged (recruited?) into the hit job effort, and then in Nichopoulos’s 2009 book he dragged in his own son, Dean, as well (more on this later). Add to this number the people who blindly regurgitate Grob’s silly conspiracy and you end up with something insidious and damaging, and one of the greatest blemishes on the Elvis fan community, and thus on Elvis himself.

Circling back…

Dick Grob said:

“Good, we’ll start blasting her [Ginger Alden] and change it around so it doesn’t look too good, you know…”

“We’ll start blasting her.“

“Change it around.”

“So it doesn’t look too good.“

FACT: Grob admitted that he would change (falsify) information to make Ginger Alden look bad.