To hear Raymond “Bubba” Green tell it, a mysterious stranger was willing to pay him $2 million to steal the body of Elvis Presley, dead not even two weeks at the end of August 1977.

Green was a heroin addict and a school dropout who had spent more time in jail than out during his first 25 years. In his telling of the tale, a stranger he called “Mr. Cincinnati” took him to a seedy motel room, showed him a suitcase with a million bucks in it, then said Green would get double that if he could pull off the brazen heist.

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