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I have observed Elvis in the media for over 50 years. I have observed Bob Joyce videos for the last six months and have come to my own opinion. His likeness to Elvis is bizarre. It is difficult to say what an elderly Elvis would look like. Depending on heredity, some men stay the same and some change dramatically. I wish Joyce would shave off his beard, so I can see the true contour of his chin. He is the right height. His lip pulls up in the back when he smiles (I don't mean the famous sneer.) He has the chicken pox scar over the left eyebrow. (There have been multiple photo overlays, but such can be deceptive.) Elvis wore elevator shoes and make up and hair pieces in later life. He had several lifts, eye, face; and a nose job. You should know how the body changes with advanced age. The voice raises, because the muscles over the laranyx thin. The lips thin due to loss of colligen. The mouth loses its verticality and becomes lateral. Facial bones shrink and a forty-year study proved jaws can and often do shrink. Eye orbits enlarge. Ear lobes grow longer. It is said one should look at the neck and the skin of the chest when judging true age. People complain Joyce's nose is not long and straight enough but is shorter and juts out from under the eyes. But if you wear glasses for decades your nose will likely (but not always) change in response to the irritating weight of the glasses (the end of the nose will grow bigger with age, but more likely loss of nose height resulting from plastic surgery to narrow eyes — spaced eyes, a distinguishing Elvis feature). We can see lateral marks to the sides of Joyce's nose because of this (more likely ruptured nasal membranes from years of singing). The nose gets larger with age and thickens beyond the glasses.Also, Elvis's skin wouldn't have aged that much. Like my grandmother, who had told me in '65 Elvis didn't perform like the Beatles because he felt forced to hide in a walled house in Memphis and who advised staying out of the sun like Mae West who lived behind curtains to maintain a youthful look, Elvis had the habit of staying out of the sun, both because of his lengthy all-night Vegas contracts and to avoid the throngs of fans and paparazzi. He often looked pale.I don't know why we expect Elvis to look so old at 84. William Shatner, 87, still jokes around with the kids; and, though fat, stays in good shape showing horses. Tom Jones and Englebert Humperdink, both Vegas contemporaries of Elvis still perform. I saw Smokey Robinson, just five years Elvis's junior, perform a mock face off with late-night performer James Corden (who has a very young audience) just the other night. Ringo, also just five years Elvis's junior, only last month (July 2019) played drums backing Paul; and he was sickly as a child. Elvis never smoked or drank or took drugs, save those prescribed. He took a lot of vitamins, exercised a lot, and stayed out of the sun. Ginger Alden said she only found vitamin bottles at the house and on the day he allegedly died he rode an exercise bike and played racketball. Now Elvis's suspicious medical record said he was — at the last — almost 350 pounds and had an impacted bowel; while his autopsy listed his weight at 170 lbs.The EEP site states career-long friend and road manager Joe Esposito reported Elvis had some plastic surgery done to slightly alter his look, for otherwise he would never have any peace. But, as the site also says, a half-brother could get away with filling in for Elvis, why then would this be necessary? (the idea of a similar looking brother seems to have fallen out of favor).The original notion was that Elvis apparently had half-brothers. And his still born twin, actually lived, some claim. I did witness one performance which was clearly not Elvis, too Nashville. You'll need to challenge those claims for documentation. Point is Joyce could be one of those brothers. Yet, while the alleged brothers might have helped with the burden of filming and perhaps aided in final year concert engagements when Elvis had tired of the routine and was struggling with glaucoma, and the weight that comes with age (one doctor said he also showed symptoms of TBI) — such alleged brothers would not have had his experienced voice (a lot of people play guitar and piano). I do know Elvis had hand-picked and personally mentored body doubles in Vegas and one of those had even agreed to plastic surgery (AP report, not scandal sheet). In the latter year scenario, I suggest it was one of them and not an alleged brother who might have filled in for an already retired super star (He created the Elvis personnae. He had the right to kill it off. The facts around his death are highly suspect and there is a good ol' boy tradition of keeping things to one's inner circle of family and friends. Though someone attempted to wrangle her out-of-frame, during an Oprah interview in 2006 Priscilla slipped up and referred to Elvis as still alive. Lisa said in a 2012 Swedish chat show interview Elvis had showed her how to manage the corporation; which is, of course, impossible if he died in 1977.)Country singer Jennie C. Riley told her audience back in 2002 Elvis was alive and she had nothing to lose by reporting it. She said many in the entertainment industry knew it, because he visited them.A photo appeared on the Internet posted by an Italian woman who appears to have caught Elvis visiting Priscilla in Italy, for Priscilla had subsequently married an Italian (a commenter says it was only a relationship of several years, which produced one son). Elvis appears to be in his 50's and bearded, and still looked like we remember him. Whether true or not, I maintain this will serve as a transition photo. Thirty more years would have taken their toll. (The seemingly bottomless EEP site has debunked this photo.)He traveled first under the name of John Burroughs and in later years Jessie Garin until there was a dna match.It is possible he had two sons in his fifties. One might be the impersonator named Matt in Arkansas. Another might be Michel Skutnik in France who has uploaded likely 500 videos to YouTube. Both these men talk like they work for Presley Enterprises. Matt has direct access to Joyce's mentoring; and even his high collar shirts (Elvis thought his neck was too long.). Skutnick has incredible access to intellectual property and Elvis's personal artifacts. Skutnik has the wide spread, drooping eyes characteristic of Elvis. Matt ressembles Elvis more in adoration than he does in looks. He seems smaller than Joyce, as Lisa Marie is small. Who knows who the EEP site is! He intends for the time being to keep it a secret. But he claims Elvis, himself, reviews the site. (This paragraph is my own wild speculation.)People say Joyce is too corny, not as sophisticated as we have come to know Elvis through his cautious film and stage presentations. But people outside of his own familiars who had the chance to get to know him always had the same comment: He was just a hillbilly. And he could be childish, as in his short-tempered outbursts and string of obscenities when studio retakes went on for too long; or in his breaking from driving his tour bus to karate around playfully with his young friends; or his brief attempts at brazen sexual references in private tour footage. Another words, he was a normal midwestern good ol' boy; and that's one of the reasons we have always liked him. But, since I grew up in his region and know these type of guys, he always seemed gentler, brighter, and more caring. He never stopped being a mother's boy.When Joyce says he married in 75 that could be possible. But it is more likely he took over the ministry of the real Joyce, in the manner of someone buying a trademark. When we think of Elvis today we think of his 1977 version. But we can look at 1000 photos over the years (and I have) and his appearance varies. Joyce says he was born in 53 — and the real Joyce may well have. I live in the general area of his residence and am familiar with the good old boys of this area and my generation of the same age: Joyce reminds me more of my father. He talks of serving in the army in Germany. His type of preaching is really old fashioned. He calls his parents mama and daddy. He talks of “those little squirts” with the smart phones and claims he doesn't own a cell phone. He speaks anachronisms like putting yourself in the hands of God like Allstate Insurance, going to Colorado where John Denver lives, lamenting wasting his life watching Bonanza and Gunsmoke, etc. And, despite telling a church visitor in a gold lamé jacket he used to own one and move his legs around a lot — now he just moves his shoulders up and down, most troubling of all he refuses to look into the camera and say: I am not now, nor was I ever Elvis Presley. (He once said in an e-mail he has assured people he wasn't Elvis. But that is not the same thing.)And somebody has to explain who the patriarchal, similarly looking guy is going in and out of the front door of Graceland when the gate is closed. Graceland is only a 2.5 hour drive to the Benton, Arkansas church. An hour by helicopter, supposing there is no need to file a flight plan.At a recent private funeral in a synagogue in Memphis for an old radio dj friend of Elvis a woman in attendance used her phone to video record Pastor Bob sitting in the front row and Priscilla passing, putting her hand on his shoulder.It is known Pastor Bob has used his name on releases of Gospel recordings made by Elvis but edited out of his albums. How would he have these, since they would have remained in Elvis's private collection? More importantly, how could he legally get away with it — otherwise.There is a Facebook page called Evidence Elvis is Alive to which I have contributed. As I said, you can scroll your thumb off trying to reach the end, because the site administrator has published twice a day since 2014. This mysterious person has considerable knowledge and access to intellectual property and documents, rivaling Michel Skutnik (who challenges him in this regard). He states definitively Elvis is alive and that Elvis is now posing as an elder Bob Joyce -- and even that Elvis, himself, reads the comments. He claims if Presley Enterprises disapproved they could easily shut his page down, but they haven't; so he must be authorized. Now Skutnik is French, but the site administrator responded to one of my posts at 2:30 a.m., which in France's time zone is well within office hours. I also saw a posted comment in French on the EEP site addressed to the administrator asking him why he expends his energy defending his position when “you told me you had authority to do so.” Interesting.Yes, but why would Presley Enterprises not do so if he is stimulating interest in Elvis? The only counter I can think of is such sites are problematic: They adulterate the memory of the actual artist. Now, at the time of Elvis's alleged death there were 170 licensed impersonators. There are now probably 250,000. The difference between the two is one threatens to distort truth, while the other is merely a tribute.With Bob Joyce obfuscating and Skutnik and that page administrator intending to firmly establish Elvis is alive and producing new material, Presley Enterprises would appear to have a problem. They have that army of impersonators, they don't need the adulteration.Unless, of course, Elvis is indeed actually alive.Update: I am now convinced after watching a year of Joyce's sermons (not easy for a Catholic) and comparing them with video of earlier years that the pastor is actually two doppelganger men, Robert Joyce and Bob Joyce aka Elvis. (I was repeatedly told this before on the EEP site, but didn't buy it. If it was true, I thought, the actual pastor was retired and gone from the scene.) Elvis and his father got good practice finding people who looked, acted, and somewhat sounded like him for security purposes. We are seeing that practice here, that throwing you off the scent, so to speak. Robert's voice doesn't have the mellow tonality of Bob's. Robert has well developed cysts on the sides of his nose, probably from wearing glasses. Bob doesn't so much. Robert's eyes are closer together; his cheeks are different; his teeth weren't split originally, but miraculously now are; and his chin is slightly smaller, so he tends to self-consciously jut it out — just run the video with a magnifier. Robert has a broad good-old-boy countenance (wide-eyed and broad grin), arms stretch out, stands back near pulpit, and preaches from an outline, returning to Scripture — he might scream or cry; while Bob aka Elvis tends to theatricalize the seriousness of his subject, an old story teller improvising, sometimes finishing with a song— again, watch both heads in motion with the magnifier. Both have aging neck and chest skin, but Bob's shows sign of advanced age. People look for the broad drooping eyes and arrow straight nose of the Vegas years, but — in contrast to my simple aging proposal above — EEP alternately says Elvis had plastic surgery. Three reasons: people with broad eyes often wish to narrow them, Elvis was involved in drug enforcement undercover work (Esposito), and he wanted to live a normal life. You narrow the eyes by removing a triangular piece of bone between the eyes and rotating the eye orbits inward. Clearly, this will shorten the nose bridge. It is difficult to distinguish these men, so begin by comparing sermon styles, though the substance is really boiler plate stuff: let the Spirit speak through you. The only agreement other than a broad similarity in look and gestures which seem common place to me, having grown up in the Midwest, is that both men sincerely and deeply love God (probably why I have hung in there for so long).Update: I have not seen the first of the two dopplegangers for a long time. With the help of the lighting enhancement from the white walls of the new church I can see an inverted triangular depression which might have been left over from the facial bi-partitioning surgery. I no longer can accept the distinct difference in look to just aging alone. Lastly, the voice in the sermons is affected, beyond the exaggerated country boy character he often jokingly employs. On the rare occasion he falls out of it you, you can hear the distinct sound of the movie and Vegas Elvis's voice (the only way most of us know anything of him).Lastly, I was watching one of the last interviews of comedian Jerry Lewis, who died in Las Vegas in 2017 at 91. In it was played a video of a later-years performance where Lewis, interacting with the audience, matter-of-factly stated Elvis is alive, then typically finished with a joke “… but I'm dead.”Update: I have read somewhere recently the rumor that Elvis desired to go public in the early Aughts, but couldn't get Presley Enterprises to agree. If there is any truth to this, the corporation would have clearly been concerned about loss of revenue as a consequence of such announcement. Elvis would have agreed and may have initiated the inquiry, concerned about cutting into the monetary value of the legacy he had left his daughter.Update: I noticed for the first time on YouTube a 45 min. music session recently recorded at Pastor Bob's new church in Benton. Normally, only sermons are uploaded or else just an individual song performance. As I listened to the pastor run through nearly 15 religious songs I began noticing how similar his voice, comments, and laughter were to outtakes of Elvis's recording sessions of the early 70s, where he ran through multiple songs and multiple takes to achieve selected masters for inclusion in an album.Update: Joyce has been good at producing sermons every Sunday and then uploading them onto YouTube (I've watched them every Sunday for at least a year.) The last two Sundays he also uploaded 45-min. Christian. music sessions which previously had been local. I looked forward (research-wise) to the same this last Sunday, July 12, 2020, but neither a sermon nor music session was uploaded. It seemed strange. I checked my app for a vacation announcement. Then I discovered Elvis's grandson had been found dead from suicide that morning at his mother's mansion in California and Lisa was reported as inconsolable.Joyce returned the following Saturday for a quickly cobbled together make up sermon and then did a regular one the following day. I believe he did another the following Sunday and then a week later he was gone again. Why? It seems Lisa was headed back to family court to endure a heated custody dispute. Perhaps her father (if Joyce is he) thought she needed support.I just saw a more extended digital video zoom of a previous posting of Joyce going in and out of the front door of Graceland. I've seen him enough times over the last year and a half to recognize him even from a distance.He was gone on Aug. 2. His app announces him gone Aug. 9 and 16, 2020, on account of coronavirus quarantine (not vacation) That's contrary to Bob's attitude about the virus, which was reflected in his congregation; but perhaps the Arkansas governor has ordered churches closed (I don't know.) If he is Elvis, Lisa likely would have pressured him to comply given her recent loss.But, again, if he is Elvis he'd alternately be with Lisa providing her support during the custody litigation.Notice specific Sundays are listed (the anticipated length of the litigation, perhaps). The termination of a virus quarantine would be indefinite. And he's already beyond the 14 days of a normal quarantine for contraction.The worse case scenario is Bob or Elvis may have actually become sick with the virus, given his disregard for wearing masks and social distancing.We wish him well, whoever he may be.Update: Pastor Bob returned to preaching as of a YouTube post dated September 7, 2020. He spoke on how we should handle death — with confidence in Jesus.Update: I've just seen Humperdinck on a very recent YouTube post. He is 16 months the junior of Elvis. He used to perform in Vegas the same time as Elvis, and they would pose together for news photos. He had well set, slightly spaced, eyes; but Elvis had eyes more like those sought by early 20th century directors for female leads. Perhaps that made Elvis self-conscious. A studio musician once remarked Elvis was the prettiest man he ever saw. I noticed Humperdinck's eyes are now close set with age. He dyes his hair and his face looks more weathered than wrinkled. His neck sags, but unlike Elvis he may not have had any cosmetic work done on it. He speaks of how careful he is with his own health. His tone is upbeat when he expresses his interest in new projects. Similarly, I saw Jerry Lee Lewis just the other day at his 85th birthday party. While he has had poor health, unlike Elvis drinking, smoking, and taking drugs extensively throughout his life;he still looks what I call wrangly. He has a bright expression and probably could sit down at the piano and still play a mean boogie woogie. I recall how angry he was at one performance when Kid Rock jumped up on his custom-made grand piano during a performance. Hopping off his piano bench when the last song ended, he stood authoritatively at the keyboard; then took a deep breath, leaned forward and cursed at him. Tom Jones made a quarantined birthday greeting video for Jerry Lee and while only five years younger than Elvis could easily pass for sixty (that's the new forty, kids). Willie Nelson was there, two years older than Elvis. He's a sun-withered 5'6″, but playing as good as ever, surrounded by male musicians clearly in their twenties.Update:. Julie Andrews was on Colbert tonight (Oct. 29) swapping limericks with him, as she pushed her latest book. She is only eight months younger than Elvis.Dick Van Dyke is recording personalized videos for people, not looking all that much different (still easily recognizable) at 94Here, next, is a photo taken in New York City, 2018, of Yoko Ono, age 87, who just a few days ago appeared at a parole hearing for the person who killed her husband.Here is William Shatner, 89 :Here is Jane Fonda 83, whether you agree or disagree with her politics she looks pretty good for that age.This is Engelbert Humperdinck, 84, who is still performing and occasionally uploads a YouTube video.Here is P.J. Proby, 82, Elvis look-alike and rival, finished touring in 2019. His eyes were spaced like Elvis's, so you can check how aging has effected them. His chin is slightly longer. He was born in Texas, but seems to have performed more in the U.K.Here is Bob Joyce at his new church building in Benton, Arkansas.Facial bi-partitioning diagram. When Joyce moved to the new church with its white walls (wiring during renovation done by Joyce — Elvis had trained to be an electrician) a triangular depression in his forward became visible in the harsher light, remedied with make-up foundation, and changes in lighting and camera.Here is impersonator Johnny Harra. His tonality, expressions, and gestures are eerily similar to Elvis. In the last few months a YouTube poster using the expression preacher man Bob Joyce has repeatedly stated that Harra was Elvis. I associate that expression with Bob Joyce's son Matt Joyce. He always refers to his father as preacher man. When viewing this video look at his nose and try to determine if it looks plastine (synthetic), because I believe that Elvis had already had his surgery by this time. Study the film, This is Elvis, he took part in long ago to determine how far the surgery might go back. Or was there cosmetics supplied even then?This is a 1978 audio recording of an interview of impersonator Johnny Harra. He exhibits characteristic psychological rambling, religious devotion, and superstition. He makes a brief reference to a brother preaching in Arkansas, but he cuts himself off before he completes the name of the state. He begins performing the day after Elvis dies.If Elvis and his father would pay for other people's images to pass for Elvis to take some of the heat off of him, how simple would it have been to go beyond that and pay for somebody's identity and past photos in order that Elvis could now be them, in turn. The proposal would be, You let me be you, sign an NDA, stay out of the media; and I will pay you and your family a whole big pile of money.Below is one of the earliest videos on YouTube of Bob Joyce. It's around the same time as the death of Johnny Harra, an Elvis impersonator who was famous for starring in a film about his death, having been approved by the Presley family. I wonder if Presley assumed the less strenuous Harrah personnae because the Elvis one was just expertise in performance and not really creative. That's years of very hard work, per the demands of the Colonel. With the Harrah persona assumed Elvis would just enjoy performing the love ballads with less effort and less pressure from fans. When he decided it was time to preach, to serve God in a more explicit way and as reciprocation for the adoration he had received, he once again killed off of a persona, stripped off the cosmetic prosthetics, and became or more likely resumed “the brother who preaches in Arkansas”. Harra hid for 25 years (the never-really-dead, raised-in-a-different-home twin Jessie years terminated by a DNA match?) and then reappeared on the stage. He “died” and then, with some plastic surgery (as agreed to do a body double back in his Vegas years), voila, Bob Joyce.Personal Note: Having seen some of the last performances of Johnny Harra I cannot see any possible transition between Harra and Joyce, unless isolating the last years of Harra when he appeared on stage so grossly overweight he could hardly walk the Harra person is as a cosmetic personnae, such as the fictional Jiminy Glick of Martin Short in some kind of latex rubber suit. That's how great the difference is between the last years of Elvis and the first years of Harra and that final performance of Harra before he died. Realistic latex costuming technology began in the 80s and has been continually perfected. While the comedian Short took it to an intended comic extreme, his use of a more sophisticated costume began in 2003 and improvements have likely been made since then. Harra's enlarged head and extreme obesity in his final performances is suspicious to me. I propose it here because of my suspicion and that other people are saying what doesn't seem possible. To them I would say prove it; because he, otherwise, would have had to do some really hard time at a really good health spa; as well as additional plastic surgery, to appear subsequently as Pastor Joyce. (Not simply a plastine nose enhancement and a lot of makeup foundation, and singing and talking a bit off; since skilled singers have considerable control over their vocal sound.)Here is a video of Bob and his son, Matt (notice his spaced eyes). Vernon Presley's favorite Elvis song was American Trilogy. This impromptu performance was later recreated on the front lawn of Graceland.Here's another video I've seen.

Cataloochee Historic District: (but the main access roads, Hwy. 284 and Cove Creek Road, are closed until May 20, 2020 for road rehab and reconstruction) In this beautiful valley you’ll see old homesteads, a school, churches and barns that were here when the park opened in the early 1930s. These buildings have been preserved as they were in the early 20th century and thus most have a more “modern” look than the log cabins in some of the other historic districts. Among the structures in Cataloochee are the Hannah Cabin in Little Cataloochee, probably built in the 1850s; the Cook Cabin in Little Cataloochee, also built in the 1850s but dismantled in the 1970s after being vandalized and restored to its original site in 1999; the Palmer House in Big Cataloochee (1869) -- originally as a log cabin -- a framed addition and weatherboarding were added later, and the house now contains a small self-guided museum in what was once a room used as a post office; the Palmer Chapel in Big Cataloochee (1898); the Caldwell House in Big Cataloochee, built 1898-1903 by Hiram Caldwell, with a barn adjacent to the house that dates from 1923; the Steve Woody House in Big Cataloochee (1880) was originally built of logs, with paneling and extra rooms added later; and the Little Cataloochee Baptist Church (1889). Surrounded by 6000-foot peaks, the Cataloochee Valley was one of the largest settlements in what is now the Smokies. Some 1,200 people lived here before the coming of the park. In Cataloochee you also are likely to see elk, deer, wild turkeys and possibly black bears. There is a horse camp and popular developed campground here, along with many good areas to picnic.Cades Cove Historic District: Cades Cove on the Tennessee side of the park near Townsend is the most visited part of the park (other than the main road through the park). An 11-mile, one-way loop road circles Cades Cove. You’ll pass a number of preserved old houses, barns, churches and a working gristmill. Among these are the John Oliver Cabin, the oldest building left in the cove, constructed around 1822-1823 by the cove's first permanent European settlers; the Primitive Baptist Church (1887); the Cades Cove Methodist Church, constructed in 1902; Cades Cove Missionary Baptist Church, (1915-16); the Elijah Oliver Place (1866) and nearby Meyers Barn; the John Cable Grist Mill (1868); the Becky Cable House (1879), adjacent to the Cable Mill; the Henry Whitehead Cabin, (1895-96); the Dan Lawson Place (1840s); the Tipton Place (1880s). The paneling on the house was a later addition. Along with the cabin, the homestead includes a carriage house, a smokehouse, a woodshed and a double-cantilever barn; and the Carter Shields Log Cabin (1880s). Although the loop is relatively short, allow at least two to three hours to tour Cades Cove, longer if you walk some of the area’s trails. Traffic is heavy during the tourist season in summer and fall and on weekends year-round. A visitor center (open daily) and restrooms near the Cable Mill are located about half way around the loop road.Elkmont Historic District: Originally a small logging community, Elkmont, on the Tennessee side of the park, eventually became a summer cottage colony and hunting and fishing club, with its own clubhouse, the Appalachian Club, for wealthy families from Knoxville. There was a passenger and logging railroad from Gatlinburg to Elkmont. A 26-room hotel called Wonderland Club Hotel was built here, in 1911. In poor repair and partly burned in a fire, it finally ceased operation in 1992, and in 2006 it was dismantled by the National Park Service. All that remains now are a rock staircase and part of a fireplace.With the coming of the national park in the 1930s, the Elkmont community became part of the park, although long-term leases were granted to owners. A 60-acre section of Elkmont was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. As the leases expired in the late 20th century, a debate within the National Park Service developed as to what would be done with the more than 70 old cottages and other buildings in the historic district – raze them and let the area return to its natural state or restore them as part of the history of the park.A compromise was reached whereby 17 cottages and the Appalachian Club would be restored and preserved, while the remainder of the buildings would be torn down. The newly restored Appalachian Clubhouse, near Elkmont campground, reopened in 2011. The 3,000 square feet building is avail-able April to mid-November for public rental for group meetings, weddings and family reunions. Several cottages, including the Spence Cabin on Little River, already have been restored, and renovation of others is underway. Restoration is expected to be completed by 2025, subject to funding availability.Mountain Farm Museum Historic District: Located adjacent to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center at the entrance to the park near Cherokee, the Mountain Farm Museum is a mountain farmstead with nine historic buildings re-assembled and recreated from original buildings in the Smokies. It is the best example of a late 19th/early 20th century mountain farm in the region. Among the buildings are the John Davis Cabin, a chestnut log house that dates from around 1900, the Messer apple house with its rock base, two corncribs, springhouse, hog pen, sorghum mill and the Enloe Barn, a large barn with some 16,000 hand-split roof shingles that was originally built around 1880 just a few hundred yards from where it now stands. You can do a self-guided tour (tour booklet and map $1 at adjacent visitor center), and rangers are available to put on demonstrations and answer questions. The museum is at the start of the Oconaluftee Trail that follows the Oconaluftee River into Cherokee. Nearby is the 1886 Mingus Mill, a turbine-driven gristmill that was restored by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1937 and still operates today.Le Conte Lodge (Mailing address: 250 Apple Valley Rd., Sevierville, TN 37862; 865-429-5704; www.lecontelodge.com, ; open late March to late November.) The only accommodations in the park (other than camping) are at Le Conte Lodge, a hike-in lodge at 6,360 feet on the Tennessee side. Le Conte, built in 1926, has seven rustic wood cabins, plus three multi-room lodges. Rooms have no running water or bathrooms. You do your business in shared privies with flush toilets, but there are no showers. Kerosene lamps provide the light. Hot water is available from a spigot near the dining room. Bring your own towel and washcloth. Bed sheets are provided.The appeal here obviously is not luxury but the extraordinary setting and the views, although be advised that at this elevation clouds and fog some-times obscure the scenery. It can be chilly here, even in summer, and some snow in spring and fall is to be expected. You sleep under wool blankets, and the cabins have propane heaters. The temperature at the lodge has only twice reached 80 degrees F., in the summer heat wave of 2012. Five hiking trails lead to the lodge. They range in length from 5 to 8 miles one-way. The short-est but steepest trail is 5-mile Alum Cave, which a hiker in good condition can do in about four hours. Start early enough to reach the lodge by 6 pm, dinnertime.Supplies for the lodge are brought up three times a week on the 6.5-mile Trillium Gap Trail by llama pack train. This trail, while longer than some, is considered the easiest hike, as it is less steep.Rates in the cabins are $151.50 per night per person (children 4-12 $87.50), including a hearty breakfast and dinner, plus staff tips and 9.75% Tennessee tax. There is also a two-bedroom lodge, actually more like a dormitory, for up to 10 ($1,020 a night for 10 persons) and a three-bedroom lodge for up to 13 ($1,326 for 13 persons). Breakfast and dinner meals for those in the lodges is an extra $49.50 per person.Meals are served family-style, and wine is available (for those 21 and over) for $12 per person per night. Vegetarian meals are offered, with advance notice. A sack lunch, available even if you are not staying at the lodge, costs $12. Breakfast and dinner are provided only for overnight guests.Demand for accommodations here exceeds supply. Reservations for the following year open October 1, and by Christmas most of the rooms are booked. There is a wait list, and a lottery system applies for heavily requested dates.Backcountry Hiking: Because there are so many hiking trails in the Smokies, covering nearly 900 miles, and nearly every hiker has a favorite, here’s just a representative sample of some of the best trails:Alum Cave Trail is a 4.4-mile roundtrip hike (moderate) that begins at a parking lot on the Tennessee side of Newfound Gap Road about 9 miles from Sugarlands and ends at a large concave bluff. It’s called a cave, but it’s really not one. In the mid-1800s, Epsom Salts were mined here, as was saltpeter used to make gunpowder. Alum Cave is one of the routes to Le Conte Lodge.Andrews Bald Trail is a moderate 3.5-mile roundtrip hike starting at the parking lot of Clingmans Dome. At the grassy meadow or bald, you’ll enjoy spectacular views of the mountains. It’s also a great area to see rhododendron and flame azalea in bloom in the late spring and early summer.Deep Creek Loop is a moderate 4.6-mile roundtrip hike near Bryson City. You’ll see waterfalls and, in spring and early summer, a large variety of wildflowers including trilliums, Jack-in-the-pulpit, crest dwarf iris and flame azalea.Gregory Ridge Trail is a strenuous 11.3-mile hike from Cades Cove with an elevation gain of more than 3,000 feet. Gregory Bald is world-famous for its flame azaleas, usually in bloom here in great variety, color and profusion in mid-June. The 10-acre grassy bald is one of only two balds maintained by the Park Service. From the bald are great views of Cades Cove and Fontana Lake.

I am, with my own permission (since I wrote it) reproducing an article I wrote for my true-crime column in Mystery Readers Journal, which was later reprinted in my book Just the Facts - True Tales of Cops & Criminals:Final AppealMysteries South of the Mason-Dixon LineCatholic theology, the theology with which I’m most familiar after eight years with Franciscan nuns and four with the Jesuit priests, holds that a genuine miracle is an extraordinary event, perceptible to the physical senses, of manifestly supernatural origin. When a terminal cancer patient bathes in the waters of Lourdes and experiences a complete cure, it’s a miracle. When a cancer patient, undergoing surgery, chemotherapy, or some other standard medical regimen, later experiences a full and complete recovery, however remarkable that recovery may be, and however fervently the patient and others may have prayed for it, it’s not a miracle, because the return to health is not attributable solely to divine intervention.Church investigations into assertions of miraculous events are long, drawn-out affairs, usually taking years. And even then, the Church stops short of declaring absolutely that a miracle has occurred. It merely says that an apparent miracle is “worthy of belief.”The vast majority of potential miracles investigated by the Church don’t even get that carefully worded semi-endorsement, but are positively declared to be non-miraculous.On the other hand, the Church never says that God has nothing to do with those non-miraculous events. That an extraordinary event turns out to have had natural, rather than supernatural, origins doesn’t mean that the Almighty didn’t take a hand in things. Consider the case of Will Purvis, who, in 1893, was a 21-year-old farmer in Marion County, Mississippi.The Ku Klux Klan, which arose during the post-Civil War era ostensibly to curb Northern injustices during the years of occupation—and which almost immediately degraded into an organization of racial terrorists—had, with Reconstruction’s end, gone into a period of decline. It would not recover until well into the 20th century, when the publication of Thomas Dixon’s novel The Clansman (Doubleday, 1905), and the release of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film version, Birth of a Nation (Epoch Producing, 1915), would spark a regeneration.In the meantime, the Southern tradition of racial terrorism was carried on by a similar group known as the White Caps, who, like the Klan, rode out at night, dressed in flowing white sheets and masks, to intimidate blacks, poor whites, and anyone else they considered deviant.One such “deviant” was a black farm worker who had had the audacity to resign from the employ of a Marion County widow in order to accept a better-paying job with a farmer named Will Buckley. Some White Caps, taking offense at the idea of a black working man’s efforts to better himself, visited Buckley’s property, captured his new employee, and horsewhipped him. Buckley was not a man to be intimidated, and, enraged at his worker’s treatment, took the case to law. His testimony resulted in Grand Jury indictments of three White Cap leaders. This was certain to arouse the ire of the organization. According to some accounts, Will Buckley was a member of the group himself, which would have made his testimony not merely defiant, but, in the eyes of the masked night riders, traitorous. In either case, retribution would be swift and merciless.Immediately after the Grand Jury hearing, Buckley, in the company of his brother Jim and the black farm worker, rode home. As they crossed a small stream, they were fired upon by two ambushers hiding in some nearby brush. Will Buckley fell dead. His brother and employee managed to escape unharmedJim Buckley was absolutely certain that one of the murderers was Will Purvis. Within hours, local law officers, acting upon the sworn testimony of Jim Buckley, arrested Purvis for the crime. The identification was given credence by the widely-held belief that Purvis was a White Cap.At his trial, Purvis insisted that he was at home with his family at the time of the murder. Numerous friends and relatives supported this alibi. It was also shown that Purvis’s shotgun had not been fired, and, therefore, couldn’t have been the weapon used in the murder. But Jim Buckley’s testimony couldn’t be shaken, and in the end, he’s the one the jury believed. Purvis was convicted and sentenced to die.While his conviction was being appealed, Purvis drew solace from the regular visits of Reverend J. G. Sibley of the Columbia Methodist Church, who had become his spiritual advisor during his confinement. Sibley had become convinced that Purvis’s conviction was a miscarriage of justice. Every Wednesday he conducted prayer services at his church devoted solely to gaining a reprieve for Purvis. Hundreds of local residents had, like Sibley, come to believe in Purvis’s innocence and became regular attendees of those Wednesday night services.Despite the prayers, Purvis’s appeals were unsuccessful and, on February 7, 1894, he was led to a scaffold erected in Columbia’s courthouse square for the execution of sentence. Five thousand people, the vast majority of them unsympathetic, had gathered in the square to watch his execution. Public executions took on a circus atmosphere in those days. Picnic lunches, children’s games, peddlers and food vendors, and spontaneous revival meetings were all part of the picture.Purvis looked out at the crowd, hoping to see a relative or friend. “I can’t hardly see a friendly face,” he told his executioner.Some of the crowd began to urge the hangman to proceed and get the thing over with. One woman yelled up at Purvis to confess before he died “for the sake of your immortal soul.” In seconds, the woman’s call for an admission from Purvis had become a chant that the whole crowd seemed to take up. “Confess! Confess! Confess!”Just before the hangman placed the noose over his neck, Purvis responded to the crowd’s demand for a final confession. In a voice surprisingly calm he said, “You are taking the life of an innocent man. There are people here who know who did commit the crime and, if they will come forward and confess, I will go free. I didn’t do it. I am innocent.”Most of the crowd remained unsympathetic when no one else came forward to claim responsibility for the murder. Still there were some in the crowd who believed in Purvis’s innocence, including Reverend Sibley and his congregation. On the eve of the execution, Sibley and his parishioners had met by the gallows in the courthouse square and prayed that somehow the execution would be prevented. Now, with only seconds to go before Purvis made the final drop, they prayed more fervently than ever.As the noose was placed over Purvis’s neck, the hood over his head, and his ankles were tied, Sibley stood at the foot of the gallows and prayed in a loud, deep voice, “Almighty God, if it be Thy will, stay the hand of the executioner.”The sheriff, supervising the execution, placed his hand on Purvis’s shoulder in a friendly manner and said, “God help you, Will Purvis.” Then the stay rope holding the trap door closed was chopped loose.The trap door opened.Purvis dropped through.*The noose began to tighten around his neck. In less time than it takes to snap one’s fingers, the rope would reach its full length and the weight of Purvis’s body would cause the knot to break his neck cleanly, killing him instantly.But, incredibly, the rope did not check Purvis’s fall. Instead of cleanly breaking his neck, the knot mysteriously came undone. The rope slipped away, causing a burn but otherwise leaving him unharmed. Purvis landed on the ground, unconscious, but very much alive.As Purvis put it later, “I heard the door creak. My body lunged down and all went black. When I regained consciousness I heard someone say, ‘Well, Bill, we’ve got to do it all over again.’”What had happened? Had the hangman’s noose been incorrectly tied? No, only minutes before the execution, a committee had examined the scaffold, the rope, and the knot and found everything in order.Purvis got to his feet. The hood fell off his head. He turned to one of the deputy sheriffs who had reached him and said, “Let’s get this over with.”As far as a lot of the spectators were concerned, it already was over with. Purvis’s survival was a sign of his innocence and they weren’t about to let him be hanged again. An almost equal number of spectators were just as convinced that Purvis’s survival had been an accident and nothing more.One of the officials leaned over the railing of the gallows and shouted down to a member of the crowd, Dr. W. Ford, to toss the rope back up. Ford, a vocal critic of the White Caps, who had been convinced of Purvis’s guilt, and who had publicly spoken against him during the trial, replied, “I won’t do any such damned thing! That boy’s been hung once too many times now!”As the crowd started to divide into pro-Purvis and anti-Purvis factions, and deputies assisted the hapless young farmer back up the scaffold, Sibley rushed past them to the top of the gallows, and, standing on top of the trap door himself so Purvis couldn’t be positioned on it, addressed the crowd.Sibley was on all occasions a powerful preacher, and this time the Spirit was really on him. Every ounce of his oratorical talent was brought to bear.“People of Marion County,” his voice boomed, “The Hand of Providence has slipped the noose! Heaven has heard our prayers! All those who want to see this boy hang a second time hold up their hands!”Not a single hand was raised.Reverend Sibley continued, “All those who are opposed to hanging Will Purvis a second time hold up your hands!”Every spectator’s hand shot up. One witness later remarked later that it appeared as if each hand had been “magically raised by a universal lever.” The force of Reverend Sibley’s heartfelt eloquence had persuaded the entire crowd.“What are we going to do, Sheriff?” said one of the deputies to his boss.The Sheriff was not an irreligious man, but he had a sworn duty to carry out the court’s sentence, and that sentence was “hung by the neck until dead.” Purvis may have fulfilled the first part of the sentence, but the second part remained uncompleted.To be sure of his legal ground, the Sheriff consulted with a lawyer who’d pushed his way to the front of the crowd. Purvis and Sibley stood to the side, their heads bent in silent prayer. Dr. Ford remained at the foot of the scaffold.The attorney insisted that the letter of the law demanded that Purvis be executed.The Sheriff nodded reluctantly and began to mount the scaffold to supervise a second attempt to carry out the sentence. At this point Dr. Ford, standing at the base of the scaffold turned to the young attorney.“I don’t agree with you,” he said. Then to the Sheriff, he shouted, “If I go up on that scaffold and ask three hundred men to stand by me and prevent the hanging, what are you going to do about it?” As he spoke scores of men gathered around him, ready to back up the doctor’s threat.Slowly they started up the stairs, Dr. Ford in the lead. “I’m ready to do it, too,” he told the Sheriff as he approached.The Sheriff was dutiful man, but standing against the doctor, the preacher, the crowd, and, it appeared, the Creator Himself was more than he was prepared to do for the sake of duty. He walked over to Purvis and cut him loose from the ropes that were binding him.“I ain’t one to go against five thousand folks and God, too,” he said later.Purvis was escorted back to his jail cell until his fate could be decided in a less heated venue. In the meantime an investigating commission attempted to find out exactly what had caused the noose to fail in the first place.One of the staff executioners, Henry Banks, suggested that the problem was with the rope itself. “[It] was too thick,” he said. “It was made of new grass and very springy. After the first man tied the noose he let the free end hang out. It was this way when the tests were made, but when it came to placing this knot around Purvis’s neck it looked untidy. The hangman didn’t want to be accredited with this kind of a job, so he cut the loose end off so that the rope was flush with the noose knot. It looked neater, but when the weight of Purvis’s body was thrown against it, the rope slipped and the knot became untied.”Banks’s published statement was very likely the correct explanation, but the investigating commission didn’t give it an official endorsement, and adjourned without coming to any conclusion. Not that it mattered to the average Marion County resident.They knew exactly why Purvis had been spared.He’d been spared because God had spared him.Over the next two years, a new round of legal briefs were filed on Purvis’s behalf, but the governor refused to commute the sentence, and the State Supreme Court denied two separate appeals. Purvis’s execution was rescheduled for December 12, 1895.Public opinion in Marion County, on the other hand, was nearly 100% in favor of Purvis. The Sheriff, as has already been pointed out, was a dutiful man. But he was also an elected official.A few weeks before his execution, Purvis was moved from the secure facility at the county seat to a small, dilapidated jail structure closer to his home town, where, the sheriff said, “he could be near relatives and friends in the last few weeks of his life.”During Purvis’s stay in the run-down structure, a few of those relatives and friends came to visit. When they left, they took Purvis with them. Reportedly, very little resistance was put up by members of the Sheriff’s Office.Over the next few years, Purvis lived in hiding. In 1897, Jim Buckley, who had been so certain of his identification at Purvis’s trial, recanted. He was no longer sure that he had named the correct man.A new governor, who had been elected partly on a campaign promise that he would commute Purvis’s sentence if he won the office, was as good as his word. Soon after his inauguration, he announced that, if Purvis turned himself in, his sentence would be reduced to life imprisonment. Purvis presented himself to the Sheriff in Columbia as soon as he heard the news.Almost as soon as Purvis began serving his sentence in the state penitentiary, a campaign to free him began. A petition signed by thousands was presented to the governor begging for the young farmer’s release. One of the signatures on the petition was that of the District Attorney who had prosecuted Purvis. On December 19, 1898, just two months short of five years since the botched execution, Purvis was granted a full pardon and walked out of prison a free man.That still left the question of who shot Will Buckley unanswered. Was it actually Purvis? Had the young farmer been saved from just punishment because a chain of coincidence had generated a wave of public sympathy? Or had his assertion of innocence been the simple truth?The answer finally came nearly two decades later. In the spring of 1918 an elderly reprobate named Joe Beard staggered into a midnight church service. At first he sat silent in one of the back pews. Then he arose, walked up to the pulpit, and began the most startling confession any of the congregants had ever heard. It was Beard, acting in concert with another White Capper named Louis Thornhill, long since dead and gone, who’d ambushed Will Buckley back in 1893. In his youth Beard had closely resembled Will Purvis, and, when the mistaken identification was made by the victim’s brother, he’d just taken it as a stroke of amazing good luck.After completing his story, Beard collapsed. He was carried to a sickbed, where, before passing quietly away, he repeated the confession in front of official stenographers and a group of witnesses. Supplying details that could be known only by one of the actual perpetrators, his final act cleared Purvis’s name from any hint of suspicion.In the wake of that final confession, the Mississippi State Legislature made Purvis’s innocence official, awarding him $5,000 as compensation for his years of wrongful imprisonment and passing a resolution “removing all stain and dishonor” from his name.In the years between his pardon and Beard’s deathbed statement, Purvis had lived a remarkably happy life, falling in love with, and marrying, a clergyman’s daughter, with whom he would eventually raise 11 children. He lived for another 25 years after the legislature’s endorsement of his innocence. Just before his 1943 death, at the age of 71,Purvis, who still bore the scar of the rope burn around his neck, spoke one last time about his brush with the hangman back in 1894, when every legal appeal had been exhausted and there was only one Judge left to hear his plea.“God heard our prayers,” he said simply. “He saved my life because I was an innocent man.”The story of the failure of the hanging rope has never been examined by the Vatican, and, if, at some future date, it ever was, it’s almost certain that it would never pass muster as a genuine miracle.But miracles aren’t the only way God has of answering prayers.FURTHER READINGAs far as I’ve been able to determine, there’s never been a book devoted solely to the Purvis case. However, many books dealing generally with the pros and cons of capital punishment, or the history of the practice, refer to the case, often at length.Accounts of the failed execution of Will Purvis, and its aftermath, can be found in Edwin Borchard’s Convicting the Innocent (Yale University, 1932), August Mencken’s By the Neck (Hastings, 1942), Justin Atholl’s Shadow of the Gallows (Long, 1954), George V. Bishop’s Executions (Sherbourne, 1965), and Frederick Drimmer’s Until You Are Dead (Citadel, 1990).“THE FUGITIVE” CONNECTION?I know of no novel, story, or drama specifically fictionalizing the Purvis case, so what follows is pure speculation.When Roy Huggins created the television series The Fugitive in 1964, most people assumed that the central situation of a Midwestern physician accused of murdering his wife derived from the famous Dr. Sam Sheppard case in Ohio. The additional conflict between the hero and the relentless police officer obsessed with recapturing him, Huggins admitted, had been lifted from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.But the whole notion of a falsely accused man, unable to prove his innocence legally, facing execution until a twist of fate saves him, then remaining on the run for several years, suggests that Huggins might have had more than a passing familiarity with the Purvis case. Of course a train wreck was substituted for a badly tied hangman’s noose, and, while Purvis was technically a fugitive for several years, it doesn’t appear as though any members of official law enforcement were trying all that hard to track him down during the years he spent in hiding. Still, the parallels between the fictional predicament of Dr. Richard Kimble and the real-life one of Will Purvis seem almost deliberately resonant.Maybe it was a coincidence. Or maybe Huggins, in addition to relying on Dr. Sheppard’s trial and Victor Hugo’s novel for source material, took some inspiration from the Purvis case as well.