Mike Stone Would Have ‘Ripped Elvis Apart’ if He Knew Elvis Talked About Killing Him
In the 1970s, there was no person Elvis Presley hated more than Mike Stone. Priscilla Presley began dating him after she left Elvis, and he did not handle the rejection well. He ranted endlessly about Stone and spent days telling his bodyguards that he wanted someone to kill him. His bodyguard, Dave Hebler, shared why he was glad Stone never found out about the way Elvis spoke about him.
Elvis’ bodyguard said Mike Stone would have retaliated if he knew how Elvis spoke about him
After several men got onstage during a 1973 concert, Elvis became convinced that Stone had hired them to hurt him. He decided that the best course of action would be to kill Stone before he could hurt him.
“You know it, Sonny,” he yelled at his bodyguard, per the book Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick. “You know it. There is too much pain in me, and he did it. Do you hear me? I am right. You know I’m right. Mike Stone [must] die. You will do it for me — kill the sonofab****, Sonny, I can count on you. I know I can … He has no right to live.”
His bodyguards thought that Elvis would drop the subject after he got some sleep. Instead, he continued to harass them about it for days.
“That talk about hitting Mike Stone was pretty disturbing,” Hebler said in the book Elvis: What Happened? by Steve Dunleavy. “I did not know Elvis then like I do now, and I was sort of disappointed that he could think in those terms.”
All his bodyguards had met Stone and liked him. They also knew that if Stone ever found out about this, he could hurt Elvis. Stone was a skilled karate fighter. While Elvis liked karate, there was never any question as to who would win in a fight.
“Mike Stone is a pretty quiet guy, but, believe me, if he had heard a word about this s*** going around, he could have turned into a very bad dude,” Hebler said. “He is the kind of guy who would say, ‘Man, if you’re looking for me, well here I am.’ And if that happened, there is no question in my mind that Mike Stone could have ripped Elvis apart.”
Elvis’ bodyguard was immensely relieved when Elvis decided not to kill Mike Stone
Nobody liked the way Elvis spoke about Stone. Still, he continued to pressure bodyguard Red West to find someone to kill him. When he finally told Elvis he’d found a potential hitman, though, Elvis backed off.
“Aw, hell, just let’s leave it for now. Maybe it’s a bit heavy,” Elvis told West. “Just let’s leave it off for now.”
West said he felt so overwhelmingly relieved that he went out and got drunk to celebrate.
Dave Hebler shared why he thought Elvis hated the relationship so much
Hebler believed that Elvis’ reaction to Priscilla and Stone’s relationship had to do with ego. Elvis was hurt that Priscilla would leave him for someone with less money and fame.
“So this was Priscilla Presley and here she is stamping hands at her boyfriend’s tournament,” he said. “She was just helping out her struggling karate instructor boyfriend, who I guess in those days in a good week would have been making two hundred and fifty dollars. Maybe that was what bugged Elvis so much. If she had run off with someone like Frank Sinatra maybe, somehow that would have erased the hurt ego. I don’t know. But a two-hundred-and-fifty-buck-a-week karate instructor, that must have hurt.”
