Today, we take a trip out of the Midwest and to the bright lights of Las Vegas. There isn’t much on this case that has been unsolved for almost 30 years so we take you through the details and all the various theories of what is known as The Elvis Murders.
When it came to the army of Elvis Presley impersonators in Las Vegas, Dana MacKay was the King of the hill. Handsome, talented, and successful, MacKay had it all, including a beauty pageant queen named Mary Huffman for a wife and a Las Vegas mansion he called “Mini-Graceland.”
But on Oct. 2, 1993, their lives hit a sour note. When police arrived at the house, they found the couple dead on the floor. They had been dead for a day, maybe longer.
Mackay’s daughter still remembers her grandmother’s howls of anguish.
“It was this cry that I can’t even explain to you,” Misty Vargas told NBC News. “It was so terrible. Anybody who has ever heard a mother mourn for her child knows what I am talking about.”
At first, cops believed the couple had walked in on a burglary and died for it. Almost 30 years later, no arrest has been made and the theory has been changed.
“I don’t believe it,” Det. George Sherwood told local media. “Somebody was lying in wait for them.”
MacKay looked like Elvis and sang like Elvis. He even had a backup band and didn’t lip-sync. He was the first to play Elvis in Legends in Concert and he also played a 35-year-old King in the movie This Is Elvis.
Detective George Sherwood, a homicide detective with the Las Vegas Police Department, spoke up in 2008 and confirmed that he did not think that the pair died in a robbery.
“Dana always kept a file with him that outlined all his business, whether it was his musical endeavors, the palm tree business, his home, and personal information, his life finances,” said Sherwood. “And that was the only notable thing that was missing. Somebody wanted that folder, and somebody wanted Dana.”
MacKay had been working as an impersonator for years, and though he was good at it, he wasn’t happy enough to spend the rest of his life onstage, squeezed into a white jumpsuit. He had other plans — palm trees.
MacKay had a landscaping business on the side not driving around in a pickup truck with a lawn mower, but designing and planting large tracts for high-end homes and hotels, friend Danny Koker remembers.
MacKay had an in with a guy in California who raised quality palm trees and sold them at a discount to the Elvis impersonator. This is clear when you look at aerial crime scene photos of Mini-Graceland, his Spring Valley stucco home: The place is covered in palm trees, a foolish number of them — a sort of Vegas desert answer to Greek columns.
Meanwhile, the Elvis impersonator’s daughter said in a 2017 interview about the case with NBC News:
“I know exactly who did it, and I know the cops know exactly who did it, but he’s allowed to get away with it because of his connections.”
Vargas has gone silent on the case, just like the Las Vegas police department. DailyMail tried to reach her for comment in 2020, but she refused to speak to reporters.
Watch the video report below for more details:
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