The 15 most shocking moments from Netflix's wild “Kings of Tupelo” docuseries

The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga, a truly wild Netflix docuseries is, briefly, the story of an unhinged Elvis Presley impersonator's quest to reveal "the truth" about an alleged illegal body part harvesting ring, who is eventually framed for several attempted assassinations. But that's just scratching the surface.

The three-part docuseries (out now) from Chapman and Maclain Way, the minds behind 2018's utopian cult doc Wild Wild Country, begins with a shocking national news story from the recent past: the mailing of a poison-laced letter to President Barack Obama. The Way brothers pedal backward from that point to reveal a web of conspiracy, extortion, arson, animal killing, illegal organ harvesting, and megalomaniacal Elvis impersonators.

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The Kings of Tupelo's primary subject - and one of its primary narrators, credibility be damned - is a man named Paul Kevin Curtis. Beginning as an Elvis impersonator in the hometown of the King, Curtis eventually takes a job at a local hospital, where he claims to have accidentally discovered a cache of severed limbs and heads in a freezer. The aftermath of the alleged discovery launches him into a vortex of conspiratorial thinking that upends his life, tears apart his family, and puts him in the crosshairs of the man who would eventually allegedly frame him for the assassination attempt.

For the most shocking moments from the docuseries, read on.

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"This is Netflix, you b----"

Curtis wrote and self-published a book called Missing Pieces documenting his research into the alleged body part harvesting trade. But he was apparently also at work on a screenplay - until it was, he claims, "stolen by the secret service." But now that the streaming giant has given Curtis's story its seal of approval, he asks, "who's laughing now? This is Netflix, you b----."

I saw Mommy kissing Elvis Presley

Curtis's mother Elois boasts about her own connection to the King, which is better conveyed in her own words: "Let me tell you something. One day, my husband was singing with Elvis, and backstage, Elvis asked him, 'Is that your wife with you?' When he found out that I was a Mississippi girl he said, 'What's your phone number.' All of a sudden, he just gave me a hug and a kiss!"

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"I'm holding his severed head in my hands"

The Elvis impersonation business not being the most lucrative - even in Tupelo - Curtis eventually takes a cleaning job at the North Mississippi Medical Center. According to him, after being asked to clean the morgue during the holiday party, he discovered "a s---load of body parts and a severed head in the freezer." That began his obsession with the conspiracy around the illegal limb and organ harvesting trade.

"This guy's having a mental breakdown"

Trouble began brewing when the band Curtis formed with his fellow Elvis impersonator and brother, Jack Curtis, hired a new guitarist named David Daniels. Kevin Curtis got it in his head that Daniels was flirting with his then wife Laura, and in Daniels's word, Kevin "came at me with a beer bottle and he says, 'I'm gonna eff you up.'" The altercation escalated to the point of Daniels drawing a gun on Curtis, who was then arrested and hauled off. Daniels, by the way, also happens to be the local District Attorney.

Conflicts of interest

Curtis encounters a major roadblock in the pursuit of introducing a bill to the local legislature setting forth guidelines to prevent the alleged illegal harvesting of limbs and organs from morgue cadavers. Steve Holland, the long-serving Mississippi state representative who founded the state's organ transplant system, is the only man who could get such a bill drafted and presented before the legislature. But Curtis's conspiratorial paranoia kicks into overdrive when he discovers Holland is also a partner in the state's largest funeral home chain. And the judge on the assault case against Curtis? Sadie Holland, Steve's mother.

"I'm not crazy, and I'm not lying"

With the Hollands stonewalling him across Lee county, his family increasingly suspicious of his paranoiac rantings, and nothing being done about the apparent harvesting scheme, Curtis presents this testament of his persecution: "I did find this, and I did get fired and banned, and the house was burned down, and the car did blow up, and the wife did leave me, and my children were threatened, and my cat burned alive in my f---ing house. I'm pissed!"

Committed

Curtis's refusal to renege on his commitment to uncovering what he sees as the truth leads to him apparently being committed by his family to a psychiatric ward. Pantomiming a vegetative state, Curtis says the hospital "stuck a needle in my arm and I was like this... So my whole family's saying, 'Shut up.' Society is saying, 'Shut him down!' And I'm like this," he says, with a hand muffling his voice.

Dumbo down

Some time after he was released, Curtis was credibly implicated in the drive-by shooting of a circus elephant. Police began looking for a white male who was driving a white Ford Explorer the night the Ringling Bros. animal was gunned down. Any guess what kind of car Curtis drove at the time?

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The raid

In April 2013, envelopes containing threatening letters laced with ricin, a highly potent toxin derived from castor beans, were sent to President Barack Obama, Judge Sadie Holland, and Senator Roger Wicker, another enemy of Curtis's. This is how Curtis describes the eventual FBI raid on his trailer on April 17, 2013: "KC is finally ready for a relaxing night of peace and quiet. Just listening to his favorite Dolly Parton record, eating steak dinner with ranch dressing, when out of nowhere - BOOM! SWAT kicked my door down. At long last, this was my destiny."

Leave Moo Cow out of this

Among the wild details Curtis remembers from the raid, he claims that "this big, muscle-bound, steroid-taking G-man shot my dog with a tranquilizer. My sweet little chihuahua, Moo Cow!"

A new suspect emerges

As investigators began to really dig into the evidence implicating Curtis in the mailing of the ricin letters, unignorable incongruencies began to emerge, right alongside clues pointing to Curtis that appeared planted. FBI Agent Steve Thomason described the new suspect - Everett Dutschke, a karate instructor with deep ties to the Curtis family - this way: "During my 25 years in the bureau, I interviewed numerous terrorists, seven different murderers, one serial killer. But I don't think I ever talked to anyone that would fit into the category of Everett Dutschke."

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Good old fashioned police work

The primary evidence leading to the arrest of Everett Dutschke for both the mailing of the ricin letters and framing of Paul Kevin Curtis came from a trusty old investigative method that doesn't often yield such staggering results: a trash pull. FBI agents Thomason and John Quaka reveal that combing through Dutschke's trash revealed a sheath of yellow paper that "looked identical to the threat letters," as well as a coffee grinder, a key instrument in the production of ricin.

Suspicious Minds

Before he masterminded Paul Kevin Curtis's framing, Dutschke took a job working at Jack Curtis's office, where he struck up a clandestine romance with Laura Curtis - the former brother's ex-wife. One of the doc's interviewees points out the bizarre historical parallel that Priscilla Presley once left Elvis for his karate instructor, Mike Stone.

"It's like he was catfishing himself"

The rumored romance drove Curtis to new extremes of paranoid rage. His revenge plot involved unleashing an absolute torrent of demented online harassment Dutschke's way. He set up a Facebook account called "Billy Bobby Body Parts" that he used to post doctored photos of Dutschke and his wife in which Curtis's face is superimposed over Dutschke's. He then took up karate, adopted Dutschke's vocal affect, and pretended to a MENSA membership, something Dutschke used to brag about. "Who f---ing does that? It's like he was catfishing himself," Dutschke commented from prison.

"Get on your knees and apologize"

Dutschke launched a short-lived bid for a seat in the state legislature against - who else - Steve Holland. At a rally in the town of Verona, Dutschke took to the stage and delivered a speech he said was "designed to be scathing to him." Holland said Dutschke "absolutely crucified my family's reputation," but recounted with delight when his mother, Judge Sadie, called Dutschke back to the podium and gave him a classic Southern dressing down. Per Steve Holland: "She said, 'I am ashamed of you. You. just told the biggest pack of lies I've ever heard in my life. So get on your knees and apologize right now!'" For what it's worth, Dutschke called the story "the biggest line of bullsh-- I've ever heard in my entire life. The only thing I'm sorry about is she has a son like Holland. So f--- them."

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