Joy Davis bio
Joy Davis was born on January 31, 1979, and was joined two years later by brother Peter. She died on December 21, 2023. The official cause of death was suicide.
Joy was an avid Elvis collector and fan who fell in love with the star when she was in her teens. She became known in later years as having one of the country's best collections of Elvis memorabilia.
While she graduated from business college and worked as a secretary, her primary focus was her role as president of the Mississippi chapter of the Love Me Tender Elvis Fan Club. She was instrumental in organizing activities for Elvis fans, including field trips to see Elvis' mansion, Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee.
From the time she was a teenager, Joy was committed several times to the Mississippi State Mental Hospital for treatment for severe depression. Despite her struggles, in 2009, she married another Elvis fan whom she met at an Elvis convention.
Unfortunately, the couple divorced after five years. They had no children. After her divorce, Joy suffered a nervous breakdown and was put on medical disability.
Joy found a new purpose in life after learning about the Elvis Faithful and had planned to attend the conference in Oxford to support them. Weeks before the event, she confessed to a friend that she had stopped taking her medication because she thought they were affecting her ability to "feel Elvis's music," and she wanted to get the most out of the conference.
One day, Joy excitedly told her sister-in-law and fellow Elvis fan, Sonya Davis, that she had discovered some Elvis letters in a box of old sheet music she'd bought at a flea market but hadn't read them yet. Joy later told friends she never would've told anyone the letters existed if she'd realized how inflammatory they were.
She refused to reveal what the letters said, saying only that they couldn't be true, and vowed to never let them see the light of day. But whatever she learned from the letters seemed to weigh on her, and Joy was feeling very low when she confided in her friend Kelly about how much the letters and their content troubled her.
Soon after, Kelly introduced Joy to Jared Plunk, who persuaded Joy to sell him the letters so he could protect them and Elvis' legacy. A few weeks after she'd handed over the letters, Joy found out Jared had tricked her and planned to reveal their contents to the world.
Joy believed she was ultimately responsible for tarnishing the image of her idol, Elvis, whom she'd loved since her youth, and she couldn't cope with the guilt she felt. She put on her favorite tape of Elvis songs and washed down a handful of antidepressants and painkillers with a bottle of red wine.
She was found dead on the couch in her studio apartment just before Christmas.
