(d. December 12, 1998)

TOP ELVIS IMPERSONATOR KILLED  Gunned Down in His Alabama Pawn Shop

By Todd Venezia  

ORRVILLE, Ala. (APB) — One of the nation’s most famous Elvis impersonators was killed when a robber with a sawed-off shotgun stormed into a pawn shop he owned and blasted him and his ex-wife at close range, authorities said.
Jimmy Ellis, who for years used his remarkably Elvis-like voice in a masked stage persona he called Orion, was standing before the display counter in his Jimmy’s Pawn and Package Store just after noon Saturday when the gunman burst in and, in seconds, turned the quiet shop into a slaughterhouse.
“Mr. Ellis never had time to do nothing or say nothing,” Dallas County Sheriff Harris Huffman Jr. told APB News. “He just opened fire in seconds and hit Mr. Ellis in the side.”
After the first blast, which left the 53-year-old Ellis mortally wounded and crawling for safety, the gunman turned his weapon on the singer’s 44-year-old ex-wife, Elaine Thompson, who was on a stool behind the counter. He fired once into her face, killing her instantly and hitting another worker, Helen King, in the hand.