Why is Jerry Lee Lewis still alive?
He has abused himself with pills and booze for most of his adult life. He nearly died in 1981 from a ruptured stomach. He shot his bass player Butch Owens in the chest – accidentally, it is said; Owens survived. But Lewis’s family tree is full of untimely deadwood. His elder brother Elmo was run over by a truck when JLL was three. His eldest son Jerry Lee, Jr., died at 19; car crash. Steve Allen Lewis, his son by Myra, died at 5 in a swimming pool. His fourth wife, Jaren Pate, also died in a swimming pool, in 1982. His fifth wife, Shawn Stephens, died a few months into their marriage; it was ruled a methadone overdose, which doesn’t explain her “bruised, bloodied corpse” police found in the bedroom of the Lewis’s Nesbit, Miss., mansion. Or the comment Lewis supposedly made to Stevens’ sister Denise. As she told the Detroit Free Press: “I said, ‘What happened?’, and Jerry said, ‘Your sister’s dead, and she was a bad girl.” Jerry Lee wasn’t the only rock star to endure or sow tragedy. El
