“My whole world turned upside down,” he said in an interview on Wednesday.

Mr. Curtis was fired shortly afterward, and contends that his firing and all of his troubles since have come because he exposed what he claimed was an organ-harvesting scheme at hospital.

That belief touched off a relentless one-man campaign, that culminated in a manuscript titled “Missing Pieces.” The hospital, in a statement, rebutted his allegations, saying it “does not, nor has ever, sold ‘body parts.’ ”

Mr. Curtis’s marriage fell apart. Family members tried, not always successfully, to keep him on medication for bipolar disorder.

“When he’s well, he loves to do things and keeps himself busy,” said his stepfather, Edward Harmen. When he isn’t, “there are pages and pages written on the computer.”

Until he began receiving disability payments, Mr. Curtis supported himself performing, mostly as Elvis, who was born in Tupelo, but also as Conway Twitty, Prince, Roy Orbison and others. He and his brother Jack would sometimes perform as a duo: Jack playing the Las Vegas-era Elvis and Kevin the younger one.

Then in 2007, Mr. Curtis met Mr. Dutschke.

Mr. Dutschke had been working in a Tupelo insurance office that Jack Curtis managed. Those who know Mr. Dutschke described him as very intelligent if rather difficult and often haughty. When he made his first court appearance earlier this year on charges that he had groped three under-age girls he signed his appearance papers with a smiley face, said James Moore, a prosecutor in Tupelo.