Emily Nitcher

HOLLY SPRINGS – Strands of silky, black ribbon cover the "closed" sign.

A lone can of Coca-Cola sits on the white chair on the porch. Graceland Too is closed.

Car after car drove by the Holly Springs house on Thursday morning. A few people stopped. Others hung out of their car windows and snapped photos with their cellphones of the lions, Christmas trees and multicolored house.

"When God made Paul, he broke the mold for sure," said Kendall Phillips, 23, who stopped to take a photo. "Paul was one of a kind."

In a town with the tourism slogan "All Kinds of Character," Paul MacLeod was one of the main characters. The 71-year-old operated the 24-hour Graceland Too museum, a popular spot for Ole Miss students to visit at all hours of the night. Not affiliated with Graceland in Memphis, the shrine in the more than 100-year-old house was all MacLeod's creation.

MacLeod was found dead at the museum that doubled as his house Thursday morning. His death came a few days after he shot and killed Dwight Taylor, who MacLeod said forced his way into the house and demanded money.

Coroner James Anderson said he has not released the cause of MacLeod's death yet, pending the results of an autopsy.

MacLeod attorney Phillip Knecht said the death is almost certainly from natural causes. He said Thursday that MacLeod had been battling bad health for some time.

"We can't be sure of anything right now, but nothing points to suicide or foul play. We await an official autopsy, but his ill health, combined with the stress from Monday's tragedy, lead me to believe it was a very unfortunate, natural occurrence," Knecht said.

Holly Springs Mayor Kelvin Buck said police are investigating both deaths.

Outside the house on Thursday morning, Phillips of Memphis reminisced about his first trip to Graceland Too. He was 15 and with a church group. The church leader asked MacLeod for the clean version of the tour.

"He could come up with sentences of profanity that you never knew could be made," Phillips said.

MacLeod was an entertainer and knew how to appease a crowd, said Lakisha Mitchell-Buffington, executive director of the Holly Springs Tourism and Recreation Bureau. The Ole Miss boys who arrived in the early morning hours after having a few drinks got a different tour than the church groups did.

The long tour of Graceland Too could stretch three hours. MacLeod often came into Annie's Restaurant, run by his friend of nearly 43 years, Annie Moffitt, saying he was tired. The visitors hadn't left until 5 a.m.

Moffitt said her friend was a jokester who would keep the laughter coming. People liked the museum, she said, but they fell in love with MacLeod.

He kept his hair slicked-back and would tap on visitors' arms commanding full attention during the tour. He never drank water, only Coca-Cola.

He took photos of everything and everyone on disposable cameras, Moffitt said. The photos were plastered floor-to-ceiling in Graceland Too.

It cost $5 to visit the museum, but visit enough and MacLeod would give a visitor a small, pink business card designating lifetime Graceland Too membership.

"I'll hold onto that for the rest of my life," Phillips said of his card.

MacLeod could recount any Elvis trivia. In his stories, his wife allegedly once told him he had to choose between her or Elvis, so he gave her a million dollars in cash and sent her on her way.

The town embraced MacLeod. And he embraced the town. He called the employees at the tourism office "his girls." Several times a week he would pull up in his red Cadillac to visit.

"I've never met anyone that was so passionate about one subject," Mitchell-Buffington said. "All day, every day."

If there was an Elvis movie showing at the tourism bureau, MacLeod would watch for a while but wouldn't stay long.

"Those Ole Miss kids will be banging down my door."

Contact Emily Nitcher at enitcher@jackson.gannett.com or (601) 961-7303. Follow @emily_nitcher on Twitter.