Elvis ‘curse’ blamed for the suicide of grandson
THE grandson of Elvis Presley has died in a suspected suicide, the latest victim of what fans see as the family curse.
Lisa Marie Presley, the King of Rock’n’Roll’s daughter, is in mourning after her son Benjamin Keough was found by police at her home.
The pain is all the more unbearable given how her boy, the “love of her life”, provided her sole male link to her father and because of his “uncanny” resemblance to Elvis.
Lisa Marie, 52, is described as “heartbroken, inconsolable and beyond devastated”.
Since Elvis died in 1977, her family has been plagued by drugs, divorce, debt and death.
Keough, 27, had suffered a single gunshot wound to the upper torso when police arrived early Sunday morning at his mother’s Calabasas mansion in California.
A spokesman said: “The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.”
Lisa Marie’s representative Roger Widynowski said: “She is trying to stay strong for her 11-year-old twins and her oldest daughter Riley. She adored that boy. He was the love of her life.”
Lisa Marie and Keough were said to be so close that they got matching tattoos and she wrote her song Storm And Grace about him.
She once said: “Ben does look so much like Elvis. He was at The Opry (a famous Nashville music venue) and was the quiet storm behind the stage. Everybody turned around and looked when he was over there. Everybody was grabbing him for a photo because it is just uncanny.”
A family friend said Keough was “struggling” for a long time and the death, though shocking, would not have come as a “huge surprise”.
Paying tribute, Nancy Sinatra tweeted: “I have known you since before your mama gave birth to you, never dreaming you would have pain like this in your life. I’m so very sorry.”
Roy Orbison Jr, whose father performed with Elvis, said: “Everybody please pray for Elvis Presley’s family. They have had another terrible tragedy.” Keough was the son of Lisa Marie – the only child of superstar Elvis – and musician husband Danny Keough. They had two children, Benjamin and his sister, the actress Riley Keough, 31, who is married to her Mad Max co-star Ben Smith-Petersen.
Days after she divorced Danny in 1994 she married Michael Jackson. That too ended in failure. She went to wed Nicholas Cage and then her fourth husband, Michael Lockwood, in 2008.
She has twin daughters with the music producer over whom she is said to be fighting a custody battle.
Keough’s death has left many fans pointing to the “Elvis curse” which began on the day he was buried.
As his funeral was going on inside Graceland tragedy was happening outside its gates. Fans were gathered outside when a car careered through the crowd. Two women were killed and one critically hurt.
Despite his worldwide fame, Elvis’s death left the family with a cash-crippled estate, and mountains of debt and tax bills.
They could not enjoy royalties from Elvis recordings because of deals by his infamous manager, Colonel Tom Parker, to sell rights to the RCA record company.
It took a bitter probate court battle to remove Parker and his 50 per cent cut from future estate dealings.
Only when Priscilla Presley won back legal rights to her former husband’s image and turned Graceland into a tourist attraction did money start coming in.
By 1993 the Elvis Estate had grown to be worth around £80million. But Priscilla went on to delegate to manager Barry Siegel who less than two years into his tenure decided to sell 85 per cent of the trust’s interests in the estate.
Between 2005 and 2015, Lisa Marie was left “financially devastated” with only £11,000 cash. She sued Siegel who blamed her extravagance.The case is still ongoing.
Lisa Marie also followed her father into drug addiction becoming hooked on cocaine and pain medication. She admitted at one point she couldn’t keep count of how many times she had been in rehab.
She later opened about her struggle writing: “I’m not perfect. My father wasn’t perfect, no one’s perfect. It’s what you do with it after you learn and then you try to help others with it.”