Curse of Elvis
Family’s grief as grandson found dead
At just nine years old Lisa Marie Presley lived through the agony of watching her father Elvis throw away his life in a haze of drugs and alcohol.
Today, she finds herself mourning again following the suspected suicide of her son Benjamin Keough, 27, after he was found dead by California police at her home.
He provided her sole male link to her dad given his “uncanny” resemblance to the king of rock ‘n’ roll as the curse of Elvis strikes again.
Lisa Marie, 52, and her family have been plagued ever since Elvis died on August 16, 1977, by death, drugs, divorce and debt.
Keough was found by cops at around 6.30am on Sunday at his mother’s Calabasas mansion.
Police said: “They located the victim suffering from one gunshot wound to the upper torso.
“The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.”
Lisa Marie’s representative Roger
Widynowski said: “She is completely heartbroken, inconsolable and beyond devastated but 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, in 2009, they got matching tattoos.
Three years later she wrote song Storm And Grace about him.
She once said of Keough: “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. Everybody was grabbing him for a photo because it is just uncanny.” A source close to the family has claimed he had been “struggling” for a long time and the death, though shocking, will not be a “huge surprise”. Singer 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
Lisa Marie is beyond devastated.. Ben was the love of her life ROGER WIDYNOWSKI ON HIS HEARTBROKEN MUM
was the son of Lisa Marie – the only child of superstar Elvis – and musician husband Danny Keough.
They also had a daughter, Riley Keough, 31, who is married to her Mad Max co-star Ben Smith-Petersen.
Days after Lisa Marie divorced in 1994 she married Michael Jackson.
She went on to wed Nicolas Cage and then Michael Lockwood, in 2008.
Lisa Marie has twin girls with the music producer over whom she is said to be fighting a custody battle. Unlike his grandfather and mother, Keough kept a low public profile.
In 2009 he was reported to have signed a £4million record deal with Universal, saying in an interview at the time: “The music will be nothing like Elvis, nothing like him at all.”
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, hundreds of fans were crowded outside when a car careened through the mob, killing two women and critically injuring another. Elvis left behind a cash-crippled estate, with only about £4million in assets but mountains of debt. A few years later, the IRS hit the family with an £8million estate tax bill.
The estate was unable to count on royalties from the large majority of Elvis recordings because of his manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
He had sold those to the RCA record company for £4.3million – £1million of which found its way into Elvis’ pocket after Parker’s 50% fee and income taxes. It took a probate court battle to remove Parker and his cut from future estate dealings. Only when Priscilla won legal rights to Elvis’s image and turned Graceland into a tourist attraction did money start coming in. By 1993 the Elvis Estate was worth £80million, with Priscilla ploughing it into a trust fund for her daughter to be accessed when she turned 25.
Instead Lisa Marie created her own living trust in 1993, and appointed others as trustees of her inheritance.
Ten years later, she delegated business manager and co-trustee Barry
Siegel to be primarily in charge of managing the assets. Less than two years into his tenure he decided to sell 85% of the trust’s interests in the estate.
Between 2005 and
2015, Lisa Marie was left with only £11,000 cash and owing hundreds of thousands in unpaid taxes and other debts. She sued Siegel who blamed her for excessive spending. The case is ongoing.
Lisa Marie also became hooked on cocaine and painkillers. She wrote: “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.”
In 2004, her half brother Navarone Garibaldi was caught with drugs at 17 years old when police stopped him. Priscilla’s son with boyfriend Marco Garibaldi was said to be in possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms and under the influence of marijuana. It seems even stonemasons tasked with creating Elvis’s Graceland headstone were hit by his curse, spelling his middle name “Aaron” not “Aron”, as seen on his birth certificate.
But fans claimed it showed the King still lives.