A memoir of the late Lisa Marie Presley released Tuesday provides new details of one of the most famous families in rock – including the revelation that Presley kept her son, Benjamin Keough, in her house for two months after his death.
Keough died by suicide at age 27 in 2020. In the memoir – co-written by Presley’s daughter, Riley Keough – it’s explained that Presley couldn’t decide where to bury him. Ultimately, she chose to bury him at Graceland, the estate of her father, rock icon Elvis Presley. Lisa Marie was also buried there, next to her son, after her death at age 54 from a small bowel obstruction last year.
While she took time to make the decision about where to bury Benjamin, who she called “Ben Ben” Presley kept him in a “casitas bedroom” at 55 degrees to preserve his body, according to a Page Six article on the new book. She noted that there are no laws in California about immediate burial and that she found a “very empathetic funeral home owner,” that helped her.
“I think it would scare the living f***king piss out of anybody else to have their son there like that. But not me,” said Presley.
Riley Keough transcribed tapes left by her mother to include her mother’s words in the book. Just months before she died, Presley had asked her daughter for help to finish the project, and it includes passages from both of their perspectives.
“My brother, Ben, and I grew up going to Graceland on the holidays. At the end of each day, when the visitor tours were finally over, we’d hang out in the house with our family, eating big dinners and running wild, jumping on the couches, playing pool,” Riley wrote.
Presley was just 9 years old when her father died at Graceland. According to a book description available on Amazon, the little girl was “dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran toward his body on the floor.”
“I was super connected to him,” Presley said of her father, per a sample of the book available through Amazon. “Our closeness was a lot tighter than I ever let on to anyone in the past.”
Presley was also very close with her son. In a statement released after his death, her team said: “She adored that boy. He was the love of her life.”
“My beautiful beautiful angel, I worshipped the ground you walked on, on this earth and now in Heaven,” Presley wrote in an Instagram post about Benjamin. In 2022, she posted a photo with Austin Butler, who won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Elvis in Baz Luhrman’s “Elvis”, and said it was the first time she smiled in two years.
While Presley was keeping his body at her home, she and Riley decided to get tattoos honoring him. He had his sister’s name tattooed on his collarbone and his mother’s name on his hand. They wanted to get his name on the same places.
“When the tattoo artist asked if they had any photos of Benjamin’s tattoos so he could match up the font and positioning, Lisa Marie replied, ‘No, but I can show you,’” Page Six reported.
“I’ve had an extremely absurd life, but this moment is in the top five,” said Riley of the memory.
Soon after, the family decided to bury Benjamin. Before he was transported to Graceland, his funeral was held in Malibu. Author Deepak Chopra led the ceremony.
“Even my mom said that she could feel him talking to her, saying ‘This is insane, Mom, what are you doing? What the f**k!”
This summer, a woman was arrested on the 47th anniversary of icon Elvis Presley’s death for attempting to steal Graceland Estate from his family.
“As alleged in the complaint, the defendant orchestrated a scheme to conduct a fraudulent sale of Graceland, falsely claiming that Elvis Presley’s daughter had pledged the historic landmark as collateral for a loan that she failed to repay before her death,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “As part of the brazen scheme, we allege that the defendant created numerous false documents and sought to extort a settlement from the Presley family.”
In addition to Riley Keough, 35, Presley is survived by 16-year-old twins Harper and Finley Lockwood as well as her mother, Priscilla Presley. She was married four times, to Danny Keough, Michael Jackson, Nicolas Cage and Michael Lockwood. Audacy reported shortly after Lisa Marie Presley’s death that Graceland was going to Lisa Marie’s granddaughters.