LISA MARIE PRESLEY was no stranger to grief, having lost her dad Elvis and second husband Michael Jackson to the curse of drugs.
But the 2020 suicide of her only son Benjamin, 27, was more than the singer and actress could possibly bear.
In her autobiography, published almost two years after she died in January 2023 aged 54, she reveals that she kept her son’s body on dry ice at home in Los Angeles for two months before arranging his funeral.
Bereaved Lisa Marie even invited a tattoo artist to view Benjamin’s remains and see where he had an inking on his hand so that she could get one in exactly the same place.
Her posthumously published memoir, titled From Here To The Great Unknown, was completed by Lisa Marie’s eldest daughter Riley Keough and is out now.
In the book, it is also claimed King of Pop Michael lost his virginity to Lisa Marie when he was 35.
And even though their marriage in the Nineties only lasted two years, four-times wed Lisa Marie reckoned it was her happiest relationship.
Just like her dad and Michael, Lisa Marie — who died of a small bowel obstruction — struggled with an addiction to drugs.
At one point she was downing 80 opioid pills a day after being prescribed the painkillers following the birth of her 16-year-old twin daughters, Harper and Finley, in 2008.
The autobiography also tells how Lisa Marie, Elvis’s only child, was allegedly abused by one of her mother Priscilla’s boyfriends when she was ten.
It is clear from the book she had a strained relationship with her mother, who divorced Elvis in 1973 four years before he died.
But Lisa Marie was devoted to her children and Benjamin’s suicide with a shotgun aged just 27 in July 2020, Riley believes, broke her spirit.
Speaking to talk show host Oprah Winfrey at Graceland about the book, Mad Max: Fury Road actress Riley, 35, said: “My mom tried her best to find strength for me and my younger sisters after Ben died, but we knew how much pain she was in.
“My mom physically died from the after effects of her surgery, but we all knew she died of a broken heart.”
Lisa Marie’s decision to keep Benjamin’s body in a room at her Graceland home set to just over 12 degrees celsius might sound strange, but Riley insists her mother “wasn’t a crazy lady.”
Quite simply, the mourning mother couldn’t decide whether to bury her son in the grand mansion’s Meditation Garden close to Elvis or in their beloved Hawaii.
Rather than leave him in the funeral home “far away”, Lisa Marie requested he remained close by.
Before he was buried, she also asked the tattoo artist to ink her and Riley in the exact same spot that Benjamin had one.
Riley recalled: “He’s like, ‘OK, do you have any photos?’ and she was like, ‘No. But I can show you’.
“I stayed quiet because it’s my mom and she does what she wants, but it was definitely one of the most absurd moments.”
In the end Lisa Marie decided the family plot in Graceland made the most sense.
Reading the memoir, it is obvious that such bizarre acts were normal in the Presley heiress’s life.
In her early days Elvis let her ride a pony through the mansion, saw her dad shooting at fireworks and relatives wielding knives.
The legendary singer, who sold half a billion records, was an unstable character, with Lisa Marie recalling: “You could always sense my dad’s intensity. If it was a good intensity, it was incredible. If it was bad, watch the f*** out.”
Elvis was hooked on drugs and died in his bathroom with 14 different substances in his system in 1977.
A nine-year-old Lisa Marie raced to be with him after hearing the commotion, but was held back from seeing her dad lying motionless on the floor.
She knew immediately that it wasn’t going to be so easy being brought up by her “strict” mum.
Lisa Marie wrote: “It was a one-two punch. He’s dead and now I’m stuck with her.”
Aged ten, she claimed that actor Michael Edwards, 80, who dated Priscilla from 1978 to 1984, gave her even more reason to mourn the departure of her protective father.
She claimed in the book “he said he was going to teach me what was going to happen when I got older” before touching her private parts.
Edwards, who appeared in Terminator 2, admitted in his memoir Priscilla, Elvis, And Me that he was attracted to Lisa Marie, but he has never admitted to any sexual contact with her or been charged with any such crime.
With the mother and daughter relationship increasingly strained, Lisa Marie went to live in the Scientology Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles, California when she was a teenager.
She felt the cult was her “tribe” and “cool.”
Lisa Marie married her first husband, musician Danny Keough, at the Celebrity Centre in 1988 and they had two children, Benjamin and Riley.
But the couple divorced six years later, by which time she was already infatuated with Jackson.
He told me he was still a virgin. When he decided to first kiss me, he just did it
Lisa Marie Presley
Riley told Oprah: “She really was obsessed with him. I remember when he would come to the house and she would run to her bathroom and put her makeup on and panic and want to get herself all dressed up for him.”
In the book, Lisa Marie revealed that she had sex with Michael prior to their wedding in May 1994.
For the pop star it was his first time.
She wrote: “He told me he was still a virgin. When he decided to first kiss me, he just did it.
“He was instigating everything. The physical stuff started happening, which I was shocked at.”
The way Lisa Marie told it, the couple were deeply in love.
She said: “I was actually so happy. I’ve never been that happy again.”
But she doubts about having children with Michael because he was so “controlling” and that caused a rift.
Lisa Marie continued: “I figured Michael would have me have the children and then dump me, get me out of the picture.
“I could read him like a clock. I knew his nature, and he was very controlling and calculating.”
The divorce, though, had nothing to do with allegations that Michael preyed on the young boys who stayed over at his Neverland Ranch.
Neither Riley nor Lisa Marie saw the singer, who was acquitted of sexual abuse in 2005 following a criminal trial, molesting young boys.
Michael died in 2009 aged 50, after becoming addicted to pain-killing drugs.
It was a problem that was to beset Lisa Marie as well.
She got hooked on painkillers after her twin daughters, whose father was her fourth husband Michael Lockwood, were born by C-section.
Lisa Marie, whose third husband was Con Air actor Nicolas Cage, wrote in her memoir: “You may read this and wonder how, after losing people close to me, I also fell prey to opioids.
“’It only took a short-term prescription of opioids in the hospital for me to feel the need to keep taking them.”
The drugs, though, did not cause her death.
The coroner ruled that she died from a heart attack as a result of a “small bowel obstruction.”
Finley and Harper celebrated their 16th birthday on Monday, the day before the autobiography was released.
They are close to Riley and are looked after by their musician dad, who divorced Lisa Marie in 2021.
Despite the official medical ruling, it is possible the affliction of addiction did play a part in ending the life of Elvis’s daughter.
Cocaine and alcohol were found in the bloodstream of Benjamin after his death and ultimately it was his departure from this world which led Lisa Marie to lose hope.
Riley concluded: “I knew this was the end of her.”
