Lisa Marie Presley's Reports after her death

From Beyond The Grave: Lisa Marie Presley Blames Scientology For Orchestrating Divorce From Michael Jackson — 'I Didn't Want To Leave Him'


The late Lisa Marie Presley allegedly claimed the Church of Scientology played a big role in her divorce from ex-husband Michael Jackson in the years before her death, RadarOnline.com has discovered.

The only child of music legend Elvis Presley got married to the King of Pop in 1994, but they called it quits two years later in 1996, citing "irreconcilable differences" as the reason for their split.

She would be present for some of the most turbulent times in his life like when Jackson was accused of child molestation — allegations Lisa Marie shut down in an unearthed interview with Tony Ortega, which was shared in a new blog post via The Underground Bunker.

"F---ing around little boys? Dude, do you think I'd be with someone if I witnessed that?" she allegedly said.

Lisa Marie alluded that busy schedules and other issues put a damper on their union, telling Rolling Stone in 2003 that she just "had enough."

Ortega said that was her way of saving face, claiming Scientology had been more involved in their breakup than anybody knew.

"I was in love with Michael. I wanted to help him," she told Ortega years before her passing. "There was always someone here. Even when we did that ABC prime time interview, there was always a Scientology handler right there."

"DM [David Miscavige] facilitated my divorce with MJ," she allegedly said, claiming there was pressure from Miscavige and Scientologist attorney, John P. Coale, to file for divorce.

"I was calling Dave, asking, what do I do? He was a huge MJ fan. He was all over that," she continued, according to Ortega, who said she was told to race to the court before MJ did, a choice she would later come to regret.

Lisa Marie added, "I was in love with Michael, believe it or not. I didn't want to leave him. He was in trouble and I wanted to help him. And they made sure that I left him."

"First of all, I never told her to love or unlove Mr. Jackson. This is 30 years ago," Coale told Ortega in response last week, claiming it was "absurd" to tell Lisa Marie to file first considering "there was no contest."

RadarOnline.com has reached out to the Church of Scientology for comment.


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Austin Butler Recalls His Deep Connection to Lisa Marie Presley: ‘We Got So Close So Fast’

"To get to be with her at the Golden Globes, I'll never forget that for the rest of my life," the Elvis star said.

Austin Butler is making his late-night show rounds as he collects awards and nominations for his acclaimed portrayal of Elvis Presley, but there’s one very important person missing from the celebrations: Lisa Marie Presley, who died earlier this month. And during his appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Monday (Jan. 30), the 31-year-old actor opened up about his connection to the only daughter of the late rock n’ roll legend.

“I’ve never had an experience where I met somebody and felt an immediate depth of relationship to them,” said Butler, who recently picked up a best actor Oscar nod for his starring role in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. “[Lisa Marie] was a person who didn’t really have anything to prove and wouldn’t open up to everybody, and she just opened up to me.”

The Carrie Diaries alum went on to explain that though he and Lisa Marie didn’t cross paths until after Elvis wrapped — they first met at the film’s screening at Graceland — the two bonded instantly and attended the Golden Globes together just days before she died. That night, Butler took home the award for best actor in a motion picture, drama.

“We got so close so fast,” he said, recalling the moment Lisa Marie invited him to see Elvis’ bedroom and showed him The King’s slippers. “His bedroom is a place that most people never get to see. Up there, he’s not Elvis. He’s just dad. To hear those stories — I’ll treasure that forever.”

On the same day he and the rest of the world received word that he’d earned an Oscar nomination, Butler called in to the TODAY With Hoda & Jenna and spoke about his devastation that Lisa Marie isn’t here to help celebrate the honor. She died Jan. 12 after suffering a full cardiac arrest. The singer-songwriter was just 54 years old.

“It’s just devastating,” Butler added. “It’s weird in moments like this because it’s so bittersweet. So much great stuff is happening. I’m just devastated for her family and for her to not be here celebrating with us.

To get to be with her at the Golden Globes, I’ll never forget that for the rest of my life.”

Watch Austin Butler open up about Lisa Marie Presley on The Tonight Show above.

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EXCLUSIVE: Lisa Marie Presley on Scientology, its leader David Miscavige, and why she left

How I got to know Lisa Marie Presley was that a bomb went off in the Los Angeles Times on April 8, 2015.


That day, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] which revealed that for 18 months, a pair of private investigators hired by Scientology leader David Miscavige had been paid $10,000 a week to spy on Dave’s own father, Ron Miscavige, who had escaped from one of Scientology’s secretive California bases.


The LA Times story was based on a police report from West Allis, Wisconsin after the two private eyes, a father and son team, had been picked up after appearing suspicious. Police found a small arsenal in their vehicle, including an illegal rifle silencer fashioned from PVC pipe. The father was looking at 10 years in federal prison for it, and so the two of them [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].


I had been talking to Ron privately since his 2012 escape, and I called him up to congratulate him on the huge story. But he said the real reason that the story was coming out now, and in the LA Times, was all thanks to Lisa Marie. The two of them had been very close in Scientology, and now that he was out, that relationship continued.

But what, I asked, was Lisa Marie Presley doing dropping bombs on David Miscavige through the press? Could I get that story?

He put me in touch with her, and a week after the Times piece appeared, she started talking to me about her history in Scientology. And talking.

It turned out that for years she’d been a daily reader of my website the Underground Bunker where I cover Scientology news as a regular beat, and she’d been tempted to talk to me for a long time.


She said that the story of growing up in Scientology, becoming one of its more visible celebrities, and then breaking away after becoming more aware of its abuses was a complex tale.

“It’s a fucking hell of a story. There’s so much to it,” she said. And ultimately, it had become a tale about how she was now pitted against David Miscavige, who had taken over control of Scientology following the 1986 death of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

“Dave was a good friend of mine. Now he’s fucking Hitler,” she said.
I asked her to start at the beginning.

“I got in right after my father died,” Lisa Marie told me, explaining how she ended up a Scientology celebrity.
Elvis Presley had famously kept Scientology at bay, saying that it only wanted his money, but when he died of cardiac arrest on August 16, 1977, there were still some Scientology books that had been sent to him among his things.
Priscilla Presley had divorced Elvis in 1973, but she found the books and she was curious about them. She knew that John Travolta was involved in the group and she asked him about the books.

Travolta sent over his assistant, a woman named Sylvia “Spanky” Taylor.

“John sent me over, and that’s how I recruited Priscilla Presley into Scientology,” Spanky told me [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].


For Scientology, it was a huge get: Both the former wife and the daughter of the King were sucked in, after Elvis himself had resisted their recruiting efforts for years.
For Lisa (as her friends called her), who was 9 when her father died, it was a bewildering experience as her mother began dropping her off at Scientology facilities.
She said her mother was treated with deference as a major celebrity, but Lisa herself was treated shabbily, like an afterthought.

“My mom was always trying to figure out what to do with me. I had watches on me. I thought at one point that I wanted to join the Sea Org just to get out of my mom’s house.”


In Scientology’s highly hierarchical structure, the Sea Organization is the elite inner corps of dedicated church workers. Joining the Sea Org requires signing a billion-year contract and the promise of coming back, lifetime after lifetime, while working 365 days a year for $25 a week, when there’s any pay at all.

Lisa must have been feeling pretty desperate to even consider it.

“My mom would dump me off at Scientology. She dumped me at Flag at one point,” she said, referring to Scientology’s “spiritual mecca,” the Flag Land Base in Clearwater, Florida.
But there, at least, she was taken care of by the captain of the base, a woman named Debbie Cook.
“I loved Debbie. And what happened to her really wrecked me.”

(On New Year's Day 2012, Debbie Cook sent [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] about David Miscavige’s leadership to thousands of her fellow Scientologists. The church sued her, but then paid her in a settlement to end the lawsuit after she briefly took the witness stand in a San Antonio courtroom and began to describe the horrors of “The Hole,” a prison created by David Miscavige for disfavored Sea Org executives.)

Lisa said she had been touched by Cook’s compassion for her when she was a teenager, being raised by Scientology itself.

“I talked to Debbie Cook yesterday. ‘Your whole life has been a manipulation, Lisa.’ That’s what she said.”
Things really began to change for her in Scientology, Lisa said, once she hit 25, the age when she qualified to get her inheritance from her father’s estate.
“At 25, after I got the inheritance, they started grooming me to be this person who would go out and get everyone else in.”

Scientology wanted Lisa to be irresistible bait for other celebrities.

And they had one particular celebrity in mind.

“I was in love with Michael, believe it or not. I didn’t want to leave him. He was in trouble and I wanted to help him. And they made sure that I left him,” Lisa told me, perhaps sensing that I, like so many others, had assumed her 1994 marriage to pop superstar Michael Jackson was some sort of put-on.

She said that her affection for him was very real, but that Scientology had its own interests in the union: It had long wanted to bring in Jackson, who had a Jehovah’s Witnesses background. “But then they realized he was getting too much bad press,” she said.
She denied ever seeing anything like what Jackson was accused of that would result, ten years later, in a trial for child molestation.
“Fucking around little boys? Dude, do you think I’d be with someone if I witnessed that?” she said.

She denied ever seeing anything like what Jackson was accused of that would result, ten years later, in a trial for child molestation.

“Fucking around little boys? Dude, do you think I’d be with someone if I witnessed that?” she said.

In a 2003 Rolling Stone interview, Lisa described some of the things that were driving a wedge into the marriage. That, for example, she hadn’t seen Michael in a month as he prepared for the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards, and there was also the time Jackson had said something false to a TV Guide interviewer, claiming that Lisa had told him that Elvis had gotten a nose job.

When Rolling Stone asked her how things had come to a head, she replied “I’d had enough. That’s all.”
To me, however, she said that Scientology was intimately involved in the split.

“I was in love with Michael. I wanted to help him,” she said. But there was always a Scientology presence wherever they went. “There was always someone here. Even when we did that ABC prime time interview, there was always a Scientology handler right there.”
In particular, two figures were involved in driving them apart, she said.

“DM [David Miscavige] facilitated my divorce with MJ,” she said, claiming that Miscavige and a Scientologist attorney, John P. Coale, pressured her to file for divorce.
“I was calling Dave, asking, what do I do? He was a huge MJ fan. He was all over that,” she said. She was told to make sure that Jackson didn’t file for divorce first, because it would give him an advantage in court.
“One morning I got a call from John Coale. He said, ‘Michael’s going to make a move. He’s going to file.’ So I filed.”

She explained that she felt pressured to be the first to file for divorce, but then regretted it.

John P. Coale is not only [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], he made a name for himself suing tobacco companies in the 1980s, and has also made news as a political operator. He’s married to TV journalist Greta Van Susteren, who joined the church as a result of marrying him in 1988.

(Lisa mentioned that she thought it was unusual that a TV journalist would be a Scientologist, when founder L. Ron Hubbard had such disdain for the media. But she said that Miscavige told her that Van Susteren “helped Scientology with Fox News.” Van Susteren left Fox News the year after my conversation with Lisa, and she has historically been very tight-lipped about her Scientology involvement.)

I spoke with Coale this past Friday, after letting him know what Lisa had told me. He had a different version of events.

“First of all, I never told her to love or unlove Mr. Jackson. This is 30 years ago,” he said.
And he added it was “absurd” that he would have told Lisa to file for divorce before Jackson. The reason?

“There was no contest.”
Coale said he vividly remembered a lunch he had with Johnnie Cochran, who represented Jackson.

“What do you want to do? I asked him. They don’t have any children. They each have their own money. There’s no joint property. There was nothing to fight over. So that was it and we ate lunch. There was never any contest,” Coale said. “It was a great lunch. Johnnie Cochran was a really great guy. It’s a shame he died. He was a great lawyer and great guy. And that’s what he would do. There was nothing to fight about.”

Coale suggested that Lisa might have confused him for another lawyer handling the case. “That was what I did with Cochran. She had other lawyers who wrote up the papers. I don’t know what happened there,” he said. “I never advised her about what to do with the relationship with Michael Jackson. I don’t know if anyone else did.”

As for Miscavige, Coale said he never talked to the church leader about the Presley-Jackson matter at the time.

“I’ve known him for years, but I’ve probably talked to him under ten times,” Coale said. “It’s probably been six or seven years since I saw him.”

In 2015, nineteen years after her divorce, Lisa told me she believed that Miscavige was behind the effort to drive her away from Jackson, and she likened it to what she had read that Miscavige had done in Tom Cruise’s marriages.

“I know how in love they were,” she said, referring to Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who split in 2000. “But they were driven apart.”
Scientology’s reputation for indoctrination and control was pretty legendary, and celebrities have come forward to detail it in the past. But I wondered about her family’s involvement in Scientology’s “technology,” the arcane past-life therapy that it sold at considerable prices.

“My mom’s not Clear. She takes courses and reads books, but she’s not involved,” she said, suggesting that Priscilla had not applied herself to making it to the higher steps on what Scientology calls its “Bridge to Total Freedom.”

Lisa herself had gone nearly to the top of the Bridge, reaching OT 7.

“Operating Thetan Level Seven” is the second highest “auditing level,” and the most grueling, requiring years for some to finish it.

“I never finished it. I quit after three months,” she said. “It was bullshit. It was just about control. It was just a way of getting more money.”

And the other celebrities she’d met in Scientology? I was curious what kind of relationship she had with them.

Tom Cruise?

“I fucking hate Tom. I met him 20 years ago. I said I never want to be in a room with him again.”


John Travolta?

“John is my last Scientology friend. Kelly [Preston] kind of monitors us. John and I get unruly if we’re together. John is renting my house in Hawaii right now.”
(Preston died of cancer in 2020.) I asked what Lisa meant by “unruly,” and she described late nights with Travolta talking about what the rest of the world thought about Scientology, which the church considers a forbidden exercise.

“I told him about the HBO thing. He had no idea. I told him that Debbie Cook was gone. He had no idea. He has no Internet or email. He’s so sheltered. All he knows is what they tell him. He’s smart but sheltered.”

Shelly Miscavige?

“She was a force to be reckoned with. I don’t know what exactly went down. I do feel that she really cared about him [Dave]. But I think she stepped on his feet.”

The wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige, Shelly vanished from the international management base near Hemet in 2005, and was seen at the funeral of her father in the summer of 2007, and not since. But Lisa said she agreed with former Scientology spokesman Mike Rinder and other former executives who said Shelly was being [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] in the San Bernardino Mountains.
“She is at that place at Arrowhead. She’s under 24/7 guard.”

Lisa said she was having dinner with Miscavige after Shelly’s disappearance, and noticed he was eating off the same plate as his “communicator,” Laurisse Stuckenbrock. When she asked where Shelly was, he said “Compilations.”

(Miscavige's response was a reference to a specific kind of work done in Scientology, and not a particular location. It was a response intended to convey that Shelly was on a special mission somewhere.)
And Miscavige himself?

“While I was beginning to realize how fucked up everything was, and how many criminals there were, I had dinner with him at Nobu four years ago in London. Listening to him talk about how great Scientology was doing was like hearing Hitler talking about how he has chimneys and smoke coming out of everywhere. All he could talk about was Tom or buildings. A four-hour dinner.”
Several times during our conversation, Lisa said that things had changed after 2013, when Leah Remini’s [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

“My mom is still friends with [a Scientology attorney who] told her that Dave is so paranoid now, nobody sees him. Nobody sees him. He’s going into an underground bunker period,” she said, with a laugh, making a reference to the name of my website".

“He’s going into that bunker phase.”
Last week, I sent a lengthy and detailed message to Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw, asking for responses to Lisa’s assertions about the church, about David Miscavige, Shelly Miscavige, and what she had to say about her treatment in the church at the hands of her mother Priscilla Presley.
I am still waiting for a response.

In 2013, I was in New Braunfels, Texas to cover a court hearing in a lawsuit filed against Scientology by Monique Rathbun, the wife of former Scientology official Marty Rathbun.

At the time, Marty and former Scientology spokesman Mike Rinder had pointed out to me that Lisa was in town that night, performing on her “Storm & Grace” tour. Mike joked about going to the concert to see if we could get in.

Now, in 2015, Lisa told me that Scientology was actually very concerned about that.
“OSA called my security guys. ‘These guys are planning on coming,’ they said. They meant Mike, Marty, and you.”

Lisa said her security guys were very worried about it, but she said what was the worst that could happen?
“Let’s say they pay a hundred bucks for the meet-and-greet. I’m not going to be rude. I'll shake their hands and say hi.”

She said she even tried to call Miscavige about it, asking him to calm down the OSA operatives. But she was told that “after the Leah thing,” he wasn't talking to anyone.
I first started noticing that something seemed to be up with Lisa when she released a single in April 2012 that contained lyrics suggesting she might be pushing Scientology away. She followed that up a month later with an album, Storm & Grace, that contained lyrics that seemed unambiguous. And in interviews at that time she talked about getting rid of people she called “nuts” from her life.


Now, in 2015, she told me I had been right.
From 2007 to 2015, Lisa said, she was carefully asking questions, looking into what was being said about Scientology, all of the things that eventually came out in a documentary like Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary Going Clear. (Full disclosure: I appear in the film.)

“For the last eight years, I’ve been putting together everything that was in that special,” she said.


In order to do that, she was questioning her close friend Ron Miscavige, who had escaped from Int Base in 2012. And also Roanne Horwich, another close friend who had escaped from the base that same year. Roanne is the daughter of Diana Hubbard, the last of L. Ron Hubbard’s children who are still involved in the Scientology organization.

But Lisa said she had to proceed very cautiously.

“While I was questioning Ron and Roanne, my mom and daughter were still in. I had to be real careful. I didn’t want to get them in trouble.”


She said that she reached out for information to other people who “were not technically declared.” In other words, people who had quietly left Scientology without raising the ire of the church, which declared enemies “suppressive persons,” and then often targeted them with harassment.

Lisa said she cultivated sources who were still flying “under the radar” and appeared to the church to be members in good standing, but who could tell her about what outsiders said about Scientology.
She says that’s how she first learned about “The Hole,” and it helped her make up her mind to leave Scientology. “No way, that’s not why I joined this,” she said about the bizarre office-prison.

Miscavige had created it in 2004 to punish top executives of Scientology’s Sea Org by locking them into a set of offices in a double-wide trailer at Int Base, the large compound near Hemet.

The existence of the Hole was revealed in a 2009 expose by the Tampa Bay Times, and it highlighted how ruthlessly Miscavige disciplined his underlings. Some of his top lieutenants had literally spent years in confinement, forced to accuse each other of disloyalty to Miscavige in brutal “seances.”

Learning about The Hole was one of the things Lisa said she had been doing for several years, investigating what was really going on in Scientology from the three sources she really trusted.
Besides Ron and Roanne, the third source was Arthur Hubbard, 64, son of L. Ron Hubbard, an artist who lived in Los Angeles.

“Arthur was my best friend since I was 16,” she said.
It’s particularly interesting that two of her sources for information about Scientology’s controversies were members of the Hubbard family itself.

Roanne Horwich is L. Ron Hubbard’s granddaughter. (She declined to be interviewed for this story.) And Arthur Hubbard is L. Ron’s youngest child. (He didn’t return a request for an interview.)

“It’s sad. Roanne was living like a gardener at the base, and she was treated like shit. Her mother, Diana, got totally screamed at. She writes the events for Miscavige, she writes those and gets screamed at. There is a whole family that’s been broken apart,” Lisa said.
She had asked Arthur, why doesn't the family unite and mutiny? She mentioned to me that she’d talked to him about it just the day before. But inertia was preventing anything from happening.

“Arthur’s always like, ‘OK, beatings, The Hole, OK. But you need a smoking gun.’”
But that’s why, she added, the police report from Wisconsin that she had delivered to the Los Angeles Times was so important.
“It is a smoking gun.”


For Lisa, the final showdown with Scientology took place in October 2014.
That month, she heard from Ron Miscavige that he had traveled from Wisconsin to Florida in order to be reunited with his two daughters for the first time since he had escaped from Scientology’s Int Base in 2012.
But when he approached his daughter Denise Gentile’s house (Denise was David Miscavige’s twin), he had been told that he wasn’t going to be allowed to see her or her younger sister, Lori Verneuille, on Dave’s orders.


“Ron was heartbroken. He and I had previous conversations, and he wasn’t going to write a book. But now I knew he was really upset,” Lisa said. (Ron told me the same thing, that he wasn’t planning on writing a book after his escape until he was prevented from seeing his daughters. Then he began work on what would become his 2016 memoir, Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me. Ron died in 2021 at 85 years old.)
Incensed by how Ron was being treated, Lisa decided to go to Florida herself.


“I was just going to go there and see if it’s as bad as everyone said. So I went to the headquarters in Clearwater.”


She wanted to talk to David Miscavige and ask him directly why he wasn’t allowing his father to visit Dave’s two sisters.


And she wanted me to understand that she had previously considered David Miscavige a good friend.


“He and I used to talk for hours and hours,” she said. “But since the Leah thing [referring to Leah’s public defection in 2013], he was real careful who he talked to. I had to be super careful.”


That October 2014, she went to the Flag Land Base.
“I was there looking for closure,” she said.


Then, she got a phone call.
“It just so happens Ron called me. I told him I was on my way. He said, ‘Can I help you? I’m here. What the fuck are you doing there?’”


Ron was still in Florida, and he was confused about what Lisa had in mind, she explained. But she admitted that she wasn’t too sure herself.


“I don’t fucking know, I told him. I’m here with a wand checking for bugs in the hotel room. I don't know.”


Lisa, her husband Michael Lockwood, her son Ben Keough and other members of their entourage had checked into the Fort Harrison Hotel, the centerpiece of Scientology’s “spiritual mecca.” And she was still trying to figure out what she was going to do there.
“I just know that I started to self-destruct because this thing [Scientology] is corrupt. I needed closure.”


Ron asked if there was anything he could do, but she asked him if he had Scientology private investigators tailing him. Yes, he answered. That made Lisa wary.


“They were being followed. He said he wanted to get together, but I told him no, not right now.”



She said that Ron was skeptical she’d even be allowed in to see David Miscavige when she went to his offices.


“He said, ‘The obvious is going to happen. You’re going to get to their door, and they’re going to slam it in your face. Is there anything I can do to help?’”
But Lisa said she wasn’t going to back down.

“Dave is too fucking scared to talk to me. I’m in the belly of the beast. It was his terrain, but I was obviously not afraid. He’s afraid,” she said.

She made her first attempt to see Miscavige, going across the air bridge from the Fort Harrison Hotel to the Flag Building, a city-block sized edifice which had been opened just the year before. She asked to be shown to the offices of the Religious Technology Center, the nominally controlling sub-organization of the Scientology movement which counts David Miscavige as its chairman. (Scientologists often refer to Miscavige as “C.O.B.”, for chairman of the board.)


She was let in to the office by a Sea Org staffer who had a Blackberry and an earpiece, Lisa remembered, and she recalled that the woman’s name was Joanna.
Joanna said that Miscavige wasn’t there. But Lisa saw cameras, and she assumed he was watching. She picked out a camera and spoke to it directly.



“I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Are you throwing everyone in The Hole? You just made the biggest mistake of your life, you just broke up your own family,” she said to the camera, assuming that Dave was watching. 


 “Somebody needs to stop you.”
After her initial visit to the office, she says she was called at the hotel and asked to come back in.


“They called me back in. They said, ‘we have a problem — you can’t be here if you’re in touch with Ron Sr. He’s a declared SP.’ So Ron, who had saved Dave’s life by getting him into Scientology when he was 9 years old, Ron is now a declared SP,” she said, referring to Ron first bringing his family into Scientology in the late 1960s in order to find a cure for young Dave’s asthma.


What about Roanne, she asked? Yes, Roanne was a declared SP as well and Lisa shouldn’t be associating with her.

Lisa said she was told that Denise and Lori, Dave’s sisters, were waiting to talk with her.
“Give me 20 minutes,” she said. She left the offices and called Arthur. He suggested that she at least find out what the sisters had to tell her.


So she went back in, with her husband Michael Lockwood in tow. She remembered passing the camera again, and this time said to it, “OK, buddy, action. This is all for you,” again with the assumption that Dave was watching.


She and Lockwood found a place to sit. Then Denise and Lori were shown in by Joanna, the Sea Org staffer.


“Denise starts screaming at me. I’d met her before. I wouldn’t say we were friends. She’s screaming about how Ron had beat her mother. How he would drink when he was looking over the kids.”


Lisa said that Denise and Lori were also screaming shocking allegations about their older brother, Ronnie Jr.


(Denise and Lori made similar allegations in a 2016 letter to ABC News to protest the publication of Ron’s book, a letter [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].)


“I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I remained completely unemotional while Denise was screaming all kinds of crazy shit. It was all a show for Dave. I kind of had a smile on my face the whole time.”


Denise’s rant culminated with her telling Lisa to keep out of their family matters.


“It’s none of your fucking business!” Denise screamed at maximum volume.
“I’m done, Denise. Good job,” Lisa said she replied. “I tried to be as calm as possible.”

She looked at the Sea Org woman, Joanna, who had shown them all in.
“I looked over at his little henchwoman. ‘That was not a two-way conversation,’ I said.”


She said Joanna replied, “They’re public and we don’t have any control over them.” (She meant that Denise and Lori weren’t Sea Org — they were “publics” — and so she couldn’t tell them what to do.)


Lisa said she told the Sea Org officer, “That was supposed to handle me? If that was on YouTube, do you think anyone would ever walk in here again?”


She and Lockwood went back to the Fort Harrison Hotel, and her son Ben was there. (She said that Ben wasn't a Scientologist.)



Lisa went back again to the office the next day. She walked in and told Joanna, “Turn the cameras on. Have him watch what I have to say.”

She then addressed Joanna: “I at least need you to acknowledge the fact that was a tiny iota insane,” Lisa remembers telling her. “This is the SS, Dave is Hitler. I didn’t join this. I want nothing to do with this. My family will have my back.”


When Joanna asked her what she had told her family, Lisa said she responded, “None of your fucking business what I tell them.”


She said Joanna replied, “You need to go into confessional now and get your overts off.”
In other words, the Sea Org official was trying to “handle” Lisa’s “upset” by putting the onus on her to confess to bad acts or negative thoughts (“overts”) in order to convince her that she was at fault for what was happening.

“I told her ‘Fuck you. You're trying to shut me the fuck up and you're not going to do it.’ She told me that I could leave. ‘Fine, I’m leaving. And when I walk out that door, you’re never seeing me again.’ As I stood up and walked out, she said she would let me know if they declared me. ‘I’ll let the whole world know if you do,’ I said.”


Lisa said that Scientologists at the base helped her pack, and that “everyone was civil.”
“But I’ve had PIs on me ever since,” she said, referring to the past six months before our conversation.




She said in that ensuing time she had been told that she had, indeed, been declared a “Suppressive Person” by Scientology.


“Declared an SP for trying to keep DM from breaking up his own family? They’re completely insane,” she said.


After the confrontation, Lisa said she took her family to Disneyworld. Ron Miscavige went to visit Mike Rinder, who lived not far from the Flag base. Ron called her telling her that he was being watched intently by Scientology’s private investigators.


(Also, Ron’s wife Becky Bigelow was with him. I spoke to her recently, and she says that Lisa’s version of what happened matches her own memory of it.)
Lisa told me that she talked to both her mother Priscilla and her daughter Riley about the encounter, and told them that she needed them to side with her against the church.

“Mom, I know you love doing your courses. But you’re going to have to have my fucking back,” she says she told Priscilla.


When I asked specifically about it later in the conversation, Lisa confirmed that when she broke with Scientology for good in 2014, she took Priscilla and Riley out with her. “They walked when I did.”
She said that she had also convinced her mother to watch Going Clear, the HBO documentary that had premiered just a month before our conversation.


Mike Rinder, the former Scientology spokesman who recently put out a book about his experiences, A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology, tells me he also spoke to Lisa about her attempted showdown with Miscavige shortly after it happened.

“What you are saying matches precisely with what she was saying to me,” Rinder tells me.

“That meeting with Denise and Lori, she went on and on about, ‘What c***s they were,’ and, ‘If Dave thought sending his ugly sisters to see me is going to take care of this, he’s crazy.’ Lisa was really over-the-top upset about the whole thing,” Rinder says.


She had called Rinder after they had reached a house in the Nashville area that she was renting at the time.


“Riley was there with her and got on the phone. I had never spoken to her in my life. The first thing she said to me was, ‘You’ve got to take these motherfuckers down.’ I was thinking in my head, wow, that’s quite an introduction to Riley,” Rinder says.





Like her mother, Riley was upset about how Scientology had handled the matter, and wanted the organization’s abuses exposed, Rinder explains.




(Later, I saw signs that suggested that both Priscilla and Riley may have gone back into Scientology. I sent requests for comment with detailed descriptions of Lisa’s assertions to attorneys for both Priscilla and Riley.)



Soon after the attempted confrontation with Miscavige at the Flag Building, Lisa said she hired a “bad ass lawyer,” who then obtained the police report about the two private investigators who were arrested while stalking Ron Miscavige in Wisconsin the year before, in 2013.


She sat on it for a few months, and she says it was Arthur Hubbard who convinced her to get the information out to the public.
In his book, Rinder revealed that he suggested to Lisa’s attorney that she should deliver the documents to Kim Christensen at the LA Times, resulting in the April 8, 2015 bombshell.


Lisa’s fingerprints were nowhere to be seen, however. I asked her why she wasn't following Leah Remini’s lead and being more public about leaving Scientology and opposing David Miscavige.


“The actual reason is, I have two nannies. They’re both Scientologists. My children are so in love with them. And I have a security executive guy who works with me, and he’s a Scientologist.”

She worried about her children being “destroyed” if they were to lose the nannies. (The twin girls were 6 at the time of this interview.) “That’s the only thing holding me back. Believe me, when I want to go, I go.” She told me that she did plan to go public about Scientology once that situation had changed.


She also told me that in the meantime, she thought she could do just as much damage from behind the scenes, with the LA Times story as a prime example.


And her goal of going after David Miscavige?
“Getting the tax-exempt status revoked. That’s the only thing you can do,” she said. Scientology had famously bullied the IRS into giving it tax-free status in 1993, and until that was taken away, she said, it would be business as usual for Miscavige.

I asked if she had thought about talking to government officials about it directly. “No,” she answered.

If she was still maintaining a low profile publicly, inside Scientology her departure was already being talked about, she said.


“I’m a suppressive person, and I’m the reason my dad died and MJ died. That’s what’s being said inside Scientology.”
She said she was being followed, but she believed that as long as she didn’t go public, she would be spared the kind of harassment that Scientology was well known for.

“I don’t want them on me. They scare me,” she said.




And it was David Miscavige that she said she was most concerned about.


“He gave me all that information about his family and then let me walk out? You have to be joking,” she said. “I’m being followed. I don't know what he’s going to do. He’s going to lose his shit at some point.”
I told her I thought Miscavige was even more scared of her.

“He should be. I have a hell of a lot of information on him.”


After that lengthy conversation on April 15, 2015, I had one more substantial phone call with Lisa later that year after [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] about a Scientology daycare where the son of the operator was accused of molesting the children. Scientology’s “ethics officers” had convinced the parents not to cooperate with law enforcement in order to bury the problem.


Lisa’s godchild was among the alleged victims, and she thanked me for making the story public. I took the opportunity to point out that Ron Miscavige’s book was going to be coming out at some point, and that it would probably contain references to her attempted showdown with Miscavige.


I told Lisa that I intended to publish a story about that of my own, but hold back that the details had come from her. She said she didn’t mind. It was very clear that she wanted the information about Scientology’s abuses she’d witnessed to come out. (My story about her battles with Miscavige [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.])

That July 2015 conversation was the last I heard from her.
Before too long, Ron Miscavige said he had also stopped hearing from her.




Over the next few years, Lisa’s life appeared to become a mix of litigation, substance abuse, and personal tragedy as she went through years of a nasty divorce and custody battle with Lockwood, and then lost Ben Keough, her son, to suicide in 2020. He was 28.
Increasingly, I saw signs that Priscilla and Riley were involved with the church again. Had Lisa gone back in as well?



This past November, there was a stunning development when the prosecutors in the forcible rape trial of Scientology celebrity and That '70s Show actor Danny Masterson revealed that they were planning to call Lisa as a witness to describe what amounted to obstruction of justice by the Church of Scientology.


One of the three women accusing Masterson of rape, who goes by the name Jane Doe 1, alleged that the actor had attacked her in April 2003, and that she had subsequently informed Scientology about it. She also asked the church for permission to violate Scientology policy and report Masterson to the LAPD. She ended up doing so in June 2004.


Lisa would testify, Deputy DA Reinhold Mueller told Judge Charlaine Olmedo on November 8, that she was instructed by Scientology to dissuade Jane Doe 1, a close personal friend of hers, from going to the police.
Mueller also revealed that Lisa’s attorney had warned that if they asked her about this on the witness stand, he would advise that she take the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.




In other words, Lisa’s own attorney realized that she would be testifying not only to a crime committed by Scientology, but one she had taken part in herself.


Mueller said he told the attorney too much time had passed for there to be legal exposure for Lisa, but he was willing to grant her immunity for her cooperation. With that agreement Lisa then came down to the DA’s office and was interviewed and signed a statement.


But Judge Olmedo ruled that the testimony about Scientology’s obstruction was more appropriate for the civil harassment lawsuit filed by the Masterson accusers, and less relevant in a criminal trial about his guilt or innocence. She ruled that Lisa couldn’t testify about it, and prosecutors decided not to call her at all. (The trial ended in a mistrial on November 30 when jurors were unable to come to unanimous verdicts on all three counts of forcible rape.)


However, the fact that Lisa was even contemplating testifying about Scientology using her to commit a crime was powerful evidence that she was still out.
I texted her at that point, hoping that she might finally be ready to talk again after seven years. I got no reply.





On Thursday, January 12, 2023, she went into cardiac arrest and died after being rushed to a hospital. She was 54.




Almost immediately, I began seeing questions about her death and her association with Scientology, and that she was at least theoretically still a potential witness in Masterson’s re-trial, which is scheduled to begin jury selection on March 29.



While I understand the reason people are wondering about that timing, it’s important to remember that Elvis Presley’s mother died of a heart attack at the age 46 in 1958. Elvis was 42 when he died of cardiac arrest in 1977. That heredity, and Lisa’s extensive drug history, didn’t require a conspiracy to explain her untimely demise.


But her sudden death was deeply unsettling. I felt fortunate to have had the interactions with her that I did.




She had wanted Scientology and David Miscavige — whom she’d compared to Hitler — exposed.




And I wanted the world to know, she had been a fighter.


— Tony Ortega

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Lisa Marie Presley was 'back on opioids and taking weight loss meds losing 40-50 lbs in the weeks leading up to Golden Globes in a bid to look her best to celebrate the 'Elvis' movie'


By Jack Newman For Mailonline and Caitlin Tilley, Health Reporter For Dailymail.Com
11:01 GMT 30 Jan 2023 , updated 17:31 GMT 30 Jan 2023

Lisa Marie Presley was trying to lose weight for the Elvis awards season and was even taking opioids in the weeks before her death, family sources have claimed.

The star underwent plastic surgery two months before the Golden Globes and lost up to 50 pounds as part of a strict regimen, insiders told TMZ.

At the awards show just days before her sudden death from cardiac arrest at her California, home, the 54-year-old was seen slurring her words and appeared unsteady on her feet on the red carpet.

In the clip, she turned to her friend Jerry Schilling, 80, and said 'I'm gonna grab your arm' as she was asked questions ahead of the event by Extra host Billy Bush.



She appeared to talk slowly and slurred her words while talking about the film's star Austin Butler and the storms and flooding in Southern California.

Lisa Marie had previously struggled with an addiction to opioids after she was given a short-term prescription during her recovery from the birth of her twin daughters, Harper Vivienne and Finley in 2008.

By 2013, she was heavily abusing cocaine and checked into rehab at least five times.

Opioid overdoses are known to trigger cardiac arrest, and after a lengthy period of being clean following an addiction, the body’s tolerance to the drugs will be far lower.

It is not clear what weight loss drugs Lisa Marie was on, but Wegovy, the newest weight loss medication on the scene, has proved highly popular since it was approved by the FDA.

Semaglutide, the active drug in Wegovy, can cause a host of side effects including heart problems.

In clinical trials, users dropped 15 per cent of their body weight over 68 weeks, but the drug also increases heart rate and impact how electrical impulses travel through heart muscle.

This means existing heart issues such as heart disease or an irregular heartbeat could be exacerbated by Wegovy.

Dr Shauna Levy, an assistant professor of bariatric surgery at Tulane University in New Orleans, who sits on the American Board of Obesity Medicine, did not rule out that Lisa Marie was taking Wegovy, but told DailyMail.com that even if she was, it was unlikely to be a contributing factor to her death.

In terms of Wegovy affecting heart rate, she said: 'It’s only a one to two beat increase, so that really should not have a big impact on cardiac outcomes.'

Because Wegovy was only recently approved by the FDA as a weight-loss drug, there is still a lot doctors do not know about how it may interact with other drugs, including opioids.

Dr Levy said there is no interaction that doctors know of between opioids and Wegovy, meaning that as long as someone is following a doctor's advice and taking the correct amounts of each, there should be no issues caused by taking the medications together.

Lisa Marie’s cause of death is still yet to be determined, with the autopsy delayed while toxicology tests are carried out to see if there was an accidental or intentional overdose.

She was believed to have been sober in recent years, but following her son's death her ex-husband Michael Lockwood said he feared she could relapse.

As a teenager, she rebelled with drugs from the age of 13 to 17, but her mother put her into The Castle, a Scientology center in Hollywood, to get her off drugs.

'I did everything but mushrooms and heroin or crack,' she said.


Cocaine, sedatives, pot, and drinking — all at the same time... I don't know how I lived through it.

'I woke up one day with a bunch of people on the floor. I drove myself to the Church of Scientology and said: 'Somebody... help me right now.'

For a time it worked, and Lisa Marie said she was drug-free from the age of 17.

At the age of 27, she married Michael Jackson - her second marriage, after a six-year union with actor Danny Keough, father of Benjamin and his actress sister Riley, now 33.

By the time of their 1994 wedding, he had been addicted to opioids for over a decade, following an 1984 accident on the set of a Pepsi commercial which left him with severe burns.

In the foreword to a 2015 book by Harry Nelson, The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain, Lisa Marie revealed for the first time the extent of her own addictions.

'You may read this and wonder how, after losing people close to me, I also fell prey to opioids,' she wrote.


She explained: 'I was recovering after the [2008] birth of my daughters, [Harper] Vivienne and Finley, when a doctor prescribed me opioids for pain.

'It only took a short-term prescription of opioids in the hospital for me to feel the need to keep taking them.'

Lisa Marie added: 'I had never openly spoken in public about my own addiction to opioids and painkillers.

'I wasn't sure that I was ready to share on such a personal topic.'

She said in the 2015 book that she faced a 'difficult path' with her recovery.

'It is time for us to say goodbye to shame about addiction.

'Across America and the world, people are dying in mind-boggling numbers because of opioid and other drug overdoses.

'Many more people are suffering silently, addicted to opioids and other substances.

'I am writing this in the hope that I can play a small part in focusing attention on this terrible crisis.'

Lisa Marie mentioned her children - her twins with Lockwood, plus Riley and Benjamin Keough.

'As I write this, I think of my four children, who gave me the purpose to heal,' she wrote, which made her think of 'the countless parents who have lost children to opioids and other drugs.'

She ended by saying that she is 'grateful to be alive today' and especially appreciative 'to have four beautiful children who have given me a sense of purpose that has carried me through dark times''

The scale of her problem was laid bare amid her bruising 2016 divorce from Lockwood, after a decade of marriage.

In a 2017 deposition, which was obtained by Radar Online, she admitted to abusing cocaine, opioids, painkillers and alcohol.

'The last three years I … had to go to rehab several times,' she said, later putting the exact number at somewhere between three and five stints in a Mexican treatment facility.

'I was a mess. I couldn't stop.'

Lisa Marie said that her addiction peaked as their marriage ended in 2016.

'The last year of our marriage, I was abusing cocaine terribly,' she said, according to the court documents.

Asked if her drug use was heavy, she said: 'It was bad, yeah.'

She added: 'I didn't mix the pills and alcohol until, like, the last two years.'

Meanwhile, damning court documents have pit Priscilla Presley against her granddaughter Riley Keough claiming she was pushed out as a trustee and an 'inconsistent signature' from her daughter Lisa Marie was used.

Priscilla filed legal documents to set aside an amendment to Lisa Marie's 2010 trust which eliminates her and her daughter's former business manager Barry Siegel as trustees and replaced them with her grandchildren Riley and the late Ben Keough.

Ben Keough committed suicide in 2020 which would leave Riley as the sole trustee for Lisa Marie's estate, but Priscilla hopes to make this amendment invalid.

Priscilla has questioned the validity and authenticity of the amendment, claiming it was never delivered to her, the date on the document is suspicious, the document misspells Priscilla's name, and Lisa Marie's signature 'appears inconsistent with her usual and customary signature.'

On January 29, 1993, Lisa Marie executed a revocable living trust, which she amended and completely restated on January 27, 2010.

'Lisa Marie Presley appointed her mother, Petitioner, and her former business manager, Barry Siegel, as co-Trustees effective as of the date of the 2010 restatement,' the court filing states.

'The 2010 restatement further provides that Petitioner and Barry Siegel shall continue to serve as co-Trustees upon Lisa Marie Presley's subsequent incapacity and/or death.'

In 2018, Siegel and Lisa Marie became entangled in a hefty court battle with the King of Rock 'n' Roll's daughter claiming that Siegel had put his own financial interests ahead of her own. She then cut ties with Siegel.

Priscilla's fresh filings state that after Lisa Marie's death, she discovered that a document existed with an amendment made on March 11, 2016.

'The Purported 2016 Amendment removed and replaced Petitioner [Priscilla] and Barry as both current and successor Trustees of the Trust with Lisa Marie Presley as the current Trustee and naming Lisa Marie Presley's daughter, Riley Keough ('Riley'), and son, Benjamin Keough ('Benjamin'), as successor co-Trustees of the Trust upon Lisa Marie Presley's incapacity and/or 10 death,' the court documents stated.

'There are many issues surrounding the authenticity and validity of the Purported 2016 Amendment.'


Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley who died on January 12 at age 54, and left behind a rock-and-roll legacy — including a rocky financial path marked with losses and lawsuits over money.

Lisa Marie, a singer-songwriter like her father, wasn't rich enough to make the Forbes list of highest-paid entertainers, while some celebrity websites even estimated that she may have had a negative net worth at her death.

Lisa Marie still owned Graceland, Elvis Presley's estate that is now a tourist attraction, through a trust, which will now be inherited by her children, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing a Graceland spokesperson.

A detailed glimpse of her financial situation emerged in 2018 when she sued Siegel claiming he had mismanaged her finances, resulting in her $100 million trust dwindling to $14,000 in cash by 2016.

The lawsuit also claimed Lisa Marie had racked up $500,000 in credit card debt, according to Reuters.


Starting in 2005, Lisa Marie suffered an '11-year odyssey to financial ruin,' the lawsuit claimed.

'Lisa has been damaged in an amount that has not yet been fully ascertained, but is believed to be in excess of $100 million.'

The suit followed her divorce from musician Michael Lockwood being finalized in 2021.


During the divorce proceedings, Lisa Marie claimed she was $16 million in debt, with most of that stemming from unpaid taxes, according to TMZ.

Priscilla blamed the root cause of her financial woes on a 2005 deal to sell an 85 percent stake in the Elvis Presley Estate (EPE) to CKX, an entertainment company that also owned the 'American Idol' television show.

She received $50 million plus stock in CKX, along with keeping a 15 percent interest in EPE, as well as the title to Graceland, the Associated Press reported at the time.

CKX was later sold to Apollo Global Management for $509 million.

Lisa Marie's suit claimed that Siegel put his own financial interests ahead of her own, alleging he bought a $9 million English home using the trust's money.

Meanwhile, Siegel countered in his own lawsuit that Lisa Marie's financial problems were due to her own missteps. The litigation claimed she had 'twice squandered' her inheritance and blamed her 'spendthrift ways,' Reuters said.


But Lisa Marie, who was nine when her father died, remained the sole owner of Graceland and her 15 percent stake in EPE likely continues to generate a steady income.

Lisa Marie last year said she earned nearly $104,000 a month from 'Elvis Enterprises.'




The case against Siegel rumbled on for years.

In 2019 she won a small victory when she was granted a motion by a judge to shut down subpoenas of her bank records, and asked to only turn over her bank records before 2016.

The case was still pending as of 2021.

Lockwood, meanwhile, who was asking her in 2016, when the pair first split, to pay him $263,000 a year so that he can 'enjoy a lifestyle that is closer to my marital status of living'.

He also sought $40,000 a month in child support.

The pair had a pre-nuptial agreement, but he claimed that he was badly advised by his lawyers.

The case was settled in 2018 in her favor, but in 2021 Lockwood went back to court demanding child support. She had avoided paying him support for years, saying she did not have the means to do so.


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Lisa Marie Presley and Sarah Ferguson

Last night a friend of the Duchess said: ‘Lisa Marie adored Fergie. From the moment they met there was an instant bond. She had been through so many scandals, as had Sarah. Sarah was there for her when Michael [Jackson] died [in 2009].

Lisa Marie had been through all the accusations that he was a paedophile but she went to her grave believing Michael was innocent. She was a rock for Sarah when the sex allegations against Prince Andrew were made.’

Lisa Marie’s eldest daughter, actress Riley Keough, 33, is close to Fergie’s daughters Beatrice and Eugenie. The friend said of Fergie: ‘She’s utterly heartbroken. They were as close as sisters. Sarah is planning to fly over to attend the funeral.

They spoke almost daily on the phone. This was a precious friendship to both of them, which is why they kept it so private. Lisa Marie didn’t trust many people outside her family but loved Sarah.’

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Tony Ortega

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About Michael Jackson

“I was in love with Michael, believe it or not. I didn’t want to leave him. He was in trouble and I wanted to help him. And they made sure that I left him,” Lisa told me, perhaps sensing that I, like so many others, had assumed her 1994 marriage to pop superstar Michael Jackson was some sort of put-on.

She said that her affection for him was very real, but that Scientology had its own interests in the union: It had long wanted to bring in Jackson, who had a Jehovah’s Witnesses background. “But then they realized he was getting too much bad press,” she said.

She denied ever seeing anything like what Jackson was accused of that would result, ten years later, in a trial for child molestation.
“Fucking around little boys? Dude, do you think I’d be with someone if I witnessed that?” she said.

She denied ever seeing anything like what Jackson was accused of that would result, ten years later, in a trial for child molestation.

“Fucking around little boys? Dude, do you think I’d be with someone if I witnessed that?” she said.

In a 2003 Rolling Stone interview, Lisa described some of the things that were driving a wedge into the marriage. That, for example, she hadn’t seen Michael in a month as he prepared for the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards, and there was also the time Jackson had said something false to a TV Guide interviewer, claiming that Lisa had told him that Elvis had gotten a nose job.

When Rolling Stone asked her how things had come to a head, she replied “I’d had enough. That’s all.”
To me, however, she said that Scientology was intimately involved in the split.

“I was in love with Michael. I wanted to help him,” she said. But there was always a Scientology presence wherever they went. “There was always someone here. Even when we did that ABC prime time interview, there was always a Scientology handler right there.”
In particular, two figures were involved in driving them apart, she said.

“DM [David Miscavige] facilitated my divorce with MJ,” she said, claiming that Miscavige and a Scientologist attorney, John P. Coale, pressured her to file for divorce.

“I was calling Dave, asking, what do I do? He was a huge MJ fan. He was all over that,” she said. She was told to make sure that Jackson didn’t file for divorce first, because it would give him an advantage in court.
“One morning I got a call from John Coale. He said, ‘Michael’s going to make a move. He’s going to file.’ So I filed.”

She explained that she felt pressured to be the first to file for divorce, but then regretted it.

Priscilla Presley’s son Navarone Garibaldi speaks out after Lisa Marie’s death amid will issues

Rishma Dosani
Wednesday 1 Feb 2023 7:13 pm


Priscilla Presley’s son, Navarone Garibaldi Garcia, has spoken out in a rare interview following the death of his half-sister, Lisa Marie Presley.

The only daughter of music icon Elvis Presley died suddenly last month at the age of 54, following a cardiac arrest.

Navarone was on hand to join his mom at the public memorial on January 22, with the ceremony held at Graceland.

Speaking of the loss in a new interview, he said: ‘It’s still so surreal.’

Although Navarone explained that he wasn’t close to his half-sister in recent years, he told People Magazine that he is closer to her eldest daughter, Riley Keough, and heaped praise on her for how she has treated her siblings, twins Harper and Finley.
‘Riley has been so good with the twins,’ he continued to the publication.

The budding musician also hit back at speculation surrounding his own career in the industry, slamming the ‘misconception’ that he was raised ‘extravagantly’ due to his mom’s connections.

‘I thought, “Okay, I’m going into the family business. I’ll write a song, and then we’ll start touring it,”’ he said. ‘I didn’t realize it takes way more than that.’

He explained that he had been lucky to have some industry knowledge, but added that it is a common ‘misconception that I was raised extravagantly with Elvis’ estate and money … That wasn’t the case’.


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Lisa Marie Presley was severely depressed before death, says music icon and Elvis' close friend Pat Boone
Her unfulfilled career hopes took their toll.

In life, the King of Rock Elvis Presley had few friends, but one he could confide in and to this day is close to the family was Pat Boone, another of America's iconic singers. Boone, who has always been close to the Presleys, revealed to The U.S. Sun that Elvis' only daughter, Lisa Marie, had been deeply depressed for months before his death.

Boone said Lisa's unfulfilled career hopes, as well as the suicide of her son Benjamin, were too much for her.

The singer said he realized something wasn't right when he was with Lisa Marie and her mother, Priscilla, at Elvis' 45th anniversary memorial service last August.


Boone had a feeling that came true
Pat Boone was Elvis' opening act in the 1950s, when both were just beginning their careers in music, and they have been friends ever since. Boone, who over the years has sold more than 45 million records, revealed what that last meeting with the Presley's was like.

"I got to spend time with Lisa Marie and Priscilla. I noticed that Lisa Marie seemed depressed. I felt something. I had, as they say, a feeling about her, and of course it turned out to be true," he explained.

"I didn't know it was serious enough to get involved. We talked and had interesting conversations. They knew I cared very much about Elvis, we were very dear friends, and of course, I cared about them," he added.

"I think Lisa Marie had a lot of disappointments and then the death of her son. It was too much," he stressed.

Boone recalled that, in some ways, the death of both had similar situations. "I know Elvis was emotionally ill. It was almost impossible for him to cope with what was required of him, which he didn't want to do anymore."

"If you watch the [Elvis] movie, you know that Tom Parker [his manager] committed him to five more years of something that he didn't want to keep doing. And it was too much."

"Elvis was taking stimulants and tranquilizers so he could sleep," Boone said. "And that's what ended his life, I think."

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Sarah Ferguson Recalls How Late Friend Lisa Marie Presley Helped Her in a 'Dark Moment' (Exclusive)


[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], the Duchess of York, is opening up about her special friendship with [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. ET's Rachel Smith spoke with the duchess at Alice's Tea Cup in New York, where she shared how her late friend helped her in a "dark moment."
"When I was really in a dark moment, she sent me an airline ticket and said, 'Come to Hawaii and I'll pick you up from the airport, and I'll drive myself.' I thought, 'OK.' Never in her life has she driven to the airport. Never has she ever driven herself, and so this is a big deal for me," she said.

The funny moment is just one of the stories about her time with Presley that the duchess wants to continue telling. The pair had a friendship that spanned over a number of years, beginning when the singer lived in England with her then-husband, Michael Lockwood. 

"She just was special. I think probably God wanted her because she's special," Ferguson gushed. "And I think that she's with Ben now and Dad. Singing a few songs with Dad."
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], the Duchess of York, is opening up about her special friendship with [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. ET's Rachel Smith spoke with the duchess at Alice's Tea Cup in New York, where she shared how her late friend helped her in a "dark moment."
"When I was really in a dark moment, she sent me an airline ticket and said, 'Come to Hawaii and I'll pick you up from the airport, and I'll drive myself.' I thought, 'OK.' Never in her life has she driven to the airport. Never has she ever driven herself, and so this is a big deal for me," she said.

The funny moment is just one of the stories about her time with Presley that the duchess wants to continue telling. The pair had a friendship that spanned over a number of years, beginning when the singer lived in England with her then-husband, Michael Lockwood. 
"She just was special. I think probably God wanted her because she's special," Ferguson gushed. "And I think that she's with Ben now and Dad. Singing a few songs with Dad."

She continued, "It's an amazing story, I just want to keep telling them and never forgetting."
As for how she's doing since Presley's [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] less than two months ago, Ferguson said it's been "very difficult" not to be able to pick up the phone and call her friend.
"It's interesting, 'cause I use the quote the queen told me, which was, 'Grief is the price for love.' But then when I saw her there, my friend, I called her 'Sissy,' it was very difficult to go," she added of memorializing Presley at Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, in January, where the 63-year-old [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] to her friend.  

"I was in L.A. last week, it was very difficult not to pick up the telephone. Grief is like that, isn't it?" she continued. "It's just another normal you get used to. And everybody has to."




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LISA MARIE PRESLEYCALABASAS HOUSE SOLD2 Days After Being Listed

Lisa Marie Presley's house has sold in record time -- with a new buyer now in escrow just a couple days after it hit the market.

Celeb realtors Robb and Nikki Friedman announced Lisa's Calabasas home -- where she lived for a little bit before passing away earlier this year -- is currently in escrow ... pretty wild considering they listed the place Friday.

As far as what it sold for ... the Friedmans say they got top dollar for the place, remember -- it was listed at $4,679,000.

Like we said ... Lisa was renting the place since 2020, and had intentions of buying it herself before she died. In the wake of her death, the Friedmans did some renovations -- and it seems like their work and investment paid off.

It's a nice pad ... with 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms and all the bells and whistles of luxury. There's a home theater inside, a wine cellar, a pool and lovely mountainside views.

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