Lisa Marie Presley kept her son’s body in her home for months after his suicide, according to a new memoir finished by her actress daughter.
Benjamin Keough died by suicide aged 27 in August 2020 - an event that would inspire Presley to write candidly on grief until her own death three years later.
Presley - the only child of music icon Elvis - said she was so heartbroken by Benjamin’s death that she kept his body in her home for two months, as she struggled to decide where to bury him.
“There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately,” Presley wrote, revealing that she kept her son in the bedroom of a casita – a small building separate to the main property.
“I found a very empathetic funeral home owner… She said, ‘We’ll bring Ben Ben to you.’”
Presley reveals in the memoir that her son’s body was kept at 55 degrees to preserve it, and that she “got used to” caring for him in the room before he was laid to rest. She would later be buried next to her son at Graceland.
She had begun work on the manuscript before her unexpected death aged 54 in January 2023 following complications from bariatric surgery.
Her actress and musician daughter Riley Keough, 35, took on the task of completing the book titled From Here to the Great Unknown, which was officially released on October 8.
According to Page Six, Presley tells in one chapter how she had to “fight” to stay alive for the sake of her surviving children, Riley, and twin daughters Harper and Finley Lockwood, now 16.
It is further claimed that Riley and her mother decided to honour Benjamin by getting tattoos that matched his – he had his sister’s name inscribed on his collarbone, and his mother’s on his hand.
For this, they had a tattooist come to look at Benjamin’s body so he could match the font and placement.
Riley reportedly writes in the memoir: “Lisa Marie Presley had just asked this poor man to look at the body of her dead son, which happened to be right next to us in the casitas.
“I’ve had an extremely absurd life, but this moment is in the top five.”
After this incident, they are both said to have felt that the time was right to lay Benjamin to rest.
“Even my mom said that she could feel him talking to her, saying, ‘This is insane, mom, what are you doing? What the f***!” she wrote.
Benjamin’s funeral was held in Malibu, with a ceremony led by Indian-American author Deepak Chopra.
He was then buried at Elvis’ former home Graceland in Memphis alongside his grandfather and Lisa Marie was later buried next to him, too.
Speaking about the decision earlier this year to push forward with the memoire, Daisy Jones and the Six star Riley said: “Few people had the opportunity to know who my mom really was, other than being Elvis’s daughter.
“I was lucky to have had that opportunity and working on preparing her autobiography for publication has been a privilege, albeit a bittersweet one.
Riley, who is the sole trustee of her mother’s estate and now owns Graceland, will read the audiobook of the memoir.
