Significant Scandals Elvis Presley's Family Faced In The Last Few Decades

Dec 30, 2020 by apost team

Trigger Warning: This article contains mentions of suicide that may be troubling for some readers.

Elvis Presley remains one of the most influential musicians of the last century even long after his death on Aug. 16, 1977. The talented star captured hearts across the world with his deep voice and reintroduced the world to the joys of rock and roll. Behind the facade of fame and fortune, however, the singer struggled with the harsh spotlight of fame in destructive ways. While it was known that he had a turbulent life, the truth behind his life and death is much darker than people may have predicted. His family members, from his wife to his late daughter, also struggled with the difficulties that come with being thrust into fame. These are some of the scandals that have rocked the Presley family. 

Many people may not know that Elvis Presley had an identical twin brother who was stillborn. According to The History Channel, Elvis Presley came about 35 minutes after his twin, Jesse Garon Presley, was born. His brother was buried in an unmarked grave the next day. While Elvis grew up an only child throughout his life, he often spoke of his twin brother. His family was submerged in poverty, and in 1938, his father Vernon Presley was sentenced to three years in prison for forging a $4 check, though he spent less than a year behind bars. The family then moved to Memphis for better opportunities, where Elvis attended Humes High School. Interestingly, he failed his music class during the time. He was the first in his immediate family that graduated with a diploma from high school, and he worked as a mechanic before he launched his music career in July of 1954 with his recording of That’s All Right in 1954.

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When he was drafted to be in the Army, Elvis Presley was 24-years-old and already quite famous. While stationed in Friedberg, Germany, Elvis met Priscilla Beaulieu at a party hosted by her stepfather — a US Air Force officer — in September of 1959, according to Biography. At the time, she was only 14-years-old, and while it would be scandalous if this happened today, at the time, it did not cause much of a public uproar. This is in part because the star kept his relationship with her as private as he could. After he left Germany in 1960, they continued their relationship through letters, until 1962 when they convinced Priscilla's parents to let her move to Memphis and complete her high school from there. 

When she arrived in Memphis, she lived with Elvis Presley's stepmother and father while she attended high school, and to keep up with Elvis' nocturnal and hectic schedule, she began to take sleeping pills and amphetamines. It was also reported that Elvis felt pressured to marry Priscilla in many ways, and they finally wed in 1967 in Las Vegas. Priscilla became pregnant right away, giving birth to Lisa Marie Presley exactly 9 months after her wedding day. 

Even while he was courting Priscilla Presley, Elvis Presley had affairs with many women. In her book Elvis And Me, Priscilla Presley details some of the affairs she knew he had before and after marrying him, such as his relationship with his co-star from the movie Viva Las Vegas, Ann-Margaret. In fact, Elvis Presley asked for a trial period of separation from Priscilla in her seventh month of pregnancy, and while it did not last long, the decision stemmed from his worry about how fatherhood would affect his career.

Priscilla wrote that after she gave birth to Lisa Marie, Elvis was reluctant to have a sexual relationship with her:

"He had mentioned before we were married that he had never been able to make love to a woman who’d had a child."

This led to him sleeping with other women as he had done before his marriage, which prompted Priscilla Presley to seek comfort elsewhere. While she turned a blind eye as long as she could, Priscilla said that, ultimately, there was infidelity on both sides. She was linked to her karate instructor, Mike Stone, as well as the owner of a dance school. 

This is not to say that the couple did not love each other. "I did not divorce him because I didn't love him. He was the love of my life, but I had to find out about the world," Priscilla Presley said in a 2016 interview. Their divorce in 1973 ended up being an amicable one, and the couple remained in each others' lives as they parented Lisa Marie. 

Elvis was already dependent on amphetamines and barbiturates to get him through his rigorous schedule as a rock and roll star in his early days of fame. The amphetamines helped him to stay awake, while the barbituates helped him relax. According to LiveAbout, Elvis became dependent on different types of prescription drugs as the years went by, and his manager at the time, Colonel Tom Parker, had a large hand in pushing these drugs as well. But in 1976, Elvis Presley reportedly had a doctor who would prescribe him any pills that he wanted as reported by People in a story from 1980. The doctor, Dr. Nichopoulos, prescribed him over 12,000 pills over the last 20 months of his life according to the story. 

“I have never seen a human being in my life abuse drugs like Elvis,” Presley’s stepbrother David Stanley recalled to People. “I am not talking about street drugs—I am talking about prescribed drugs. Some of the doctors were out for the almighty buck.”

The dependence on drugs was so integral in his life that according to Town & Country, "multiple doctors involved reportedly argued that the musician's cause of death should have been attributed to a toxic combination of pharmaceuticals." His toxicology reports that came out a few weeks after his death "reportedly contained high dosages of, among other things, the opiates Dilaudid, Percodan, and Demerol, as well as Quaaludes and codeine."

While his official death report stated that his heart disease was the main cause of death and that his pills did not play a part, it was only later that two pathologists spoke out about covering up the real cause of his death. An article from PBS addressed this with the question, "how would it look if the rock star who President Richard Nixon awarded a special badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs had died of a drug overdose?"

The only child of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie Presley, also had her own turbulent life before sadly passing away at the age of 54 on Jan. 12, 2023. According to TMZ, Lisa was pronounced dead after she was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital, where she was taken after suffering cardiac arrest that morning.

Back when Lisa was 9 years old, she was present in the house when her father died, and opened up about that tragic day on The Today Show in 2012, according to Express UK. "I knew something was wrong, because I was in my room which was right next to his bathroom ... So I knew that something was very wrong," she said, and added, "all the commotion and everything. I was a wreck."

Lisa Marie Presley also struggled with opioid addiction during her life, which she privately battled for a long time. She wrote a forward in the book, The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain by Harry Nelson, where she describes how her addiction started. "I was recovering after the (2008) birth of my daughters, Vivienne and Finley, when a doctor prescribed me opioids for pain," she wrote. "It only took a short-term prescription of opioids in the hospital for me to feel the need to keep taking them." Following that, she worked hard to overcome her addiction.

She also added in the forward:

"[It’s] a difficult path to overcome this dependence, and to put my life back together. Even in recent years, I have seen too many people I loved struggle with addiction and die tragically from this epidemic. It is time for us to say goodbye to shame about addiction. We have to stop blaming and judging ourselves and the people around us … That starts with sharing our stories."

At the time, Lisa Marie credited her children for helping her overcome her addiction and giving her a reason to heal.

Lisa Marie Presley was married four times in total, with her final divorce from Michael Lockwood being in 2016. Her first marriage to Danny Keough ended after 6 years, after which Lisa Marie Presley was in a high-profile relationship with Michael Jackson for two years, from 1994 to 1996, before divorcing him because of irreconcilable differences. Michael Jackson's death from a drug overdose in 2009 was the second tragic death of someone Lisa Marie Presley loved and lost due to drug problems, the first being her father. 

Lisa Marie Presley married Nicholas Cage in 2002, but the marriage only lasted four months. “I’m sad about this, but we shouldn’t have been married in the first place,” Lisa Marie Presley said in a statement issued by her publicist, Paul Bloch.  

Lisa Marie Presley had two children with her first husband Danny Keough: Riley Keough and Benjamin Keough. Through her fourth marriage to Michael Lockwood, she had twin girls born in 2008: Harper Vivienne Ann Lockwood and Finley Aaron Love Lockwood. Unfortunately, Benjamin Keough passed away in July 2020 from suicide. Lisa is survived by her mother, Priscilla, and her three living children, Riley, Harper and Finley. 

After her divorce from Elvis Presley, Priscilla Presley also had a number of serious relationships, including being linked to Michael Edwards, Terry O'Neill, and Robert Kardashian. Her relationship with Michael Edwards ended after he began developing feelings for the then-teenage Lisa Marie Presley. Her most significant relationship was with Marco Garibaldi, a screenwriter turned computer programmer. Their relationship lasted for 22 years, and they both share one son, Navarone Garibaldi, who was born in 1987. 

There is a lot of heartache behind the veil of fame as seen here by the Presley family. How do you feel about the tragedies that have befallen the family? Let us know your thoughts below. 

If you or anybody you know is struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts, please visit https://findahelpline.com/ to find your local suicide prevention hotline. The hotlines provides 24/7, free and confidential support for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals.