There are few estates better-known than Memphis, Tennessee’s Graceland, once the home of Elvis Presley and his family. This family jewel, glowing with the allure of its past, not to mention the mansion’s sprawling ’60s design, was home to the rock and roll legend for more than 20 years. After sharing the premises with his parents, the King lived there with his wife, Priscilla Presley. The house hosted the couple’s second wedding ceremony on May 29, 1967. Now open to the public as a monument to Elvis’ legacy, the singer’s property almost suffered a very different fate. In her memoir, Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis, which hit shelves Tuesday, Priscilla Presley reflected on the fate of Graceland, now a must-see for Elvis fans.
When Elvis died of a heart attack in 1977, his father, Vernon Presley, inherited the house, as he and Priscilla had divorced in 1973. When Vernon, Priscilla’s former father-in-law, died two years later in 1979, she then became trustee of the property. If we are to believe Priscilla, becoming Graceland’s caregiver was more burden than boon. According to her, Graceland’s upkeep represented such a huge loss of money that she and her daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, were left with just $500,000 of Elvis’s inheritance to spare. The future of the property was at stake.
“After Elvis passed, it went on for about three years until the attorneys brought me in and said, ‘Priscilla, we’re going to have to sell Graceland. We have no money. We’re not bringing any money in,’” Priscilla told People in an interview this week. “I just looked at them, and I said, ‘That’ll never happen, ever.’ Then, I left.”
Time was running out. The new trustee had to come up with a plan to prevent the Graceland estate from slipping away, crumbling, or being sold. A new acquaintance saved the day: Morgan Maxfield, a businessman who had made his fortune building highway service stations, was introduced to Priscilla by a mutual friend. Maxfield breathed life into the idea of opening Graceland to the public and generating income to sustain the estate. Unfortunately, Maxfield died in a plane crash in 1981, before he could see Graceland opened as a museum in 1982.
“That was a shock. He was guiding me all the way on opening Graceland,” Priscilla told People. “Thank God I was able to fulfill what he had said about making sure I get the right people, the right attorneys, the right bank. It was a trip, but it was a trip worthwhile.” Today, the estate welcomes around 600,000 visitors a year.
Although Priscilla Presley fought to preserve the estate as soon as the singer passed away, the property again found itself at the heart of a dispute in 2024. Riley Keough, Elvis’s granddaughter, is now the property’s trustee. She became embroiled in a legal battle with Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, which purported to be an investment firm specializing in real estate loans and buyouts. The mysterious Naussany claimed that they had granted a $3.8 million loan to Keough’s mother, Lisa Marie Presley, in which she allegedly put up the property as collateral. Naussany advertised a foreclosure auction for Graceland, claiming to hold the deed, and after a brief, bizarre period of legal drama, both the deed and Naussany itself were both found fraudulent, with Keough’s ownership of Graceland affirmed.
“The purported note and deed of trust are products of fraud and those individuals who were involved in the creation of such documents are believed to be guilty of the crime of forgery,” reads part of the initial civil suit, which also accuses NIPL of being “not a real entity.”
A Missouri woman, Lisa Jeanine Findley, was arrested in August 2024 and fingered as the actor behind Naussany and the scheme to steal Graceland. In February 2025, she pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud in the ensuing criminal case in the District of Western Tennessee court. On September 23, a Memphis judge sentenced her to 57 months in prison, with three years of supervised release.
Originally published in Vanity Fair France.
