Lisa Marie Presley revealed why she kept son’s body in family home for two months after he died
Actress Lisa Marie Presley lost her son Benjamin Keough to suicide in 2020, three years before her own death
Rhianna Benson
Warning: This article contains references of suicide that some readers may find distressing.
The late actress Lisa Marie Presley has revealed that she kept the body of her deceased son in her home on dry ice for two months after his shock suicide.
Presley's chilling revelation comes following the release of her long-awaited memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown.
Advert
The posthumously-released book hit shelves this week, almost two years after her tragic passing in January 2023, following complications from bariatric surgery.
The much-loved actress - who was the only child to 'The King', Elvis Presley and his wife Priscilla - lost her own son, 27-year-old Benjamin Keough, three years prior after he made the decision to take his own life.
The family - including Benjamin's older sister Riley Keough (recognisable for her lead role in Prime Video rockstar series Daily Jones & The Six) - and their father, Chicago-born musician Danny Keough, held a funeral service for him in Malibu.
Presley subsequently opted to bury her son in Graceland, where her father Elvis was put to rest, placing a pair of yellow Nikes in the casket with him.
It wasn't until the release of her memoir, however, that fans of the family learned that the mother-of-two had actually kept her son's dead body in her house for over eight weeks following his unexpected death.
Writing to reveal she kept Benjamin's body on dry ice for two months in a separate casitas bedroom in her Los Angeles residence, she penned: "There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately."
Presley added that she'd recruited a funeral home owner to assist her in preserving her son's body properly, revealed she'd done the same with her own father when he died back in 1977.
"Having my dad in the house after he died was incredibly helpful because I could go and spend time with him and talk to him," she wrote.
Adding that she kept his body at 55 degrees, she used this time to decide where to bury her child.
"That was part of why it took so long," she wrote. "I got so used to him, caring for him and keeping him there.
"I felt so fortunate that there was a way that I could still parent him, delay it a bit longer so that I could become okay with laying him to rest.
"I think it would scare the living f*****g piss out of anybody else to have their son there like that. But not me."
Presley's daughter Riley also wrote an excerpt of the book, revealing her mother deemed it 'really important' to have 'amble time to say goodbye' to her brother, 'the same way she'd done with her dad'.