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All the fame and money in the world could not save Elvis Presley’s daughter from a life of pain and anguish or from squandering much of her father’s $100 million fortune.
The only child of the man known as The King died from cardiac arrest Thursday at age 54.
Those who knew Lisa Marie paint a picture of a woman trapped by her birthright — and the demons of addiction — despite multiple bids to fight the burden of both.
It all started, apparently, with her father’s death — also from a heart condition — at age 42 in 1977. Lisa Marie, then just 9 years old, was at Graceland at the time and reportedly saw her father’s lifeless body.
Karen de la Carriere, a former top-ranking Scientologist who was tasked with counseling Lisa Marie shortly after Elvis’s death, said that Lisa Marie later “drowned herself in drugs for years” due to the sustained trauma of his passing.
“Lisa Marie had such a tough life. Broken marriages, corrupt money managers who ripped off a lot of her fortune at Elvis Presley Enterprises,” de la Carriere told The Post. Not to mention four broken marriages and the tragic suicide of her son, Benjamin, in 2020, which turned Lisa Marie into a heartbroken recluse in her Calabasas, Calif., mansion.
“I’ve dealt with death, grief and loss since the age of 9 years old,” Lisa Marie wrote in an essay published in People in August 2022. “I’ve had more than anyone’s fair share of it in my lifetime and somehow, I’ve made it this far.”
Lisa Marie was born on February 1, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn., nine months to the day after her parents’ wedding. Elvis and Priscilla divorced when their daughter was 4.
After Elvis’ death, Lisa Marie became joint heir to his estate along with her grandparents Vernon and Minnie Mae Hood Presley. When they both died just a few years later, a pre-teen Lisa Marie became the sole heir and inherited Graceland, her father’s famous Memphis home.
By then, she was already being indoctrinated into the Church of Scientology along with Priscilla, who reportedly became involved with the group after being introduced to it by John Travolta.
This made for a tortuous childhood, according to de la Carriere, who was the last person trained by Scientology’s founder. L. Ron Hubbard. In 1979, she began spending as much as two and a half hours a day with an already rebellious Lisa Marie at the church’s facilities.
“Priscilla would show up and drop her off with two words: ‘Handle her!” claimed de la Carriere, who defected from the church in 2008. “No child wants to be dropped off at a strange place and sit in a room with a stranger holding soup cans for hours and months.”
“Soup cans” is a reference to the E-meter, a lie detector-style device used by Scientologists for “auditing” counseling.
“Some people want to go to a therapist and tell them every last thing. Lisa Marie did not. She did not want coaching or therapy. But she had to go to Scientology,” de la Carriere said.
“Karen de la Carriere would have no first-hand knowledge of Lisa Marie or her relationship with the Church. The Church does not comment on parishioner counseling,” a Scientology spokesperson told The Post.
