Lisa Marie Presley Kept Her Son Benjamin’s Body for Two Months: “No Law Requires Immediate Burial”

Lisa Marie Presley’s posthumous memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, contains heart-wrenching revelations about her personal life, especially the deep grief she endured after the tragic loss of her son, Benjamin Keough. In one of the book’s most shocking confessions, Presley reveals that she kept Benjamin’s body in her home for two months after his death. Unable to cope with the overwhelming pain, she chose not to say goodbye to her son immediately, struggling with where to bury him—either at their family estate in Graceland, where her father Elvis Presley rests or in Hawaii. Presley wrote, “My house has a separate casitas bedroom and I kept Ben Ben in there for two months. There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately. I found a very empathetic funeral home owner … She said, ‘We’ll bring Ben Ben to you.’”

As per Page Six, Presley shared that Benjamin’s body was kept in a temperature-controlled room at 55 degrees. She explained how she grew accustomed to his presence, taking care of him in her own way. Presley’s attachment to her son’s body was part of her emotional struggle to stay alive for her remaining children, including her actress daughter, Riley Keough, and twin daughters, Harper and Finley Lockwood. Adding to the emotional complexity, Presley and Riley honored Benjamin with matching tattoos. Benjamin had his sister Riley’s name inked on his collarbone and his mother’s name on his hand. To commemorate him, Riley had her brother’s name tattooed on her collarbone, while Presley inked his name on her hand.

A tattoo artist was even called to the house, and Presley reportedly asked him to examine her son’s body to ensure the design matched Benjamin’s original tattoos. Riley revealed, “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.” Talking about the living situation of his son she wrote, “I think it would scare the living f–king piss out of anybody else to have their son there like that. But not me.”

In addition to these deeply personal stories, the book also sheds light on Presley’s tumultuous relationship with Michael Jackson. As per the reports of People magazine, Jackson reportedly told Presley that he was still a virgin at the age of 35 when they first became romantically involved. She wrote, “Michael said,’ I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m completely in love with you. I want us to get married and for you to have my children…’ He told me he was still a virgin.”

Jackson and Presley married in 1994, just weeks after Presley’s divorce from her first husband, Danny Keough. She noted in her book, "I think he had kissed Tatum O'Neal, and he'd had a thing with Brooke Shields, which hadn't been physical apart from a kiss. He said Madonna had tried to hook up with him once, too, but nothing happened. I was terrified because I didn't want to make the wrong move." Riley completed her mother’s memoir after Lisa Marie’s death in January 2023 and writes that her mother’s aim was to create a connection with readers through her own experiences of heartbreak, loss, and family struggles.