Addiction, Death and Tragedy: Inside the Presley Curse That Haunted The King’s Family

The Presley family has suffered multiple tragedies.

Elvis’ Stillborn Twin

On Jan. 8, 1935, Elvis was delivered 35 minutes after the stillbirth of his identical twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley. A memorial gravestone at Graceland honors Elvis’ only sibling, who the impoverished family buried in a shoebox in an unmarked grave in Tupelo, Miss.

Gladys’ Early Death

Amid a struggle with alcohol and diet pills, Elvis’ beloved mother developed hepatitis before she died at 46 in 1958 — almost 19 years to the day before Elvis passed. Though her cause of death was a heart attack, liver failure due to alcohol abuse was a contributing factor.

The King Dies

In 1977, Elvis, 42, was found unconscious on the floor of his bathroom at Graceland by fiancée Ginger Alden. After years of abusing prescription drugs, he died of a heart attack ascribed to hypertensive heart disease, with coronary artery heart disease as a contributing factor.

Lisa Marie’s Heartbreak

Elvis’ only grandson, Benjamin Keough, died by suicide at 27 in 2020. In her posthumous memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, mom Lisa Marie revealed she kept Ben’s body on dry ice in a 55-degree room at her home for two months as she struggled to cope with his sudden death.

Sudden Tragedy

Less than two days after attending the 2023 Golden Globes to support Baz Luhrmann’s lauded Elvis movie, Lisa Marie, who, like her father, long struggled with her weight, died at 54 from the effects of a small bowel obstruction — a complication from bariatric surgery she’d had years earlier.