By Stacy Perman, Los Angeles Occasions
In the summertime of 2021, Priscilla Presley gave the impression to be using excessive.
The ex-wife of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll had appeared at Graceland in the course of the annual Elvis Week celebration and later hosted a three-day pageant on the well-known manse extolling the virtues of chic Southern dwelling. Then there have been the extremely anticipated upcoming biopics: director Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” and Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” primarily based on her 1985 memoir, for which she served as an government producer.
Privately, nonetheless, it was a tough time for the actress. Priscilla was mourning the passing of her mom, only a yr after her grandson, Benjamin Keough, the one son of her daughter Lisa Marie Presley, had dedicated suicide at 27. Including to her private woes, Elvis’ former bride was in a severe monetary gap, as courtroom filings would later declare.
Then she met Brigitte Kruse, a flamboyant, fifth-generation auctioneer and self-styled philanthropist who specialised in high-profile celeb memorabilia, royal objects, estates and high-quality jewellery gross sales. In 2017, Kruse gained a measure of renown when she bought an deserted personal aircraft generally known as the “misplaced jet” as soon as owned by Elvis for $498,000.
After the pair had been launched, they launched a three way partnership that might money in on Priscilla’s well-known title, picture and likeness by means of her paid public appearances and different tasks.
Inside months of their preliminary assembly, Priscilla started lending her title to a few of Kruse’s on-line Elvis memorabilia auctions with GWS Auctions Inc., primarily based in Agoura Hills, California.
Lower than two years later, their partnership was in tatters, with the 2 girls buying and selling bitter allegations in dueling lawsuits.
Priscilla, 80, referred to as Kruse, who was half her age, a “con-artist and pathological liar” who had compelled her right into a “type of indentured servitude,” main her into signing away 80% of her revenue and conning her out of greater than $1 million, in keeping with the fraud and elder abuse lawsuit she filed in opposition to Kruse and her enterprise associates in Los Angeles final yr.
Kruse, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, has disputed Priscilla Presley’s claims, depicting herself in courtroom filings as her monetary savior who confronted retaliation after she sued Priscilla for breach of contract a yr earlier.
The litigation is the newest in a string of authorized battles that Priscilla and the Presley heirs have been concerned in since Elvis died almost 50 years in the past, leaving a monetary legacy as messy and fraught because the King’s life.
Whereas the storied Presley household has perpetually been enshrined in celeb as America’s reigning popular culture icons, Elvis’ property has lengthy been the spigot of his heirs’ fortunes and misfortunes, spilling out from the gates of Graceland.
As Joel Weinshanker, managing companion of Elvis Presley Enterprises as soon as stated about one other dispute involving the property:
“Individuals have been attempting to take from Elvis since Elvis was Elvis.”
Inheriting a messy property
When 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu met Elvis Presley in 1959, he was already Elvis. She was the stepdaughter of an U.S. Air Pressure officer, dwelling in West Germany the place the rocker, then 24, was stationed throughout his navy service.
4 years later, Priscilla moved to Memphis and stepped contained in the gilded cage of Elvis’ fame. In 1967, the couple married in Las Vegas. With the start of their daughter Lisa Marie 9 months later, a rock ‘n’ roll dynasty was born.
However life inside the irresistible mythology of Elvis proved stifling. He was totally on tour and in a haze of medication and affairs. At 28, Priscilla divorced the rocker, however not his stardom.
She constructed an agile profession out of the ashes of their romance. Priscilla went on to turn out to be an actress with a recurring function within the Eighties CBS hit collection “Dallas,” starred in a number of of the “Bare Gun” motion pictures and appeared in different tv reveals; she additionally authored books and launched a perfume.
However she by no means strayed removed from the buzzy afterlife of Elvis’ orbit.
When Elvis died in 1977, their daughter Lisa Marie was simply 9 and his father, Vernon Presley, took the reins as executor of his property. After Vernon died in 1979, Priscilla, a successor trustee, assumed the function of major supervisor.
Regardless of the celebrated affect and international recognition of Elvis, who was estimated to have earned wherever between $100 million to $1 billion, his property was in shambles — value solely about $5 million. Graceland’s expensive upkeep and large IRS payments had been quick depleting Lisa Marie’s inheritance.
The poor state of affairs was due partly to Elvis’ profligate spending. He was recognized to lavish Cadillacs and jewellery on associates, lots of whom had been additionally on his payroll. However his fortune’s wane was exacerbated by the abusive management that his longtime supervisor Col. Tom Parker exerted over his enterprise affairs.
The cigar-chomping Parker, who died in 1997, was a former carnival barker and a compulsive gambler. He wasn’t, nonetheless, a colonel — the Dutch-born “Parker’s” actual title was Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk.
Throughout his time as Elvis’ supervisor, Parker took commissions as excessive as 50%, and regularly reduce offers that enriched himself on the rocker’s expense.
4 years earlier than Elvis died, Parker bought off his again catalog to RCA for $5.4 million (with Parker taking $2.6 million and Elvis $2.8 million), depriving the property of untold hundreds of thousands in royalties.
In 1981, the co-executors of Elvis’ property (an lawyer individually represented Lisa Marie), sued Parker for enormous fraud and mismanagement, claiming he acquired the “lion’s share” of Elvis’ revenue, even after his loss of life. The events ultimately reached an out-of-court settlement.
Reviving Graceland
However the years of profound missteps and mismanagement left Elvis’ property going through the prospect of chapter and worse, having to promote Graceland. Priscilla introduced in a crew of economic advisers and legal professionals who engineered a shocking monetary turnaround.
In 1981, the Elvis Presley Belief created Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. to conduct enterprise and handle the belief’s belongings, together with Graceland, which was opened to the general public the next yr. Now a Nationwide Historic Landmark, the vacationer shrine generates an estimated $10 million yearly.
By the point Lisa Marie inherited her father’s property upon her twenty fifth birthday in 1993, the property had rebounded. Twenty years later, Graceland, together with the merchandising of Elvis’ picture and managing his music royalties, was value upward of $500 million.
Then, in 2005, Elvis’ property modified fingers. Lisa Marie agreed to promote 85% of EPE’s belongings, together with her father’s likeness rights, to music entrepreneur Robert F.X. Sillerman and his firm CKX Inc. for $114 million.
Below the deal, Lisa Marie retained 15% of the belief and acquired $50 million in money in addition to $26 million in CKX widespread and most well-liked inventory. She additionally retained sole possession of Graceland and her father’s private objects. Priscilla acquired $6.5 million for the usage of the household title, Fortune reported.
However in 2013, CKX Inc. bought its majority curiosity within the property to the mental property agency Authenic Manufacturers Group for a reported $145 million.
The issues that had lengthy trailed the property surfaced once more 5 years later.
This time it was Lisa Marie who alleged she had been duped. Then 50 and in the midst of divorcing her fourth husband Michael Lockwood, the daddy of her twin women, she sued her enterprise supervisor Barry Siegel. She claimed that because of his “reckless and negligent mismanagement” the belief had dwindled to simply $14,000 and was left with $500,000 in bank card debt.
Siegel denied the allegations and countersued, claiming that she had “squandered” her fortune because of her “extreme spending.” On the time, courtroom filings associated to her divorce from Lockwood, revealed that she was $16.7 million in debt.
A mom, daughter feud
When Lisa Marie died all of a sudden in January 2023 on the age of 54, one other tense authorized battle erupted over the property and the belief Lisa Marie had arrange.
Inside weeks of her loss of life, Priscilla went to courtroom to problem an modification that eliminated her as a trustee, making her granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough, sole trustee. Priscilla’s legal professionals argued that the signature was “inconsistent” with Lisa Marie’s handwriting.
The matter was settled 5 months later. Keough was named sole trustee. In alternate for stepping down, Priscilla acquired a $1 million lump sum cost paid out of Lisa Marie’s $25 million life insurance coverage coverage and was made a particular adviser for a belief referring to EPE, for which she would obtain $100,000 yearly for 10 years or till her loss of life.
Priscilla was additionally granted permission to be buried within the Meditation Backyard at Graceland close to Elvis’ gravesite and to be given a memorial service on the property.
‘Dame’ Kruse
By spring 2023, as Priscilla resolved her dispute along with her daughter’s property, Kruse’s presence and affect in her private and enterprise affairs deepened.
After they met, Priscilla was in her mid-70s and her primary supply of revenue derived from her paid private appearances. Kruse’s swimsuit described Presley’s celeb as “a mere shadow of what it as soon as was, and her incomes potential was solely a fraction of what it beforehand was.”
Furthermore, she claimed that Priscilla was 60 days away from monetary catastrophe, and drowning below $700,000 in excellent tax money owed.
Then 39, Kruse was publicly portrayed as a hit, energetic within the worlds of celeb and philanthropy and who spoke a number of languages. She highlighted her advocacy for youngsters with autism and AIDS analysis; donating cash to associated causes and delivering toys to orphans in international battle zones along with her husband, Vahe Sislyan.
On social media and in information releases, Kruse showcased her actions and accolades, posting photos alongside numerous marquee names such because the pop star Gwen Stefani and President Donald Trump and his spouse Melania.
In 2016, seven years after Kruse and her husband based GWS, she was the primary feminine auctioneer to make it into the Guinness Guide of World Information (for promoting the biggest deserted world property). Kruse formally added the honorific title “Dame” to her title after a member of the royal Italian Medici household conferred the title of Cavaliere, a form of knighthood, on her.
In media interviews, Kruse preferred to say that the sale of Elvis’ “misplaced jet” had seared her status because the rocker’s memorabilia vendor. Through the years she was prolific, promoting plenty of his objects, together with the Smith & Wesson that he was stated to have bought in 1973 after he was attacked onstage in Las Vegas.
In response to Priscilla, she first met Kruse in June 2021 after the auctioneer texted her saying she’d like to fulfill for lunch.
They dined at Gucci Osteria in Beverly Hills adopted by quite a few different get-togethers in Los Angeles. Kruse launched her to her “enterprise companion,” Kevin Fialko, “an investor, skilled businessman, and monetary skilled,” who “would assist Kruse get my monetary affairs so as,” in keeping with a declaration submitted by Priscilla.
“Once I first met Brigitte Kruse, she needed to contain me in her public sale enterprise,” she wrote in her March declaration.
From there, Kruse “rapidly immersed herself” in Priscilla’s life, “usually sending her a number of textual content messages a day, and “telling her how a lot she beloved her and admired her,” in keeping with her elder abuse criticism. She additionally talked up her credentials, lineage and experience within the public sale enterprise in addition to her “connections to celebrities.”
In September 2021, Priscilla participated in one among GWS’ on-line auctions that featured a non-public lunch along with her and Kruse, with a portion of the proceeds going to a charity. Quite a lot of Elvis objects had been additionally auctioned off, such because the white eyelet jumpsuit cape he wore throughout his 1972 performances at Madison Sq. Backyard and a jar of his hair.
“She’s simply such a wealth of expertise and data. You don’t examine and find out about Elvis with out studying about Priscilla as nicely. Their names are synonymous,” Kruse instructed Individuals.
The next yr, Kruse’s GWS performed an on-line public sale billed as “The Misplaced Jewellery Assortment of Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker,” together with watches, rings and cuff hyperlinks that Elvis had purchased or commissioned for his supervisor.
Though she didn’t personal any of the objects, Priscilla supplied “letters of recollection” vouching for her private historic recollections of lots of them, in keeping with the public sale’s on-line catalog notes.
“There’s a lot product on the market that isn’t genuine in any respect and that worries me,” she stated in a video with Reuters after viewing the gathering. “I wish to know for certain that that’s going to go to somebody who’s going to look after it, adore it.”
By January 2023, Priscilla and Kruse agreed to arrange a number of corporations to take advantage of Priscilla’s title and picture and to bolster Kruse’s Elvis memorabilia auctions by means of Priscilla’s written “recollections.”
The phrases of their settlement gave Kruse 51% and Presley 49% of Priscilla Presley Companions LLC, in keeping with courtroom filings.
Quickly after, nonetheless, Priscilla alleged Kruse and Fialko “expanded the scope of their curiosity in my affairs, looking for to inject themselves into each space of my life.”
They gained her belief and remoted her from key advisers, setting the stage for “a meticulously deliberate and abhorrent scheme,” meant “to empty her of each final penny she had,” Presley alleged in her lawsuit.
Presley says that she was “fraudulently induced” to signal paperwork with out the chance to overview them prematurely or “suggested as to the character of the paperwork.”
The contracts gave Kruse a controlling curiosity in her title, picture and likeness in perpetuity. Additionally they granted her energy of lawyer over Priscilla’s affairs and well being care and named Kruse a trustee on her private and household trusts, in keeping with Priscilla’s declaration.
Together with Fialko, Kruse closed Priscilla’s financial institution accounts and opened new ones “in an effort to switch the funds of Presley’s numerous private, enterprise and belief accounts.”
Priscilla claims she additionally signed a five-year lease on a home in Orlando, Florida, owned by Sislyan, that she by no means requested for or needed.
Additional, Priscilla alleges in a declaration that Kruse and Fialko leaned on Coppola to get a credit score on the biopic and diverted $120,000 of cash Presley earned from the movie into their very own accounts.
When Lisa Marie died, Priscilla contended that Kruse and Fialko improperly inserted themselves into her authorized dispute over her daughter’s belief, she stated in her criticism. Additionally they had the “audacity” to demand that they had been allowed “to attend any memorial service for Presley sooner or later,” she added.
By August 2023, Priscilla severed ties with Kruse.
A lawyer representing Kruse and Fialko didn’t reply to a request for remark.
A couple of months later, Kruse, by means of Priscilla Presley Companions, sued for breach of contract, saying Priscilla requested Kruse to take over her enterprise affairs, requiring her to “commit her consideration full-time to managing Priscilla’s life” with a purpose to “monetize numerous elements of her (Presley’s) life.”
Kruse and Fialko maintained they labored tirelessly to maintain Priscilla from “monetary smash and public embarrassment,” and that she totally understood the agreements she was signing.
In the meantime, others started to query the authenticity round a few of GWS’s Elvis gross sales.
When GWS held one other on-line public sale of Elvis memorabilia in January 2023 that included a one-of-a-kind grommet jacket that Elvis wore in 1972, it drew the eye of Elvis Presley Enterprises.
“We all know there was just one made, and guess what? We now have it in our archives,” Weinshanker, EPE’s managing companion, instructed NBC Information, final July.
GWS stated the claims had been unsubstantiated: “GWS stands behind all the pieces that it sells, and categorically denies monitoring in pretend or inauthentic objects attributed to Elvis Presley, or in any other case.”
The tensions escalated final November, after GWS introduced one other “misplaced” assortment public sale of Elvis and Col. Parker memorabilia, comprising 400 objects.
The cache of paperwork included telegrams Elvis and Parker despatched to Frank Sinatra, the Beatles and others, handwritten notes and Elvis’ signed 1956 contract with the New Frontier Resort in Las Vegas, included within the public sale, that rang alarm bells.
The property’s legal professionals in December despatched a stop and desist letter to GWS, claiming the listed public sale objects had been the property of Graceland and demanded their rapid return. Nonetheless, GWS went ahead with the sale, contending in a letter it had acted appropriately.
On Dec. 24, the property sued GWS, Kruse and two others, claiming the objects belonged to Graceland and had been “improperly and illegally provided on the market at public sale.” They sought to get better no less than 74 “irreplaceable paperwork,” and alleged that the defendants had been in “possession of maybe 1000’s extra such objects.”
In response to the swimsuit, the allegedly “stolen” objects had been a part of an infinite trove that the property acquired from Parker in 1990 for $1.25 million. GWS has denied that it had engaged in “any wrongdoing in any respect.”
Elvis’ property alleges {that a} former Parker worker named Greg McDonald “took possession” of the paperwork that ought to have been turned over to Graceland after Parker died.
As a substitute, when McDonald died in 2024, his widow Sherry and son Thomas McDonald, who’re named as defendants, “took possession of the Property after which delivered it to Brigitte Kruse on the market at GWS,” the lawsuit states.
The swimsuit additional asserted that Kruse was conscious of the circumstances during which Greg McDonald obtained the objects earlier than placing them up on the market. In an electronic mail thread between Kruse and Graceland’s longtime archivist in 2021, included within the filings, Kruse wrote that she had a video of her in dialog with McDonald during which he “admits to figuring out of the theft,” regarding the paperwork.
An lawyer for Kruse disputed the declare, saying in an announcement that when she had knowledgeable the Elvis property of the existence of McDonald’s assortment in 2021, “they didn’t make a declare to Mr. McDonald alleging that the gathering was not rightfully his.”
GWS “by no means maintained care, custody or management of any of the objects” that had been auctioned,” the assertion learn. “We’ll proceed to respect the judicial course of and the result of the continued litigation.”
In an announcement to the Los Angeles Occasions on behalf of himself and his mom, Thomas McDonald stated: “The property during which Graceland and Elvis Presley Enterprises are asserting possession has been in my household’s possession for over forty years as items from the Colonel. I’m dedicated to resolving this dispute and vindicating my household’s rights as expediently and pretty as potential.”
Legal professionals for EPE and Graceland Holdings didn’t reply to a request for remark.
As the assorted lawsuits had been unfolding, final April, GWS Auctions was suspended by the Franchise Tax board in California, successfully dropping its standing to function legally as a result of noncompliance with tax necessities.
In courtroom filings, Kruse and her co-defendants are cited as saying that GWS is “defunct.” Nonetheless, GWS’ web site stays energetic and presently lists the outcomes of its most up-to-date public sale: the Artifacts of Hollywood and Music sale held on June 7 (that included the racing helmet Elvis wore in “Viva Las Vegas,” that bought for $6,500).
Final month, Elvis’ former spouse scored a authorized win when a Los Angeles Superior Courtroom decide denied a movement by Kruse and her enterprise associates to briefly put a maintain on the elder abuse lawsuit in an effort to maneuver the litigation to Florida.
In his ruling, Decide Mark H. Epstein expressed frustration with the defendants’ “unending collection of motions,” underscoring that this was not a a contract-based case. Presley “is suing these defendants for fraud and elder abuse, a facet of which was allegedly bamboozling her into signing these agreements within the first place.”
The continued conflict with Kruse has left Priscilla “devastated,” stated her lawyer, Wayne Harman. “We look ahead to the courtroom holding defendants totally accountable for his or her actions,” he stated in an announcement.
Amid the fallout with Kruse, the property confronted one other controversy.
A mysterious firm, Naussany Investments & Non-public Lending, introduced paperwork claiming that Lisa Marie had borrowed $3.8 million and put up Graceland as collateral however had did not repay the mortgage earlier than she died.
Nevertheless it was an elaborate rip-off, in keeping with federal authorities, who in August arrested a Missouri lady, Lisa Jeanine Findley, alleging she used pretend paperwork to “steal the household’s possession curiosity in Graceland” and tried to place it up on the market.
In February, Findley pleaded responsible to mail fraud for her function within the scheme and is scheduled to be sentenced. She faces a most penalty of 20 years in jail.
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