Priscilla Presley Reveals Lisa Marie's Death Split Her from Her Family

Priscilla Presley just opened up about how Lisa Marie Presley’s death reshaped the family dynamic — and it ’s more complicated than a simple drifting apart.

What Priscilla said in Vegas

During a speaking event at Westgate Las Vegas on Saturday, May 2, Priscilla, 80, talked about how the family used to gather for meals and stay tightly knit. She pointed to Lisa Marie’s twins with Michael Lockwood — Finley and Harper — now 18 — and basically said they’ve got boyfriends and their own lives, which naturally pulls everyone in different directions.

She started to add that they’re still close when her son Navarone Garibaldi, 39, jumped in and pushed back a bit. His view? The distance started earlier, and for tougher reasons.

Navarone’s take: the first fracture

Navarone believes the split really began after Lisa Marie’s son Benjamin died by suicide at 27 in July 2020. He said you’d think that kind of loss would pull a family together, but it did the opposite — people grieved differently, some looked for someone to blame, and the emotional fallout pushed folks further apart. In his view, after Lisa Marie died in January 2023, the family actually started moving back toward each other and letting go of some of that baggage.

How Lisa Marie described her grief

Nearly five months before she died at 54 from a small bowel obstruction related to previous bariatric surgery, Lisa Marie wrote an essay for National Grief Awareness Day (shared with People in August 2022). She talked about running grief support groups at her home for other bereaved parents and leaning on communities of people who understood that kind of loss. She didn’t sugarcoat the isolation that can come with it, either:

Your old friends and even your family can and will run for the hills.

She said nothing truly eases the pain, but finding the right support can make you feel a bit less alone. She also said she’d come to cherish the few who stayed — and the new friends she found who were going through the same thing.

Riley on the chaos and the reset

Riley Keough, 36, described the months after her mom’s death as pure chaos in an August 2023 Vanity Fair interview — like the floor dropped out from under everyone. She said there was panic as the family tried to figure out how to move forward amid complicated details. After a stretch of upheaval, she felt they’d settled into a new normal that looked a lot more like how things were supposed to be.

Who’s who and where things stand

Lisa Marie is survived by her mom Priscilla; her half-brother Navarone; her twins Finley and Harper with ex-husband Michael Lockwood; and her daughter Riley Keough, whom she shared with her first husband, Danny Keough. It’s a lot of history and a lot of loss for one family — and based on what Priscilla and Navarone said, they’re still figuring it out, sometimes from opposite angles.

Quick timeline

• July 2020: Lisa Marie’s son Benjamin Keough dies by suicide at 27. Navarone says this is when the family first started to splinter.
• August 2022: Lisa Marie publishes a candid essay about grief for National Grief Awareness Day, noting she runs support groups at her home.
• January 2023: Lisa Marie dies at 54 from a small bowel obstruction, a complication tied to prior bariatric surgery.
• August 2023: Riley Keough says the aftermath was chaotic but eventually settled into something steadier.
• May 2 (Las Vegas event): Priscilla says the family has felt separated; Navarone counters that they’re now coming back together.

Side note: Riley has also talked about her mom’s music, calling the recordings a beautiful blessing — which tracks with all of this. Grief is messy, and sometimes the art is what sticks around and makes sense when the people and the relationships are still finding their shape.