Graceland
Graceland is a mansion on a estate in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, which American singer Elvis Presley once owned. He is buried there, as are his parents Vernon and Gladys, paternal grandmother Minnie Mae, grandson Benjamin, and daughter Lisa Marie.
Graceland is located at 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard in the Whitehaven neighborhood, about south of central Memphis and fewer than north of the Mississippi border. It was opened to the public as a house museum on June 7, 1982, and attracts more than 650,000 visitors annually.
Graceland was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on November 7, 1991, becoming the first site recognized for significance related to rock music. It was declared a National Historic Landmark on March 27, 2006, also a first for such a site.
Elvis' father, Vernon, inherited Graceland after Elvis' death on August 16, 1977. Lisa Marie Presley inherited Graceland after she turned 25 years old. Following Lisa Marie's death on January 12, 2023, her eldest daughter, Riley Keough, became the sole trustee and owner.
History
Graceland Farms was originally owned by Stephen C. Toof, founder of S.C. Toof & Co., the oldest commercial printing firm in Memphis. He worked previously as the pressroom foreman of the Memphis newspaper, the Memphis Daily Appeal. The site was named after Toof's daughter, Grace. She inherited the property from her father in 1894. After her death, the property passed to her niece Ruth Moore, a Memphis socialite. Together with her husband, Thomas Moore, Ruth Moore commissioned construction of a Colonial Revival style mansion in 1939. The house was designed by architects Furbringer and Ehrman.After Elvis Presley began his musical career, he purchased a $40,000 home for himself and his family at 1034 Audubon Drive in Memphis in 1956. As his success and fame grew, especially after his appearances on television, the number of fans who would congregate outside the house increased. Presley's neighbors, although happy to have a celebrity living nearby, concluded that the constant gathering of fans and journalists was a nuisance.
In early 1957, Presley gave his parents, Vernon and Gladys Presley, a budget of $100,000 and asked them to find a "farmhouse"-like property to purchase, with buffer space around it. At the time, Graceland was located in southern Shelby County, several miles south of Memphis's main urban area. In later years, Memphis expanded with residential developments, resulting in Graceland being surrounded by other properties. Presley purchased Graceland on March 19, 1957, for a price of $102,500.
Later that year, Presley invited Richard Williams and singer Buzz Cason to the house. Cason said: "We proceeded to clown around on the front porch, striking our best rock 'n' roll poses and snapping pictures with the little camera. We peeked in the not-yet-curtained windows and got a kick out of the pastel colored walls in the front rooms with shades of bright reds and purples that Elvis most certainly had picked out." Presley was fond of claiming that the US government had mooted a visit to Graceland by Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union, "to see how in America a fellow can start out with nothing and, you know, make good."
After Gladys died in 1958 aged 46, Presley's father Vernon married Dee Stanley in 1960, and the couple lived at Graceland for a time. There was some discord between Presley and his stepmother Dee at Graceland, however. Elaine Dundy, who wrote about Presley and his mother, said that
Vernon had settled down with Dee where Gladys had once reigned, while Dee herself – when Elvis was away – had taken over the role of mistress of Graceland so thoroughly as to rearrange the furniture and replace the very curtains that Gladys had approved of." This was too much for Presley, who still loved his late mother deeply. One afternoon, "a van arrived... and all Dee's household's goods, clothes, 'improvements,' and her own menagerie of pets, were loaded on... while Vernon, Dee and her three children went by car to a nearby house on Hermitage until they finally settled into a house on Dolan Drive which ran alongside Elvis's estate.
According to Mark Crispin Miller, Graceland became for Presley "the home of the organization that was himself, was tended by a large vague clan of Presleys and deputy Presleys, each squandering the vast gratuities which Elvis used to keep his whole world smiling." The author adds that Presley's father Vernon "had a swimming pool in his bedroom", that there "was a jukebox next to the swimming pool, containing Elvis's favorite records", and that, he "would spend hours in his bedroom, watching his property on a closed-circuit television". According to Presley's cousin, Billy Smith, Presley slept at Graceland with Smith and his wife Jo many times: "we were all three there talking for hours about everything in the world! Sometimes he would have a bad dream and come looking for me to talk to, and he would actually fall asleep in our bed with us."
Priscilla Presley and Elvis married in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 1, 1967. Their daughter Lisa Marie Presley was born on February 1, 1968, and lived the first years of her life on the estate. After her parents divorced in 1972, her mother moved with Lisa to California. Every year around Christmas, Lisa Marie Presley and all her family would go to Graceland to celebrate Christmas together. Lisa Marie often returned to Graceland for visits.
When Elvis toured, staying in hotels, "the rooms would be remodeled in advance of his arrival, so as to make the same configurations of space as he had at home – the Graceland mansion. His furniture would arrive, and he could unwind after his performances in surroundings which were completely familiar and comforting." 'The Jungle Room' was described as being "an example of particularly lurid kitsch."
On August 16, 1977, Presley died aged 42 in his bathroom at Graceland. The official cause of death was cardiac arrhythmia, although later toxicology reports strongly suggested that polypharmacy was the primary cause of death; "fourteen drugs were found in Elvis's system, with several drugs such as codeine in significant quantities. Presley lay in repose in a, copper-lined coffin just inside the foyer; more than 3,500 of his mourning fans passed by to pay their respects. A private funeral with 200 mourners was held on August 18, 1977, in the house, with the casket placed in front of the stained glass doorway of the music room. Graceland continued to be occupied by members of the family until the death of Presley's aunt Delta in 1993, who had moved in at Elvis's invitation after her husband's death.
Elvis's daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, inherited the estate in 1993 when she turned 25.
Presley's grave, along with those of his parents Gladys and Vernon Presley, his grandmother Minnie Mae Presley, Elvis's daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, and his grandson Benjamin Keough are located in the Meditation Garden next to the mansion. They can be visited during the mansion tours or for free before the mansion tours begin. A memorial gravestone for Presley's stillborn twin brother, Jesse Garon, is also at the site.
In 2019, the owners of Graceland threatened to leave Memphis unless the city provided tax incentives. The Memphis City Council subsequently voted on a deal to help fund a $100 million expansion of Graceland.
Attempted foreclosure
In September 2023, a legal claim was filed in a California probate court that Lisa Marie Presley owed $2.8million to a company named Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC. The property was slated for a foreclosure sale in May 2024, as the claimant alleged that Lisa Marie Presley had put the home up as security on a $3.8million loan from Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC in 2018. Riley Keough said that the documents underlying the foreclosure were fraudulent and sued to stop the sale. Elvis Presley Enterprises, which manages the rest of the Presley estate, concurred with Keough's claims. Keough's lawsuit included an affidavit from Kimberly L. Philbrick, the Florida notary public who had allegedly notarized Lisa Marie Presley's signature on a promissory note, saying, “I have never met Lisa Marie Presley, nor have I ever notarized a document signed by Lisa Marie Presley” and “I do not know why my signature appears on this document.”In a hearing on May 22, JoeDae Jenkins of the Shelby County Chancery Court declared the lender's claims invalid. The lender subsequently dropped plans to go ahead with the foreclosure without addressing Chancellor Jenkins' allegations. NBC News tried without success to find Naussany Investments & Private Lending and its representative, Gregory E. Naussany, in public records. A real estate professor at the University of Memphis has said, "f this had been someone else's inheritance, someone else's home, it would just be another example that the public never hears about."
No evidence has been found that Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC was an actual company at the time it sought foreclosure on Graceland.
On August 16, 2024, Lisa Jeanine Findley, a woman from Missouri who is also known by Lisa Holden and many other aliases, was arrested. The U.S. Department of Justice charged Findley with identity theft and mail fraud connected to the attempt to extort the Presley family into selling Graceland. Findley made an appearance in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri on August 16, 2024 in a hearing that lasted seven minutes. During her arraignment, Findley waived her right to a preliminary hearing or detention hearing and agreed to have those hearings take place in the prosecuting court, the Western District of Tennessee. The U.S. government moved for detention, and Findley was ordered to be removed to the Western District of Tennessee. She remains in custody. On January 25, 2025, Findley pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Public Affairs, Findley "posed as three different individuals" affiliated with the "fictitious private lender" in order to falsely accuse the late Lisa Marie Presley of borrowing $3.8 million from Naussany Investments in 2018. Findley also "allegedly fabricated loan documents" on which she "forged the signatures of Elvis Presley’s daughter and a Florida State notary public. Findley then allegedly filed a false creditor’s claim with the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles, and a fake deed of trust with the Shelby County Register’s Office in Memphis" and "allegedly published a fraudulent foreclosure notice." Despite Findley's direct role, a Graceland official claimed to celebrity news site The Blast that Graceland did not believe Findley was the scam's mastermind, stating that "We think this is the first domino to fall, not the last. We do not believe this is the mastermind behind the scam." Prosecutors have also stated that the person responsible for the scheme was an identity thief based in Nigeria. Findley was also confirmed to have had history of similar criminal cases in the state of Oklahoma, which led to numerous arrests and her serving prison time in both Oklahoma and a Texas federal prison.
On September 23, 2025, Findley was sentenced to 57 months in prison and three years probation.