Lisa Marie Presley dies at 54 after apparent cardiac arrest
TMZ broke the news earlier today that Lisa Marie Presley was rushed to hospital after what appears to be a cardiac arrest. Now, this evening, it is being reported that she has died. She was 54.
We were hoping to hear news that she had pulled through. The singer, daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, was seen just Tuesday night at the Golden Globe Awards awards with her mother as they were there to see Austin Butler take home a statue for portraying Elvis.
Lisa Marie was a frequent presence in our pages because of her rather epic journey out of Scientology in 2014, and then the dramatic way she made news during the Danny Masterson trial in November.
While we wait for more news about her condition, we will briefly summarize those stories and direct you to where you can get the full narratives.
Priscilla Presley was lured into Scientology after the death of Elvis in 1977. They were no longer married, but she was still deeply affected by his death and it made her vulnerable to an appeal by John Travolta, according to Travolta’s former Scientology handler, Spanky Taylor.
Priscilla then raised Lisa Marie in Scientology, but then beginning in 2012 we noticed that she was beginning to drop some pretty obvious hints in her lyrics that she was souring on the group. That became even more clear with the release of her album Storm & Grace that year.
That was also the year that Ron Miscavige, father of Scientology leader David Miscavige, made his clever escape from the secretive Scientology headquarters known as Int Base near Hemet, California. A couple of years later, in 2014, Ron attempted to visit his two daughters in Florida, but he was turned away. They had been instructed by their brother David to cut their father out of their lives.
Ron told us this incensed Lisa Marie, with whom he was very close, and she attempted to have showdown over it with Miscavige at Scientology’s “spiritual mecca” in Clearwater, Florida. Rather than show up himself, Miscavige sent his two sisters to hurl abuse at Lisa Marie about their father. Ron told us Lisa Marie then went back to her hotel and announced to the others with her that she was now no longer a Scientologist. Read our full story about this here.
For good measure, she then made sure a hugely critical news story about Miscavige landed in the pages of the Los Angeles Times in 2015.
After that, Lisa Marie got caught up in a years-long and brutal legal battle with her ex-husband, musician Michael Lockwood, and there were reports that she was having more struggles with substance abuse.
Ron told us before he died in 2021 that Lisa Marie had stopped communicating with him.
This year, there was another bombshell involving Lisa Marie and Scientology. During the Danny Masterson trial, prosecutors informed the court that they had asked her to testify because she had been a close friend with Jane Doe 1.
Jane Doe 1 testified that she had been raped by Masterson in 2003, and that she was considering defying Scientology policy and reporting the incident to the police.
Lisa Marie was being asked to testify that Scientology had asked her to dissuade Jane Doe 1 from going to the police.
Deputy DA Reinhold Mueller told the court that Lisa Marie’s attorney had said that if they asked her about that on the stand, he would advise her to take the Fifth Amendment — because it also implicated Lisa Marie in a crime, and not just Scientology. Mueller said he granted her immunity to testify.
But Judge Olmedo ruled that such testimony was more about Scientology than about Danny Masterson and so it didn’t belong in a criminal trial. The prosecutors then chose not to call Lisa Marie at all.
Here’s how we called it that afternoon at the courthouse.
We are very sorry to hear that Lisa Marie has passed away.
Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:
Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history
Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea
Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time
Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology
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This is terribly shocking news. So much heartbreak for Lisa Marie in recent years, following the death of her son and the messy divorce battle with her former husband. I wish her a full and speedy recovery. Poor Lisa.
I’m so sorry to hear about Lisa Marie’s passing. I didn’t know her personally well, but had a couple of stories about her I thought I would share. Though she may not have smiled much, she did do some funny or nice things.
The first one I remember sometime in the mid-90’s she won or settled a lawsuit with a British tabloid. She took the entire settlement amount and paid it to Flag for her kids to get their entire Bridge there. They asked her who her FSM was (who would get a commission) and she said “CC Int”. And so CC Int got a quarter million commission from Flag. And the finance people were going nuts trying to figure out what to do with that money. There were many meeting and fights about it, but Dave Petit won and all of it went to the CC Int staff as bonuses.
The second story was later at Flag. I was in training to become an auditor. LMP was on OT VI, which is not a confidential level. It’s just redoing meter drills and reading lots of basic books and such. Lisa was supposed to be doing this at the Sandcastle but she didn’t want to be over there. She could t stand it there. So she came over to the training trenches of the Coachman where all us low life trainees were. She did all her course there. I remember one particular drill she had to do was find a dirty needle on someone. (Supposed to mean that person is hiding something). It was myself and another CC Int staff member helping her. I’m holding the cans as she’s staring at the needle to see if it’s dirty. She looks up and smiles at me briefly and says “this must be so introverting, me looking for a dirty needle on you”. Then: “there’s one!” She’s looks at me apologetically and asks what I’m thinking of. Of course it was Kali’s tie (the other CC Int staff member). Lisa looks at the tie, then me, and says “yeah that CC uniform is hideous”. Yeah it was. We hated that uniform.
Rest in peace lady.