‘Tired of Priscilla Presley’s version,’ Brigitte Kruse to reveal the truth ‘about everything’

Here’s the reason Brigitte Kruse is about to stun the world with all that she knows.

It was April Fool’s day two years ago, and Brigitte Kruse was trying to keep the chaos in her central Florida home under some semblance of control.

About forty people were in her house for the birthday party of her ten-year-old daughter, and between the face painters and balloon artists, the screaming kids and the other moms she had just met who were looking over her things and quietly assessing her, Brigitte was barely holding it together.

And then the doorbell rang.

“We have this large foyer. I was talking to some of the moms and the doorbell rang and I wondered who it was,” Brigitte remembers.

She opened the door, and it was a courier. A woman. Asking for Brigitte Kruse.

She wanted her to sign for a letter, but Brigitte had learned recently to be wary, and said she didn't want to sign anything.

The letter carrier shrugged. “It’s OK, you don’t have to sign for it. Here,” she said and handed over the piece of mail.

With the birthday party going on loudly behind her and the moms in her foyer wondering what was going on, Brigitte took in who the letter was addressed to.

“LISA M PRESLEY (DECEASED)”

The address under the name was in California.

The letter was from the Internal Revenue Service, and it was a notice of a federal tax lien.

Brigitte had to look twice at the amount, which was lacking a comma and looked like too many digits strung together.

It was for $607,518.43

“The lien attaches to all property you currently own and to all property you may acquire in the future. It also may damage your credit rating and hinder your ability to obtain additional credit,” the letter warned.

But the person it was warning, Lisa Marie Presley, had died tragically just two months before in Los Angeles.

Why was a tax bill for more than half a million dollars, which threatened to seize Lisa Marie Presley’s property, being delivered to a Florida mom at her home while she was having a birthday party for her 10-year-old daughter?

Brigitte knew who to ask about it.

After making an excuse to her guests about getting a notice from the county on a construction project — she couldn’t tell them what was really going on — she pulled up Riley Keough’s number in her phone and typed out a text message, managing to keep what was going on from her guests and without interrupting the party.

“I hate to send this on a beautiful Saturday,” she wrote to Lisa Marie’s daughter, a successful actress who lived in Los Angeles, “but we really need authority from you to deal with the IRS. I was served again today during my daughter's party.”

Brigitte noted that this was a new $600,000 debt she hadn’t seen before.

She went on to describe for Riley that her home had been full of “Southern women that already don't trust me because ‘I’m from LA’.”

Riley texted back, seemingly apologetic.

“I’m sorry you were served with this. That’s so bizarre. So sorry for any inconvenience,” she said. “My team is in the process of working on all of this and they are aware of all of the IRS issues. They're totally on top of it and said it will all be handled soon!”

It had been a traumatic few weeks for Riley since the death of her mother, of course, but it had also been a bewildering time for Brigitte Kruse, more than two thousand miles away in Florida.

Brigitte had become so close to Lisa’s mother Priscilla — Riley’s grandmother — that she was practically a member of the family herself, involved closely in the private lives of Lisa’s ex-husband Michael Lockwood, his daughters Harper and Finley, and Priscilla’s son Navarone. They all had come to rely so closely on Brigitte in business and personal matters, Priscilla had signed over power of attorney and role of co-trustee of her trusts to the Florida mom just prior to Lisa’s unexpected death.

In January, Priscilla had stunned the public by filing a court action challenging a 2016 amendment in Lisa’s will that removed her as co-trustee of Lisa’s estate and replaced her with Riley.

But if the public was surprised, Brigitte had long known about the complex issues between Priscilla and Lisa.

“At that time, I was Priscilla’s most trusted person in the world,” Brigitte says. “Everything I did she instructed me to do, no matter if it was 2 am or 2 pm, I was always on call. Anyone that knows Priscilla knows that no one tells her what to do.”

But then things changed. Five days before Priscilla and her son were set to receive their funds from the settlement from Lisa’s trust, Brigitte was terminated after working thousands of hours, which included working from a hospital bed after major surgery.

Today, Brigitte Kruse and Priscilla Presley are suing each other in Florida and California, and Brigitte has been targeted by other lawsuits and negative press stories about her work with Elvis Presley memorabilia.

Much of it is inaccurate, she says, and calculated to destroy her reputation.

Even basic facts like how she met Priscilla the public has wrong, Brigitte says. It wasn’t because Priscilla needed help auctioning off Elvis memorabilia, but something else entirely, which she is ready to share.

Brigitte said she felt comfortable talking to us because we’ve been covering these lawsuits.

She says she’s had enough of the lies about her, which have hurt her reputation and her children.

It’s time, she says, that Brigitte Kruse sets the record straight. And not with rumors or allegations. But with receipts, gathered as a formerly trusted inner member of the tight-knit Presley clan, and witness to its internal turmoil before and after the death of Lisa Marie.

“I have texts, emails, documents, video, audio. I have everything,” she says.

She sent over a few other documents and some texts and described some of what else she has. From what we can tell, it’s a stunning collection, and will produce numerous bombshells when she makes it public, including the identity of the grandchild of Elvis and Priscilla living in Florida today that Brigitte referred to in her lawsuit.

Brigitte tells us she’s putting together a video series to reveal what she knows. She’s giving us some access to what it’s going to contain, and we will be helping her make things public.

“I’m ready to tell the world the whole truth, what really happened,” she says.

We told her that she may be facing some serious blowback when the news of her project goes public.

She said she was undaunted by that prospect.

“There’s so much that I know. I am going to hang my hat on the truth. I can’t handle the lies anymore,” she says.

“I have nothing left to lose.”

---

Want to help?

Please consider joining the Underground Bunker as a paid subscriber. Your $7 a month will go a long way to helping this news project stay independent, and you’ll get access to our special material for subscribers. Or, you can support the Underground Bunker with a Paypal contribution to bunkerfund@tonyortega.org, an account administered by the Bunker’s attorney, Scott Pilutik. And by request, this is our Venmo link, and for Zelle, please use (tonyo94 AT gmail). E-mail tips to tonyo94@gmail.com. Find us at Threads: tony.ortega.1044 and Bluesky: @tonyortega.bsky.social

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

Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain

Here’s the link to today’s post at tonyortega.org

And whatever you do, subscribe to this Substack so you get our breaking stories and daily features right to your email inbox every morning.

Paid subscribers get access to a special podcast series…

Group Therapy: Our round table of rowdy regulars on the week’s news