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How Lisa Marie Presley’s matching tattoo with her son Ben Keough helped her grieve
When Lisa Marie Presley’s son Benjamin Keough died by suicide in 2020 she began living on borrowed time, Elvis Presley’s granddaughter Riley Keough told Oprah Winfrey in an exclusive prime-time special “An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley,” airing Tuesday on CBS.
“I just couldn’t imagine a world where she would make it without him,” said Keough as she recalled the final years she shared with her famous mother, and how she processed her brother’s death, as she finished co-writing “From Here to the Great Unknown,” Lisa Marie’s posthumous memoir.
“She would say ‘I’m going to die of a broken heart’ and I think we felt that,” Keough told Winfrey.
Lisa Marie’s grief was so immense that she kept Ben’s coffin in her home for about two months after his death. She worked with a funeral homeowner to ensure the body was preserved — using dry ice — until it was ready for burial.
“Everybody in the house was in the grieving process,” said Keough, adding that Lisa Marie felt comfort when she sat by the body.
During the mourning period, Lisa Marie called in a tattoo artist to help get her ink before laying Ben to rest. She wanted to have a tattoo like his on her hand — the same place he had a tattoo.
“My mom was just very much herself,” Keough said. “She wasn’t a crazy lady.”
Keough recalls how Lisa Marie took the artist to Ben’s coffin to show him the tattoo placement, ensuring that the placement would be exactly right.
“He’s like, okay, do you have any photos?” Keough remembers the tattoo artist asking. “And she was like ‘No, but I can show you.'”
Keough said the tattoo artist was very professional, studied the placement, and created the meaningful tattoo for Lisa Marie.
The tattoo honoring their mother-son connection proved how close the pair were. In her memoir, Lisa Marie wrote about how much Ben resembled her father Elvis.
“Ben was very similar to his grandfather, very, very, very, and in every way. He even looked like him. Ben was so much like him, it scared me. I didn’t want to tell him because I thought it was too much to put on a kid. We were very close. He’d tell me everything. Ben and I had the same relationship that my father and his mother had. It was a generational f-–ing cycle. Gladys loved my dad so much that she drank herself to death worrying about him. Ben didn’t stand a f-–ing chance,” Lisa Marie wrote.
Stream Winfrey’s exclusive hourlong interview with Keough on Tuesday, Oct. 8, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. “An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley” will stream live on Paramount+ for “Paramount+ with Showtime” subscribers and will be available on demand the next day for “Paramount+ Essentials” subscribers.
If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or a suicidal crisis, you can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. You can also chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline here.
For more information about mental health care resources and support, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) HelpLine can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.–10 p.m. ET, at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or email info@nami.org.
The House Ethics Committee, which has been conducting an investigation into sexual misconduct and obstruction allegations against Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, scheduled a vote for Friday on whether to release its report, according to three sources with knowledge of the committee’s work.
Hours after President-elect Donald Trump said he planned to nominate Gaetz to be attorney general, Gaetz resigned his congressional seat, effective immediately.
“I do not intend to take the oath of office for the same office in the 119th Congress, to pursue the position of Attorney General in the Trump Administration,” Gaetz said in his resignation letter obtained by CBS News
House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that there was about an eight-week period during which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could fill his seat by setting the date for a special election.
Now that Gaetz has resigned, it is unclear whether the panel will vote on releasing the report, since Gaetz is no longer in Congress.
There is precedent in Congress on the Senate side for an ethics committee report to become public after a member resigns from Congress, however. In 2011, this happened when Sen. John Ensign of Nevada resigned amid allegations that he tried to hide an extramarital affair.
But it’s not clear that that would apply to the House, leaving open the possibility that the report on Gaetz would not be released.
In June, the House Ethics Committee released a statement saying it was investigating a range of allegations against Gaetz, including sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, and bribery.
Multiple sources at the time told CBS News that four women had informed the House Ethics Committee that they had been paid to go to parties that included sex and drugs, and that Gaetz had also attended. The committee has Gaetz’s Venmo transactions that allegedly show payments for the women.
Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has called the committee’s investigation a “frivolous” smear campaign.
Some of the allegations of sexual misconduct under review by the committee were also the subject of a previous Department of Justice probe into Gaetz. Federal investigators sought to determine if Gaetz violated sex trafficking and obstruction of justice laws, but no charges were filed.
The House Ethics Committee resumed its investigation into Gaetz in 2023, following the Justice Department’s decision not to pursue charges against him.
Gaetz has long blamed then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, also a Republican, for the probe. And Gaetz later led the movement to sack McCarthy as speaker.
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