by Pa Rock
Fan of Auctions
Riley Keough was not amused when she recently learned that her old family home place, which she now owned in its entirety, was being sold at public auction due to a loan that her late mother had supposedly taken out against the property and never repaid. The loan had been secured from a private lender in August of 2015 (some sources say 2018) in the amount of $450,000, and with accumulated interest and assorted fees over the years, the total due was now $3.8 million. The note holder announced in the local press that he intended to sell the property at a public auction to repay the obligation.
Ms. Keough is the 34-year-old daughter and only surviving child of Lisa Marie Presley - and the granddaughter of Elvis Presley. The home place at the center of this controversy is Graceland, the Memphis mansion and 13.8 acre estate where Elvis spent the last twenty years of his life before passing away there in August of 1977. Elvis is buried on the grounds of Graceland and so are his parents, daughter, and grandson.
Riley Keough was not about to stand idly by while her birthright and heritage were auctioned off. She attacked the move to auction off her property first in the press where she claimed that the documents used in the claim were fraudulent, and then in the courts where she sought a temporary restraining order to stop the sale. A judge in Memphis granted the order and stopped the sale of the property.
Today it looks as though the aggrieved lender is backing off of his claim. A woman listed as a notary on loan documents says that she never met the presumed borrower, Lisa Marie Presley, and the lender and his organization now seem to be in hasty retreat. Court documents provided by the lender show addresses for his private lending business in Jacksonville, Florida, and Hollister and Kimberling City, Missouri, with all three addresses being post office boxes.
Graceland was constructed for its original owners, Thomas and Ruth Moore, in 1939, and Elvis bought it from Ruth Brown Moore on March 19th, 1957, for $102,500. (That would be about $1.1 million today, but the estate is now valued nearer to $400 million, obviously thanks to Elvis's fame.). Today the mansion is a museum and pay tours fun throughout the day on most days
I visited Graceland once in the very early 1980's while sponsoring a high school senior trip. In a posting in this blog on September 11, 2013, entitled "Along the Tourist Trap Trail," I had this to say about that visit:
"The Graceland mansion was not open to the public at that time because one of Elvis's elderly aunts was still living there. Our visit was carefully restrained to the front wall of the property - which was covered with messages from die-hard fans, and the grounds around the graves. Our bus driver, also a school employee and trip sponsor, slipped off and walked around the big house where he managed to meet the person responsible for caring for the King's cars.
"Today Graceland itself - the house - is open to tourists for forty dollars a pop, and an extra forty will buy and extended special tour that allows tourists to see the Presley cars and his personal jet."
Keep up the good work, Riley. Money lenders alway bear close scrutiny!
No comments:
Post a Comment