Lisa Marie Presley’s final private act at Graceland involved a pair of blue slippers hidden under her father’s bed, a secret she kept for decades before sharing it with the man who would portray Elvis on screen. In early 2022, actress Riley Keough and her mother Lisa Marie invited Austin Butler upstairs to Elvis’s private quarters after the filming of the 2022 biopic. Lisa Marie reached under the bed and pulled out a pair of blue slippers positioned exactly where Elvis would slip his feet into them each morning. The estate’s archivist, Angie Marchese, later revealed she had no idea the slippers were there, but Lisa Marie had always known.
The second floor of Graceland has been sealed since 1982, when Priscilla Presley opened the mansion to the public. Elvis himself reportedly insisted that nobody would ever go upstairs, even after his death. The space features heavy soundproofed double doors and a privacy wall with one-way mirrors. The upstairs contains Elvis’s bedroom in the southwest corner, with its black bed and red walls.
His bathroom, where he died, remains covered in gold and black tiles with a purple sink. His dressing room still holds jumpsuits and stage clothes. Lisa Marie’s childhood bedroom sits in the northeast corner. Nothing has been moved since August 16, 1977.
The sheets on the bed are reportedly the last ones Elvis and Ginger Alden slept in. His cologne, Crest toothpaste, and hair dye remain on the counter. Underwear and socks stay folded in drawers. The record player still holds the last record Elvis listened to.
The room is maintained at a constant 68 degrees. Access has been extraordinarily restricted. Guards are posted at the bottom and top of the stairs. No fan has ever breached the second floor in over four decades.
The list of visitors is remarkably short. Nicolas Cage reportedly sat on Elvis’s bed during the 25th anniversary of his death. Michael Jackson was granted access during his marriage to Lisa Marie. Director Baz Luhrmann received only 20 minutes to view the space with no cameras or photographs to prepare for his film’s set recreation.
President George W. Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi toured Graceland on June 30, 2006, making it the first tour ever given by a sitting US president. The tour stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Even the most powerful man in the world was not allowed up.
In the months following Lisa Marie’s death in January 2023, Marchese went upstairs for maintenance work. She lifted the bedspread and found the blue slippers still under the bed, right where Lisa Marie had left them. Marchese described it as a comfort, noting that their position makes it almost possible to imagine Elvis rolling out of bed, with shoes waiting for feet that will never fill them again. Lisa Marie had spoken about the room in interviews, saying she kept the key with her.
She described it as his sanctuary, a place where she could shut the door and feel the safest she had ever felt. Priscilla has described experiencing Elvis’s spiritual presence at the estate, recalling she can hear laughter and music playing when she walks in the door. While the Presley family protected Graceland from the public, someone else was planning to steal it entirely. In September 2023, nine months after Lisa Marie’s death, emails began arriving at the estate claiming she had borrowed $3.
8 million in May 2018 with Graceland as collateral. The company making the claim called itself Naussany Investments and Private Lending. The company did not exist. The documents appeared legitimate, complete with signatures, notary stamps, and official seals.
On May 12, 2024, a foreclosure sale notice appeared in Memphis’s Commercial Appeal newspaper. Graceland would be auctioned on May 23, 2024, outside the Shelby County Courthouse, just eleven days away. Riley Keough, now the owner of Graceland, filed a lawsuit on May 15. Her 60-page complaint stated the documents were fraudulent.
Lisa Marie Presley never borrowed money from Naussany Investments and never gave a deed of trust. The filing described Naussany as a false entity created to defraud the Promenade Trust and the heirs. Investigators traced the scheme to Florida, where a notary named Kimberly Philbrick was shocked to learn her signature and seal appeared on the loan documents. She swore she had never met Lisa Marie Presley and had never notarized any document she signed.
The notarization certificate included language suggesting remote notarization, which was not legal in Florida until 2020. The documents were dated 2018. On May 22, 2024, Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins held a hearing in Shelby County Chancery Court. No attorney appeared for Naussany Investments.
The judge granted a temporary restraining order, halting the sale. The auction was cancelled. After the scheme collapsed, emails started appearing at media outlets claiming to be from someone named Gregory Naussany. The writer claimed to be Nigerian, called themselves a Yahoo, and bragged about being a ringleader on the dark web.
The messages taunted authorities to come find them in Nigeria. Headlines declared that a Nigerian scammer had tried to steal Graceland. But linguists analyzing the emails noticed something odd. The messages were written in clunky Spanish, Luganda, a language from Uganda, and English.
A native speaker said the writer knew Luganda but was not entirely fluent. The whole thing felt too convenient. NBC News investigators broke the real story in June 2024. The person behind Naussany Investments was in Missouri.
Her name was Lisa Janine Findley, 53, living in Kimberling City. The same P. O. box and fax number connected to Naussany appeared in court filings tied to Findley.
A Facebook account linked to the scheme was deleted within 30 minutes of an NBC reporter showing up at her home. Findley’s criminal record stretched back nearly 30 years. Her first known crime was writing bogus checks in Oklahoma in 1997. In 2005, she faced federal charges for using fake social security numbers to obtain more than $180,000 in loans, receiving a 20-month prison sentence.
She had operated under at least six aliases, including Gregory Naussany, Carolyn Williams, and Lisa Holden. According to a Department of Justice press release, after the scheme attracted global media attention, Findley wrote to representatives of Elvis Presley’s family, the Tennessee State Court, and the media to falsely claim the responsible party was a Nigerian identity thief. She invented Gregory Naussany and wrote those emails in broken languages to make them seem authentic. Lisa Janine Findley was arrested on August 16, 2024, the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death.
She was charged with mail fraud, carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years, and aggravated identity theft, carrying a mandatory minimum of 2 years. Inspector Eric Shen of the US Postal Inspection Service said Findley allegedly took advantage of the very public and tragic occurrences in the Presley family as an opportunity to prey on the name and financial status of the heirs. On February 25, 2025, Finley pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud in US District Court in Memphis. When the judge asked if she was admitting guilt, she said simply, “Yes.
” She offered no apology and no justification. On September 23, 2025, US District Judge John T. Fowlkes Jr. sentenced Finley to 57 months in federal prison, plus 3 years of supervised release.
The judge described the plot as a highly sophisticated and brazen scheme to defraud. Findley declined to speak at her sentencing. No members of the Presley family were present. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti released a statement after the conviction.
“Graceland matters so much to so many people around the world,” he said. “Those fans would never know how close Graceland came to being stolen. ”
Long before scammers targeted Graceland, there were people inside those walls who saw what the public never did. Nancy Rooks was hired on May 9, 1967, as a cook and maid working the 5 p.
m. to 1 a. m. shift.
She remained at Graceland until 1982. On August 16, 1977, she was the only maid present when Elvis died. She kept that story private for years before publishing a memoir and giving interviews. She died on August 15, 2022, one day before the 45th anniversary of Elvis’s death.
Rooks recalled Elvis coming in early that morning from the racquetball club. He stood on the steps waiting to go upstairs. Nancy asked if he wanted breakfast. He said no, he just wanted to get some sleep, but he did ask for water.
Another cook, Pauline Nicholson, told Nancy she had never seen him grab water and drink it the way he drank it that morning. Between 9:30 and 10 a. m. , Nancy heard a loud noise from upstairs.
She thought Elvis and Ginger were arguing. She said if Ginger had not been up there, she would have checked on him. Around 1:50 p. m.
, the phone rang on the intercom. It was Ginger. She asked who was downstairs. Nancy said nobody but her.
Ginger’s voice changed. “Something bad has happened up here,” she said, then started crying. Nancy ran upstairs and saw him on the floor. She ran back downstairs.
When the paramedics brought Elvis back down, Nancy said he looked just like he was asleep, except he had blue spots on him. Mary Jenkins Langston began working at Graceland on January 8, 1963, Elvis’s 28th birthday. She started as a maid before Priscilla promoted her to cook, staying until 1989. In an interview on the Joan Rivers show in 1989, Mary revealed that Elvis would stay up in his room and not come out.
His doctor told the staff to keep him on his diet, and they tried. In a 1996 documentary, Mary shared a heartbreaking quote about Elvis’s final years. She said Elvis told her the only thing in life he got any enjoyment out of was eating. Nancy Rooks described how they would try to put him on a diet, but he would not allow it.
His typical breakfast was three to four eggs with cheese and onions plus a full pound of bacon, 18 to 19 slices fried dry. Leticia Henley Kirk was Elvis’s private nurse from 1972 to 1983, living in a trailer on the Graceland grounds. She kept silent for 38 years before publishing a memoir in 2015. She said Elvis was miserable because he had gained so much weight.
He knew he was not going to be able to perform like he wanted to. “The world thinks he has everything,” she said, “and yet the happiness isn’t there. ”
Billy Smith, Elvis’s first cousin, was the last person other than Ginger to see Elvis alive. Billy’s wife Jo recalled the final hours.
She gave Elvis a hug as he started up the steps. He said, “I love you. ” Billy was drying Elvis’s hair after his shower when they spoke for the last time. Elvis was excited about his upcoming tour.
He told Billy, “I think this is going to be my greatest tour ever. ” Elvis’s final words to his cousin were simple. He said, “I love you. See you tomorrow.
” There would be no tomorrow. Ginger Alden, 21 years old and engaged to Elvis since January 26, 1977, found him unresponsive around 2:30 p. m. In her 2014 memoir, she described the discovery.
Elvis looked as if his entire body had completely frozen in a seated position while using the commode. She gently turned his face toward her. A hint of air expelled from his nose. The tip of his tongue was clenched between his teeth.
She raised one eyelid. His eye was staring straight ahead and blood red. Graceland remains a place where public devotion and private protection exist in permanent tension. The sealed second floor with its blue slippers still under the bed represents the family’s determination to preserve something authentic.
The 2024 fraud scheme showed how that devotion makes the estate a target. And the staff testimonies emerging gradually over decades offer the most human portrait of a man whose final days were marked by isolation and declining health. Riley Keough now holds the keys that Lisa Marie once carried. The room where Elvis spoke his final words remains exactly as he left it.
Over 600,000 visitors annually make Graceland the second most visited private home in America after the White House. They will never see what is behind those padded double doors at the top of the stairs.