When you think about the men in the orbit of the Presley family, the names usually start with Elvis and move quickly to Michael Jackson or Nicolas Cage. But there is another Michael who loomed over Lisa Marie Presley’s childhood like a shadow. Michael Edwards. He was a handsome model and actor, the man Priscilla Presley brought home just a year after Elvis died in 1977.
To the outside world, they were a Hollywood power couple. To a young Lisa Marie, he was something much different. Honestly, for decades, the full extent of their "relationship"—if you can even call it that—was kept under wraps. It wasn’t until Lisa Marie’s posthumous memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, was released in 2024 that the world finally saw the jagged edges of this story.
The Man Who Replaced Elvis
Priscilla and Michael Edwards started dating in 1978. It was a weird time. Elvis was gone, Graceland was in transition, and Priscilla was trying to find her own identity. Edwards was the quintessential 70s hunk. He appeared in high-end commercials and eventually played the role of John Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
He lived with Priscilla for roughly six years. During that time, he wasn't just a boyfriend; he was a surrogate father figure to a ten-year-old Lisa Marie. But according to her, he was never a protector. In her book, she describes a man who was deeply unstable, often intoxicated, and dangerously obsessed with her.
It's pretty jarring when you look back at his own 1988 book, Priscilla, Elvis, and Me. In those pages, Edwards actually admitted to being "attracted" to a teenage Lisa Marie. He wrote about waiting for her to get out of school the same way Elvis once waited for Priscilla. It’s the kind of admission that makes your skin crawl in hindsight. He framed it as a "forbidden love" back then. Lisa Marie, however, used a much more accurate word for it: abuse.
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What Really Happened Behind Closed Doors
Lisa Marie first opened up about this slightly in a 2003 interview with Playboy, but she didn't give the full, graphic details. She mentioned he would try to enter her room while he was drunk. People sort of glossed over it at the time. We weren't as good at listening to victims then.
The 2024 memoir changed everything. In it, she alleges that Edwards sexually molested her starting when she was just ten years old. Think about that for a second. Ten.
- He would sneak into her bedroom at night.
- He used his position in the house to stay close to her.
- The trauma, according to her daughter Riley Keough, fueled Lisa Marie's lifelong struggles with self-worth and addiction.
Basically, while the world thought the King's daughter was living a fairy-tale life, she was surviving a predator in her own hallway.
The Private Investigator and the Control Tactics
The story gets even weirder as Lisa Marie grew up. When she fell in love with her first husband, Danny Keough, Michael Edwards didn't just step aside. He reportedly hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on Danny.
Why? Because Danny made Lisa Marie "harder to control."
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There are even claims in the memoir that Edwards tried to pressure Lisa Marie into an abortion when she became pregnant with her first child, Riley. It speaks to a level of manipulation that goes far beyond a "bad breakup" with a mother. It was a systematic attempt to dominate a young woman's life.
Where is Michael Edwards Now?
Edwards is still around. He's in his 80s now. When these new, more detailed allegations surfaced in the 2024 memoir, he denied them. He has maintained for years that his relationship with the family was "complicated" but not criminal.
But public opinion has shifted. You can't really read his own words from 1988—where he literally compares himself to Elvis waiting for a child—and see him as a victim of "rumors." The evidence of his fixation is written in his own hand.
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Why This Matters Today
We talk a lot about the "Presley Curse," but looking at the Michael Edwards saga, it’s clear that much of the tragedy in Lisa Marie’s life wasn't supernatural. It was human. It was the result of being surrounded by people who saw her as a trophy or an object rather than a child.
The actionable takeaway here is about the importance of believing survivors, even when the "villain" is a famous face. If you are researching this because you're a fan of the Presley legacy, look closer at the gaps in the story. The "missing years" between Elvis's death and Lisa Marie’s adulthood are where the real damage was done.
If you want to understand the woman Lisa Marie became, you have to understand the environment Michael Edwards created in that house. It wasn't just a Hollywood romance; for the girl living there, it was a nightmare.
Next Steps for Readers:
If you want the full context, read From Here to the Great Unknown. It’s heavy, but it’s the only time Lisa Marie truly got to speak for herself without a filter or a PR team protecting the "Presley Brand." You can also look up archived interviews from 1988 to see how the media originally treated Edwards’s admissions—it’s a fascinating, if disturbing, look at how much our culture has changed.