Wait, someone tried to steal Graceland?
Wait, someone tried to steal Graceland?
Bless my soul, here's a heist attempt for the ages
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Today in the newsletter:
Lordy mama, feel some larceny rising
New (-ish) music from The King
Eat like Elvis, if you dare
The first time I visited Graceland, I was young and stupid and absolutely convinced of my own cleverness, which is why I thought it would be a great idea to ask the clerk at a nearby gift store whether she ever, you know, got sick of listening to Elvis play on the loudspeakers overhead. To me, it was a valid question; if you’ve never been to the Holy Grounds, there was, at the time, an entire strip mall across Elvis Presley Boulevard whose stores were all dedicated to the King. (It’s since been absorbed by the Presley machine and converted into one of the many on-site museums.)
I wasn’t trying to be cruel, I just wondered how you could live every waking moment in service of a singer who’d been dead for years. (At that age, I did not truly comprehend zealotry.) As I asked my oh-so-clever question, the face of the clerk, an older woman with a gentle, patient elementary school teacher vibe, briefly flashed rage but quickly morphed into pity at my blindness.
I immediately felt intensely guilty, like I’d spray-painted cuss words on my grandmother’s house, and even today I cringe at the thought of how I’d mocked that poor sweet old lady’s entire belief system. I was an idiot.
But hey, at least I didn’t try to steal Graceland.
This is a story that landed in my inbox courtesy of the wonderfully goofy type click type newsletter from Brian Grubb, one which you should subscribe to immediately. I’m a little late to this one thanks to (waves hands vaguely in the direction of Pinehurst, North Carolina), but it’s well worth spotlighting on its own given the fact that we are now bone-deep fans of all things Elvis around these parts. (What can I say? Living in Memphis changes the way a man sees the world.)
The tale of Elvis and his wealth is a sad one; the poor kid from Mississippi was an easy target for grifters from the moment that Sam Phillips recognized his brilliance, and leeches preyed on him pretty much every minute of his public life. (He kept making terrible movies and releasing substandard albums because his manager, Col. Tom Parker, wanted to squeeze every nickel out of him as quickly as possible, and he never toured outside the U.S. because Parker may well have been an illegal alien and would have been unable to return. Tom Hanks’ portrayal of Col. Tom in “Elvis” had plenty of over-the-top cartoon mannerisms, but the predatory greed under the surface was spot-on.)
So it was depressing but unsurprising to hear in May that Graceland was going up for auction after the death of Presley’s daughter Lisa Marie. Before her death in January 2023, Lisa Marie had apparently gotten in way over her head with loans to shady lenders, selling off pieces of the still-massive Presley estate and also using Graceland itself as collateral. A company that said it had loaned Lisa Marie large sums of money filed claim in Shelby County, Tennessee to take over Graceland over those unpaid debts, and it sure seemed like the Elvis Presley story would end with the cold redistribution of once-beloved assets.
But wait! Enter Riley Keough, Lisa Marie’s daughter. She’s an actress perhaps best known for her starring turn in “Daisy Jones & The Six,” where she plays a Stevie Nicks-esque singer and channels more than a little of Grandpa’s old charismatic stage magic. She also starred in the exceptional heist film “Logan Lucky,” which might be where she got the sense that something wasn’t quite right with this “claim” and potential “auction” of her family estate.
She challenged the authority of the company that claimed to hold the rights to Graceland, an outfit called “Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC,” on the grounds that this company had apparently forged documentation and may not, in fact, even exist. A judge stopped the proceedings to give everyone time to just chill the heck out, and that’s when the real revelations started happening.
Tennessee’s attorney general opened an investigation into the whole deal, and hoo boy does this get wild. Keough’s lawyers got an email from a “Kurt Naussany” demanding $1.8 million to satisfy old loans that Lisa Marie had taken out, with the threat of selling Graceland if the loans weren’t repaid. However, NBC News — which has done some fine investigative work here — got an email from “Kurt Naussany” who said he never loaned Lisa Marie any money, and that he left the company in 2015. That email suggested contacting “Gregory E. Naussany,” who didn’t show up for the initial hearing and only communicated by fax and email. Soon afterward, a scammer admitted to concocting the plot, which — and here’s where it gets really sad — was a large-scale version of the fraud and schemes perpetrated daily on the elderly and the grieving.
“They picked the wrong piece of property,” Mark A. Sunderman, a real estate professor at the University of Memphis, told the New York Times. “If this had not been such a high-profile piece of property, they might have gotten away with it.”1
NBC News kept digging, and found that beneath the ring of Nigerian scammers that had attempted to vulture the estate, there was another figure involved here: a grandmother in Branson, Missouri — “a con woman,” as NBC News described her, “with a decades-long rap sheet of romance scams, forged checks and bank fraud totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, for which she did time in state and federal prison.” Yeah! Now we’re getting somewhere!
“Those who know (the con woman) know her as different people,” the article continues, “a woman made wealthy from inheritance, a cannabis entrepreneur, an underwater welder, an online harasser, a cancer faker, and a scammer. One thing they seem to agree on: She’s determined.” She did business as, apparently, “Kurt Naussany,” “Gregory E. Naussany,” “Carloyn Naussany” (yes, with that misspelling), and “Carolyn Williams,” and goes by still another name now.
In addition to attempting to swipe Graceland, the Naussany accounts apparently hatched protection schemes, forged documents, used Internet dating services as hunting grounds, impersonated doctors and review-bombed plenty of local Branson restaurants and nail salons. How she graduated from small-time single-victim harvesting to attempting to steal one of the most famous homes in the United States is still a mystery.
So don’t roll your eyes at that cranky Nextdoor commenter who complains about everything in your town; they might just be masterminding an entire criminal enterprise right there in plain sight.
The bottom line here is that the failed Graceland heist is yet another example of how most would-be One Big Score schemes aren’t intricately-plotted “Ocean’s 11” conspiracies, but slapdash wow-that-escalated-quickly cascades of brash incompetence and dodged consequences. As always, Deep Throat’s line in “All The President’s Men” applies: “The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”
One of my favorite E songs is “If I Can Dream.” When sung right — i.e. without all the post-performance gloop that so much of his worst albums have — it’s a testament to transcending earthly chains and reaching toward something higher, something eternal, and man, could Elvis sing the hell out of it. After all, before he was ELVIS, he was a kid from Tupelo with a dream, and he wanted others to dream along with him.
But I think even Elvis would’ve drawn the line at a dream of stealing his house.
Random reader Q: Tell us your favorite heist tale, real or imagined.
Song of the Week: ‘Polk Salad Annie,’ Elvis
I don’t know how it’s possible nearly 50 years after the King’s passing, but the Elvis Presley estate continues to remake, remix and release new material, several times a year. Coming later this fall: “Elvis Memphis,” a collection of tunes that E recorded in Memphis, starting with the little record he made for his mamma (I wrote about that here) and running right on through the last recordings he made at Graceland before he ascended to a higher throne. This particular tune is from a kick-ass concert he put on at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis. Check out this setlist, it’s got damn near everything. I’m a little leery of 1970s-era Elvis, but he sounds pretty damn good here. And the “Elvis Memphis” album is billed as a stripped-down, no-gooey-overdub production, which is good news indeed.
Find “Polk Salad Annie” and everything else we’ve recommended here, at the official Flashlight & A Biscuit Spotify playlist, accept no imitators:
Stunt Food of the Week: The Fool’s Gold Sandwich
That right there is the famous Fool’s Gold Sandwich, a delicious/nightmarish concoction of peanut butter, jelly, bacon and butter on a sourdough roll. According to legend, Elvis once had a hankering for the sandwiches — the creation of a now-vanished Colorado restaurant called the Colorado Mining Company — and so he loaded up his entire crew onto his private plane, flew to Denver, dropped $49.95 per sandwich (about $275 in today’s dollars), and together with his crew housed more than 20 of these beasts.
The Colorado Mining Company is closed, but the lad who served Elvis the sandwich went on to open his own restaurant, Nick’s Cafe, which sadly closed in 2022 as well. But here, for the sake of preservation, is the recipe in all its glory:
Fool’s Gold Sandwich
Split a loaf of Italian bread lengthwise, hollow out the soft bread inside, and smear butter on both halves
Spread one entire jar of peanut butter on the halves (Crunchy or smooth, it really doesn’t matter)
Spread one entire jar of blueberry jam on both halves
Fry up one (1) pound of bacon, blot it dry, and, yep, spread it on both halves
Deep-fry the sandwich, or just eat it straight, it doesn’t really even matter at this point
There you go. Eat like a king. Just notify your next in the line of succession beforehand.
I’m always on the lookout for more ridiculous food creations. When you see one, message or tag me — @jaybusbee — on any of the social media sites. I’ll give you credit and a bite.
That’ll do it for this week, friends. Stay cool and we’ll see all you cats and kittens right back here soon…
—Jay
Land Cat, Georgia
This is issue #122 of Flashlight & A Biscuit. Check out all the past issues right here. Feel free to email me with your thoughts, tips and advice. If you’re new around here, jump right to our most-read stories, or check out some of our recent hits:
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…if it weren’t for those meddling kids. (Sorry. Force of habit.)
Favorite heist: I was just listening to a podcast about the 1990 art museum theft of a Rembrandt and many other paintings from a museum in Boston.
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/new-inside-the-isabella-stewart-gardner-art-heist-part-1--59689374