Could one of Hollywood’s most famous families be hiding a secret that connects the youngest child of John Travolta to Elvis Presley? That is the bizarre claim that’s at the centre of a $50 million lawsuit that’s being filed in Los Angeles, the report said.
In documents filed with Superior Court in LA, former Presley family assistants Brigitte Kruse and Kevin Fialko assert that Benjamin Travolta, born in November 2010 to actor John Travolta and Kelly Preston, now deceased, is, in fact, the biological son of Riley Keough, Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, via a secret egg donation. Riley Keough, Presley’s daughter with her former husband and actor Danny Keough, is claimed to have donated her eggs in exchange for an “old Jaguar” car and $10,000 to $20,000. According to the complaint, this was arranged through the Presley family circles, with Lisa Marie Presley’s former husband Michael Lockwood involved, and got a “sign off” from the Church of Scientology with Priscilla Presley supervising.
The lawsuit places the occurrence of the deal in the year 2010, only a year after the Travoltas lost their son Jett, aged 16, to a seizure. This changed when Travolta asked Lisa Marie for her eggs but turned down the proposal, reportedly because they did not want “eggs with heroin” on them because of Lisa’s addiction problems. This changed to the involvement of Riley, with the pregnancy which led to Ben’s birth carried by Kelly Preston, referred to through handwritten exhibit references as “Kelly Preston carried baby,” “Old Jaguar,” and “$10-$20,000,” together with the names of professionals involved. Text messages quoted between Priscilla and her assistants even mentioned Ben as “your beautiful great grandson.”
The allegations are part of a much larger lawsuit between Kruse, Fialko and the Presley family. Priscilla’s son Navarone Garibaldi Garcia is blamed by the plaintiffs for breach of contract and it is alleged that Garcia was angry at the report about egg donation and demanded that it not be printed in the press because he was promised by his mother that he would be “the only male musician in the family” and thus “the king.” He was allegedly seeking a multi-million-dollar settlement.
Lawyers for the Presley family have filed vehement denials of the charges. Marty Singer, attorney for Priscilla, labeled the charges ‘shameful’ and ‘outrageous,’ saying, “These recent outrageous allegations have absolutely nothing to do with the claims in this case. The conduct of Kruse, Fialko, and their new lawyers (they are on their fourth set of attorneys) is shameful, and it absolutely will be addressed in court.” Riley Keough and John Travolta have issued no statements regarding the lawsuit. This is only the latest installation in a long line of very public fertility agreements, and very public disputes, in Hollywood.
From the long fight over frozen embryos between Sofia Vergara and Nick Loeb-where Loeb claimed that these embryos are “lives” who are being denied their inheritance-to lawsuits over improperly stored or handled reproductive cells at fertility clinics, this strange triangle of celebrity, reproduction, and litigation continues to fascinate. For people who are fans of Elvis Presley, the fact that a great-grandson of this music icon could potentially be raised within the Travolta family can only be described as sensational news. These kinds of revelations could easily evoke a certain emotional response, especially if they involve a person with a certain level of stardom whose imagery has presented a normal, acceptable construction of a person for, easily, forty years. However, like most situations in Hollywood, only a court of law can determine what a person actually is, and this is far from the sensational and fascinating news that pervades public opinion.
