Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [184]
Currie would say later that Priscilla had not bled when he penetrated her, leading him to believe that she had already had intercourse, perhaps with one of the older “bad boys” she ran around with in eighth grade. Later he decided that probably wasn’t right—she seemed so inexperienced at lovemaking.
The bottom line, if Currie’s account is to be believed, and from what Priscilla’s schoolmate Tom Stewart told her biographer, Suzanne Finstad, about his own sexual relationship with Priscilla in 1959, is that in 1967, when Elvis and Priscilla married, she was not the virgin bride that Elvis always said he wanted. She was not even a virgin on the night he first met her.
When writing her biography of Priscilla, Finstad interviewed both Currie and Priscilla and found their versions of the story at great variance. Hoping to reconcile their accounts, Finstad arranged to interview the two of them together. Presented with Currie’s story, Priscilla became hysterical. “May God strike me dead if that ever happened to me,” Finstad quotes her as saying. “I am telling you on the life of my son and my daughter, that never happened. That man is a liar!”
But by Priscilla’s later account to her then-boyfriend, Mike Edwards, related in Child Bride, she did have some kind of episode with Currie in the German hills that led to her meeting Elvis.
In 1998, Priscilla sued Currie for defamation, arguing in her legal action that his statements were fabrications. She and her attorney sought $10 million in damages. In August of that year, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Daniel Curry entered a default judgment against Currie for libel and ordered him to pay $75,000, far less than the $10 million Priscilla sought. Neither Finstad nor her publisher, Harmony Books/Crown, were ever sued.
Priscilla used the default judgment to make it appear that the information that Currie provided was tainted. While there is a default judgment against Currie on file, there is also a confidential settlement agreement, a secret arrangement dated August 11, 1998, between Currie and Priscilla that underlies and supercedes the default judgment.
In the private side letter agreement, apparently prepared by Priscilla’s attorneys, Currie is not required to pay Priscilla a dime as long as he does not repeat his accusations or disclose the existence of the secret settlement. According to the settlement, he and Priscilla agree not to discuss each other in public, other than a statement from Priscilla in which she says she “feels vindicated.” In exchange, Priscilla does not enforce the default judgment against Currie and pays him $15,000 for pictures he took of her in Germany.
The confidential side letter states:
The parties stipulate and agree that the parties can state to the Media that a judgment for defamation has been entered in favor of Presley against Grant. No mention will be made by Presley or her attorneys to the Media of the dollar amount of the judgment. Presley can state to the Media that she feels vindicated by this result. Grant will make no comment to the Media other than the fact that Grant is glad to move on.
Furthermore,
The parties stipulate and agree that Grant will no longer state to the Media or any other individual that he had sex with Presley and Presley will no longer state to the Media that Grant attempted to rape her.
Per the side letter, Currie must pay a minimum of $75,000 if he engages in any “prohibited communications” regarding Priscilla. Clearly Priscilla has taken extraordinary measures to silence Currie, presumably to protect the myth of how she met Elvis and whether she was a virgin at the time.
When Currie brought Priscilla back to Elvis’s house a second time, he knew that Elvis would waste no time in taking her upstairs.