The group overseeing Dolly Parton’s empire accused her nephew and former security manager of threatening violence and destroying his late aunt’s legacy in court filings submitted Tuesday.
The court documents filed in Nashville requested that Bryan Seaver be kept away from employees and the business, The New York Times reported.
Seaver owns a company that provided Parton’s security detail. He’s also the relative who made the lengthy announcement that his country music legend aunt had died last month following a battle with cancer.
The temporary restraining order was filed by the company She’s Alive, which manages Parton’s professional property and business, as the outlet noted. She’s Alive is run by Parton’s longtime manager, Danny Nozell.
The filing states that Seaver has been sending threatening messages over the last several weeks. Last week, She’s Alive cut ties with Seaver’s company, claiming that “terrorizing conduct made their continued retention untenable.” It accused Seaver of conducting “an obscene, deliberate and escalating campaign of threats” to obtain money from the Parton estate.
The court documents also contain text messages and emails allegedly sent by Seaver starting before Parton’s death with threats to destroy the brand. Messages sent after Parton’s death allegedly show Seaver enjoying the attention and calling himself an “international arms dealer.”
One message allegedly sent on September 1 read, “I’m going to set up a podcast dedicated to ruining Dolly’s brand partnerships and telling the violations these people have done on us. It’s going to be great. Or f*cking pay me.”
He’s also accused of writing that he would become “the hand of retribution for my entire family.”
In another message, Seaver said, “I’m going to spend the next time I have on earth ratf*cking anyone that has ever betrayed my family,” according to the court documents.
The documents state that employees of She’s Alive have quit due to Seaver’s statements and that the company has had to hire private security. The restraining order would keep Seaver at least 1,000 feet away from employees, attorneys, and business partners, the outlet noted.
Seaver told the Times that the communications highlighted in the court filing are taken out of context. “This is a contrived out-of-context explanation of how this went down and it is being done in an effort to solidify me as some sort of opposition to her brand in her legacy, and that is not the case,” Parton’s nephew told the outlet.
He said his Aunt Dolly referred to him as “killer” in a joking manner. “It was a joke we used around her camp,” he said. “I was her ‘baby boy ninja.’”
“I trusted Danny,” Seaver said of Nozell, “and that’s what those messages were, two friends and brothers commiserating on the people that have screwed Dolly over for many, many years.”
Seaver reiterated that thought to TMZ, saying, “I was talking about people that have done bad to Dolly in business — a specific company that scared her and intimidated her. Those comments were about specific, horrible business partners that have done wrong to her and I stand by that.”
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