Sign says 'For Sale,' but Newtons intend to stay

But Newton's wife, Kathleen McCrone Newton, said Friday that even if a bidder snatches up the property at auction May 31, the "Mr. Las Vegas" crooner and his family have no intention of moving out.

"We stay here until we choose to leave. We have that right," Kathleen Newton told The Associated Press. "Even if at some point the property gets sold, it gets sold with us here."

She said a lease with a partnership that purchased the nearly 40-acre property for $19.5 million in June 2010 will let the couple and their 10-year-old daughter stay in the gold-trimmed opulent main house.

The mansion, featuring 17th century antiques and keepsakes from performers like Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and Bobby Darin, was to have been the featured attraction in a "Graceland West" attraction commemorating the career of the 70-year-old "Mr. Las Vegas" crooner. But those plans have crumbled.

Kathleen Newton's sister, Tricia McCrone, lives in another home on the property. Newton's 92-year-old former longtime personal secretary, Mona Matoba, lives in a third.

An exotic menagerie including Newton's penguins, swans and Arabian horses also stay, Kathleen Newton said.

Well, maybe not, said Joseph Wielebinski, a Dallas-based lawyer representing the property owner, CSD LLC, in a bitterly contested Chapter 11 reorganization.

"We have teed up that issue for resolution by the judge," Wielebinski said. "It is anything but certain whether the Newtons remain on the property or not."

The Newtons don't own the Casa de Shenandoah property anymore, Wielebinski said.

While Newton certainly owns his famous Arabian horses, he doesn't own the irrigated green pastures where they graze. The court will have to decide if he owns the barns where they're kept. And leases can be broken during bankruptcy reorganization.

"This is a business divorce. Everything is contested," Wielebinski said.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Bruce Markell in Las Vegas is poised during hearings March 29 and April 8 to rule on questions about who owns what.