Harold Ray Presley was one of six children born to Noah Edward and Christine Presley. He attended local schools, but dropped out of school in the tenth grade. In 1968 he was drafted into the Army and served in Vietnam in the Twenty-ninth General Support Group. After serving two years, he received an honorable discharge and returned to Tupelo.

Harold Ray Presley married his teenage sweetheart Charlene McMullen in 1968. They had two sons and a daughter. Elvis Presley was his second cousin.

In 1993 he was elected sheriff of Lee County. During his tenure as sheriff, Presley received numerous awards including the Buford Pusser Award and the "Best of the Best Officers" for five years.

Perceiving a need for battling both the demand and supply of illegal drugs, Presley initiated the DARE Program in local County schools to educate young people, several twelve-step programs in the jail to help recovering addicts, and a tough approach to law enforcement regarding illegal drug sales and use. Harold Ray also took college classes along with getting his GED. He started a work-center program for the inmates in his jail and provided GED classes for training and testing inmates.

Presley was as famous for stopping the drug trade and drug traffic in Lee County, Mississippi as Buford Pusser was for chasing down the State Line Mob and bootleggers in McNairy County, Tennessee in the 1960s.

Sheriff Harold Ray Presley died in the early morning hours of July 6, 2001 in a shootout with a kidnapping suspect. There are questions surrounding the circumstances of his death - for instance, the family has always been denied the ballistics report.