Despite ‘all the money in the world’, Getty family refused to help kidnapped son

BILLIONAIRE John Paul Getty Sr was designing a museum to display his immense art collection when he was advised of the kidnapping of his grandson John Paul Getty III in 1973. But despite having “all the money in the world”, why did his family reluctantly pay the ransom?

John Paul Getty III, 17, was kidnapped and held by unknown brigands in Italy for five months. They also severed his right ear to show proof of life.

ENJOYING the spoils from his talent for striking it rich, John Paul Getty Sr was designing a museum to display his art collection when advised of a family tragedy in Italy.

Viewing “art as an enlightening influence” which should be accessible to the public for education and enjoyment, he opened the J. Paul Getty Museum at his Malibu ranch-house in 1974.

Exhibits included 18th-century French furniture, European paintings, and Greek and Roman antiquities, perhaps a reminder that his public philanthropy did not necessarily extend to family.

At 3am on July 10, 1973, John Paul Getty III, 16, was snatched by the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta, as he lounged with friends at the Piazza Farnese near Rome’s River Tiber. A movie about his ordeal, All The Money In The World, opens in Sydney on January 4.

Young Getty’s father John Paul II was one of Getty Sr’s five sons with four wives. Born in 1932, John Paul II’s mother was silent screen actor Ann Rork, who in 1934 also had Gordon Peter Getty, in a four-year marriage that ended in 1936.

John Paul Getty Jr in Rome in 1968. Picture: Getty

Sir John Paul Getty Jr in 1999. Picture: Getty

John Paul II then rarely saw his father, but wrote to him. His father never answered the letters, but returned them with spelling mistakes underlined.

Getty Sr’s fifth wife Louise, in 2013 at age 99 wrote that Getty complained about her spending money too freely in the 1950s to treat their son Timmy, then six, left blind from a brain tumour. When Timmy died at 12, Getty did not attend his funeral.

John Paul II married his childhood sweetheart, waterski champion Abigail (Gail) Harris in 1956, and had four children while living in Rome, where he ran Getty Oil Italiana. A popular,
party-loving couple, as alcohol and drugs became a problem they divorced in 1964. John Paul II married Dutch model and actor Talitha Pol in 1966, and had little contact with his children after moving to London. Pol died of a drug overdose in 1971.

In 1966, Getty Sr was named as the world’s richest private citizen, worth an estimated $1.2 billion, rising to more than $2 billion at his death in 1976. The son of an Oklahoma oil man, Getty Sr was born in 1892. In 1949 he bought a 60-year concession to land in Saudi Arabia that from 1953 produced 16 million barrels of oil a day.

John Paul Getty III, born in Rome in 1956, by age 15 had been expelled from seven schools, regularly took drugs and posed naked for a sex magazine. He had also had several older lovers and smashed multiple cars and motorbikes.

Seventeen-year-old John Paul Getty III (right) with his mother Abigail Harris at a press conference after his release from kidnappers in December 1973.

After his abduction he was driven 320km to mountains in Calabria. Days later his kidnappers demanded a $17 million ransom from his mother. She asked his father and grandfather for help, but they suspected the unruly teen had devised his disappearance to raise money. Police were also sceptical, although Harris had received a desperate letter from her son, and a phone call from a man who offered to send a severed finger as proof he was still alive. The note began, “Dear Mummy, Since Monday I have fallen into the hands of kidnappers. Don’t let me be killed.”

Getty Sr refused to pay, arguing he had 14 grandchildren and “If I pay one penny now, I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.” A Getty biographer later claimed the eldest Getty also refused to talk to Harris or his son, who said he could not afford to pay.

After three months the kidnappers sent a package to a Rome newspaper. It contained a lock of red hair, a mouldy human ear and a letter demanding more than $3 million ransom. The kidnappers then sent photographs of Getty minus one ear and threatened that if their demands were ignored they would return him “piece by piece”. His billionaire grandfather relented, putting in $2.2 million and charging his son interest on the rest.

Seventeen-year-old John Paul Getty III was kidnapped and held by unknown brigands in Italy for five months until his family paid a reported ransom of $2.2m.

John Paul Getty III arrives at Westminster Cathedral in London for the memorial service in September 2003 for his father, billionaire philanthropist John Paul Getty Jr. Picture: AP

Getty was found at an abandoned service station south of Naples on December 15, 1973. Nine men were later arrested; two were convicted and sent to prison.

After two weeks recuperating in a private clinic and an Austrian ski holiday, a year later Getty married his pregnant girlfriend, German actor and photographer Martine (later Gisela) Zacher, 24.

They lived in Los Angeles, where he enrolled to study Chinese history at Pepperdine University. But paranoid after his kidnap and incarceration, Getty was unable to sleep, and dependent on brandy, given to him in captivity.

His only child, actor Balthazar Getty, was born in Los Angeles in 1975. Getty, then a drug addict and heavy drinker, in 1981 took a Valium, methadone and alcohol overdose. He suffered liver failure and a stroke that left him in a coma for six weeks. He was paralysed, nearly blind and unable to speak.

His father refused to help. When Getty and his wife divorced in 1993, he was cared for by his mother who helped him sue his father for $28,000 a month to cover medical needs. Getty died in February 2011.

Originally published as Despite ‘all the money in the world’, Getty family refused to help kidnapped son