Heir to world’s biggest fortune held by kidnappers for 158 days
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| John Paul Getty III was left severely disabled after a stroke in 1981 |
A story that dominated the Italian press and newspapers
around the world ended on this day in 1973 when police responding to a tip-off
found a shivering, malnourished and deeply traumatised American teenager inside
a disused motorway service area in a remote part of southern Italy.
John Paul Getty III, grandson of the richest man in the
world, the oil tycoon John Paul Getty, had been held in captivity for more than
five months by a kidnap gang who had demanded $17 million for his safe return.
The boy’s 80-year-old grandfather, whose personal fortune
would equate today to almost $9 billion but who was notoriously mean, at first
refused to pay a penny and stuck to that position until late November, when a
letter containing a lock of hair and a human ear arrived at the offices of a
daily newspaper in Rome.
After a further letter arrived containing a photograph of
John Paul Getty III minus one ear, the octogenarian’s representatives made
contact with the kidnappers and negotiated his release for $3 million.
Even then, John Paul Getty Senior refused to pay more than
$2.2 million, which his lawyers allegedly told him was the maximum he could
claim as a tax-deductible expense. The other $800,000 was paid by the boy’s
father, John Paul Getty II, then usually known as John Paul Getty Junior but later as Sir Paul Getty.
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| The 17-year-old John Paul Getty III speaks to members of the press following his release |
The story not only shocked Italy but exposed many rather
unsavoury secrets about the world’s richest family.
The early life of John Paul Getty III had been fairly unremarkable,
as far as is possible for one born into wealth and privilege. He was one of four children to emerge from
John Paul Getty Jnr’s marriage to Gail Harris, a water polo champion.
Although born in Minneapolis, he spent much of his childhood
in Rome, where his father was head of Getty Oil Italiana. Life began to unravel
for him when his parents divorced and his father took up with a beautiful Dutch
actress and model, Talitha Pol, and rejected his former life.
The couple, famously photographed in Marrakesh by the
society snapper Patrick Lichfield, led a dissolute lifestyle, flitting from
Rome to London to Morocco until Pol died of a heroin overdose in 1971 and her
husband, an Anglophile, returned to London.
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| John Paul Getty Snr at first refused to consider meeting the ransom demand |
His son was left alone in Rome and his own lifestyle began
to follow a similarly Bohemian path. With no senior male figure to guide him,
he fell into a life of excess, partying hard and taking drugs. He was arrested
for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a left-wing demonstration and reportedly
expelled from no fewer than seven schools. By 1971 he had given up on the
prospect of an education and decided he would make a living as an artist. He
began selling his paintings to local trattorie, and made extra cash by modelling
nude for life classes.
It was when his was 16 and sharing an apartment with a
couple of other artists that he was seized by a gang led by members of the notorious
Calabrian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta. They had clearly noted his nocturnal
lifestyle and were able to snatch him fairly easily in the Piazza Farnese in
central Rome at three o’clock in the morning on July 10, 1973.
He was blindfolded and chained up in a mountain hideout while
the gang issued their ransom demands. At first, even his mother and father had
doubts about the authenticity of the kidnap, remembering that their son had joked
about faking a kidnap to extract money from his miserly grandfather.
Eventually it became clear it was not a hoax, however. When Gail
Harris, the gang’s first point of contact after they had made her son write her
a desperate letter, told them she had no money, they demanded that she “get it
from London”, implying that her ex-husband or his father should be made to pay.
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| John Paul Getty III died at his father's estate, Wormsley Park, in Buckinghamshire, which has its own cricket field |
Although John Paul Getty Jnr would in time inherit a
substantial share of the family’s wealth, at that moment he was still relatively
poor and it fell to John Paul Getty Snr to decide his grandson’s fate. Having first reasoned that to settle one
ransom demand would simply turn his 13 other grandchildren into kidnap targets,
he was finally persuaded to pay up, albeit at a much-reduced figure. He gave John Paul Getty Jnr a loan
to pay his share, charging him interest at four per cent.
Once the money was paid the teenager, who had turned 17 during
his captivity, was dumped by his abductors at a motorway service area near
Lauria, in the province of Potenza, more than 400km (250 miles) south of
Rome. He was in a poor state of health
but while he recovered physically, with his missing ear rebuilt, he was left with
deep psychological scars that never healed.
He married a German photographer, Gisela Zacher, and had a
son – now an actor, Balthazar Getty - when he was only 18. They moved to New
York, where he became part of Andy Warhol’s hedonistic set in Greenwich
Village.
In 1981, addicted to Valium and methadone and drinking
heavily, he suffered liver failure and a stroke, which left him quadriplegic, almost
blind and unable to speak. His father,
who had by then become a philanthropist while battling his own drug addiction,
at first refused to pay his son’s medical bills but eventually relented.
John Paul Getty III managed to survive for another 30 years,
living in what were effectively his own private hospitals in California,
Ireland and at Wormsley in Buckinghamshire, where his father had a building in the
grounds of his mansion converted so that his son could live there. It was at Wormsley in 2011 that he died at
the age of 54, having survived his father by eight years.
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| The Palazzo Farnese houses the French embassy in Rome |
Travel tip:
The Piazza Farnese is the square in front of the Palazzo Farnese,
one of the most important High Renaissance palaces in Rome. Owned by the
Italian Republic, it was given to the French government in 1936 for a period of
99 years, and currently houses the French embassy. Built in the 16th century for the
Farnese family by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, it was extensively redesigned
by Michelangelo when Alessandro Farnese became Pope Pius III. In 1900, the
composer Puccini chose the Palazzo Farnese as the setting for a major scene in
his opera, Tosca.
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| The tumbledown ruins of the Saracen castle in Lauria |
Travel tip:
Lauria is a picturesque medieval walled town built on the
side of a steep hill in Basilicata, about 110km (68 miles) southwest of the large
city of Potenza. The main sights include the remains of a Saracen castle, once the
home of a famous 13th century admiral, Roger of Lauria. The actor
and film director, Rocco Papaleo, was born in Lauria in 1958.
Also on this day:
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