It was 1973 and John Paul Getty, the 80 year old head of the Getty family, was one of the richest men in the world. An oil tycoon with a personal wealth in the billions, Getty was a famous patron of the arts and collector of rare and valuable treasures.
However, in July 10th of that year he received the worst possible news. His grandson, John Paul Getty III, had been snatched from the street in Rome and kidnapped. The 16 year old boy was snatched from street in the Piazza Farnese, bundled into a van and driven out of the city.
This was a true family crisis, and John Paul Getty’s life was at stake. When the kidnappers issued a ransom demand for $17 million, all eyes were on the grandfather. Would Getty rise to the occasion and rescue his own grandson.
Famously Frugal
Well, in an word: no. John Paul Getty was a famously frugal man, which in this instance sounds a little too polite for his actions. When his son (and the kidnapped boy’s father), also called John Paul Getty (just to make things even more confusing), approached the old man for assistance, Getty flat out refused him.
Getty replied that he had 13 grandchildren and that if he were to pay this ransom, he would likely make them all kidnap targets. Sweeping aside the fact that a family member was in imminent danger, he preferred to focus on the hypotheticals which incidentally gave him a solution where he kept all his money.
Meanwhile Getty III’s predicament was becoming more precarious by the moment. His captors had hidden him in a cave in Calabria in the far south of Italy, a sparsely populated region where he would likely never be found.
As the days passed and no ransom was paid, his situation became even worse. Getty III was denied his radio and a bird he had tempted to share his prison was killed by his captors. They then started to torture the teenager, holding a partially loaded gun against his head and pulling the trigger in a sickening game of Russian Roulette.
However months went by and John Paul Getty senior refused to budge. That was, until November of that year, when a newspaper received a letter from the captors containing a lock of Getty III’s hair, and one of his ears.
The ransom demand was reiterated in the letter, but the amount was reduced to $3.2 million, a figure that Getty senior was still unprepared to pay even after seeing his grandson’s severed ear. Finally, after coming under intense pressure from his family who feared for the safety of the kidnapped boy, Getty senior relented and paid a ransom of $2.2 million.
But this is not the end of the story. The mutilated and tortured teenager was released at a petrol station in the southern Italian town of Lauria on December 15, 1973, in a terrible state. His wound had become infected and he had been dosed with high levels of penicillin and brandy to keep him alive.
His grandfather refused to even come to the phone to talk to him about the ordeal. And the $2.2 million ransom that Getty senior paid? That was not a gift, and the shocked teenager was informed that he was expected to repay every cent to his grandfather. At 4% interest.
John Paul Getty III would go on to develop problems associated with chronic alcohol and drug abuse, caused by the trauma of his kidnap. In 1981, eight years after the kidnap, he consumed a cocktail of prescription and non-prescription drugs which caused a stroke and liver failure, leaving him completely paralyzed, half blind and unable to speak.
His poor health continued for the rest of his life and he died, aged 54, in 2001.
Top Image: John Paul Getty loaned his own kidnapped grandson money to free himself, and then charged interest. Source: Jakub Krechowicz / Adobe Stock.
By Joseph Green
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