When he was 16-years-old, John Paul Getty III was kidnapped by an Italian organized crime ring called the “‘Ndrangheta” while at the Piazza Farnese in Rome.
The ‘Ndrangheta had been snatching people up for ransom in northern Italy for years, but they considered John Paul Getty III as their biggest win. His kidnapping took place at three in the morning on July 10, 1973.
John Paul Getty III was the grandson of one of the world’s richest men. He was set to inherit the massive Getty fortune.
The family made their money in the early 1950s when John Paul Getty III’s grandfather, J. Paul Getty, established the Getty Oil Company. At the time, it was one of the largest companies in the United States.
J. Paul Getty rose through the ranks of wealth. He was born in the U.S. but moved to the United Kingdom in the late 1950s. He passed down his love for the British Isles to his son, J. Paul Getty Jr., who was a philanthropist.
Then, John Paul Getty III was born. Starting at a young age, he was somewhat of an embarrassment to the family.
He was raised in Rome and was expelled from multiple English boarding schools, once for painting the hallway of a school.
By the age of 15, Getty III frequently partied at nightclubs and drank and smoked heavily. He sold art and jewelry he created himself, as well as posed nude for magazines to support himself.
At one point, he was arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a left-wing demonstration and for smashing vehicles.
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During this period of his life, he was kidnapped by the ‘Ndrangheta. Two days after Getty III disappeared, his mother received an anonymous phone call demanding $17 million in exchange for his safe return.
However, his mother had been divorced from his father, J. Paul Getty Jr., for over nine years and did not have that kind of money. The kidnappers told her to “get it from London,” which was where her ex-husband and ex-father-in-law lived.
Many family members and police officers doubted that he had really been kidnapped. Getty III had often joked about faking his own kidnapping to get some money from his grandfather. But as the days went on, the demands continued. Everyone realized the situation was actually serious.
Getty Jr. did not have $17 million, so he asked his father for help. By then, J. Paul Getty was 80-years-old. He denied the request, saying, “I have 14 other grandchildren, and if I pay one penny now, then I will have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.”
During the negotiations between his family and the kidnappers, Getty III was kept in a cave in the Calabrian Mountains.
He was beaten and tortured regularly. Four months after he was first abducted, the kidnappers decided to show the family they meant business.
They cut off the boy’s ear and sent it to a local newspaper, along with a lock of his hair and a note that read, “This is Paul’s ear. If we don’t get some money within 10 days, the other ear will arrive. In other words, he will arrive in little pieces.”
J. Paul Getty finally agreed to pay the kidnappers. He was able to cut a deal with the kidnappers and ended up giving them just under $3 million. He required his son to pay back the ransom money at a rate of four percent interest.
On December 15, 1973, Getty III was discovered on a snowy motorway between Rome and Naples shortly after the ransom was delivered. His ear was reconstructed through several surgeries.
Later, nine of the kidnappers were arrested, but only two of them were convicted. The traumatic incident caused Getty III to succumb to alcoholism and drug addiction. In 1981, Getty III had a stroke that left him quadriplegic and partially blind. He was only 25-years-old.
He never fully recovered and died in 2011 at the age of 54 due to complications from the stroke.