John Paul Getty III- Biography
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John Paul Getty III was the grandson of American oil mogul Jean Paul Getty, who was once the world’s richest person. During his adolescence, Getty III was famously abducted for a $17 million ransom. He went through a five-month experience in Rome, Italy, during which his kidnappers tortured him and sent his hair and severed ear to an Italian tabloid to blackmail his family into paying the necessary sum of money. Despite his grandfather’s initial reluctance to pay the ransom, who had developed a reputation for his frugality, eventually arranged for negotiation in exchange for his grandson’s release.
Getty III, on the other hand, continued to suffer in the following years as a result of drug usage while in captivity and remained partially crippled until his death at the age of 54. The kidnapping incident has been exploited numerous times in popular culture, most recently in the Ridley Scott film ‘All the Money in the World and the FX television series Trust.’
John Paul Getty III- Birth, Age, Ethnicity, Siblings, Education
Sir John Paul Getty Jr. and Abigail Harris gave birth to John Paul Getty III on November 4, 1956, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was the grandson of Getty Oil Company founder Jean Paul Getty, who was ranked the world’s wealthiest person in 1957 by ‘Fortune’ magazine.
He was the first of his parents’ four sons to move to Rome after his father was appointed head of Getty Oil’s Italian affiliate, Getty Oil Italiana. After his parents split in 1964, his father married model and actress Talitha Pol in 1966.
Getty III stayed with his mother and went to St. George’s British International School in Rome until he was dismissed in early 1972 after writing derogatory remarks about the headmaster on the school’s walls. Later that year, his drug-addicted father went to England when his wife Talitha died of a heroin overdose. In the years that followed, he lived in a squat and enjoyed a bohemian lifestyle, frequenting nightclubs and participating in left-wing demonstrations. He had artistic talent and was able to make money by selling paintings, cartoons, jewelry, and acting as an extra in movies.
John Paul Getty III- Relationship, Married Life
In early 1973, John Paul Getty III, then 16, began a connection with Gisela Martine Schmidt, the twin sister of Jutta Winkelmann, a 23-year-old German photographer, filmmaker, and writer. The couple married nine months after he was released from captivity, in 1974.
Gisela was pregnant when they married, and she gave birth to their son Balthazar in 1975. Gisela’s daughter from her former marriage to Rolf Zacher was later adopted by John Paul.
In 1977, he had surgery to repair his right ear. During the early 1980s, he participated in a few European films as a supporting actor, including Raul Ruiz’s ‘The Territory’ and Wim Wenders’ ‘The State of Things.’
Even after his release, he was unable to escape the torments of his horrible confinement because he developed a drug and alcohol addiction in the years that followed. He suffered liver failure and a stroke in 1981 after ingesting a mixture of Valium, methadone, and alcohol, leaving him quadriplegic, half-blind, and unable to talk. In his final years, his mother cared for him, and he sued his father for $28,000 per month to maintain his therapy. While he regained part of his autonomy, he was severely disabled for the remainder of his life.
John Paul and Gisela divorced in 1993, after nearly two decades of marriage.
He died on February 5, 2011, at his father’s Wormsley Park estate in Buckinghamshire, after suffering from different ailments during his life.
Kidnapping
On July 10, 1973, around 3 a.m., 16-year-old John Paul Getty III was kidnapped from Rome’s Piazza Farnese. He was then led to a cave and blindfolded and imprisoned. In exchange for his safe return, the kidnappers demanded a ransom of $17 million from his family. Some of his family members, however, questioned the occurrence, suspecting his own complicity.
Interestingly, according to his fiancée at the time, Gisela Martine Schmidt, he had considered abducting himself with the help of small criminals during difficult circumstances but had later abandoned the notion. However, the kidnappers continued to pursue him and eventually devised their own scheme to extort money from his family.
When Getty III’s father requested that his grandfather pay the ransom, the frugal patriarch refused, claiming that doing so might encourage the kidnappers to take his other 13 grandchildren. Following this, the kidnappers began torturing him in numerous ways, including taking away his radio, killing his favorite bird, and playing Russian roulette with his head.
His kidnappers mailed an envelope containing a lock of hair and a human ear to a daily newspaper in November 1973. They also threatened to send additional disfigured body parts if the ransom was not paid. While emphasizing that it was not a prank set up by Getty III, they also reduced the ransom amount to $3.2 million.
In the months that followed, his health gradually deteriorated due to his wounds becoming infected, as well as pneumonia induced by the increasingly cold weather. In a panic, his kidnappers gave him excessive dosages of penicillin to treat his infection, which resulted in an allergic reaction. They also gave him a lot of brandy to keep him warm and relieve his agony, but it caused him to become an alcoholic.
His grandfather ultimately began negotiating with the kidnappers, and while they agreed for $2.9 million, he offered to pay the maximum amount that was tax-deductible, which was $2.2 million. He lent the remaining funds to his son at a 4% interest rate. On December 15, 1973, Paul was discovered alive at a petrol station in Lauria after the ransom was finally paid.
In connection with his kidnapping, nine persons were caught, including high-ranking ‘Ndrangheta members Girolamo Piromalli and Saverio Mammoliti, but the majority of the ransom money could not be retrieved. Due to a lack of evidence, the Mafia bosses and five others were released, while two of them served prison sentences.
In Pop Culture
A few years after John Paul Getty III’s trauma, English thriller novelist Philip Nicholson, a.k.a. A. J. Quinnell drew inspiration from it for his 1980 novel, ‘Man on Fire.’ In his 1995 book, ‘Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortunes and Misfortunes of J. Paul Getty’s Heirs,’ John Pearson documented the episode in considerable detail. Sir Ridley Scott, the acclaimed director, and producer, transformed his novel into the film ‘All the Money in the World’ in 2017.
A more dramatic version of the incident was recently depicted in the 2018 drama series trust,’ produced by Simon Beaufoy and Danny Boyle, in which Harris Dickinson portrayed John Paul Getty III.
Trivia
- The Italian sexual magazine ‘Playmen’ paid John Paul Getty III $1,000 to appear naked in a pictorial.
- He was kidnapped soon after, and by the time the photograph appeared on the cover of the magazine’s August 1973 issue, he was in the news for his kidnapping.
- When he returned home after being kidnapped, his mother persuaded him to call and thank his grandfather for paying the ransom, but his grandfather refused to answer the phone.
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