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JOHN PAUL GETTY III

ABDUCTED

// AGE: 16

// DISAPPEARED: July 10, 1973

// RANSOM DEMANDED: $17 million

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J. Paul Getty

Grandfather

Billionaire

Founder of the Getty Oil Company

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“I have 14 other grandchildren,” said the richest man in the world at the time, “if I pay one penny now, then I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.”1 14

meets the Italian press

after announcing kidnap

Gail Getty

mother

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Three months after the abduction, the kidnappers, who turned out to be Calabrian bandits with a possible connection to organized crime, cut off Mr. Getty’s ear and mailed it, along with a lock of his hair, to a Roman newspaper. Photographs of the maimed Mr. Getty, along with a letter in which he pleaded with his family to pay his captors, subsequently appeared in another newspaper. Eventually the kidnappers reduced their demands to around $3 million.2

After five months his notoriously tight-fisted grandfather, John Paul Getty Snr, agreed to pay the gang £2.1million which he ordered his grandson to repay with 4 percent interest a year.3

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John Paul Getty III

grandson of oil tycoon

found alive on December 15, 1973

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Italian police station

John Paul Getty III

January 1974

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The teenager, malnourished, bruised and missing an ear, was released on Dec. 15; he was found at an abandoned service station, shivering in a driving rainstorm. Nine men eventually were arrested. Two were convicted and sent to prison; the others, including the man prosecutors said was the head of the Calabrian Mafia and the mastermind behind the abduction, were acquitted for lack of evidence.2

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JOHN PAUL GETTY III

after his release

missing his right ear

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1. Fontevecchia, A. (2014, July 11). The Tragedy Of

The Gettys: Billions, Affairs, Severed Ears, Drug

Overdoses, And Oil.

2. Weber, B. (2011, February 07). J. Paul Getty III,

54, Dies; Had Ear Cut Off by Captors.

3. Reporter, D. M. (2011, February 07). Finally, he’s

out of pain: Tragic oil heir John Paul Getty III dies

at 54 after being paralysed for 30 years.

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T A L I E C H E N