The ransom remained unpaid, even after the kidnappers sent Harris a letter from her son that read, “Dear Mummy, Since Monday I have fallen into the hands of kidnappers. Getty III had often joked that he would stage his own kidnapping to squeeze money out of his miserly grandfather. Harris didn’t have the money, and the police-and even some members of the Getty family-expressed doubt that the boy really had been abducted. Two days later, his mother received a ransom note asking for around $17 million dollars. On July 10, 1973, when he was 16 years old, John Paul Getty III disappeared. He was expelled, however, and even though his father left Rome for England shortly afterward (following Talitha Getty's heroin overdose) the teenaged Getty III continued living on his own in the Italian city.
John Paul III also lived in Italy as a young teenager, first at boarding school. moved to Rome, where he married Talitha Pol and reportedly became a heroin addict. and Harris divorced in 1964, and John Paul Jr. had four sons of his own with his wife Gail Harris John Paul Getty III was born in 1956. It's no surprise that his family relationships were fraught.
Paul developed a reputation for being a terrible cheapskate, famously going so far as to temporarily install a payphone for guests to use at his house in London. In the FX version, he is played by Donald Sutherland.)ĭespite being crowned the richest man in the country by Forbes in 1957, J. (In All the Money in the World, the Getty patriarch was originally played by Kevin Spacey, but the role was abruptly recast with Christopher Plummer just months before the scheduled premier date, following sexual assault accusations against Spacey. Paul racked up millions in oil money and, along the way, married five women with whom he had five sons. During his heyday in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and Getty Images, really begins with his grandfather, family patriarch J. The story of John Paul Getty III, whose relatives founded Getty Oil, and, later, the J. The kidnapping, which involved cold-blooded ransom negotiations and a severed ear, also inspired the 10-part television show Trust produced by Trainspotting director Danny Boyle for FX. The tragic 1973 kidnapping of John Paul Getty III is the subject of a film by Ridley Scott called All the Money in the World, which was nominated for three Golden Globes. It has all the elements of a taut psychological thriller: A wealthy family, a wayward son, and a frightening, gruesome crime.