Forty-four years before a movie based on his ordeal was drawn into the Kevin Spacey scandal, a then 16-year-old John Paul Getty III, one of the oil magnate’s grandchildren, disappeared in Rome.
Two days after the July 10, 1973, abduction, kidnappers sent a ransom demand of $17 million to his mother, Gail Harris, who certainly didn’t have that kind of cash after divorcing out of the family. Some members of the Getty enclave believed the abduction to be a hoax, an attempt by the teen to pry money from his notoriously thrifty grandfather.
To him, the idea of paying for the return of his family member was a non-starter. “I have 14 other grandchildren. If I pay one penny, I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren,” family patriarch J. Paul Getty famously said.
The resulting drama, as profiled in Town & Country Magazine, captivated the world at the time, and has now become the basis for All the Money in the World, the upcoming Ridley Scott-directed film which had starred Kevin Spacey as J. Paul up until last week. In the aftermath of the wave of sexual harassment and assault allegations against Spacey, Scott quickly moved to hire Christopher Plummer and reshoot every scene that had previously included Spacey.
The John Getty III kidnapping is also the subject of an upcoming 10-episode FX series produced by Slumdog Millionaire filmmaker Danny Boyle.
Don’t expect a happy ending: After months in captivity, the frustrated kidnappers cut off one of the junior Getty’s ears and mailed it to a newspaper in Rome.
As Town and Country‘s Jillian MacKenzie writes: “Pictures of Getty with his ear severed, and more pleas to his family to pay the ransom, soon appeared in another paper. Eventually, his grandfather agreed to pay the captors, but only a much reduced ransom. The final amount, $3 million, was the most his accountants said would be tax-deductible, according to a 1995 book about the family by John Pearson. John Paul Getty II paid the rest with a loan from the Getty patriarch—to be repaid with four percent interest.”
Getty III was eventually released—but never the same. A year after his release, he got married to Gisela Zacher, with whom he had two children, including actor Balthazar Getty. Struggling with addiction after his ordeal, he suffered a drug-induced stroke in 1981 that left him paralyzed for the rest of his life and in the care of his mother. He died thirty years later, at the age of 54.
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