A Billion-Dollar Heir and a Sliced-Off Ear: The Brutal True Story of J. Paul Getty III's Kidnapping

When the grandson of the richest man in the world was kidnapped by Italian gangsters in the ’70s, his grandfather refused to pay the ransom until he received the teenager’s severed ear in an envelope. Even then, J. Paul Getty haggled with the captors until the price for his grandson’s release was suitably tax deductible.

The incident, just one of the Getty dynasty’s many family misfortunes, is depicted in Ridley Scott’s new thriller All the Money in the World. At the time, John Paul Getty III’s abduction made headlines around the globe, and the trauma it caused the family has continued to reverberate through subsequent generations.

The film — nominated for three Golden Globes — stars Christopher Plummer as the infamous Getty patriarch. Plummer replaced Kevin Spacey in the role after he was accused of repeated instances of sexual misconduct. Charlie Plummer plays the young Getty III, also known as Paul, and Michelle Williams stars as his devoted mother Abigail Harris, who fights to save her son’s life.

The Fortune

At the time of Paul’s kidnapping, his grandfather was not only the richest man in the world, he was the richest man in the history of the world. A millionaire by the age of 25, Getty grew up working on his father’s oil fields and eventually took control of the family business, acquiring several American oil companies and consolidating them into what became Getty Oil.

But Getty made the bulk of his eventual billion-dollar fortune after taking a gamble in the Middle East. In 1949, Getty made a deal with the Saudis to purchase a tract of land near the border of Kuwait. For years no oil was found, but eventually his engineers tapped into one of the largest natural oil reserves the world. He invented a giant ship (what is now known as a super tanker) to transport his liquid gold out of the desert, and soon became the world’s first billionaire.

A notorious playboy in his youth, Getty married five times and had five sons, who later gave him 14 grandchildren. Despite his incredible wealth, the family patriarch was a infamous miser, who kept his fortune in a charitable trust to avoid taxes, but gave little if anything to charity. Getty was not shy about his penny-pinching either. For instance, he once admitted to the BBC that he installed a payphone in his mansion for guests. (Williams is forced to use the payphone in All the Money World).

He “was a genius at business,” biographer Robert Lenzner once told PEOPLE, “but an illiterate with respect to intimacy and family.”

His obsession with his business strained his relationship with his children. His third eldest son, John Paul Getty Jr., grew up hardly knowing his famous father and enjoyed no financial support from him. They rekindled their relationship when Getty Jr. was an adult, and his father ended up developing a relatively close relationship with Getty Jr.’s son, Paul.

When Getty finally agreed to bring his eldest son into the family business, he moved him and his family to Rome and installed him as the head of Getty Oil Italiana. But Getty Jr. never had his father’s interest in the oil business, and when he discovered drugs while on vacation in Morocco, he sunk into a deep addiction. His wife Harris (played by Williams) divorced him as he remained in Morocco with his new girlfriend, actress Talitha Pol, and his new friends, like Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger.

The Kidnapping

Paul was living in Rome when he was taken captive in 1973 by Italian gangsters hoping for the ransom of a lifetime. He was blindfolded, thrown in the back of a van and driven deep into the mountains where he was imprisoned in a makeshift cell.

When his kidnappers sent a ransom letter demanding $17 million for Paul’s safe return, some family members believed it was a stunt, as the rebellious teen had sometimes joked about staging his own kidnapping as a means of getting money from his stingy grandfather. He was also using drugs at the time, according to Getty’s friend and former chief executive Claus von Bülow.

“Paul was living more or less on the Spanish Steps together with other kids shooting up when it happened,” says von Bülow. “When he disappeared they just assumed he was on a binge somewhere. Let’s just say he did not disappear out of his childhood bedroom.”

Even when it became clear that the kidnapping was real, and despite repeated pleas from both Harris and Getty Jr., Getty refused to pay for his grandson’s release. During a press conference, he explained to reporters, “If I pay one penny ransom, I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.”

“The problem could have been solved instantly,” says All the Money in the World screenwriter David Scarpa. “The money’s there, the entire problem exists in the head of one man.”

Throughout the ordeal, Harris tried desperately to negotiate with her son’s kidnappers over the phone, and even managed to significantly lower their asking price. Despite explaining to them that she did not have the money, the kidnappers refused to believe that the boy’s grandfather would abandon his own family.

Journalist A. Craig Copetas says that Harris “tried to be a rock, but she was a nervous wreck. She said the Getty family was remote, closed off, almost unreachable.”

After nearly four months in captivity, an envelope containing Paul’s severed ear was delivered to an Italian newspaper in November 1973. The captors, now asking $3.2 million, included a note: “This is Paul’s ear. If we don’t get some money within 10 days, then the other ear will arrive. In other words, he will arrive in little bits.”

Finally, Getty agreed to get involved, and negotiated a deal to pay a total of $2.9 million. He put up the first $2.2 million with no strings attached, as that was the maximum amount of money that was tax deductible. The remaining sum was given to Getty Jr. as a loan, which he was responsible to repay at 4% interest.

The Aftermath

Paul was recovered at a gas station on Dec. 15, 1973, not long after the ransom was paid. Harris suggested he call his grandfather to thank him for paying the ransom, but Getty refused to come to the phone to hear his grandson’s voice, according to The New York Times.

Nine of the kidnappers were captured, some of whom belonged to a prominent Mafia organization. Most of the kidnappers were released due to lack of evidence, but two were convicted and imprisoned. Most of the ransom money was never recovered.

After his release, Paul “was more angry about them taking off his ear than he was psychologically traumatized by the kidnapping,” says A. Craig Copetas, who befriended Paul after interviewing him for Rolling Stone. “He wanted to be a superstar, basking in 15 minutes of Warholian fame. I felt sorry for him. He was a very nice, confused kid from an exceptionally dysfunctional family.”

Paul had reconstructive surgery to rebuild his severed ear, got married and had his only child, Balthazar, at the age of 18 in 1975. He appeared in a handful of small European films over the following years and lived for a time in New York City, where he rubbed shoulders with Andy Warhol and his collective of artists.

But Paul never fully recovered from the kidnapping trauma. In 1981, when he was his 20s, he suffered a stroke after a drug overdose, leaving him partially blind and quadriplegic. Paul died in 2011 at the age of 54 following years of illness.

He is survived by his mother, who now lives a quiet life in London, his son Balthazar, an actor based out of Los Angeles who has four children of his own, and his stepdaughter Anna.

Getty died on June 6, 1976 in England and was buried at the Getty Villa in Los Angeles. At the time of his death, he was worth more than $2 billion, or nearly $8.5 billion in today’s money. A bulk of his estate was put into the J. Paul Getty Trust, now the world’s wealthiest art institution. His heirs have also donated a substantial part of the family fortune to charitable causes.

All the Money in the World is now in theaters.