Getty, troubled oil scion, dies at 54

LOS ANGELES – J. Paul Getty III, a scion of the Getty oil dynasty whose tragedies – mutilation by kidnappers in the early 1970s and an incapacitating, drug-induced stroke in the 1980s – brought into high relief the dysfunctional relations that beset his famously wealthy family, has died in Buckinghamshire, England. He was 54.

Getty died Saturday after a long illness, according to a statement from his actor-son, Balthazar.

Left nearly blind and a quadriplegic after the stroke, Getty, a father of two and grandfather of six, was known to the public largely for his misfortunes.

Getty was the grandson of American oil magnate J. Paul Getty, whose fortune built the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

The most sensational event in the family’s history was the young Getty’s 1973 kidnapping in Rome when he was 16. Several days after his disappearance, his kidnappers notified a local newspaper that he was being held by the Mafia. His grandfather and father at first believed the kidnapping to be a hoax. .

Four months into the kidnapping, a package arrived at the offices of a Rome newspaper. It contained a lock of red hair and a moldy human ear. An accompanying letter demanded more than $3 million in ransom.

His billionaire grandfather yielded to the demands a short time later.

Getty was freed in a small town south of Naples on Dec. 15, 1973, which happened to be his grandfather’s 81st birthday. According to some reports, he tried to call his grandfather to thank him for obtaining his release, but the elder Getty refused to come to the phone. The young man cut off relations with both his grandfather and father.