4 Kidnapped!

Italian police thought it wasa hoax. They did not believe 16-year-old John Paul Getty III had been kidnapped. A ransom note had been sent to Getty's mother. But it did not convince them. The note read:

Dear Mother,

I have fallen into the hands of

kidnappers. Don't let me be killed!

Make sure that the police do not

interfere. You must absolutely not take this as a joke.

The note then demanded$17 million for the boy's safe return.

Police had reasons to be dubious. Getty's grandfather was the richest man in the world. Yet young Paul was always running out of money. Neither his father nor his grandfather would give him the cash he wanted. Paul himself had never earned any money on his own. He had dropped out of high school. He had no job. His idea of a tough day was going to a big party. Just before he disappeared, he joked about his lack of funds.He knew of a way to solve his money problems, he told friends with a laugh. All he had to do was stage his own “perfect kidnapping”.

That explains why police were not too alarmed when he disappeared on July 10, 1973. They did investigate, of course. They looked around. They asked a few questions. But privately they thought the whole thing had been set up by Paul. They waited to see what Grandfather Getty would do. Would he come up with money to“save” his missing grandson?

Old Mr. Getty answered that question right away. “I'm against paying any money,”he snapped.“It only encourages kidnappers.”These words upset Gail Getty, mother of the missing boy. She believed her son was in real danger. “At first I thought it might be a stupid joke,” she told one person. “But then I understood it was serious.”With old Mr. Getty refusing to help, Gail feared her son might soon be killed. She announced that she would try to raise the ransom money herself.

But Gail did not have that kind of cash. She was divorced from John Paul Getty, Jr. So she couldn't get her hands on the Getty fortune.Meanwhile,her ex-husband agreed with his father.No money would be paid out.

The weeks dragged by. Then, in November, something happened that changed everything. An envelope was sent to an Italian newspaper. When employees opened it, they found a gruesome sight. The envelope contained a note, a lock of Paul's red hair, and a human ear.

“This is Paul's first ear,” read the note. “If within 10 days the family still believes that this is a joke mounted by him, then the other ear will arrive. In other words, he will arrive in little bits.”

Medical experts checked out the ear. It was Paul's. The boy's father and grandfather were shocked. They now realized that the kidnapping was real. Fearing for Paul's life, they agreed to bargain with the kidnappers. They would not pay $17 million, they said. But they would hand over $2.8 million.

The kidnappers took that deal. They told the Getty family to put the money in three plastic bags.These bags were to be left along the side of a road in southern Italy. The Gettys did this. But first they had the police photograph each bill.That way the money could be traced. After the ransom money was delivered, the Gettys sat back to wait. They hoped and prayed that Paul would be returned to them.

On December 14, Gail Getty got a late-night phone call from the kidnappers. They had received the money, they said. They were about to release her son.Early the next morning,a truck driver named Antonio Tedesco saw a young man standing by the side of the road. It was raining hard. Yet the young man was not wearing a raincoat. He was standing in wet clothes, waving his arms wildly. Tedesco slowed down. He saw that the young man was crying. As Tedesco pulled to a stop, the youth staggered over to the truck.

“I am Paul Getty,” he said.

And so, five months after being kidnapped, John Paul Getty III was free. It turned out that he had suffered greatly during his five months as a hostage. The kidnappers had kept him blindfolded most of the time. They had forced him to march from one mountain hideout to the next.These long treks had exhausted him.Cold,frightened,and poorly fed, he had grown very weak.

Worst of all had been the ear episode. The kidnappers had tried to knock him out before they cut off his ear. “They struck me on the head to make me unconscious, ”he said.“But I felt everything.It was terrible.”

With Paul safe, the police turned their attention to catching the kidnappers.Undercover officers had seen men pick up the ransom money. So the police knew who the kidnappers were.

In late January 1974, police made their move. They arrested all eight kidnappers. And so the kidnappers did not get to enjoy much of the Getty money. It had been the highest ransom ever paid in Italy. But as these kidnappers discovered, they had to return the money and go to jail.