He had been in this wretched state since 1981 when, aged 24, he was crippled by a stroke caused by a self-induced drug overdose. And no amount of money — and there was plenty — could make him well again.
At that point, his short life had not been lucky. The overdose came just eight years after he was kidnapped, held for five months in a cave in northern Italy, ransomed and released only after his severed and rotting right ear arrived in the mail (there was a postal strike at the time and it languished in the Rome sorting office for three weeks).
His death this weekend at the Getty family mansion in Buckinghamshire marks the latest sorry instalment, not just in his own cursed life, but in the desperately sad story of the house of Getty.
Because 54-year-old John Paul III was heir to one of the world’s largest (and most unhappy) fortunes. He was grandson to Paul Getty, the late oil baron, billionaire, womaniser and legendary miser, and son of Sir Paul Getty II, the philanthropist who gave more than £140 million to good causes but refused to pay his eldest son’s medical bills.
It all started with John Paul III’s grand-father, Paul Getty. He was the richest man in the world but installed a payphone for guests in the hallway of his Surrey mansion, used only second-hand envelopes and once made a group of friends wait outside a dog show for 15 minutes so they could get in for half-price.
He was as ungenerous with his love as he was with his money. The young Paul II rarely saw his father during his first 23 years (his parents separated when he was three) and correspondence was hurtful — Paul II’s letters were returned unanswered but with spelling mistakes carefully underlined and corrected by his father.
And on the very rare occasions they dined together, his father would deduct the cost of the meal from his pocket money.
But they did have one thing in common — their absence of parenting skills. Paul II was also an appalling father.
Rich but mean: Paul Getty was the richest man in the world at one point, but was as ungenerous with his love as with his money
Things started well. In 1956, aged 24, Paul married Gail, his childhood sweetheart and a former water polo champion. John Paul III was born the same year, after which the family moved to Rome where Paul headed Getty Oil’s Italian operations and where Aileen, Mark and Ariadne were born.
Paul and Gail were very much the young power couple about town, flitting from party to party.
But the happy years were short-lived. Paul’s head was soon turned by other women, alcohol and hard drugs, the marriage broke down and, in 1975, after being cut off by his father (‘no Getty will be a drug addict’) he married Talitha Pol, the beautiful and unstable step-granddaughter of the painter Augustus John.
By the age of 15 Jean Paul III had already been expelled from seven schools, regularly took drugs and posed naked for a sex magazine.
Already spiralling into addiction, the pair decamped to Morocco, where Paul bought a mansion called The Pleasure Palace, hosted Roman-style orgies and consumed a bottle of rum and a gram of heroin a day.
Broken and exhausted by all the partying, Talitha then killed herself with a heroin overdose while her husband lay next to her in bed.
It was now John Paul III’s turn to go off the rails. He had been abandoned by his father and deprived of a role model when he was nine years old, and by the age of 15 he had already been expelled from seven schools, regularly took drugs and posed naked for a sex magazine.
He’d also had numerous older lovers, had been arrested for hurling a Molotov cocktail during a Left-wing demonstration and had smashed up countless cars and motorbikes.
Wordless: John Paul Getty III is surrounded by newsmen and police as he leaves the local police station in Southern Italy after his release by kidnappers who severed his right ear
Then on July 10, 1973, when he was just 16, he was abducted in Rome by a gang of Calabrian bandits, who demanded a ransom of £11 million.
Since John Paul III’s father had already been cut off from the family billions, the sum was beyond his means, and his miserly billionaire grandfather refused to pay, insisting: ‘I have 14 other grandchildren and if I pay one penny now, then I will have 14 kidnapped grandchildren’.
'Dear Mummy, don’t let me be killed... Pay, I beg you, pay up as soon as possible if you wish me well’ he wrote while chained to a stake in a cave
But he secretly suspected the kidnap was a ruse by his drug-addled progeny to extort money from him.
So poor John Paul III was kept in a cave in the mountains of Calabria, where, chained to a stake, he wrote desperate letters to his mother in his large, childish handwriting — ‘Dear Mummy, don’t let me be killed... Pay, I beg you, pay up as soon as possible if you wish me well’ — and was beaten and tortured for five months.
The breakthrough came after his captives cut off his right ear — with a razor and no anaesthetic — and posted it along with a tuft of his hair and a type-written note to the offices of Il Messaggero, one of Rome’s biggest daily newspapers.
Getty senior, the grandfather, finally offered £2.1 million to the kidnappers, but only on the strict condition that his son repaid him in full, plus four per cent interest.
After such appalling dithering and such a monstrous experience, it was perhaps unsurprising that John Paul III neither thanked his father nor grandfather — nor cleaned up his act.
Instead, he resumed his partying with more zest than ever and, aged just 18, married Martine Zacher, a German model seven years his senior who wore top-to-toe black for their wedding in Sienna and who had to prop him up during the vows because he was so spaced out on drugs.
Now it was John Paul III’s turn to be cut off by his grandfather — according to the rules of his family trust, he was barred from marrying until he was 25.
So he took yet more solace in drugs and alcohol and, in 1981 — five years after they moved to Los Angeles and Martine gave birth to their only son, Balthazar (who is now a Hollywood actor; in 2008, he had an affair with Sienna Miller) — he took the overdose that left him a paraplegic.
John Paul III remained in a coma for six weeks. When he regained consciousness, the terrible extent of the damages was revealed. He was nearly blind, unable to speak and paralysed.
‘Everything was gone,’ said Bill Newsom, his godfather. ‘Everything except his mind.’ He was just 24 years old. Even then, the Gettys and all their billions failed him.
His mother, Gail, took him in, but couldn’t afford the £16,000-a-month medical bills. And his father — who finally emerged from his drugs haze to become a raving Anglophile, philanthropist and knight (he was invested in 1996 after becoming a British citizen) — refused to help, claiming his son had bought it all on himself.
He did, however, give £50 million to the National Gallery, £40 million to the British Film Institute, £2 million for a new stand at Lord’s cricket ground and countless other millions here and there for what he did consider to be ‘good causes’.
Paul Getty had by now overcome any financial difficulties — his father had died in 1976 and he had inherited millions through a family trust and his grandmother.
Only after suing his father was John Paul III able to move into a specially adapted house in Beverly Hills with a full staff and hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of medical equipment hidden discreetly behind sleek wooden doors.
During his 30-year incarceration — much of which was spent living with his devoted mother in mansions on the shores of Lough Derg in Ireland and in northern Italy — he has made only rare public appearances.
Once, in the mid-Eighties, he turned up in his wheelchair in Tramp nightclub in London.
And in September 2003, looking gaunt, haunted and raddled, he attended his father’s funeral at Westminster Abbey.
Astonishingly, friends insist that, despite his physical disabilities and the appalling behaviour of his family, John Paul III was not bitter and maintained ‘a wonderful and joyous’ approach to life.
If he did, that is truly wonderful. But it’s hard to imagine — for it can’t have been much of a life, cursed by money, marred by family feuding, scarred by drugs and starved of fatherly love. ( dailymail.co.uk )
No comments:
Post a Comment