Mr. Getty had required intensive medical care since 1981, when he suffered a narcotics-induced stroke that left him paralyzed and nearly blind. He died Feb. 5 at his home in Buckinghamshire, England, according to British news reports.

He was a grandson of billionaire J. Paul Getty Sr., who founded the renowned California museum that bears his name and was once the world's wealthiest man. Young Getty spent much of his childhood in Rome, where he gravitated to the world of artists and left-wing bohemians and where, in July 1973, he disappeared.

His family at first thought it was a hoax. Mr. Getty, who had been expelled from several schools, had been known to joke with friends about staging his own kidnapping to squeeze money from his tightfisted grandfather. In fact, he was being held chained and blindfolded in a series of mountain hideouts.

The media deemed Mr. Getty the "golden hippie" as much for his long reddish-blond locks as his family fortune.

His kidnappers sent word that they wanted $17 million, an amount J. Paul Getty Sr. refused to pay.

"I have 14 other grandchildren," he said, "and if I pay one penny now, then I'll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren."

Mr. Getty's father, J. Paul Getty Jr., was in no position to pay the ransom. After years of lavish living and drug addiction, he had holed up in London, where he was undergoing rehabilitation.

The stalemate broke only after an Italian newspaper received a package containing a lock of red hair, a severed ear and a typewritten warning. "This is Paul's first ear," the note read. "If within ten 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."

The captors agreed to release Mr. Getty in exchange for $2.8 million in cash. Getty Sr. arranged for stacks of Italian lira to be bagged and left by the side of a highway near Rome. He told his son, the teenager's father, that the money was a loan that he expected to be repaid at 4 percent interest.

Soon after, a truck driver noticed young Mr. Getty standing by the side of a road about 100 miles south of Naples. Shivering and frail, he had been held captive for five months. When he phoned to thank his grandfather for his help, the elder Getty reportedly refused to take the call.

"He will need time to learn to believe in love and affection once again," said his mother, actress Gail Harris, who was divorced from Mr. Getty's father by that time.

source:washingtonpost