John Paul Getty was 16 years old when he was kidnapped in Rome in 1973. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of $17 million because Getty’s grandfather was oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, the richest man in the world at that time. Some family members thought that the kidnapping was a hoax, but then the kidnappers sent John’s severed ear to a Rome newspaper. The only person who had enough money to pay the ransom was J. Paul Getty, but he didn’t want to. The young Getty was held for five months before a deal was worked out. His notoriously cheap grandfather negotiated the ransom down to $2.89 million, and insisted that his son, John’s father, pay a substantial part of it, which meant getting a loan- from his father. The trauma of the kidnapping stayed with young Getty for the rest of his life.
Other kidnapping stories involved prominent and not-so-prominent people. Frank Sinatra, Jr. was held until his father paid $240,000 for his release. Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of publisher William Randolph Hearst, was taken by the Symbionese Liberation Army and then appeared to have joined forces with them. Adolph Coors III, heir to the Coors Brewing Company, was kidnapped in 1960 for a half a million in ransom, but was never released. Read the details of all these kidnappings and more, nine in total, at Mental Floss.
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Source: neatorama