by Charles Fox
I bullshitted the kidnappers. They sat on the stairs wearing black nylon stockings and ski masks. I wanted to impress them. I said stupid things, that I had two motorcycles, a Porsche, that I would be worth $850 million. I humored them. I thought they were impressed. Piccolo brought me a radio, a big one, silver and black, with the large antenna and handle, all the dials. They said, “This is for you to see all the things we are trying to do for you. If you and your family don’t do as we say, we’ll take it away.”
They made me write more letters, but I don’t think all of them were sent. One day I wrote to my father. They made me leave the ransom amount blank, that’s what really frightened me.
Who were “they”? Ciambellone and the malavita taking revenge for the humiliation of the twins’ abduction? The Air France coke dealers? Or was it the “friends of the friends,” as Marcello had put it? In these days, Paul began to realize that this business was not going to be quickly resolved and his abductors had absolutely no idea of the nature and extent of his grandfather’s fortune, parsimony, or influence.
Paul:
After a week I heard the amount, on the radio, $17 million. I freaked out. I told them, “There’s no way you’ll get that much money. I told them much less. I worked out a way to convince them not to do it. I worked out the weight. They wanted the money in five-hundred and one-thousand-lire notes. That amount of lire would weigh three hundred kilos and would be something like three hundred and fifty thousand notes. I knew there was no way that kind of money could be, I don’t believe there is that kind of money around.
They said they wanted ten percent of what my grandfather had. Before I was kidnapped, I was a little boy, stupid, dissident, ridiculous. I didn’t use my head, that’s why they asked for so much money.
Then I realized the whole thing revolves around sex, like Freud said, the whole world revolves around sex. Now I think that wanting more money is wanting to fuck better chicks. I’m serious. The whole world is corrupt. People who have more money have nicer girls. Those kind of Italians, they marry and they’re married their whole life to the same woman and children, but they go out at night, snort coke, fuck around, and go home on weekends, you know, ’cause those women take it. All they did it for in the end was to fuck better women. “We’ll wait until we have so much money and then we can go with nicer women.” That’s why there’s jealousy between the rich and the poor. I’ve been with nicer women than they have been with. What it comes down to is, if you’re healthy and beautiful, it’s okay; otherwise, you’re fucked. There’s no chance.
Upon hearing the size of the ransom demand, Gail was devastated. She went to a television studio in Rome to tape an appeal to the kidnappers. She was given five minutes of air time, during which she had planned to remind the kidnappers that the grandfather had already refused to pay any ransom for fear of endangering his sixteen other grandchildren, and to point out she couldn’t possibly raise this sum herself. However, during the taping she collapsed and nothing was aired.
She had to fight on four fronts: as a mother to her three other children; managing relations with the family whose patriarch, a paranoid eighty-year-old, refused her calls and whose son, Paul’s father, was a shuttered recluse addicted to heroin and wracked by guilt and grief over the death of Talitha; the kidnappers, who called her almost daily; and the press, who printed whatever they thought would sell the most newspapers.
Gail:
The press made things up. I was ending the lease on my house, and therefore I had not paid the last two months’ rent, as it had come out of my deposit. The headlines read PAUL GETTY’S MOTHER CAN’T PAY HER RENT, SHE’S BEING EVICTED. Garbage, concierge gossip. They were just trying to sell papers, but they were influencing Paul’s grandfather, and they were influencing the kidnappers.
Right after Paul disappeared, I moved into a house right near the French embassy and half a block from Piazza Farnese. It was weird, because I had no idea Paul had been kidnapped there. We knew that that girl Danielle refused him a ride home. We knew that he had left Piazza Navona. I assume that he had made his way to Martine’s house, or to my house, or to Marcello’s house—one of the three.
Fortunately, in the new apartment, all the family photographs and everything were still packed. There was nothing out to hit me over the head. But when I did think about it or saw a photograph, I started becoming emotional.
The Italian press are vultures. They were saying, “Is it some boy’s caprice, or did it really happen?” When they found out that Paul and Danielle had a row at Piazza Navona and she disappeared simultaneously, they made a big speculative thing about that. “This must be a hoax, Danielle Devret is missing.” She was on holiday in Portugal. They mentioned that “Paul’s mother” believed it, but everyone else thought he was going to come home any day. They said maybe he was here, or maybe he was there. It created a basis of doubt. To be fair, they didn’t have much to go on. I refused to talk. I had nothing to say. I begged them to leave us alone, to keep the phones free. That’s when the press brought up all the old Getty news, Paul’s free lifestyle; they raked over all that stuff.
It was damaging because the police were reading the papers, and they were already skeptical. It must have affected Old Paul, those things are translated, and he’s a great paper reader, reads everything written about the family. The Getty family is not popular, and the press has used the family over the years, or the family has allowed itself to be used. The Gettys get lousy press, maybe because they never do anything very nice. Getty karma. I’m not a Getty and never was. I married one, but I’m not a Getty, and I resented tremendously the things that were said about me. It must have really upset the kidnappers to have the Italian press saying “This is a joke.”
The press refused to leave me alone. They printed everything. They misled the situation. I begged the police to not say anything, because something could happen to Paul. They said, “Sì, Signora, sì, sì,” and the next day whatever I had confided was in the papers. There was a leak. We had to keep our own secrets within the family, not tell the police.
The press harassed me ceaselessly. The house was surrounded; they wanted a photograph. I sent my lawyer, Giovanni Iacovoni, out and he said to them, “What’s the difference, you have a thousand photographs already.” They said, no, we want this and we want that, and we want it now. They rang the doorbell endlessly. They were always standing in the halls.
I couldn’t leave from the front. I couldn’t go out on the terrace, to look out at the night and get a breath of fresh air because they were always there. I was a prisoner. Vultures. I finally relented, stood outside the front door and they took photographs, had a field day. I was damned. They portrayed me as this ice-cold woman, the mother without emotion. I wasn’t going to show them emotion. As far as I’m concerned, I showed them too much emotion. It’s none of their damn business. They wanted a weeping mother. How can anyone expect an Italian to understand? It’s an extremely unusual family situation.
We tried to use the press to say the right things, to appeal to them to print what the family put out, not their assumptions. We tried to use the press to keep the kidnappers in a positive frame of mind. That was not successful.
Il Tempo saw it in their own way. They wrote an extraordinary letter to Old Paul. The Il Messaggero men, Mario Gandolfo and Paolo Graudi, were cooperative. They tried to be responsible. They and Paese Sera even came out and said, “Let’s leave her alone.”
Many had no mercy. They did everything to antagonize me. They told me that my son has been seen in Corsica, and wasn’t I happy? I said, “My son is not in Corsica.” They say, “Your son is on his grandfather’s yacht.” Paul’s grandfather doesn’t have a yacht.
On July 18, Chace noted in his diary:
Letters from Marcello and Martine to the grandfather: “I know I haven’t seen you much. He’s still young,” etc. etc. Five different false leads jump up including a couple from Texas, some South Americans and some Germans from Munich. All claimed
to be holding the boy and demanding ransom.
On the following day, Chace began his move to take control from Gail. He ordered the kidnappers to only call the office of Iacovoni, Gail’s lawyer. He advised Iacovoni that he would need a desk in the office. He didn’t introduce himself to Iacovoni by name, just as a “family representative.” He would have liked to talk with the kidnappers himself, but he spoke no Italian, just a few words of Spanish mixed in with English.
On July 20, he noted in his diary:
We have made a small amount of money available to the kidnappers to forget the whole thing. Our strategy is to persuade them to take expenses and forget the rest. We aren’t going to pay a ransom. Just enough to keep them happy and we will forget the prosecution. Gail wants to raise $200,000. People in Rome are all running around offering to raise various sums of money. The man who calls himself Fifty is getting worried. He called Iacovoni and assured him, “It is we who have the boy. He may be killed. Pay the ransom.” Paul II [the boy’s father] is showing great interest wondering what he can do to help. At this point someone telephones an offer of $500,000. May be a false lead.
On that same day, Fifty introduced himself to Iacovoni and for the first time, after two weeks of waiting, the kidnappers revealed their ransom demand.
Iacovoni:
I get a call at nine forty-five in the morning in my studio. The voice was Calabrian-Sicilian; he called himself “Fifty.” He told me to prepare a white automobile and to put an advertisement for Cynar on the radiator. Only Gail and I were supposed to go. I ask if we can be accompanied by a friend of the lady’s, that is Lou, but the Calabrese is adamant and denies me this. He tells me that we will have other instructions for the payment and during the morning somebody will arrive. I ask who this somebody is, but the Calabrese hangs up. At one o’clock the postman arrived and brought an express letter with the request for ten billion lire [approx. $18 million].
There was also a letter from Paul:
ROME, JULY 23.
If you don’t do as they say, dear Mother, it will mean that you want me dead. They have made all the arrangements. If one of them is taken, the others have orders to kill me without requesting the money. Take the road indicated with two people in a white Mercedes. Drive normally. Take it from Rome to Ban. Turn back. Take the autostrada to Palermo—stay on the autostrada. Leave in the morning. The evening before you leave, give an interview on television at 8.30 P.M. Say these words: ‘Please show up. The family will pay.’ The money should be in sacks. The signal is two pieces of gravel will strike your windshield. Stop at once, leave the money on the road and go. Study this letter and what I say in it. The car must be unaccompanied. Nobody else in the car, no radios. If you don’t follow these instructions it will mean my life.
Paul
In Rome, after a week of his investigation, asking questions of the police and people on the street, Chace revealed his true position. He did not do so to anyone but his boss, Old Man Getty, or in his own diary.
Chace:
I heard from someone that Paul was forging travelers’ checks, was involved in the use and distribution of drugs and an extraordinary number of sexual vices. I contacted the police. The vice president of the squadra mobile homicidal kidnap division is convinced the whole thing is a trick by Paul. He doesn’t buy it. He thinks that the case is possibly a family affair. He says that there are certain discrepancies. The boy, he says, was leading a very costly life, had lots of girlfriends, went out a great deal, he was a pseudo-artist, and that there is a considerable difference between his mother and his father, so they don’t get along. Paul made fun of the police. If you make fun of the police, they won’t like you. Not only that, but his mother is hard up and is going around with a very shady character. There is nothing official on it, but he is definitely shady. They go to the Luau Club, a mafia place. The boy has connections with the underworld. Ciambellone and Mammoliti, he says, may be involved. But somebody is behind them. Theoretically, it could be the boy’s mother. If she is involved at all, she was probably involved not initially, but informed of the plan later on. She is a strong woman, a very strong woman.
I talked to Old Paul on the phone. I spent the day talking to him about business affairs in the world and the Middle East, the Getty case, how he was feeling. He feels all right and he feels about the kidnapping just like I do. He keeps an open mind and he listens and he deduces. He doesn’t say a great deal but when he does, he’s specific. He listens carefully before he says something. He asks very good questions when you’re talking to him. If you didn’t know him, you might wonder if he’s paying attention because he goes for a long time without saying anything.
He told me he had issued a statement to the press to the effect that he had fifteen grandchildren, and if he paid a ransom for one, it would put the rest in jeopardy. Therefore he would not pay Paul’s ransom. He told me he’d contacted the boy’s father, Big Paul, in private, and agreed to advance him the amount of a ransom to be deducted from his future inheritance. He said he was awaiting a reply.
10.
Big Paul, a recluse in the Rossetti house on Cheyne Walk, no longer spoke directly to his father. Old Paul had come around occasionally, despite the fact that he much preferred Gail to Talitha. He stopped visiting after his grandson Tara was born and he discovered that his son and Talitha had christened the boy Gabriel Galaxy Gramophone Getty. The last time he did visit, he sat down on a poof in the living room and couldn’t get up.
If Big Paul didn’t reply to his father, he did reveal his opinion of the matter in a phone call he took from Victoria.
Victoria:
I was in Mexico when the drama began, engaged to a Dutch banker. I got desperately ill and was admitted to the ABC Hospital in Mexico City.
Someone called me from London and said, “Old Paul has died.” Two hours later they called again and said, “No, it was George.” He had committed suicide. God, I thought, Big Paul must be devastated.
Then someone called me and said Little Paul had been kidnapped. When I rang his father, Big Paul, from my hospital bed, he said, “I don’t think it’s true.” I remember relaxing.
Occasionally after that I’d ring Paul up. He didn’t want to talk about the kidnapping. He made allusions. He said, “I’ll tell you later,” as if he had a whole lot of things he wanted to say, but it has never come up. I always thought it was strange that Jerry Cherchio didn’t come forward. He always used to come forward in trouble. So I was in my hospital bed in Mexico City, figuring out what the situation was … Where was Jerry?
Eventually my mother flew out and I came back to London on a stretcher. I was moved to a hospital in England and then to the London Clinic to convalesce.
When I talked to George d’Almeida about it, he told me that after I left for Mexico he had gone to London to tell Paul that the kidnapping was real and that he absolutely had to do something. He’s a very special person, George. He really is rather extraordinary and a very serious human being and this was beyond his comprehension.
He said [Big] Paul was in the most frightful state, taking a lot of things. There was chaos in the house. He said the first night that he was there [Big] Paul was quite friendly and nice. The next day George laid it on the line. He said, “As long as there is one chance in a million that it is so, then the ransom has to be paid. There’s no such thing as playing for time. You are playing with someone’s life.” Paul was quite unreceptive. He said, “Do you realize that if I have to pay the ransom, I would have to sell my entire library, for that useless son?” In the morning, George left without saying good-bye, vowing never to darken his doors again.
Gail presumably heard the news of the note from Chace. She knew as well as anyone what was happening with Big Paul.
Gail:
I never saw it, but I heard that Old Paul had written to [Big] Paul telling him that all he had to do was sign it and the funds would be there for the ransom. The money was there, waiting to be released. I don’t know if Old Pa
ul asked for interest. We went into a time warp when this piece of paper from his father came to him. [Big] Paul came up with every possible reason not to. Bill Newsom went back to London to ask [Big] Paul to sign the note and pay the money. People went there day and night, but Big Paul wouldn’t sign.
In July, Gail had been at the center of negotiations with both kidnappers and press, but Chace tightened his control.
Gail:
Chace wanted to get me out of touch for a few days so that the press would leave the telephone alone. If they stopped calling, then the kidnappers could get through. We couldn’t think of how; if I just disappeared, there wouldn’t be any sympathy. Chace said to me, “Do you think you can fake a collapse? Can you fall down, cry, scream, whatever?” If I was sick and unreachable, the papers would sympathize.
I said, “Well, I’ll try.” No one knew, except Lou, Chace, and myself. It was lovely for them because they didn’t have to do the act.
Gail planned to stage her false collapse before the group of paparazzi camped outside her front door day and night:
We waited until everyone was out of the house. Lou asked me how much time I would need to do my spell. He needed to know so he could get someone to drive us to the hospital. Obviously, he couldn’t drive me by himself, because then we wouldn’t have a witness. I fell on the floor and I started crying, crying, crying. I really got myself going. It was a tremendous relief. I had held it all in. I had tried never to cry, because I knew if I started, I’d fall apart. I was in a real state.
At a certain point you get tired of crying, and no one was there. Lou had to run down and get the car. I walked very feebly down; it was all an act. At the hospital, they put me in a wheelchair. I told the press, “I’ve known this doctor for a long time.” I was carrying on. They fell for it. They gave me all kinds of medication, tranquilizers. By the time I had gotten through with it, I believed it. Really, I absolutely believed it because it was actually there.
