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John Gilbert Getty, the grandson of oil magnate J. Paul Getty, died last Friday in San Antonio, Texas.
He was 52 years old, he was dedicated to music like his father, the composer Gordon Getty, and at the moment the causes of death, which occurred after he was found unconscious in a hotel room, are unknown.
The police are investigating the event and are awaiting the result of the autopsy to clarify the facts, although for now, as reported by the US media
TMZ
, it is not suspected that it is a suicide.
The news has come out through a representative who has acted on behalf of Gordon Getty: “With a heavy heart Gordon Getty announces the death of his son, John Gilbert Getty.
John was a talented musician who loved rock and roll.
We will miss him deeply.
He leaves behind his daughter, Ivy Getty, whom he loved beyond measure, and his brothers Peter and Billy.
His other brother, Andrew, passed away before John and his mother, Ann Gilbert Getty died last September. "
The only daughter of the musician has also made a moving publication on his Instagram account this weekend in which he lamented the circumstances of the death of his father and paid him a loving tribute.
"I hate publishing something so soon, but people have been in charge of sharing the news that I wish I could have published myself," he said next to some images in which he appears with his father.
“My father was amazing, the coolest man to ever land on this planet and I will always be the proudest daughter.
I love you so much dad ... life is cruel sometimes ... I don't have one, but two guardian angels watching over me now ... Here are some of my favorite photos of him (and selfishly a couple of us) ”.
Other family members made comments about the loss and making mention of those two angels that protect them and that are also supposed to refer to Andrew Rork Getty, brother of the musician who died this Friday and that as he was found dead at his home in Los Angeles in 2014 when I was 47 years old.
Little is known about the two brothers beyond the fact that they are two of the descendants of J. Paul Betty, the billionaire oilman who left a family fortune that is currently estimated at about 5,000 million dollars (more than 4,200 million euros) and whose Art collection served as the basis for the creation of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
His son, Gordon, parent turn of the two brothers killed, as
well as composer and philanthropist, helped sell the business from his father, Getty Oil, after the death of the billionaire in 1973, as published in
The New York Times
and once became the sole benefactor of the family trust, organized the division of it into six other separate trusts.
He
is credited with a net worth of $ 2.1 billion by
Forbes
magazine
and founded in 1995, with California Governor Gavin Newson, PlumpJack Winery, a quality vineyard in the Napa Valley.
His personal trajectory has not escaped controversy either.
Until 1999 he maintained a discreet existence in San Francisco where he lived with his wife and three children, but at that time it was learned that he had a double life and that for 10 years he had maintained a parallel relationship with a woman named Cynthia Beck with whom he had three daughters whom he ended up having to recognize after his mother sued him in court.
The death of John Gilbert Getty is not the first tragedy to hit the multimillionaire family that throughout history has been plagued with misfortunes despite the immense accumulated fortune.
Kidnappings, suicides, deaths from overdoses, illegitimate children ... are also part of the future of this surname related to oil, art and money around the world.
J. Paul Getty was born in Minnesota in 1982 to a businessman who had already become rich off oil.
He himself began amassing his own fortune in California in the early decades of the 20th century.
He acquired small oil companies and merged them to create the Getty Oil Co. and become the richest man in the United States himself, according to
Forbes
magazine
.
But the business success did not run parallel to the staff: he married five times, had numerous lovers and five children, of whom two died at very young ages, one of them in 1958 at the age of 12 from a brain tumor and another in 1973 in what seemed like a suicide.
Earlier, in 1971, Talitha Pol, the second wife of his son J. Paul Getty Jr., had died of a heroin overdose.
He died in 1976, estranged from his children, whom he never treated very closely, and determined not to leave his fortune, which he used for the most part to create the Getty Museum.
The heirs were lucky that the billionaire's mother left a trust fund for her grandchildren in Getty Oil Co. shares, a bundle that, according to
Forbes
magazine
, was valued in the 1980s at more than $ 4 billion.
However, the best known of the family tragedies was the kidnapping in Rome of J. Paul Getty III when he was 16 years old, for whom a criminal gang demanded a ransom of more than 17 million dollars. Negotiations lasted three months because the young man's father could not get the amount they demanded and the grandfather refused to help him, claiming that if he paid, his other 14 grandchildren could follow. He did not even give in when the kidnappers sent an ear of the young man to a local newspaper and threatened to kill him. Finally the family paid 2.8 million and the grandson of the hard oilman was released. Eight years after regaining his freedom, the young man, addicted to drugs and alcohol, suffered an attack that left him quadriplegic and almost blind. He died in 2011 when he was 54 years old and had spent almost three decades in a wheelchair.
