John Paul Getty III ... his body mutilated by kidnappers then devastated by a stroke. Credit:Getty Images Getty was moved to a Beverly Hills house where all the medical equipment was concealed behind sliding walls of wood panelling. The house could be transformed into a sophisticated medical centre at the touch of a button. Lasers, X-ray machines and even a private blood bank were on hand in case of emergency. Occasionally Getty would break out; on a flying visit to London in the mid-1980s, for example, he spent an evening at Tramp, the nightclub in St James's. But, while his confinement led to the breakdown of his marriage, the estrangement from his father ended a few years later. In 2003, John Paul Getty II left the bulk of his fortune, estimated at £200 million, to his second son, Mark, bequeathing to Getty chattels worth £50,000 and an unspecified share of a family fund.

Displaying his damaged ear shortly after being released by his kidnappers. By then, Getty and his mother had moved to an Irish lodge on a 40-hectare estate. Latterly, Getty had lived at a house in England set in 1200 hectares, with a mock castle, ornamental lakes, a cricket pitch and a specially built tower holding a library containing many of the world's oldest and rarest books. One of the estate cottages was adapted for Getty's wheelchair and the house was fitted with the latest medical equipment. John Paul Getty III was born on November 4, 1956, and struck his normally misanthropic grandfather, John Paul Getty I, as ''a bright, red-haired little rascal, most cheerful and cute''. He spent his childhood in Rome, where his father ran the Italian division of the family oil business.

In 1964, Getty II divorced Paul's mother, childhood sweetheart Gail Harris. After his parents broke up, Getty saw little of his father, who spent much of the 1960s in England and North Africa in a drug-induced haze. By his 15th birthday, Getty was partying hard, taking drugs and crashing motorbikes and cars. He was reportedly expelled from no fewer than seven schools, then determined on an artistic career. He started selling his own paintings to local trattoria and supplementing what he made by modelling nude for life classes. In 1973, he was kidnapped in Rome's Piazza Farnese by a gang, who sent a ransom note demanding $35 million for his safe return.

Some members of the Getty clan initially suspected that the note was either a hoax, a joke, or a ruse by the rebellious teenager to extract money from his notoriously tight-fisted grandfather. A second demand was received but it had been held up for three weeks by a postal strike and when Getty II asked Getty I for the ransom money, the old man refused. The billionaire head of the Getty clan, then aged 80, made clear his attitude to paying ransom money: ''I have 14 grandchildren and if I pay a penny of ransom, I'll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.'' Then Rome's daily newspaper, Il Messaggero, received an envelope containing a hank of hair and a decomposing human ear. With it was another note threatening the boy with further mutilation unless a ransom, now set at $7 million, was paid. Getty I cut a deal with the kidnappers and reportedly paid out just under $3 million. The boy was found thin, filthy and bloodstained, still in pain from the ear amputation and with infection set in. Although his kidnappers had pumped him with penicillin, the doses had been so enormous he had become allergic to it. When he phoned his grandfather to express his gratitude, the old man refused to take the call. Getty turned for solace to his girlfriend, a small-time German actress named Martine Zacher, and less than a year later, they married. Getty I not only believed his son had married too young but that he had broken a legal injunction prohibiting him from marrying before he was 22 and disqualified him from receiving an income from the family trust. By the mid-1970s, Getty was trying to make a new life in Los Angeles but was suffering the serious effects from his kidnapping. He was paranoid, unable to sleep and had become dependent on brandy (which his captors had administered to him). He also turned to drugs.

Getty I died in 1976, reputedly worth between $2 billion and $4 billion, and his will gave strict orders that control of his estate was not to pass to his grandson. Getty remained the principal beneficiary of the SarahC.Getty Trust and inherited a fortune. Shortly afterwards, seven men received prison sentences of between four years and 10 years for the kidnapping. Apart from a few thousand lire discovered on one of the accused, none of the ransom money was ever found. In 1977, Getty had surgery in Los Angeles to be fitted with a new ear. By then, he had supplemented his cocaine and heroin habit with a daily bottle of bourbon; even so, he had shown signs of calming down and through Martine had met avant-garde German director Wim Wenders. In 1981, Getty was cast in a key role in Wenders's new film, The State of Things.

But he then suffered liver failure and for a time his brain was starved of oxygen. After six weeks in a coma, he emerged with impaired speech, negligible vision and paralysed from the neck down. However, he proceeded to demonstrate extraordinary will power - submitting to a daily regimen of painful exercise, physiotherapy and speech therapy. By 1987, his partial recovery was such that he was able to visit concerts and cinemas and even - strapped to a metal frame - ski again. Loading John Paul Getty III's marriage to Martine was dissolved in 1993; his son, actor and model Paul Balthazar Getty, survives him. Telegraph, London