Ghosts of the Past: The Tragic Fates of Famous Families

Welcome to another episode of the Nighttime Scary Tales Podcast, where we explore the dark side of storytelling. Tonight, prepare for spine-chilling tales featuring original horror stories, eerie supernatural encounters, and real-life crime that reveals the darker aspects of human nature. Each story is designed to keep you on the edge of your seat long after it ends. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Share your most chilling moments by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. More haunting stories are coming, so keep your lights on and your doors locked. Sweet dreams… if you can find them!


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Welcome to another episode of the Nighttime Scary Tales Podcast, where we explore the dark side of storytelling. Tonight, prepare for spine-chilling tales featuring original horror stories, eerie supernatural encounters, and real-life crime that reveals the darker aspects of human nature. Each story is designed to keep you on the edge of your seat long after it ends. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Share your most chilling moments by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. More haunting stories are coming, so keep your lights on and your doors locked. Sweet dreams… if you can find them!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
I grew up in a small town in the hills
of southwestern Kentucky, not too far from an old, abandoned
coal mine. There were rumors that it was haunted, and
one time me and my middle school buddies walked up
there and just kind of stared at the entrance for
a while, daring each other to step inside, but never
getting any closer. I told my mom about it, and

(00:36):
she told me to stay away from the place. I
thought that that was proof that the place was haunted,
but she said those rumors were nonsense and that the
place was just dangerous, especially for curious little boys like us.
Our town didn't just have a haunted mine either, We
had our very own haunted house too. It was actually

(00:56):
about a mile out of town, and I only ever
saw the place I was driving out that way with
my dad, but every time we passed, I stared and
wondered if there really were a ghosts walking around that
big old place. It must have been a pretty nice
place at one time, three floors, balconies on the second,
with a big old gravel driveway lined with trees. It

(01:19):
looked like a mansion to me when I was a kid,
but it was also boarded up, falling down, and absolutely derelict.
At first, all I heard was that something terrible had
happened there, some people got murdered, and that their ghosts
were hanging around the place because they couldn't move on.
But my dad said that was bull crap too. He

(01:39):
also told me that I was too young to be
asking those kinds of questions, and that he'd tell me
all about it when I was older. Well, many years later,
when we were both much older, I asked him what
happened out of that old, big house outside of town,
and this is what he told me. At one time,
the house had been owned by the Fairfax family, one

(02:02):
of the richest in all of Kentucky. They got rich
from owning shares and coal mines, and as the family's
wealth grew, so did their holdings. They mined the hills
around Whitesburg, Cumberland, and mac Roberts for almost a hundred years,
and by the time the Fairfax Mining Corporation was owned
and operated by A Maxwell Fairfax around the turn of

(02:24):
the century, the family owned half the coal mines in
Perry and Lecher Counties. It was Maxwell who had the
house constructed, and he considered it his own small contribution
to the family's legacy, the seat of power from which
they had ruled over the Kentucky mining industry for another
hundred years. Maxwell was supposedly a shrewdly intelligent business man,

(02:47):
one who rarely made mistakes. But in choosing his heir,
he made a mistake that was fatal, not just to
the Maxwell Mining Corporation, but his entire blood line. Maxwell's
protege in the heir to the family fortune was his
eldest son, William Fairfax. Maxwell taught his son everything he
knew about the family business, and when he finally passed

(03:10):
away in the early nineteen thirties, William stepped up to
take his place. William then started off on an aggressive
expansion project, buying land here and staking claims there. They
paid off for him too. Their investors were happy, their
customers were happy, and I hear he offered very fair
wages too. Needless to say, he was a popular man,

(03:34):
one who'd earned the right to call himself a Fairfax.
But the same eagerness by which he cemented his reputation
would eventually become his undoing. William Fairfax opened six new
minds in as many years, but to do so, he
had to skirt all kinds of state and federal regulations.

(03:54):
This was no issue for a man of such vast
wealth and power, and even less difficult was the act
of procuring land from those less fortunate than he. One
of these poor landowners, a Choctaw man whose name had
been lost to history, sold his land of Fairfax at
a discount, And this is a very important detail of

(04:15):
the story, but one will revisit later on. Anyway, Fairfax
does the same thing across southeastern Kentucky, opening up brand
new coal mines as he went. For a while, everything
was running smoothly and profits were steadily increasing. But then
one day William Fairfax calls a meeting with the mining

(04:36):
company's top guys and makes a shocking announcement. Following the
end of that work week, all mining operations were to
shut down with immediate effect. Needless to say, the board
of the mining company was horrified. To their knowledge, the
company was doing just fine. They were unaware of any

(04:56):
financial difficulties, none of the mines were anywhere near depleted,
and there had been no attempt to take over the
company hostile or otherwise. The Fairfax went one step further
once all mining operations had been halted, the company was
to completely dissolve, with all employees and board members to
be laid off immediately. The second move caused a veritable

(05:19):
poop storm. The miners the company employed were devastated, but
generous redundancy payments quickly eased their suffering. The same win
for the board members, who each got the equivalent of
a couple of million dollars in today's value. A check
that size surely saw them through the winner, and other
mining companies were crying out for workers, so very few

(05:42):
of Fairfax's former employees went destitute. But all anyone wanted
to know was why why shut down one of the
most successful mining operations in the entire region. Well, the
answers disputed, and I'll tell you the one that I
believe before for the one I don't want to believe.

(06:03):
The first explanation is that Fairfax knew something his board
members didn't, and that's how the company's entire investment structure
was about to fall out from under them. For one
reason or another, Fairfax and his top investor had endured
a bitter falling out, so bitter that his investor had
promised that Fairfax would never work with a single American

(06:24):
financier for as long as he lived. The guy was
apparently so well connected that he had the ear of
all the money men in Lexington, and so in the
time it took to say a few rude words, William
Fairfax had doomed his family's beloved mining company his varied
legacy to a slow death. But then, instead of stripping

(06:46):
the assets or potentially risk leaving his employees destitute, William
Fairfax rather nobly neglected the opportunity to protect his fortune
in favor of ensuring his workers and board members did
not go hungry. Now, obviously this was a really nice
thing to do, but I'm sure you'll all agree that
it seems pretty out of character for a super rich

(07:08):
coal baron like will Fairfax, and from what I can gather,
it was pretty out of character for him. Fairfax emulated
his father in that he was a shrewd business man.
He paid his employees fairly, but he worked them hard.
So when he starts just giving his money away all
of a sudden in what amounted to generous severance packages,

(07:30):
people thought he was crazy. And the sad thing is
that seems like it was true. So, as I mentioned,
Fairfax declared that the company would continue through the working
week before ceasing operation, presumably to fulfill contracts so he
could better compensate his employees. But during those days, Fairfax

(07:52):
appears to have acted out of character. He was giving
away his fortune, shrugging off the board member's accusations that
he throwing away his family's legacy. But that's all the
subjective crazy stuff. He could just as easily put down
to having a good heart. But as time went on
and the week drew to a close, Fairfax supposedly went

(08:13):
from acting out of the ordinary to acting in a
way that was downright frightening. He stopped eating, he looked
like he hadn't slept, And people had said that he'd
be talking away one minute, then the next his words
would get all garbled, like he was jabbering nonsense. And
there was other stuff too, like how he'd be reading

(08:35):
or looking at something and then just suddenly jerk his
head to one side, as if searching for the source
of a sound that no one else could hear. I
don't know if anyone sought to make any kind of intervention,
and by that I mean get Fairfax to a psychiatrist,
or even to just a general hospital of some kind,
but if there was one in the works, it came

(08:57):
far too late. Sometime later, I'm not sure exactly how long,
but I figured it was maybe a weak tops, folks
around town realized they hadn't seen any of the Fairfax
family at all. Williams hadn't been seen since the mine closures,
but neither had any of his family, and his wife
and daughter were often seen visiting stores around town, while

(09:19):
his son was fond of riding over to the town
saloon to drink and play cards. They were regular visitors
and popular too, so when all three of them suddenly
stopped showing their faces around town, people started to talk,
and that talk eventually led to the town sheriff heading
over to the Fairfax place to check on the family.

(09:39):
What he actually found there took years to make it
to the ears of the wider public, but what the
sheriff could bring himself to say was that upon entering
the Fairfax house, they became evident that William, his wife,
and their two children were all deceased. At first, all
the townsfolk knew was that the Fairfax family had passed,

(10:02):
and although many assumed it was some kind of tragic accident.
Others grumbled that William hadn't been well as of late
and were obviously concerned for his recent state of mind.
Rumors were rife, but the fact remained that no one
but the sheriff and his boys had seen the inside
of the Fairfax house. They managed to keep a little
on things for a day or two, but then the

(10:24):
law stated that the Fairfax's bodies had to go over
to the coroner, and when that happened, the sheriff and
his boys couldn't keep things quiet anymore. The Fairfaxes hadn't
been lost in some tragic but unavoidable accident. William Fairfax
had murdered his own family. I think the most common

(10:46):
explanation tagged on to this version is that Fairfax knew
that his family were doomed to be impoverished. They weren't
accustomed to such a lifestyle either, so rather than watch
them suffer and grow to resent him, William Fairfax decided
to put them out of their misery before it even
visited them. It makes for a pretty horrible story, right

(11:07):
man loses fortune because of his own hubris, Then, after
quite possibly losing his mind, he decides to kill his
family instead of allowing them to live in poverty and misery.
Seems like it's all there, doesn't it. And personally that's
the version I like the best. But there's another version,
one that a frightening amount of people believe. And to

(11:28):
be honest, when you get your hands on that coroner's report,
it's not as easy to dismiss as you might think.
For the first part of this second and much more
terrifying explanation, we got a circle back and touch on
the land Fairfax bought from that Choctaw man at heavy discount.
Fairfax could have and probably would have paid ten times

(11:51):
what he ended up paying for that land, seeing as
there was this huge coal seam running the backside of
the hill the Sky's land was on. Yet he only
ended up paying a fraction of the estimate. The question
is how did he manage to obtain such a reduction
in price? While you ask certain people who I politely

(12:11):
referred to as the Fairfax's official historians, the discount was
agreed upon due to the Choctaw man's desperation. He needed
fast money and was in no room to negotiate, and
was willing to accept a much smaller sum of money,
so long as it was paid in cash. But ask
other people and they give you a very different explanation.

(12:32):
Fairfax got his hands on that land so cheap because
the Choctaw made a very special request of him. If
he promised to fulfill it, he could have the land.
And the promise was this. Up in the hills on
this old Indian guy's land was an old Choctaw charnel house.
They sometimes called them bone houses or bone caves, but

(12:55):
whatever the name, they were held as deeply sacred places
by the natives. Following the death of a Choctaw, their
friends and or family would place their bodies up in
a tree, or if there were none available, they'd construct
a kind of primitive scaffolding and then place the body
of the deceased at the top. The idea was that
carrion birds or flesh strippers as the natives called them,

(13:19):
would remove all the tissue spiriting away the soul of
the dead, so that their bones could be safely stored
in one of those bone caves I just told you about.
And so the land Fairfax bought was host to one
of those bone caves, and the discount he received was conditional.
The Choctaw man refused to sell unless Fairfax made a

(13:39):
promise to him that the bone Cave would remain untouched. Supposedly,
Fairfax gave the man his word that the bones of
his ancestors would be respected. But then, sooner had the
Choctaw taken his money and rode off into the sunset,
Fairfax ordered the bone house demolished. Apparently, the quickest and
most direct route till the coal seam was directly through

(14:02):
the bone cave. And although Fairfax was more ethical than most,
profit trump decency every single time. And so Fairfax went
back to his promise almost right away, and on his order,
workers packed the cave out with dynamite and then blew
it sky high. Now, as compelling a story as that

(14:23):
all is, there's not an ounce of evidence to support
it outside of local hearsay. But what there is evidence for,
and this is evidence I've seen with my own two eyes,
is that the Fairfax family annihilation wasn't quite what the
official historians have made it out to be. You see,
when the sheriff and his boys showed up at their place,

(14:45):
they were greeted by a vision of hell. But it
wasn't no average murder scene, if they even exist at all.
As following the slaughter of his family, using a combination
of knife stabs and hammer blows, William Fairfax dre their
bodies outside, each wrapped in expensive cotton bed sheets, and
began placing their bodies in the trees that lined the

(15:07):
driveway to their home. The coroner report states that Fairfax
had attempted to strip away some of the flesh from
his family's bodies, but for some reason, had stopped himself
during the act and had instead opted for the trees. Now,
I'm not saying that Fairfax fell foul of some ancient
Choctaw curse. What I'm saying is I think he believed that.

(15:32):
Maybe it's because he really was losing his mind, But
whatever the reason, after killing his wife and two children,
Fairfax started to mimic the Choctaw's burial rites. To this day,
no one knows why Fairfax did what he did. They
got their guesses, but even folks like me who lean
away from the supernatural have a hard time piecing together

(15:53):
the details in a way that doesn't give you the creeps.
The nation of Ireland is famous for many things throughout
the centuries, the country has produced some of the greatest artists, musicians,

(16:16):
and poets the world has ever known, and quite arguably
the world's greatest beverage too. Guinness, the iconic Irish stout,
was first brewed in seventeen seventy eight by Arthur Guinness
at Dublin's Saint james Gate Brewery, almost two decades prior
the man himself signed the now legendary nine thousand year

(16:37):
lease on the brewery, and it wasn't until the late
seventeen seventies that the brewery began producing the dark, creamy
stout that would give the Guinness family name its now
global fame. The exact story behind the drink's initial creation
is very poorly documented, but it's commonly believed that mister
Guinnis experimented with several different techniques and ingredients in the

(17:00):
effort to create a new, distinctive kind of beer. The
use of roasted barley, which gave Guinness its distinctive jet
black color, along with its characteristic flavor, is one of
the key elements that sets it apart from other beers,
and over the centuries that followed, Guinness has become one
of the most recognizable and beloved beer brands on the planet.

(17:22):
But did you know that the story of Arthur Guinness's
descendants is one as dark as the drink which bears
their name. This is the story of the Guinness Family curse.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Guinness family amassed
a sizable fortune from the export of their beer. They

(17:44):
bought their way into the aristocracy, became a giant on
international stock markets, and so intertwined themselves with the Irish
culture that wherever there are Irish people, pints of Guinness
are being poured. But as their wealth accumulated, a pattern
of highly publicized tragedies fueled rumors of a Guinness Family curse.

(18:06):
The family itself had dismissed such claims, telling the Irish
Times that any big family will have its share of grief,
but the frequency and severity of the events has many
putting stock and more sinister explanations. Firstly, of Arthur Guinness's
twenty one children, eleven of them passed away before reaching adulthood. Granted,

(18:29):
child mortality rates in the late eighteenth century were considerably
worse than they are now, but even by the sins
of Nepal were shell shocked. How could their beloved crowned
prince have done something so utterly horrifying. The Chief Justice
went on to announce that since the Pendra had survived
the self inflicted gunshot wound, he had technically inherited the

(18:51):
throne upon the death of his father, King Bearendra. He
lay in a hospital bed and the comatose state, both
a mass murderer and a monarch. In the days it followed,
many questions were asked of both the Napalese government and
its subordinate security services, But without a doubt, the overarching

(19:11):
question remained why had Dependra suffered some kind of sudden
psychotic break, shot his family in a daze and then
taken his own life when he realized what he'd done,
or had he deliberately killed them, in which case what
prompted his decision to do so. To this day, there
have been no definitive conclusions on why Dependra carried out

(19:34):
the murder of his family, but a number of sometimes
contradictory theories remained prevalent. The first theory centers around a
rejected bid for marriage, one which caused Dependra to descend
into a murderous rage. While visiting the United Kingdom, Dependra
had met an Indian girl by the name of Deviani Rana. Then,

(19:55):
upon returning to Nepal, de Pendra announced that he was
in love with Deviani and wished to marry her. Supposedly,
King Birendra rejected his son's proposal, claiming that the girl's
family were a lower class and that her father's political
leanings also left a lot to be desired. What's more,

(20:16):
the King and Queen had already picked out a prospective
bride for their crown prince, and having ensured that she
was of aristocratic Napalese stock, they would not budge on
their decision. This is supposedly when Dependra flew into a
murderous rage, gunning down his family in the heat of
passion before finally turning his weapon on himself. However, a

(20:38):
few of this story's details simply do not add up. Firstly,
Deviani Rana was most certainly not lower class, and King
Barendra would have almost definitely have known this. Her family
was descended from former Indian royalty and were actually much
wealthier than the Napalese royal family. In fact, upon hearing

(21:01):
that her daughter was in love with the Crown Prince
of Nepal. Devianni's mother warned her that the move might
result in a sharp decline of her standard of living.
It also seems highly out of character for some one
like the Pendra, who was intensely passionate about Napales's nationhood,
to insist on marrying an Indian woman after having known

(21:22):
her a relatively short amount of time. It also seems
even more out of character for de Pendra to fly
into a murderous rage over just about anything, at least
not of his own volition anyway. This also pokesholes in
the theory that de Pendra murdered his family after his father,
the king, suggested that they completely dissolve the monarchy following

(21:43):
the end of his reign. And even so, if de
Pendra did intend the murders to be a violent coupd'ettas,
why take his own life once he believed everyone to
be dead. Others have looked to other areas of the
investigation where they claimed chilling in consistencies. Many of questioned
why there was a more security at the party where

(22:05):
the attack took place, While a number of people had
pointed out that de Pendra supposedly self inflicted gunshot wound
was located at his left temple, something which struck them
very unusual for a right handed person. The Napalese government
then shocked the world by refusing any and all help
from friendly nations, asserting the burden of the tragedy was

(22:26):
theirs to carry alone. This might strike many as decidingly dignified,
but some Scotland yard included, found it deeply suspicious that
Napalese officials seemed so allergic to foreign intervention, raising the
question what exactly did they have to hide. On the

(22:46):
day following the royal massacre, the slain were given a
state funeral and cremated in front of one of the
holiest Hindu temples in all of Nepal. As we've covered,
Dependra was proclaimed king while comatose in a catman due hospital,
but just four days later he slipped away during the
night and was announced dead the following morning. Upon his passing,

(23:10):
a distant relative named Ganendra Shah ascended to the throne
in a turn of events that surprised him just as
much as everyone else. Some say Ganendra's strange behavior in
the days that followed were a result of the man's
deep and profound grief, and others assert otherwise. In one instance,
Gaanindra rather publicly suggested that the royal massacre was the

(23:34):
result of an accidental discharge, as in Dependra shot in
his entire family with a fully automatic assault rifle by accident,
and he later defended his decision to publicly suggest such
a theory, saying he was bound to tradition to avoid
the suggestion that his distant cousin was a murderer. But

(23:55):
some have argued that Ganendra's public statement was also an
attempt to skirt legal and constitutional hurdles and ensure that
if he survived, Dependra would be exempt from prosecution. If true,
this would constitute a horrifyingly shrewd attempt to seize power.
Perhaps Dependre was relying on trusted surgeons to save his

(24:17):
life following the self inflicted wound. Maybe passing away from
the self inflicted wounds simply wasn't part of Dependra's fiendish plan.
Maybe his true intention wasn't to end the royal line forever,
but to ensure its survival for another thousand years. On
June twelfth of two thousand one, a Hindu ceremony known

(24:39):
as Okato was held in the Nepalese capital. In order
to exercise or banish the spirit of the dead royals,
a Hindu priest dressed himself in the late King Bearendra's belongings,
then wrote an elephant out of catman dou as a
way of symbolizing his exile into death. The Nepalese citizen

(24:59):
re grieved and the world wept with them. Yet as
the ceremony unfolded, a deep sense of resentment towards Gaynendra
began to grow. Many pointed out that on the day
of the massacre, Guynendra had rather conveniently been unable to
attend the event which it took place. Others counted that

(25:19):
Gaynendra's wife and two children did make it to the party,
meaning it was highly unlikely that he agreed to be
part of any such plan to end their lives. However,
while every single member of Dependra's family met their end
that day, Gaynendra's wife and two children miraculously survived their injuries,
slowly but surely. In the eyes of many Napalese citizens,

(25:43):
the single most compelling piece of evidence to suggest Gaynendra's
innocence became one of the most damning suggestions of his guilt.
In the years that followed, elements within the Napalese MAOIs
party claimed that the U S Central Intelligence Agency executed
the massacre. Nicknamed Prachanda, one communist official asserted that multiple

(26:05):
people with the mask of the crown Prince de Pendra
were present in the room at one point. Brakando also
asserted that there were dramatic inconsistencies between the official version
of events, which were endorsed by Ganendra and his government,
and the eyewitness accounts of the medics and police officers
who attended the royal palace in the aftermath of the massacre.

(26:27):
It was also Prakanda's opinion that Dipendra was not in
fact the perpetrator of the massacre, but yet another of
its many victims. He pointed out the fact that the
gunshot wound was not where a right handed shooter would
place the barrel of his weapon and place the blames
squarely at the feet of the newly crowned King Gayanindra.

(26:48):
But others, perhaps those with much more fruitful imaginations, placed
their belief in our final theory, one involving an eleventh
century Hindu mystic Gurikna was revered Saint Yogi in a
prominent figure in the Nath tradition of Hinduism. He believed
to have lived during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, although

(27:10):
precise historical details about his life are uncertain due to
the hagiographic nature of many accounts. Garakhnov is considered one
of the influential figures of the development of Hatha and
Kudalini yoga, and is often credited with the spread of
Yogic teachings across India as well as the wider region. Today,

(27:31):
he is still revered by millions of Indians and Nepalese,
and in both countries numerous temples and shrines dedicated to
him can be found. Garakhnov is often depicted as a
Yogi with supernatural powers, and his teachings emphasize the importance
of spiritual practice self discipline in the attainment of enlightenment.

(27:52):
Many of the stories detailing his life and work involve
him being kind, gentle, and understanding, but one such story
has a marked different tone. According to the legend, the
first ruler of Nepal was named King Prithvi, and he
is credited with uniting the kingdom following the conquest of
numerous petty kingdoms. One day in the late seventeen sixties,

(28:16):
the king came across an old holy man practicing yoga
in the forest. Being a man of great respect, the
King offered the holy man some kurd to quenscious thirst,
but after consuming it, the holy man vomited into the
King's drinking bowl and demanded he drink it naturally. King
Prithvie was repulsed and tossed the holy man's fresh vomit

(28:39):
onto the ground, but this caused the holy man to
fly into a rage, claiming that the refusal to imbibe
the fluid of a holy man is tantamount to a
mortal sin. King Prithvie laughed, but this only angered the
holy man further, and after focusing all of his divine will,
the man put a curse on King Prithvie's blood line,

(29:00):
claiming that his royal lineage would last no longer than
ten generations. Obviously, any one who puts a curse on
you after offering you some puke to drink is probably
playing with a few cards short of a full deck.
But upon hearing of the curse, the Great Yogi Garaknoth
grew ashen Garaknoth claimed that despite his evident madness, the

(29:23):
man was still a very very powerful Yogi and that
his curse should be taken very seriously. Some dismiss the
warning as far out nonsense. Yet it appears that history
did indeed vindicate our curd vomiting Yogi. King Prithviy was
born in April seventeen forty three, and if the generation

(29:44):
is said to be anywhere between twenty five and thirty years,
this means ten generations. Is anywhere between two hundred and
fifty to three hundred years. Between the year of King
Prithvie's birth and the massacre of the Palace Royal party,
two hundred and fifty eight eight years elapsed exactly ten
generations since the mad Yogi declared the royal family's doom.

(30:08):
There are many, and perhaps rightfully so, who dismissed the
timing of the family's demise as mere coincidence, and there
are many other, much more feasible explanations. But the fact
remains that hundreds of thousands of North Indian Hindus believed
that Karakhnoth had indeed prophesied the end of the royal lineage,

(30:29):
and with belief and manifestation being so chillingly interlinked, sometimes
perhaps the moment young de Pendra learned of it had
ceased to be ancient rumour and became destined to be
self fulfilling. For many years, America knew the Gedei family

(30:53):
as one of the wealthiest in the entire world. They
continued to own several prominent businesses, including Getty Images, one
of the largest providers of stock photographs in the world.
Chances are, if you've ever used Google image Search, you've
seen a picture with the Getty Image's water mark. Yet
the family is famous for another reason, and this one

(31:15):
is considerably darker. The Getty family began with George Getty,
an oil man from the state of Oklahoma. He and
his son Jean Paul Getty later known as j. Paul Getty,
teamed up to start Getty Oil, a company that continued
to exist until it was sold shortly after the millennium
and moved its base of operations to California. J Paul

(31:39):
brought the family to great heights, but his father believed
that he would ruin the family business and it was
probably out. Despite that, Jay Paul didn't run Getty Oil
into the ground and opted to vastly expand the family fortune.
The curse, however, seemed to only afflict those who came
after J. Paul Getty. Most people believe that the curse

(32:00):
was karmic retribution for how terrible Jay Paul was to
his family. He married five times, his children rarely saw him,
and Jay Paul even skipped out on his eldest son's
wedding after deciding that business was more precious than his
own flesh and blood. Perhaps the first tragedy to hit
the family was the death of Timothy Getty, J Paul's

(32:23):
youngest son, who died of a brain tumor in nineteen
fifty eight at the tender age of just twelve years old.
In her book Alone Together, Timothy's mother claimed that Ja
Paul had once scolded her for spending too much on
the child's cancer treatments. The nineteen seventies were an increasingly
tragic time for the Gettys. Third son, John Paul Junior,

(32:46):
left his wife and took up with the actress to
LEITHA Pole in nineteen sixty six. The two became addicted
to drugs, causing J. Paul Senior to cut off his
son completely. Paul went on to die of a drug
overdose in eighteen seventy one. Older brother, George, always felt
their father's cruelty the most. He was chief operating officer

(33:07):
of Getty Oil, but J. Paul didn't trust his business
savvy and often overrode his decisions. George, who was reportedly
scared of Mister Getty as his children called him, often
drank to numb the pain. One night in nineteen seventy three,
after an argument with his wife over J. Paul, George
went into a room, drank alcohol, took sedatives, and stabbed

(33:31):
himself with a barbecue fork. It took an extra twenty
minutes to bring him to a discreet hospital, where he died. J.
Paul tried to cover up his son taking his own
life so it would ADMR His image. The month that
followed saw the worst tragedy the Gettys ever experienced. In
July nineteen seventy three, J. Paul Junior's son J. Paul

(33:54):
the Third, was enjoying a vacation in the Italian city
of Rome. In one morning, his mother received a horrifying
letter stating that he'd been kidnapped and was being held
for ransom. The family thought it was employed by the
young man to extort money from his famously frugal grandfather,

(34:14):
but in reality, none other than the notorious Undragatamafia had
kidnapped Ja Paul the Third. The boy's grandfather. Ja Paul
refused to pay the seventeen million dollar ransom, saying that
the rest of the grandchildren could be targets of the
family settled. He didn't budge even when the kidnappers sent
the family a lock of the boy's hair in his

(34:36):
severed ear, and eventually grandfather relented after negotiating to reduce
the ransom. He agreed to pay two point two million,
the most that can be tax deductible, and loan the
remaining eight hundred thousand to his son. J Paul the
Third was a captive for six months and it traumatized

(34:57):
him forever. He became addicted to drugs and suffered a
drug induced stroke, which left him paralyzed and unable to speak,
and he died in twenty eleven. In twenty fifteen, Gordon
Getty's son Andrew was found dead in Beverly Hills, naked
from the waist down and lying in a pool of Blood,
said the Los Angeles Times. His death was attributed to

(35:21):
a heart condition exacerbated by drugs, and then in November
twenty twenty, another of Gordon's sons, John Gilbert, died in
a San Antonio, Texas hotel from an accidental overdose. Despite
the family's success, the Getty name lives on in its businesses,
philanthropic ventures, and the many museums named after them. It's

(35:44):
clear that even with all the money in the world,
you can't buy happiness. Hey, friends, thanks for listening. Click
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