Being born into a rich family is not always good times and good fortune.
As the saying goes, money can't buy happiness. Many children
of business tycoons have fallen onto hardship, criminal activity, addiction
and more. Here are the tragic stories of some of the most well-known heirs and heiresses.
Patty Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped at her
college apartment at Berkeley by a terrorist group at the age of 19 in February of 1974.
The group called itself the Symbionese Liberation Army, or SLA, and they demanded Patty's father,
Randolph Apperson Hearst, donate "millions of dollars in food" to Californians in need.
But in another shocking twist, surveillance video
later showed Patty actively participating in a crime spree alongside her kidnappers.
The saga didn't end well. Six of the nine members of the SLA were killed by the Los Angeles police,
while Hearst was arrested in September of 1975 and ultimately sentenced to
seven years behind bars. President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence, however,
and Hearst was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.
Why? Well, it's still widely contested today what really happened. Hearst claims she was
brainwashed, threatened, and abused, while prosecutors claimed she was in
on it all along. Where the truth lies will probably never be known.
John Paul Getty III, grandson of oil tycoon John Paul Getty,
was attending a boarding school in Italy when he was kidnapped in Rome in 1973.
Getty III lived in Italy as a teenager and went to boarding school there. One day,
he just disappeared. His mother received a ransom note two days later demanding $17 million dollars
in exchange for his freedom. His mother was unable to pay and sought help from the famous
family patriarch, who was reluctant to pay, as he didn't believe the boy had truly been kidnapped.
The kidnappers finally lost patience. They lopped off Getty III's ear and mailed it to
a newspaper as proof of their sincerity. Getty III's unfeeling grandfather finally agreed to
pay the ransom, but he managed to whittle the asking price down to $3.2 million. Even then,
he only paid out $2.2 million himself - the maximum amount he could claim as a tax deduction;
the rest he considered a loan that had to be paid back by his grandson at 4% interest!
Getty III recalled the terrifying kidnapping experience years later to Rolling Stone Magazine,
saying that he tried to escape, stealing a knife and using it to drill a peephole. By
the time he was finally ransomed, he had been a captive for five months.
The experience left a terrible toll. Getty III fell into drug addiction and suffered a
narcotics-induced stroke in 1981, leaving him paralyzed until his death in 2011.
Known as America's "poor little rich girl," Barbara Hutton was heiress to
the Woolworth company trust. She flaunted her fortune and
was the extravagant epitome of inherited wealth to the public.
But her childhood was fraught with tragedy. Hutton stumbled upon her mother's dead body
when she was just 4 years old. Her father remarried, and neither he nor her stepmother
showed any interest in being parents. They were reportedly neglectful, shipping her off
to various friends and relatives, and sending her away to boarding school at the earliest
chance. She even spent holidays alone at school because no one bothered to come pick her up.
That isolation and neglect she experienced as a child may have contributed to her fickle and needy
love life. Hutton was constantly seeking love and attention, and that led to seven failed marriages,
a drug and alcohol addiction, and struggles with anorexia and depression. Tragically,
her only son was killed in a plane crash at the age of 27. Hutton said,
"All the unhappiness in my life has been caused by men. I think I'm pretty timid
about marriage but I'm also too timid to live alone, and life doesn't make sense without men."
She died at the age of 66, with only $3,500 to her name.
Doris Duke was the heiress to tobacco billionaire and president of the American Tobacco Company,
Buchanan Duke. Doris inherited his wealth at just 12 years old and actually had to sue her
own mother two years later to prevent her from selling the family's assets.
After two failed marriages and the death of her daughter,
Doris also became the prime suspect in the suspected killing of her friend of ten years,
Eduardo Tirella. On their way into town to Newport, Rhode Island,
Doris reportedly slid into the driver's side of the vehicle while Tirella was out opening the
gate to her home. She then drove into him and ran him over. The death was ruled an accident;
a later Vanity Fair investigation found strong evidence suggesting that Duke had intentionally
killed Tirella and paid off the authorities in a cover-up, but nothing was ever proven.
Just days before her own death, Duke reportedly rewrote her will and left her $1.2 billion estate
to her butler as executor. Many suspected foul play there as well but again, there was no proof.
Abigail Folger's tragic story has been portrayed in numerous films, including 2019's Once Upon a
Time in Hollywood. Heir to the Folgers Coffee fortune, she was one of the five victims of the
Charles Manson murders, alongside her boyfriend, and their mutual friend, actress Sharon Tate.
Folger spent most of her young life trying to find herself. She eventually found purpose
working as a volunteer social worker for the Los Angeles County Welfare Department,
focusing on helping children at the Watts ghetto. She was also involved
in politics and donated generously to Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign,
while also working for a city council campaign in Los Angeles.
Folger's wealth, intelligence, and charm made her an easy companion to the stars.
She and her beau had been asked by Tate to stay with her while Tate's husband,
director Roman Polanski, was still away on business. Tragically,
none of Tate's houseguests made it out alive that night. Folger was just 26 years old.
The Kennedy family has had more than its fair share of tragedy,
and one of Robert Kennedy's sons, David, was no exception. Not only did he have
to endure his father's assassination, which led to developing a heroin and
alcohol addiction, he died a tragic, public death at the tender age of 28.
David led a troubled young adulthood, particularly
after his father's assassination. According to The Kennedys: An American Drama, he said,
"No one ever talked to me about what I was feeling.
Nobody ever talked to me about my father's death."
David was arrested for drunk driving twice and had
a known cocaine addiction. He dropped out of Harvard and began working as a reporter,
but shortly after visiting his grandmother Rose Kennedy in the spring of 1984,
David was found dead at the Brazilian Court Hotel of a drug overdose.
Lisa Brennan-Jobs was the love child of Apple tech mogul Steve Jobs and his high-school sweetheart,
Chrisann Brennan. But Lisa had to endure her father's paternity
denials throughout her childhood, as he refused to acknowledge her while
also slandering her mother in the process. He once told a Time magazine journalist,
"28% of the male population of the United States could be the father."
Brennan-Jobs spent the majority of her childhood watching her single mother struggle,
cleaning houses and waitressing while on welfare. Her mother had to sue Jobs for child support,
one of many difficulties Brennan later wrote about in her memoir The Bite in the Apple.
Jobs was eventually forced by the state to take a DNA test, which proved Lisa was his daughter. And
the two formed a sort of relationship during her teen years, when she lived with him for a time.
But cruel and unusual behavior by Jobs followed, which Brennan-Jobs recalled in her memoir, Small
Fry — in just one example, for instance, Jobs refused to get the heating fixed in her bedroom.
Still, Brennan-Jobs maintains that though their relationship was complicated,
she and her father shared a lot of happy memories together,
with Jobs even naming one of his earliest Apple personal computer models The Lisa in 1983.
"At the very end, he was so, so apologetic, about the times we had missed together."
Anthony D. Marshall was the only son to socialite and philanthropist Brooke Astor,
who was heiress to the Astor dynasty. Marshall was abused by his father and neglected by his
mother as a child. Nevertheless, he had a slew of successful, high-profile careers,
including working as an operative for the CIA,
acting as a United States ambassador, and even became a Tony Award-winning Broadway producer.
Marshall found out as his mother got older that his inheritance had been cut by half, and he
enacted revenge on his mother when he was put in charge of her fortune. He was later convicted of
stealing millions from her and taking advantage of the fact that she suffered from Alzheimer's
Disease. In 2009, he was found guilty of 14 of the 16 charges filed against him, including
first-degree grand larceny. The trial captivated New York with its seven-day star-studded witness
lineup, which included Henry Kissinger, Barbara Walters, and the wife of Oscar de la Renta.
The 89 year old was sentenced to three years in New York State prison, but eight weeks in,
he was granted medical parole due to his Parkinson's and congestive heart failure.
Marshall died a year later.
Evalyn McLean was a gold rush heiress who purchased the infamous, and some consider cursed,
45.5-carat Hope Diamond. Why did people think it was cursed? She, along with
previous and future owners, experienced a slew of tragedies after possessing the rare jewel.
The diamond's origins trace back to French merchant traveler, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier,
who likely purchased it from a Kollur mine in Golkonda, India,
in the 17th century. Among its owners were King Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette.
McLean and her fiancé agreed to buy the diamond from Cartier in Paris in 1910 for $180,000.
She was apparently aware of the rumored curse upon its purchase, writing in her diary,
"Then I put the chain around my neck and hooked my life to its destiny for good or evil."
Unfortunately, destiny chose evil. Her son died at the age of 9, and her daughter died of a drug
overdose at 25. Her husband ran off with another woman, was later declared certifiably insane,
and eventually died in a mental hospital. Her family business also went bankrupt, and she was
forced to sell their newspaper, The Washington Post. McLean died with massive debts, and her
remaining children sold the Hope Diamond to Harry Winston, who gifted it to the Smithsonian.
Christina Onassis, Aristotle Onassis' daughter,
led a fraught and tragic life despite her wealth. Heiress to the Onassis Greek shipping fortune,
Christina was diagnosed with clinical depression and had a pill addiction.
Christina also did not approve of her stepmother, Jackie Kennedy, whom she considered to be
a gold-digger. She referred to Kennedy as, quote, "my father's unfortunate obsession."
As a child, her family was humiliated when her father was the subject of a very public
case of adultery. She struggled with drug use, her weight, and was known for giving
cash to her friends just to convince them to hang out with her. She was married four times,
and none of her marriages lasted more than two years. Her mother died of a drug overdose,
and her brother died in a plane crash, among other tragic details.
Christina was found dead in a bathtub at the age of 37 at a friend's house in Buenos Aires,
reportedly suffering from a heart attack.
Stepsister Henrietta Gelber said,
"She was one of those people who would never be happy. She would become impatient. It had all
come too easily — all the money, houses all over the world, few real responsibilities."
Much like the Kennedy family, the Guinness dynasty has a long history of tragedy, including the sad
life and death of Lady Henrietta Guinness, one of the heiresses of the Guinness brewing fortune.
A number of Henrietta's relatives died in car crashes,
and Henrietta nearly died in one herself when boyfriend Michael
Beeby crashed his Aston Martin in the French Riviera. Luckily, she survived.
But her relationship with Beeby was just one of several doomed romances. She almost married
an Italian sous-chef, and nearly married her hairdresser after gifting him with a
£70,000 salon, before finally marrying medical school dropout and bartender Luigi Marinori.
She and Marinori moved into a cozy cottage in Spoleto, Italy, and had a daughter, Sarah.
But while things seemed to finally be going her way,
it wasn't to be. Henrietta had also been hospitalized for depression, and in 1978,
she took her own life by jumping off the famous Ponte delle Torri bridge.
She once said,
"If I had been poor, I would have been happy."
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts,
please call or chat online with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Or Text HOME to the Crisis Text Line 741741.