Fortean Biographer Colin Bennett Has Died

Colin Bennett was a British researcher known among Forteans and Ufologists for his insightful biographical works. I have just been alerted to his passing at the end of 2014, by editor Patrick Huyghe.

Bennett died on December 13, 2014, after suffering two diabetic strokes in December. He passed away at the Hospital of St. Cross, Rugby, Warwickshire, England. His funeral was held on January 14, 2015, at the Rainesbrook Crematorium. He is survived by his children Ceri and Andy, and his grandchildren Georgia, Madison, Olivia and Finn. He had lived on Portobello Road, London.

Colin Bennett was born on April 2, 1940, in Robin Hood's Sherwood Forest, within arrow-shot of the Sheriff of Nottingham's castle. He left school after studying science and mathematics, became a professional musician, then a mercenary soldier before winning a scholarship to read English at Balliol College, University of Oxford.

After leaving Oxford, he had several plays performed on the professional stage in London, including the Royal Court Theatre, before re-training as an electronics engineer. Bennett then ran his own electronics consultancy and printing firm. 

Bennett frequently was consulted on security, conspiracies, and computer hacking. 

Bennett had two novels published, early in his writing career. He also was the author of Looking for Orthon (Paraview Press), a biography of George Adamski. His next book was on the life work and ideas of Charles Fort, entitled Politics of the Imagination (Headpress). That book won the Anomalist Award for Best Biography, 2002. His third biography was An American Demonology (Headpress), the story of Captain Edward Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book in the early 1950s. This Project was the official United States Air Force investigation into the UFO phenomenon.

Bennett continued writing into the 2000s, online and elsewhere.

The following are some of his published books.

Practical Time Travel (Red Wheel Weiser, 1971)

Entertainment Bomb (New Futurist Books, 1996)

Looking for Orthon (Foreword by John Michell; Paraview Press, 2001)

Politics of the Imagination: The Life, Work and Ideas of Charles Fort (Foreword by John Keel; Headpress, 2002).

 An American Demonology: Flying Saucers Over the White House (with contributors Nick Pope and Jerome Clark; Headpress, 2005.)

Rumford Rogues: Tales from Consumer Life (Headpress, 2010)

Thor's Stone: Thurston School Shootings' Name Game

Thurston means "Thor's Stone." It is a name involved in school violence incidents since, at least, 1998. Today gives us another example.

2015 Incident

Emergency dispatchers confirmed reports of an active shooter, a 15- or 16-year-old boy, was armed with a handgun, on campus about 7:40 a.m., on Monday, April 27, 2015. In the Year of the Ram, school violence visited another Thurston.

A gunman at North Thurston High School, 600 Sleater Kinney Road NE, Lacey, Washington State, near Seattle, fired, at least, two shots in a common area, and then was tackled by staff members, according to the school district. No one was hurt.
The school is in lockdown. Lacey police said the gunman is in custody.

A parent shows the text message she got from her child at North Thurston High School in Lacey, Wash., April 27, 2015. (Photo: KING 5 News)

North Thurston High School, located in the North Thurston Public Schools District in Lacey, Washington, is a comprehensive high school, which first opened in 1955. North Thurston serves a portion of Lacey and northeast Thurston County. The school is accredited by the Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction. The principal is Tyler Roach.

This school has been a focus of concern in the past. According to the October 24, 2006, issue of the Mason County Daily News, a North Thurston School District teacher from Shelton, Washinton, was accused of bringing a gun onto school grounds and had to resign. The North Thurston School Board accepted the resignation of Mary Catherine Roe, a language arts teacher at Nisqually Middle School.

North Thurston High School is not to be confused with the Thurston High School shooting of Springfield, Oregon.

It will be recalled that on May 21, 1998, Kip Kinkel brought school violence to his fellow students at Thurston High School.

On that day, in Springfield, Oregon, two students were killed, and 22 others were wounded in the cafeteria at Thurston High School by 15-year-old Kipland "Kip" Kinkel. His parents were later found dead at home. Kinkel had brought three weapons to the high school, a .22 caliber rifle, a .22 caliber handgun, and a 9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol. 

Kinkel was convicted of shooting his parents, William, 59, and Faith, 57, in their Springfield home and, the next day, opening fire in the Thurston High School cafeteria, wounding 25 students and killing Mikael Nickolauson*, 17, and Ben Walker, 16.

Kinkel was sentenced to 112 years in prison in the Thurston shootings. His case was a precusor to the Columbine High School massacre of April 20, 1999.
My further investigations revealed that two other school shootings happened on that date in 1998.

From my book, The Copycat Effect, following my discussion of the Springfield, Oregon shooting, I wrote:

On the same day, May 21, 1998, 200 miles due north, at the end of the school day, Miles Fox, 15, a student of Onalaska High School, Onalaska, Washington, took a young woman hostage from his bus to his home, and died by suicide from a shot to his head. As the story aired on radio and television, Ricardo Martin, 15, shot himself with a .38 caliber pistol and died on the campus of Rialto High School, in Rialto, California.

The events happening earlier on May 21, in Springfield, Oregon, had been all over the radio, Internet, and news channels constantly, all day.

Thurston has had ripple effects through other school violence.

The Gresham, Oregon, Tuesday, April 10, 2011, school shooting was triggered by the shooter's viewing of the recent National Geographic Channel's The Final Report: Columbine.

The shooter Chad Antonio Escobedo had watched the Columbine documentary and decided April 7 that he would do a shooting at his school because he was angry. The incident took place at Springwater Trail High School in a Portland suburb. Coincidentally, the principal at Springwater — Larry Bentz — was principal at Thurston High School in Springfield, when the Kip Kinkel shooting occurred in 1998.

Thurston Name Game

The Thurston name game is strong in these school violence events. Thurston is an English-language surname. It appears to have originated from the Old Norse personal name Þórsteinn. This name is derived from the Old Norse elements Þórr ("Thor," the Scandinavian thunder god) and steinn ("stone," "rock").

As an aside, the name game kicks into high gear in a historical baseball-Hawaiian sidetrip, for Mr. Baseball writes:

Alexander Cartwright died on July 12, 1892, from blood poisoning from a boil on his neck. The Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown six months later on January 17, 1893. A group of Americans in Honolulu formed to request of President Benjamin Harrison that Hawaii be annexed to the United States. The president was in favor. The individual leading the cause for annexation was Lorrin Thurston. Coincidentally, Thurston had played baseball at Punahou School at the same time as Alexander III and Bruce Cartwright Sr.

Thurston, as a surname, is tied to powerful political and historical individuals in Hawaii, Oregon, Washington State, and elsewhere.

Howard Thurston (July 20, 1869 – April 13, 1936) was a stage magician from Columbus, Ohio, United States. He was the most famous magician of his time, and his traveling magic show was the biggest one of all; it was so large that it needed eight train cars to transport his road show.

In fiction, the character Francis Wayland Thurston was the narrator of The Call of Cthulhu.

Thor's Stone/Thurston

Thurstaston Hill is the location of Thor's Stone (shown), a large sandstone outcrop and a place of romantic legend. In the 19th century it was supposed that early Viking settlers may have held religious ceremonies here. A visit to the site by members of the British Archaeological Association in 1888 heard an account by Rev. A. E. P. Gray, rector of Wallasey, that the "Thor Stone" was also known in the locality as "Fair Maiden's Hall" and that children were "in the habit of coming once a year to dance around the stone". This part of Wirral was certainly part of a Norse colony centred on Thingwall in the 10th and 11th centuries. However, geologists and historians now think that the rock is a natural formation similar to a tor, arising from periglacial weathering of the sandstone, which was later exploited by quarrymen in the 18th and 19th centuries. Source.

As far as locations, several sites are named Thurston, and linked to people of that name:

Antarctica
Thurston Glacier, Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica

(Named by Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names for Thomas R. Thurston, United States Antarctic Research Program meteorologist at Byrd Station in 1965.)
Thurston Island, off Ellsworth Land, Antarctica

(The island was discovered from the air by Rear Admiral Byrd on February 27, 1940, who named it for W. Harris Thurston, New York textile manufacturer, designer of the windproof "Byrd Cloth" and sponsor of Antarctic expeditions.)

United Kingdom
Thurston, Suffolk, England, a village

(Allegedly, a local name meaning "settlement.")

United States
Thurston County, Nebraska
Thurston, Nebraska, a village

(The county and village were named after the United States Senator John M. Thurston.)
Thurston, New York, a town

(The town is named after early landowner William Thurston.)
Thurston, Ohio, a village
Thurston, Oregon, several places

(The settlement was named for pioneer George H. Thurston, and Thurston post office was established in 1877.)

Thurston, Virginia, an unincorporated community
Thurston County, Washington

(It is named after Samuel R. Thurston, the Oregon Territory's first delegate to Congress.)

April 27

April 27, 1911: Manhattan, Kansas, During a school play rehearsal, a revolver was accidentally loaded by a boy who tried to shoot a bird with it the day before. When the girl was to use the firearm as written in the script, she picked it up, then laid it down saying she was afraid of the old thing. The Teacher, Miss Reedy then grabbed the gun and said there was no need for alarm and pointed it at the girl, Pearl Reedy, 18 years old, and squeezed the trigger. The bullet lodged near her heart fatally wounding her.

April 27, 1936: Lincoln, Nebraska, Prof. John Weller shot and wounded Prof. Harry Kurz in a corridor of the University of Nebraska, apparently because of his impending dismissal at the end of the semester. After shooting Kurz Weller tried to escape, but was surrounded by police on the campus, whereupon he killed himself with a shot in the chest.

April 27, 1966: Bay Shore, New York, Teacher John S. Lane, 48, was shot and fatally wounded when he tried to stop 16-year-old student James Arthur Frampton, who was walking through the halls of Bay Shore Senior High School with a shotgun, searching for some boys with whom he had an argument earlier that day. Lane died of his wounds on June 13, 1966.

The Future

With the fatal crossbow incident in Spain on the Columbine anniversary, a school violence threat in Columbia, South Columbia, also on April 20th, and now this event, should we watch out during May 2015, for other school incidents?

Past school violence events have shown that the suicidal-homicidal rampage-styled shooters often focus on in-school cafeterias, for example, at Aarhus University, Denmark (1994), Thurston High School, Oregon (1998), Montreal, Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal (1998), Columbine High School, Colorado (1999), Red Lion Area Junior High School, Pennsylvania (2003), and Dawson College, Montreal (2006).

__________

*In terms of the name game, Bill Grimstad has been alerting his correspondents to an especially active "power name" in recent years: Nicholas. Please see the scholarly discussion of this name, here.

Columbine Copycats Continue: Teacher's Crossbow Death in Barcelona

There has been a fatal death in a school in Spain. We should not be surprised it happened today, April 20, 2015.

Someone has posted the top photo at the Joan Fuster School website. It is a screen capture from a past season of Game of Thrones, in which crossbows become important story elements, involved in various significant deaths.

A 13-year-old Spanish boy armed with a crossbow and a machete killed a substitute teacher and injured four people at his school, the Joan Fuster School in the La Sagrera neighborhood of Barcelona, Spain.

La Sagrera, according to my research associate Red Pill Junkie, is from the word sagrera, which translates as the hallowed space around consecrated chapels, inside which cellars and store rooms were built to keep wine and cereals.

Therefore, I must observe, in terms of the name game, this is a "cereal"/"serial" killing, of sorts.

There is an occult nose-thumbing at the bottom of many of these twilight language cereal murders, such as Jack the Ripper - poking fun at the investigators and the public because so many don't get the black comedy at the heart of it. It's a feeling of superiority magnified exponentially. ~ Michael Hoffman III, Cereal Murder and the Group Mind, 2000.

The Joan Fuster School is named after Joan Fuster i Ortells (November 23, 1922 – June 21, 1992), who was a Spanish writer. He is considered a major writer in Catalan language, and his work contributed to reinvigorate left-wing, pro-Catalan nationalism in Valencia during the Spanish transition to democracy. In his influential political essay Nosaltres, els valencians (1962) he coined the term Països Catalans (Catalan Countries) to refer to the Catalan-speaking territories, for which he claimed independent statehood from Spain. Intriguingly, datewise, on September 11, 1981, two bombs exploded in his house, damaging heavily his library and archive. Nobody was prosecuted, but it is widely believed that it was the anti-Catalan far right's response to Fuster's political and cultural position.

In the school attack today, a substitute teacher shot was dead from the use of a crossbow. Four others were injured, including two female teachers.

The Spanish Teachers' Union says this is the first ever case of a pupil carrying out fatal attack on teacher in Spain.

Due to the legal system in Spain, the student cannot be charged for attack as he is under the criminal age of responsibility in Spain. Police have detained a 13-year-old after a teacher was shot dead with a crossbow and several others injured in a Barcelona secondary school.

"A male teacher was killed shortly after 9am this morning at the Joan Fuster secondary school in Barcelona," a police spokesman told The Local.

The weapon used in the attack was widely reported to be a crossbow, but there was no official confirmation from police.

The male teacher, thought to have been working as a social sciences substitute, was killed after being shot with a crossbow by a 13-year-old pupil, who was also armed with a dagger (or a machete, in some reports).

She confirmed that four others had been injured. "Two female teachers and two pupils suffered injuries and three of them are recovering well in hospital," the spokesman for the Catalan police force told The Local.

A report in the Vanguardia said he was obsessed with the military and had a collection of weapons at home. A fellow pupil told the Catalan newspaper that his classmate had said he wanted to kill all the teachers at the school and was known to draw up blacklists.

According to reports in Spanish media, the male pupil arrived late at school, at around 9:15 a.m.

The teacher who was killed reportedly came running from the next door class room when he heard screams.

Spanish media are reporting that the pupil fired at a female teacher who opened the door to him, as well as her daughter, who was one of his fellow pupils.

Hearing screams, a teacher from a neighboring classroom came running to help and was fatally shot in the chest.

The teacher "left to see what was happening and that was when the young man attacked him," one student, who requested anonymity, told AFP.

Moments later the suspect went into the teacher's own classroom, attacked a girl and went back into the hallway with a knife in his hand.

Terrified students closed the classroom door and barricaded it with furniture.

Apparently, the Spanish media are publishing graphic imagery, such as above.

In 2012, a man was arrested for reportedly planning to plant bombs around a university in Palma de Mallorca. The man had written in an online blog and personal diary of his admiration for the 1999 Columbine killers in Colorado.

The Joan Fuster attack was carried out on the 16th anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School in the US, when two students murdered 12 students and one teacher.

The attack on Monday morning also immediately sparked comparisons to the fictional story, We Need to Talk about Kevin, in which dysfunctional teenager Kevin carried out a crossbow massacre at his high school gym.

The 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver was turned into a movie in 2011 starring Tilda Swinton.

Spain has had three previous well-known cases of crossbow attacks, according to El Pais.

In 2009, a German man who was reportedly mentally ill became obsessed with Spanish actress Sara Casanovas. The man found Casanovas at a Madrid theatre, fired the crossbow aimed at her, but she was able to dodge the shot and stage technicians restrained him until police arrived.

The Barcelona area was the site of a similar crossbow crime in 1994 when 20-year-old Andrés Rabadán, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, killed his own father before turning himself in.

In 1986, a man and his brother-in-law were charged for killing a man, who was allegedly extorting one of the perpetrators, by beating him with a baseball bat, stabbing him in the arm with a crossbow arrow and shooting him with a shotgun.

This may be one of the most dangerous copycat times of the year.

April 19th is the anniversary of the deaths occurring at the end of the Waco events and the Oklahoma City bombing. It is an older anniversary of the Revolutionary War, of militia deaths, and other violent incidents - Patriots' Day, celebrated in Massachusetts and Maine. 

The Boston Marathon Bombing took place two years ago - in 2013. This race happens on Patriots' Day.

Patriots' Day (sometimes incorrectly punctuated Patriot's Day or Patriots Day) is a civic holiday commemorating the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War. It is observed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and State of Maine (once part of Massachusetts), and is a public school observance day in Wisconsin. Observances and re-enactments of these first battles of the American Revolution occur annually at Lexington Green in Lexington, Massachusetts, (around 6 am) and The Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts (around 9 am). In the morning, a mounted re-enactor with State Police escort retraces Paul Revere's ride, calling out warnings the whole way.

In 2013, the race ended very badly, with the bombing.

Let's also revisit April 19th for 1993 and 1995, for a moment.

The Waco siege began on February 28, 1993, when the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) attempted to execute a search warrant at the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel, a property located nine miles east-northeast of Waco, Texas. An exchange of gunfire resulted in the deaths of four agents and six followers of David Koresh. A subsequent 51-day siege by the Federal Bureau of Investigation ended on April 19th when fire destroyed the compound. Seventy-six people (24 of them British nationals) died in the fire, including more than 20 children, two pregnant women, and Koresh himself.

The Oklahoma City bombing was the bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, when American militia movement sympathizer Timothy McVeigh allegedly detonated a truck filled with explosives parked in front of the building. McVeigh's co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, had assisted in the bomb preparation. Their motive allegedly was to avenge the government's handling of the Waco siege and Ruby Ridge incidents. (Intriguingly, Rebirth of Pan author Jim Brandon has pointed out to me that "Nichols" and its variations are on his "names of power" list to watch.)

Then Columbine happened on April 20, 1999.

On April 20, 1999, two teenage students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, carried out a deadly shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado killing 12 students and a teacher, and wounding 24 others before dying by suicide.

This is a danger zone time of year for school violence. Columbine haunts the world of school violence. Just in 1999, over 500 copycat threats and incidents occurred in North America.

Let's not forget that Columbine happened on Hitler's birthday too.

Then on April 26, 2002, on Rudolf Hess's birthday, Robert Steinhäuser, killed 16 people plus himself at his Erfurt, Germany high school. He had files on his computer, which contained information about the Columbine Massacre. Steinhäuser had outdone the Columbine total (which may have been one of his goals).

Adolf Hitler, it will be recalled, died by his own hand, ten days after his birthday, on April 30, 1945, exactly 70 years ago, in 2015.

The Virginia Tech shooting (also known as the Virginia Tech massacre) was a school shooting that took place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at Virginia Tech, shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others in two separate attacks (another six people were injured escaping from classroom windows), approximately two hours apart, before dying by suicide. Cho noted the Columbine killers in his writings. There is no doubt it was a copycat.

In Cho Seung-Hui's twisted and tortured mind, the Columbine killers were martyrs on a par with Jesus Christ. And the world had forced him to join their ranks. Friendless by choice, he accepted Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as his brothers, and dreamed that his violent acts would bear "children." ~ "Cho idolized Columbine killers," Denver Post, April 18, 2007.

Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui plagiarized other school shooting psychos in a twisted show of one-upmanship. He used the Internet to research and learn from infamous school killers, including Columbine's Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold..."Cho was an empty vessel and he poured himself full from images off the Internet...," said Loren Coleman, an expert on school shootings and the author of The Copycat Effect. "There's a psychological process that these shooters appear to be competing for - the high body count." ~ "Sick homages from a student of psychos," N.Y. Post, April 22, 2007.

I have been warning about this "Red Danger Zone" time for years. Now the Grim Reaper has struck in Spain.

Murder and suicide are two sides of the same coin played out in going postal, workplace violence, shooting spree, and school shooting incidents, which are impacted by the copycat effect. Watch for any of those this week too.

Being forewarned and aware is half the battle. Vulnerable, suicidal, homicidal youth need help and attention, long before it gets to the stage where they feel there's no turning back. Keep talking, take care, get people help, and remain alert, with your guard up.

A few bloggers may wish to demean the predictive insights of known patterns, but ridicule does not overwhelm the reality of history. Killers do pick special dates.

And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us." ~ Magnolia, 1999.

The Wonderful Richard Dysart, 86, Has Passed Away

Richard Dysart died on April 5, 2015, at his home in Santa Monica, California, having just turned 86, on March 30. Born in Boston, Dysart grew up in Maine. After high school, he attended Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine, for one year, then served in the U.S. Air Force. He went to Emerson College in Boston to earn a master's degree in speech communications.

Dysart's connection to Maine led to my asking him if he would work with me on a project. I was the executive producer of a government-sponsored public service announcement on elder fire prevention, and I had to get a video made. The end result, There’s No Place Like Home - Straight Talk About Elders and Home Fires was taped in 1989, at the University of Southern Maine, Portland, and then shown around the country.

I befriended Dysart and his wife the artist Kathryn Jacobi, whom he brought to Maine with him. He stayed for a week in my family cabin in Rangeley, Maine, during the time we (director Dan Porter, our crew, and I) needed to film him. We kept in touch for a time, after he returned to what he called "The People's Republic of Santa Monica." A socially conscious political man, Dysart quietly lived his life there, until he also bought another place to relax in British Columbia.

I was interested in using Dysart in our Maine-based PSA because of his role as a sharp elder man in his then-current, award-winning series, L.A. Law. Dysart portrayed the crusty senior partner Leland McKenzie in the slick, long-running drama L.A. Law. L.A. Law was an American television legal drama series that ran for eight seasons on NBC from September 15, 1986 to May 19, 1994.

Long before L.A. Law, Richard Dysart was an accomplished actor. In 1979, he was featured in the film Being There, portraying a good-hearted physician. In 1980, he portrayed Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in the television film The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd. He voiced the kindly miner Uncle Pom in the Disney English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki's 1986 adventure classic, Castle in the Sky, and voiced the character of "Cogliostro" on Todd McFarlane's Spawn: The Animated Series, which aired on HBO.

Dysart also starred in movies such as The Last Days of Patton, The Day of the Locust, The Rumor Mill, Pale Rider, The Falcon and the Snowman, Prophecy, The Thing, Warning Sign, Hard Rain, Mask, An Enemy of the People, Wonderland, The Hospital, The Hindenburg, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and Back to the Future Part III. Many horror movie fans loved Dysart especially in The Thing, a role that is vividly recalled by anyone that appreciates that film.

Dysart created the role of Coach in the original Broadway production of Jason Miller's Pulitzer Prize winning play, That Championship Season in 1973. He appeared in an episode of the 1976 CBS television series Sara. He appeared in several more roles.

Dysart came out of retirement for his last onscreen appearance, the L.A. Law reunion telefilm of 2002.

"They remain timely, with cases about points of law that are still current," he said of watching L.A. Law reruns in a 2002 interview with The Bangor Daily News. "[The show] was also one of the fathers of yuppiedom. It was very much of the times, and very Los Angeles. It holds up as well as any series I know."

Dysart and his wife Kathryn Jacobi were married from 1987 until the time of his death.

A good and kind man has left the stage.

Peace be with you, Richard.

A Getty Dies in the Hollywood Hills, near Mulholland Drive

David Lynch ponders Mulholland Drive:

At night, you ride on the top of the world. In the daytime you ride on top of the world, too, but it's mysterious, and there's a hair of fear because it goes into remote areas. You feel the history of Hollywood in that road.

A member of the tragedy-ridden Getty family was found dead in his home in the 2900 block of Montcalm Avenue, in the Hollywood Hills near Mulholland Drive, on Tuesday, March 31, 2015, around 2 PM Pacific time. This is near the iconic Laurel Canyon, also.

Andrew Rork Getty (pictured above), the grandson of J. Paul Getty, was discovered deceased "under suspicious circumstances," and his ex-girlfriend was detained as a possible witness or suspect.

One of Andrew Getty's possessions in his home is a 80-million-year-old fossil of a four feet tall dinosaur.

Andrew Getty wrote and directed an independent horror film called The Storyteller starring Sean Patrick Flannery and Brianna Brown in 2005. 

Andrew Getty’s second cousin is actor Balthazar Getty, known for his role on ABC drama Brothers & Sisters. He’ll next serve as a narrator for the educational documentary Unity.

Balthazar Getty played Pete Dayton in David Lynch's cult classic Lost Highway (1997). The film has appearance by Patricia Arquette (as the murdered wife) and Robert Blake (as the Mystery Man). Lost Highway was the last film performances of Blake, Jack Nance and Richard Pryor.

According to TMZ, "Andrew and his ex-girlfriend have a storied history with the LAPD. Cops have been to his residence 31 times, mostly for domestic disturbances. Our sources say they have both frequently been under the influence of drugs during the police visits.
We're told the drugs cops found in the past were prescriptions. As for their relationship, we're told he has a restraining order against her and she has been placed under a 5150 psychiatric hold in the past, after injuring cops when they responded to the house. We're also told she's allegedly broken into Andrew's house on numerous occasions."

The New York Daily News reported,

The 47-year-old suffered a traumatic injury to his rectal area and paramedics found significant bleeding due to the injury, the site reported.
Getty was found naked from the waist down and suffered blunt-force trauma, but it was unclear how the injury was caused, the Los Angeles Times reported.
While the death appeared to be from natural causes, it was called an accident because of medication found at the scene, according to Los Angeles County coroner's Assistant Chief Ed Winter.

Gordon Getty, right, walks with his son, Andrew, in 1976.

Andrew Rork Getty's father, Gordon Getty, is one of the richest men in the United States. Forbes put Gordon's wealth at $2.1 billion, with the family being listed as the 54th richest and worth an estimated $5 billion.

As with the Paradise Syndrome and the Hemingway Curse, wealth is no guarantee against tragedy for the Getty family.

The mainstream media jumped all over the "family curse" of the Gettys, in telling of today's news. The Washington Post noted that money did not shelter the family from rough times.

Tragedy seemed to dog J. Paul Getty. As the L.A. Times noted, first there was the death of one of his sons, who died of a brain tumor at age 12 in 1958. Then, in 1973, another son died after stabbing himself and taking barbiturates and alcohol.
That same year, J. Paul Getty III — one of the industrialist’s grandchildren and the future father of actor Balthazar Getty — was in Rome, “living a bohemian life, frequenting nightclubs, taking part in left-wing demonstrations and reportedly earning a living making jewelry, selling paintings and acting as an extra in movies,” as the New York Times put it. This was an age when American heirs were a target — and, a year before Patty Hearst, Getty III was kidnapped....The family eventually paid $2.2 million to get Getty III back — part borrowed from the boy’s grandfather at an interest rate of 4 percent — but Getty III lost an ear to his captors.

The Irish-Scottish Getty family of the United States made its fortune in oil in the 20th century. The Getty family is distantly related to Samuel Gettys, founder of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Getty Family Tree

J. Paul Getty

• George Getty (1855–1930), American lawyer, married Sarah Catherine McPherson Risher (1852-1941), 1 son

• J. Paul Getty (1892–1976), wealthy American industrialist and founder of Getty Oil, 5 marriages and 5 sons

1. George Getty II (1924–1973), by first wife Jeanette Demont, married Gloria Gordon (1951, div. 1967), married Jacqueline Riordan (1971)

• Anne Catherine Getty Earhart (born 1952), married John Earhart

• Sara Earhart

• Claire Eugenia Getty Perry (born 1954), married N. Mazzota (div.), married N. Perry

• Beau Maurizio George Getty-Mazzota (born 1979)
• Byron Perry
• Somerset Perry
• Sebastian Perry

• Caroline Marie Getty (born 1957)

2. Jean Ronald Getty (born 1929), by third wife Adolphine Helmle, married Karin Seibl (1964)

• Christopher Ronald Getty (born 1965), married Pia Miller in 1992

• Isabel Getty
• Robert Maximilian Getty
• Conrad Getty

• Stephanie Marie Getty-Waibel (born 1967), married Alexander Waibel

• Marietherese Waibel
• Sigourney Waibel
• Vanessa Waibel

• Cecile Karin Margarita Getty (born 1970)
• Christina Therese Getty (born 1975)

3. Sir Paul Getty (1932–2003), (also known as John Paul Getty II), by fourth wife Ann Rork, married Gail Harris (1956, div. 1964), married Talitha Pol (1966, died 1971), married Victoria Holdsworth (1994)

• John Paul Getty III (1956–2011), son of Paul Getty and Abigail Harris, married Gisela Martine Zacher (1974)

• Anna, daughter of Gisela Zacher, adopted daughter of John Paul Getty III
• Balthazar Getty (born 1975), American actor, son of John Paul Getty III, married Rosetta Millington (2000)

• Cassius Paul Getty
• Grace Getty
• Violet Getty
• June Catherine Getty

• Aileen Getty (born 1957), daughter of Paul Getty and Abigail Harris, married Christopher Wilding

• Caleb Wilding
• Andrew Wilding

• Mark Getty (born 1960), founder of Getty Images, son of Paul Getty and Abigail Harris, married Domitilla Harding (1982)

• Alexander Getty
• Joseph Getty
• Julius Getty

• Ariadne Getty (born 1962), daughter of Paul Getty and Abigail Harris, married Justin Williams

• Natalia Williams
• August Williams

• Tara Gabriel Getty (born 1968), son of Paul Getty and Talitha Pol

4. Gordon Getty (born 1934), by fourth wife Ann Rork, married Ann Gilbert (1964)

• Gordon Peter Getty, Jr. (born 1965)
• Andrew Rork Getty (1967-2015)
• John Gilbert Getty (born 1968)

• Ivy Getty

• William Paul Getty (born 1970), married Vanessa Jarman
• Nicolette Getty, by Cynthia Beck
• Kendalle Getty, by Cynthia Beck
• Alexandra Getty, by Cynthia Beck

5. Timothy Ware Getty (1946–1958), by fifth wife Louise Dudley Lynch

Source.