Andrew Getty, a 47-year-old heir to the Getty oil fortune, appears to have died of natural or accidental causes, not foul play, according to a Los Angeles County coroner’s spokesman.
The Los Angeles Police Department has called off its investigation, said Detective Meghan Aguilar, a spokeswoman.
Coroner’s officials plan to examine Getty’s body later this week, with toxicology results in a month or so, Craig Harvey, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, said by telephone on Wednesday. Getty was found unconscious at his Hollywood Hills home on Tuesday.
“The family has requested that members of the media and the public respect its privacy during this extremely difficult time,” Getty’s parents, Ann and Gordon P. Getty, said in a statement Tuesday. “Further statements will be issued as information becomes available.”
Larry Kamer, a spokesman for the family, declined to elaborate on the circumstances around Andrew Getty’s death.
Robbery-homicide detectives were summoned to the property at 2:18 p.m. local time on Tuesday with a report of an unconscious male, Officer Norma Eisenman, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department, said then.
Police are no longer at the location and have heeded the coronor’s preliminary conclusion that no foul play was involved, the LAPD’s Aguilar said by phone on Wednesday.
“At this time there is no criminal investigation,” Aguilar said.
Getty was the grandson of J. Paul Getty, who drilled for oil in Oklahoma and California before taking over his father’s business in 1930 and merging several oil companies into the Getty Oil Co. in 1967, according to Biography.com. In the 1966 he was named by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s wealthiest private citizen.
Gordon Getty, a music composer and founder of Forward Funds, has a net worth estimated at $3.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.