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Grandson of Getty oil founder found dead in Los Angeles

By Dan Whitcomb LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The grandson of billionaire Getty oil founder J. Paul Getty was found dead on Tuesday afternoon at his home in Los Angeles, his parents confirmed in a statement released by a family spokesman. Andrew Getty's parents, Ann and Gordon, confirmed the 47-year-old's death in the statement. It said the family was requesting privacy during "this extremely difficult time" and that further details would be released as they became available. The cause of Andrew Getty's death was not immediately clear. Celebrity news website TMZ.com reported earlier that Getty, an heir to his grandfather's oil fortune, was found in a bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home about 2 p.m. under suspicious circumstances and that a former girlfriend was being detained as a potential witness or suspect. The Los Angeles Times said Andrew Getty had sought a restraining order against a woman two weeks earlier. A Los Angeles Police Department spokeswoman told Reuters that detectives were conducting a death investigation at a home in the Hollywood Hills, where a white male was found not breathing. The spokeswoman said she could not identify the dead man. A spokesman for the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office could not be reached for comment by Reuters on Tuesday evening. Police blocked off the street leading to the home with yellow crime-scene tape and more than a dozen news crews and photographers gathered at the scene. Getty's grandfather, J. Paul Getty, merged several smaller oil companies into Getty Oil in the 1960s. At one time one of America's richest men, he was also an avid art collector who established the trust that funds the J. Paul Getty Museum and several other institutions. (Additional reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Sandra Maler and Eric Walsh)