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In 1961, Michael Rockefeller went missing on the island of New Guinea. The 23-year-old heir to the Rockefeller fortune was gone without a trace. While on a trip to document native New Guinea tribes and collect carvings for his father's art museum, the boat he was traveling in capsized. He tried to swim to shore for help, and that was the last time anyone saw him alive.
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In 1961, Michael Rockefeller, the 23-year-old heir
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to the Rockefeller fortune, disappeared without a trace off the coast of the island of New Guinea
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Rockefeller was on a trip to document native tribes and collect carvings for his father's art museum
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when his boat capsized. He tried to swim to shore for help
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and that was the last time anyone saw him alive. Or was it
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Today, we're going to take a look at the mysterious disappearance of Michael Rockefeller
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Okay, time for a weird mystery. In 1957, Nelson Rockefeller, Michael's father, opened the Museum of Primitive Art in New York
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City. Primitive art is a term that has been used for centuries, referring to different historical
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European periods and non-Western societies. It closed in 1974, and the collection of carvings
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and sculptures from New Guinea, Nigeria, and the ancient Aztecs and Mayans was later absorbed
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into the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which Michael's mother had helped found
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Nelson had instilled a love of art collecting in his children from a young age, and it was
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his passion for primitive art that had kept Michael coming back to New Guinea. He had made a previous scouting trip to the island in 1960 and had brought back many wood
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carvings and artifacts from the Asmat people. In retrospect, it's hard not to conclude he should have quit while he was ahead
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On November 17, 1961, Michael Rockefeller was sailing to several different coastal villages
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in New Guinea to gather asthmat art for his collection when the small catamaran he was
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traveling in capsized. Two indigenous teens who were on board immediately swam to shore to get
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help, but Rockefeller and his companion, a Dutch anthropologist named Rene Vossing
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stayed with the boat. They clung to the hull through the night, and in the morning
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Michael could see that they were in danger of drifting even farther from the island. He stripped down to his underwear and tied jerry cans to himself as flotation devices
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telling his companion he thought he'd be able to make it to shore. Vossing was found and rescued later that day
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Rockefeller, on the other hand, disappeared forever. The Dutch government eventually listed his official cause of death as drowning
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but a storm of rumors and speculation have surrounded the case for 50 years
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These days, when we hear the term headhunting, we tend to think of corporate recruiters trying to woo potential new hires
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with unlimited appetizers at Chili's. But not too long ago, the term was much more literal
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and brought to mind gruesome images of tribal warfare. Some of that imagery is accurate The Azmat people that Rockefeller was filming were true headhunters and they were heavily involved in cycles of violence and revenge between neighboring tribes Each attack was revenge for a previous raid and if someone was killed their death would need to be avenged
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After a person was murdered by an opposing tribe, their body went through a ritualistic process of dismemberment and consumption, including the eating of the victim's brain
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So just slightly worse than the corporate recruitment process. In 1957, four years before Rockefeller disappeared, there was a brutal mutual raid amongst the Esmat
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Two neighboring villages, Otzjanep and Omadisep, were long-time enemies and led attacks on
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one another in which over 100 people were killed. Eventually, the Dutch colonel-controller of New Guinea at the time, Max Lepri, decided
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that things had gone too far and that he needed to teach the Esmat a lesson
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Things went downhill fairly quickly. Lepri went to Omadisep and confiscated weapons
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setting fires to canoes and sacred buildings in the process. Since Otzgenep wasn't as easy to push over
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Lepri brought armed policemen with him. In what has been described as a misunderstanding
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the Dutch police shot and killed five Asmat men, four of whom were leaders of their communities
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That's the kind of misunderstanding that often earns you a front row seat at a murder trial
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It's been suggested that Rockefeller was killed by some of the villagers in retaliation
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For instance, the testimony of a Dutch priest named Hubertus van Peay
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who was living as a missionary in Asmat at the time of Rockefeller's disappearance
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directly contradicts the drowning theory. Van Pee claimed that one day, four men from the surrounding villages came to him with a confession
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They said that while on a trading trip, a group of local men spotted Rockefeller swimming to shore
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They argued about what to do with the strange man swimming in the ocean. And in the end, all but one voted to kill him
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Gotta wonder what the other vote was for. Brunch? According to the priest, while they tried to lift the white man into the canoe
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One of them speared him in the ribs. It wasn't fatal, but then they rode him to a hidden creek
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where they killed him and made a big fire. The priest wanted to make sure that the man they had killed
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was indeed Rockefeller, so he asked them what he had been wearing. The local men described the man they killed
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as wearing shorts they'd never seen before, and that you couldn't buy an asthmat
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shorts that ended high up on his legs and had no pockets. Assuming this was a description of underwear
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or perhaps a sleek new speedo Rockefeller had purchased for the trip, Pompeii
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believed that they were indeed talking about the missing heir. The local men also gave Von Pei meticulous details
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about how Rockefeller's body had been dismembered and distributed. Shocked but convinced that the men had just clearly outlined
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Rockefeller fate Von Pei notified the Dutch government of the horrifying discovery However they chose not to act on his evidence which is going to become a repeated motif for them
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Despite all this testimony, Rockefeller wasn't necessarily killed by cannibals. Apart from the
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reasonable assumption that he simply drowned, there is another equally reasonable possibility
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The island of New Guinea is home to some pretty fearsome creatures. In addition to poisonous
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reptiles on land, the animals that can be found in the ocean are totally capable of eating a lost
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rich kid. And there is a chance that Rockefeller may have encountered some of them during his
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desperate swim for the shoreline. For instance, saltwater crocodiles are found throughout Papua
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These are known man-eaters and can be found in the ocean as well as in brackish areas along the
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coasts and river inlets. Sharks pose another threat, although some claim that the sharks
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off the New Guinea coast were not known to attack humans. A list of recorded New Guinea shark attacks
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suggest the possibility is still worth considering. There were dozens of recorded shark attacks, both fatal and non-fatal, in the decade before
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Rockefeller's disappearance, so the sharks were clearly open for at least some business
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Van Pij's testimony wasn't the only one that was ignored. Two Dutch missionaries that had been living among the Asmat in the years leading up to
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Rockefeller's disappearance insisted they had both been told by villagers that a group
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of asthmat men had killed Rockefeller. The Dutch government, however, was not willing to take their
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stories at face value and sent an officer named Wim van der Waal to follow up. After conducting an
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investigation, van der Waal agreed with the missionaries. He even acquired a skull he believed
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to be Rockefeller's. But the Dutch were not swayed by these results either, and Wim van der Waal's
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evidence was put aside. It's unclear whether they let him keep the skull. Their dismissiveness was
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likely due to political tensions during the years of the investigation and the Netherlands
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unwillingness to lose their final colony in the east. After all, it just wouldn't do to have an unsolved murder on the island, certainly not
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that of one of high society's most famous members. The stories were buried, and Rockefeller's parents were not informed of the new developments
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Almost as soon as Rockefeller was reported missing, the media frenzy began
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When the heir to one of history's biggest fortunes gets lost at sea, people take notice
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Rockefeller's parents flew out to New Guinea with a retinue of journalists to join the search
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Then even more reporters showed up on their own. Theories about what might have happened
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covered a wide range. Some believed that he had drowned, as the official report said. But wild
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speculation was certain that he had been eaten by sharks had gone into hiding in the jungle or had fallen victim to cannibals Kind of sounds like they just rattling off different stories they read in Boys Life magazine The Dutch authorities denied every rumor which of course only caused the mystery to deepen over
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the years. As soon as they learned of their son's disappearance, Michael's father and twin sister
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chartered a plane and were on their way to New Guinea. When you're a Rockefeller, you just have
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plane money, like in your pocket. But due to the untamed, undeveloped nature of the country
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they were only able to make it to the town of Marauki, 150 miles southeast of Hesmat
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Still, they did everything they could. They hired helicopters, boats, and airplanes to scour the
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coastline, and they paid thousands of locals to comb through the dense jungle to aid in the effort
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to find Michael. Sadly, all of their efforts were in vain. Helpless to do anything more
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the Rockefellers went home after nine days. Their vast wealth had been no match for the island
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One of the many theories surrounding Rockefeller's disappearance was that he had simply given up his privileged life in New York to live among the asthmat in New Guinea
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But as much as he had fallen in love with their culture and comparatively simple way of life, this theory does not hold much water
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There is, however, an interesting video supposedly filmed in New Guinea eight years after Rockefeller went missing
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It shows a white man living among a group of asthmat warriors in canoes, and some believe the man is Rockefeller
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Although many people disregard this theory, there are others who believe that it's entirely possible
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At the time of Rockefeller's disappearance, the island of New Guinea was one of the few
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truly wild and untouched places left on Earth. Although there had been Dutch missionaries on the island for over 10 years, the Asmat
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people still lacked modern things like steel and paper, or even wheels
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And despite the Dutch presence, there were still locals who had never seen a white person
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The Azmat people had been isolated for longer than anyone knew, and had developed customs
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and traditions that were very different from those in the West. The Azmat saw the edge of their island as the edge of the world
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They had everything they needed to survive, and whatever came from beyond the water came
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from the realm of the spirits. The Azmat and other native groups in the region had come to see Western people and supplies
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like mass-produced clothing and medicine, as being from this realm of the gods
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Some have argued that if Michael Rockefeller had decided to abandon his pampered life to
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live among the Asmat, it's possible they may have viewed him as a good omen from the spirit world
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and helped him stay hidden by spreading the rumor that he had been killed. Again
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not the most convincing theory, and the guy in the video doesn't look much like Rockefeller
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The truth is, we may never know what actually happened to Michael Rockefeller
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but the theories surrounding his disappearance make for an intriguing mystery