On the 17th of November, 1961, a young American man vanished in what was then Dutch New Guinea.
After an arduous investigation, the authorities deemed that he’d drowned
after his boat capsized a few clicks off the coast of the town of Agats in the Arafura sea.
His remains were never recovered. Intriguing? Kind of. But strap yourself
in because two crucial details transform this tepid tale into a scintillating saga.
First - the man who went missing was Michael Clark Rockefeller, son of a
future vice President and great-grandson of one of the richest men who ever lived.
And second - contrary to the official report,
Michael Rockefeller didn't drown in the Autumn of 1961... Rather, he was eaten by cannibals.
To tell his tale, we must travel to faraway frontiers,
unlock the secrets of one of the planet’s most secluded tribes,
unravel a governmental coverup that’s lingered for decades, and confront some unpalatable truths. Oh,
and stick around to the end, because this one has a truly spectacular twist.
From birth, Michael was bathed in privilege. New York was his playground,
a world of luxury and abundance. Spending his days beside future titans of politics
and industry at some of America’s most acclaimed academies. He graduated from Harvard in 1960.
The powerful pedigree of Michael's family propelled his academic ascent,
but he wasn’t just some spoiled silver-spooned scion. He boasted big brains as big as his
bankroll. With the world at his feet and a Rockefeller legacy to uphold,
his path seemed set in stone. But first, Michael yearned for an adventure.
The Rockefellers had always been admirers and patrons of fine art. Michael's grandmother
founded the famous Museum of Modern art in New York, and his father, Nelson, had a particular
penchant for what was then called primitive art - non-western artwork crafted by indigenous peoples
around the world. In 1954, Nelson founded a gallery in which to showcase his passion.
No force in the universe rivals a son's desire to make his father
proud. And what better way for Michael to achieve this
than to curate a collection of global wonders for his father’s new gallery?
In 1961, Michael Rockefeller departed for a daring art-gathering expedition to Dutch New Guinea,
home of the Asmat, an ethnic group almost unknown to the western world at the time.
Visiting the Asmat was like taking a Time Machine back to the Stone Age. When Michael turned up,
they had no textiles or metals - they hadn't even invented the wheel.
But whilst they weren’t too clued up on tech, they were masters of arts and
crafts. Even today, Asmat wood carvings are highly sought after by collectors.
Don't get the wrong impression, though - the Asmat weren't some quiet tribe of
master craftsmen who wouldn't say boo to a New Guinean goose - when they weren't whittling wood,
they were waging war. Either that or engaging in their favourite pastimes
of headhunting, ritual cannibalism, and monopoly.
Their way of life was a far cry from the silver spoons and skyscrapers Michael was used to. But
he was undeterred - in fact, he threw himself into this passion project with purpose and panache.
Michael’s diary entries from this time reveal a man entranced by the strange new world into
which he'd stumbled. For six months, he lived amongst Asmat, studying their way of life and
procuring art for his father's museum. He amassed an almighty collection - you can
still see most of it today in the Michael C Rockefeller wing of The Met in New York...
...Which is all very lovely, but as you already know, this story doesn't have a happy ending.
Michael was travelling with anthropologist René Wassing and their two local guides when
a wave capsized their boat 3 miles from shore. With no comms equipment on board,
the guides swam to get help while Mike and René stayed with the stricken vessel.
To begin with, they weren't especially worried. But they were steadily drifting
further from the shore, and after 24 hours with no sign of rescue,
Michael's patience wore thin. The guides had clearly abandoned them, and with each passing
second, the swim back to safety stretched out before them. He stripped to his boxer shorts,
tied a couple of empty jerry cans around his waist and struck out for shore.
The question that's fascinated historians and amateur sleuths ever since is simple:
what happened next?
For René Wassing, that question has a brief answer - he stayed with the boat and was rescued by the
Dutch a few hours later. Their Papuan guides had sought help as promised, but they’d had to trudge
through several miles of mudflats, mangroves, and mosquito-infested forest after swimming ashore.
As for Michael? He was busy turning himself into a modern-day myth.
When word of his disappearance reached the Rockefellers in the US, they used their
plentiful political and financial leverage to launch the largest manhunt in the history of
the South Pacific, involving thousands of locals and a multitude of ships, helicopters, and spotter
planes. Michael's father and twin sister flew to Dutch New Guinea to personally oversee the search.
Despite this monumental effort, no trace of Michael was ever found,
and after 10 fruitless days, the Rockefellers returned home. The manhunt was officially called
off 2 weeks later, and Michael was declared legally dead by drowning in 1964. At the time,
his estate was worth 660,000 thousand dollars - about 7 million today. Not bad for a graduate.
Ever since his disappearance, there have been doubts about the official version of events.
It's generally assumed that René and Michael were between 10 and 14 miles offshore when Michael
abandoned the ship. That's a hell of a swim in open water, but it certainly isn't impossible.
Don’t let Michael’s unassuming appearance fool you - as a university varsity wrestler and former
soldier - he was tough as nails. He was also a supremely strong swimmer, had rudimentary
flotation aids with him, and perhaps most importantly of all - he was fighting for his life.
People can achieve incredible things when failure means certain death - just watch Squid Game.
It's intriguing that despite the scale of the search effort, Michael's body was
never found. A drowned man roped to jerry cans should float, but... nothing surfaced.
The local wildlife is often blamed for this conundrum - hammerhead sharks and
saltwater crocodiles infest these waters. But shark attacks are practically unheard
of in the area, and while the colossal crocs pose a threat,
they're notoriously messy eaters - if one did get him, there would’ve been a few chunks left over.
In the years after Michael fell off the map, several people attempted to
replicate the swim he would have faced in 1961. All of them made it to shore alive.
It's for that reason - and others I'll come to in
a minute - that convinced many that he was still out there. Among them
was Milt Machlin - the renowned editor of an adventure magazine called Argosy.
In October 1968, Machlin was visited by an Australian smuggler who claimed to have new
information about Michael’s disappearance. Little did he know that his “information”
was about to melt Milt Machlin's mind (try saying that five times quickly).
This was 1968, remember - 7 years since Michael disappeared. And yet,
while visiting a remote island off the east coast of New Guinea 10 weeks prior,
the smuggler claimed to have seen the lost Rockefeller with his own two eyes.
Now, Milt Machlin was an ex-military man, explorer, and master of the moustache. But
above all else, he was a journalist who knew how to sniff an exclusive scoop.
So he packed up his life in New York and charted a course for New Guinea.
However, the first leg of his journey proved fruitless - he visited the island
the smuggler had mentioned, only to find it deserted, with no signs of habitation.
But Machlin hadn't flown 9,000 miles to get TKO’d when the first hurdle smacked him round the head
- especially since he'd noticed a curious trend: nobody in New Guinea believed Michael Rockefeller
had drowned in 1961. By interviewing both Dutch and indigenous locals - Machlin slowly pieced
together the events that led to Michael’s death. What he learned shocked him to the very core.
In 1957, four years before Michael arrived in New Guinea, a battle between two rival Asmat villages
saw the deaths of over 100 people in a single day. The Dutch colonists were incensed - they
were on a mission to 'civilise' the locals, and 100 murders doesn’t exactly scream “high society”.
Keen to bring them to heel, the Dutch dispatched an armed patrol. One thing led to another,
and when the dust had settled 5 warriors from the village of Otsjanep lay dead from Dutch gunfire.
Asmat culture was really into all that ‘an eye for an eye’ stuff - if a rival
village killed someone in yous, you had to kill someone in theirs.
It wasn't about spite - but a central tenet of their system of spirituality.
So, the five dead warriors from Otsjanep needed to be avenged to restore balance to
the world. But retaliation against the Dutch was basically impossible - their guns were
so technologically advanced they might as well have been magic wands. However,
the Dutch weren't the only people from the 'white tribe' in New Guinea.
After a tired and helpless Michael Rockefeller washed ashore near Otsjanep, the Asmat saw
an opportunity to avenge their fallen brethren. Michael was killed, butchered,
and eaten as payback for crimes he probably wasn't even aware of.
Machlin returned to America in April 1969 after 4 months in New Guinea. He had seen and heard enough
to be convinced that Michael Rockefeller was the victim of a cannibalistic killing.
He published his findings in a book called 'The Search for Michael Rockefeller.' It presented a
convincing case, but one thing was missing: hard evidence. Without it, doubts would always remain.
Over the years, the story slowly faded from the public consciousness - considering how frankly
mental the whole thing is, it's surprising how few people actually know about it.
But the case was reignited in 2014 when author Carl Hoffman published his research into Michael's
disappearance. Like Machlin, Hoffman travelled to New Guinea in search of clues. Unlike Machlin,
Hoffman also paid a visit to the Dutch Colonial Archives in the Hague,
where he found a plethora of documents, showcasing that several Dutch officials
and missionaries had suspected Michael's death at the hands of the Otsjanep headhunters. Crucially,
he also discovered that the Dutch had deliberately suppressed the truth.
As for why? Michael's disappearance occurred during a tumultuous period in New Guinea's
history. The Dutch were in the process of relinquishing control to Indonesia,
and they were keen to show the world what a good job they'd done 'civilising' the locals. Revealing
that cannibals had consumed a member of one of the world's most powerful families would have been a
PR disaster. So, they did what all governments do with embarrassing information - they buried it.
By the way, if you're wondering what the Rockefellers made of these revelations,
the truth is nobody outside the family really knows. Publicly
they've always stuck to the official version - that Michael drowned.
Rumours suggest they hired a private investigator to visit the Asmat in the late 70s. While he was
there, he allegedly traded a boat engine for 3 human skulls - those of the only white men
the Otsjanep had ever killed. Whether or not any of them belonged to Michael is unknown,
but supposedly the investigator was paid a quarter of a million
for smuggling skulls back to America. So, I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
By this point in the video, you may believe it’s an open-and-shut-case - Michael Rockefeller was
surely killed and eaten by the Asmat. However, it isn’t quite so simple.
Consider this - all the documented evidence we have so far can be traced
back to a single source - the Asmat themselves. No outsiders witnessed Michael's alleged murder,
and his remains have never been found. Everything we *think* we know comes from Asmat confessions,
either made to the Dutch in the 60s or, more recently, to Carl Hoffman.
It’s entirely plausible that the Asmat took credit for the murder to appear more
powerful to western visitors. There is a second possibility though - that the Asmat came up with
the lie to hide an even more remarkable truth. That’s right - it’s twist time.
Milt Machlin returned from New Guinea in the late 60s with hundreds of hours of footage
documenting his visit. The reels lay untouched in a safe until 2008, when they were recovered by,
of all people, Charlton Heston's son Fraser, who was making a documentary about Machlin's trip.
The reels were a goldmine of information, but it was when Fraser stumbled upon footage of dozens of
Asmat canoes charging down a river that he noticed something absolutely insane - hidden amongst the
Asmat was a single naked white guy, apparently one of the tribe. Could the Asmat have come up with
the whole 'yeah, we ate that guy' thing to cover the truth - that Michael had become one of them?
The film's too grainy for any serious analysis, but you have to admit - the
man bears more than a passing resemblance to a slightly older Michael Rockefeller.
Plus, if it isn't him... who the hell is it?
Far-fetched as that sounds, it's worth pointing out that almost every contemporary
report from the time of Michael's death mentions how the experience transformed
him. After his son’s disappearance, Nelson Rockefeller even admitted in
a TV interview that Michael had been his happiest during the expedition.
The idea that the heir to one of the world's richest families gave
it all up to live out his days among a primitive tribe in a distant land is a
tantalising possibility. Could Michael still be alive to this day, even in his mid-80s?
Whilst implausible, considering he’s been dwelling in the forests of New
Guinea without access to modern medical care for so long, it’s by no means impossible.
So - drowned, eaten by sharks, eaten by *people,* or a lost millionaire who went native?
You tell me.
Thanks for watching.