Michael Clark Rockefeller, one of the wealthiest men in the
world and the fifth child of New York Governor and future U.S. Vice President
Nelson Rockefeller, disappeared on or about November 19, 1961, during an
expedition in the Asmat region of southwestern Netherlands New Guinea (Now a
part of the Indonesian province of Papua.)
Michael was a little bit different from the other Rockefellers.
Although he attended The Buckley School, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Harvard
(Cum Laude) He served six months as a private in the U.S. Army and held a
series of low level, low paying teaching positions.
He volunteered for an expedition for Harvard's Peabody Museum of
Archaeology and Ethnology to study the Dani tribe of western Netherlands New
Guinea. On November 17, 1961, Rockefeller and Dutch anthropologist René Wassing
were in a 40-foot) dugout canoe about 3 miles from shore when their double
pontoon boat was swamped and overturned.
Their two local guides swam for help, but it was slow in coming.
After drifting for some time, early on November 19 Rockefeller said to Wassing
"I think I can make it" and swam for shore. The boat was an estimated
12 miles from the shore and its probable that Rockefeller died from exposure,
shark attack, or saltwater crocodile, exhaustion, and/or drowning.
There is also the probability that since the area was filled
with headhunting and cannibalistic tribes, that he may have been murdered as
well.
In 1969, the journalist Milt Machlin investigated Rockefeller's
disappearance and concluded that circumstantial evidence supported the idea
that he had been killed by the locals in or near the village of Otsjanep where
he likely would have arrived had he made it to shore. In 1958, several
villagers had been murdered by a Dutch patrol, providing some rationale for
revenge by the tribe against a white man.
There is a persistent story and testimony that men from Otsjanep
killed Rockefeller after he swam to shore. The tribesmen killed and ate him by
the shore. Soon afterward the villages were swept by a cholera epidemic and
the villagers believed that it was retribution for killing Rockefeller.
In 2011, Agamemnon Films released a documentary stating that
Rockefeller survived and was living among the locals.
Writer Paul Toohey claimed that in 1979, Rockefeller's mother
hired a private investigator to go to New Guinea and try to resolve the mystery
of his disappearance. She also may have offered a $250,000 reward to the
investigator that gave her proof positive that her son was alive or dead.
Whatever happened, after he left the boat, he was never seen
again. His body was never found. He was declared legally dead in 1964.No
remains or other physical proof of his death have been discovered.