Michael Rockefeller disappearance

I had heard this story mentioned before in other contexts, but hadn't heard this spin on it. Sorta Tiki related, maybe.

MYSTERY OF THE MISSING ROCKEFELLER

**After the disappearance of 23-year-old Michael Rockefeller in Irian Jaya in 1961 his body was never found – despite an intensive search. In this extract from his new book, Australian private investigator Frank Monte goes on a terrifying voyage into crocodile-infested estuaries to solve the case. **

The man sitting in front of me was somewhere around 50. He introduced himself as Albert Gross. Would I be willing, he wanted to know, to do some investigations into the disappearance of somebody in New Guinea?

The disappearance had taken place 18 years earlier. What he wanted was to trace witnesses to the disappearance, or people in the area at the time.

He said he wanted me to fly to New Guinea and do face-to-face interviews. There was, he said, a lot of money behind him. He could make arrangements to pay me what my business earned for the time I was away. "If you learn what has happened to the person who has disappeared, there'll be substantial rewards."

He saw me hesitating, leaned closer and whispered: "Fifty thousand."

He snapped open an attache case and put the down payment of $US4000 in crisp bills on my desk. Then he had me sign a contract. As I was doing so, Gross dropped his little bombshell.

"The person who has disappeared is Michael Rockefeller, heir to one of the biggest fortunes in the world. He went missing in 1961. My client is Mrs Rockefeller, first wife of the recently deceased Nelson."

Just as it is now, New Guinea in 1979 was split into two countries. Papua New Guinea, the eastern side of the island, had been administered by Australia since the end of World War II.

The area in which Rockefeller had disappeared was in the other half; in the south of Irian Jaya, to be precise. It was a long way away from civilisation. At the time of his disappearance, the Dutch controlled the territory. The native and headhunter people, the Asmats, who lived in the muddy delta where Rockefeller had gone missing, had no political aspirations. They just wanted to be left alone to hunt heads.

By the time Gross made his visit to my office in 1979, Irian Jaya was under the control of the Indonesian military. Much of the region was wetlands – impenetrable swamps and jungle populated by headhunters and cannibals. The area where Rockefeller had gone missing was in the south and was as much under the control of crocodiles as of the military.

Soon I learned that Michael's mother, Mary, who had divorced Nelson Rockefeller in 1961, had been actively prevented from finding her son by her former husband. He had feared it would impede his political career. Upon Nelson's death, Mary had immediately set out to learn as much as she could about Michael's disappearance. Gross had come to see me within days of Nelson's passing. Now Mary was finally free to find out what had really happened to her son.

In November 1961, 23-year-old Michael was in the treacherous region where the Asmat people lived, the wetlands off the Casuarina Coast, West Papua. He was collecting artefacts to display in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and had indicated to other anthropologists and friends that he was also hopeful of setting up a museum for the West Papuans themselves.

It was Rockefeller's second visit that year. Earlier, he'd been part of a Harvard Peabody Museum anthropological expedition to film native tribes untouched by westerners.

Rockefeller and a friend linked up with two Dutch anthropologists, Adri Gerbrands and Rene Wassing, who had already spent some time there. Wassing was assigned by the Dutch administration to keep an eye on the billionaire's kid and make sure he didn't come to harm in Dutch territory, but was little more than a yes man, quietly going along with whatever Rockefeller wanted to do.

Rockefeller had to leave the Asmat region in July, but he determined to return as soon as possible with Wassing. By late September 1961, he was flying back to New Guinea, apparently to buy shields, canoes and heads for his museum. He linked up again with Wassing and made his way back to the Asmat. This was headhunter territory. Rockefeller was starting to feel that here was the place where he could make his mark in history. He tried to make contact with a tribe from a nearby place called Otsjanep, who were the most recalcitrant of all the Asmats. They hunted heads, they sucked brains, they butchered women and children. And they weren't stupid.

Their favourite pastimes had been outlawed by the Dutch police and frowned on by the missionaries, but they knew well enough how to conceal the fact that they were still practising centuries-old customs. It was here among these people that Rockefeller spent his last weeks, in the jungle buying skulls and carvings.

The official story of Rockefeller's last days goes like this. On Saturday, November 18, Rockefeller and Wassing were in the town of Agats on the coast preparing to sail south. Despite advice to take the rivers, Rockefeller was determined to take the quicker sea route. His vessel, a catamaran, was really two canoes with a central bamboo platform and an outboard motor.

Two Asmat guides accompanied Rockefeller and Wassing. At the Agats pier, police inspector Henri Watrim saw how low in the water the boat was sitting and ordered Rockefeller to lighten its load. Rockefeller did as he was told – until Watrim had gone on his way. Then he reloaded and the laden catamaran sailed south-east into the open sea.

The party put in at the village of Per a while later so that Rockefeller could inspect a canoe that he was going to purchase. They left at 2pm and hit a squall. The boat was swamped, the outboard engine died. The guides abandoned the boat and Rockefeller and Wassing stayed. It took the guides five hours to get to shore. According to Wassing, the catamaran capsized and he and Rockefeller drifted around, clinging to the hulls until dawn. Around 8am, Rockefeller decided he should try to make the shore alone.

At 4pm on Sunday, November 19, a Dutch Neptune patrol plane spied Wassing on the upturned cat about 60km to sea off the Cook Bay area. Wassing was dropped supplies and finally rescued at 9am on Monday, November 20. There was no sign of Michael Rockefeller.

When Nelson Rockefeller learned of the disaster, he chartered a seaplane that would take him, Michael's twin sister Mary Strawbridge, their staff and dozens of international journalists to the island of Biak off the north coast of Irian Jaya. The Dutch sent its air force and navy to search for Michael and its administrators and police joined in too. The US sent an aircraft carrier and Australia a Catalina seaplane and two helicopters.

Most of the search was concentrated on the coastline, where it was expected that he might have been washed up. The search was finally called off. The consensus was that there was no hope for Michael. He had drowned or been eaten by sharks.

Frank Monte puts ads in various newspapers around the world, offering a $10,000 reward for any information regarding Michael Rockefeller's disappearance. After hundreds of false leads, his search takes him to Amsterdam and Father Peters, a priest who was at a mission in the region where Rockefeller disappeared and claims to know what really happened.

I hoped that this was the end of my journey, but I didn't dare presume.

The seminary where the priest was living was a large stone building rising impressively out of the flat surrounds. Father Peters was elderly, probably about 70, a small but sprightly Mickey Rooney.

He told me about his years as a missionary. Dutch New Guinea was by far the most inhospitable region to which he had ever been sent. The Asmats were barbaric, warlike; the various tribes were constantly fighting among themselves. Their belief system was such that tribes would kill and eat the brain of their enemy, believing that this gave them great power. They were nomadic, following the sago crop upon which they lived.

After we had finished our meal, the priest began to tell me the true story of what had happened to Michael Rockefeller nearly 20 years before.

Rockefeller and Wassing had been trading with the Asmat people of the village of Fos on the Eilanden River. He had landed upriver on the evening of November 18. Rockefeller had done a deal with the son of one of the tribal elders to buy a relic of great tribal significance, a sort of totem pole adorned with skulls.

The priest explained to me that the Asmats believed that spirits lived alongside the living, and that killing another person entailed an obligation to look after the spirit's physical remains – the skull. Trading this pole was a huge no-no. Selling it would get the spirits angry and bring doom to the tribe.

What Father Peters told me was that Rockefeller had taken this sacred skull pole in the middle of the night and was on his way with it to the catamaran when other warriors came upon him. Rockefeller was dragged out of his boat. The pole went overboard, the engine was flooded as Wassing tried to get away, and the guides ran off to save their own skins. This account meant that the other, official, story was a complete fabrication.

After his capture, Rockefeller was taken alive back to the village of Fos, where he was kept hidden while the tribe determined his fate. The size of the search was so great that the people feared retribution if the white man was found in their custody. They felt the safest avenue was to kill him.

Father Peters didn't say whether the killers had also eaten Rockefeller. He did tell me, though, that he and his two fellow missionaries had not dared tell the authorities for fear of the genocidal retribution that would have followed. It was only on account of his concern for Mary Rockefeller that Father Peters had now consented to tell me what had happened. He still felt some guilt about the affair, believing that he should have been able to intervene to save Rockefeller's life.

I had a first-hand account from a reliable witness of the fate of Michael Rockefeller. I had done my job – or so I thought.

Gross thanked me for my efforts and assured me that the balance of my fee, now up around $70,000, would be sent immediately. He then came straight back at me. How would one go about locating Michael's remains? I told him the skull might still exist, but the rest of him may have been turned into knives and arrows. And anyway that part of the world was controlled by the Indonesians and they simply didn't let people in there.

"You can leave that part to me," said Gross. "Are you seriously contemplating bringing the skull of Michael Rockefeller out of there?" I asked. "It's crocodile-infested, headhunter land."

"Not personally, no. But my client will pay generously for whoever will. Would you like the job?"

Then I did something very, very stupid. I said: "Yes."

Monte travels to Jakarta, where Gross has arranged for $US50,000 in cash to be delivered to his hotel room. Carrying the money in a brown paper bag, Monte is instructed to deliver it to a general in the Indonesian army, who arranges for a boat and crew to take him into head-hunter territory. Reluctantly, the general agrees that Monte can take his own bodyguard, ex-SS-man Dieter Stein.

In October 1979, as rain pelted down into muddy brown water, I found myself waiting at Biak, a small island to the north of Irian Jaya, with my bodyguard, Dieter Stein.

I was expecting something like a small frigate to cruise elegantly into port. But what docked was a rusty looking patrol boat with the cabin space of a prawn trawler. I was alarmed. The personnel totalled around 25. About four were the boat's crew. The rest were commandos, cut-throat Indonesian soldiers. The captain was obviously the general's man and was more refined and courteous than the sergeant or the grunts.

Before I even stepped on the boat I was getting bad vibes. These commandos were all big men, bigger than me. They looked like thugs. I'd been around many criminals and I knew the look of the killer who'd cut your throat and go back to his dinner with an increased appetite.

I didn't learn until later that their mission in helping me had an underlying purpose: to prove how inept the Dutch had been and how savage and inhumane the natives were.

Monte and his crew of cut-throats hire Peter, a local guide who can speak the Asmat dialects. Finally, they enter the waterways that had drawn Rockefeller further and further inland in his search for rare artefacts.

We had sent a party ashore and were awaiting their return when there was the unmistakable sound of rapid gunfire from the village. I was worried, but nobody else on board seemed to have the slightest concern.

When the shore party returned, Peter gave me some information which I thought needed to be followed up. I asked him if he could go back the next day. All Peter would say was: "Too late, too late." Then it dawned on me exactly why it was too late. The gunfire wasn't the boys shooting a few wild boars: they were killing the villagers. The Indonesians were using this trip to conduct a little tribal murdering.

I was appalled. The boat journey into hell continued for around two weeks. I'd lost many kilos in weight. It was a nightmare of mosquitoes, headhunters, foul drinking water and now cold-blooded murder. One day, as we anchored, I slipped on some oil and fell off the boat. Usually the river was dead still, but an unexpected swell threw me off balance and into the water where crocodiles and sharks lurked. I couldn't get back on board fast enough.

I'd expected we'd sail up to a beach, shake hands with a few elders, hand over some gold and beads, and bring home a skeleton in a casket draped in the US flag. Never in my wildest thoughts had I imagined it would be like this: not to be able to shower or brush my teeth or even sleep.

Finally, we were getting closer to the tribe. It began to rain endlessly.

Everything was damp and mist settled like low-lying cloud. The crew had grown quieter, even more threatening. Conversation seemed pointless, as if each kilometre up the river made us somehow more primitive, as if we were journeying into the dark heart of our own soul.

We had now gone as far as we could in the patrol boat. From here on it would be in rubber dinghies and on foot. We went as far as we could in the dinghies then had to carry them and the outboards through the swamp.

Most of the time you were wading through knee-high water, then every now and again you would suddenly fall into a hole and find yourself up to your neck in mud. There were plenty of crocs around. Snakes were everywhere – up trees, on land, in the water – wherever you stepped.

The place had an evil aura about it. It was dank, dark and dangerous. At night we stuck cottonwool in our ears to stop bugs crawling in.

After just a few hours of these conditions your clothes were soaked through with a mixture of your own perspiration and the foul waters you'd been wading through. The chafing, the discomfort, as you trudged through mud was terrible.

I had been keeping the anxiety at bay pretty well up to this point, but when I saw dark shapes in the distant trees my stomach knotted up. The shapes in the trees were rotting corpses. I didn't know if this was an Asmat burial ground or what, but it spooked me. Nothing was normal, nothing was what it seemed. I started praying, something I hadn't done in years.

The second day of our trek took the surrealism of the scene to new heights.

Suddenly, we emerged into a small clearing to find two tribes confronting one another, ready for battle. The warriors wore nothing but penis gourds. Some had their hair decorated with long bird plumes, most carried spears and shields.

The two tribes quickly turned their attention away from each other towards us. There were many more of them than us but we were heavily armed. I don't know who fired first. Dieter and I were in the middle of the squad when the fighting started. There was gunfire, then spears and arrows were coming our way. One of the commandos went down, struck by a spear as his fellow soldiers raked the natives with automatic fire. After a couple of minutes the locals just ran off into the jungle.

It's hard to come to terms with the silence of spears. The Asmats use a plant poison on them so that, if you're struck, even if it's not a deep wound, you can still die. It's the same with their arrows.

With the air thick with the smell of guts and cordite, we checked the damage. Eight natives dead, one commando speared badly. We were much faster going back than we had been on the way from the boat, but the injured soldier died of his wound not long after we arrived back.

After a few more days, we finally stumbled on something solid. Peter came across a tribe that was an enemy of the tribe we were seeking. Our quarry was just a couple of days away.

We continued up a tributary of the river in our inflatable dinghies until Peter made contact with the tribe and we travelled to within a short distance of the village of Fos, where Michael Rockefeller had made his fatal error. I decided that Dieter and I would go into the village alone. We were now armed with Kalashnikovs, but I was under no illusion as to what would happen if the natives all decided to attack us.

Fos consisted of bamboo and vine huts built on stilts. Peter led me to the chief and a witchdoctor. He had said what we wanted when he first made contact, but the witchdoctor didn't seem too cordial. Through the guide, he kept asking me: "What will you do with the man if you find him?" They always speak about the dead in the present tense.

I told the witchdoctor that I would take the man back to his family. The witchdoctor clearly didn't want to hand back any of Rockefeller's remains, but the chief was more pragmatic. He wanted to know if we would trade our outboard motors. I offered one in return for the skull of Michael Rockefeller. Then the witchdoctor got going again. He thought we were associated with the Indonesians and wanted no part of us. Peter explained that we weren't like the others at all.

Finally, the chief told us that it was his predecessor, now dead, who had killed Rockefeller. This chief had a totem pole, a special relic with the bones of all the important ancestors of the village on it. Rockefeller had wanted to buy it, but the chief would not sell. Rockefeller, according to this chief, simply took it, just pulled it out of the ground in the middle of the night, and ran for the boat. Rockefeller was dragged off the boat, there was a struggle and some of the relics were damaged. Then Wassing managed to start the boat and took off. Rockefeller was kept alive and hidden while the Asmats decided what to do with him. It was when the ships and planes started to search the area that they decided it was safer to kill him.

The story coincided with what Father Peters had told me. It was also possible that they had attempted to con Rockefeller by selling him the relic even though they had no intention of parting with it. Perhaps he caught them unawares by actually removing the pole, meaning to take what he thought was rightfully his. The exact trigger for Rockefeller's death could stay a mystery as far as I was concerned, as long as they gave me the skull. That's what I'd been paid to get.

In fact, they gave me three skulls. The chief explained that these were the skulls of the only white men the tribe had ever killed. Which one was Rockefeller's he wasn't sure.

It was too late to make the transaction that day. I spent the night in the long hut waiting to lose my head. I woke up the next day to find it still attached.

Finally, when they had been given the motor and shown that it worked, the Asmats handed me the skulls. They looked like any other skulls, though brightly painted. They stank, even though they had long been stripped of any flesh. To transport the skulls, I wrapped them in leaves and put them in a gym bag.

It took us nearly two days to get back to the boat. I should have felt some sense of satisfaction. But all I felt was exhaustion.

Carrying the skulls in his hand luggage, Monte flies to the US, but he's worried about customs finding them. He gets lucky when the woman at the immigration booth is too distracted by some long-haired musicians to pay much attention to the well-dressed businessman with the holdall. Gross has the skulls picked up at Monte's hotel and Monte is invited to dinner with Mary Rockefeller, who wants to thank him personally.

A big limousine arrived and drove me to Fifth Avenue. Mrs Rockefeller had her apartments on the top floor. As soon as I walked in the door, I felt years of wealth pressing down on me like a heavy fur coat. Led by a man I guessed was the butler, I walked along the corridor past busts of blank-eyed Romans on tall pedestals. He showed me into a drawing room. Gross was waiting in his tuxedo, like Bing Crosby waiting for Grace Kelly in High Society. He greeted me, formally thanked me and sat me at a table. Across the polished ebony, he slid over some papers for me to sign. I read them quickly. It seemed the main thing was that I was not to talk about the assignment for 10 years. That was fine by me. I signed with a fountain pen he supplied me. I calculated that the pen alone was worth a house in one of Sydney's humbler suburbs.

I asked him if they had identified a skull as Michael's. Gross confirmed that they had, but cautioned me to say nothing about the skulls themselves to Mrs Rockefeller. Instead, I was to talk about the body as if it had been one whole unit.

Gross said we should dine and led me to a dining room where the clan had assembled. Mary Rockefeller introduced herself. She was in her early 70s, but looked younger. She was quiet and genteel.

Mary Rockefeller asked what had been the most difficult part about the trip and I told her of the tension, the weather, the natives and the mosquitoes. She asked me to stay for a private chat after dinner.

At this stage, of course, I was still waiting for my money. I knew it would be impolite to bring it up in conversation and I knew these people were supposed to be far too wealthy and refined to renege on a debt of $67,000.

Mary Rockefeller wanted to know exactly what I had learned of the last moments of her son. I told her that a fight ensued in which he had defended himself, ultimately in vain, against a number of warriors. I did not mention that he may have been held captive and then killed only because of the rescue operation.

She handed me an envelope. Inside was a cheque for the full amount.

And I'd earned every cent of it.

*Edited extract from The Spying Game, by Frank Monte with Dave Warner, published in July by Pan Macmillan Australia, rrp $30.
*

[ Edited by: Philot on 2004-05-03 12:08 ]

Cool tale!

I wonder if it's true.

What a great read, Philot! Thanks!

After that tale, I will never complain about Texas mosquitos and humidity again.

well, not really....

(I should be more grateful; at least I don't have to contend with sharks, crocodiles and headhunters - just blood-sucking airborn insects.)

I ran across this synopsis of Milt Machlin's "The Search for Michael Rockefeller" at this film production company's website.

Story Synopsis
The disappearance of Michael Rockefeller is one of the enduring unsolved mysteries of the 20th Century. THE SEARCH FOR MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER, by journalist and Argosy editor Milt Machlin, tells the true story of the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller in the jungles of New Guinea in 1961, and Machlin’s epic search for him seven years later.

Machlin’s story is a gripping account of one of the most unsettling vanishings ever to have engaged the nation. On November 11, 1961, the 23-year-old son of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller led a small expedition along the treacherous cannibal coast of New Guinea, with anthropologist RENE WASSING. Heavy seas swamped their trading canoe in the Arafura Sea. After a night adrift clinging to the wreckage, Rockefeller set out to swim for the distant shore, leaving Wassing with the fateful words: "I think I can make it…"

He was never seen again. Despite a massive air-sea search, and international furor, no trace of Rockefeller was ever found.

Seven years later, MILT MACHLIN, editor of the adventure magazine ARGOSY, was approached by a nefarious Australian smuggler named DONAHUE, with the startling question: "What would you say if I told you I saw Michael Rockefeller alive, not ten weeks ago?" Donahue spun for the hard-bitten editor a tale of mystery and intrigue, which, if true, meant that Michael had somehow survived among the cannibals in the wilderness of New Guinea.

Donahue claimed that while on a trading venture in the Trobriand Islands, a thousand miles from where Rockefeller disappeared, he and an "associate" visited a remote village on the island of "Kanapua". There, a white man with a long red beard hobbled out of a small hut on two badly-healed broken legs, squinting through the cracked lenses of his glasses, and croaked these words: "My name’s Michael Rockefeller… Please, help me!"

Could it be that Rockefeller was still alive, held captive by headhunting tribesmen? Before Machlin could press Donahue for more details, the Aussie smuggler slipped away into the night. "If by the remotest flight of fancy," wrote Machlin, "Donahue’s story should actually be true, Michael Rockefeller would have to be found. And I was determined to be the one to do it." With the cryptic clues given him by Donahue, his reporter’s intuition, and the name of an island that wasn’t even on the map, Milt set off for New Guinea to discover the truth for himself, and to find Michael Rockefeller, dead or alive.

THE SEARCH FOR MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER – Story & Themes

Our protagonist is MILT MACHLIN, the tough, jaded editor of Argosy Magazine. When approached by DONAHUE, Machlin, a former Army soldier who had served in New Guinea during WWII, seizes the opportunity to tell the ultimate real-life adventure story. Rather than just another "aliens-kidnapped-my-girlfriend"Argosy story, Machlin’s adventure is a quest for the truth. He sets out to unravel one of the great mysteries of the 20th century: What really happened to Michael Rockefeller in New Guinea in 1961?

Using his skills as an investigative journalist, Machlin travels from the mansions of New York’s power elite to the Trobriand Islands and across the hinterlands of New Guinea to unravel the layers of the mystery. Machlin follows Rockefeller’s trail into the very heart of darkness, to the missionary outpost of Agats and the Asmat village of Otsjanep where Michael was last seen. Ignoring telegrams from his publisher to return home, Machlin becomes more and more convinced that Rockefeller might still be alive – and soon finds himself in circumstances disturbingly similar to Rockefeller’s. Machlin must overcome not only the cannibals and the jungle, but the duplicity of his allies, to solve the mystery and escape to tell the tale.

On his quest, Machlin encounters the key players in the Rockefeller drama: Michael’s reclusive mother MARY "TOD" ROCKFELLER who refuses to accept that her son isn’t coming back, and breaks ranks with the family’s wall of silence. Dutch anthropologist RENE WASSING, the mercurial and strangely reticent survivor of the canoe disaster. VAN KESSLE, the unconventional Jesuit missionary and champion of the Asmat cannibals. MEDWAY, a nefarious alcoholic planter, in cahoots with Donahue. A dyspeptic headhunting Asmat War Chief, who doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. A local Shaman, guardian of a skull which may – or may not - be Rockefeller’s. And DR. SHELAGH MCLEOD, an overworked Australian doctor laboring in a tiny underfunded clinic attached to Van Kessle’s mission in Agats, who serves as a bridge for Machlin between the two worlds.

In Roshomon-like flashbacks, each character reveals to Machlin various versions of the deepening mystery, sometimes confirming, often conflicting. As he travels deeper into the heart of the New Guinea jungle, Machlin peels back the layers of the onion to get at the core of the truth. And in attempting to unravel this tangled mystery, Machlin also paints a detailed picture of a remarkable young man:

Why did Michael Rockefeller – privileged son of Nelson Rockefeller, heir to one of the world’s great fortunes, journey to the one place on earth where his name and wealth meant nothing - the Stone Age world of the Asmat cannibal?

Living in a world of mud, water and wood, the Asmats are an enigma; fierce warriors, headhunters and ritualistic cannibals, they are also great artists, carving some of the most beautiful and sought-after primitive art on earth. Both Michael and Machlin came to share a deep respect for these remarkable people.

Rockefeller’s expedition was intended, in part, to acquire some of the extraordinary carvings, bis poles (ritual totems), decorated skulls and other artwork created by the Asmats. But by driving up the price of human skulls with steel ax-heads and massive quantities of tobacco, did Michael inadvertently provoke headhunting raids and thereby become the architect of his own demise?

Or did Michael simply drown in the Arafura sea on his long swim to shore? Could he have been eaten by sharks or crocodiles which infested those waters?

Did he survive the swim only to fall victim to a headhunter’s "payback", becoming an unwitting participant in the revenge cycle? Or was he captured by the Asmat – the very people he had befriended – and offered up as a sacrifice in a cannibalistic ritual?

Most intriguing of all, did Michael Rockefeller choose to remain in the jungle, as some evidence suggests, living with the natives as a revered talisman and a respected icon of the Cargo Cult? And, if he was indeed killed and eaten by the Asmats, had he, in effect, chosen the manner of his own death – even accepted it?

Even more bizarre is the persistent rumor that Rockefeller may have had a child with a native woman. Is the heir to one of the world’s greatest fortunes now a New Guinea cannibal?

And what of Donahue and his tale – could Rockefeller have survived, held against his will these many years? If so, how did he come to be living with the Trobriand Islanders – the Argonauts of the South Pacific – one thousand miles from where he disappeared?

What was Donahue’s angle? Whether his tale was true or false, what was in it for him? Was Donahue’s motive purely the fulfillment of a promise to an unfortunate castaway? Or was something more sinister at work? Was he manipulating Machlin for his own purposes? Had Machlin seen the last of him in that bar in Manhattan, or would Donahue reappear in the unlikeliest of places and show his true colors?

THE SEARCH FOR MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER is, in part, about what happened to Michael Rockefeller in New Guinea, and why. It is also about Machlin’s journey - both physical and spiritual – an epic quest in search of the truth, which in many ways transforms Machlin, much as it did Rockefeller himself.

Either of these stories seem like they would make a smashing film!

Let this story be a caution to you Tiki Centralites -- show some decorum when on your collecting expeditions, lest you end up being collected!

[ Edited by: Philot on 2004-05-03 22:37 ]

Philot, this definitely is intriguing reading. Considering that this happened over 40 years ago, I'm surprised there hasn't already been a movie made aoubt it. It would be interesting to see it in alternate endings based on the different theories/accounts of what actually happened.

It's amazing but true that in today's modern, technological landscape there are still cultures in the world who are living the way their people have lived for thousands of years.

Really cool take, Polynesian Pop.

I am picturing an ending where he is still alive, living like Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now - his potentate kept secret out of fear of retribution!

Isn't that the area where The Phantom lived?

Yum, Long PIG!

Too bad he didn't die "in the saddle" like the old man.

On 2004-05-04 23:02, Atomic Cocktail wrote:
Yum, Long PIG!

I wonder if they topped him with spinach & parmasian cheese & draped bacon over the top... Rockerfeller Rockerfeller!

Actually, with the differing theories and all, would it be possible to do this as a "cut up" like "Pulp Fiction" where the scenes are jumbled out of order? Just toss the three or four different endings in the mix. It would be ideal for DVD.

Or would that be totally too confusing? Maybe if you filmed different narrative threads in different styles. Hmmmmmm... wacky!

I think it might make an interesting videogame, one of those 1st person problem solvers with inserted video footage. "You've offended the headhunters by trying to buy a sacred skull trophy, & now you must escape the trackless, swampy PNG jungle before they collect your head for a trophy!" You can choose to go different ways or handle situations differently which take you into the different theories.

Or you could write it from the point of view of the investigator: tracking the clues, weighing the conflicting stories, traveling up the jungle rivers with a group of (possibly) genocideally muderous soldiers, searching for a group of (possibly) caniballistically murderous headhunters, through (definately) deadly swamps & thickets full of poisonous snakes, spiders & other creepy crawlies.

Indeed a very educational story, cautioning us not to go too far in our collecting obsessions!

I can see it now, some Tiki Central member, inspired by the successes of Spanish Tiki mug auctions on e-bay, decides to go on an expedition to distant and mysterious Spain, in search of the Kahala tribe and their elusive "Feather Face" mug.

He joins them in the ritual imbibing of the "Bastardo Safferin" potion, and gets to hold the precious relic in his hands...only to find that the chief of the tribe is unwilling to part with it (because their stock is low).

Alas, no pleading and bribing helps, and feverish in his desire to own the godhead, the TC member decides to nab the mug and flee. But on his hasty way out he bumps into a group of giggling young Spanish yuppy virgins and the mug slips out of his hands (in slow motion) and smashes on the ground!
The village members apprehend the thief and...

OFF goes the head, to be used as decoration for the Men's room door!

Yup, I heard it before, these things happen, matey, you shouldn't have let your collecting obsession get the better of you. Tiz tiz....

What a great story! Thanks for posting it (many moons ago...) I actually just found this when I was googling for Michael Rockefeller disappearance info. Guess I should have come to TC first.

Anyway, I'm looking for photos of Michael Rockefeller as a child (obscure, I know, just bear with me) I've turned up zilch on google so far, so on the off chance that anybody out there has a good pic of his face as a kid or a link to one, please post here!

Well, fingers crossed but I'm not holding my breath... :)

Thanks!
Heather

What a great story! Absolutely should be made into a film....

Pure fiction: Michael Rockefeller meets up with Emilia Earhart and they discover the portal to Atlantis being guarded by the mehenes

The above statement is to be taken in jest. Fancinating report.

Tracked down a little more info about this, but still looking for photos--any photos--I have those that crop up on 'google images' but would like larger, clearer pics. I'm also looking for any personal info about michael Rockefeller that doesn't relate to his new guinea trip. I know the basics of his family etc, but if anyone has any sources of information about who he was as a person, it would be much appreciated.

(incidentally, if anyone has a copy of his $$$ rare book they want to trade for some original tiki art... LET ME KNOW!) :)

The reason for all this is that I'm working on a painting about M. Rockefeller's days in New Guinea... but more on that later...

Anyway, here's another fascinating take on the whole thing that I found online. Its a longgie but a goodie!

THE MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER RIDDLE

by John Godwin (SOURCE: Copyright 1976 by John Godwin.)

Our helicopter danced and leaped crazily, buffeted by blasts of hot, moist air. Below, as far as our eyes could see, the jungle stretched like a crumpled green rug, the solid mass of treetops broken only by mudbrown patches of loraro and mangrove swamps. This was the Asmat coastline of southern New Guinea, the region known as "the land of the lapping death."

A tangled morass of bog and forest, thick with insects and leeches but unmarred by a single road, airfield, or telephone wire.
Down there lived an estimated 18,000 natives, but no sign of human habitation was visible from above. Most of the villages lay so deeply buried in the jungle that their people rarely saw the sun.

It was mid-November, 1961, and I knew that the greatest search operation in the island's history was running full gear: Dutch and Australian aircraft crisscrossing the sky, canoes and launches nosing along the rivers, thousands of marines, police troopers, and tribesmen beating through the bush. But all this might have been happening in another country. From where we sat, there was nothing but the infinity of vegetation.

Before starting out I had asked Sergeant Gerig, the Dutch patrol officer flying with us, how he rated our chances of finding any lone man in this wilderness.

He shrugged. "About as good as finding half a needle in a thousand haystacks, mijnheer."

The man we were searching for, however, wasn't just "any" lone man. His name was Michael Clark Rockefeller, and he happened to be the son of the governor of New York and heir to one of the largest fortunes on earth.

Michael was a Harvard graduate, but otherwise refused to follow in his father's footsteps. After graduating cum laude and serving a hitch in the army, he went to New Guinea as a member of the Harvard Peabody Museum expedition. As he explained it, "I have the desire to do something romantic and adventurous at a time when frontiers in the real sense of the word are disappearing."

He couldn't have picked a better place to fulfill that particular desire. New Guinea is an island about as large as Texas and New York State combined, perched on the northern tip of Australia. It remains one of the least explored areas in the world; vast patches are as unmapped as the mountains of the moon. The island has never had an accurate census; the population is believed to number approximately 4 million.

Rockefeller's first expedition went to the Baliem Valley in the central highlands, a region of clouds and constant drizzle and perpetually warring Dani tribesmen, so secluded that explorers had tagged it "Shangri-la." The Harvard men stayed there until September, 1961, filming bloody tribal battles and collecting Dani weaponry and artifacts.

Michael returned home for a brief rest, but New Guinea seemed to draw him like a magnet. Two months later he was back, this time on behalf of the New York Museum of Primitive Art. He headed for the Asmat coast in the South. His object was to purchase some of the decorated bis poles which the natives carve in memory of their ancestors. Above all, he wanted samples of the human skulls that serve the Asmat warriors as tokens of prowess in combat as well as hut decorations.

For the Asmats were headhunters (some of them were also cannibals), but their treatment of the trophies varied sharply from that of other head-takers in different parts of the world. The Asmats didn't shrink heads. Instead they stripped heads down to the skull, let them bleach in the sun, then painted them in artistic designs and stuck them on poles to proclaim their machismo.

Michael Rockefeller was 23 when he returned to New Guinea, a rangy, bearded lad whose round spectacles gave him a deceptively indoorish appearance. Actually he was an outstanding athlete in peak physical condition, untroubled by the murderous climate of the region (the humidity, I remember, was such that a cigarette pack I put under my bed at night showed a film of mildew by morning).

Unfortunately the young American knew little about the dangers of the Asmat coast. He took risks that made some of the more experienced locals blanch. And he rarely took warning.

The last persons to caution him were the Dutch Crozier fathers at the mission station of Agats. Michael arrived there in a 30-ft. catamaran made of two native canoes lashed together by planks and powered by a single 18-hp outboard motor. It was a highly maneuverable craft, but quite unsuitable for what he had in mind. The mission fathers shook their heads when they learned that he intended to cruise in it to the village of Atsj, 25 mi. down the coast.

They explained that this journey would take him across the mouth of the Eilanden River where it empties into the Arafura Sea. At this point the coastal tides often rolled out in waves up to 20 ft. high. No place for a fragile makeshift craft, heavily laden with trading goods.

On the morning of Thursday, Nov. 16, Michael started out just the same. His only companions were a Dutch anthropologist named Rene Wassing and two Asmat helpers. Around noon, just as they were passing across the mouth of the Eilanden, the warning of the missionaries came true. A huge wave suddenly surged over the boat, swamping the outboard motor. Now the vessel was drifting helplessly, the fierce tidal rip sweeping it out into the Arafura Sea.

The two natives dived overboard almost immediately and reached land. But the white men hung on, stubbornly trying to tinker the engine back to life.

Twenty-four hours later they were still drifting with a dead motor. Both of them believed that the Asmats had simply left them to their fate--falsely, as it turned out, because the natives had already alerted the Dutch authorities. But the helpless drifting and the beckoning shoreline were too much for Michael's active temperament. He told his companion that he'd try to swim to the coast.

Wassing warned him against the attempt. The mangrove swamps of the coast were only about 3 mi. away, but the water was known to contain both sharks and crocodiles. Michael merely grinned and made his preparations. He stripped down to his shorts, tied his glasses firmly to his ears, and strapped on a jerry can and an empty gas container to make an impromptu float. He was an excellent swimmer, and with these supports the 3 mi. to land seemed easy.

Wassing watched him disappear--the last confirmed witness to see the young man alive. For with this swim Michael Rockefeller joined Ambrose Bierce, Colonel Fawcett, and Amelia Earhart on the mystery list of vanished celebrities.

Late that afternoon Wassing was picked up by a Royal Netherlands Navy flying boat. His first question was about young Rockefeller. The navy pilots shrugged. Nothing had been seen or heard of him.

As soon as the flying boat docked, New Guinea's meager communications network began to hum. The Dutch administrator at Agats raised his superior at Merauke, 240 mi. away, by shortwave radio. Merauke radioed Hollandia [now Djajapura], the colony's capital. The governor informed The Hague, in far-off Holland. From there the message went to the Dutch embassy in Washington. And the ambassador telephoned Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in New York.
The governor immediately chartered a jet for $38,000 to fly him and Michael's twin sister, Mary, to the scene, more than 10,000 mi. from New York. Even before he arrived there, an immense search apparatus leaped into action.

Dutch Gov. P. J. Platteel mobilized every aircraft at his disposal, ordered out marines, police troopers, and every naval patrol craft to scour the area. Australia dispatched helicopters and a squadron of air force transport planes. Most important, some 5,000 local Asmats joined the search voluntarily, fired by the royal reward of 250 sticks of trading tobacco offered for any clue to Michael's whereabouts.

Also on the spot were nearly 100 reporters and cameramen (including me) representing the world's press, television, and radio.
Merauke, a small cluster of huts with normally 3,000 inhabitants, became search headquarters, and temporarily the most overcrowded spot in the Southern Hemisphere. The temperature hovered around 100 in the shade, air conditioning was unknown, ants ate through flashlight batteries, mosquitoes feasted on every exposed inch of skin, and newsmen slept four to a room. The water supply broke down immediately, so everyone went dirty and stank. The only drink available was lukewarm beer.

The main search area lay 240 mi. to the north and encompassed 1,400 sq. mi. of swamp and jungle. Governor Rockefeller exchanged his jet for a lumbering Dakota, slowly circling over the endless greenish-brown curtain under which his son had vanished. He and Mary took turns peering down with field glasses, scanning the treetops ... hoping.

Those of us using helicopters got a closer view--occasionally a little too close for comfort. Whenever our pilot spotted what could pass for a clearing near a few huts, we went down.

The scene was always the same. Thick, steamy heat that engulfed you like a moist towel. Branch huts built on stilts over reeking, dark brown mud. A wide, cautious circle of people staring at us as we climbed from our machine. The Asmats were totally naked--not so much as a loincloth among them. The men fingered flintstone knives and whipped 12-ft. spears with serrated shark's-teeth tips. Some of the women nursed a baby on one breast and a piglet on the other.

Our helicopter didn't seem to astonish them unduly. Other things did. I created a sensation by lighting my pipe with a match; you could hear them drawing their breaths in wonder. We always broke the ice by passing out the standard currency of the region: sticks of tobacco that could be smoked or chewed or bartered for something else.
Sergeant Gerig spoke a few words of their language and used gestures to explain the purpose of our visit. We were looking for a bearded young man wearing glasses. His hands indicated hair on his face and rings around his eyes. He pointed to his own fair skin--a white man. Had they seen such a man?

The Asmat warriors exchanged a few rapid grunts. Then one of them--usually a headman with a boar's tusk stuck through his nose--replied. Yes, they had heard of such a man, but they hadn't seen him. He was agai, agai--farther away--which might mean anything from 1 to 100 mi.

The Asmats were quite friendly, particularly after we'd distributed the tobacco. But you couldn't help noticing the skulls. Some yellow with age, others gleaming white and fresh. Most of them displayed on poles outside the huts, but a few lying around casually, like household utensils. I also noticed that Gerig kept his leather gun holster in a handy position.

Later I asked him about those skulls. "I thought you'd outlawed headhunting around here?"

"Oh, certainly. Only the nearest police post is 140 mi. away. So we cannot control very well. Also, mijnheer," he added, "we have no way of telling which skull belonged to a slain enemy or somebody's grandfather who died of old age. They often keep a relative's skull. Like--how do you say?--for memento."

We whirred from one swampy clearing to another, handing out tobacco, always asking the same questions, always getting the same maddening agai, agai for an answer. The white man had been seen ... found ... farther inland ... farther down the coast ... anywhere except the place we were at.

The other search teams were getting the same elusive reply. We saw the crocodiles basking on the mud banks, the skulls grinning at us from the village poles, the incredible clouds of sparrows rising like locusts from the trees, and felt our hopes fading.

They revived briefly when a patrol craft fished an empty gasoline can from the sea 120 mi. down the coast. But they found no sign of Michael, and it still isn't certain that the can was his.

Gov. Nelson Rockefeller held a press conference in Merauke. He looked as if he hadn't slept for days and seemed totally exhausted. But his quiet courtesy never cracked. He was one of the bravest men I'd ever seen. He thanked the Dutch and Australian governments--and all of us--for our help. Then he patiently answered a barrage of questions. Then he flew back to New York.

After 10 days the Dutch authorities called off the search. They were satisfied, they declared, that Michael had either drowned or been taken by a shark or crocodile. Most of the press corps pulled out.

Only a few of us stayed on, held by a lingering doubt about the correctness of the official verdict. It was mostly instinctive--we had no real clues to go by--but we had the distinct feeling that this case wasn't as closed as some people wanted us to believe.

Only after the turmoil of the search had died down did it become apparent that a large number of people shared our opinion. There was, in fact, a sharp split between Dutch officialdom and the local white civilians as to young Rockefeller's fate. Those who lived in the area--resident missionaries, medical men, traders--were convinced that, whatever else may have happened, Michael had not perished in the water.

The first person to confirm my private doubts was Dr. Ary Kemper, who specialized in tropical medicine and had lived in the Asmat for 11 years.

"That young man was a powerful swimmer, and with those floats on his back he could not have drowned," said the doctor. "Sharks and crocodiles? Yes, there are plenty. But, you know, in all the years here I have never heard of one human being attacked. The natives swim and fish without fear of them. They just don't seem to be man-eaters. Not along this part of the coast. Believe me, I would have learned of any such attack."

"Well, what do you think happened?" I asked.

"I think he reached land. And I think he was killed there," Kemper said grimly. "By the Asmats. Perhaps for his head. Or perhaps he was eaten. One man alone--unarmed--wandering on this coast, now that is risky."

"Then why are the government people so adamant about him being lost at sea?"

Kemper grinned wryly. "Because they don't wish the world to know that they are not in control of the entire territory. Officially there is no head-hunting, no cannibalism, no tribal warfare, you understand? No white man is ever murdered. And such an important person--a billionaire's son--this must not have occurred! It would look very bad at the United Nations, you understand?"

I understood even better after talking to a Dutch administration officer. Over half a bottle of jonge genever he gave me a view of Michael that had not hitherto been voiced.

"He was a likable boy, very courageous and sincere, but sometimes very foolish. He came to the Asmat and offered six, seven steel axes per skull for his museum. He offered this to natives who hardly know any metal. Six steel axes--why, gottverdomme, that is a fortune! They could buy two wives for that price!"

The official went on to describe how--as soon as word of the offer spread--head-hunting flared up along the entire coast. "I don't think Rockefeller realized what he was doing," he went on. "But some tribesmen actually approached me for permission to go raiding--`only one night, two night, no more.' And when I refused, they went just the same. They just couldn't resist that offer."

Although the administrator didn't say so, his implication was that Michael had perished in trouble of his own making. To the Asmat warriors a head was a head; they couldn't have known that the half-naked white man on the shore was the source of those steel hatchets.

The more locals I interviewed, the stronger grew the impression that Michael had indeed been slain rather than drowned. One missionary priest, Father Jan Smit--who knew Rockefeller well--told me he had actually seen a warrior wearing the young man's shorts.

Father Smit, who was himself killed by the Asmats in 1965, was the first person who pinpointed the murder scene for me: the costal village of Otsjanep.

The place had a sinister reputation for general violence as well as cannibalism. A French movie team chose it as the location for their epic New Guinea film The Sky Above, the Mud Below, because there they were able to get shots of warriors sleeping with their heads pillowed on human skulls.

Yet during our search operation the Dutch authorities had paid very little attention to Otsjanep--despite the fact that it lay in the area where Michael could have reached shore. Later on they actually barred strangers from the vicinity. Why?

The more I learned about this village the more puzzling the whole matter became. For Michael Rockefeller and his team had done most of their initial research right there! If the Otsjanep tribesmen wished to kill them, they must have missed a dozen earlier opportunities to do so.

Hospitality is a sacred institution among the Asmats. Your worst enemy becomes an honored guest as long as he dwells in your village. Thus the Rockefeller team was sacrosanct just as long as they remained in Otsjanep. As soon as it left, any of them became fair game.

It was Michael's tragic bad luck that he should have reached land just at a point where a fishing party of his former hosts was hunting for sea turtles. They were not a war party, but their long barbed fishing spears were just as deadly for humans.

According to one story, one of the warriors speared the American while he was still in the water. Then the others joined in and dragged their wounded victim ashore to finish him off. They took the head, cooked and ate parts of the body, and buried the remains.

This account, I learned, was based mainly on the boasting of an Otsjanep fight chief named Ajik or Ajim. While the search operation was going on, the men involved kept very quiet about their deed. But as soon as things calmed down, Ajik went around proclaiming how he had killed an "important wizard" of the whites and taken his head, thereby inheriting some of his powers. Simultaneously two other warriors spread the same story, also claiming to be the killers and now possessors of some of Rockefeller's "magic." In evidence one of them, called Fin, allegedly showed Michael's spectacles to his audience.

I could only surmise the reason why the Dutch authorities failed to search Otsjanep. Possibly because the incident of the trigger-happy patrol that had opened fire on a throng of villagers earlier might then have come to light. More probably because the searchers might have had to fight their way in. Either way it would have made a pretty bad impression on the representatives of the international media.

This undoubtedly was what lay behind officialdom's insistence on Rockefeller's death by drowning. They had to cling to that theory in order to avoid having to raid Otsjanep by force. It also accounted for the fact that neither Ajik nor Fin nor any of the other boasters were ever arrested or even interrogated.

The missionaries, who knew their Asmats, took these boasts quite seriously. Father Gerald Hekman of the Evangelical Aid Mission even offered a substantial reward in axes and tobacco to anyone who brought in Michael's skull. There were no takers.
Some rumors, based on second-, third-, or even fourth-hand accounts, had it that Michael was alive, that he was being held captive by one of the coastal tribes, who were now even more isolated and unapproachable than they had been during the Dutch regime.

What made these stories so tantalizing was both their elusiveness and their persistence. Plus the fact that similar episodes have occurred in New Guinea.

During the W.W. II fighting in the Pacific, the Eilanden River region marked the most southerly point of advance for the Japanese armies. When U.S., Australian, and Dutch troops finally recaptured Merauke in 1945, thousands of Nipponese soldiers fled into the Asmat. The Japanese War Office wrote them off as dead. But an amazing number of them were very much alive. Most of their comrades either perished in the jungle or by Asmat spears. A few survivors, however, were taken in by the villagers and treated kindly for reasons it took them years to understand.

The Asmats believe that odd-looking and unusual people offer protection against their main dread--the adat, or forest demons. They like to keep such creatures in their villages as good-luck charms because the adat won't approach a settlement that harbors them. To the Asmats some of the Japanese must have looked very odd indeed.
They were kept as part prisoners, part guests. They were given wives and whatever food the tribe possessed--but carefully watched and never allowed to leave a certain area. The Asmats often keep their own albinos in similar captivity as mascots against the jungle spirits. As the years passed, the Japanese grew accustomed to tribal life and made no serious efforts to escape. Those who did usually owed their getaway to the confusion of a tribal war. Others died in the villages without the outside world's ever learning of their existence.

There was thus at least a possibility of Rockefeller's survival some-where in the Asmat wilderness. But until one of the rumors came up with some concrete geographical data there was no chance for a follow-through.

Then, in October, 1968, a very tough-looking individual who called himself John Donahue walked into the New York office of Argosy magazine, demanding to see the editor. The executive editor was Milt Machlin, a chunky globe-trotting adventurer who had nosed around the remotest corners of the Pacific.

To him Donahue confided that he, personally, had seen Michael Rockefeller alive only 10 weeks earlier! What's more, he had talked to him.

The man began his story by admitting that he was a wanted criminal, a professional smuggler and gunrunner. He certainly looked the part. On his most recent operation he and two companions stopped at a small island called Kanaboora, one of the Trobriand group lying off the northeastern tip of New Guinea. There, Donahue claimed, he met a half-crippled white man with a long sandy beard, whom the natives were keeping in their tribal council house.
The bearded man, who was wearing only a native lap-lap, peered at them shortsightedly, then introduced himself: "I am Michael Rockefeller. Can you help me?" According to Donahue he related how he had reached the Asmat shore after diving overboard and stumbled through the mangroves for three days, sleeping in the trees at night. He broke both his legs when a branch snapped under him, and lost his glasses. Eventually he was captured by a party of Trobriand Islanders, a seafaring tribe that often made long coastal journeys. They had brought him back to their home island and kept him there, believing him to be an "important sorcerer."

Donahue couldn't do anything for him at the time. He would have run the risk of drawing attention to his illicit cargo. But perhaps Machlin could.

Most magazine editors would have treated the story as just one more yarn spun by a roving crank. But Milt Machlin was not the average editor. He asked for names and details--and got them. Without quite believing the tale, he assured himself that Donahue had actually been to New Guinea recently and that he really was some sort of outlaw. Where exactly was that island? "About a hundred and fifty degrees east longitude by around eight degrees south," came the prompt answer.

Machlin was no armchair journalist. He knew enough about the region and the background of Rockefeller's disappearance to realize that--while wildly improbable--the story was not impossible. Donahue wanted neither a reward nor a fee for his information. Why, then, would he bother to make up such a saga?

As Machlin put it: "There was only one way to check out Donahue's story--go out and see." Whatever the outcome, the investigation would make a splendid article for his magazine. [It did.]

For a start the editor discovered that Donahue had made a mistake about the name of the island. There was no "Kanaboora" at the location given. But there was a minute speck called Kanapu in almost precisely that position.

Machlin got there by jet liner, prop plane, and diesel schooner, only to discover that the tiny islet was uninhabited. The searchers found old campfire sites, a couple of abandoned palm shelters, but not a living soul. Some natives had obviously been there, but they had gone. Where to and who with was anybody's guess.

This was the end of what Machlin dubbed the "Donahue saga." It had served merely to add yet another mystery touch to the Rockefeller enigma.

Rumors concerning Michael Rockefeller continued to surface. Most of them were the usual secondhand legends, long on fantasy and short on facts, all the more difficult to verify because the Indonesian government was busily manufacturing tales of its own, aimed at discrediting the former Dutch administration. One of them had it that the American was actually a CIA agent and that his disappearance had been an elaborately staged fraud designed to plant him in West Irian, where he was now fomenting unrest among the natives.

But in December, 1972, I tracked down an eyewitness account that pushed the whole guessing game back to square one. It came from a veteran Australian island trader named Roy Hogan, who was taking a brief vacation in Sydney before returning to his route. His "run," as he called it, extended into the Arafura Sea from Australian Papua and occasionally included the Asmat coast.
His boat, the 60-ft. Rosemary M., was a former pearling lugger fitted with an improved cargo hold that enabled him to carry anything from copra to light machinery.

The previous month he had visited the Ewta River region in the Asmat. Hogan and his crew--a Chinese and a Papuan--were doing some fishing at a bivouac called Mirinaup.
"Around five in the afternoon we saw a whole bunch of natives coming toward the bivouac," Hogan told me. "We were sheltered behind some scrub, so they didn't spot us until they were almost on top of us. A big bunch--about 30 of 'em--but evidently peaceful because they had women and small children with them. The moment we stood up they stopped dead; they were pretty surprised, judging by the looks on their faces.

"We made peace signs with our palms open--no weapons--and they stood still; kind of hesitant. I got a long, close look at them. And that's when I saw the white bloke."

Hogan raised his hand to forestall my interjection. "I know what you're going to say--he might have been an albino. But I've seen plenty of Asmat albinos, and I'm telling you this fellow was white. First of all, he wore specs--glasses. Then he had straight blond hair, not curly, and a big straggly beard. The Asmats can't grow beards. He was taller than the rest. And he wore a strip of cloth around his waist; the others weren't wearing a stitch between 'em.

"He was staring directly at us, but he gave us no special greeting, no sign of recognition. He just stared like the rest. After a few moments the whole bunch turned away from us, heading back the way they'd come. Well, I was pretty curious and followed them a few steps. That's when some of the bucks turned nasty. I saw them raising those long barbed spears of theirs, shaking them up and down the way they do when they're getting ready to throw.

"That was enough for me. I got back to my mates as fast as I could. We had no guns or anything on us. And that crowd disappeared in the scrub. We never saw them again.

"The funny thing is," Hogan added, "that I never thought of young Rockefeller until we got back to Australian territory, to Port Moresby. I looked up his picture in a newspaper file. And let me tell you--if that geezer wasn't him, it must have been his bloody twin brother!"

When I matched Hogan's account with the mass of similar snippets in circulation, I was struck by two alternative solutions nobody seems to have considered so far.
There may be several other white men living a tribal existence in the remoter regions of New Guinea. This would explain the bewildering change of locale in these stories that had Michael cropping up in places hundreds of miles apart.

The second solution is admittedly the most way-out of all. Those who knew Michael Rockefeller have found it impossible to believe in his prolonged captivity. They reason that anyone as intelligent and enterprising as he would have managed to escape or at least send out a message of some kind.

Quite true--providing he wanted to escape. But there remains the bare possibility that Michael has deliberately renounced civilization. That he decided to make his way in a land where his family's name and wealth counted for nothing . . . where he would be valued for himself alone.

He was, by nature, a passionate outdoorsman, fascinated by the primitive life and constantly drawn toward the wilderness. He could, conceivably, have made friends with the Asmats and become a kind of honorary tribal member. And he must have realized that if the outside world learned of this, they would pressure him into returning to the plastic artificiality he had shaken off.

It is, as stated, a way-out solution. But then, New Guinea is a way-out country. Stranger things have happened there than a billionaire's son's return to nature in the raw.

Heather, the Simon Frasier Library & Vancouver Public Library have copies of T"he Asmat of New Guinea; the journal of Michael Clark Rockefeller." I just checked the VPL website & found:

The Asmat of New Guinea; the journal of Michael Clark Rockefeller, edited with an introd. by Adrian A. Gerbrands.
by Rockefeller, Michael Clark.
New York, Museum of Primitive Art; distributed by the New York Graphic Society, Greenwich, Conn., 1967 [i. e. 1968]
Call #: 709.951 R68a
Subjects Asmat (Indonesian people)

Art, Asmat -- Catalogs.

Description: 349 p. illus. (part col.), fold. col. map, plates (part col.), ports. (part col.) 33 cm.

Notes: "With ... [the author's] ethnographic notes and photographs made among the Asmat people during two expeditions in 1961; documented by a pictorial and descriptive catalogue of the objects he collected."

Bibliography: Bibliographical references included in "Notes" (p. 39)

Added Author: Gerbrands, A. A. (Adrianus Alexander), 1917- ed.
Museum of Primitive Art (New York, N.Y.)

Dynix#: 207679

Copies in: 1

Copies available to request: 1

Requests: 0

It's in the Central Branch's Fine Arts Ref. L5 Compact Shelving Collection, call # 709.951 R68a.

Woopie! Thanks Freddie.

You know, I checked the VPL a few weeks ago and came up with nothing. I actually put in a request for an interlibrary loan for it! Guess I must have typed in 'amsat' instead of 'asmat' or somesuch... because you're right, its there.

So turns out it was right under my nose. Good think I have TCers like you to give me a smack and point me in the right direction. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to look into it FF! Your efforts are much appreciated!

Amazing!
He went hunting for primitive art and became hunted himself, a trophy, the irony! Stranger than fiction... My favorite possible ending is that he choose to stay with the Asmats and live like a savage, renouncing to his billionaire's destiny. He was looking for romance and adventure...
Any news on this mystery?

The Smithsonian Magazine had an article on this recently. Its from a new book coming out in March, "Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art".

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/What-Really-Happened-to-Michael-Rockefeller-180949813/

Thanks for posting the link tikilongbeach.
I'm really looking forward to getting the book when it's released.

If you have Netflix, The Search for Michael Rockefeller is available for streaming. My wife has watched it, but I'll need to wait until I have a free night to watch.

howlinowl