How Michael Rockefeller Was Killed By Cannibals

Michael Rockefeller vanished somewhere off the coast of Papua New Guinea in the early 1960s.

His disappearance stunned the country and sparked a manhunt of unprecedented proportions. Years later, the exact destiny of the heir to the Standard Oil fortune has been revealed — and it is far more troubling than anyone could have predicted at the time.

The Beginning

Rockefeller, Michael Clark, was born in 1938. He was the youngest son of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and the newest member of a prosperous dynasty formed by his legendary great-grandfather, John D. Rockefeller — one of the wealthiest persons in history.

Despite his father's expectations that Michael would follow in his footsteps and assist run the family's massive commercial empire, Michael was a calmer, more artistic personality. He wanted to do something more thrilling than sit in boardrooms and hold meetings when he graduated from Harvard in 1960.

Michael was captivated by the exhibitions in his father's newly opened Museum of Primitive Art, which featured Nigerian, Aztec, and Mayan pieces.

He made the decision to seek out his own non-Western art, notably that of Indigenous peoples, and became a member of his father's museum.

Michael Rockefeller believed he could make his impact here. "Michael stated he wanted to do something that hadn't been done before and bring a large collection to New York," Karl Heider, a graduate student of anthropology at Harvard who worked with Michael, remembered.

He had already traveled widely, living for months at a time in Japan and Venezuela, and he needed something new: he wanted to embark on an anthropological expedition to a place few would ever see.

Michael decided to make a scouting expedition to what was then known as Dutch New Guinea, a huge island off the coast of Australia, after speaking with personnel from the Dutch National Museum of Ethnology, to gather the art of the Asmat people who lived there.

The First Trip To Asmat

Dutch colonial authorities and missionaries had been on the island for about a decade by the 1960s, but many Asmat natives had never seen a white man.

Because they had little interaction with the outside world, the Asmat believed that the region beyond their island was inhabited by spirits, and when white people arrived from across the sea, they perceived them as supernatural beings.

Michael Rockefeller and his team of academics and documentarians were thus an unwelcome anomaly in the village of Otsjanep, home to one of the island's largest Asmat settlements.

The locals tolerated the team's photos, but they refused to let the white scholars buy cultural relics such as bisj poles, beautifully carved wooden pillars used in Asmat rituals and religious rites.

Michael was unfazed. He discovered a fascinating transgression of Western society's conventions in the Asmat people, and he was more eager than ever to bring their world back to his.

Warfare between villages was prevalent at the time, and Michael discovered that Asmat warriors frequently took the heads of their adversaries and ate their flesh. In some areas, Asmat men would engage in ceremonial homosexual sex, and as part of bonding rituals, they would occasionally consume each other's urine.

“Now this is a wild and somehow more remote country than what I have ever seen before,” Michael wrote in his diary.

When the initial scouting mission concluded, Michael Rockefeller was energized. He wrote out his plans to create a detailed anthropological study of the Asmat and display a collection of their art in his father’s museum.

The Last Journey To Asmat

In 1961, Michael Rockefeller returned to New Guinea, this time accompanied by René Wassing, a government anthropologist.

As their boat approached Otsjanep on November 19, 1961, a sudden squall churned the water and riled crosscurrents. The boat capsized, leaving Michael and Wassing clinging to the overturned hull.

Despite the fact that they were 12 miles from shore, Michael informed the anthropologist, "I think I can make it," and jumped into the water.

He was never seen or heard from again.

Michael's family, who were wealthy and politically connected, made certain that no expense was spared in the search for the young Rockefeller. Ships, planes, and helicopters explored the area for Michael or any evidence of his whereabouts.

Nelson and Laura Rockefeller travelled to New Guinea to assist in the search for their son.

They were unable to locate Michael's body despite their best efforts. "There is no longer any possibility of locating Michael Rockefeller alive," the Dutch interior minister declared after nine days.

Though the Rockefellers believed there was still a chance Michael would appear, they left the island. The Dutch called off the hunt two weeks later. The official cause of death for Michael Rockefeller was drowning.

Michael Rockefeller's strange disappearance became a media sensation. In tabloids and newspapers, stories spread like wildfire.

A Revisit To The Case

Carl Hoffman, a National Geographic writer, revealed in his book Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art, published in 2014, that many of the Netherlands' inquiries into the incident yielded proof that the Asmat murdered Michael.

Two Dutch missionaries on the island, both of whom having spent years living among the Asmat and speaking their language, told local authorities that they had heard from the Asmat that some of them had murdered Michael Rockefeller.

The police officer sent to investigate the crime the following year, Wim van de Waal, came to the same conclusion and even produced a skull that the Asmat claimed belonged to Michael Rockefeller.

All of these reports were buried in classified files and never looked into further. The Rockefellers were told that the stories about their son being killed by natives were false.

How Michael Rockefeller Was Killed By Cannibals

Carl Hoffman began his investigation of these 50-year-old reports by traveling to Otsjanep. His interpreter overheard a man advising another member of the tribe not to disclose the American tourist who had died there while posing as a journalist documenting the culture of the Asmat people.

When the interpreter questioned who the man was, at Hoffman's request, he was told it was Michael Rockefeller. He discovered that the Asmat people of Otsjanep had murdered a white guy and that it should not be revealed for fear of retaliation.

A massacre between two Asmat tribes happened in 1957, just three years before Rockefeller's first visit to the island: the Otsjanep and Omadesep villages slaughtered dozens of each other's men.

After taking possession of the island, the Dutch colonial authority attempted to put an end to the violence. They went to disarm the isolated Otsjanep tribe, but due to cultural misunderstandings, the Dutch opened fire on the Otsjanep.

Four of their war leaders, were shot and killed in their first encounter with weapons in the village of Otsjanep.

In this context, Otsjanep tribesmen came across Michael Rockefeller as he backstroked toward the shore that bordered their territories.

The tribesmen initially mistook Michael for a crocodile, according to the Dutch missionary who first heard the story, but as he got closer, they recognized him as a tuan, a white guy like the Dutch conquerors.

Unfortunately for Michael, the guys he met were the kids of those war leaders slaughtered by the Dutch.

"People of Otsjanep, you're always talking about headhunting tuans," one of them allegedly stated. So now you have your chance."

Despite their hesitation, which was primarily due to fear, they eventually speared and killed him.

They then severed his head and cracked his skull in order to consume his brain. The rest of his flesh was cooked and eaten. His thigh bones were fashioned into daggers, while his tibias were fashioned into spear tips for fishing.

His blood was drained, and the tribesmen bathed in it while performing ritual dances and sex practices.

According to their theology, the people of Otsjanep felt they were restoring world equilibrium. The "tribe of the white man" had slain four of them, and now they were exacting vengeance. They might absorb the energy and power that had been drained from them by consuming Michael Rockefeller's body.