Death of missing millionaire remains a mystery amid suspicion 'cannibals ate his brains and danced in his blood'
Ella Scott
Featured Image Credit: Nielsen/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images / Youtube/Archie's True Crime
Mystery has shrouded the disappearance of a wealthy American man for decades - with many believing he could’ve had his ‘brain eaten’ by a cannibalistic tribe.
Michael Clark Rockefeller, 23, was the son of Nelson A. Rockefeller - an American businessman and former Vice President of the United States.
Born on May 18, 1938, he was one of seven children who shared a great-grandfather in Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller.
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Following his graduation from Harvard University after studying history and economics, the 23-year-old completed a six-month stint in the United States Army before travelled to the Asmat region of southwestern New Guinea.
Whilst in the country - now a part of the Indonesian province of Papua - the budding ethnographer worked on a documentary called Dead Birds and later decided he wanted to further his research into the mysterious Asmat tribe.
However, just seven months into his expedition, disaster struck when he and Dutch anthropologist René Wassing were travelling to shore in a 40-foot canoe.
Reports claim the explorers were around three nautical miles out from the island on November 17, 1961, when fierce waters swamped their vessel.
Eventually, their canoe capsized and the pair were tossed into the unforgiving waters.
Despite Wassing being willing to wait for help, Rockefeller was allegedly determined to reach the shore and decided to swim.
Wassing was later spotted in the Arafura Sea by a search party but unbelievably, Rockefeller was never seen again.
60 years after the wealthy man disappeared - with him later being declared dead by drowning - a multitude of outlandish theories have developed.
One rumor claims that Rockefeller was successful in his swim mission - but ended up being killed and consumed by the cannibalistic Asmat tribe who ‘danced in his blood’.
Another alleged he had been eaten by sharks on his way to the island, while a third theory is that he’d turned his back on the West and decided to make a life for himself in the jungle.
This latter claim was backed up when a National Geographic project was dropped on the clan ten years later.
It’s alleged that Malcolm Kirk, the man who snapped the documentary footage, caught a single white man rowing with the tribe on camera.
However, he said he was sceptical of whether the missing man ever really featured.
He said: "I can’t say I was particularly aware of a light-skinned figure in one of the canoes, but I do recall coming across a reference to an albino male when I glanced through my journal a few weeks ago."
Documentary maker Fraser Heston, whose 2011 film The Search for Michael Rockefeller investigated the disappearance, remains more open-minded.
In his doc, he said: "This shot of a bearded, light-skinned Caucasian paddling in a canoe full of naked Asmat warriors begs more questions than it answers.
“The resemblance to Michael Rockefeller, an accomplished canoeist who wore a beard, is obvious.”
Rockefeller has been missing for more than 62 years and if he was still alive today, he’d be around 86-years-old.