Floating adrift on an overturn catamaran off the coast of southwest New Guinea on November 21, 1961, Michael C. Rockefeller, the 23-year old son of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and future Vice President, decided to swim what he estimated to be some five to ten miles to shore in the remotest corner of the world.
His expedition partner René Wessing waited for him on the overturned wooden hull where they had been marooned for twenty-four hours.
'I really don’t think you should go,' Wessing told his friend.
'No, it’ll be okay. I think I can make it,' Michael replied.
With that he was in the water with the two empty gasoline cans tied to his military-style belt and started kicking slowly in what he estimated to be a ten-hour swim ahead of him.
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An exhaustive search by land, sea and air would, of course, find no trace of his body.
While rumors circulated that he had made it to shore and had been eaten by the local Asmat, the Dutch government denied any such possibility.
The Rockefeller family didn’t know the truth.
The search was called off and Michael was declared dead by drowning in 1964.
That didn’t end years of speculation as to what happened to the body or even a shred of clothing.
The author, Carl Hoffman, who is also a contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler, decided to take on the assignment of unraveling the mystery.
Traveling to the Netherlands, he went through hundreds of pages of original letters, cables, reports and other never-before-seen documents in the Dutch colonial archives, the records of the Dutch missionaries as well as records of the Catholic Churches.
He learned that the Dutch government and the local Church authorities did indeed know what had happened to Michael and remained silent to the public and to Michael’s parents.
Cannibal killing finally revealed: The gruesome details of how Rockefeller heir was gutted and cooked by the Asmat tribe of New Guinea | Mail Online
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