March 1, 2023 • 49 mins
Michael Rockefeller was -- or is -- a descendant of one of the most powerful families in the United States. In 1961, he disappeared in a rural part of modern-day Indonesia. Decades later, the mystery remains: What happened to Michael Rockefeller? Tune in for part one of this two-part series.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My
(00:26):
name is Matt, my name is Noman. They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our superproduced Paul mission controlled decond.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Now, folks,
in the interest of full disclosure, we all three of us,
(00:47):
we three conspiracy realists right now, have a soundtrack in
our heads from a television show. And Matt, you were
doing a lovely rendition of this right before we went
to air, and I hereby refused to do it because
(01:09):
boo boo boo boboo. Sorry, I'm done. It's pretty close, right, Yeah,
that's good. Well, that's the show you're talking about, In
Search of the first time I ever heard it was
in a Tenacious D song about Sasquatch, and they say
in Search of Sasquatch. That was a kick ass in
Search of with Leonard Nimoy kicking out the jams. I
didn't know at the time that that was a show.
I just thought it was just like, this is a
really awesome in search of, like searching for, you know,
(01:32):
stream of consciousness. Yeah, and then what's Leonard Nimoy got
to do with anything? Like you Today's You Guys are Weird? Yeah? Uh?
In Search Of is a television program that ran. It's
it's kind of a similar genre to things that came
later that that you might recognize, like what was the one,
Oh the guy who plays Walter on Fringe, Um, he did,
(01:57):
he did a series where he's investigating stuff. It's it's
got like this unsolved mystery in history channel format has
been tried and true. You know that. Now there's what's
it called with with William Shatner following in Leonard's footsteps
that was called The Unexplained with as Explained? And then
Riiker did one? Uh who is a real person as
(02:20):
a real name that is not space affiliated anyway? Uh,
We're we like you love mysteries, folks, and one of
the most surprising things for any enthusiast of mysteries is
how many remain unsolved, and they come up cyclically sometimes. Right,
there's some big mysteries that seem to hit the national
(02:43):
consciousness at regular intervals, right, there will always be a
think piece about JFK Right or nine to eleven or
the Titanic, etcetera, etcetera, Area fifty one and so on.
Today's episode is about a mystery that remains unsolved. In
this it's unsolved. You may it's you may have heard
of it, quite possibly, but it's one that was sadly
(03:05):
mischaracterized pretty often in its time, and now as we
record today, it's become the subject of numerous documentaries. It's
inspired works of art. There's an off Broadway play that
was made about this. There's rock songs, you know. Leonard
Nimoy put it on in search of So that's kind
of a gold standard. It's twenty twenty three. Yes, we're
(03:29):
recording and the world is still asking what happened to
Michael Rockefeller. Yeah, one of those Rockefellers, the Rockefeller Rockefellers.
Here are the facts, yeah, not those off brand Rockefellers.
Not we have Rockefellers at home. Rockefeller ones the center
is named after, Yes, yeah, and there are no records here.
(03:51):
Re Re is not a part of this episode worth it,
And there there's also you know, you have. This is
one of the things where if you are living in
the United States or you spend any time in that country,
you have encountered the work of the Rockefellers in some
degree and likely across generations. Despite how it may be
(04:16):
portrayed on paper, the US does very much have an aristocracy,
and the Rockefellers, I would argue, are members of that aristocracy,
which doesn't necessarily make them bad. But it's like, you
need to know. Now, our subject for today, Michael, Let's
learn a little bit about him. Michael Clark Rockefeller. Yeah,
(04:37):
he was born May eighteenth, nineteen thirty eight. His father
was Nelson Rockefeller. This man is very interesting and honestly,
gotta say everybody came into this episode a little biased.
I would say anti Rockefeller a little bit, just because
you know, it's easy target for like, there's probably something
(04:57):
bad going on there because there's all the fat cattle money,
you know. Yeah, but I learned a lot about his
father and Nelson Rockefeller, and I would recommend you everyone
out there just take a look at Nelson Rockefeller. The
he's described as a progressive, liberal Republican, really interesting stuff.
We maybe when that was a thing. Yeah, maybe we
(05:20):
could all learn a little something about that. He also
served as VP under Gerald Ford as vice president, and hey,
guess who the Secretary of State was during that time, guys,
Leonard Nimoy Henry Kissinger. It was Henry Kissinger. Okay, that
would have been my second guess. Yeah, I would I
would have preferred a Nimoy led State Department, but I
(05:44):
wasn't on good enough terms for us to talk that out.
You know, God Bock is just so calm and collected
and diplomatic. I mean, he seems like he'd be great
in government. I don't know whether the State Department of
that time would have vibed with Vulcan philosophy, you know,
that needs of the many kind of stuff that sounds
a lot like communism. Uh right. I feel like data
(06:07):
would have been a better choice. Or that's probably what's
going to happen in the next couple of you know. Yeah,
present way, and just as we do every time that
he comes up, let's give a real quick check. We
might have to build a sound cue for this at
some point. Let's give a real quick check and confirm,
drum roll please, hinz Alfred Kissinger is still alive and
(06:32):
His next birthday is May twenty seventh, right, which is
is what birthday? It's gonna be a big one, man,
he is going to be one years old. Wow, what
is that called? A septagenarian? Centenarian? Centenarian? I'm good at math.
(06:53):
I mean those are fun words to whip out, right.
Can you imagine the thing about being a centenarian is
by the time you get there, do you really brag
about it? Or do you just want, you know, like
juice and a nap. You know, I'm thirty nine and
I want juice and a nap, right now? I mean
who could say no to juice and a nap, or
(07:13):
at least juice? Nice? And you've got a Garfield mug
that says I'm kind of a big deal. Yeah, like
you've got it for me. Nice. And we're talking about families, right,
You can't really talk about Michael Rockefeller without talking about
the Rockefellers and Nelson Rockefellers. You said, Matt is a
(07:36):
fascinating character, and some would argue fairly anomalous, especially if
you look at history through a narrative of social and
financial class. Right, a socioeconomic lens would tell you that
a Nelson Rockefeller doesn't happen super often, but by the
time Michael is born, you know, he's like the baby
(07:58):
of a family. This is a januine American dynasty. His father,
Nelson Rockefeller, had already done some big things. He was established,
and Nelson came from John D. Rockefeller Junior. JD. Yep,
j D big big deal financier, right, financier. We say
(08:19):
so it sounds classier, okay, So just to get the
lineage correctly, a game of throne style in terms of
the first or second or third of his name. They
all had different first names, but he was the grandson
of John D. Rockefeller, of the Rockefeller Rockefeller's junior and
the great grandson of the John D. Rockefeller, so that
that would be first of his name. Junior would be
(08:41):
second of his name. And John D. Senior was the
founder of Standard Oil, which you may have heard of.
That's it's not called that anymore, but what did it become.
It's definitely some iteration of it still very much around.
And this is also an example of kind of being
first to market on the ground floor, if you will,
something like oil. You know, back when you could just
(09:03):
name it standard, you know, you know the one. It
reminds me of that we don't have to impress you
so much. Right, there's oil. That's what you need to know, folks.
It's kind of it still reminds me of weird naming conventions,
like how there was this restaurant in Atlanta called Legal Seafood. Right, yeah,
that's I think that's actually a chain. Um it's so
(09:24):
many Boston or something. But if you've seen the film,
there will be blood. Standard oil is mentioned a lot.
It's sort of the main competition to Daniel day Lewis's
character Daniel Plainview. Well. Yeah, it was around for several
years in the eighteen eighteen seventy I think is when
it started. But then guess what the government came through
(09:45):
and said, uh, this is a monopoly and it got
broken up into a bunch of different companies. I think
so forty something companies. Oh geez, yeah, it did. Must
have been quite a monopoly. The people, the tycoons and
titans of Indi Stry who owned companies that got broken
up for their monopolies, said hey, you know what we
should do. We should get into government. And then a
(10:08):
few generations later their families totally did so so that's
a story for a different time maybe. But but yeah,
like we said, Michael is the youngest kid. He has
a twin sister. There are a lot of other kids
who come before him, but being a Rockefeller and a
smart dude, he still gets a top notch silverspoon type
(10:32):
education the Buckley School, Phillips Exeiter goes to Harvard, where
he graduated coom laude. But one of the there's an
author we're going to talk about a lot, a guy
named Carl Hoffman, and Hoffman writes beautifully about Rockefeller, about
this story in particular, and Hoffman seems to argue that
(10:54):
Rockefeller has another education. Another moment that really speaks to
him shapes his destiny, and that's when he goes to
his family's museum, because you know, his family has a museum.
How cool would that be? I want to go to
your family's museums. And my first thought was, like, is
this a museum of the history of the Rockefellers, because
(11:16):
even at this point it's kind of a thing. I mean,
they're an important part of culture. But no, it was.
In fact, Rockefellers were fans of modern art and also
a bit of a loaded term primitive art that is
not guys, isn't this MoMA? Yeah, but they don't call
(11:36):
it the Museum of Primitive Art anymore at the moment, Yeah, right, right.
The Museum of Primitive Art inside the MoMA eventually gets
closed down, but at the time it's opening. Our buddy Michael,
he's eighteen years old. He's he's hanging with the swells.
It's a black tie, private reception event before the Museum
(12:00):
a Primitive Art opens, and his father gives this speech.
Nelson Rockefeller gives this speech about how important it is
to understand art. You know this speech, Just to be clear,
it doesn't age super well, as you can tell by
the word primitive thrown around kind of Lucy goosey. But
(12:20):
this rocks Michael's world, Feller, sorry, Rockefeller's his world. Yes,
the rocks fellas left and right, and his perspective is
skewed in a very important, very profound way for him
because he's seeing this entire world, right, he seemed physical,
(12:45):
tangible artifacts of this entire world that he's only heard about,
he's only read about, and he's thinking there's something outside
of this cage of privilege, right, because fame, wealth, the
things people think they want. They can often be a cage,
you know, and we get the feeling, at least the
way Hoffman tells it, that Michael Rockefeller at this young
(13:07):
age is going through something like that. Yeah, and he
acts on those feelings, joins the army, spends some time
as a private and in the early sixties he goes
on an expedition of self discovery and also you know,
the external discovery to study the Donni tribe of New
Guinea for Harvard's Peebody Museum. Okay, folks from that part
(13:32):
of the world that I said it, right, of archaeology
and ethnology. Yeah, and you know, this is a guy
who he's got all the stuff. Right. If he needs
some stuff, he can get it, right, doesn't matter what
the stuff is, he could get it if he wants it.
He like stabs his fingers and someone shows up with
a diet coke and a lego set. You know, if
(13:54):
that's what he wants. Oh yeah, unlimited legos, I guess.
But but but here's the thing. He doesn't go. He
doesn't travel to this part of the world as that person, right,
he doesn't have his huge entourage. He's not there, you know,
no one's watching over him hand and foot in that way.
(14:14):
He's actually I don't know, Bennick. I don't want to
put anything on you, but it reminds me of the
way you'll travel, like just immerse yourself into a place
and kind of become one. Does that make sense? I
like to think that, especially oh man, we're so excited
to get back on the road as a group. But
I think especially when we're traveling as a crew as
(14:36):
a unit, we do the same thing, you know, we
we often. We were just talking about this. We were
in Texas a while back and the three of us
were just on a night walk and there was a
moment where we got we got clocked right, somebody made us.
We got it, guys, we got Nadi. That was fun. Yeah. No,
I think we all are fans of like full immersion travel.
(14:57):
I mean, it really is the only way to fly. Um,
it's just kind of having not really a schedule, but
like you know, just really feeling like you just kind
of discover things as they present themselves to Yeah, and
we've run into some really cool and some very strange
situations as a result. What I love about your point,
(15:18):
Matt is that, Yeah, this guy could have traveled with
an entourage, you know, and and said bring me the people.
You know, I want diet cokes and Lego sets and artifacts,
and I will bring them to my father. But he didn't, Well, yeah,
and I and I need two bodyguards at all times
while I'm traveling in this other country, right, I mean,
(15:39):
which would be almost standard if you're in that level
right of having money. But he didn't heard like like
the oil. Yeah, it's true. Tiny little aside. It reminds me.
It's it's a little bit of a sad analogy. But
I just saw this thing where at one point Michael
Jackson m paid or like his people like basely rented
(16:00):
out a grocery store for a day and then like
members of his entourage posted as regular shoppers so that
Michael Jackson could feel what it felt like to grocery shop. Yeah,
apparently that's a true story. Was video of it. He's
like he's gliding around on the on the cart like Superman.
It's like, because that's what you do when you grocery shop.
(16:21):
I mean, if you're not if you're taking a cart
through a parking lot and you don't write it a
little bit, Yeah, are you just surviving or are you living? Dude? Uh?
And I've gotten some looks before. Actually, I recently raced
a total stranger on a cart and a parking lot.
It was a very amicable race. Did you say we
(16:44):
I didn't. I didn't. I should have expected. We just
both did the bro nod when we got It was
almost not a race. I guess. We're just riding together
in a publics as you pelt him with red shells,
you gotta get that boost on the beep beep, you
(17:06):
gotta hit that hit that accelerate right then then you
get a little boost. Think, y'all, that's great. I think uh,
I think we did. We had that moment where you know,
we're licking each other and we're realizing, oh, this is
the highlight of both our Saturday nights and we're both
probably too old to be doing this. No such thing.
You can translate a lot through a bro nod, you know. Anyway,
(17:29):
if you're hearing this, I wish you luck. My friend
made the cards be ever in your favor, and I
love you nor Well that was for you guys, and
so so uh yeah, okay, this is the thing. He
doesn't do any of that stuff we're describing. He is
(17:50):
the sound guy for this documentary, and no no shade
on sound guys, but it is sort of considered a
bit of a grunt job. You know, you have to
keep your levels right and get good sound, but you're
basically holding up a boom mic the whole time and
toting around like at this point it would have been
(18:10):
like a Nagra tape, you know, recorder, like a portable
real to real many real to real. So those things
are heavy. So he kind of relegated himself when he
could have insisted on being the director. You know, he
had the clout to make that happen. You know, you
want some financing, I'm the director, or at the very
least been pushy, but he wasn't. I really it speaks
(18:30):
volumes to the guy's whole attitude. I think it's cool
and it's hard. It's a hard job. That's especially trapesing
around the wilderness, you know well. And he also it's
he didn't just have audio equipment, which you're as you're saying,
is correct there. It's very heavy stuff. He's also got
a big camera, a big heavy camera back in the day,
and all the equipment you need to make that camera
run and all you know, all the film you have
(18:52):
to carry and all that stuff. Dude, it's still camera
yeah yeah, yeah, but still but still yeah, it's a lot.
And the lenses are big and heavy and bulky. Yeah,
and you know he's moving in a group. This is
a this is a proper expedition, as they would call
it in that time. But I think we all have
(19:12):
immense respect for him, the the four of us on
the show today, including including Paul, we have been in
those situations, even with much more sophisticated, newer equipment, where
we're going around and we're just hoping whatever we had
to improvise two minutes ago works, you know, racing batteries,
(19:36):
all that crap. Even nowadays with you know, cameras and stuff,
you still have to It's it's a process to get
usable content, you know, whether you're recording audio with another phone,
you know, and then you sync it up later, and
just being aware in that way and observing through that lens,
it really is you know, a mental strain as well.
(19:56):
You know. So just like imagine this is all going
on right Michael's out there in the wilderness. They're shooting
a documentary that I believe you can. There isn't there
footage of this that you can actually find right now?
Ben Uh yeah, it's a you can see and hear
his expeditions work in a documentary called Dead Birds. Sounds
(20:17):
like a bummer. Yeah, full disclosure. I haven't watched the
entirety of this, but you can. You can easily find clips.
I don't want to say anything other than go through
the official channels. Okay, yeah, right, okay. So during this
(20:37):
time he is finding other things he's always like in
letters to his family, we know that he is having
one of the most exciting periods of his life, and
he's wondering what's next, what's over the horizon, because this
is a place where a lot of what he thinks
of as civilization or Western civilisation has not traveled. So
(21:02):
he briefly leaves this expedition to study a different group
that we should probably talk about a little bit, the
Asthmat tribe or Asthmat tribe Asmat. They're on the southwestern
coast of Dutch Colonial Guinea or New Guinea, and he
(21:23):
feels like he is connected. He's back in that moment
at the museum where he heard his dad's awesome speech,
because you know, if you're that level of politician, you're
probably good at speeches. And so he's recalling this, and
we actually we have his correspondence or part of it
from this time. Yeah, he says, I am having a
(21:44):
thoroughly exhausting but most exciting time here. The Asthmat is
like a huge puzzle with the variations and ceremony and
art style forming the pieces. My trips are enabling me
to comprehend, if only in a superficial, rudimentary manner, the
nature of this puzzle. That was from a letter from
Michael on November thirteenth, nineteen sixty one. So he's talking
(22:06):
about pieces and art style that was sort of a
hallmark of this group, correct, Yeah, the Asthmat people in particular,
He found their art fascinating. They would have these incredibly
sophisticated and do have these incredibly sophisticated wood carvings that
were made to honor ancestors. And you can see pictures
(22:29):
of this very easily. Actually some of it is in
the moment today, I believe. And this just rocks his
world and he wants to be the person he wants
to be Promethean. He wants to bring this back to
New York because, yeah, I remember this time, this was
this was like a discovery, not essentially, I mean, this
style of art, this kind of work wasn't something that
(22:50):
folks in Western art circles would have been aware of
it at all. This is like something new. Yeah, not
many people would have been aware of it in kind
of the the upper echelons of the art circles at
the time. And so their lifestyle also seems very I
don't want to say alien or foreign, but it's very
(23:12):
different to what he's experienced up to this point. And
this also enthralls him, and so he goes this one
time and then he says, I want to travel back
a second time. And when I travel back, I'm gonna
barter and I'm gonna collect enough material to make this
world class exhibit when I come back, you know, to
(23:36):
to the blue blood region of my homeland. Do you
think he was being equitable with these barters? Like I mean,
you know, because you think about art and artifacts like
this often being like stolen or at the very least
kind of swindled, you know, out of folks that maybe
you know, we're not up on these kinds of tactics,
(23:59):
but Michael strikes me as a little bit better than that.
I'm just wondering what you think. I don't know. You know,
we've never we haven't met the guy. It's possible that
we might. It's not probable, but it's possible. We've we've
never met the guy, and it is I don't know.
It becomes a matter of conjecture because even if you're
(24:21):
going into a place like that, doing something like that
with the best of intentions, you might be romanticizing people right,
exoticizing them, you know, when the when the reality is
they're just people living their lives as best they can.
I wonder if we can just quickly talk about the
people because within that In search of episode learn Nimoy,
(24:42):
he pronounced it as osmat and I wrote down I
wrote down the name wagh incorrectly before I looked it up,
like how to actually spell it, because it's spelled asmat,
which roughly translates to treat people. If you look up
the ritualization of the simple task of cutting down a
tree and then using that tree for you know, the tribe,
(25:06):
it is beautiful and fascinating and awesome, And I think
that's exactly why Michael became so interested. It reminds me
of the some restaurants and the philosophy behind making food
that's really popular right now, where you use food, well,
you use every part of the animal, right it's you
translate that to using every part of the tree in
(25:28):
this case. But I know, it's just it really interested
me personally, and like, you know it. Maybe a modern
equivalent might be something like chainsaw sculptures. But again, they
didn't have chainsaws, they didn't have any kind of power tools.
This was all done in the most you know, bespoke,
handcrafted way possible. No, no shade on chainsaw sculptures. Yeah,
(25:49):
but but imagine using every piece of the bark, every
piece that gets cut off. It becomes a part of
the village itself in everyday Life's can be used in
medicines as well, and things, I mean, and I'm sure
they were, you know, the roots and certain aspects like
that could be used to make tea or whatever. I mean,
there's a there's a bunch of things you can use
a tree for, just like an animal. Yeah, and so
(26:10):
did he find this beautiful? Yes, undoubtedly. To the earlier question,
did he was he doing his best to be equitable
in his bartering to not take advantage of right people. Right,
Probably he was. He was probably not trying to take advantage.
He was probably trying to say, here are things that
(26:31):
are of value to you, and let's trade. I'm not
going to take this from you. And I also want
to tell your story. I want to share your voice
with the world, you know. So he wasn't setting out
thinking I'm going to get over on a bunch of
rooms or anything like that. Not to romanticize, you know him,
but I think that's pretty cool, you know, I mean comparatively,
(26:55):
that's a vision he's like. At this time. This is
a Dutch colonial possession and colonialism has a bad name
for a reason. So he also, of course being a
big deal being one of the VIPs of the world
at the time, whether or not he likes that, he
is assigned a government anthropologist named Renee Wassing, and Wassing
(27:22):
is on these expeditions with him. Washing is sort of
like a fixer, sort of a minder, sort of a sidekick,
the guy who knows the lay of the land to
the other guy. Yes, yeah, Livingston to his other guy,
(27:42):
and so Washing and Rockefeller and these two local teenage guides.
They set off and in this next trip, operating out
of kind of their home base. This next trip, they
spend three weeks visiting thirteen different villages in the region.
They're collecting everything that they can barter for, and they're
(28:05):
also trying maybe just as or more importantly, they're trying
to make connections which will be important to some theories later.
And they get back to their home base, you know,
offload what they got, get some more supplies, some more
goods to barter for, provisions and so on. They set
off again and on November seventeenth, nineteen sixty one, things
(28:29):
go wrong. They're going to head down to Southern Osmat
or Asmat or however you want to say it. And
they're very excited about this because again in his mind,
in Michael Rockefeller's mind, this is unknown country. And you
can see in his letters he talks about how frontiers
in general are disappearing and he wants to see the wild.
(28:51):
So Ozmat is the name of the region as well
as the name of the tribe. That's a great question.
Ozmat Is, I should say Southern Osmat territory, so Osmat
ethnic group that is in what would now be modern Indonesia,
modern day Indonesia, South Papua. It's on like if you
(29:12):
look at the island, it's on the southwestern coast, and
it's bordering a place called the Arafura Sea, which is
also important because it's you know, it's one of those
places where you can think you're on a river and
if you don't know what you're doing, you can find
yourself in a around and find out situation. And that's
how that would have been traveling right by sea, Yeah,
(29:35):
by sea. And this place is so unknown to the
west that Rockefeller and actually the entirety of the Dutch
colonial government, they know one white guy who is like aware,
like cool, knows his way around the place, has earned
(29:56):
the trust of the people who live there. His name
Cornelius van Cassel. And so Rockefeller and his crew say, Okay,
we've reached out, we've made some contacts. We're going to
meet up with Van Kessel when we get to this
remote area, and he's going to help us kind of.
He's gonna liaise, right, and he will help us learn
(30:16):
more about this culture, learn more about their practices, and
come away with stuff from my art show. And right
around this time is when something goes horribly wrong. And
we'll continue this story right after a word from our
sponsor and we've returned. Okay, so we're on our second
(30:45):
leg of the journey here with our protagonist Michael, with
Renee Wassing, who is by the way from the Dutch
New Guinea Department of Native Affairs. Doesn't that just sound
lovely coming off the top, he said sarcastically, But that's
what he was called. And they're also with their two guides.
They're two younger guides, and they are traveling by boat,
(31:10):
headed back out. So let's get back to them in
the boat. Oh yeah, this is where we go to
Karl Hoffman. We're pulling directly from some of his riding,
he says. As they began to cross the mouth of
the Bets River, conflicting tides and winds whipped up waves
and cross currents. Water that had been gentle one minute
(31:31):
was heaving the next. A wave drowned their outboard and
the catamaran began to drift. Then the waves capsized it.
We should also mentioned this is a homemade catamaran. This
is not like really fancy, this is just a boat
that floats. Yes, like Jerry cans. It looks like it's
from far cry. It's that kind of thing. No, maybe
(31:54):
I would probably be all of them. But the outboard
is the motor that's they're talking about. And of course
capsize just means it flipped over. And so these guides teenage,
I mean, they're kids, they're familiar with the area. They
know that things are going wrong. We're gonna go get help.
They jump in. The river is a big river. Sometimes
(32:17):
if you haven't grown up around big rivers, you might think, well,
how hard could it be? This women across the river.
It's very difficult because this is again right on the
coast of a sea. So they successfully make it to shore,
but the shore is so far away that that washing
and Rockefeller don't know they made it. And these kids
(32:41):
heroically trudge through miles and miles a very not cool terrain.
They make it back to the home base where they left,
and it's the evening. It's late in the evening, and
they say, we need to send help. Those other two
dudes are still on the river somewhere. And again, what
this happened for every person who went missing, probably not,
(33:04):
but the Dutch colonial power structure there knows what a
Rockefeller is. So they they send ships, they send helicopters,
they send planes for this search. The entire time this
search is happening, those two guys are clinging to the
remnants of their of their boat, and they realize they're
(33:27):
getting closer and closer and closer to the open ocean,
which is exactly what you don't want to happen. And
it's my understanding that twenty four hours passed like from
the capsizing to what the thing we're about to talk
to you next. At the very least, it was a
long night. They were not. It's arduous, right, clinging clinging
(33:52):
to flots of in water might sound easy, you know,
whomever that lady was in the Titanic might have made
it look easy to lay out a door, but it's exhausting.
Did you see that. James Cameron recently did an experiment
that proved that there was room for Jack on that door. Yes,
he acknowledged it. I guess kudos to him for that.
(34:15):
Jerry Can, by the way, that's like a gas can,
like a large gas can. Ooh yeah, I mean you
could kind of yes, yeah, exactly. And so they're they're
floating they're exhausted, and they've got to do something because
it's just going to get worse if they get out
to the ocean, because the ocean will eat things. Oh yeah,
(34:39):
So Michael, being a man of action, decided to do
something about it. He stripped down to his under rush
and he attached two of the empty gas can jerry
can things to his belt to it like as a
personal like improvised flotation device, and he tried desperately to
(34:59):
get to the show or which would have been around
between somewhere between three and up to ten miles away.
Presumably there's current. So he's, you know, and he's waved
down by these cans. So that's a lot. That's an
arduous swim right there. Yeah, and you know, according to
the stories, Renee told him not to do it, like,
(35:22):
don't do this, man, you don't have it in you.
But Michael appeared to be determined to just go and try. Yeah,
and he said, look, from my estimation, this shore has
to be somewhere between three to ten miles away or right,
it's a heck of a swim. But I've got these
(35:42):
flutation devices, right, so I won't have to be working
the entirety of the time, and it's not like the
dolicators or snakes or sharks. Yeah, we don't know whether
he was correct, and we probably never will. And the
reason we don't know this is because this and was
never seen again still hasn't been seen by anybody. It
(36:06):
SISMID officially confirmed. Right. The Rockefeller family has stayed mum
on this. We will see some speculation, but right now,
no physical evidence nor physical remains of Michael Rockefeller have
been found. The teenage guides were okay, they made it,
(36:28):
and I believe Renee Wassing was all right as well. Yeah,
the big search and rescue mission was successful and they
did locate the remains of that boat and they found
Renee Wassing on there and alive. Yep. And the only
reason we know these details about what Michael did right
before he disappeared is because Renee was able to recount
(36:49):
that stuff. It sounds like Michael should have taken Renee's
advice and stuck with him, clinging to that debris. Yeah,
if your law, the best thing to do is stay
where you are unless you have to go. And Michael
felt like he had to go, and Renee felt like
he you know, also has every enthusiast of dungeons and
(37:14):
dragons nose. You don't split up the party. Things go wrong.
So this this triggers this huge search, a cavalcade of
searches really throughout decades, and in the aftermath of his disappearance.
No physical evidence has been found. No living Michael Rockefeller
has been found, No glasses because he was wearing spectacles
(37:38):
have been found, no confirmation of bones or remains. And
that's why so many people I've continued attempting to solve
this mystery, and we welcome you to this. If you
have the answer, please write to us and help us
with this question what happened to Michael Rockefeller, And with
(37:58):
that will take a break your word from our sponsors
and return. Here's where it gets crazy. Some people might
know if one of the theories is true. Some people
might know, but right now no one knows for certain.
(38:21):
Right outside of a very remote part of modern day Indonesia,
no one knows. And that those people would only know
if part of these theories are true. If there is
someone in that area who knows what happened, they're not
going to say much about it. Well, yeah, because we
talked about the resources that the Rockefellers have. Right, imagine
(38:45):
you are a parent, doesn't matter what kind of wealth
you have. Just imagine you're a parent, and imagine your
child goes on a trip and that child goes missing
while on that trip. I'm assuming you would use every
resource you have to try and locate your child. In
this case, the Rockefellers have all the resources. So when
(39:06):
they start at full scale search, not like the you know,
the Dutch search that end up finding Renee, but this
this is like just imagine on a whole other scale
of searching for their son, and man, they throw everything
they've got at it. It's weird though, because they charter
a Boeing seven h seven and they you know, fill
(39:27):
it with reporters and they you know, end up around
one hundred and fifty miles southeast of the Ozma region.
But they did they not send some kind of serious
search party, like into the region where he disappeared. I'm
confused about that. With those resources that we're talking about,
you think they'd find some kind of crazy wilderness fixer
(39:50):
type person to take a crew out there and not
just have these like kind of sad newsless press conferences. Well,
it was there were there were teams out there searching, Okay,
I mean, that's that's what was going on. The problem
was and having enough people who could who could actually
like translate right and and have discussions about okay, well
(40:11):
did you see anything? What you know? What did you
see and all of that. There weren't enough people to
actually do that right. And aerial coverage is helpful, but
it only does so much when you have when you
have a dense forest area. Yeah, there were a lot
of problems. And on November twenty fourth, the Dutch Minister
(40:32):
of the Interior is speaking to the New York Times
and says, quote, there is no longer any hope of
finding Michael Rockefeller alive. And that's only five days after
he goes missing. Yeah, yeah, and there you know again,
this is also a pretty tense period geopolitically for these folks.
(40:53):
This is also not their first rodeo losing someone. I
couldn't imagine that the Rockefeller family would have been okay
with a statement like that. Well, they're a little bit
of a black box about some of this. And you know,
it's again to the point about being a concerned parent,
(41:13):
you sometimes want the privacy right so we don't We
don't know how they may have personally felt about several
of the turns in the investigation, but we do know.
Nine days after we can confirm Michael Rockefeller swam away
attempting to reach the shore, his father and his sister's
(41:34):
twin sister flew home. They flew back to New York,
and then if you fast forward two more weeks, the
Dutch government calls off the search, and eventually Michael Rockefeller
has declared legally dead, which we'll get to you, but
other searches follow. Like we're saying right now, the official
conclusion is Rockefeller either drowned attempting to reach the shore,
(42:00):
or he was attacked by a predator. We weren't just
doing a bit there. That's hungry water at this time,
and in that part of the world, a shark could
have Shark attacks are very rare, honestly, but it could
have happened a saltwater crocodile. Could he could have run
into that, and that that kind of attack is that's
(42:23):
a higher likelihood, honestly. Sure. Yeah, And the swim was
more like somewhere between twelve to fourteen miles, So yeah,
I mean, that'll just wear you out, unless that's your thing,
you're like some sort of Olympic level endurance swimmer. I mean,
that's that's more than half the length of the English
Channel at the narrowest point at the streets of Dover. Yeah,
(42:45):
and again, theoretically he had those flotation devices in the
oil cans, right, or the gas cans. Maybe he could
have taken breaks in between. You know, a lot of exertion.
But again, just holding onto those is exertion. But if
there's occurrence and he took a break and weren't actively paddling,
wouldn't you kind of lose ground head on back? Yeah?
(43:06):
Exposure exhaustion. Oh yeah, I mean, my goodness. We should
know that there is footage you can see of Michael's father, Nelson,
being brought oil cans or petroleum cans that are thought
to be the ones at least one I've seen. It
was thought to be one that Michael was carrying, right,
But again, these are generic Jerry cans. Yeah, you know,
(43:28):
they're not bespoke or monogrammed or anything like that, which
would be weird. I'd be a weird flex in it
would But so yeah, you can also see footage of
people retracing the passage of this catamaran and going to
these waters themselves. Karl Hoffman does this and describes it
again beautifully in his work. So some Dutch officials at
(43:52):
the time are being optimistic. Again, as we say, it's
not their first rodeo. They have lost people. They know
the waters well too. And at least one guy says,
you know, if Michael Rockefeller did reach the shore, he
would probably be safe because here we consider the native
populations pretty friendly. But how much of that is him
(44:14):
just trying to reassure someone, trying to not be a
jerk to someone who's lost a loved one, And how
much of it is speaking from fact I don't know well.
And there's some timing stuff there that Carl Hoffman points
out that we're going to get into later, just about
why a public statement from a Dutch official would probably
be positive, like overall on purpose when speaking about the
(44:40):
tribes and New Guinea. Yeah. And then also speaking of timing,
we have to remember there's a social lens in which
this occurs. Some groups in the area. We're still practicing headhunting,
we're still practicing cannibalism. Simply the reality and the colonial
government there, and I mean the West in general still
(45:03):
had these crazy offensive ideas about people they consider primitive
or savage quote I mean honestly less than is what
they were thinking. They have very condescending attitudes. And it's
no surprise that the public sphere began to ignore well
established facts about how people can drown or die of
exhaustion on the water, and instead they started a glom
(45:26):
onto these stories that Rockefeller had been killed or have
been eaten or gone full heart of darkness. I mean,
there's some pretty offensive Looney Tunes cartoons that depict that
kind of stuff, you know, the idea of like savages,
you know, I mean, it really was in the zeitgeist
in such a way that it was in popular culture,
(45:47):
you know. And a complicating factor about this is that, yes,
these practices are real, but are how sensationalized? Are they
right to pull headlines? How? And also, you know, this
is a very diverse part of the world, So how
broad of a brush are these right? Would that be
(46:08):
the question? Like I I, you know what, I'll do it.
This is a problematic and dumb comparison. But if you
ever go to different countries and you're from the United states.
You will meet people who are surprised that you don't
fit certain stereotypes. That's just like a human thing, right,
(46:29):
you know, they say, oh, you how many guns do
you own? Yeah? And I mean even today there are
countries that like eat things that we consider taboo, you
know over over here in the US. So and these
kinds of cultural differences, well maybe not as extreme as cannibalism,
they certainly still exist. Yeah, And you know, I'm just
(46:50):
pointing out some of the stuff that Leonardieboy already pointed
out and in search of when you knew hear that
episode that some of the rituals that Michael was so
interested in, right the mangrove tree carving, the whole ritual
of that, Like as the tree is making its way
to the village center, the rituals that take place after
(47:12):
that all have to do with basically preparing for a battle,
an attack to to I think what they call it,
to revenge another tribe in which they're having war. So
like it's it's based on violence, the thing that Michael
was so interested in that the tribes created. And that's
(47:32):
just it's a variation of ancestors too. It's it's all
it's all of that. It's everything's all of that. It's
like revenge for the ancestors or past injustices. There's not there.
There aren't really accidents in this belief system. Is the
issue if a disease occurs, that disease is an attack
of some sort or retribution for something that you or
(47:53):
your community did incorrectly. Yes, so it becomes very complicated too.
So the generalization is so problematic here, But it is
real violent stuff or potentially violent stuff that you're dealing with. Okay,
hey on, we did it. This doesn't always happen on
this show. But we've we've gone deeper than we thought
(48:14):
into the rabbit hole. There's still so much to explore,
a gentleman, I think we're looking at a two parter here.
This is real. We definitely didn't record this later now
it's true. We did come to a place where we
realized that there was a lot to cover on this topic.
And I think y'all will agree on conspiracy realism land.
Oh yes, make sure you stick around for episode two
(48:35):
because we're gonna dive deep deep into the conspiracy. Sorry,
I was doing my my Mama told me thing. Thet
talkness there's just so much to explore here, and we
really do break apart a lot of this stuff in
great detail. So stick around for episode two, don't go away,
and we'll be back in just a few days. In
the meantime, you can reach out to us on social
(48:57):
media where we are conspiracy stuff on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook,
Conspiracy stuff show on Instagram and TikTok. And if you
don't want to do any of that, why not just
give us a phone called. You know what the number is.
You already know, but we're gonna tell you anyway. It's
one eight three three std wy t K. And if
that doesn't quite bad your badgers, feel free to send
us a good old fashioned email. Where we are conspiracy
(49:19):
at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they Don't Want you to
(49:41):
Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My
(00:26):
name is Matt, my name is Noman. They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our superproduced Paul mission controlled decond.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Now, folks,
in the interest of full disclosure, we all three of us,
(00:47):
we three conspiracy realists right now, have a soundtrack in
our heads from a television show. And Matt, you were
doing a lovely rendition of this right before we went
to air, and I hereby refused to do it because
(01:09):
boo boo boo boboo. Sorry, I'm done. It's pretty close, right, Yeah,
that's good. Well, that's the show you're talking about, In
Search of the first time I ever heard it was
in a Tenacious D song about Sasquatch, and they say
in Search of Sasquatch. That was a kick ass in
Search of with Leonard Nimoy kicking out the jams. I
didn't know at the time that that was a show.
I just thought it was just like, this is a
really awesome in search of, like searching for, you know,
(01:32):
stream of consciousness. Yeah, and then what's Leonard Nimoy got
to do with anything? Like you Today's You Guys are Weird? Yeah? Uh?
In Search Of is a television program that ran. It's
it's kind of a similar genre to things that came
later that that you might recognize, like what was the one,
Oh the guy who plays Walter on Fringe, Um, he did,
(01:57):
he did a series where he's investigating stuff. It's it's
got like this unsolved mystery in history channel format has
been tried and true. You know that. Now there's what's
it called with with William Shatner following in Leonard's footsteps
that was called The Unexplained with as Explained? And then
Riiker did one? Uh who is a real person as
(02:20):
a real name that is not space affiliated anyway? Uh,
We're we like you love mysteries, folks, and one of
the most surprising things for any enthusiast of mysteries is
how many remain unsolved, and they come up cyclically sometimes. Right,
there's some big mysteries that seem to hit the national
(02:43):
consciousness at regular intervals, right, there will always be a
think piece about JFK Right or nine to eleven or
the Titanic, etcetera, etcetera, Area fifty one and so on.
Today's episode is about a mystery that remains unsolved. In
this it's unsolved. You may it's you may have heard
of it, quite possibly, but it's one that was sadly
(03:05):
mischaracterized pretty often in its time, and now as we
record today, it's become the subject of numerous documentaries. It's
inspired works of art. There's an off Broadway play that
was made about this. There's rock songs, you know. Leonard
Nimoy put it on in search of So that's kind
of a gold standard. It's twenty twenty three. Yes, we're
(03:29):
recording and the world is still asking what happened to
Michael Rockefeller. Yeah, one of those Rockefellers, the Rockefeller Rockefellers.
Here are the facts, yeah, not those off brand Rockefellers.
Not we have Rockefellers at home. Rockefeller ones the center
is named after, Yes, yeah, and there are no records here.
(03:51):
Re Re is not a part of this episode worth it,
And there there's also you know, you have. This is
one of the things where if you are living in
the United States or you spend any time in that country,
you have encountered the work of the Rockefellers in some
degree and likely across generations. Despite how it may be
(04:16):
portrayed on paper, the US does very much have an aristocracy,
and the Rockefellers, I would argue, are members of that aristocracy,
which doesn't necessarily make them bad. But it's like, you
need to know. Now, our subject for today, Michael, Let's
learn a little bit about him. Michael Clark Rockefeller. Yeah,
(04:37):
he was born May eighteenth, nineteen thirty eight. His father
was Nelson Rockefeller. This man is very interesting and honestly,
gotta say everybody came into this episode a little biased.
I would say anti Rockefeller a little bit, just because
you know, it's easy target for like, there's probably something
(04:57):
bad going on there because there's all the fat cattle money,
you know. Yeah, but I learned a lot about his
father and Nelson Rockefeller, and I would recommend you everyone
out there just take a look at Nelson Rockefeller. The
he's described as a progressive, liberal Republican, really interesting stuff.
We maybe when that was a thing. Yeah, maybe we
(05:20):
could all learn a little something about that. He also
served as VP under Gerald Ford as vice president, and hey,
guess who the Secretary of State was during that time, guys,
Leonard Nimoy Henry Kissinger. It was Henry Kissinger. Okay, that
would have been my second guess. Yeah, I would I
would have preferred a Nimoy led State Department, but I
(05:44):
wasn't on good enough terms for us to talk that out.
You know, God Bock is just so calm and collected
and diplomatic. I mean, he seems like he'd be great
in government. I don't know whether the State Department of
that time would have vibed with Vulcan philosophy, you know,
that needs of the many kind of stuff that sounds
a lot like communism. Uh right. I feel like data
(06:07):
would have been a better choice. Or that's probably what's
going to happen in the next couple of you know. Yeah,
present way, and just as we do every time that
he comes up, let's give a real quick check. We
might have to build a sound cue for this at
some point. Let's give a real quick check and confirm,
drum roll please, hinz Alfred Kissinger is still alive and
(06:32):
His next birthday is May twenty seventh, right, which is
is what birthday? It's gonna be a big one, man,
he is going to be one years old. Wow, what
is that called? A septagenarian? Centenarian? Centenarian? I'm good at math.
(06:53):
I mean those are fun words to whip out, right.
Can you imagine the thing about being a centenarian is
by the time you get there, do you really brag
about it? Or do you just want, you know, like
juice and a nap. You know, I'm thirty nine and
I want juice and a nap, right now? I mean
who could say no to juice and a nap, or
(07:13):
at least juice? Nice? And you've got a Garfield mug
that says I'm kind of a big deal. Yeah, like
you've got it for me. Nice. And we're talking about families, right,
You can't really talk about Michael Rockefeller without talking about
the Rockefellers and Nelson Rockefellers. You said, Matt is a
(07:36):
fascinating character, and some would argue fairly anomalous, especially if
you look at history through a narrative of social and
financial class. Right, a socioeconomic lens would tell you that
a Nelson Rockefeller doesn't happen super often, but by the
time Michael is born, you know, he's like the baby
(07:58):
of a family. This is a januine American dynasty. His father,
Nelson Rockefeller, had already done some big things. He was established,
and Nelson came from John D. Rockefeller Junior. JD. Yep,
j D big big deal financier, right, financier. We say
(08:19):
so it sounds classier, okay, So just to get the
lineage correctly, a game of throne style in terms of
the first or second or third of his name. They
all had different first names, but he was the grandson
of John D. Rockefeller, of the Rockefeller Rockefeller's junior and
the great grandson of the John D. Rockefeller, so that
that would be first of his name. Junior would be
(08:41):
second of his name. And John D. Senior was the
founder of Standard Oil, which you may have heard of.
That's it's not called that anymore, but what did it become.
It's definitely some iteration of it still very much around.
And this is also an example of kind of being
first to market on the ground floor, if you will,
something like oil. You know, back when you could just
(09:03):
name it standard, you know, you know the one. It
reminds me of that we don't have to impress you
so much. Right, there's oil. That's what you need to know, folks.
It's kind of it still reminds me of weird naming conventions,
like how there was this restaurant in Atlanta called Legal Seafood. Right, yeah,
that's I think that's actually a chain. Um it's so
(09:24):
many Boston or something. But if you've seen the film,
there will be blood. Standard oil is mentioned a lot.
It's sort of the main competition to Daniel day Lewis's
character Daniel Plainview. Well. Yeah, it was around for several
years in the eighteen eighteen seventy I think is when
it started. But then guess what the government came through
(09:45):
and said, uh, this is a monopoly and it got
broken up into a bunch of different companies. I think
so forty something companies. Oh geez, yeah, it did. Must
have been quite a monopoly. The people, the tycoons and
titans of Indi Stry who owned companies that got broken
up for their monopolies, said hey, you know what we
should do. We should get into government. And then a
(10:08):
few generations later their families totally did so so that's
a story for a different time maybe. But but yeah,
like we said, Michael is the youngest kid. He has
a twin sister. There are a lot of other kids
who come before him, but being a Rockefeller and a
smart dude, he still gets a top notch silverspoon type
(10:32):
education the Buckley School, Phillips Exeiter goes to Harvard, where
he graduated coom laude. But one of the there's an
author we're going to talk about a lot, a guy
named Carl Hoffman, and Hoffman writes beautifully about Rockefeller, about
this story in particular, and Hoffman seems to argue that
(10:54):
Rockefeller has another education. Another moment that really speaks to
him shapes his destiny, and that's when he goes to
his family's museum, because you know, his family has a museum.
How cool would that be? I want to go to
your family's museums. And my first thought was, like, is
this a museum of the history of the Rockefellers, because
(11:16):
even at this point it's kind of a thing. I mean,
they're an important part of culture. But no, it was.
In fact, Rockefellers were fans of modern art and also
a bit of a loaded term primitive art that is
not guys, isn't this MoMA? Yeah, but they don't call
(11:36):
it the Museum of Primitive Art anymore at the moment, Yeah, right, right.
The Museum of Primitive Art inside the MoMA eventually gets
closed down, but at the time it's opening. Our buddy Michael,
he's eighteen years old. He's he's hanging with the swells.
It's a black tie, private reception event before the Museum
(12:00):
a Primitive Art opens, and his father gives this speech.
Nelson Rockefeller gives this speech about how important it is
to understand art. You know this speech, Just to be clear,
it doesn't age super well, as you can tell by
the word primitive thrown around kind of Lucy goosey. But
(12:20):
this rocks Michael's world, Feller, sorry, Rockefeller's his world. Yes,
the rocks fellas left and right, and his perspective is
skewed in a very important, very profound way for him
because he's seeing this entire world, right, he seemed physical,
(12:45):
tangible artifacts of this entire world that he's only heard about,
he's only read about, and he's thinking there's something outside
of this cage of privilege, right, because fame, wealth, the
things people think they want. They can often be a cage,
you know, and we get the feeling, at least the
way Hoffman tells it, that Michael Rockefeller at this young
(13:07):
age is going through something like that. Yeah, and he
acts on those feelings, joins the army, spends some time
as a private and in the early sixties he goes
on an expedition of self discovery and also you know,
the external discovery to study the Donni tribe of New
Guinea for Harvard's Peebody Museum. Okay, folks from that part
(13:32):
of the world that I said it, right, of archaeology
and ethnology. Yeah, and you know, this is a guy
who he's got all the stuff. Right. If he needs
some stuff, he can get it, right, doesn't matter what
the stuff is, he could get it if he wants it.
He like stabs his fingers and someone shows up with
a diet coke and a lego set. You know, if
(13:54):
that's what he wants. Oh yeah, unlimited legos, I guess.
But but but here's the thing. He doesn't go. He
doesn't travel to this part of the world as that person, right,
he doesn't have his huge entourage. He's not there, you know,
no one's watching over him hand and foot in that way.
(14:14):
He's actually I don't know, Bennick. I don't want to
put anything on you, but it reminds me of the
way you'll travel, like just immerse yourself into a place
and kind of become one. Does that make sense? I
like to think that, especially oh man, we're so excited
to get back on the road as a group. But
I think especially when we're traveling as a crew as
(14:36):
a unit, we do the same thing, you know, we
we often. We were just talking about this. We were
in Texas a while back and the three of us
were just on a night walk and there was a
moment where we got we got clocked right, somebody made us.
We got it, guys, we got Nadi. That was fun. Yeah. No,
I think we all are fans of like full immersion travel.
(14:57):
I mean, it really is the only way to fly. Um,
it's just kind of having not really a schedule, but
like you know, just really feeling like you just kind
of discover things as they present themselves to Yeah, and
we've run into some really cool and some very strange
situations as a result. What I love about your point,
(15:18):
Matt is that, Yeah, this guy could have traveled with
an entourage, you know, and and said bring me the people.
You know, I want diet cokes and Lego sets and artifacts,
and I will bring them to my father. But he didn't, Well, yeah,
and I and I need two bodyguards at all times
while I'm traveling in this other country, right, I mean,
(15:39):
which would be almost standard if you're in that level
right of having money. But he didn't heard like like
the oil. Yeah, it's true. Tiny little aside. It reminds me.
It's it's a little bit of a sad analogy. But
I just saw this thing where at one point Michael
Jackson m paid or like his people like basely rented
(16:00):
out a grocery store for a day and then like
members of his entourage posted as regular shoppers so that
Michael Jackson could feel what it felt like to grocery shop. Yeah,
apparently that's a true story. Was video of it. He's
like he's gliding around on the on the cart like Superman.
It's like, because that's what you do when you grocery shop.
(16:21):
I mean, if you're not if you're taking a cart
through a parking lot and you don't write it a
little bit, Yeah, are you just surviving or are you living? Dude? Uh?
And I've gotten some looks before. Actually, I recently raced
a total stranger on a cart and a parking lot.
It was a very amicable race. Did you say we
(16:44):
I didn't. I didn't. I should have expected. We just
both did the bro nod when we got It was
almost not a race. I guess. We're just riding together
in a publics as you pelt him with red shells,
you gotta get that boost on the beep beep, you
(17:06):
gotta hit that hit that accelerate right then then you
get a little boost. Think, y'all, that's great. I think uh,
I think we did. We had that moment where you know,
we're licking each other and we're realizing, oh, this is
the highlight of both our Saturday nights and we're both
probably too old to be doing this. No such thing.
You can translate a lot through a bro nod, you know. Anyway,
(17:29):
if you're hearing this, I wish you luck. My friend
made the cards be ever in your favor, and I
love you nor Well that was for you guys, and
so so uh yeah, okay, this is the thing. He
doesn't do any of that stuff we're describing. He is
(17:50):
the sound guy for this documentary, and no no shade
on sound guys, but it is sort of considered a
bit of a grunt job. You know, you have to
keep your levels right and get good sound, but you're
basically holding up a boom mic the whole time and
toting around like at this point it would have been
(18:10):
like a Nagra tape, you know, recorder, like a portable
real to real many real to real. So those things
are heavy. So he kind of relegated himself when he
could have insisted on being the director. You know, he
had the clout to make that happen. You know, you
want some financing, I'm the director, or at the very
least been pushy, but he wasn't. I really it speaks
(18:30):
volumes to the guy's whole attitude. I think it's cool
and it's hard. It's a hard job. That's especially trapesing
around the wilderness, you know well. And he also it's
he didn't just have audio equipment, which you're as you're saying,
is correct there. It's very heavy stuff. He's also got
a big camera, a big heavy camera back in the day,
and all the equipment you need to make that camera
run and all you know, all the film you have
(18:52):
to carry and all that stuff. Dude, it's still camera
yeah yeah, yeah, but still but still yeah, it's a lot.
And the lenses are big and heavy and bulky. Yeah,
and you know he's moving in a group. This is
a this is a proper expedition, as they would call
it in that time. But I think we all have
(19:12):
immense respect for him, the the four of us on
the show today, including including Paul, we have been in
those situations, even with much more sophisticated, newer equipment, where
we're going around and we're just hoping whatever we had
to improvise two minutes ago works, you know, racing batteries,
(19:36):
all that crap. Even nowadays with you know, cameras and stuff,
you still have to It's it's a process to get
usable content, you know, whether you're recording audio with another phone,
you know, and then you sync it up later, and
just being aware in that way and observing through that lens,
it really is you know, a mental strain as well.
(19:56):
You know. So just like imagine this is all going
on right Michael's out there in the wilderness. They're shooting
a documentary that I believe you can. There isn't there
footage of this that you can actually find right now?
Ben Uh yeah, it's a you can see and hear
his expeditions work in a documentary called Dead Birds. Sounds
(20:17):
like a bummer. Yeah, full disclosure. I haven't watched the
entirety of this, but you can. You can easily find clips.
I don't want to say anything other than go through
the official channels. Okay, yeah, right, okay. So during this
(20:37):
time he is finding other things he's always like in
letters to his family, we know that he is having
one of the most exciting periods of his life, and
he's wondering what's next, what's over the horizon, because this
is a place where a lot of what he thinks
of as civilization or Western civilisation has not traveled. So
(21:02):
he briefly leaves this expedition to study a different group
that we should probably talk about a little bit, the
Asthmat tribe or Asthmat tribe Asmat. They're on the southwestern
coast of Dutch Colonial Guinea or New Guinea, and he
(21:23):
feels like he is connected. He's back in that moment
at the museum where he heard his dad's awesome speech,
because you know, if you're that level of politician, you're
probably good at speeches. And so he's recalling this, and
we actually we have his correspondence or part of it
from this time. Yeah, he says, I am having a
(21:44):
thoroughly exhausting but most exciting time here. The Asthmat is
like a huge puzzle with the variations and ceremony and
art style forming the pieces. My trips are enabling me
to comprehend, if only in a superficial, rudimentary manner, the
nature of this puzzle. That was from a letter from
Michael on November thirteenth, nineteen sixty one. So he's talking
(22:06):
about pieces and art style that was sort of a
hallmark of this group, correct, Yeah, the Asthmat people in particular,
He found their art fascinating. They would have these incredibly
sophisticated and do have these incredibly sophisticated wood carvings that
were made to honor ancestors. And you can see pictures
(22:29):
of this very easily. Actually some of it is in
the moment today, I believe. And this just rocks his
world and he wants to be the person he wants
to be Promethean. He wants to bring this back to
New York because, yeah, I remember this time, this was
this was like a discovery, not essentially, I mean, this
style of art, this kind of work wasn't something that
(22:50):
folks in Western art circles would have been aware of
it at all. This is like something new. Yeah, not
many people would have been aware of it in kind
of the the upper echelons of the art circles at
the time. And so their lifestyle also seems very I
don't want to say alien or foreign, but it's very
(23:12):
different to what he's experienced up to this point. And
this also enthralls him, and so he goes this one
time and then he says, I want to travel back
a second time. And when I travel back, I'm gonna
barter and I'm gonna collect enough material to make this
world class exhibit when I come back, you know, to
(23:36):
to the blue blood region of my homeland. Do you
think he was being equitable with these barters? Like I mean,
you know, because you think about art and artifacts like
this often being like stolen or at the very least
kind of swindled, you know, out of folks that maybe
you know, we're not up on these kinds of tactics,
(23:59):
but Michael strikes me as a little bit better than that.
I'm just wondering what you think. I don't know. You know,
we've never we haven't met the guy. It's possible that
we might. It's not probable, but it's possible. We've we've
never met the guy, and it is I don't know.
It becomes a matter of conjecture because even if you're
(24:21):
going into a place like that, doing something like that
with the best of intentions, you might be romanticizing people right,
exoticizing them, you know, when the when the reality is
they're just people living their lives as best they can.
I wonder if we can just quickly talk about the
people because within that In search of episode learn Nimoy,
(24:42):
he pronounced it as osmat and I wrote down I
wrote down the name wagh incorrectly before I looked it up,
like how to actually spell it, because it's spelled asmat,
which roughly translates to treat people. If you look up
the ritualization of the simple task of cutting down a
tree and then using that tree for you know, the tribe,
(25:06):
it is beautiful and fascinating and awesome, And I think
that's exactly why Michael became so interested. It reminds me
of the some restaurants and the philosophy behind making food
that's really popular right now, where you use food, well,
you use every part of the animal, right it's you
translate that to using every part of the tree in
(25:28):
this case. But I know, it's just it really interested
me personally, and like, you know it. Maybe a modern
equivalent might be something like chainsaw sculptures. But again, they
didn't have chainsaws, they didn't have any kind of power tools.
This was all done in the most you know, bespoke,
handcrafted way possible. No, no shade on chainsaw sculptures. Yeah,
(25:49):
but but imagine using every piece of the bark, every
piece that gets cut off. It becomes a part of
the village itself in everyday Life's can be used in
medicines as well, and things, I mean, and I'm sure
they were, you know, the roots and certain aspects like
that could be used to make tea or whatever. I mean,
there's a there's a bunch of things you can use
a tree for, just like an animal. Yeah, and so
(26:10):
did he find this beautiful? Yes, undoubtedly. To the earlier question,
did he was he doing his best to be equitable
in his bartering to not take advantage of right people. Right,
Probably he was. He was probably not trying to take advantage.
He was probably trying to say, here are things that
(26:31):
are of value to you, and let's trade. I'm not
going to take this from you. And I also want
to tell your story. I want to share your voice
with the world, you know. So he wasn't setting out
thinking I'm going to get over on a bunch of
rooms or anything like that. Not to romanticize, you know him,
but I think that's pretty cool, you know, I mean comparatively,
(26:55):
that's a vision he's like. At this time. This is
a Dutch colonial possession and colonialism has a bad name
for a reason. So he also, of course being a
big deal being one of the VIPs of the world
at the time, whether or not he likes that, he
is assigned a government anthropologist named Renee Wassing, and Wassing
(27:22):
is on these expeditions with him. Washing is sort of
like a fixer, sort of a minder, sort of a sidekick,
the guy who knows the lay of the land to
the other guy. Yes, yeah, Livingston to his other guy,
(27:42):
and so Washing and Rockefeller and these two local teenage guides.
They set off and in this next trip, operating out
of kind of their home base. This next trip, they
spend three weeks visiting thirteen different villages in the region.
They're collecting everything that they can barter for, and they're
(28:05):
also trying maybe just as or more importantly, they're trying
to make connections which will be important to some theories later.
And they get back to their home base, you know,
offload what they got, get some more supplies, some more
goods to barter for, provisions and so on. They set
off again and on November seventeenth, nineteen sixty one, things
(28:29):
go wrong. They're going to head down to Southern Osmat
or Asmat or however you want to say it. And
they're very excited about this because again in his mind,
in Michael Rockefeller's mind, this is unknown country. And you
can see in his letters he talks about how frontiers
in general are disappearing and he wants to see the wild.
(28:51):
So Ozmat is the name of the region as well
as the name of the tribe. That's a great question.
Ozmat Is, I should say Southern Osmat territory, so Osmat
ethnic group that is in what would now be modern Indonesia,
modern day Indonesia, South Papua. It's on like if you
(29:12):
look at the island, it's on the southwestern coast, and
it's bordering a place called the Arafura Sea, which is
also important because it's you know, it's one of those
places where you can think you're on a river and
if you don't know what you're doing, you can find
yourself in a around and find out situation. And that's
how that would have been traveling right by sea, Yeah,
(29:35):
by sea. And this place is so unknown to the
west that Rockefeller and actually the entirety of the Dutch
colonial government, they know one white guy who is like aware,
like cool, knows his way around the place, has earned
(29:56):
the trust of the people who live there. His name
Cornelius van Cassel. And so Rockefeller and his crew say, Okay,
we've reached out, we've made some contacts. We're going to
meet up with Van Kessel when we get to this
remote area, and he's going to help us kind of.
He's gonna liaise, right, and he will help us learn
(30:16):
more about this culture, learn more about their practices, and
come away with stuff from my art show. And right
around this time is when something goes horribly wrong. And
we'll continue this story right after a word from our
sponsor and we've returned. Okay, so we're on our second
(30:45):
leg of the journey here with our protagonist Michael, with
Renee Wassing, who is by the way from the Dutch
New Guinea Department of Native Affairs. Doesn't that just sound
lovely coming off the top, he said sarcastically, But that's
what he was called. And they're also with their two guides.
They're two younger guides, and they are traveling by boat,
(31:10):
headed back out. So let's get back to them in
the boat. Oh yeah, this is where we go to
Karl Hoffman. We're pulling directly from some of his riding,
he says. As they began to cross the mouth of
the Bets River, conflicting tides and winds whipped up waves
and cross currents. Water that had been gentle one minute
(31:31):
was heaving the next. A wave drowned their outboard and
the catamaran began to drift. Then the waves capsized it.
We should also mentioned this is a homemade catamaran. This
is not like really fancy, this is just a boat
that floats. Yes, like Jerry cans. It looks like it's
from far cry. It's that kind of thing. No, maybe
(31:54):
I would probably be all of them. But the outboard
is the motor that's they're talking about. And of course
capsize just means it flipped over. And so these guides teenage,
I mean, they're kids, they're familiar with the area. They
know that things are going wrong. We're gonna go get help.
They jump in. The river is a big river. Sometimes
(32:17):
if you haven't grown up around big rivers, you might think, well,
how hard could it be? This women across the river.
It's very difficult because this is again right on the
coast of a sea. So they successfully make it to shore,
but the shore is so far away that that washing
and Rockefeller don't know they made it. And these kids
(32:41):
heroically trudge through miles and miles a very not cool terrain.
They make it back to the home base where they left,
and it's the evening. It's late in the evening, and
they say, we need to send help. Those other two
dudes are still on the river somewhere. And again, what
this happened for every person who went missing, probably not,
(33:04):
but the Dutch colonial power structure there knows what a
Rockefeller is. So they they send ships, they send helicopters,
they send planes for this search. The entire time this
search is happening, those two guys are clinging to the
remnants of their of their boat, and they realize they're
(33:27):
getting closer and closer and closer to the open ocean,
which is exactly what you don't want to happen. And
it's my understanding that twenty four hours passed like from
the capsizing to what the thing we're about to talk
to you next. At the very least, it was a
long night. They were not. It's arduous, right, clinging clinging
(33:52):
to flots of in water might sound easy, you know,
whomever that lady was in the Titanic might have made
it look easy to lay out a door, but it's exhausting.
Did you see that. James Cameron recently did an experiment
that proved that there was room for Jack on that door. Yes,
he acknowledged it. I guess kudos to him for that.
(34:15):
Jerry Can, by the way, that's like a gas can,
like a large gas can. Ooh yeah, I mean you
could kind of yes, yeah, exactly. And so they're they're
floating they're exhausted, and they've got to do something because
it's just going to get worse if they get out
to the ocean, because the ocean will eat things. Oh yeah,
(34:39):
So Michael, being a man of action, decided to do
something about it. He stripped down to his under rush
and he attached two of the empty gas can jerry
can things to his belt to it like as a
personal like improvised flotation device, and he tried desperately to
(34:59):
get to the show or which would have been around
between somewhere between three and up to ten miles away.
Presumably there's current. So he's, you know, and he's waved
down by these cans. So that's a lot. That's an
arduous swim right there. Yeah, and you know, according to
the stories, Renee told him not to do it, like,
(35:22):
don't do this, man, you don't have it in you.
But Michael appeared to be determined to just go and try. Yeah,
and he said, look, from my estimation, this shore has
to be somewhere between three to ten miles away or right,
it's a heck of a swim. But I've got these
(35:42):
flutation devices, right, so I won't have to be working
the entirety of the time, and it's not like the
dolicators or snakes or sharks. Yeah, we don't know whether
he was correct, and we probably never will. And the
reason we don't know this is because this and was
never seen again still hasn't been seen by anybody. It
(36:06):
SISMID officially confirmed. Right. The Rockefeller family has stayed mum
on this. We will see some speculation, but right now,
no physical evidence nor physical remains of Michael Rockefeller have
been found. The teenage guides were okay, they made it,
(36:28):
and I believe Renee Wassing was all right as well. Yeah,
the big search and rescue mission was successful and they
did locate the remains of that boat and they found
Renee Wassing on there and alive. Yep. And the only
reason we know these details about what Michael did right
before he disappeared is because Renee was able to recount
(36:49):
that stuff. It sounds like Michael should have taken Renee's
advice and stuck with him, clinging to that debris. Yeah,
if your law, the best thing to do is stay
where you are unless you have to go. And Michael
felt like he had to go, and Renee felt like
he you know, also has every enthusiast of dungeons and
(37:14):
dragons nose. You don't split up the party. Things go wrong.
So this this triggers this huge search, a cavalcade of
searches really throughout decades, and in the aftermath of his disappearance.
No physical evidence has been found. No living Michael Rockefeller
has been found, No glasses because he was wearing spectacles
(37:38):
have been found, no confirmation of bones or remains. And
that's why so many people I've continued attempting to solve
this mystery, and we welcome you to this. If you
have the answer, please write to us and help us
with this question what happened to Michael Rockefeller, And with
(37:58):
that will take a break your word from our sponsors
and return. Here's where it gets crazy. Some people might
know if one of the theories is true. Some people
might know, but right now no one knows for certain.
(38:21):
Right outside of a very remote part of modern day Indonesia,
no one knows. And that those people would only know
if part of these theories are true. If there is
someone in that area who knows what happened, they're not
going to say much about it. Well, yeah, because we
talked about the resources that the Rockefellers have. Right, imagine
(38:45):
you are a parent, doesn't matter what kind of wealth
you have. Just imagine you're a parent, and imagine your
child goes on a trip and that child goes missing
while on that trip. I'm assuming you would use every
resource you have to try and locate your child. In
this case, the Rockefellers have all the resources. So when
(39:06):
they start at full scale search, not like the you know,
the Dutch search that end up finding Renee, but this
this is like just imagine on a whole other scale
of searching for their son, and man, they throw everything
they've got at it. It's weird though, because they charter
a Boeing seven h seven and they you know, fill
(39:27):
it with reporters and they you know, end up around
one hundred and fifty miles southeast of the Ozma region.
But they did they not send some kind of serious
search party, like into the region where he disappeared. I'm
confused about that. With those resources that we're talking about,
you think they'd find some kind of crazy wilderness fixer
(39:50):
type person to take a crew out there and not
just have these like kind of sad newsless press conferences. Well,
it was there were there were teams out there searching, Okay,
I mean, that's that's what was going on. The problem
was and having enough people who could who could actually
like translate right and and have discussions about okay, well
(40:11):
did you see anything? What you know? What did you
see and all of that. There weren't enough people to
actually do that right. And aerial coverage is helpful, but
it only does so much when you have when you
have a dense forest area. Yeah, there were a lot
of problems. And on November twenty fourth, the Dutch Minister
(40:32):
of the Interior is speaking to the New York Times
and says, quote, there is no longer any hope of
finding Michael Rockefeller alive. And that's only five days after
he goes missing. Yeah, yeah, and there you know again,
this is also a pretty tense period geopolitically for these folks.
(40:53):
This is also not their first rodeo losing someone. I
couldn't imagine that the Rockefeller family would have been okay
with a statement like that. Well, they're a little bit
of a black box about some of this. And you know,
it's again to the point about being a concerned parent,
(41:13):
you sometimes want the privacy right so we don't We
don't know how they may have personally felt about several
of the turns in the investigation, but we do know.
Nine days after we can confirm Michael Rockefeller swam away
attempting to reach the shore, his father and his sister's
(41:34):
twin sister flew home. They flew back to New York,
and then if you fast forward two more weeks, the
Dutch government calls off the search, and eventually Michael Rockefeller
has declared legally dead, which we'll get to you, but
other searches follow. Like we're saying right now, the official
conclusion is Rockefeller either drowned attempting to reach the shore,
(42:00):
or he was attacked by a predator. We weren't just
doing a bit there. That's hungry water at this time,
and in that part of the world, a shark could
have Shark attacks are very rare, honestly, but it could
have happened a saltwater crocodile. Could he could have run
into that, and that that kind of attack is that's
(42:23):
a higher likelihood, honestly. Sure. Yeah, And the swim was
more like somewhere between twelve to fourteen miles, So yeah,
I mean, that'll just wear you out, unless that's your thing,
you're like some sort of Olympic level endurance swimmer. I mean,
that's that's more than half the length of the English
Channel at the narrowest point at the streets of Dover. Yeah,
(42:45):
and again, theoretically he had those flotation devices in the
oil cans, right, or the gas cans. Maybe he could
have taken breaks in between. You know, a lot of exertion.
But again, just holding onto those is exertion. But if
there's occurrence and he took a break and weren't actively paddling,
wouldn't you kind of lose ground head on back? Yeah?
(43:06):
Exposure exhaustion. Oh yeah, I mean, my goodness. We should
know that there is footage you can see of Michael's father, Nelson,
being brought oil cans or petroleum cans that are thought
to be the ones at least one I've seen. It
was thought to be one that Michael was carrying, right,
But again, these are generic Jerry cans. Yeah, you know,
(43:28):
they're not bespoke or monogrammed or anything like that, which
would be weird. I'd be a weird flex in it
would But so yeah, you can also see footage of
people retracing the passage of this catamaran and going to
these waters themselves. Karl Hoffman does this and describes it
again beautifully in his work. So some Dutch officials at
(43:52):
the time are being optimistic. Again, as we say, it's
not their first rodeo. They have lost people. They know
the waters well too. And at least one guy says,
you know, if Michael Rockefeller did reach the shore, he
would probably be safe because here we consider the native
populations pretty friendly. But how much of that is him
(44:14):
just trying to reassure someone, trying to not be a
jerk to someone who's lost a loved one, And how
much of it is speaking from fact I don't know well.
And there's some timing stuff there that Carl Hoffman points
out that we're going to get into later, just about
why a public statement from a Dutch official would probably
be positive, like overall on purpose when speaking about the
(44:40):
tribes and New Guinea. Yeah. And then also speaking of timing,
we have to remember there's a social lens in which
this occurs. Some groups in the area. We're still practicing headhunting,
we're still practicing cannibalism. Simply the reality and the colonial
government there, and I mean the West in general still
(45:03):
had these crazy offensive ideas about people they consider primitive
or savage quote I mean honestly less than is what
they were thinking. They have very condescending attitudes. And it's
no surprise that the public sphere began to ignore well
established facts about how people can drown or die of
exhaustion on the water, and instead they started a glom
(45:26):
onto these stories that Rockefeller had been killed or have
been eaten or gone full heart of darkness. I mean,
there's some pretty offensive Looney Tunes cartoons that depict that
kind of stuff, you know, the idea of like savages,
you know, I mean, it really was in the zeitgeist
in such a way that it was in popular culture,
(45:47):
you know. And a complicating factor about this is that, yes,
these practices are real, but are how sensationalized? Are they
right to pull headlines? How? And also, you know, this
is a very diverse part of the world, So how
broad of a brush are these right? Would that be
(46:08):
the question? Like I I, you know what, I'll do it.
This is a problematic and dumb comparison. But if you
ever go to different countries and you're from the United states.
You will meet people who are surprised that you don't
fit certain stereotypes. That's just like a human thing, right,
(46:29):
you know, they say, oh, you how many guns do
you own? Yeah? And I mean even today there are
countries that like eat things that we consider taboo, you
know over over here in the US. So and these
kinds of cultural differences, well maybe not as extreme as cannibalism,
they certainly still exist. Yeah, And you know, I'm just
(46:50):
pointing out some of the stuff that Leonardieboy already pointed
out and in search of when you knew hear that
episode that some of the rituals that Michael was so
interested in, right the mangrove tree carving, the whole ritual
of that, Like as the tree is making its way
to the village center, the rituals that take place after
(47:12):
that all have to do with basically preparing for a battle,
an attack to to I think what they call it,
to revenge another tribe in which they're having war. So
like it's it's based on violence, the thing that Michael
was so interested in that the tribes created. And that's
(47:32):
just it's a variation of ancestors too. It's it's all
it's all of that. It's everything's all of that. It's
like revenge for the ancestors or past injustices. There's not there.
There aren't really accidents in this belief system. Is the
issue if a disease occurs, that disease is an attack
of some sort or retribution for something that you or
(47:53):
your community did incorrectly. Yes, so it becomes very complicated too.
So the generalization is so problematic here, But it is
real violent stuff or potentially violent stuff that you're dealing with. Okay,
hey on, we did it. This doesn't always happen on
this show. But we've we've gone deeper than we thought
(48:14):
into the rabbit hole. There's still so much to explore,
a gentleman, I think we're looking at a two parter here.
This is real. We definitely didn't record this later now
it's true. We did come to a place where we
realized that there was a lot to cover on this topic.
And I think y'all will agree on conspiracy realism land.
Oh yes, make sure you stick around for episode two
(48:35):
because we're gonna dive deep deep into the conspiracy. Sorry,
I was doing my my Mama told me thing. Thet
talkness there's just so much to explore here, and we
really do break apart a lot of this stuff in
great detail. So stick around for episode two, don't go away,
and we'll be back in just a few days. In
the meantime, you can reach out to us on social
(48:57):
media where we are conspiracy stuff on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook,
Conspiracy stuff show on Instagram and TikTok. And if you
don't want to do any of that, why not just
give us a phone called. You know what the number is.
You already know, but we're gonna tell you anyway. It's
one eight three three std wy t K. And if
that doesn't quite bad your badgers, feel free to send
us a good old fashioned email. Where we are conspiracy
(49:19):
at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they Don't Want you to
(49:41):
Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
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Noel Brown
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