Michael Rockefeller

Michael Rockefeller
Rockefeller in 1961
Born
Michael Clark Aldrich Nelson Rockefeller

(1938-05-18)May 18, 1938
DisappearedNovember 19, 1961(1961-11-19) (aged 23)
Asmat region of southwestern Dutch New Guinea
StatusMissing and legally declared dead in 1964
EducationHarvard University (AB)
Parents
RelativesRockefeller family

Michael Clark Rockefeller (May 18, 1938; disappeared November 19, 1961) was an American anthropologist and art collector and member of the Rockefeller family. He was a son of New York Governor and later U.S. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, a grandson of American financier John D. Rockefeller Jr., and a great-grandson of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller Sr.

In 1961, Rockefeller disappeared during an expedition in the Asmat region of southwestern Dutch New Guinea, which is now a part of the Indonesian province of South Papua, with conflicting views of his fate; Rockefeller's twin sister wrote in a 2012 memoir that she believes her brother drowned. In 2014, Carl Hoffman published a book that included details from the official inquest into the disappearance, in which villagers and tribal elders stated that Rockefeller had been killed and eaten, after swimming to shore in 1961. No remains of Rockefeller or physical proof of his death have been discovered.