in 1969 an adventure magazine reporter named Milt Macklin flew to New Guinea with his film crew to shoot a documentary about a missing person who had gone missing in that area milt's Hope was he was actually going to find this missing person and capture it on film really pushing his documentary over the top but despite shooting all this footage and looking all over the place they never found the missing person and so Milt ultimately went back home and just put all the footage in storage never even watched it well 40 years later that footage got pulled out of storage because another crew wanted to make a documentary about this missing person and when they watched this footage they found something totally unbelievable on it and so today I'm gonna tell you the story of what they found and then more importantly what it revealed about this missing person and I will say right now it is highly disturbing but before we get into that story if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format then you've come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload once a week so if that's of interest to you please gift the like button the complete set of where's Waldo books but make sure you cut all the Waldo's off of every page first also please subscribe to our Channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads okay let's get into today's story foreign [Music] on the morning of Saturday November 18 1961 a 23 year old man named Michael Rockefeller reached down and grabbed the pull cord that was connected to the outboard motor that was on the boat that Michael was riding in and Michael he pulled and pulled on that cord but he could not get this engine to restart it just sputtered and wouldn't turn over and without power that meant that Michael and his small crew just continued to drift farther and farther out to sea but that wasn't even the worst of this situation the boat that Michael and his crew were on which was a 40 foot long catamaran it was two handcrafted canoes tied together well it was starting to sink minutes before Michael and his crew had been happily traveling along the beautiful Green jungled Coast of New Guinea when they had to cross over this area where the water was particularly turbulent there was this River in New Guinea that was feeding out to the era for a sea which is where Michael and his crew were and where this brown River met the Blue Water it became very choppy with lots of rough waves and so as Michael and his crew tried to cross that area the waves came on board they flooded the engine it shut off and then as more and more waves landed inside the boat the boat began to sink the reason why Michael and his crew were even out here and taking these chances to begin with is because Michael wanted to go see this tribe called the asmaths that lived in New Guinea basically right past this area where this River was they lived right on the coast Michael was obsessed with the artwork that the Asmat tribe created in particular the very unique this pole these poles are created by the master Carvers within the Asmat tribe what they do is they take a single piece of wood and they etch it away until it looks like it's a bunch of men standing on each other's shoulders now these best poles are totally beautiful and intricate and wonderful to look at but the Asmat tribe doesn't make them for art they make them because they believe they contain The Souls of the Warriors from their tribe who have been killed in combat and until the asmats avenge these downed Warriors basically until the tribe kills their enemies these Souls remain trapped in these best poles which means the asmats don't really ever get rid of these poles they don't sell them they don't throw them away they are just part of their culture and Society but months ago Michael had come and visited the Asmat tribe he had learned about these bispoles and what they meant and he believed he had successfully negotiated a deal where he would barter some of his own Goods in order to get one of their best pulls but even though Michael gave them all the things he had offered they had not in return sent the best pole and so now Michael was coming back to hopefully be able to claim the best poll and take it with him but as Michael sat in his sinking catamaran watching the muddy shores of New Guinea get farther and farther away as he drifted farther and farther out into the arafara sea the last thing on his mind was the bistpole he needed to figure out what they were going to do Michael's crew consisted of three other people there was a French Anthropologist named Renee and there were two teenagers who were actually Asmat guides and their names were Simon and Leo and so after Michael was unable to start the engine up all three of them took their turn yanking on the cord but they too could not get it to start finally Simon and Leo spoke up and they said to Michael and Renee that at this point they believed their only hope was abandoning the catamaran jumping into the ocean and swimming to shore which for now was about a half mile away but they were drifting so quickly out to sea that if they waited any longer they might be too far away to actually make that swim but Renee was not a good swimmer at all and Michael was just not ready to totally abandon ship and leave this thing out here to sing because on board the catamaran was all the stuff he had brought along like tobacco and fishing line and clothes and candy and all this different stuff that he knew this tribe wouldn't have and he could use it as leverage to continue bartering to get his fist pole and to get other artwork they might be offering and so even though Michael understood that obviously this catamaran and everything on it is going to sink into the ocean at some point he just wasn't there mentally to jump off now and just kind of abandon all this stuff and so a decision was made that the two Asmat guides the two teenagers Simon and Leo they on their own would jump out swim to Shore and try to get help while Michael and Renee stayed back and waited for that help to come and so a few moments later the two teenagers jumped into the water and began their long swim to Shore and as they did Michael watched and it suddenly dawned on him just how far away he was from his own home it had been months since Michael had last showered so he smelled terrible he was totally sunburned and caked in dirt and his hands were rough and calloused from all the rowing he was doing but this was not really Michael's real life because Michael was not from New Guinea or from anywhere near here he was actually from America where his family was one of the most well-known influential and richest families ever like in the history of humanity the Rockefeller family are in like the top 10 of the most powerful people ever Michael's grandfather was the oil tycoon John D Rockefeller who at the time was literally the richest man in the world and Michael's father Nelson Rockefeller was at the time the governor of New York and the future Vice President of the United States but despite having these unbelievable resources at his disposal Michael was not compelled to kind of be a Rockefeller instead he found his calling in the Wilds of New Guinea he had first come here seven months earlier with a teen team of Harvard University filmmakers who were looking to document a very remote tribe and Michael just fell in love with the adventure of this trip even though on this trip while they were filming a battle between this remote tribe and another tribe Michael got shot accidentally in the shoulder with an arrow so despite being wounded effectively in combat Michael just loved being in New Guinea in fact Michael actually never told his family about getting shot in the shoulder with this Arrow because he was worried if he told his family the all-powerful Rockefeller family they would respond by seeking out retribution against one of these tribes that had inadvertently harmed Michael Rockefeller and so Michael was just very respectful and protective of the people he came in contact with in New Guinea and in many ways he viewed them as more like his people than his family and so after the Harvard University filmmakers wrapped up their documentary and went back to America Mike Michael had stayed in New Guinea and in the meantime his father Nelson Rockefeller had opened up a museum back home in New York called The Museum of primitive art and what it displayed was artwork from places like New Guinea now this was the early 1960s and so many westerners viewed natives of New Guinea like the people of the Asmat tribe as being very primitive and backwards and so as a result there was a lot of people that were drawn to this new Museum in New York just for the spectacle of it to see what these primitive backwards people were creating but Michael felt like he had a deeper understanding of the natives of New Guinea and he felt like it was his responsibility to go out and find the incredible artwork all around New Guinea including like the best poles from the asman tribe and send that artwork back to his father to be put up in this Museum so that it was more than just a spectacle Michael wanted the people of the West to appreciate and respect the natives of New Guinea the same way he did and he believed through ART he could do that and so Michael had teamed up with Renee the French Anthropologist to go all around New Guinea to find this artwork to send back to his dad a few hours after Simon and Leo had leapt off the sinking catamaran and began their swim to shore Michael and Renee had no idea if they'd even made it to shore they hadn't seen anybody show up to rescue them and so as far as they knew they had no idea how close they were to being rescued or not and as they looked down they saw their catamaran was sinking lower and lower in the water and so at some point Michael and Renee just grabbed buckets and began filling the water out of the catamaran which was totally useless the water was coming in way too quickly but they had nothing else to do and so they're bailing the water out and then a rogue wave comes through and flips the entire catamaran over sending Michael and Renee into the sea and so luckily Michael and Renee were able to swim to the surface they swam over to the now upturned catamaran but there was an air pocket kind of trapped underneath eat it and so it was staying afloat and so Michael and Renee grabbed onto the catamaran and Michael actually grabbed a gas canister that had come off the boat and he attached it to his belt like a flotation device and so he and Renee just kind of held on to this upturned catamaran Michael was also supported by this gas canister and they just continued to wait hoping that Simon and Leo had made it to Shore and that help would be arriving soon but in the back of Michael's mind he knew that if help didn't come soon Michael might have to do something drastic like attempt the swim himself which now was way farther than half a mile away by the next morning when the sun came up Michael and Renee were still in the water holding on to that catamaran waiting for help to arrive but no help had come now Michael was a very good swimmer but by this point he knew they were at least five or maybe even 10 miles from Shore so this would be a gargantuan swim in pretty Rough Waters but you know Michael he's a Rockefeller he had a lot of confidence and he began telling Renee that hey I'm going to do this swim I know I can do it I can swim the whole distance even if it's 10 miles I can do it you know you're going to have to just hang tight it's going to take a while but I'll get us help Renee begged Michael not to go but Michael said I have to do something otherwise we're going to die out here and so all Renee could do was watch as Michael stripped off some of his clothes and attached another gas canister to his belt to give him a little bit more flotation and then Michael shook Renee's hand and then right around 8 A. M on Sunday November 19 1961 Michael began the swim about 12 hours later so that night while Renee is still just holding on to this catamaran hoping help is going to come soon suddenly kind of without warning the sky suddenly erupted with this incredibly bright flame and what it was was a plane flying overhead that had spotted Renee and the upturned catamaran they had fired a flare into the air to be like hey we see you we're gonna send help and then just a couple of hours later a boat came around and picked Renee up and when Renee climbed on board he was so relieved and he asked the captain you know hey did Michael Rockefeller tell you I was out here is that why you knew I was here and the captain said no we were told by two teenagers two guides Simon and Leo that you were out here no one's heard from Michael now you need to remember that Michael Rockefeller was a Rockefeller and so as soon as Renee heard oh my goodness we don't know where Michael is and he told the captain that Michael had begun this unbelievably long swim to shore to get help it was like suddenly a bomb had gone off in the Rockefeller family and they committed all of their money and their resources and their influence to launch the biggest Manhunt basically ever to find Michael they dispatched ships and helicopters and planes they got in touch with the U. S Navy and got them to be fully involved I mean they looked everywhere for weeks but they could not find Michael this search for Michael would continue for years now it wouldn't be as intense as the first few weeks but there was always somebody or some entity looking for Michael around the area where he had begun that swim but by 1964 so three years after Michael had begun the swim to shore the Rockefeller family finally accepted that Michael had to be dead that he had to have drowned on that five or ten mile swim to shore foreign for the last 60 years I've been a hardcore whale male Enthusiast every morning I wake up and I break up my quill and parchment and I draft up the various messages I need to send to my team and then after slapping those in my backpack I dive into the ocean and I swim out until I encounter a whale and then I jump on its back and I spend 45 minutes wrestling with it until I've secured my packages to its Hefty trunk and then I leap off that Beast wish it good luck swim to Shore and wait for my mail to get delivered but despite how glorious this shipping system sounds unfortunately in the past six decades not one whale has understood it was my Courier and so as a result all of my mail has gone undelivered so after 60 years I finally decided to give up on whale mail and join the future and entrust all of my shipping needs to stamps.
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