by Carl Hoffman
“Who told you this story?” I said.
“Pep was my uncle,” he said. “He looked just like me.”
I asked who was with them, about Ajim and the head, but he would say no more. Kokai didn’t move, didn’t speak, sitting like a statue, smoking. They wanted to leave.
I thanked them, said maybe we could talk more tomorrow, and they were gone.
I didn’t know what to make of it all. The glasses had been a bold attempt at making a fast buck. Maybe even they’d come from Amates, not Kokai, but I didn’t think so; Amates seemed as surprised and pissed off as I. Kokai had nothing, none of the Asmat did; they were dirt poor. I had offered a lot of money. Either Kokai didn’t have the real glasses, or they were so sacred—or he was so frightened—that no amount of money would make him part with them. As for the story, it wasn’t much, but it corresponded with the original reports of van Kessel and von Peij in its most essential elements.
I was still pondering it all when Amates returned early the next morning. He was full of additional small details. They’d killed Michael and eaten him at the Kali Jawor, he said, and planted some of the bones under a clump of bamboo. The head they’d placed in a hollow of a tree, far up the Ewta. We should give Kokai a necklace of dogs’ teeth and a stone ax, he said; that might make him talk more.
“Wouldn’t he rather have money?” I said.
“No,” Amates said. “Let’s go to the Kali Jawor and look. I went there when we went to find Kokai, and there is bamboo at the end of the river.”
I felt that I was at risk of embarking on a never-ending wild-goose chase. Gasoline for the boat cost $10 a gallon, plus the boat itself and Wilem and Amates, and food and tobacco for all of us; going back to the Kali Jawor would cost me hundreds more.
And there was this: fifty years. There was no way we’d find bones in the Asmat mud under fifty years of bamboo growth and rains and tides. A necklace of dogs’ teeth cost hundreds of dollars, a stone ax the same—I could see it going on forever, and I had no idea if the information I was getting was accurate or what they were making up to keep the profitable business of Michael Rockefeller going. My visa was running out, my money was gone. I felt like I was getting lost in a jungle—a jungle of information and myth and story.
It was time to go home.
22
January, February, and March 1962
SAUER (LEFT), SON OF SAMUT, KILLED BY MAX LAPRÉ, AND THE HEAD OF THE JISAR JEU, LOOKS AT PHOTOS TAKEN BY MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER IN THE UNFINISHED JEU, PIRIEN VILLAGE.
IN PUBLIC, OFFICIALS moved quickly to put the case of Michael Rockefeller to rest. On December 20, 1961, one month after Michael disappeared, the Dutch New Guinea court of justice announced its intention to register his death. The next day Platteel sent his secret cable to Bot, informing him of van Kessel’s and von Peij’s reports that Michael had made it to shore and been killed. Nevertheless, that very same day Platteel officially ended the public search for Michael, cabling Nelson Rockefeller: “The entire area has been extensively searched by various parties in close cooperation with local inhabitants, even any rumors were thoroughly investigated. . . . After having examined all reports I regretfully have to inform you my decision to end the unsuccessful search as I feel that not anything more can be done.”
Nelson Rockefeller immediately called a press conference announcing Platteel’s decision and making public his response. “All of us in the family will be eternally grateful to you for . . . the complete and exhaustive search undertaken by your government. You went way beyond the call of duty in your efforts and we will always find comfort in knowing that nothing was left undone.”
Behind the scenes, though, a new search for Michael was just beginning, albeit reluctantly. The reports that van Kessel sent to the government, which made their way to Herman Tillemans, the Church’s apostolic vicar (then the highest Catholic official in Dutch New Guinea), were the last thing anyone wanted to hear. Van Kessel and von Peij named fifteen men as having body parts belonging to Michael, with another thirty-five present at the scene—the political structure of the largest village in southern Asmat, all of its most important men. If they had killed Michael Rockefeller and the Rockefellers knew, well, something would have to be done. But what?
At the height of colonialism, in places like the Belgian Congo or British India or even Dutch New Guinea, the response to the killing of a white might have been simple—an armed raid, villages burned, men dragged away to uncertain and extrajudicial fates. A swift, merciless, and violent reprisal—a lesson taught, as Max Lapré might have said—would have been in order.
But times had changed, even since Lapré’s raid in 1958, just four years before. The Netherlands was still trying to convince the United States and the United Nations that Dutch New Guinea was an orderly place with a functioning government and that the Netherlands itself was an able and enlightened manager. And Michael Rockefeller was no ordinary white man. If he had been killed—and eaten, as described by van Kessel and von Peij—it wasn’t a simple case of one or two guilty men who’d committed a cut-and-dry immoral anomaly and who could be identified and arrested, but a whole village doing what it considered just, carrying on its culture, a culture under intense outside pressure to change at a time when those very cultural elements were being celebrated by people like Nelson Rockefeller and his new museum.
Arrest the fifteen men named? Arrest all fifty who’d been present? What if they resisted, as they surely would? What if the whole village tried to defend them? How many police and soldiers might be necessary? How many people might die, mowed down by men armed with modern weapons? And if the government did manage to arrest anyone, what then? Subject an illiterate group of naked Stone Age warriors to a moral standard and administrative process that were totally incomprehensible to them, all while the Dutch insisted they didn’t even practice headhunting and cannibalism any longer? Perhaps most important, how were they to deal with the motive? How to admit that the whole thing had been set in motion by Dutch administrative officials themselves, by a Dutch patrol officer’s wanton killing of five people?
It was an impossible tangle. Arresting the men involved risked vicious bloodshed and alienation of the entire village (if not all of Asmat), both from the government and the Church, while the Netherlands was still making its case in the UN. It risked exposing the Luns Plan as absurd. It risked alienating the United States, whose support the Netherlands needed if it had any hope of maintaining control of its colony.
Van Kessel had been pushing for a trip home to Holland, and the Church wanted him out fast. Though he had been living among the Asmat for years and spoke their language, he was considered a rogue, a man who had never followed his superiors. The Church wanted to replace him as soon as possible with Anton van de Wouw. Tillemans, his superior, wrote van Kessel. “From the Resident I got approval to see what you have written about Mr. Rockefeller. You have to admit it is a little bit extraordinary that you did not also submit this to me. However, I hope you are extremely cautious, so you or Father van de Wouw will not get into trouble because of this, and therefore the mission will not fall from grace with the population.”
At the end of January 1962, Tillemans quizzed van Kessel closely about details of his report and then sent a series of letters to both von Peij and van Kessel. When I met von Peij in Tilburg in 2012, he said he’d remained silent about the case out of loyalty to his superiors. “I wrote my bishop and he forbade me to talk, to tell the story. The government felt ashamed, and the bishop [Tillemans] agreed, so the government was always silent, and I said nothing. But I have no doubt. I was in Asmat for six years and then in Merauke until 1991, and I am certain.”
The original letters from the time, on apostolic vicar letterhead, back him up. “In the matter of Mr. M. Rockefeller I urgently request you to be extremely cautious,” Tillemans wrote again to von Peij and van Kessel. “The notes I received from van Kessel show it is a public secret. Still nothing is published about it in the newspapers. I wo
uld regret it if the first messages to enter the world came from the side of the mission. So I want to ask both of you not to bring into publicity what you know and that which you are convinced of what happened. Just leave the scoop of talking to someone else. In time it will be revealed.”
On behalf of the Dutch New Guinea resident, Eibrink Jansen, Tillemans requested a report from Alphonse Sowada, an American Crozier father who would, in 1969, become bishop of the newly created Catholic diocese of Agats. “What is most puzzling to me,” Sowada wrote, “is the belief that the Asmat should kill and consume Michael Rockefeller. To my knowledge, the Asmat people in their past history have never killed, much less consumed the flesh of an individual of white extraction. Why should they start at this late date when they have had ample opportunity to do so in the past? To this day, even with intensive Western contact in a few of the Asmat villages, the prevalent belief among the Asmat is that the white man is an ancient ancestor newly arrived to many benefits to the people. On a number of occasions I have been called a Mbji, namely a creature from the spirit world. For me, then, it seems quite improbable at this early stage in their development that the Asmat people would wish to kill, and further, possess the courage to kill a white man.”
Sowada, however, was newly arrived; he had been in Asmat for only six months. He had never been to southern Asmat, neither Otsjanep nor Omadesep, while von Peij and van Kessel spoke the language fluently and had been on the ground in those villages for years. And both priests were convinced that Michael had been killed—and eaten—by the men from Otsjanep.
Von Peij, more conservative than van Kessel, was afraid for his own safety; he wanted a response from the government and wrote to Tillemans on February 3. “I received your letter in relation to this and will follow your advice [about keeping quiet]. I can understand they want to keep this hidden from the outside world. However, nobody can convince me that this was not what happened.” If the government acts “as if it never happened, they are committing a crime. This is my honest conviction. In Ndanim, a good village where people are very satisfied with their dumb catechist, the . . . catechist shot a dog, which had just bitten his chicken to death. And then the villagers told him: ‘Man, watch out a little, that Tuan from America was killed in Otsjanep and nobody did anything in response. . . .’ So, unrelated to the outside world, something has to be done in Asmat. I’m somewhat afraid that what happened to Rockefeller might happen to me or a catechist too if one does simply neglect these killings.”
Zegwaard agreed with von Peij. “Everywhere it’s assumed that Rockefeller Junior was killed by the people of Otsjanep,” Zegwaard wrote Eibrink Jansen on February 14. “The fact that this hasn’t had any consequences, that there hasn’t been any reprisal whatsoever, makes them feel free and able to act with arbitrariness in all kinds of circumstances without being punished for it.”
Van Kessel wanted to contact Michael’s family and even go to America to tell them in person what he knew. Tillemans, 150 miles away in Merauke, was adamant. “I want to ask you to make clear to Father van Kessel,” Tillemans wrote to van Kessel’s boss, the provincial superior, on February 28, 1962, “that there has to be absolute discretion regarding the case of Rockefeller. Bringing these sadistic colored stories into the world is in nobody’s interest. He can prove nothing. . . . Leave it to the Governor [Platteel], who is completely informed about all this and who knows more than van Kessel can possibly expect. Or more than what he thinks is passed on by me.
“I reject his plan to go to America and will not give my approval. Also, correspondence with Mr. Rockefeller, tempting or not, must be forbidden. This case is way too precarious for him to get involved in.
“The governor and Resident of Merauke are worried about irresponsible behavior of priest van Kessel. I hope he will spare the mission unpleasantries. He asks for clemency with the village that would have committed the murder. Father Van Pey [sic] calls for immediate measures against that village etcetera etcetera. Let him have faith in the people who bear the responsibility for this. It is not up to Father van Kessel.”
Three days later, Tillemans sent another letter to the provincial superior. “I rely on you to forbid van Kessel to go to America, whatever the circumstances might be and to forbid him to correspond with the family Rockefeller too.”
Tillemans’s letters read like the defense of pedophiles in the Church, or like Penn State’s reaction to accusations against its football coach Jerry Sandusky. How could such a thing be possible? There’s no proof. The rumors could damage our reputation. Better to say nothing. Protecting itself was, of course, standard Church operating procedure, as revealed in a December 2011 report by the Dutch Conference of Bishops and the Conference of Dutch Religious Orders, detailing the abuse of more than twenty thousand children by Dutch priests and lay workers between 1945 and 2010. The Church rarely investigated these allegations, and when it did, the most common punishment was a quiet transfer. In New Guinea, by the end of January, van Kessel was shipped back to Holland, replaced by van de Wouw.
For all of its public denials, however, the Dutch government took van Kessel’s and von Peij’s reports seriously. Although the government had informed the Rockefellers that every stone had been peered under and the case had been closed, Eibrink Jansen decided to dispatch Dutch patrol officer Wim van de Waal to Otsjanep to investigate, along with nine armed Papuan police. On March 4, Father van de Wouw sent Gabriel (van Kessel’s former assistant, who was now working for him) to Otsjanep with the pretext of building a house there for van de Wouw, but really in hopes that he might hear something further about the murder and to prepare the villagers for the coming of van de Waal and the police.
On March 23, Father van de Wouw wrote Tillemans that “Gab did not pick up anything in Ocenep [sic] that would point to the murder of M.R., nor the opposite,” and that van de Waal and the police would arrive the following week.
Tillemans responded, cautioning van de Wouw: “If you get new information on the case of Rockefeller then be careful, because the topic is like a cabinet of glass. Of course, as long as there is no proof one keeps saying that one didn’t know anything, and rightly so. If you find any proof don’t mention this to anybody! Please, everything via me. So no messages to other priests or KvK [Kees van Kessel] in the Netherlands. Keep silent in Agats too. I really ask you to keep this case strictly confidential in separate letters with a double envelope and the word ‘Secret’ on the inner envelope.”
The word was about to get out, however. On January 13, 1962, a Dutch priest working in Asmat, W. Hekman, wrote his parents back home in Arnhem a note full of salacious details. Michael Rockefeller, he told them, had been speared and eaten by villagers from Otsjanep, in revenge for the men shot to death by police a few years before. The names of the men who still had his bones were known. An American woman had been eaten too (this wasn’t true). And no one could go to the village or else they, too, would be killed and eaten. The parents leaked the letter, which exploded across the Associated Press wires during the third week of March. On March 27, Jan Herman van Roijen, the Dutch ambassador to the United States, cabled his foreign ministry. “Press reports from the Netherlands mention a message which a Dutch missionary allegedly sent to his family . . . that Michael Rockefeller did indeed reach the New Guinea coast, but was eaten there by the natives and that his skull and bones would have been preserved. For the benefit of the office of Governor Rockefeller, who contacted this embassy in this connection, it would be appreciated if I could be informed about the source and the value of these reports.”
Joseph Luns, the foreign minister himself, replied to van Roijen the following day. “Similar rumors also circulated previously in a small circle in Dutch New Guinea,” wrote Luns. “These rumors were contradicted as being completely unfounded by . . . the Apostolic Vicar of Merauke [Tillemans]. Any rumor in that regard has been investigated thoroughly by the resident of New Guinea, F. R. J. Eibrink Jansen, and the content of them have been called entirely incorr
ect.” It was classic government denial. In reality, the apostolic vicar, Tillemans, had shown no interest in investigating the case, had relied on the opinion of men who hadn’t been anywhere near the events, and had done everything he could to silence von Peij and van Kessel, the only two men who were on the ground and had been in Asmat longer than any other white there. As for the thorough government investigation, Eibrink Jansen believed the reports were serious enough that he was sending van de Waal and a gang of policemen to Otsjanep the very week the news hit the newspapers, an investigation that hadn’t even begun yet.
Nevertheless, the denials did the trick: the next day newspapers around the world reported that there was no truth to the rumors.
Meanwhile, van de Waal built a police post in Otsjanep and settled in. Slowly, he began ingratiating himself into the village, giving gifts of soap to the children, tobacco to the men, helping the men build wooden walkways over the mud and swamp. “It must have been strange for the people there,” he told me, sitting around his dining room table on the Spanish island of Tenerife, where he’d lived since 1968.
At seventy-three, van de Waal looked fit and strong, with a salt-and-pepper goatee and deep blue eyes. He was a man comfortable in his own skin, and comfortable in foreign places—he had been married to a Spanish woman for decades—with a quiet self-confidence and sure-footedness that would have served him well in a place like Asmat. He hadn’t said a word about the case in fifty years. But the case, and his time in Asmat—a young man’s exotic interlude—had always remained with him. He showed me meticulously organized loose-leaf binders filled with original documents, including a bill of sale that he’d gotten from René Wassing for the catamaran, as well as photos of him and the Asmat and of Nelson and Mary in Pirimapun. “The Asmat in Otsjanep didn’t understand why I was there,” he said. “It was a complicated village, and they feel like talking about these things brings them bad luck, so I had to do everything little by little and smoked with them and gave them gifts, and eventually we started talking about old murders and headhunting and who had been killed, and when I’d tell them a story they’d say, ‘Yes, that’s correct.’ ”
