He fell in love with the Asmat men, with their muscular bodies and laissez-faire attitude toward sexual identity, and returned over and over again.
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On November 17th, 1961, his boat overturned about 12 miles from shore, and he decided to swim for it. He was never seen again. Extensive searches of the area -- the Rockefellers could afford very extensive searches -- revealed no clue to his fate.
Sounds like a tragic but easily explainable event: Rockefeller drowned, or was eaten by a shark, during the 12-mile swim.
But paranormal authors latched onto the story. He was abducted by aliens, or swam through a time vortex, or was living as the god-king of a lost tribe, or was living incognito in Hollywood. The fact that Rockefeller was "secretly gay" increased the aura of scandal.
A more plausible theory has him reaching the shore, where he was killed and eaten by the Asmat. They weren't usually cannibals, but the play The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller (2010) suggests that Michael (Aaron Strand, top photo) represented a sexual threat.
His barely-contained homoerotic interest in Designing Man (Daniel Morgan Shelley, left) threatens his lover, Plentiful Bliss (Tracey Jack), who happens to be his best friend's wife. So Michael must die.
The book Savage Harvest, by anthropologist Carl Hoffman (2014), documents the murder theory with eyewitness testimonies from villagers. But he minimizes the sexual-threat angle, suggesting that the Asmat killed Michael in retaliation for some murders of their people by Dutch traders a few years earlier.