Rockefeller mystery punctuated by 'firm fears' for safety

But friends and family say Herman Rockefeller had no reason to disappear. Photo / Supplied

The mystery that began with a missing millionaire and his bag of grapefruit could end halfway to nowhere with his abandoned car and a sausage roll.

What happened in between is where detectives are struggling: how and why did Herman Rockefeller suddenly vanish last week? And more importantly, where is he now?

The unexplained disappearance is punctuated by "very firm fears" for his safety, a police raid late last night with two people taken into custody for questioning, and a loving family desperate to hear from him.

The 52-year-old Harvard graduate is now more famous as a missing person than when he was running multi-million-dollar business deals across Australia and New Zealand, for which his close group of friends believe would humiliate a man who lived a quiet and private life.

Mr Rockefeller is married to a New Zealander, Vicky, and between 1992 and 2000 was chief financial officer for Brierley Investments.

Despite a task force of detectives chasing up every lead, major theories have run the gamut of taking off on his own to more sinister plots of extortion or murder.

But friends and family say Mr Rockefeller had no reason to leave, had no enemies, no disputes, conflicts or hints of a secret life.

The arrest of two people from a Hadfield townhouse on South Street on Thursday near the airport only deepened to the mystery.

"He had virtually everything a bloke would want," says one long-time friend.

"He had a great house in a great area. He had money, he had success, he's a devoted family man with strong core values. He's not the kind of bloke who would ever let you down."

Since arriving in Geelong from the United States in the '60s, Mr Rockefeller has quietly built a family fortune.

He spent over a decade in New Zealand with Brierley; he could have retired at 40 after holding senior positions with the Pratt family's Visy empire, but kept working as a corporate adviser with Singapore-based IDFC Capital, acquiring properties along the way.

While he is known as a sensitive man, though notoriously late and terrible with directions, friends say he has a focused business mind and is a whiz with numbers.

"He could be remarkably calm in dealing with millions of dollars in transactions," one friend said. "The pressure never showed."

Then, one Thursday evening, he vanished.

The last image of Mr Rockefeller was caught on Melbourne Airport CCTV footage on January 21 when he returned from a four-day interstate business trip with his brother.

Dressed in a grey business suit, the property investor headed to his car in the long-term carpark carrying a plastic bag full of grapefruit.

For some unknown reason he decided to walk rather than take the airport's shuttle bus to his vehicle.

At 9.32pm his 2007 Toyota Prius left the airport. While investigators are confident it was Mr Rockefeller driving the car, they can't rule out that someone else was behind the wheel.

His car never arrived at his southern Melbourne dress-circle home in East Malvern. His wife called police within two hours of him failing to turn up.

Four days later the car was spotted dumped northwest of the city in rural Victoria. The car was locked and abandoned near a Ballan country homestead on a lonely stretch of road next to the Werribee River.

That same day a man matching his description walked into a general store about 10 kilometres away and ordered a hot pie, sausage roll and a cold drink. He returned later to buy a carton of milk.

"We still don't know 100 per cent if it's him, but we're pretty sure," says Jan Spiteri, co-owner of the Gordon General Store. "He looked a little bit unshaven."

Friends are more sceptical and discount the unconfirmed sighting. Mr Rockefeller would never eat a pie and sausage roll, they say, because he is a marathon runner and fitness fanatic.

Homicide detectives were called in to assist in the investigation, but became increasingly tight-lipped on their progress once the car was examined.

"I'm not going to say what we found in the car," said Detective Senior Sergeant Stuart Bateson.

While there have been a half-dozen unconfirmed sightings across rural Victoria and NSW, many believe the car holds the key to the mystery - perhaps a vital clue police want to keep close to their chest.

Was there a note? Was the bag of grapefruits inside the car? Was he perhaps followed? Or maybe something happened inside the airport? One theory friends are exploring centres on a possible third party being involved - a theory pushed into the spotlight late in the week when homicide detectives confirmed they were exploring foul play in their investigation.

"It all depends on what's in the car and the police are keeping that secret, for whatever reason," one long-term friend says of the case.

"I'm still optimistic he's going to come out of this on the other end, but the police are holding the key to it."

Police have gathered everything the man spotted eating the pie and sausage roll may have touched in the rural general store, but have not said whether forensic investigators have drawn any conclusions from the evidence.

The investigation appears to now be chasing multiple leads.

Missing persons detectives have seized control of his Facebook page while on Thursday officers questioned neighbours about whether they had spotted him at home hours after he was reported missing.

Hours later and homicide detectives searched the Hadfield home near the airport and took a 57-year-old man and 41-year-old woman into custody.

"We are still yet to locate Mr Rockefeller," said Det Snr Sgt Bateson.

The mystery seems to be gripping Australians with hundreds of arm-chair detectives airing their own theories online.

"My guess is he's either decided to do a runner or had a complete brain snap," says one observer on Twitter.

"That story has me utterly baffled," Western Australian Courtney Murphy said on the social-networking site.

A Facebook group has also surfaced, with theories ranging from alien abductions to him being so infuriated by those asking if he's related to the American Rockefeller dynasty (he's not) that he's taken off.

For his wife and two children, however, the mystery is very real and incredibly painful.

"Everyone is just shattered," says Ian Lyle, a friend of 40 years.

His wife, Vicky, has even stopped giving media interviews after sobbing through two days of public pleading for information.

"We've just reached a dead end so to speak," she told ABC Radio earlier in the week.

"We've been through phone records, credit cards, banks, tollways, everything. I mean everything possible has been checked and there's just nothing."

Sophia Gibb, one of two directors of the Salvation Army's family tracing unit, says the unknown is most traumatic element for relatives of missing persons.

"They just want to know where they are," she says. "And if they know they are safe and they are well, sometimes that's all that people want to know to bring them closure."

Tear-filled appeals for Rockefeller to call home have gone unanswered.

"I've been praying. A lot of people have been," his brother Charles Rockefeller told one newspaper this week.

"I encourage people to keep praying."

- AAP