A newly unearthed photo shows
Amelia Earhart survived her final flight, investigators say
By Amy B Wang
What happened to Amelia Earhart?
That question has captivated the
public ever since her plane vanished over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 as she
attempted to become the first female pilot to fly around the world.
Now, investigators believe they
have discovered the “smoking gun” that would support a decades-old theory that
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were captured by the Japanese: a newly
unearthed photograph from the National Archives that purportedly shows Earhart
and Noonan — and their plane — on an atoll in the Marshall Islands.
“I was originally skeptical until
we could get the photograph authenticated,” Shawn Henry, a former FBI assistant
executive director who is now helping privately investigate the Earhart
disappearance, told The Washington Post. “The fact that it came out of the
National Archives as opposed to somebody’s basement or garage somewhere — that
to me gave it a lot more credibility.”
The photograph was rediscovered a
few years ago in a mislabeled file at the National Archives by a former U.S.
Treasury agent named Les Kinney, who began looking into Earhart’s disappearance
after he retired, according to previews for a new History channel documentary,
“Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence,” that airs July 9.
The 8-by-10-inch black-and-white
photograph went ignored in a stack of 20 or 30 other pictures until Kinney took
a closer look a few months later, Henry said.
In the photo, a figure with
Earhart’s haircut and approximate body type sits on the dock, facing away from
the camera, Henry points out. Toward the left of the dock is a man they believe
is Noonan. On the far right of the photo is a barge with an airplane on it,
supposedly Earhart’s.
Henry, who was asked to join the
investigation about a year ago, said two different photo experts analyzed the
picture to ensure it had not been manipulated. It had not been, they found. The
experts also compared the facial features and body proportions of the two figures
in the photograph with known pictures of Earhart and Noonan.
For the man on the left, “the
hairline is the most distinctive characteristic,” Ken Gibson, a facial
recognition expert who studied the image, told the “Today” show. “It’s a very
sharp receding hairline. The nose is very prominent. … It’s my feeling that
this is very convincing evidence that this is probably Noonan.”
The figure seated on the dock is
wearing pants, much like Earhart often did, Henry noted.
“I’m looking at her sitting on
the dock and thinking, ‘This is her,’ ” he said.
Though they can’t be sure of when
the photo was taken, there is no record of Earhart being in the Marshall
Islands, he added.
Henry said he traveled to the
Marshall Islands and interviewed the son of a man whose father repeatedly told
others he had witnessed Earhart’s plane land at Mili Atoll in 1937. He also
spoke with the last living person who claimed to have seen the pair after their
emergency landing.
“But again, for me, those things
are all somewhat suspect until you have that photograph, which corroborates
that she was there,” Henry said. “To me, that’s just proof beyond a reasonable
doubt.”
Gary Tarpinian, executive producer of the History
documentary, told the “Today” show that they believe the Koshu, the Japanese
merchant ship in the photo, took Earhart to Saipan, where she died in Japanese
custody.
The team thinks the photo may
have been taken by someone spying on the Japanese, he added. Other questions,
like when and how Earhart died, remain a mystery.
“What happened to her then? Was
there a coverup or not? Did the U.S. government know? What did the Japanese
government know?” Henry said. “I think this actually opens up a whole new line
of questioning.”
Over the past 80 years, three
prevailing theories about Earhart’s disappearance have emerged.
Some speculate that Earhart’s
Lockheed Model 10 Electra crashed and sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean,
killing her and Noonan.
Last year, a Pennsylvania-based
group called The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR)
repositioned the spotlight on an alternate theory: With their fuel rapidly
depleting, Earhart and Noonan used celestial navigation to land on a remote
coral atoll named Gardner Island, about 400 miles south of Howland Island, their
original destination. It was there, TIGHAR says, that the two tried to send out
frantic radio calls for help but eventually died as castaways.
Just last month, the group
launched an ambitious expedition to try to prove its theory, sending
researchers and a pack of forensically trained border collies to Gardner
Island, now called Nikumaroro. The mission: For the dogs to sniff out human
bones that, through DNA matching, would confirm Earhart and Noonan landed and
then perished on that island.
Henry said he isn’t bothered by
other explanations of Earhart’s disappearance.
“I’ve listened to some competing
theories,” he said. “When you look at the totality of what we put together and
then hold that photograph … I think that photograph is as close to a smoking
gun as you’re going to have in a cold case that’s 80 years old.”