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 The photo, found in the U.S. National Archives
by retired U.S. Treasury Agent Les Kinney and the subject of a
new History Channel documentary titled, "Amelia Earhart: The
Lost Evidence," shows what appears to be a Caucasian woman
sitting on a dock in the Marshall Islands.
Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan were last seen taking off
in her twin-engine Lockheed Electra on July 2, 1937, from Papua
New Guinea en route to tiny Howland Island, some 2,500 miles
away in the central Pacific. Radio contact with her plane was
lost hours later after 39-year-old Earhart reported running low
on fuel.
A massive air-and-sea search, the most extensive such U.S.
operation at that time, was unsuccessful. Earhart's plane was
presumed to have gone down, but it has never been known whether
she survived, and if so, for how long.
In the two-hour documentary, which airs on Sunday, researchers
say body image comparisons between the photographed woman and
Earhart make the match "very likely."
They hypothesize that Earhart veered away from Howland Island,
crash-landed on the Marshall Islands and was then taken captive
by Japanese forces.
"At first glance, I didn't see anything special about it," said
Gary Tarpinian, executive producer of the History documentary.
He added, however, that after Kinney made the case for why he
thought the photograph showed Earhart, he was "instantly
intrigued."
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Ric Gillespie, executive director of the International Group for
Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), on the other hand, said there
is no evidence the person in the photograph is Earhart.
Gillespie said he believes Earhart died on the island of Nikumaroro,
Kiribati, where a partial skeleton was discovered in 1940. The
bones' dimensions match Earhart's build, likely revealing she died
there as a castaway.
"I could show you a dozen pictures of Amelia Earhart in the last
days of her world flight," said Gillespie. "Her hair's shorter than
that. It's not down on her collar. It's shorter," he said, "and that
doesn't look like Fred Noonan."
"We knew there were going to be people questioning its validity,
especially other people who have spent their lives or their careers
trying to find more information on Amelia Earhart," Tarpinian said.
"We think we have real evidence and we stand behind it."
(Reporting by Ben Gruber and Bob Mezan in Los Angeles; Writing by
Melissa Fares in New York; Editing by Daniel Grebler)
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