Searching for Amelia
65 years later, the mystery of Amelia Earhart continues
June 30, 2002 Posted: 10:12 PM EDT (0212 GMT)

HONOLULU, Hawaii (AP) -- Elgen Long believes Amelia Earhart remains in her plane on the Pacific Ocean floor after running out of gas.

Tod Swindell theorizes she survived a crash landing in the Marshall Islands, was captured by the Japanese and secretly repatriated, living out her life as a New Jersey housewife.

Sixty-five years after her disappearance at age 39, the missing pilot remains one of America's great mysteries and the subject of continuing searches of the Pacific and research and debate.

The tomboy who became an icon with her short tousled hair, leather jacket and silk scarf already had set numerous flying records when she began her final flight May 20, 1937, from Oakland, Calif.

She made it as far as New Guinea. And on July 2, she took off from there for tiny Howland Island on a 2,556-mile flight that would be one of her longest and most dangerous.

Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, never made it to the tiny atoll southwest of Hawaii. She radioed she was running low on fuel.

The official position of the U.S. government has been that Earhart and Noonan went down with their plane.

Elgen Long, a consultant for Nauticos, a company based in Hanover, Md., supports the government conclusion and earlier this year led a $1.7 million, 27-day search of waters within 100 miles of Howland. The expedition ended early with equipment problems. Nauticos plans to resume the effort when repairs are made and more money is raised, Long said.

"We have high expectations the airplane is in the area we are searching," Long said. "It's important to find it to correct the history of the event."

The Nauticos effort was preceded by Dana Timmer's group in 1999. Head of Howland Landing Ltd. of Reno Nev., he spent $1 million to hunt for plane in 1999. Timmer still wants to try again, but waits for more money.

He has acquired rights to the Lockheed Electra from Earhart's estate, and he wants to restore it and display it at a museum.

Ric Gillespie, on the other hand, believes the plane landed at Gardner Island, now called Nikumaroro in the Phoenix Islands.

Gillespie, a former aviation accident investigator, heads up The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), a nonprofit that has made six trips to Gardner Island over the past 14 years.

On the trip last September, the group found evidence of a castaway. Artifacts recovered there are still being analyzed, Gillespie said.

Other researchers believe the Marshall Islands are where Earhart and Noonan landed, and from there are some of the most intriguing theories.

Earhart's mother, Amy Otis Earhart, in a 1949 newspaper interview, said she was convinced her daughter was on a government mission and was picked up by a Japanese fishing boat and taken to the Marshalls, which the Japanese controlled.

In his 1966 book "In Search of Amelia Earhart," the late Fred Goerner says former Pacific Fleet commander Chester Nimitz told him Earhart and Noonan were picked up by the Japanese.

Most who believe that theory think Noonan was executed and that Earhart was executed or died of dysentery.

However, Joe Gervais' research convinced him Earhart survived, was repatriated and returned secretly to the United States where she lived in New Jersey under the name of Irene Craigmile Bolam.

Gervais, a retired fighter pilot, was introduced to Bolam in 1965 at a gathering of the Early Birds of Aviation, a group of aviation pioneers. He noticed her resemblance to Earhart and that she was wearing two aviation pins Earhart had worn.

When a book based on Gervais' research came out in 1970 -- "Amelia Earhart Lives" by Joe Klaas -- Bolam sued. Five years later, the defendants offered to settle for the requested $2 million if Bolam provided fingerprints in front of the judge. Bolam dropped the suit, Gervais said in a 1996 interview with Tod Swindell, a screenwriter.

Before Bolam died on July 7, 1982, she willed her body to Rutgers University for research. A spokeswoman for the medical school there said the body was later cremated. Bolam's death certificate listed her parents as "unknown."

Swindell, a professional screenwriter, has expanded on Gervais' research, trying to find out if Bolam was really Earhart. Recently he showed a conference of Earhart aficionados overlays of photos of the pilot's face and hands, matching perfectly with those of Bolam.

"It's an exact congruence," said Swindell who had the help of two forensic pathologists.

"We were inclined to think Irene probably was not Amelia Earhart," said John Bolam, a retired aerospace engineer from Merritt Island, Fla., and a half-brother of Guy Bolam, Irene's husband. However, he said, "The forensic studies are very convincing."

While Irene Bolam denied being Earhart, she was not an ordinary housewife as she claimed, John Bolam said. "She was influential, knew many well-placed people and was well-traveled."