April 1, 2025 • 38 mins
Amelia Earhart was a living legend -- this high-flying aviation pioneer garnered international acclaim and accolades for her daring flights across the planet. On July 2nd, 1937, midway through a flight around the world, Earhart's plane disappeared. Although she was declared legally dead on January 5th, 1939, theories about the true story of her disappearance linger in the public consciousness today. So what really happened to Amelia Earhart? Why do some people believe she didn't actually die on that fateful flight?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist. This classic is for all our fellow
aviation nerds out there. It's a little bit ridiculous history.
It's a little bit unsolved mystery. It's definitely it's definitely
one that caught us in twenty nineteen. And even when
we started exploring this, the mystery was decades and decades old.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, this is a story that we've heard about for
a long time. It's talked about in almost every unsolved
mystery series that's ever been on television, right because it's
one of the most enduring ones. A human being that
was lauded, talked about all the time, a huge deal
and then just gone.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Or did they actually disappear? This is the story of
Amelia Earhart. I gotta tell you, guys, with the benefit
of retrospect giant crabs, you heard it here first, folks.
From UFOs to psychic hours and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
(01:07):
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Hello, and welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
My name is Noel, and our compatriot Matt is on
adventures but will be returning soon they call me Ben.
We were joined with our super producer Paul mission control
decand most importantly, you are here and that makes this stuff.
They don't want you to know. Now, Noel, you just
got off a plane, Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I did, and I got the plane crid and I
hope I don't pass it on to you in this
sort of fuselage asque environment that we're currently inhabiting.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
That's fine with me. Honestly. When I have a little
bit of the cred or a head cold, I love writing.
It's I don't know it does. It does great stuff
for creativity. Maybe it's because I don't feel like going
outside and doing things.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Also true, man, also true?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Also true?
Speaker 3 (02:06):
What's you?
Speaker 1 (02:08):
And I have been on a lot of planes, as
have you Paul, and has had many people listening to
this show today, and this is a question for everyone
to think about. You and I can take a sabbage
answering this too right now, if you'd like, NOL, what
is the craziest flight you've ever had or what's the longest?
Are you a person who's terrified of flying? I would
(02:28):
say you're not.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
No, I'm not. I haven't been on any super long
flights in a while. But I think I maybe mentioned
this on our other show, Ridiculous History, when we talked
about luxury airlines and why they don't really exist anymore.
Check that one out. But there was one time where
and this is gonna be this makes me sound such
a tool, but I'm gonna say it anyway, and the
quick version, there was one time where I'm used to
ticking Delta where they have us be chargers and screens
(02:52):
on the back of the chairs in front of you,
and I took a Southwest flight for the first time
and didn't have like a power brick for my phone,
and I was expected until you have a USB and
didn't have one, and my phone died and I had
to be alone with my thoughts for the entire flight.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
It was terrifying, especially if you were It's so strange
how quickly things become normalized. And if you are expecting something,
not to crib too hard from our earlier episode on
Ridiculous History, but if you're expecting something all of a
sudden it's taken away, it's tough to recover from that.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
It really is.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
It's in a strange way. It's similar to having two
very different beverages next to your plates when you're eating
and then expecting you were going to, I don't know,
drink water, but you accidentally pick up the juice or
the milk and your mouth goes what why? Or the
kerosene or the kerosene? I weren't the kerosene very popular
(03:43):
beverage here in Atlanta. It's strange that there are millions
of people frankly terrified of flying, especially when you consider
that statistically, you are much much, much more likely to
get into an automobile accident than ever to be involved
in a plane crash. But whether you love fly, whether
(04:04):
you hate those vast stretches of sky, sun and cloud,
whether you've been on a plane you know, three times
a week for most of your life, or whether you've
never been on a plane or have it yet, you
have at least some inkling of the story of one
Amelia Earhart, And this is the topic of our episode today.
(04:27):
So here are the facts.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Amelia Earhart was born on July twenty fourth, eighteen ninety seven,
and she was the daughter of Amy and Edwin. Earhart
lived with her mother's parents until she was twelve, and
they were quite wealthy, so she was afforded some privilege,
including attending private school. And then in nineteen oh nine,
Amelia and her youngest sister moved to Des Moines. Did
(04:51):
you pronounce the s? I say de Wine des Moine.
I want to go with de Moines, Iowa. And that's
where they were reunited with their parents because their father
went to work for a railroad company and he moved
there to join them and take that gig.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, they moved him to a new position. The family
continued to move around from Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Springfield, Illinois,
and so on. This was not a happy home, you see.
Edwin Earhart had been waging an unsuccessful battle with alcoholism
(05:26):
for the entirety of Amelia's life, and this experience with
a parent who had substance abuse problems gave Earhart a lifelong,
abiding dislike of booze, along with the deep, deep desire
for financial security. And you have to you know, you
can understand it when you think of the disparity she
(05:47):
encountered in her life. She had very wealthy maternal grandparents
and then struggling immediate parents, you know, so she saw
both sides, the have and the have nots of life.
So in nineteen fourteen, Amy Earhart, Amelia's mother, takes the kids,
she leaves her husband, and they go to Chicago. In Chicago,
(06:08):
Amelia graduates from the Hyde Park School in nineteen fifteen.
Interesting historical side note. In the yearbook, she is described
as ae the girl in brown who walks alone. It's
a dubious what do they call them?
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Monica superlative? Yeah, the honorific maybe a thing.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Honorifics are a thing, but I think honorifics are closer
to titles.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
He might be right. I think you might be right.
It's true, the girl in brown who walks along. That's intense. Actually, yeah,
it's almost like a ninja wondering ninja kind of nickname, you.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Know, unhappy intellectual. I mean, high school Ben Bullen would
have been all about getting her number, telegram address. What
did they do back then?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Noe, not clear, Maybe a particular Morse code right signal.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
No.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
But she went on to go to a place called
the Ogonte School, which was a private high school. And
this is interesting. I never really heard this. I guess
it goes straight from high school to junior college, which
I guess it's like the early year of college or
is it more of like a community college.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, it feels like it's either a community college or
a prep school, you know.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Right, because if it was a community college, sort of
as a sort of like a second like not as prestigious. Right.
It's a two year program.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
A lot of community colleges have a two year program,
and so sometimes people, for one reason or another will
take their prerequisites at a community college two year college
and then go for the latter half of their college
career at a more expensive institution.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
That makes sense. So then she went on to visit
her sister Muriel, who was living in Toronto, and that
is where she saw someone who had returned from World
War One and had lost a limb in combat, an amputee.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yes, and this moves her. She immediately refuses to return
to her junior college high school and instead becomes a
volunteer nurse in a veteran hospital. And then she also,
during her time working as a volunteer nurse, she also
becomes a pacifist and this is something that she will
(08:17):
keep for as far as we know the rest of
her life. Emphasis on, as far as we know. So
that's the early days of Amelia Earhart, but of course,
most of us know her for her aviation.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Career, that's right. Another first for Amelia was in nineteen
fifteen when she saw her very first air show and
had the opportunity to actually ride on an airplane. She
seemed to become passionate about things pretty quickly. She was
very driven and had a sense of what her mission
was in life. I think that's interesting part of her character.
(08:54):
She knew right away that she wanted to take flying lessons,
so she went to a place called Burt Canner's Airfield,
which is on Long Beach, Bulevard in LA from a
woman with a lovely name, Nedda Snooks.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yeah, yeah, Nedda Snooks, which sounds like a made up
name but is very real. But again, as I think
we've said before, on the air, all names are made up.
At some point. On December fifteenth, nineteen twenty one, Amelia
finally receives her license from the National Aeronautics Association or NAH.
(09:25):
She was working part time as a file clerk, as
an office assistant, as a photographer, as a truck driver,
and she was pinching her pennies. She was scrounging and
saving and she got a little bit of help from
her mother, which enabled Amelia Earhart to buy her own plane.
Think about how extraordinary that is.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Okay, first of all, like a little bit of scratch
from her mother to buy a plane, right, And we
know a little bit about this plane, don't we.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
We do know a little bit about it. It was
what was called a Kinner airster, just like the Kinner
air Field. Kinder airster was a two seat, single engine biplane.
So it wasn't you know, it was still a plane.
It would get you in the air. You can actually
see a photograph of Amelia Earhart and her instructor, Netta
(10:17):
Snook standing together by the airstar. Oh.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, so it's like it looks almost like one of
those fighter type planes you would have seen in World
War One.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah, it's like a biplane, I guess, yeah, that exactly. Yeah,
And she loved this plane and she was It was
such a tremendous moving moment for her to be able
to purchase her own plane. That's still a pipe dream
for a lot of people here in twenty nineteen as
we record this. However, flying as anybody with a pilot's
(10:49):
license ken assurus can be a very expensive hobby and
she could afford to buy the plane, but she could
not afford to continue flying. You know, the maintenance fee's
fuel fuel definitely. So eventually she sold her plane and
she bought an automobile. She drove her mother to Boston,
(11:10):
where her younger sister, Muriel was teaching school, and a
little bit after that she re enrolls in college. She
goes to Columbia University in New York City, but she
doesn't have the scratch again to continue studies for more
than one year. A little bit dejected, she returns to Boston.
She becomes a social worker, She joins the National Aeronautics Association,
(11:34):
and she still in her spare time when she can
find finds opportunities to fly.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
So I wonder what she thinks. She must have just
like taken a class or like, you know, rented one
for the afternoon or.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Guess so, yeah, that feels like a big trust fall.
Really rent my.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Plane, rent my plane exactly. So then in nineteen twenty eight,
Erhart gets a pretty incredible opportunity. You guys remember Charles W. E.
Charles Lyndenburg, who became the first person, obviously a man,
to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean back in nineteen
twenty seven. So this guy named George Palmer Putnam was
(12:13):
the editor of a book about Charles Lindbergh's voyage and
decided to kind of drum up some pr with a
sort of a stunt that he would have. We have
seen it as a stunt at the time. It's like, hey,
lets let's let's put a lady on a plane. You know,
we'll make a make a lady do the same flight.
Because that that's crazy, that could never happen.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Imagine that.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Imagine that. Yeah, put a name up in a byplan.
Goodness gracious, yeah, the the uproar must have been marked.
So he dubs her lady Lyndy because of yeah, it
sits just a little bit on the nose and kind
of a little misogynistic to say, to say the least,
and decides to make her kind of the star of
the show. So puts her on a plane with a
(12:53):
pilot by the name of William Stultz and a mechanic
by the name of Lewis Gordon, and she crossed the
Atlantic from Newfoundland to Wales on June eighteenth through nineteenth
of nineteen twenty eight. But she wasn't flying the plane.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, and this really bothered her. She never once touched
the controls of the plane and afterward described herself as
little more than a quote sack of potatoes. Still, she
became world renowned as the first woman to fly the Atlantic.
George Putnam clearly was capitalizing on this marketing opportunity. He
(13:31):
became Amelia Earhart's manager and later her husband when they
married in nineteen thirty one. So here's what he did.
As her manager. He arranged all of her flying engagements
in step with this exhaustive series of lecture tours, like
she would lecture for twenty nine days out of thirty one,
like in a row.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Jeez. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
And eventually she grew irritated because she said, you know,
I'm I'm reading the press here and people are saying
that I am not an actual pilot, that more or
less a puppet that my husband created for public relations purposes.
So I am going to prove to people that I
(14:13):
am the real deal, a genuine aviator. And this leads
her to pilot a Lockheed Electra from Newfoundland, Canada, all
the way to Ireland. This is impressive because a Lockheed
Electra is a tiny, tiny, tiny plane. It's a single engine.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
It's true. And lest you think you've made a mistake
and you're actually listening to an episode of ridiculous history,
that's sort of how it sounds with just the two
of us doing a topic like this. I actually kind
of forgot myself for a second what show we're doing.
But we're getting there, guys. There's a twist coming, I promise.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yes there is. On May twentieth, the twenty first, nineteen
thirty two, five years after Lindberg makes his solo flight,
Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the
Atlantic Soul and for the next five years she is
a champion of women's rights as well as commercial aviation.
She sets numerous world records, she gets accolades and awards
(15:10):
from across the planet, and she decides eventually that she
will circumnavigate the globe, that she will fly around the world, and,
after a brief word with our sponsors, will walk through
the infamous last voyage of Amelia Earhart.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
On July second, nineteen thirty seven, just twenty two days
before her fortieth birthday, Amelia Earhart and her navigator friend
Fred Noonan vanished partially through their attempt at circumnavigating the globe.
They vanished. We know this. They vanished somewhere between Ley,
(15:55):
New Guinea and Howland Island and the navy. The US
Navy searched the largest swath they'd ever searched for a
missing person an history at that point, and they found
neither plane nor crew. Then, on January fifth of nineteen
thirty nine, Amelia Earhart was declared legally dead after being
(16:19):
missing for eighteen months. So what happened?
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Here's where it gets crazy. Theories on the disappearance of
Amelia Earhart have proliferated for almost a century now. The
official report concluded that Earhart and Noonan were unable to
land on their their planned destination of Holland Island, and
(16:44):
that while trying to find this destination they ran out
of fuel, they crashed into the water and sank. But
of course that sort of explanation did very little to
quell suspicion, especially because there were no remains of plane
nor person to be found. Owned there are a couple
of different theories that run counter to the official narrative.
(17:05):
One theory suggests that this is the weirdest one, that
Amelia Earhart actually didn't die. She not only survived, but
she returned to the US. She changed her name to
Irene Bolm b O L A M. And lived a long,
long life in obscurity. There are actually some books written
(17:26):
about this.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
But why to what end? It's strange? Yeah, she unhappy
and I want to do what a weird name? To
change her name to Bolum? No one suspects them, right, No,
I guess not right, that's true. It's very clear. I
don't know van are you? Are you potentially a missing aviator?
Speaker 1 (17:42):
No relation to Bolum? Okay, all right, you like how
I didn't really answer your question.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
I do like that, you know, I love it when
you do that. Actually, it's one of my favorite things
in the whole world. So in a book by Joe
Class from the nineteen seventies, I'm not quite sure exactly
what your came out called Amelia Earhart lives. This gentleman
makes the case that Earhart was in fact captured and
then taken to Saipan and then to Tokyo, where she
(18:10):
was a prisoner of the Imperial Palace until nineteen forty five.
The theory argues that Earhart's secret was used as a
bargaining chip after the war to allow the Japanese emperor
to remain in power. What secret has this been?
Speaker 1 (18:27):
The secret would be that they were able that the
Japanese government was using Earhart as leverage to preserve the
emperor's standing in the community post World War Two. The
idea here being that there was a what's the term
so popular nowadays, a bit of a quid pro quo?
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Oh, yes, clarius, a bit of a.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Quid pro quo, and that you know, if the Allies
allowed the emperor to retain the position of the royal family,
then Earhart would be returned to the US. Yes, of
course that doesn't explain the name change, right, So bracket
that we'll get back to that one. There's another much
more popular theory that we wanted to share with you today.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
That's right. Another widely held belief is that Earhart and
Noonan actually did touch down on a remote South Pacific
island called Nicu Maroro. You okay there in I thought
they did agree. I'm not a native speaker and I'm
not either, but we always try to do our best.
And this at the time of their disappearance would have
been uninhabited and was known as Gardiner Island. The Airhart Project,
(19:34):
which is a division of the International Group for Historic
Aircraft Recovery or TIGER or Tiger GHAR, I still think
it's pronounced Tiger, and it's an organization dedicated to investigating
this hypothesis. So TIGER has been investigating the island since
nineteen eighty nine and they've collected a ton of intriguing
(19:55):
things related to the case, improvised tools, remains of shoes,
in aircraft wreckage parts, which is consistent with Airhart's plane
an Electra exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
They also discovered that a few years after Earhart vanished,
a British colonial officer found the remains of a castaway
on what was then called Gardner Island, now known as
Nico Morero. The bones were sent to Fiji for analysis,
but ultimately they were misplaced and lost. Let's fast forward
(20:30):
to the future. During Tigers Tigers twenty ten expedition, their
team found some of the most compelling clues they had
ever seen. They were looking around in a spot where
they had previously identified what was likely the remains of
a campfire, and they found three pieces of a pocket knife.
(20:53):
They found shells that have been cut open, glass cosmetic
jar fragments. Thereof little bits of makeup and and bone
fragments that they thought might be from a human being. Now,
let's let's put our skeptic hats on because we're gonna
talk a little bit about a History Channel documentary. Did
(21:14):
you hear about this one?
Speaker 3 (21:15):
No?
Speaker 1 (21:16):
We know how a History Channel and a lot of
the cable TV channels have those investigative shows, and sometimes
they're top notch, very well researched, very honest, and other
times they're a little too George Suklos, you know, saying
ancient aliens kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
The fro mm.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Yeah, yeah, it's less of a fro.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
And more of just like a wild hairdo.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Let's say it's a main Yeah, he's a he's a
nice guy.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
I've heard I like his I'd like his whole name
and hair situations. Fun to say, it's got a nice mouthfeel. Yeah, No,
it's true, and this one was of that variety. No,
was it good?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Well, this is the question we leave to you and
your fellow listeners. Right the name of the document who
was Amelia Earhart? The Lost Evidence? And it dives headfirst
into the theory that Noonan and Earhart were captured by
Japanese forces. In the documentary, there's a retired federal agent.
His name is Les Kenny and less. Kenny and his
(22:14):
team searched through records at the National Archives to find
any overlooked clues to the disappearance of Aarhart.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
That's right. He and his team found a photograph that
was stamped with official Office of Naval Intelligence marks that
read Marshall Islands, Jalui Atoll, Jalue Island, Jaluwe Harbor and
the photo a ship can be seen that's towing a
barge with an Airplan on the back of it, and
then nearby on a dock you can see several people.
(22:45):
And Kenny argues that the photo had to have been
taken before nineteen forty three because US Air Forces conducted
more than thirty bombing runs on Jalui in nineteen forty
three and forty four. He believed are through that was
like a range of time, so they did it quite frequently.
He believes the plane on the barge is the Electra
(23:07):
and that the two people are two of the people
on the dock are Airhart and Nonan.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
And then we have a way in also in the
same documentary from Doug Karner and Kent Gibson. These are
forensic analysts, and Karner looked at it and said, Okay,
no one is messed with this photo, meaning no one
has altered it. It was from that time and is legit.
(23:33):
And then Kent Gibson specializes in recognizing faces, and he
says it's very likely that the two individuals they point
out on the dock there are Earhart and Nonan. Both
of them also say that the ship in the photo
is a Japanese vessel called the Koshu Maru, and they
(23:55):
think this is the ship that took Earhart and Nonin
away after they survived that crash landing. If that is
you believe the television show, that's where we have our
skepticats on, you know what I mean, because we have
to ask ourselves, not in any way being a derogatory
toward the experts in the show, nor to the History
(24:18):
Channel or what have you. We have to ask ourselves
how much of this we believe? And it's it's a
good question. We have to ask ourselves how sincere or
how disingenuous some of these outfits can be.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
You know, what was the name of the ship in question.
The Koshu Ma rooms have the same as the Kobayashi
Ma room.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
That is similar. I thought the same thing, but it
is not the unsolvable scenario and Star Trek isn't it.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Though an unsolvable scenario. I'm sorry for the Amelia Earhart version.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
We could call it like that Maru, the Aarhart Maru,
the kosh kosh kosh.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Remember bats Maru? That was always my favorite Sanrio character.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Oh god, yeah, barely bats ma little?
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Was he a penguin?
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I can't remember.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
I don't know. Let's see, this is not important. We're
taking a little sidetrack here. Bats Marou, penguin with four
little spiky hairs coincidence.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Always looks like he's in the just the worst moods.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
He's a little cranky guy.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
He's you know, he's.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Got dead eyes. He's staring you like, uh, like he
wants to murder you. Yeah, want to double down on that. Yes,
weren't you finger wagged by the public? I thought you were.
I thought somebody reached out and said something about how
that they didn't think it was very nice that you
would malign Kristen Dunst his eyes in.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
That well I don't think it's very nice that they're
anti dead eyes as someone who has a pair of
dead eyes themselves.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Funny story. Again, don't want to get derailed too much,
but this is worth describing buddy of ours. You we
we both know. His name is Connor Ratliffe. He's a
comedian with the Chelon's Brigade. He made a podcast called
Dead Eyes because he auditioned for a band of Brothers.
Remember that television sequel to Saving Private Ryan that Tom
(26:10):
Hanks had something to do with. He directed and he
was cast but then fired in the eleventh hour and
an agent made the horrible mistake of telling him mister
Hanks says, he decided you have dead eyes, and now
you're gonna and that now he like made a podcast
series about how he wants to like track down Tom
Hanks and get to the bottom of this whole dead
Eyes situation. So you can check that out. It's on
(26:31):
it's on the interwebs.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
It's to be fair to Kirsten Dudds, who is I
think a great actor. I'm particularly doubling down on her
role in Interview with a Vampire, not her fantastic turn
in that series of cheerleader movies.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Do you remember those? What was it?
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Bring it On?
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Bring it On? Bringing On was great? Yeah, Stomp the Yard.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Now that that was. That was another one, right, It
was more of.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
A stomp movie. It was in that same time time
there were a lot of what is it bringing on?
So what she just said, Yeah, no, there's another one though,
you got served. That's right where it's like I'm gonna
dance up on you remember South Park made fun of that.
It's so funny. Ben, I was just briefly scrolling through
Instagram and our friends over Unladylike posted today this maybe
(27:19):
is going to be pressing it for the story. A
headline from back in these days, Amelia Earhart weds gp Putnam,
but Atlantic Flyer will remain Miss Earhart for business purposes
and writing exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah, this was a huge, huge deal. This is one
of the most famous people on the planet, no smoke,
no hyperbole. So it's no wonder that there was such
an extensive, expensive search for these missing aviators, and it's
also no wonder that the media became obsessed with it.
(27:55):
It's correct, it's absolutely correct to be skeptical of the
the television show. Again, we're not saying it's not true.
We're not saying it's manipulative. We're just saying be aware
of be aware of the motives behind some of those
sorts of programs. Anyhow, there are other things that add
tantalizing bits to the cauldron of conspiracy here. One is
(28:17):
that a number of the residents of Marshall Islands claimed
they witnessed the aviator's land there, and the Marshall Islands
issued stamps commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Aarhart flight,
and the stamps show Airhart's plane crash landing at mili
A Toll and the recovery of that plane by the
(28:38):
Koshu Maru. This leads to one quite okay, So this
is a lot of fun as a thought exercise to say,
what if the people on the plane survived the plane
crash just difficult thing to do, and what if Japanese
forces took them captive? The big question is why on
earth would they take her captive? We'll tell you after
(29:02):
a word from our sponsors, and we're back. So people
who believe this theory don't believe that the Japanese forces
were just randomly capturing people for fundsies. And they don't
think that they captured Earhart specifically because she was a celebrity. No.
(29:27):
You see, people who believe in this post crash survival
abduction scenario also believed that Amelia Earhart was a spy
was working as a secret agent for Uncle Sam. Partially,
this is based on the fact that she did have
a documented close friendship with Franklin Roosevelt and his wife
(29:49):
Eleanor Roosevelt.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
And folks who believe this theory tend to suggest that
the plane crashed after the pilot's veered off course in
order to pursue a spying mission over japan occupied islands
in the Pacific, right.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
And the thing about that is it feels plausible because
they're in the right place. They have a great cover,
you know what I mean, They can always fly over
smilings and then just say that they got lost, right.
And this is fascinating to me because we have seen
(30:28):
accusations similar to this kind of thing happened before in
the world of espionage. As a matter of fact, a
few years back, there were three three Western students arrested
in Iran because they had apparently crossed over the border.
They were arrested as spies. They were all in their
early twenties and there ostensibly they were just hikers with
(30:50):
a very bad sense of direction, and that story kind
of disappeared from the news, but it is an excellent
cover story to just say, whoops, we were you know,
we were in the air for so long, we just
got a little mixed up.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Yeah, it doesn't really quite add up.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
It's a little.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
It's one of those things where you kind of just
suck in air between your teeth and go all right, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
My teeth are cold sensitive. I can't suck air between
my teeth like, oh man, I know, it hurts me
right to the core of my root.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Well probably the yeah, the roots of your dental roots.
It probably. It probably makes you seem like a nicer
person because you don't have that expression in your nonverbal vocabulary.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
I do this though, suck my teeth.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, yeah. I remember a few years back one of
my friend groups literally banned me, suspended me for a
while from saying tut tut. It's very tut, man, I know,
and then I just describing things as tut.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
This one tut is a little less egregious. I would
argue yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Well, also it's it's a little more dismissive. It's calling
some tut means you don't have time for both tuts.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Oh dang, you're right because tut tut's scolding. But tut
is almost like, sh yeah, you're a real sucker. I
don't even have time for the second tough for you.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
And I've actually been able to propagate that way.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
That's weird. I use it.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Everybody knows what we mean when we say it.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yeah, and every time I just want you to know. Man,
every time I use it under my breath, I give
you credit. Thank you very well.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
That must be an interesting conversation for people. And so
this is strange though it's plausible, No, it's possible. It
is plausible that spycraft will be conducted that way, but
it's a little bit of a leap to say it
was definitely air Heart. The story, however, does not end there.
We mentioned those the British forces that found those thirteen bones,
(32:43):
including a skull, on the island. They sent a telegram
after the discovery. This is back in the forties, and
they said it was possibly the skull of Amelia Earhart.
But doctors who examined it at the time said it
belonged to a short European male. Even now some people
dis agree with this assessment. But here's the question. If
(33:03):
the thirteen bones they found did in fact belong to
Amelia Earhart, what happened to all the other bones in
a human skeleton? Where did they go? There's a weird theory.
It's that giant coconut crabs consumed the flesh and carried
away the bones, and coconut crabs actually do that kind
(33:24):
of thing. Have you seen a coconut crab?
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Did we not talk about them in the Cryptid sequel episode?
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Now?
Speaker 3 (33:30):
They are mistaken because they're so bonkers looking.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
They're gigantic.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
First of all, these creatures are crazy looking. Yeah again,
I forgive us if this is redundant, but they look
like something of like a face hugger meets a lobster
meets a crayfish meets a crab. And they're they're heavily armored,
and the limbs are all kinds of cthulhu esque, and
(33:55):
they can crack coconuts. They just wrapped their weird you
know in this arms what do you call them? Limbs
around these coconuts and they can crack them right open,
and as we all know, that's it's a hell of
a job.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Yeah, absolutely this. They look like the hybrid of a
lobster and crab that also took a lot of steroids.
They look like that arthropod that's been juicing. And what
we found is that they are capable of moving bones,
So they could have taken those other one hundred and
(34:28):
ninety three bones in the human skeleton and moved it around.
But at this point we have to pause and ask ourselves,
what is the most likely sequence of events here? Well,
remember the Amelia Earhart Lives guy class. It turns out
there is a real Irene Bolum and she was super
(34:51):
not cool with being accused of being Amelia Earhart. She
sued Klaus's publishers for one point five million dollars and said,
I'm not Amelia Earhart. I've got pictures from of myself
from the thirties that prove it. Stop bugging me and
pull this book from publication.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
She holding up newspapers of the day. Come on, it's
the only thing that's going to take to convince me.
You gotta hold up a newspaper.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
That's the only thing that checks out.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Yea, so.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
We have another we have another series of developments here.
Doctor Aaron Kimberly, a researcher at the University of South Florida,
was recently asked to examine some of those bones that
have been rediscovered at a museum on this island, Nico Morou,
to see if they might be Earhart's actual bones, because,
(35:39):
as we said before, they have been examined in the past,
but they mysteriously disappeared in Fiji, and now experts are
thinking the bones have been found again at a museum
and cultural center in Kiribati. The bones were stored in
this large box where there are several sets of different
remains that have all been stored together. One set was
(35:59):
female and matched Earhart's rough description. As we record now
just this year, just a little while ago, these bones
were sent for DNA testing, and the plan is to
compare the DNA from the bones against the DNA of
Earhart's one living niece. So while a mystery remains for now,
(36:20):
we're closer to a solid answer than we've ever been before.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Wait, so this is ongoing, This is like the tests
are in the mail.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, Like October of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
That's pretty cool. When are we gonna hear We don't know.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
You know, it's weird because we get these close calls,
these tantalizing brushes with answers in DNA cases all the time, Like.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
There was one involving the Zodiac Killer that was you know,
the team we worked very closely with it does the
Monster Zodiac series. We're really hoping it was going to
be a big scoop at the end of the of
the series and it did not pan out.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
If I'm not mistaken, yeah, absolutely, or we're still waiting,
right and this is another waiting game. That's where we'll
leave it today. But we want to hear from you.
This concludes our episode, but not our show. Let us
know what you think happened to Amelia Earhart. Do you
think that there's enough evidence to prove that either she
(37:16):
or Noonan or both of them survived for a time
after the plane crash. Do you think it's just a
case where humanity likes a good story and a good mystery.
What do you think the DNA will find.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Were they secret lovers?
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Were they secret lovers? Were they secret spies?
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Also a question, and.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
That's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait
to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
It's right let us know what you think. You can reach.
You to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok work Conspiracy
Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
If you want to call us dial one eight three
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Give yourself a cool nick name and let us know
if we can use your name and message on the air.
If you got more to say than can fit in
that voicemail, why not instead send us a good old
fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
We are the.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Entities that read every single piece of correspondence we receive.
Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the void writes back
conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow conspiracy realist. This classic is for all our fellow
aviation nerds out there. It's a little bit ridiculous history.
It's a little bit unsolved mystery. It's definitely it's definitely
one that caught us in twenty nineteen. And even when
we started exploring this, the mystery was decades and decades old.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, this is a story that we've heard about for
a long time. It's talked about in almost every unsolved
mystery series that's ever been on television, right because it's
one of the most enduring ones. A human being that
was lauded, talked about all the time, a huge deal
and then just gone.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Or did they actually disappear? This is the story of
Amelia Earhart. I gotta tell you, guys, with the benefit
of retrospect giant crabs, you heard it here first, folks.
From UFOs to psychic hours and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
(01:07):
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Hello, and welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
My name is Noel, and our compatriot Matt is on
adventures but will be returning soon they call me Ben.
We were joined with our super producer Paul mission control
decand most importantly, you are here and that makes this stuff.
They don't want you to know. Now, Noel, you just
got off a plane, Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I did, and I got the plane crid and I
hope I don't pass it on to you in this
sort of fuselage asque environment that we're currently inhabiting.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
That's fine with me. Honestly. When I have a little
bit of the cred or a head cold, I love writing.
It's I don't know it does. It does great stuff
for creativity. Maybe it's because I don't feel like going
outside and doing things.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Also true, man, also true?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Also true?
Speaker 3 (02:06):
What's you?
Speaker 1 (02:08):
And I have been on a lot of planes, as
have you Paul, and has had many people listening to
this show today, and this is a question for everyone
to think about. You and I can take a sabbage
answering this too right now, if you'd like, NOL, what
is the craziest flight you've ever had or what's the longest?
Are you a person who's terrified of flying? I would
(02:28):
say you're not.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
No, I'm not. I haven't been on any super long
flights in a while. But I think I maybe mentioned
this on our other show, Ridiculous History, when we talked
about luxury airlines and why they don't really exist anymore.
Check that one out. But there was one time where
and this is gonna be this makes me sound such
a tool, but I'm gonna say it anyway, and the
quick version, there was one time where I'm used to
ticking Delta where they have us be chargers and screens
(02:52):
on the back of the chairs in front of you,
and I took a Southwest flight for the first time
and didn't have like a power brick for my phone,
and I was expected until you have a USB and
didn't have one, and my phone died and I had
to be alone with my thoughts for the entire flight.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
It was terrifying, especially if you were It's so strange
how quickly things become normalized. And if you are expecting something,
not to crib too hard from our earlier episode on
Ridiculous History, but if you're expecting something all of a
sudden it's taken away, it's tough to recover from that.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
It really is.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
It's in a strange way. It's similar to having two
very different beverages next to your plates when you're eating
and then expecting you were going to, I don't know,
drink water, but you accidentally pick up the juice or
the milk and your mouth goes what why? Or the
kerosene or the kerosene? I weren't the kerosene very popular
(03:43):
beverage here in Atlanta. It's strange that there are millions
of people frankly terrified of flying, especially when you consider
that statistically, you are much much, much more likely to
get into an automobile accident than ever to be involved
in a plane crash. But whether you love fly, whether
(04:04):
you hate those vast stretches of sky, sun and cloud,
whether you've been on a plane you know, three times
a week for most of your life, or whether you've
never been on a plane or have it yet, you
have at least some inkling of the story of one
Amelia Earhart, And this is the topic of our episode today.
(04:27):
So here are the facts.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Amelia Earhart was born on July twenty fourth, eighteen ninety seven,
and she was the daughter of Amy and Edwin. Earhart
lived with her mother's parents until she was twelve, and
they were quite wealthy, so she was afforded some privilege,
including attending private school. And then in nineteen oh nine,
Amelia and her youngest sister moved to Des Moines. Did
(04:51):
you pronounce the s? I say de Wine des Moine.
I want to go with de Moines, Iowa. And that's
where they were reunited with their parents because their father
went to work for a railroad company and he moved
there to join them and take that gig.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, they moved him to a new position. The family
continued to move around from Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Springfield, Illinois,
and so on. This was not a happy home, you see.
Edwin Earhart had been waging an unsuccessful battle with alcoholism
(05:26):
for the entirety of Amelia's life, and this experience with
a parent who had substance abuse problems gave Earhart a lifelong,
abiding dislike of booze, along with the deep, deep desire
for financial security. And you have to you know, you
can understand it when you think of the disparity she
(05:47):
encountered in her life. She had very wealthy maternal grandparents
and then struggling immediate parents, you know, so she saw
both sides, the have and the have nots of life.
So in nineteen fourteen, Amy Earhart, Amelia's mother, takes the kids,
she leaves her husband, and they go to Chicago. In Chicago,
(06:08):
Amelia graduates from the Hyde Park School in nineteen fifteen.
Interesting historical side note. In the yearbook, she is described
as ae the girl in brown who walks alone. It's
a dubious what do they call them?
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Monica superlative? Yeah, the honorific maybe a thing.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Honorifics are a thing, but I think honorifics are closer
to titles.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
He might be right. I think you might be right.
It's true, the girl in brown who walks along. That's intense. Actually, yeah,
it's almost like a ninja wondering ninja kind of nickname, you.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Know, unhappy intellectual. I mean, high school Ben Bullen would
have been all about getting her number, telegram address. What
did they do back then?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Noe, not clear, Maybe a particular Morse code right signal.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
No.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
But she went on to go to a place called
the Ogonte School, which was a private high school. And
this is interesting. I never really heard this. I guess
it goes straight from high school to junior college, which
I guess it's like the early year of college or
is it more of like a community college.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, it feels like it's either a community college or
a prep school, you know.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Right, because if it was a community college, sort of
as a sort of like a second like not as prestigious. Right.
It's a two year program.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
A lot of community colleges have a two year program,
and so sometimes people, for one reason or another will
take their prerequisites at a community college two year college
and then go for the latter half of their college
career at a more expensive institution.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
That makes sense. So then she went on to visit
her sister Muriel, who was living in Toronto, and that
is where she saw someone who had returned from World
War One and had lost a limb in combat, an amputee.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yes, and this moves her. She immediately refuses to return
to her junior college high school and instead becomes a
volunteer nurse in a veteran hospital. And then she also,
during her time working as a volunteer nurse, she also
becomes a pacifist and this is something that she will
(08:17):
keep for as far as we know the rest of
her life. Emphasis on, as far as we know. So
that's the early days of Amelia Earhart, but of course,
most of us know her for her aviation.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Career, that's right. Another first for Amelia was in nineteen
fifteen when she saw her very first air show and
had the opportunity to actually ride on an airplane. She
seemed to become passionate about things pretty quickly. She was
very driven and had a sense of what her mission
was in life. I think that's interesting part of her character.
(08:54):
She knew right away that she wanted to take flying lessons,
so she went to a place called Burt Canner's Airfield,
which is on Long Beach, Bulevard in LA from a
woman with a lovely name, Nedda Snooks.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yeah, yeah, Nedda Snooks, which sounds like a made up
name but is very real. But again, as I think
we've said before, on the air, all names are made up.
At some point. On December fifteenth, nineteen twenty one, Amelia
finally receives her license from the National Aeronautics Association or NAH.
(09:25):
She was working part time as a file clerk, as
an office assistant, as a photographer, as a truck driver,
and she was pinching her pennies. She was scrounging and
saving and she got a little bit of help from
her mother, which enabled Amelia Earhart to buy her own plane.
Think about how extraordinary that is.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Okay, first of all, like a little bit of scratch
from her mother to buy a plane, right, And we
know a little bit about this plane, don't we.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
We do know a little bit about it. It was
what was called a Kinner airster, just like the Kinner
air Field. Kinder airster was a two seat, single engine biplane.
So it wasn't you know, it was still a plane.
It would get you in the air. You can actually
see a photograph of Amelia Earhart and her instructor, Netta
(10:17):
Snook standing together by the airstar. Oh.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, so it's like it looks almost like one of
those fighter type planes you would have seen in World
War One.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah, it's like a biplane, I guess, yeah, that exactly. Yeah,
And she loved this plane and she was It was
such a tremendous moving moment for her to be able
to purchase her own plane. That's still a pipe dream
for a lot of people here in twenty nineteen as
we record this. However, flying as anybody with a pilot's
(10:49):
license ken assurus can be a very expensive hobby and
she could afford to buy the plane, but she could
not afford to continue flying. You know, the maintenance fee's
fuel fuel definitely. So eventually she sold her plane and
she bought an automobile. She drove her mother to Boston,
(11:10):
where her younger sister, Muriel was teaching school, and a
little bit after that she re enrolls in college. She
goes to Columbia University in New York City, but she
doesn't have the scratch again to continue studies for more
than one year. A little bit dejected, she returns to Boston.
She becomes a social worker, She joins the National Aeronautics Association,
(11:34):
and she still in her spare time when she can
find finds opportunities to fly.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
So I wonder what she thinks. She must have just
like taken a class or like, you know, rented one
for the afternoon or.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Guess so, yeah, that feels like a big trust fall.
Really rent my.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Plane, rent my plane exactly. So then in nineteen twenty eight,
Erhart gets a pretty incredible opportunity. You guys remember Charles W. E.
Charles Lyndenburg, who became the first person, obviously a man,
to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean back in nineteen
twenty seven. So this guy named George Palmer Putnam was
(12:13):
the editor of a book about Charles Lindbergh's voyage and
decided to kind of drum up some pr with a
sort of a stunt that he would have. We have
seen it as a stunt at the time. It's like, hey,
lets let's let's put a lady on a plane. You know,
we'll make a make a lady do the same flight.
Because that that's crazy, that could never happen.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Imagine that.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Imagine that. Yeah, put a name up in a byplan.
Goodness gracious, yeah, the the uproar must have been marked.
So he dubs her lady Lyndy because of yeah, it
sits just a little bit on the nose and kind
of a little misogynistic to say, to say the least,
and decides to make her kind of the star of
the show. So puts her on a plane with a
(12:53):
pilot by the name of William Stultz and a mechanic
by the name of Lewis Gordon, and she crossed the
Atlantic from Newfoundland to Wales on June eighteenth through nineteenth
of nineteen twenty eight. But she wasn't flying the plane.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, and this really bothered her. She never once touched
the controls of the plane and afterward described herself as
little more than a quote sack of potatoes. Still, she
became world renowned as the first woman to fly the Atlantic.
George Putnam clearly was capitalizing on this marketing opportunity. He
(13:31):
became Amelia Earhart's manager and later her husband when they
married in nineteen thirty one. So here's what he did.
As her manager. He arranged all of her flying engagements
in step with this exhaustive series of lecture tours, like
she would lecture for twenty nine days out of thirty one,
like in a row.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Jeez. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
And eventually she grew irritated because she said, you know,
I'm I'm reading the press here and people are saying
that I am not an actual pilot, that more or
less a puppet that my husband created for public relations purposes.
So I am going to prove to people that I
(14:13):
am the real deal, a genuine aviator. And this leads
her to pilot a Lockheed Electra from Newfoundland, Canada, all
the way to Ireland. This is impressive because a Lockheed
Electra is a tiny, tiny, tiny plane. It's a single engine.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
It's true. And lest you think you've made a mistake
and you're actually listening to an episode of ridiculous history,
that's sort of how it sounds with just the two
of us doing a topic like this. I actually kind
of forgot myself for a second what show we're doing.
But we're getting there, guys. There's a twist coming, I promise.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yes there is. On May twentieth, the twenty first, nineteen
thirty two, five years after Lindberg makes his solo flight,
Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the
Atlantic Soul and for the next five years she is
a champion of women's rights as well as commercial aviation.
She sets numerous world records, she gets accolades and awards
(15:10):
from across the planet, and she decides eventually that she
will circumnavigate the globe, that she will fly around the world, and,
after a brief word with our sponsors, will walk through
the infamous last voyage of Amelia Earhart.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
On July second, nineteen thirty seven, just twenty two days
before her fortieth birthday, Amelia Earhart and her navigator friend
Fred Noonan vanished partially through their attempt at circumnavigating the globe.
They vanished. We know this. They vanished somewhere between Ley,
(15:55):
New Guinea and Howland Island and the navy. The US
Navy searched the largest swath they'd ever searched for a
missing person an history at that point, and they found
neither plane nor crew. Then, on January fifth of nineteen
thirty nine, Amelia Earhart was declared legally dead after being
(16:19):
missing for eighteen months. So what happened?
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Here's where it gets crazy. Theories on the disappearance of
Amelia Earhart have proliferated for almost a century now. The
official report concluded that Earhart and Noonan were unable to
land on their their planned destination of Holland Island, and
(16:44):
that while trying to find this destination they ran out
of fuel, they crashed into the water and sank. But
of course that sort of explanation did very little to
quell suspicion, especially because there were no remains of plane
nor person to be found. Owned there are a couple
of different theories that run counter to the official narrative.
(17:05):
One theory suggests that this is the weirdest one, that
Amelia Earhart actually didn't die. She not only survived, but
she returned to the US. She changed her name to
Irene Bolm b O L A M. And lived a long,
long life in obscurity. There are actually some books written
(17:26):
about this.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
But why to what end? It's strange? Yeah, she unhappy
and I want to do what a weird name? To
change her name to Bolum? No one suspects them, right, No,
I guess not right, that's true. It's very clear. I
don't know van are you? Are you potentially a missing aviator?
Speaker 1 (17:42):
No relation to Bolum? Okay, all right, you like how
I didn't really answer your question.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
I do like that, you know, I love it when
you do that. Actually, it's one of my favorite things
in the whole world. So in a book by Joe
Class from the nineteen seventies, I'm not quite sure exactly
what your came out called Amelia Earhart lives. This gentleman
makes the case that Earhart was in fact captured and
then taken to Saipan and then to Tokyo, where she
(18:10):
was a prisoner of the Imperial Palace until nineteen forty five.
The theory argues that Earhart's secret was used as a
bargaining chip after the war to allow the Japanese emperor
to remain in power. What secret has this been?
Speaker 1 (18:27):
The secret would be that they were able that the
Japanese government was using Earhart as leverage to preserve the
emperor's standing in the community post World War Two. The
idea here being that there was a what's the term
so popular nowadays, a bit of a quid pro quo?
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Oh, yes, clarius, a bit of a.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Quid pro quo, and that you know, if the Allies
allowed the emperor to retain the position of the royal family,
then Earhart would be returned to the US. Yes, of
course that doesn't explain the name change, right, So bracket
that we'll get back to that one. There's another much
more popular theory that we wanted to share with you today.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
That's right. Another widely held belief is that Earhart and
Noonan actually did touch down on a remote South Pacific
island called Nicu Maroro. You okay there in I thought
they did agree. I'm not a native speaker and I'm
not either, but we always try to do our best.
And this at the time of their disappearance would have
been uninhabited and was known as Gardiner Island. The Airhart Project,
(19:34):
which is a division of the International Group for Historic
Aircraft Recovery or TIGER or Tiger GHAR, I still think
it's pronounced Tiger, and it's an organization dedicated to investigating
this hypothesis. So TIGER has been investigating the island since
nineteen eighty nine and they've collected a ton of intriguing
(19:55):
things related to the case, improvised tools, remains of shoes,
in aircraft wreckage parts, which is consistent with Airhart's plane
an Electra exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
They also discovered that a few years after Earhart vanished,
a British colonial officer found the remains of a castaway
on what was then called Gardner Island, now known as
Nico Morero. The bones were sent to Fiji for analysis,
but ultimately they were misplaced and lost. Let's fast forward
(20:30):
to the future. During Tigers Tigers twenty ten expedition, their
team found some of the most compelling clues they had
ever seen. They were looking around in a spot where
they had previously identified what was likely the remains of
a campfire, and they found three pieces of a pocket knife.
(20:53):
They found shells that have been cut open, glass cosmetic
jar fragments. Thereof little bits of makeup and and bone
fragments that they thought might be from a human being. Now,
let's let's put our skeptic hats on because we're gonna
talk a little bit about a History Channel documentary. Did
(21:14):
you hear about this one?
Speaker 3 (21:15):
No?
Speaker 1 (21:16):
We know how a History Channel and a lot of
the cable TV channels have those investigative shows, and sometimes
they're top notch, very well researched, very honest, and other
times they're a little too George Suklos, you know, saying
ancient aliens kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
The fro mm.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Yeah, yeah, it's less of a fro.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
And more of just like a wild hairdo.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Let's say it's a main Yeah, he's a he's a
nice guy.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
I've heard I like his I'd like his whole name
and hair situations. Fun to say, it's got a nice mouthfeel. Yeah, No,
it's true, and this one was of that variety. No,
was it good?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Well, this is the question we leave to you and
your fellow listeners. Right the name of the document who
was Amelia Earhart? The Lost Evidence? And it dives headfirst
into the theory that Noonan and Earhart were captured by
Japanese forces. In the documentary, there's a retired federal agent.
His name is Les Kenny and less. Kenny and his
(22:14):
team searched through records at the National Archives to find
any overlooked clues to the disappearance of Aarhart.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
That's right. He and his team found a photograph that
was stamped with official Office of Naval Intelligence marks that
read Marshall Islands, Jalui Atoll, Jalue Island, Jaluwe Harbor and
the photo a ship can be seen that's towing a
barge with an Airplan on the back of it, and
then nearby on a dock you can see several people.
(22:45):
And Kenny argues that the photo had to have been
taken before nineteen forty three because US Air Forces conducted
more than thirty bombing runs on Jalui in nineteen forty
three and forty four. He believed are through that was
like a range of time, so they did it quite frequently.
He believes the plane on the barge is the Electra
(23:07):
and that the two people are two of the people
on the dock are Airhart and Nonan.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
And then we have a way in also in the
same documentary from Doug Karner and Kent Gibson. These are
forensic analysts, and Karner looked at it and said, Okay,
no one is messed with this photo, meaning no one
has altered it. It was from that time and is legit.
(23:33):
And then Kent Gibson specializes in recognizing faces, and he
says it's very likely that the two individuals they point
out on the dock there are Earhart and Nonan. Both
of them also say that the ship in the photo
is a Japanese vessel called the Koshu Maru, and they
(23:55):
think this is the ship that took Earhart and Nonin
away after they survived that crash landing. If that is
you believe the television show, that's where we have our
skepticats on, you know what I mean, because we have
to ask ourselves, not in any way being a derogatory
toward the experts in the show, nor to the History
(24:18):
Channel or what have you. We have to ask ourselves
how much of this we believe? And it's it's a
good question. We have to ask ourselves how sincere or
how disingenuous some of these outfits can be.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
You know, what was the name of the ship in question.
The Koshu Ma rooms have the same as the Kobayashi
Ma room.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
That is similar. I thought the same thing, but it
is not the unsolvable scenario and Star Trek isn't it.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Though an unsolvable scenario. I'm sorry for the Amelia Earhart version.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
We could call it like that Maru, the Aarhart Maru,
the kosh kosh kosh.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Remember bats Maru? That was always my favorite Sanrio character.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Oh god, yeah, barely bats ma little?
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Was he a penguin?
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I can't remember.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
I don't know. Let's see, this is not important. We're
taking a little sidetrack here. Bats Marou, penguin with four
little spiky hairs coincidence.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Always looks like he's in the just the worst moods.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
He's a little cranky guy.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
He's you know, he's.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Got dead eyes. He's staring you like, uh, like he
wants to murder you. Yeah, want to double down on that. Yes,
weren't you finger wagged by the public? I thought you were.
I thought somebody reached out and said something about how
that they didn't think it was very nice that you
would malign Kristen Dunst his eyes in.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
That well I don't think it's very nice that they're
anti dead eyes as someone who has a pair of
dead eyes themselves.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Funny story. Again, don't want to get derailed too much,
but this is worth describing buddy of ours. You we
we both know. His name is Connor Ratliffe. He's a
comedian with the Chelon's Brigade. He made a podcast called
Dead Eyes because he auditioned for a band of Brothers.
Remember that television sequel to Saving Private Ryan that Tom
(26:10):
Hanks had something to do with. He directed and he
was cast but then fired in the eleventh hour and
an agent made the horrible mistake of telling him mister
Hanks says, he decided you have dead eyes, and now
you're gonna and that now he like made a podcast
series about how he wants to like track down Tom
Hanks and get to the bottom of this whole dead
Eyes situation. So you can check that out. It's on
(26:31):
it's on the interwebs.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
It's to be fair to Kirsten Dudds, who is I
think a great actor. I'm particularly doubling down on her
role in Interview with a Vampire, not her fantastic turn
in that series of cheerleader movies.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Do you remember those? What was it?
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Bring it On?
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Bring it On? Bringing On was great? Yeah, Stomp the Yard.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Now that that was. That was another one, right, It
was more of.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
A stomp movie. It was in that same time time
there were a lot of what is it bringing on?
So what she just said, Yeah, no, there's another one though,
you got served. That's right where it's like I'm gonna
dance up on you remember South Park made fun of that.
It's so funny. Ben, I was just briefly scrolling through
Instagram and our friends over Unladylike posted today this maybe
(27:19):
is going to be pressing it for the story. A
headline from back in these days, Amelia Earhart weds gp Putnam,
but Atlantic Flyer will remain Miss Earhart for business purposes
and writing exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah, this was a huge, huge deal. This is one
of the most famous people on the planet, no smoke,
no hyperbole. So it's no wonder that there was such
an extensive, expensive search for these missing aviators, and it's
also no wonder that the media became obsessed with it.
(27:55):
It's correct, it's absolutely correct to be skeptical of the
the television show. Again, we're not saying it's not true.
We're not saying it's manipulative. We're just saying be aware
of be aware of the motives behind some of those
sorts of programs. Anyhow, there are other things that add
tantalizing bits to the cauldron of conspiracy here. One is
(28:17):
that a number of the residents of Marshall Islands claimed
they witnessed the aviator's land there, and the Marshall Islands
issued stamps commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Aarhart flight,
and the stamps show Airhart's plane crash landing at mili
A Toll and the recovery of that plane by the
(28:38):
Koshu Maru. This leads to one quite okay, So this
is a lot of fun as a thought exercise to say,
what if the people on the plane survived the plane
crash just difficult thing to do, and what if Japanese
forces took them captive? The big question is why on
earth would they take her captive? We'll tell you after
(29:02):
a word from our sponsors, and we're back. So people
who believe this theory don't believe that the Japanese forces
were just randomly capturing people for fundsies. And they don't
think that they captured Earhart specifically because she was a celebrity. No.
(29:27):
You see, people who believe in this post crash survival
abduction scenario also believed that Amelia Earhart was a spy
was working as a secret agent for Uncle Sam. Partially,
this is based on the fact that she did have
a documented close friendship with Franklin Roosevelt and his wife
(29:49):
Eleanor Roosevelt.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
And folks who believe this theory tend to suggest that
the plane crashed after the pilot's veered off course in
order to pursue a spying mission over japan occupied islands
in the Pacific, right.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
And the thing about that is it feels plausible because
they're in the right place. They have a great cover,
you know what I mean, They can always fly over
smilings and then just say that they got lost, right.
And this is fascinating to me because we have seen
(30:28):
accusations similar to this kind of thing happened before in
the world of espionage. As a matter of fact, a
few years back, there were three three Western students arrested
in Iran because they had apparently crossed over the border.
They were arrested as spies. They were all in their
early twenties and there ostensibly they were just hikers with
(30:50):
a very bad sense of direction, and that story kind
of disappeared from the news, but it is an excellent
cover story to just say, whoops, we were you know,
we were in the air for so long, we just
got a little mixed up.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Yeah, it doesn't really quite add up.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
It's a little.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
It's one of those things where you kind of just
suck in air between your teeth and go all right, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
My teeth are cold sensitive. I can't suck air between
my teeth like, oh man, I know, it hurts me
right to the core of my root.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Well probably the yeah, the roots of your dental roots.
It probably. It probably makes you seem like a nicer
person because you don't have that expression in your nonverbal vocabulary.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
I do this though, suck my teeth.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, yeah. I remember a few years back one of
my friend groups literally banned me, suspended me for a
while from saying tut tut. It's very tut, man, I know,
and then I just describing things as tut.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
This one tut is a little less egregious. I would
argue yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Well, also it's it's a little more dismissive. It's calling
some tut means you don't have time for both tuts.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Oh dang, you're right because tut tut's scolding. But tut
is almost like, sh yeah, you're a real sucker. I
don't even have time for the second tough for you.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
And I've actually been able to propagate that way.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
That's weird. I use it.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Everybody knows what we mean when we say it.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yeah, and every time I just want you to know. Man,
every time I use it under my breath, I give
you credit. Thank you very well.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
That must be an interesting conversation for people. And so
this is strange though it's plausible, No, it's possible. It
is plausible that spycraft will be conducted that way, but
it's a little bit of a leap to say it
was definitely air Heart. The story, however, does not end there.
We mentioned those the British forces that found those thirteen bones,
(32:43):
including a skull, on the island. They sent a telegram
after the discovery. This is back in the forties, and
they said it was possibly the skull of Amelia Earhart.
But doctors who examined it at the time said it
belonged to a short European male. Even now some people
dis agree with this assessment. But here's the question. If
(33:03):
the thirteen bones they found did in fact belong to
Amelia Earhart, what happened to all the other bones in
a human skeleton? Where did they go? There's a weird theory.
It's that giant coconut crabs consumed the flesh and carried
away the bones, and coconut crabs actually do that kind
(33:24):
of thing. Have you seen a coconut crab?
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Did we not talk about them in the Cryptid sequel episode?
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Now?
Speaker 3 (33:30):
They are mistaken because they're so bonkers looking.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
They're gigantic.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
First of all, these creatures are crazy looking. Yeah again,
I forgive us if this is redundant, but they look
like something of like a face hugger meets a lobster
meets a crayfish meets a crab. And they're they're heavily armored,
and the limbs are all kinds of cthulhu esque, and
(33:55):
they can crack coconuts. They just wrapped their weird you
know in this arms what do you call them? Limbs
around these coconuts and they can crack them right open,
and as we all know, that's it's a hell of
a job.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Yeah, absolutely this. They look like the hybrid of a
lobster and crab that also took a lot of steroids.
They look like that arthropod that's been juicing. And what
we found is that they are capable of moving bones,
So they could have taken those other one hundred and
(34:28):
ninety three bones in the human skeleton and moved it around.
But at this point we have to pause and ask ourselves,
what is the most likely sequence of events here? Well,
remember the Amelia Earhart Lives guy class. It turns out
there is a real Irene Bolum and she was super
(34:51):
not cool with being accused of being Amelia Earhart. She
sued Klaus's publishers for one point five million dollars and said,
I'm not Amelia Earhart. I've got pictures from of myself
from the thirties that prove it. Stop bugging me and
pull this book from publication.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
She holding up newspapers of the day. Come on, it's
the only thing that's going to take to convince me.
You gotta hold up a newspaper.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
That's the only thing that checks out.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Yea, so.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
We have another we have another series of developments here.
Doctor Aaron Kimberly, a researcher at the University of South Florida,
was recently asked to examine some of those bones that
have been rediscovered at a museum on this island, Nico Morou,
to see if they might be Earhart's actual bones, because,
(35:39):
as we said before, they have been examined in the past,
but they mysteriously disappeared in Fiji, and now experts are
thinking the bones have been found again at a museum
and cultural center in Kiribati. The bones were stored in
this large box where there are several sets of different
remains that have all been stored together. One set was
(35:59):
female and matched Earhart's rough description. As we record now
just this year, just a little while ago, these bones
were sent for DNA testing, and the plan is to
compare the DNA from the bones against the DNA of
Earhart's one living niece. So while a mystery remains for now,
(36:20):
we're closer to a solid answer than we've ever been before.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Wait, so this is ongoing, This is like the tests
are in the mail.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, Like October of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
That's pretty cool. When are we gonna hear We don't know.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
You know, it's weird because we get these close calls,
these tantalizing brushes with answers in DNA cases all the time, Like.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
There was one involving the Zodiac Killer that was you know,
the team we worked very closely with it does the
Monster Zodiac series. We're really hoping it was going to
be a big scoop at the end of the of
the series and it did not pan out.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
If I'm not mistaken, yeah, absolutely, or we're still waiting,
right and this is another waiting game. That's where we'll
leave it today. But we want to hear from you.
This concludes our episode, but not our show. Let us
know what you think happened to Amelia Earhart. Do you
think that there's enough evidence to prove that either she
(37:16):
or Noonan or both of them survived for a time
after the plane crash. Do you think it's just a
case where humanity likes a good story and a good mystery.
What do you think the DNA will find.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Were they secret lovers?
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Were they secret lovers? Were they secret spies?
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Also a question, and.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
That's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait
to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
It's right let us know what you think. You can reach.
You to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok work Conspiracy
Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
If you want to call us dial one eight three
three std WYTK that's our voicemail system. You've got three minutes.
Give yourself a cool nick name and let us know
if we can use your name and message on the air.
If you got more to say than can fit in
that voicemail, why not instead send us a good old
fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
We are the.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Entities that read every single piece of correspondence we receive.
Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the void writes back
conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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