FROM LEFT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; GETTY (5)surrounding areas also
place Amelia and Fred
there. “[We believe] she
landed in the Marshall Is-
lands and was taken by a
Japanese ship, the Koshu,
to Saipan [in what is now
the Mariana Islands].”
The picture has been
proven to be undoctored.
Kinney says an FBI photo
authentication expert put
the likelihood that it’s
short-haired Amelia and
Fred, who has a distinctive
hairline and nose, “in the 95
percent range.” Further, heinsists, “There were no oth-
er Caucasians in the Mar-
shall Islands in that area in
1937.” Over the years, sev-
eral eyewitnesses have also
reported seeing Amelia and
Fred or their plane. After
their capture, Kinney be-
lieves the pair were impris-
oned in Saipan, a former
Japanese territory, and a
Spanish nun has claimed
that she was incarcerated
alongside Amelia in the is-
land’s Garapan Prison in- Kinney adds that dur-
ing the Marshall Islands
invasion of 1944, U.S.
Marines “found a suitcase
containing women’s cloth-
ing and a diary that be-
longed to Amelia Earhart.”
Investigators believe
the U.S. government
knew and covered it up.
Kinney discovered tran-
scripts of radio communi-
cations the U.S. captured
from Japan. “But every
time I got close to July and
August of 1937, they disap-
peared from the fi les,” he
explains, noting that on the
eve of World War II, the U.S.
couldn’t risk revealing that
they knew how to break
the enemy ’s codes, which
would have been obvious
if they’d tried to rescue the
fl ying legend. And accord-ing to aviation and dive
specialist Dan Hampton,
a former fi ghter pilot who
investigated the case for
the recent History Chan-
nel special Amelia Earhart:
The Lost Evidence, “It looks
like somebody intention-
ally purged the archives.”
There’s more digging
to be done. “The most im-
portant piece was putting
her in the Marshall Islands,
and I think we did that
conclusively,” says Henry.
“What happened to her af-
terward, how she died and
what may have happened to
her body — I think those are
questions that still need to
be answered.” ċFLYING
LEGEND
“To be a female
pilot then
was extremely
unusual,” Henry
says of Amelia.
“She has been an
icon for women.”MYSTERY
PLANNING
HER TRIP
When they disappeared,
Amelia and Fred had
fewer than 7,000 miles
to go in her attempt to
become the fi rst female
pilot to fl y around
the world.INTOUCHWEEKLY.COM 35HER PLANE