AMELIA EARHART PLANE
AIRING: Season 7, Episode 6
THE DETECTIVE: Elyse Luray
THE PLACE: San Jose, California
THE CASE:
July 2, 1937: newspapers all over the world report the same event: Amelia Earhart’s airplane disappears over the pacific. The disaster and presumed death of the beloved 39 year-old heroine gripped the public.
For decades historians have debated how and where the aviator disappeared. Both scientific and more fanciful theories abound: some surmise she landed on uninhabited Gardner Island. Others suggest she was captured and executed by the Japanese. Less scrutinized is an accident she had four months earlier, during take-off for her around-the-world flight.
Did that crash somehow contribute to Earhart’s disappearance?
Over seventy years later, History Detectives investigates whether a fragment of metal is from the missing plane.
Video: Susan Butler Interview
Watch an extended interview with aviation expert Susan Butler.
Think you have a case for the History Detectives? Send us your mystery here. 