Three main theories

There are many theories about what happened to Earhart, including a 1970 book claiming that Earhart had not only survived the flight but also changed her name and remarried, becoming Irene Craigmile Bolam. Bolam vehemently denied this and sued the publisher, which pulled the book off the market and eventually reached a settlement. But three theories in particular have come to dominate among Earhart enthusiasts. First, she and Noonan lost their bearings, ran out of gas, and crashed in the ocean. Second, one or both of them ended up as castaways on Nikumaroro Island (formerly Gardner Island), eventually dying there of starvation or injury. Third, Japanese forces captured Earhart and Noonan and (most likely) executed them.

Hartigan takes on these three theories in turn in Lost, interweaving efforts to find evidence for each with an account of Earhart’s life. She admits that originally, she had been quite impressed with the case for the island castaway hypothesis, given that the 2017 expedition had found such telltale 1930s objects as a zipper pull and pocket knife, as well as a fire feature and water bottles. And trained cadaver dogs had identified the campsite as a place where there might be human remains.

“But none of that is actually tied specifically to Amelia Earhart or Fred Noonan,” said Hartigan. “It’s just confirmation that somebody died there, and we don’t know who it was. No bones have been found. So by the second trip, I was a little more skeptical. There’s so many things I like about the castaway theory. But if I’m thinking about the most likely thing to have happened, the simplest explanation that matches with most of what we know, it’s that she got lost, ran out of gas, and crashed.”

In some sense, there has never been a better time to hunt for Earhart, given all the new science and technology at our disposal, particularly for deep-sea exploration. In 2003 and 2006, for example, David Jourdan used deep-sea sonar devices to search a 1,200-square-mile area north and west of Howland Island. His company, Nauticos, even conducted an elaborate experiment using 1930s equipment to determine how far off course Earhart and Noonan might have been when she sent her various radio messages. Most recently, a 2024 expedition searched for Earhart’s plane around Howland Island, the original planned landing site, but found no evidence of it.