Amelia Earhart: What The General Public Never Knew

Reality Check: The 'Missing Person Case' Of Amelia Earhart

Tod Swindell

Reality Check: Amelia Earhart...   While reviewing this page, recall how Amelia Earhart became a 'missing person' in 1937. She did not simply 'disappear.' TS

Irene-Amelia superimposed

Irene Craigmile, 1977 Irene-Amelia superimposed

Irene-Amelia superimposed

"Special recognition goes to Tod Swindell, who undertook an extensive, in-depth forensic analysis of the Gervais-Irene Craigmile Bolam and Amelia Earhart to show the world they were one in the same person." USAF Colonel, Rollin C. Reineck (Ret.), reprinted from his book, Amelia Earhart Survived.

A New Amelia Earhart Reality Check For 2020...   "Science alone says it did not happen, yet for years people bought into the suggestion that Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, 'vanished without a trace' in 1937 while flying in Amelia's plane. Those who recognized the physical impossibility of such a thing tended to lean toward another suggestion. This one offered, 'while flying for an undetermined amount of time in radio silence the duo eventually crashed into the Pacific Ocean at unknown coordinates and sank in deep waters.' Anymore it is certain neither one of the above scenarios took place, nor were Amelia's bones found on a desert island.   In answering what did happen, while the final fate of Fred Noonan remains uncertain, it is at least possible he survived the ending of his flight with Amelia and may have lived-on with a different name applied to his person. For this is what happened to Amelia Earhart, although the public is only just now catching up to the reality of it.   Recall how something similar took place with the case of Charles Lindbergh's alias of Careu Kent, a name he used in Europe where he raised a family no one knew about from the 1950s on, until his death in 1974. For decades this was considered a baseless rumor until it was ultimately verified in 2004. Now it is true as well: The long-time 'rumor' that stated Amelia Earhart lived the last half of her life known as Irene Craigmile... is no longer baseless. Anymore it is obvious to people who review the now available 'incontestable' information about it, that such a thing did happen." Tod Swindell

A Reality Check About Amelia Earhart's Missing Person Case:   Tod Swindell, the orchestrator of the first ever, Amelia Earhart to Irene Craigmile 'Forensic Research Study and Human Comparison Analysis' explains how he became involved with the Amelia Earhart story and what the results of his comprehensive study conveyed.  I've always demonstrated a strong penchant for analyzing U.S. history's relationship with its ever evolving pop-culture arena. This is how I was drawn into the Amelia Earhart story.   It is 2019 now. Twenty three years ago, in 1996, while shopping a well researched WGA screenplay about Amelia Earhart's disappearance written by a film industry colleague of mine, I was recommended to go meet with a distinguished World War Two veteran. He was a retired USAF Major by the name of Joseph A. Gervais who lived on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada.   Joe Gervais and I did meet then and we became good friends and collaborators from that point on, until his passing took place in 2005, and let me tell you, he was one utterly amazing, savant-like Amelia Earhart historian. I can personally attest he was incomparable in that regard.   I miss Joe. History has mostly lost sight of him as well, and that's a shame because he was the last truth serum delivering Amelia Earhart expert on the planet. (Well, I guess I'm still here.) Or put it this way: Here's a guy, Joe Gervais, who in 1970 all but single-handedly caused the so-called, 'mystery of Amelia Earhart's disappearance' to reach a fever-pitch of consternation thanks to his simple assertion of a truth he came to recognize and understand... about Amelia Earhart.  On the left is USAF Major Joseph A. Gervais (Ret.) accepting his Amelia Earhart Society of Researchers 'Lifetime Achievement' award in 2000. The 2002 photo above features Joe and myself taking a break from filming 'Protecting Earhart' during our decade-long collaboration.   It's not surprising that few people recall Joe Gervais anymore. After all, Amelia Earhart's incomplete life story grew to be somewhat of a taboo subject matter since the 1970s, something caused by Joe himself. Today, people who take the time to look into the 1937 disappearance of the famous pilot, Amelia Earhart, are more in step with my personal rejuvenation of Joe's mind-bending contribution to Amelia Earhart investigative research studies; a contribution that in time grew to be viewed as 'infamous' in contrast to the intuitive brilliance that spawned it.   Because of this general consensus, most people find it hard to understand my viewpoint when it comes to the story of Amelia Earhart's officially unresolved (according to history) but in recent years, solved in a cumulative forensic way, 'missing person' case.   Sounds crazy, no? Yet it's true. When Amelia Earhart purportedly disappeared in 1937, in legal terms she actually became a 'missing person.'   Joseph A. Gervais? In 1965, he encountered the woman who used to be known as Amelia Earhart and he spent the remainder of his days making sure people did not forget he had done so--even to the endless stream of combatants he faced whose projections abetted official history--when it came to all-but burying the important discovery he made.   Regardless, today a person would be hard pressed to find anyone at the Smithsonian Institution, at the National Geographic Society, or on Capitol Hill who will freely volunteer an opinion that states they are certain Joseph A. Gervais was incorrect to have claimed what he did way back then, and samplings of the study results I made public in recent years are the reason for that.    Many of you are now asking: "How is it that Amelia Earhart's missing person case is being referred to as "solved" and people in general are unaware of it?"   I'll cut to the chase: It took almost fifty years for it to ultimately happen after initial efforts to do so began in the summer of 1965, but for all intents and purposes, Amelia Earhart's missing person case ultimately was conclusively resolved, or solved over the course of the past decade--even though said truth still remains to be officially endorsed to the public. And there are a lot of reasons for that. For starters, a formal official review of Amelia's missing person case has never taken place. Why? Amelia's survived family members have never expressed an interest in doing such a thing. This foremost dates back to the attitude displayed by Amelia's sister, Muriel (her only sibling) who died in 1998. Even though Muriel knew her survived sister as 'Irene Craigmile' in her later life years (yes, she did) ever since the truth about Amelia's post-loss survival as Irene was discovered (in 1965) and then revealed (in 1970) by Joseph A. Gervais, Muriel maintained the practice of instantly shunning anyone who even dared to suggest that Irene Craigmile was her survived sister, and today, Muriel's daughter, Amy Kleppner (Amelia's niece) continues to respect her late mother's same defiant code there.   Let me further explain another side of the coin, and I'll cut to the chase again: Since the 1980s, Amelia Earhart cottage industries have been feeding news media outlets a wide variety of hypothetical solutions within their individual attempts to explain what really happened to Amelia Earhart--that had absolutely nothing to do with the truth. In the meantime, however, the purveyors of these off-base ideas had also long been conjointly dismissing the missing person aspect of Amelia Earhart out of hand, that in turn managed to obfuscate the most important forensic strides being made ever since the late 1990s, that ended up solving it in the new millennium, and it all had to do with identifying the body evidence of Amelia Earhart.    Where do I come in? Beyond Colonel Reineck's above words about my accomplishment, I never personally claimed to have 'solved the mystery' of Amelia Earhart's 1937 disappearance. Yet I did claim, and still do claim by virtue of having examined it closely since the 1990s, to have helped solved the missing person case of Amelia Earhart after my study ended up clearly displaying how in 1965, retired USAF Major, Joseph A. Gervais did recognize the 'body evidence' of Amelia Earhart re-identified as "Mrs. Irene Craigmile Bolam."   I'm always sure to add that no one in the public realm knows for certain what happened to Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan on July 2, 1937, nor do they know what Amelia was doing or where she actually was from the time she went missing in 1937 to the time she resurfaced in the United States known as "Irene." However, I do profess to know that to solve a missing person case one must find the missing person, or one must find and produce the body evidence of the missing person, and how CONCRETELY, in 1970, Joseph A. Gervais absolutely did produce the body evidence of Amelia Earhart for all the world to see. He did so when a clear, 35MM photograph he took in 1965 of Amelia's living, renamed body appeared in the 1970 nationally published book, Amelia Earhart Lives by Joe Klaas.   No, in 1965 the former Amelia Earhart wasn't expecting it and she did not give Major Gervais permission to take the photograph when he asked her if he could, but he snapped his camera shutter anyway right as she turned back to him to politely say, "no thank you" to his request. After she realized he took the picture anyway she quietly said to him, "I wish you hadn't done that." But he did do it. In the full frame version (below) of the photo that appeared in the book, you can see the former Amelia Earhart's English husband who she wed in 1958, Guy Bolam, finishing telling her that he, "didn't think it was a good idea" in response to Joe Gervais' request to photograph them.    Here, I'll recommend that you not pay attention to the rest of the book Amelia Earhart Lives for now in favor of concentrating instead on the 1965 Joe Gervais taken photograph of the woman that appeared in it. Do so as if you're watching the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination and observing the stark reality its film gamma conveys. In other words, concentrate very hard on the Gervais photograph only, and think as deeply as you can about it, while accepting the known fact that the woman featured in it appeared nowhere identified as "Irene" prior to the end of World War Two.    Directly below is an enlargement of the 1965 Gervais photograph next to the way it originally appeared in the book, along with a few of my many superimposed Irene-Amelia comparison samples that displays only part of the overall head-to-toe body congruence--that the other comparisons in the analysis further revealed:   Irene Craigmile, 1965 Amelia, 1937 Irene-Amelia superimposed Irene-Amelia superimposed Irene Craigmile, 1977 Irene-Amelia superimposed Here above we have the same person shown in younger and older forms. There is no room for arguing this point anymore. Younger to older character traits also aligned. No, you are not going to tell me the person identified as 'Irene Craigmile' in the above photographs is Amelia's 1930s pilot friend who was the ORIGINAL Irene Craigmile. If you even try to tell me that, as politely as I can I will shut you down. (What do you think, I'm some kind of idiot who spent twenty years studying a bizarre doppelganger equation? Get real.)   The TRUTH is, Amelia Earhart had a friend in the 1930s who was a budding pilot by the name of Irene Craigmile, and she looked nothing like the Irene Craigmile displayed in the above photographs... even though to this day 'official history' says the Irene Craigmile displayed above was the original Irene Craigmile. For you see... we know now it is 'official history' that is incorrect there.   Above is an old newsprint photo of the original Irene Craigmile shown in 1930 with her then-husband, Charles Craigmile, who died the following year, and her father, Richard Joseph O'Crowley. (Higher contrast version of her underneath.) The overall comparison study led to an epiphany that stated Joe Gervais was entirely correct to have adhered to the truth he knew and professed all the way to his dying day in 2005, and that anyone who ever doubted him or outright insisted he was wrong--was incorrect to have done so. This goes for our nation's top college history professors, national news media moguls and influential news media lobbyists, Amelia's extended family, and the many individuals who have occupied our government's highest halls from the 1970s on. Believe it or not this is history's new smelling-salts of truth about Amelia Earhart, as difficult as it may be for so many people to presently fathom.   When photo images of the post World War Two Irene Craigmile come into play with the comparison samples that align her with Amelia, most people still have a hard time believing their own eyes when they transmit the reality of what they're observing to their minds--a reality that states they are actually looking at older versions of Amelia Earhart's body re-identified as 'Irene Craigmile.' Yet the reason people's minds have a hard time there it is easy to understand: Ever since 1937, it was instilled in American pop culture that Amelia Earhart 'vanished without a trace and she was never seen again.' This became the 'legend' of Amelia Earhart, one that evolved to become a commonly known fact.   One might also wonder who the heck am I to tell you otherwise? I'm not affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution or a higher education history department. I am a person, though, who recalls a line spoken at the end of the movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance by a newspaper publisher, who said, "When legend becomes fact, print the legend." He uttered this right after finding out that the legendary story about a man who shot the notorious outlaw, Liberty Valance... was not true.  So here, where the legend of what happened to Amelia Earhart says she, "disappeared without a trace and she was never seen again," notice how this is all anyone has EVER seen reported in the news as a hard fact about Amelia's final fate, even though it never actually happened. The legend became the fact.   Consider again the photograph above that Joe Gervais took in 1965. Granted, while living as Irene the former Amelia Earhart had put on a little weight, but people often do that in their later life years. By 1970, though, she had trimmed down significantly. As an example, here's how she looked when she appeared unaccompanied at the press conference she held in November of 1970, to defy the just published suggestion that had blindsided her, offering that she was really the survived 'Amelia Earhart' living incognito.   Incidentally, Joe Gervais said it best: "She handled the press like the old pro she was that day." And once again, he was correct: Amelia in 1935. 'Get me outta here!' "God, the world hounded that woman," Jackie Cochran once said about Amelia Earhart. As Irene at her 1970 press conference.  Flanked by her former self images. The book, Amelia Earhart Lives in the foreground. "I am not a mystery woman and I am not Amelia Earhart!" (But she did used to be known as Amelia Earhart. Absolutely, she did.) Hey, think about your own life and the way it was photographically recorded from the time you were born, then think about this: What is clearly evident by virtue of what the comparison study I orchestrated revealed, is that the woman identified as Mrs. Irene Craigmile Bolam in the 1965 Gervais photograph (and at her press conference) appears nowhere in photographs identified as "Irene" prior to the World War Two years, and, the study also displays how physically and character trait wise, the same woman matched Amelia Earhart's entire being to exactitude.   People still arguing or outright fighting against the proof I delivered that edifies these realizations (you know who you are...) or people looking for reasons to doubt it all are in denial and cannot be helped, unless they help themselves by looking at the old Amelia Earhart missing person case differently than they have done before.   As well, while what became of Amelia's long ago acquaintance, the original Irene Craigmile, still remains unknown, she is the actual person who ended up missing forever those years ago. By virtue of the study results, this is evident now too.   Simply put, Joseph A. Gervais was absolutely correct all those years ago when he unequivocally stated that Amelia somehow managed to live on after she went missing in 1937, and her entire earthly being was later attributed to her old friend, Irene Craigmile's left over identity for herself to use for the remainder of her days. As mentioned he kept repeating this truth he knew to others from 1970 on, to include throughout Irene's five-year defamation law suit against him, and all the way to his dying day in 2005. [Note: Irene did not sue Joe Gervais nor publisher McGraw-Hill for implicating her as the former Amelia Earhart. She sued them for some inaccurate statements in the book, Amelia Earhart Lives that she felt were damaging to her character. After she refused to submit her fingerprints as proof-positive of her identity, she settled with Gervais and author, Joe Klaas for ten dollars consideration she paid to them and they each paid to her. She originally sued publisher McGraw-Hill for $1.5 million but ended up only being rewarded $60k for its failure to better vet the information it allowed to be printed about her. For example, in the book, Joe Klaas referred to her husband, Guy Bolam, (who died earlier in 1970) as her "alleged husband," and she was able to produce her 1958 marriage license as proof they had been legally married.]   Even though the book, Amelia Earhart Lives turned into somewhat of a train-wreck, it's author, Joe Klaas was a brilliant writer who knew how to lure people into the 'I found her' claim made by Joe Gervais. Hindsight, however, tells us that his book delved too much into trying to explain howAmelia ended up where she did and what she was doing while she was missing, where it ought to have focuse more on identifying her renamed body that Joe Gervais clearly photographed in 1965. Yet, no one is to blame for that. The former Amelia Earhart proved far too strong and resourceful in her defiance against the book's overall content.    I am proud to have known Joe Klaas, who was a past World War Two prisoner of war held by Germany for twenty-five months. I am also very proud to have known Joseph A. Gervais. He was a war hero who flew combat missions in World War Two, Korea, and Vietnam before the Air Force honorably retired him as a Major in 1963. He was also a respected family man known for his good character. And I am proud to have known Colonel Rollin C. Reineck, who so closely examined my study and thoroughly believed what it revealed.   Oh yeah, by the way, it is easier for people to accept this now identifiable reality about Amelia Earhart if they don't automatically reject it just because they are encouraged by others to do so. Rather, people should try thinking for themselves about the information displayed in the comparison analysis, and perhaps wonder in some kind of ethereal way, (as blatantly obvious as the 'Amelia became Irene' truth is now) if the universe of Amelia herself has worked its way back in order to be recognized for the full life-long person she ended up being.   If you have a hard time believing this... then take it from one who knows; living as 'Irene' in her later life years, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, the former Amelia Earhart clearly emulated the great individual she was known to be until her death was recorded in 1982. In contrast to this, in-depth research on the original Irene Craigmile illustrates that it would have been all-but impossible for her person to posture herself in such a 'proud Amelia image way' had she lived a full life.   In 1998, as the former Amelia Earhart's later-life sister in law, Mrs. John Bolam described her to be, "She had a commanding presence," and "She was the epitome of a classy lady." As well, John Bolam himself, her survived brother in law, who with his wife was well settled with their combined determination that stated their late sister in law could only have been the former Amelia Earhart, once told the Associate Press, "She was not an ordinary housewife," admonishing how such an idea had been used to describe his late sister in law time and again in newsprint.   And I'll add to that; the Irene Craigmile Bolam shown directly below in 1977 does not embody the look of an ordinary housewife, and this is because, most definitely, she was previously known as, "Amelia Earhart."

Amelia, right

Irene, FKA 'Amelia Earhart.' With her "commanding presence," she was "the epitome of a classy lady."

Irene-Amelia

U.N. Marshall Islands Ambassador Alfred Capelle told the Associated Press in 2002: "Amelia Earhart definitely came to the Marshall Islands in 1937"

1987, 50-year commemorative Marshall Islands Stamp Depicts Earhart & Noonan and their plane's retrieval by Japan's military near Mili Atoll

A few American accented women...

...broadcast for Japan duing WWII. One indentified herself as, "Tokyo Rose"

The 1987 Marshall Islands Stamp Series

Shows Earhart and Noonan's takeoff from New Guinea to their crash and retrieval at Mili Atoll

1944 USAAF recon photo Taroa in the Marshalls; several accounts described Amelia's wing-damaged plane was taken there

1944 USAAF Marshall Islands reconnaissance photo Taken on a bombing run over Taroa, eyewitnesses claimed Amelia's 'wing damaged' plane ended up there

April 17, 1935

Above: Fred Noonan shown third from right with Pan Am's original Hawaiian Clipper survey team.

 

Henry P. Morgenthau Jr., second from right...

...shown with his assitant, Stephen Gibbons, far right.

 

Henry P. Morgenthau Jr. & FDR