Oct. 19, 2026
Search For Amelia Earhart’s Plane Yields “A Clump Of Trees” And Coconut Crabs
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RSS Feed What a let down. After high hopes that a 90 year mystery would finally be solved, a team of U.S. researchers are leaving a remote island empty-handed after suspected ‘plane debris’ was, in fact, a clump of trees The expedition arrived at Nikumaroro in the South Pacific after years of research and a hope that the team had finally located Amelia Earhart’s plane. Previous visits to the uninhabited island found signs of a castaway camp, a 1930s-era woman’s shoe and other evidence attributed to the celebrity aviator, including glass from a cosmetics freckle cream jar. But for now, the mystery continues.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It is Monday, October 19th, and we have been on standby waiting for word on a history-making expedition. They believe they were about to solve one of the great mysteries of our time. Where did Amelia Earhart go? Turns out we got an answer to the great mystery. It was just a tree, Robes. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Well, there's one thing we knew was a possibility. They might not find what they were looking for, which was Amelia Earhart's plane. I don't know why, when they came back and said it was a tree, that just felt so unfulfilling.
00:00:42
Speaker 2: Like, oh, it's a clump of trees that have been there for almost.
00:00:48
Speaker 3: Like 90 years, decades, they say, that they saw these trees dating back to what, the 1930s?
00:00:54
Speaker 2: Then they talked about a glint of metal.
00:00:57
Speaker 3: And they really, I have to say, because we were following this as so many people were.
00:01:01
Speaker 1: They sold it.
00:01:03
Speaker 3: They said, I mean, it was my belief, based on what I read from the researchers who know a lot more than we do from Purdue, that... They were pretty sure they had the plane. They had high expectations, and they sold those high expectations to the world. Yes.
00:01:22
Speaker 2: Just wait.
00:01:24
Speaker 3: We are pretty sure, there is a high degree of probability, that we are about to finally, finally find Amelia Earhart's plane.
00:01:34
Speaker 1: We always knew there was a possibility this wouldn't be it, but Robes, they were convincing. Now, I don't want to say... No, I think it's fair to say. So they've been all over every network doing every interview. They have sold us on this idea. And I'm not criticizing. I think they genuinely did believe it. And they raised millions of dollars over the past several years to make this expedition work. So they had to have great confidence. But damn, it was a tree.
00:01:58
Speaker 2: Can you imagine that moment? I mean, the way they had to travel. Do you have, like, it's remarkable what they had to do.
00:02:05
Speaker 3: They had to fly here, and then they had to take a boat here, and then they had to be out on this remote island that has coconut crabs.
00:02:12
Speaker 2: That apparently are so dangerous.
00:02:14
Speaker 1: Those things are scary as hell.
00:02:20
Speaker 2: Or an atoll, as it's called, in the South Pacific.
00:02:22
Speaker 3: It sounds like there are dangerous predators that almost feel alien-like that we're not used to seeing. So yes, this was a dangerous, expensive, exhaustive trek to finally unearth basically the greatest aviation mystery of all time. Yes.
00:02:39
Speaker 2: And when the moment they realized... I cannot.
00:02:42
Speaker 3: Imagine the sinking horror of realizing that after all that press, all that publicity, all that money, all that time, years of saying, this is it, it's just a clump of trees. Okay.
00:02:58
Speaker 1: And we're going to get into it at the end here and explain why somebody predicted that was exactly what it was. But where we're talking about and what we're talking about, Robes, it is, it's hard to to describe and get your head around where it is unless you're staring at a map, but the best way I can put this, and I've heard somebody else describe it, like the halfway point between LA and Australia is the best we can do. It's 7,000 miles between those two, and this is right dead center in the middle. And this was the area, or a clump of islands here, that Amelia Earhart was supposed to stop. Now, it has long been believed, Robes, that Her plane, or she, possibly went down in this particular island. It's called the Kiribati Republic. Yes, a little republic, a country there, that has a part of it called the Phoenix Islands. Now, a part of the Phoenix Islands is a specific, smaller, little spot called the Niki Maroro. It's uninhabited there in the Pacific, but it's a part of this whole thing. So near this little island, Robes, and when you see it, you're convinced. A lot of people have seen this video, this image over the years. Robes, it looks like a plane.
00:04:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was first spotted or seen in 2020 by a Navy vet, right?
00:04:21
Speaker 1: Robes, he was just doing, he was just messing around during COVID, just going through some old photos and whatnot. And in 2020, during COVID, a Navy vet just going through pictures, go, ooh, What is that? So he passes it along. People start researching rogues. They start looking at similar satellite images from decades before. And like you said at the top, this object has been there since 1938.
00:04:43
Speaker 3: I can understand why. And yes, it does look like it's in the shape of a plane.
00:04:52
Speaker 1: Oh, 100% rogues. When I first saw it, I was like, ooh, they got it now. What else could that possibly be? So They want to go check it out, Rose, because, and they call it the Terraria Object. You're going to hear us say that a couple times.
00:05:04
Speaker 2: You're going to say that because I have a hard time with it.
00:05:06
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:05:06
Speaker 1: And I said it wrong the first time. It's the Terraria. Terraria Object is what they call it. Terraria Object is what they're going to check out near the Niki Mororo Island. There you go.
00:05:15
Speaker 2: Well done.
00:05:16
Speaker 1: So there is a hypothesis for a long time. This theory, they call it the Castaway Theory, and a lot of people don't believe. Amelia Earhart crashed. in the ocean in the first place no.
00:05:25
Speaker 3: They think she actually died on this island look they have found previous visits have found pretty significant evidence of the possibility that that is where she ended up there was uh that was.
00:05:40
Speaker 1: Funny i use the evidence of the possibility right because well but.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: Like think about what they found they found a 1930s era female shoe.
00:05:49
Speaker 3: They found a glass from a cosmetics freckle cream jar that looks to date back to the 1930s. They also found skeletal remains, right, that they believe are the same height as potentially Amelia Earhart.
00:06:04
Speaker 1: We'll get into those as well. It's those skeletal remains. That sounds wild. Wait a minute. There were skeletal remains found there?
00:06:10
Speaker 3: Wow.
00:06:10
Speaker 1: They just test those because they lost them. They're gone. They don't know where they are. They weren't saved or anything, but they were.
00:06:16
Speaker 2: Recorded.
00:06:16
Speaker 1: Recorded by British, I think, researchers who initially said it was a man. And then years later, somebody came back and, well, we can't guarantee that's actually a man. And now other people coming back say, well, that's the size and shape of a male. They don't know because you can't examine the damn things anymore. So all we can examine is notes from somebody who examined it 90 years ago. Wow. That's where we are.
00:06:47
Speaker 2: It's just such a mystery.
00:06:49
Speaker 1: I'm with you 100%. So the mystery continues. But yes, the idea that possibly she landed... Noonan. Frank Noonan was her navigator. We should mention as well. But yes, the idea that they crashed there survived for a while. You mentioned the crabs. Well, that's been kind of a more grotesque part of some of these theories is that she landed there. They eventually perished.
00:07:13
Speaker 3: And these crabs.
00:07:14
Speaker 1: Crabs did their work. And folks, Robes, these things are monsters. These, what crab, what do they call them again?
00:07:22
Speaker 2: A coconut crab.
00:07:22
Speaker 1: Coconut crabs. They're scary.
00:07:24
Speaker 2: They're so scary.
00:07:26
Speaker 3: Just Google that right now and you'll understand exactly what we're talking about.
00:07:30
Speaker 1: Good Lord.
00:07:30
Speaker 2: Poor Frank Noonan, by the way.
00:07:31
Speaker 1: Say it again?
00:07:32
Speaker 2: Poor Frank Noonan. He never gets mentioned.
00:07:34
Speaker 1: Never gets mentioned.
00:07:34
Speaker 3: Never. In fact, just in researching this story is the first time I actually even kind of saw his name and thought, wow. You know, we all have joked before if you're on a plane and it goes down and there's some celebrity on, it'll be like, you know, I don't even know to.
00:07:50
Speaker 2: Pick out a celebrity, but whatever.
00:07:52
Speaker 1: Nobody else will be named.
00:07:53
Speaker 2: Kelly Clarkson was on the plane.
00:07:55
Speaker 1: No one else will be named.
00:07:56
Speaker 2: I shouldn't say that.
00:07:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, we shouldn't say that. You were looking for a celebrity. We actually just did an episode earlier in which we were talking about Kelly Clarkson. Like this, like 10 minutes ago, you were talking about Kelly Clarkson.
00:08:04
Speaker 2: Well, whatever, celebrity. No one else.
00:08:06
Speaker 3: It would be that person and the others. Like you're just an asterisk. You're not even worth mentioning. I just wanted to give some love to Noonan.
00:08:13
Speaker 1: A very important guy in Robes. If she trusted him to help get her around the world, he was clearly a very important part of what she was able to do. Now, this latest expedition, Robes, they've been working on this for years, as you mentioned, but they plan to use all their scientific equipment, get out there, a magnetometer, use sonar, the latest of everything. But you said, Robes, we talk about the distance, how far it is out in the Pacific area. Robes, I'm not sure where they landed out there, but it was a five-day boat trip to get to this island. That's how remote out this thing is. Wow.
00:08:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, they left L.A. at the beginning of this month, correct, October?
00:08:51
Speaker 1: Earlier, yeah.
00:08:51
Speaker 3: And then, I mean, this doesn't help at all. I love the location is 400 miles southeast of Howland Island. LOL, I have no idea where any of that is.
00:08:59
Speaker 1: Well, Howland Island is where, and we're reading that significant, that's where she was supposed to go.
00:09:04
Speaker 2: Got it.
00:09:05
Speaker 1: So it seems through communication that night with the radio that was spotty, she was off course. She wasn't where she was supposed to be, wasn't clear where she was. So that's why she might have been 400 miles off course, and that's a lot of saying. She could have ended up here. Now, Rose, they put out this statement. They've been putting out statements and doing interviews, and this was a little heartbreaking, but they had to admit to all of us, we made it down here, this expedite. And, Rose, they were giving updates like day in, day out, social media.
00:09:30
Speaker 2: I was so excited about it. One day last week, do you remember what I said to you?
00:09:34
Speaker 3: Hey, should we do an episode on the search for Amelia Earhart's plane?
00:09:38
Speaker 2: Because honestly, the anticipation is growing. This is exciting.
00:09:42
Speaker 3: Maybe we should just get on the record with it and do a whole episode on their journey. And then we can get so excited when and if they find the plane. I just didn't think it was going to be this much of a downer.
00:09:56
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to call me out because I said at the time.
00:09:59
Speaker 3: You did. You said, let's just wait and see. It was almost as if, yes, the skeptic in you won out.
00:10:06
Speaker 1: How many times over the years? They think they're close. They think they're close. And maybe they'll figure it out. It took them a while to reach the Titanic, right? And find that sucker.
00:10:13
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:10:14
Speaker 1: Maybe this would be that case.
00:10:15
Speaker 3: Titanic was a very large ship.
00:10:17
Speaker 1: It was big, and they had a hard time with that. That's such a good point.
00:10:19
Speaker 2: Like, that was a ginormous ship.
00:10:20
Speaker 3: They knew exactly where it was.
00:10:23
Speaker 2: They knew exactly where it went down, and they still couldn't find it.
00:10:25
Speaker 1: Still couldn't find it.
00:10:26
Speaker 2: That's the ocean for you, right? But here was their official statement.
00:10:30
Speaker 3: They said they found no conclusive evidence to confirm a hypothesis that wreckage from Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E was in a lagoon on a remote atoll in the South Pacific. Evidence gathered confirmed that the visual anomaly first seen in satellite imagery in 2020 was likely a collection of large trees deposited along the peninsula's sand spit. By the time the team arrived at the site, a good portion of the debris had fragmented and washed away, leaving only a single Y-shaped segment, a fraction. of the anomaly's original size observed in imagery when the Terea object hypothesis was developed.
00:11:13
Speaker 2: The fragment's reflective surface.
00:11:16
Speaker 3: Long associated with the idea that the object was a metallic substance, was.
00:11:20
Speaker 2: Due to its carbonate veneer.
00:11:23
Speaker 3: Other items found by the team were similarly coated with a shiny, concretized amalgam of coral sand.
00:11:31
Speaker 1: We were wrong. All of that is we were wrong. I guess you have to do this. And they say, babe, this is important. The Terea object. They can now cross it off the list. So this was a long time coming. A lot of years, Robes. A lot of money in this. And no, it's not her. It's not her plane. But, Robes, they've checked one major thing off the list. I guess that's something. But that's still a disappointment. That stings, baby.
00:11:57
Speaker 2: That's a lot of money. A lot of time.
00:11:59
Speaker 1: To confirm that it's not it. Yes.
00:12:03
Speaker 2: Oh, my goodness.
00:12:05
Speaker 1: Say this is what you got to do. Amelia Earhart, again, this is stuff of legend at this point. She is one of the most famous aviators ever. She was one of the most famous aviators at the time. She went around the world solo. First woman to go across the Atlantic, fly across the Atlantic. But, Ro, she was trying to break this record by going around the equator. Now, I didn't remember that she left from Oakland, right? I didn't remember that.
00:12:30
Speaker 2: I didn't know. Did not know that.
00:12:31
Speaker 1: But that was May of 1937. She heads, starts in Oakland, makes a couple stops in the U.S., but flies across the U.S., gets to Miami, where she then leaves the U.S. That was on June 1. Robes, this is a 29,000-mile journey. When she disappeared, she was 20,000-plus into it. Wow.
00:12:48
Speaker 2: She almost finished it.
00:12:50
Speaker 1: And this was considered one of the, if not the toughest stretch. There's nothing out there. They actually placed boats in the water. like big ships, and told them to turn all your lights on. just to give her the best chance of seeing something when she's out there. Like just turn every light on in the book. Isn't that crazy?
00:13:05
Speaker 2: I didn't know that. That is such an interesting fact. Like almost like a lighted pathway.
00:13:10
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:13:10
Speaker 1: There was no, babe, it's pitch black.
00:13:13
Speaker 2: How do you navigate?
00:13:14
Speaker 1: No tower, no nothing to help you.
00:13:16
Speaker 2: No communication.
00:13:17
Speaker 1: No land, no, there are no high rises on Howland Island out there. You can feel nothing. So yes, they knew this was a tough stretch. The radio communications rose between the two. I was actually reading some of these old logs this morning. They reported cloudy weather, tough conditions. They couldn't see much of anything. But Robes, one of these, this is the one, it wasn't the final transmission there you see, but it was one of the latter ones that didn't bode well for history.
00:13:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this certainly speaks to the trouble that they felt they were in. We must be on you, but we cannot see you. Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at a thousand feet.
00:13:59
Speaker 2: That is so low. That is no room for error.
00:14:03
Speaker 3: But she obviously felt like the fuel was so low they had to be that close to whatever land. Yeah, that she could just land immediately. And unfortunately that didn't happen. I also read that if she had known Morse code, if Frank Noonan had known Morse code.
00:14:17
Speaker 1: I was shocked they didn't know Morse code.
00:14:18
Speaker 2: How did they not know Morse code before they left?
00:14:20
Speaker 1: Aviators. Aviators. I was stunned to hear that detail.
00:14:27
Speaker 3: Because the implication was that had they known it, they could have still been able to communicate.
00:14:33
Speaker 2: Someone would have picked it up somewhere. But that, alas, did not happen.
00:14:37
Speaker 1: All right, well, stay here, folks. Yes, this is one significant theory about Amelia Earhart. Do you know the others, though? We'll explain the still floating around theories out there. Some of them are a little more far-fetched, and a couple of them are still needing to be examined. Stay here.
00:15:04
Speaker 2: Welcome back, everyone, to Amy and TJ. Well, a very expensive, costly, and lengthy theory has been debunked.
00:15:12
Speaker 3: We know that Amelia Earhart's plane is not in a specific island, or at least in the lagoon off of a specific island in the middle of nowhere, so to speak. And so now, what, do they have to go back to the drawing board? There are a couple of other theories that are out there that could be pursued, but my God, it's been 90 years now. And no one has ever been able to explain to date what exactly happened, where these two ended up, where the plane is, where their bodies were, what went wrong.
00:15:46
Speaker 2: We're just as clueless now as we were then.
00:15:50
Speaker 1: Man, I was trying to find a way to push back against that. Yeah. I mean, I guess they've knocked one thing off the list. And that is supposed to be the upside, the positive here, Robes. But we are What did we learn that moves the investigation ahead? We've learned not to focus on this area anymore, perhaps. Perhaps, because again, Robe, you said other things have been found on the island.
00:16:15
Speaker 3: To me, I don't know why this stands out so much, but yes, the 1930s, they're roughly guessing. This freckle cream, that really stands out to me. If you've seen pictures of Amelia Earhart, you know she's got the red hair and the freckles, and so But that was something so specific to the time and how would it end up.
00:16:36
Speaker 2: On that island? I can understand why they devoted.
00:16:39
Speaker 3: So much resource and so much resources and so much time to this specific area because there were like that shoe, the freckle cream. That is hard to explain away when you have a missing woman and you have items that would come from that era washing up on that island.
00:16:58
Speaker 2: Doesn't mean she made it to the island.
00:16:59
Speaker 3: No.
00:17:00
Speaker 2: But they're close, I would think.
00:17:03
Speaker 1: In the vicinity. I mean, people have focused on this area for a while. Yeah. Robes, after this, it's not like they have other vast areas to go check out. Let's go check out Hawaii now. No. They think that they're in the right area. Robes, I know you probably saw some theories. Some of them are like alien abductions.
00:17:21
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:17:21
Speaker 1: Some stuff.
00:17:22
Speaker 3: Like Bermuda Triangle kind of stuff.
00:17:24
Speaker 1: That kind of. Some of that is out there. There is one that's a little, I'll give. One that's a little more mainstream, this idea, Robes, that she survived and then picked up another identity somewhere and lived out her life.
00:17:40
Speaker 2: Why would she do that?
00:17:41
Speaker 1: Why would she want to do that? She was too famous, wanted to get away, trying to escape something? Don't know. Another one, Robes, that some give a little more credit to, she was a spy for the U.S. I've heard that one. She was an American spy. The other, which is one of my favorites... is that she was captured by the Japanese. That she actually landed on an island somewhere that was Japanese territory. We're obviously, at that time, not friendly. And she was a prisoner.
00:18:07
Speaker 2: One way to put it.
00:18:07
Speaker 1: Now, Robes. That photo of that island with Japanese territory, where it has a woman sitting on this dock. Robes, that's a fascinating photo.
00:18:20
Speaker 3: It is.
00:18:21
Speaker 1: That one is a little creepy.
00:18:22
Speaker 3: And is the theory that if the Japanese know that they actually ended up capturing her and doing something with her, they don't want to admit it now because she's so beloved. Like it would just, it would not, there's no advantage for them to, because a part of me thought, well, why wouldn't they want to claim credit?
00:18:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got her. She was a prisoner. She was a spy.
00:18:44
Speaker 3: We did what we wanted because it was a time of war and it was justified. Or is it an embarrassing thing? piece of information that they could have that they wouldn't want to get out.
00:18:54
Speaker 1: Or is it possible there's no record of it and they never made it up some chain they just found two people you don't know these are american heroes over here doing their.
00:19:03
Speaker 2: Thing yeah it was a volatile time in the world it was.
00:19:05
Speaker 1: In rome the news doesn't travel as fast as it does now they didn't pick up their iphone to go oh there's an aviator coming our way from the u.s we should keep it no It's possible. That photo, if you get a chance, what was the other thing you told people to look up? The crab, right?
00:19:19
Speaker 2: Oh, the coconut crabs.
00:19:20
Speaker 1: And look at them up and also look up Amelia Earhart, Japanese Island photo. It is. That one's a little freaky. I would like some, who knows what that is, but that is an interesting, interesting one. The other one, yes, theory robes. We just went over that.
00:19:36
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:19:36
Speaker 1: The hypothesis that she survived, but still, babe, the, The predominant theory is that, yes, she crashed. Yes. Somewhere in the ocean, and they perished.
00:19:46
Speaker 3: Right. Well, if one of the last forms of communication involved... her saying, we're running low on fuel, we can't see you, I think that is an obvious next thought. The question is, was she able to land it on some piece of land at some point and what happened then? But you teased this at the very beginning of this episode.
00:20:05
Speaker 2: There was someone.
00:20:07
Speaker 3: in the midst of all this excitement, that they had found this plane who was, well, let's just say cautioning everyone from getting too excited about the possibility that these researchers would actually find Amelia Earhart's plane wreckage.
00:20:21
Speaker 1: And this other guy wrote this, he calls himself this, but the industry kind of assumes he is the foremost expert on Amelia Earhart. This name is Rick Gillespie, but he is an investigator. They say he's actually made a dozen trips down to the area doing research of some kind, all come up with nothing. But this is how he put it. He told Robes, this interview and this article came out before they left. His quote, you can see the root ball. You can see the branches. It's a tree. People see what they want to see. Wow. That's crazy. Before they left.
00:20:58
Speaker 2: Before they left. No one else saw it?
00:21:02
Speaker 1: Y'all going to look for a tree. Look, you got these researchers, and she's a part, this group was led by a guy who's at Purdue University. She is near and dear to them, Robes. Who knew? I didn't know that either.
00:21:14
Speaker 2: I didn't either, that she was actually a professor?
00:21:16
Speaker 1: She was a lecturer who came there. A lecturer. Yeah, who came there, but she is a part of that family. They love her.
00:21:20
Speaker 3: And she had asked, yes, so much so that she had asked when she completed her mission, which she obviously intended on doing, that the plane be donated to Purdue University to be there for its historic, And so she wanted to gift her plane, which she hoped would become a symbol of a great American feat, aviation feat, led by a woman that, yes, that plane should return to Purdue, her home, the place where she wanted it to be. And so it would make sense that researchers from that university would be a part.
00:21:51
Speaker 2: Of this expedition.
00:21:52
Speaker 1: And it speaks to how badly maybe they wanted this to be it, how badly they wanted it to be. And again, all these folks know each other in the community. Rick Gillespie is kind of described as a competing, right, Earhart investigator. They're kind of in a race to find it themselves, to find it first. But he said something, Rick Gillespie. These are older guys. They've been at this for a long time. He said the plane might simply, and Amelia Earhart, might simply be lost to history. And we have to accept that that plane went down. It broke up in such a way. It was a smaller plane. Yeah. It broke up in such a way. It washed away. Even the idea that maybe if she did get to the island, what those crabs might have done to their bodies. Like, it's gone. She's gone. The plane is gone to history. Just the idea of that, to have to accept that, sucks. But if that guy is making that statement....
00:22:47
Speaker 3: I wonder how Rick Gillespie is feeling today upon the news that, in fact, it was a treat.
00:22:53
Speaker 1: I don't know him at all, but I have a feeling he glowed a little bit. Maybe privately. Maybe in the mirror. Maybe not.
00:22:59
Speaker 2: Doesn't even need to say, I told you so.
00:23:01
Speaker 1: Because he said it before they left.
00:23:02
Speaker 2: It's on record.
00:23:04
Speaker 1: All right, folks. Well, the mystery continues. We appreciate you always spending a little time with us. I'm TJ. That's Robes. We'll certainly talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It is Monday, October 19th, and we have been on standby waiting for word on a history-making expedition. They believe they were about to solve one of the great mysteries of our time. Where did Amelia Earhart go? Turns out we got an answer to the great mystery. It was just a tree, Robes. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Well, there's one thing we knew was a possibility. They might not find what they were looking for, which was Amelia Earhart's plane. I don't know why, when they came back and said it was a tree, that just felt so unfulfilling.
00:00:42
Speaker 2: Like, oh, it's a clump of trees that have been there for almost.
00:00:48
Speaker 3: Like 90 years, decades, they say, that they saw these trees dating back to what, the 1930s?
00:00:54
Speaker 2: Then they talked about a glint of metal.
00:00:57
Speaker 3: And they really, I have to say, because we were following this as so many people were.
00:01:01
Speaker 1: They sold it.
00:01:03
Speaker 3: They said, I mean, it was my belief, based on what I read from the researchers who know a lot more than we do from Purdue, that... They were pretty sure they had the plane. They had high expectations, and they sold those high expectations to the world. Yes.
00:01:22
Speaker 2: Just wait.
00:01:24
Speaker 3: We are pretty sure, there is a high degree of probability, that we are about to finally, finally find Amelia Earhart's plane.
00:01:34
Speaker 1: We always knew there was a possibility this wouldn't be it, but Robes, they were convincing. Now, I don't want to say... No, I think it's fair to say. So they've been all over every network doing every interview. They have sold us on this idea. And I'm not criticizing. I think they genuinely did believe it. And they raised millions of dollars over the past several years to make this expedition work. So they had to have great confidence. But damn, it was a tree.
00:01:58
Speaker 2: Can you imagine that moment? I mean, the way they had to travel. Do you have, like, it's remarkable what they had to do.
00:02:05
Speaker 3: They had to fly here, and then they had to take a boat here, and then they had to be out on this remote island that has coconut crabs.
00:02:12
Speaker 2: That apparently are so dangerous.
00:02:14
Speaker 1: Those things are scary as hell.
00:02:20
Speaker 2: Or an atoll, as it's called, in the South Pacific.
00:02:22
Speaker 3: It sounds like there are dangerous predators that almost feel alien-like that we're not used to seeing. So yes, this was a dangerous, expensive, exhaustive trek to finally unearth basically the greatest aviation mystery of all time. Yes.
00:02:39
Speaker 2: And when the moment they realized... I cannot.
00:02:42
Speaker 3: Imagine the sinking horror of realizing that after all that press, all that publicity, all that money, all that time, years of saying, this is it, it's just a clump of trees. Okay.
00:02:58
Speaker 1: And we're going to get into it at the end here and explain why somebody predicted that was exactly what it was. But where we're talking about and what we're talking about, Robes, it is, it's hard to to describe and get your head around where it is unless you're staring at a map, but the best way I can put this, and I've heard somebody else describe it, like the halfway point between LA and Australia is the best we can do. It's 7,000 miles between those two, and this is right dead center in the middle. And this was the area, or a clump of islands here, that Amelia Earhart was supposed to stop. Now, it has long been believed, Robes, that Her plane, or she, possibly went down in this particular island. It's called the Kiribati Republic. Yes, a little republic, a country there, that has a part of it called the Phoenix Islands. Now, a part of the Phoenix Islands is a specific, smaller, little spot called the Niki Maroro. It's uninhabited there in the Pacific, but it's a part of this whole thing. So near this little island, Robes, and when you see it, you're convinced. A lot of people have seen this video, this image over the years. Robes, it looks like a plane.
00:04:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was first spotted or seen in 2020 by a Navy vet, right?
00:04:21
Speaker 1: Robes, he was just doing, he was just messing around during COVID, just going through some old photos and whatnot. And in 2020, during COVID, a Navy vet just going through pictures, go, ooh, What is that? So he passes it along. People start researching rogues. They start looking at similar satellite images from decades before. And like you said at the top, this object has been there since 1938.
00:04:43
Speaker 3: I can understand why. And yes, it does look like it's in the shape of a plane.
00:04:52
Speaker 1: Oh, 100% rogues. When I first saw it, I was like, ooh, they got it now. What else could that possibly be? So They want to go check it out, Rose, because, and they call it the Terraria Object. You're going to hear us say that a couple times.
00:05:04
Speaker 2: You're going to say that because I have a hard time with it.
00:05:06
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:05:06
Speaker 1: And I said it wrong the first time. It's the Terraria. Terraria Object is what they call it. Terraria Object is what they're going to check out near the Niki Mororo Island. There you go.
00:05:15
Speaker 2: Well done.
00:05:16
Speaker 1: So there is a hypothesis for a long time. This theory, they call it the Castaway Theory, and a lot of people don't believe. Amelia Earhart crashed. in the ocean in the first place no.
00:05:25
Speaker 3: They think she actually died on this island look they have found previous visits have found pretty significant evidence of the possibility that that is where she ended up there was uh that was.
00:05:40
Speaker 1: Funny i use the evidence of the possibility right because well but.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: Like think about what they found they found a 1930s era female shoe.
00:05:49
Speaker 3: They found a glass from a cosmetics freckle cream jar that looks to date back to the 1930s. They also found skeletal remains, right, that they believe are the same height as potentially Amelia Earhart.
00:06:04
Speaker 1: We'll get into those as well. It's those skeletal remains. That sounds wild. Wait a minute. There were skeletal remains found there?
00:06:10
Speaker 3: Wow.
00:06:10
Speaker 1: They just test those because they lost them. They're gone. They don't know where they are. They weren't saved or anything, but they were.
00:06:16
Speaker 2: Recorded.
00:06:16
Speaker 1: Recorded by British, I think, researchers who initially said it was a man. And then years later, somebody came back and, well, we can't guarantee that's actually a man. And now other people coming back say, well, that's the size and shape of a male. They don't know because you can't examine the damn things anymore. So all we can examine is notes from somebody who examined it 90 years ago. Wow. That's where we are.
00:06:47
Speaker 2: It's just such a mystery.
00:06:49
Speaker 1: I'm with you 100%. So the mystery continues. But yes, the idea that possibly she landed... Noonan. Frank Noonan was her navigator. We should mention as well. But yes, the idea that they crashed there survived for a while. You mentioned the crabs. Well, that's been kind of a more grotesque part of some of these theories is that she landed there. They eventually perished.
00:07:13
Speaker 3: And these crabs.
00:07:14
Speaker 1: Crabs did their work. And folks, Robes, these things are monsters. These, what crab, what do they call them again?
00:07:22
Speaker 2: A coconut crab.
00:07:22
Speaker 1: Coconut crabs. They're scary.
00:07:24
Speaker 2: They're so scary.
00:07:26
Speaker 3: Just Google that right now and you'll understand exactly what we're talking about.
00:07:30
Speaker 1: Good Lord.
00:07:30
Speaker 2: Poor Frank Noonan, by the way.
00:07:31
Speaker 1: Say it again?
00:07:32
Speaker 2: Poor Frank Noonan. He never gets mentioned.
00:07:34
Speaker 1: Never gets mentioned.
00:07:34
Speaker 3: Never. In fact, just in researching this story is the first time I actually even kind of saw his name and thought, wow. You know, we all have joked before if you're on a plane and it goes down and there's some celebrity on, it'll be like, you know, I don't even know to.
00:07:50
Speaker 2: Pick out a celebrity, but whatever.
00:07:52
Speaker 1: Nobody else will be named.
00:07:53
Speaker 2: Kelly Clarkson was on the plane.
00:07:55
Speaker 1: No one else will be named.
00:07:56
Speaker 2: I shouldn't say that.
00:07:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, we shouldn't say that. You were looking for a celebrity. We actually just did an episode earlier in which we were talking about Kelly Clarkson. Like this, like 10 minutes ago, you were talking about Kelly Clarkson.
00:08:04
Speaker 2: Well, whatever, celebrity. No one else.
00:08:06
Speaker 3: It would be that person and the others. Like you're just an asterisk. You're not even worth mentioning. I just wanted to give some love to Noonan.
00:08:13
Speaker 1: A very important guy in Robes. If she trusted him to help get her around the world, he was clearly a very important part of what she was able to do. Now, this latest expedition, Robes, they've been working on this for years, as you mentioned, but they plan to use all their scientific equipment, get out there, a magnetometer, use sonar, the latest of everything. But you said, Robes, we talk about the distance, how far it is out in the Pacific area. Robes, I'm not sure where they landed out there, but it was a five-day boat trip to get to this island. That's how remote out this thing is. Wow.
00:08:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, they left L.A. at the beginning of this month, correct, October?
00:08:51
Speaker 1: Earlier, yeah.
00:08:51
Speaker 3: And then, I mean, this doesn't help at all. I love the location is 400 miles southeast of Howland Island. LOL, I have no idea where any of that is.
00:08:59
Speaker 1: Well, Howland Island is where, and we're reading that significant, that's where she was supposed to go.
00:09:04
Speaker 2: Got it.
00:09:05
Speaker 1: So it seems through communication that night with the radio that was spotty, she was off course. She wasn't where she was supposed to be, wasn't clear where she was. So that's why she might have been 400 miles off course, and that's a lot of saying. She could have ended up here. Now, Rose, they put out this statement. They've been putting out statements and doing interviews, and this was a little heartbreaking, but they had to admit to all of us, we made it down here, this expedite. And, Rose, they were giving updates like day in, day out, social media.
00:09:30
Speaker 2: I was so excited about it. One day last week, do you remember what I said to you?
00:09:34
Speaker 3: Hey, should we do an episode on the search for Amelia Earhart's plane?
00:09:38
Speaker 2: Because honestly, the anticipation is growing. This is exciting.
00:09:42
Speaker 3: Maybe we should just get on the record with it and do a whole episode on their journey. And then we can get so excited when and if they find the plane. I just didn't think it was going to be this much of a downer.
00:09:56
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to call me out because I said at the time.
00:09:59
Speaker 3: You did. You said, let's just wait and see. It was almost as if, yes, the skeptic in you won out.
00:10:06
Speaker 1: How many times over the years? They think they're close. They think they're close. And maybe they'll figure it out. It took them a while to reach the Titanic, right? And find that sucker.
00:10:13
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:10:14
Speaker 1: Maybe this would be that case.
00:10:15
Speaker 3: Titanic was a very large ship.
00:10:17
Speaker 1: It was big, and they had a hard time with that. That's such a good point.
00:10:19
Speaker 2: Like, that was a ginormous ship.
00:10:20
Speaker 3: They knew exactly where it was.
00:10:23
Speaker 2: They knew exactly where it went down, and they still couldn't find it.
00:10:25
Speaker 1: Still couldn't find it.
00:10:26
Speaker 2: That's the ocean for you, right? But here was their official statement.
00:10:30
Speaker 3: They said they found no conclusive evidence to confirm a hypothesis that wreckage from Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E was in a lagoon on a remote atoll in the South Pacific. Evidence gathered confirmed that the visual anomaly first seen in satellite imagery in 2020 was likely a collection of large trees deposited along the peninsula's sand spit. By the time the team arrived at the site, a good portion of the debris had fragmented and washed away, leaving only a single Y-shaped segment, a fraction. of the anomaly's original size observed in imagery when the Terea object hypothesis was developed.
00:11:13
Speaker 2: The fragment's reflective surface.
00:11:16
Speaker 3: Long associated with the idea that the object was a metallic substance, was.
00:11:20
Speaker 2: Due to its carbonate veneer.
00:11:23
Speaker 3: Other items found by the team were similarly coated with a shiny, concretized amalgam of coral sand.
00:11:31
Speaker 1: We were wrong. All of that is we were wrong. I guess you have to do this. And they say, babe, this is important. The Terea object. They can now cross it off the list. So this was a long time coming. A lot of years, Robes. A lot of money in this. And no, it's not her. It's not her plane. But, Robes, they've checked one major thing off the list. I guess that's something. But that's still a disappointment. That stings, baby.
00:11:57
Speaker 2: That's a lot of money. A lot of time.
00:11:59
Speaker 1: To confirm that it's not it. Yes.
00:12:03
Speaker 2: Oh, my goodness.
00:12:05
Speaker 1: Say this is what you got to do. Amelia Earhart, again, this is stuff of legend at this point. She is one of the most famous aviators ever. She was one of the most famous aviators at the time. She went around the world solo. First woman to go across the Atlantic, fly across the Atlantic. But, Ro, she was trying to break this record by going around the equator. Now, I didn't remember that she left from Oakland, right? I didn't remember that.
00:12:30
Speaker 2: I didn't know. Did not know that.
00:12:31
Speaker 1: But that was May of 1937. She heads, starts in Oakland, makes a couple stops in the U.S., but flies across the U.S., gets to Miami, where she then leaves the U.S. That was on June 1. Robes, this is a 29,000-mile journey. When she disappeared, she was 20,000-plus into it. Wow.
00:12:48
Speaker 2: She almost finished it.
00:12:50
Speaker 1: And this was considered one of the, if not the toughest stretch. There's nothing out there. They actually placed boats in the water. like big ships, and told them to turn all your lights on. just to give her the best chance of seeing something when she's out there. Like just turn every light on in the book. Isn't that crazy?
00:13:05
Speaker 2: I didn't know that. That is such an interesting fact. Like almost like a lighted pathway.
00:13:10
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:13:10
Speaker 1: There was no, babe, it's pitch black.
00:13:13
Speaker 2: How do you navigate?
00:13:14
Speaker 1: No tower, no nothing to help you.
00:13:16
Speaker 2: No communication.
00:13:17
Speaker 1: No land, no, there are no high rises on Howland Island out there. You can feel nothing. So yes, they knew this was a tough stretch. The radio communications rose between the two. I was actually reading some of these old logs this morning. They reported cloudy weather, tough conditions. They couldn't see much of anything. But Robes, one of these, this is the one, it wasn't the final transmission there you see, but it was one of the latter ones that didn't bode well for history.
00:13:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this certainly speaks to the trouble that they felt they were in. We must be on you, but we cannot see you. Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at a thousand feet.
00:13:59
Speaker 2: That is so low. That is no room for error.
00:14:03
Speaker 3: But she obviously felt like the fuel was so low they had to be that close to whatever land. Yeah, that she could just land immediately. And unfortunately that didn't happen. I also read that if she had known Morse code, if Frank Noonan had known Morse code.
00:14:17
Speaker 1: I was shocked they didn't know Morse code.
00:14:18
Speaker 2: How did they not know Morse code before they left?
00:14:20
Speaker 1: Aviators. Aviators. I was stunned to hear that detail.
00:14:27
Speaker 3: Because the implication was that had they known it, they could have still been able to communicate.
00:14:33
Speaker 2: Someone would have picked it up somewhere. But that, alas, did not happen.
00:14:37
Speaker 1: All right, well, stay here, folks. Yes, this is one significant theory about Amelia Earhart. Do you know the others, though? We'll explain the still floating around theories out there. Some of them are a little more far-fetched, and a couple of them are still needing to be examined. Stay here.
00:15:04
Speaker 2: Welcome back, everyone, to Amy and TJ. Well, a very expensive, costly, and lengthy theory has been debunked.
00:15:12
Speaker 3: We know that Amelia Earhart's plane is not in a specific island, or at least in the lagoon off of a specific island in the middle of nowhere, so to speak. And so now, what, do they have to go back to the drawing board? There are a couple of other theories that are out there that could be pursued, but my God, it's been 90 years now. And no one has ever been able to explain to date what exactly happened, where these two ended up, where the plane is, where their bodies were, what went wrong.
00:15:46
Speaker 2: We're just as clueless now as we were then.
00:15:50
Speaker 1: Man, I was trying to find a way to push back against that. Yeah. I mean, I guess they've knocked one thing off the list. And that is supposed to be the upside, the positive here, Robes. But we are What did we learn that moves the investigation ahead? We've learned not to focus on this area anymore, perhaps. Perhaps, because again, Robe, you said other things have been found on the island.
00:16:15
Speaker 3: To me, I don't know why this stands out so much, but yes, the 1930s, they're roughly guessing. This freckle cream, that really stands out to me. If you've seen pictures of Amelia Earhart, you know she's got the red hair and the freckles, and so But that was something so specific to the time and how would it end up.
00:16:36
Speaker 2: On that island? I can understand why they devoted.
00:16:39
Speaker 3: So much resource and so much resources and so much time to this specific area because there were like that shoe, the freckle cream. That is hard to explain away when you have a missing woman and you have items that would come from that era washing up on that island.
00:16:58
Speaker 2: Doesn't mean she made it to the island.
00:16:59
Speaker 3: No.
00:17:00
Speaker 2: But they're close, I would think.
00:17:03
Speaker 1: In the vicinity. I mean, people have focused on this area for a while. Yeah. Robes, after this, it's not like they have other vast areas to go check out. Let's go check out Hawaii now. No. They think that they're in the right area. Robes, I know you probably saw some theories. Some of them are like alien abductions.
00:17:21
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:17:21
Speaker 1: Some stuff.
00:17:22
Speaker 3: Like Bermuda Triangle kind of stuff.
00:17:24
Speaker 1: That kind of. Some of that is out there. There is one that's a little, I'll give. One that's a little more mainstream, this idea, Robes, that she survived and then picked up another identity somewhere and lived out her life.
00:17:40
Speaker 2: Why would she do that?
00:17:41
Speaker 1: Why would she want to do that? She was too famous, wanted to get away, trying to escape something? Don't know. Another one, Robes, that some give a little more credit to, she was a spy for the U.S. I've heard that one. She was an American spy. The other, which is one of my favorites... is that she was captured by the Japanese. That she actually landed on an island somewhere that was Japanese territory. We're obviously, at that time, not friendly. And she was a prisoner.
00:18:07
Speaker 2: One way to put it.
00:18:07
Speaker 1: Now, Robes. That photo of that island with Japanese territory, where it has a woman sitting on this dock. Robes, that's a fascinating photo.
00:18:20
Speaker 3: It is.
00:18:21
Speaker 1: That one is a little creepy.
00:18:22
Speaker 3: And is the theory that if the Japanese know that they actually ended up capturing her and doing something with her, they don't want to admit it now because she's so beloved. Like it would just, it would not, there's no advantage for them to, because a part of me thought, well, why wouldn't they want to claim credit?
00:18:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got her. She was a prisoner. She was a spy.
00:18:44
Speaker 3: We did what we wanted because it was a time of war and it was justified. Or is it an embarrassing thing? piece of information that they could have that they wouldn't want to get out.
00:18:54
Speaker 1: Or is it possible there's no record of it and they never made it up some chain they just found two people you don't know these are american heroes over here doing their.
00:19:03
Speaker 2: Thing yeah it was a volatile time in the world it was.
00:19:05
Speaker 1: In rome the news doesn't travel as fast as it does now they didn't pick up their iphone to go oh there's an aviator coming our way from the u.s we should keep it no It's possible. That photo, if you get a chance, what was the other thing you told people to look up? The crab, right?
00:19:19
Speaker 2: Oh, the coconut crabs.
00:19:20
Speaker 1: And look at them up and also look up Amelia Earhart, Japanese Island photo. It is. That one's a little freaky. I would like some, who knows what that is, but that is an interesting, interesting one. The other one, yes, theory robes. We just went over that.
00:19:36
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:19:36
Speaker 1: The hypothesis that she survived, but still, babe, the, The predominant theory is that, yes, she crashed. Yes. Somewhere in the ocean, and they perished.
00:19:46
Speaker 3: Right. Well, if one of the last forms of communication involved... her saying, we're running low on fuel, we can't see you, I think that is an obvious next thought. The question is, was she able to land it on some piece of land at some point and what happened then? But you teased this at the very beginning of this episode.
00:20:05
Speaker 2: There was someone.
00:20:07
Speaker 3: in the midst of all this excitement, that they had found this plane who was, well, let's just say cautioning everyone from getting too excited about the possibility that these researchers would actually find Amelia Earhart's plane wreckage.
00:20:21
Speaker 1: And this other guy wrote this, he calls himself this, but the industry kind of assumes he is the foremost expert on Amelia Earhart. This name is Rick Gillespie, but he is an investigator. They say he's actually made a dozen trips down to the area doing research of some kind, all come up with nothing. But this is how he put it. He told Robes, this interview and this article came out before they left. His quote, you can see the root ball. You can see the branches. It's a tree. People see what they want to see. Wow. That's crazy. Before they left.
00:20:58
Speaker 2: Before they left. No one else saw it?
00:21:02
Speaker 1: Y'all going to look for a tree. Look, you got these researchers, and she's a part, this group was led by a guy who's at Purdue University. She is near and dear to them, Robes. Who knew? I didn't know that either.
00:21:14
Speaker 2: I didn't either, that she was actually a professor?
00:21:16
Speaker 1: She was a lecturer who came there. A lecturer. Yeah, who came there, but she is a part of that family. They love her.
00:21:20
Speaker 3: And she had asked, yes, so much so that she had asked when she completed her mission, which she obviously intended on doing, that the plane be donated to Purdue University to be there for its historic, And so she wanted to gift her plane, which she hoped would become a symbol of a great American feat, aviation feat, led by a woman that, yes, that plane should return to Purdue, her home, the place where she wanted it to be. And so it would make sense that researchers from that university would be a part.
00:21:51
Speaker 2: Of this expedition.
00:21:52
Speaker 1: And it speaks to how badly maybe they wanted this to be it, how badly they wanted it to be. And again, all these folks know each other in the community. Rick Gillespie is kind of described as a competing, right, Earhart investigator. They're kind of in a race to find it themselves, to find it first. But he said something, Rick Gillespie. These are older guys. They've been at this for a long time. He said the plane might simply, and Amelia Earhart, might simply be lost to history. And we have to accept that that plane went down. It broke up in such a way. It was a smaller plane. Yeah. It broke up in such a way. It washed away. Even the idea that maybe if she did get to the island, what those crabs might have done to their bodies. Like, it's gone. She's gone. The plane is gone to history. Just the idea of that, to have to accept that, sucks. But if that guy is making that statement....
00:22:47
Speaker 3: I wonder how Rick Gillespie is feeling today upon the news that, in fact, it was a treat.
00:22:53
Speaker 1: I don't know him at all, but I have a feeling he glowed a little bit. Maybe privately. Maybe in the mirror. Maybe not.
00:22:59
Speaker 2: Doesn't even need to say, I told you so.
00:23:01
Speaker 1: Because he said it before they left.
00:23:02
Speaker 2: It's on record.
00:23:04
Speaker 1: All right, folks. Well, the mystery continues. We appreciate you always spending a little time with us. I'm TJ. That's Robes. We'll certainly talk to you soon.