Photo suggests Amelia Earhart did not die in crash

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Could a grainy, black-andwhite photo, long buried in the National Archives, offer new evidence to solve the Amelia Earhart mystery?

The famous Kansas-born aviatrix disappeared on July 2, 1937, while attempting to fly around the world. The most widely held theory is that she crashed into the Pacific Ocean.

But now a never-beforeseen photograph — allegedly showing Earhart, navigator Fred Noonan and her twin-engine Lockheed Electra— supports a theory that she crash landed in the Marshall Islands, was captured by the Japanese and died while being held on the island of Saipan.

Japanese officials told NBC News they have no record of Earhart being in their custody.

The new photo, unearthed by retired U.S. Treasury agent Les Kinney five years ago and revealed for the first time in the documentary, is stamped with official Office of Naval Intelligence markings that read “Marshall Islands, Jaluit Atoll, Jaluit Island, Jaluit Harbor.”

“It was misfiled,” said Kinney, who spent 15 years trying to solve the Earhart mystery, says in the documentary. “That’s the only reason I was able to find it.”

The photo will be featured in a two-hour documentary, “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence,” Sunday night on the History channel.

“This absolutely changes history,” Shawn Henry, an NBC News analyst and former FBI executive assistant director who led the investigation featured in the documentary, tells People magazine.

“I think we proved beyond a reasonable doubt that she survived her flight and was held prisoner by the Japanese on the island of Saipan, where she eventually died.”

The photo shows a ship towing a barge with an airplane on it. A group of people are standing on the dock. Kinney believes the plane on the barge is the Electra, and that two of the people on the dock are Earhart and Noonan.

Earhart is believed to be the woman in the photo with short dark hair, wearing a white shirt, sitting on the dock with her head turned to the right.

Many theories about Earhart’s fate have been researched and debated since she disappeared. Some even contend she survived and eventually returned to the United States under an assumed name.

The government’s official story, however, is that her plane ran out of gas and crashed into the Pacific Ocean somewhere near her destination, Howland Island. Some researchers have studied her plane’s typical fuel usage, her flight path and other factors to determine approximately where she would have gone down.