Earhart vanished from sight, not ears

island at a point near” ... then she said something about a storm and that the wind was blowing.

“Will have to get out of here,” Earhart says at one point. “We can’t stay here long.”

What happened to Earhart after that has vexed the world for nearly 81 years, and TIGHAR is not the only group to try to explain the mystery.

Gillespie is just one member of competing researchers who have dedicated their time and resources to one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.

Mike Campbell, a retired journalist who wrote “Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last,” insists along with others that Earhart and Noonan were captured in the Marshall Islands by the Japanese, who thought they were American spies, and died in Japanese custody after being tortured.

Elgen Long, a Navy combat veteran and an expert on Earhart’s disappearance, wrote a book saying her plane crashed into the Pacific and sank.

Gillespie said he believes that evidence supporting his Gardner Island theory is adding up. He believes that the messages sent out over those six days were by Earhart and, occasionally, Noonan. He believes that bones found on Gardner island in 1940 belonged to Earhart but were misidentified and discarded. He believes Earhart died marooned on an island after her plane was sucked into the Pacific Ocean.

But he realizes that the public needs more than his tide tables and extrapolations from data that predates World War II.

“We’re up against a public that wants a smoking gun,” he said. “We know the public wants, demands, something simple. And we’re also very much aware that we live in a time of rampant science denial. Nobody does nuance anymore.”