THE DETECTIVE: Elyse Luray

THE PLACE: San Jose, California

THE CASE: July 2, 1937: newspapers all over the world report the same event: Amelia Earhart’s airplane disappears over the pacific. The disaster and presumed death of the beloved 39 year-old heroine gripped the public. For decades historians have debated how and where the aviator disappeared. Both scientific and more fanciful theories abound: some surmise she landed on uninhabited Gardner Island. Others suggest she was captured and executed by the Japanese. Less scrutinized is an accident she had four months earlier, during take-off for her around-the-world flight. Did that crash somehow contribute to Earhart’s disappearance? Over seventy years later, History Detectives investigates whether a fragment of metal is from the missing plane.