Was Amelia Earhart a New Jersey housewife?

WOODLAND PARK, N.J. — As the 80th anniversary of Amelia Earhart's disappearance was marked Sunday, a new theory surfaced as to what happened to her as she attempted to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.

Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937. Many believed she ran out of gas and crashed into the water.

A new documentary on the History Channel claims that a photograph found deep within the National Archives shows the famed lost pilot and Noonan captured by the Japanese on the Marshall Islands.

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One of the many theories over the years about what happened to Earhart was that she returned to the United States and was a housewife in New Jersey.

In the 1970s, a book called Amelia Earhart Lives by Joe Klass was published, claiming that Irene Bolam, a woman living in Monroe Township, N.J., in Middlesex County, was the lost pilot.

Someone saw Bolam at a garden party in New York's Long Island and thought her to be Earhart, said Richard Gillespie, founder and executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. Bolam denied she was the female aviator, but Klass' book claimed that Earhart returned to the United States after World War II to live a different life as a New Jersey housewife. Bolam, who bore a slight resemblance to Earhart, also was a pilot.

Bolam sued Klass and McGraw-Hill after the book was published and received a settlement of an unknown amount. The publisher pulled the books from the shelves.

"People will believe anything," said Gillespie.

The new History Channel documentary premiering Sunday claims the unearthed photograph depicts Earhart and Noonan on a dock while their Lockheed Electra 10E is towed by a boat and that the two were captured by the Japanese military and held until their deaths.

Gillespie called the theory an "absolute myth" and "ridiculous."

"It's a person who might be a white woman in the distance sitting on the edge of a dock and a guy that looks like a white guy so it has to be them," Gillespie said. "It's ridiculous."

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Gillespie pointed out that the hair of the person sitting on the dock is too long to be Earhart's and that there are no Japanese soldiers surrounding her and her navigator.

"If that's Amelia Earhart, where are the soldiers? No one is carrying a gun, no one is restricting their activity," Gillespie said, adding it is hard to believe that Earhart was captured by the Japanese and the United States knew about it. "Think about how many people would have to keep that secret for years."

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery has made several expeditions to Nikumaroro, which was formerly known as Gardner Island, in the Pacific where Gillespie believes he has found evidence that Earhart and Noonan crashed there and became castaways. The group is currently wrapping up an expedition on Nikumaroro to find human remains with National Geographic and forensic cadaver dogs.

Gillespie said the theory that the two perished on the island is the original theory. It makes perfect sense to him that Earhart perished on the island, noting that Nikumaroro was along the same navigation line as their original destination and that distress calls from Earhart's plane were transmitting from that area for six days after her disappearance.

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Gillespie said it took the Navy a week to reach the island to search for Earhart and by that time, the plane had been washed off the reef, slipping into the waves below. They thought the distress calls were a hoax and surmised that the plane crashed into the ocean, he said.

Three years after Earhart disappeared, the British established a colony on the island and discovered the partial skeleton of a castaway. Part of a woman's shoe was found as well as a sextant, used for navigation, Gillespie said.

"We've examined it archaeologically and we are finding artifacts that speak to an American woman in the 1930s," Gillespie said. "We are trying to find any surviving human remains to get DNA."

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery also is searching for the remains of Earhart's plane, which Gillespie maintains are located in an area of steep coral reef that makes searching difficult.

Follow Kaitlyn Kanzler on Twitter: @KaitlynKanzler8