Amelia Earhart’s Three Mysterious Endings | Crash, Castaway, or Capture? with Rachel Hartigan

What if Amelia Earhart’s disappearance isn’t just an unsolved mystery, but a reflection of who we are and what we choose to believe?

In this powerful conversation, Julie Fairhurst sits down with author Rachel Hartigan to explore the three most debated theories surrounding Earhart’s fate: crash and sink, castaway on Nikumaroro, or capture by the Japanese. But this episode goes far beyond speculation.

Rachel shares behind-the-scenes insights from her multi-year investigation—including her journey with National Geographic to a remote Pacific atoll, hiking alongside archaeologists and human-remains detection dogs at a suspected castaway site. Together, we unpack how wartime fear, colonial politics, and technological optimism shaped the narratives that still captivate the world today.

More importantly, we restore Amelia as a woman, not just a legend. A determined Midwesterner who valued skill over spectacle. A pilot who endured brutal conditions during her solo Atlantic flight. A leader who advocated for women in aviation during an era defined by deep gender bias.

We also examine the barriers faced by early women aviators, including the backlash against pioneer pilot Helen Ritchie, and discuss what courage, preparation, and grit really look like.

If you love aviation history, women’s leadership, unsolved mysteries, or longform investigative storytelling, this episode will challenge what you think you know.

Listen. Share. Leave a review.
 Because behind every theory is someone loved and lost.

https://rachelhartiganauthor.com/

https://rachelhartiganauthor.com/books

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Transcript

Framing Amelia’s Legend

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Women Like Me Stories in Business. I'm your host, Julie Fairhurst, and ooh, we're gonna have a really great conversation today. A really great conversation. So let me just introduce today's guest. So today's guest guest is author Rachel Hardigan, whose newest book, Lost, Amelia Earhart's Three Mysterious Deaths, and One Extraordinary Life, releases March 3rd. Like this is going to be a cool conversation. In this powerful and intriguing exploration, Rachel revisits the life of one of the most iconic women in history. Not just the mystery of her depearance, but the layered ways Amelia Earhart's story has been told, retold, and perhaps misunderstood. Rachel invites us to look beyond the legend and into the complexity of a woman who challenged limits, defied expectations, and became larger than life even in death. Rachel, I am so glad you're here. Welcome. Well, thank you. I'm very glad to be here. Perfect. All right, we're gonna just dive in. I almost off-air started asking her questions, and then I had to stop myself. So let's just dive in. So your title of the book is very compelling. So what do you mean by three mysterious deaths?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Well, there are three main theories about how she died. She disappeared when she was almost done with a round-the-world flight along the equator. And some people think she just ran out of gas and crashed into the ocean and died that way. Some people think she landed on an uninhabited island and died a castaway. And others think that she got lost and ended up being captured by the Japanese and held as a prison prisoner and maybe executed. So those are her three deaths. There are more. There are more theories, but those were the sort of the main ones. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

That that that uh those are three completely different theories. Yes. Interesting. Well, what first drew you to her story?

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Well, it was kind of that accidental in a way. I was working as writer and editor at National Geographic magazine. Wow. And I have this moment that was just very National Geographic-ish. I was going to the copy machine in our regular old office, nothing fancy. And one of the editors stopped me and he said, We have a berth on a ship that's going to an island where some people think Earhart died. Do you want to go and cover it? And I really had no idea where that would be. I said, I know it's in the ocean somewhere, but I don't know exactly where. But I said yes. And then I thought, oh, I better ask my family. But I just couldn't say no to something like that. And as I, you know, went out and reported the story, I learned more and more about her, but also more and more about these theories and the people who have pursued them for decades.

History’s Influence On Theories

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Wow, that is so interesting. So what so there were many theories about her disappearance, which we've already discussed. So, what did you discover that surprised you the most?

Research Timeline And Structure

SPEAKER_00 3:47

About the theories, I think the thing that surprised me the most initially was how connected the theories were with broader trends in history. You know, the theory about the fact that she was, you know, captured by the Japanese is connected to the buildup to World War II and how people felt about the Japanese during World War II and afterwards. The castaway theory is connected to British colonialism. And I mean, the the crashed and sink theory as it's caused is, I mean, that's probably the most boring one, but the one that is most easily explained. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

How long did it take you to do your research for the book? There must have been so much to go through.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Yeah, it was really a lot. I the I went on two expeditions. The first one was in 2017, and I didn't decide to see if I could turn this into a book until 2019, and now it's publishing in 2026. Um, I had some family issues in the meantime, so that kind of delayed my research, but it was hard because the book is four has four narrative threads. So there were four stories to tell with four different groups of people involved.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

So I could have researched it for decades more. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

What about when you went on that first where you were telling us about when you were with National Geographic and you went out on that first, I don't know what we what we call it, expedition, yes. Yes, expedition. So tell us a little bit about that.

Human Remains Dogs And Findings

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Uh that was that was pretty wild because there was this group called Tigar, which stands for the, I'm always gonna get this wrong. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. And they had been going to this island called Nicomorro since the late 1980s, trying to figure out if she had if Earhart had landed there. And they they had been there maybe 10 times, but the expedition I want went on was a part of that group, not the whole group. And they had decided that a good way to fund it and also get people who would work with them was to pair with a travel company. So we were actually going out on a cruise ship, and there were all these people who had paid to be on board because they just were so into Amelia Earhart, and then there was our National Geographic crew, you know, me and the writer and videographers and archaeologists and everything. And the main purpose of this trip was to bring human remains sniffing dogs to see if they would be able to find remains at the site where the archaeologists from Tigar had identified a castaways campsite. So they had found a burn feature, basically signs of a campfire, signs of jars that had been used to boil water, clamshells, where clearly somebody had pried the clams open to eat. So somebody had been there and they were wondering if somebody also died there, and they were also wondering if the person who died there was Amelia Earhart. So that's that was the purpose of it. So we had four, four very cute border collies with us who flew first class. I did not fly first class to Fiji. And then we took we took about five days to sail on this cruise ship from Fiji to Nicomoraro, which was the farthest the cruise ship had ever gone.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Wow. Wow, how interesting. I can see how that would have sort of got you going, like, ooh.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Oh yeah.

unknown 7:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah, it was very exciting. I'd never gone that far before. I'd never we were the island is part of the nation of Caribbean, but it's very far away from the main population centers. And you know, we we saw maybe one plane fly over us. We saw one other ship. It's really, really isolated.

Who Amelia Was Beyond The Mystery

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Wow. Wow, amazing. So beyond the mystery, who was Amelia Earhart, really?

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Well, she was somebody who was, I think, born at the right time. She was born in 1897 in Atchison, Kansas, right in the middle of the country. And she was born at a time when people were really optimistic about progress and technology. You know, there were, as she was growing up, there were cars, there were, you know, airplanes. The Wright brothers had discovered flight, trains were getting better and better. There was just this feeling that it this was going to be America's century and it was just going to be positive progress, you know, onward. And she was born into well-to-do family in Atchison. Her grandparents were very prominent in this town. But her father struggled and he he had a drinking problem and ended up. Well, he he worked as a lawyer for the railroads, but he lost a lot of jobs. So they ended up, they lived in Des Moines, then they lived in St. Paul and back to Missouri. I mean, they were just bouncing around while he was trying to keep a job. So she grew up both with plenty and with scarcity. She, during a time of plenty, she ended up going to a finishing school in Pennsylvania where she learned how to act like a lady and sit down properly and all those things. And her sister was in another such school in Toronto. And she went up and visited her her sister, I think it was 1918. It was right after the US had joined World War I. And Canada, of course, had been at war for a long time. Yes. And Amelia went up there and she was just shocked to see all the wounded soldiers there. She said at one point she saw four soldiers walking down the street, and all of them were missing a limb. So she quit her school and decided to become a nurse in Toronto. And that was that's kind of indicative of sort of her impulsivity, her character, her desire to help, and also her adventurous spirit. I mean, it didn't really make her pause to think, oh, I'm just gonna live in another country and help these soldiers with these grievous war wounds. Wow. What do you think? And that's where she encountered airplanes for the first time. Oh, that's where she did. Well, she had seen them, but this is when she really saw them in flight. You know, all the pilots were training there. So she got to see them do all their daring.

unknown 11:02

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Loop the loops and everything. So it just yeah.

Misunderstandings And The Long Path To Fame

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Wow. So what do you think history has misunderstood about her?

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Well, I mean, she wasn't perfect at all. And she wasn't, you know, we see a picture of her, and she looks very stylish and confident and humble, but it took her a long time to get to where she was when she became truly famous. I mean, she was she was about 19 or 20 when she was in Toronto. She didn't become the Amelia Earhart that we know until 1928, when she was at 30 or 31. And, you know, in between that time, she moved to Los Angeles. She went to Colombia where she thought she was going to be a doctor, studying to be a doctor. But then her parents had moved to Los Angeles and they said they needed her help because their marriage was a little bit rocky. So she went out to Los Angeles, and that's where she learned how to fly a plane. But she couldn't really afford to keep it up. Her parents got divorced. She ended up back in Massachusetts, and then she was trying to find a job. She was engaged, but she really didn't want to take the traditional path of getting married and staying at home, even though she, you know, she loved her fiance, but she just recoiled at that. So, but it took her a long time to figure out what her other path would be. And eventually she thought she'd found it. She started working as a social worker at Denison House, which was one of these settlement houses that helped immigrants teaching English and providing social services and everything.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

So that's where she was when she became famous.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Wow. Wow. Where do you think her adventurism came from? I mean, she must have had something inside of her that just yeah.

Roots Of Her Adventurous Spirit

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Her well, her mom was very adventurous too. Her mother had hiked up Pike's Peak, one of the highest mountains in the Rockies, you know, as a young woman. Yeah. And her parents, they were very progressive. They had two daughters, but they let their daughters do a lot of things that were not quote unquote ladylike. If they asked for a football, they got them a football. If they asked for actually, they I think they were given guns. I don't know if they were BB guns or regular guns to shoot rats in the barn. Her mother made the two girls bloomers so she they could play without wearing a dress. Yeah. So just these big, billowy, yeah, short-like things. And they were the only ones who wore things like that to play. But it's their parents, for all their struggles and challenges, really fostered that adventurousness and really wanted their daughters to be who they wanted to be.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Yeah. Wow. Well, why do you think we're still so captivated with her?

SPEAKER_00 14:19

I think there's a lot of reasons. I mean, one, uh she did what she wanted to do. She did not appear to be limited by in the ways that women were limited at the time, or even the way women are limited now. She she wanted to fly, so she was gonna fly and she was gonna find a way to learn how to do it, which for her ended up being finding a woman instructor who she felt wouldn't be patronizing to her. But she just had this, she has a fearless quality. And I think she also, you know, she still looks kind of modern, and she also had a very modern sensibility. I always think that if she was plopped into 2026, she would just be, she wouldn't be scared or daunted or amazed. She just wanna know, well, how does AI work? And what are these, you know, driverless cars? She would just she was always interested in something new. So I think that we can identify with that. And and she, yeah, she was just so fearless.

Risk, Reinvention, And Planning

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Wow, wow. Well, that brings that will come right into our next question. What does Amelia's life say to modern women about risk, reinvention, and legacy? Because there's a lot of fear out there to think, and and when you say that, I'm like, wow, if I could have even 50% or 20% of her of that fearlessness.

Gender Barriers In Early Aviation

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Yeah, I mean, for Earhart, it was both good and bad, the fearlessness. I think it allowed her to do things that you know most people wouldn't do. You know, she was the first, she was the second person after Lindbergh, Charles Lindbergh, to fly across the Atlantic solo. And it was a complete nightmare of a flight. You know, there was they didn't have good weather prediction at the time, so she ran right into a storm, her altimeter broke, so she couldn't tell how high or low she was over the ocean, her wind wings were icing up, there was oil dripping on her head, and she just goes forward, which is really all she could do. But I think she also didn't trust it to luck, maybe a bit too much. So one thing I took away from her life is that take risks, but plan ahead and make sure you know how to use everything. So still do the thing, but just make sure that you know how to use your radio in case you need it and or whatever your tools might be. Yes. But I I do think the thing that really struck me about her was just how curious she was. And she just did try a lot of different things. And I think that's something you know that I personally could do more of instead of thinking, oh, well, I'm not gonna be perfect at it, so I shouldn't try, or it'll be embarrassing when I make a mistake. Yeah, she just did things. I mean, she went up in a what was it called? Autogyro, which was an early version of a helicopter, and they're like, oh, just give it a try. And she went up and it's very risky, but she was just gonna she wasn't afraid to make mistakes. Right. And I think people really are now.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yes, yes. And she it sounds like she just lived life, like she was living life where so often so many of us sit back now because, like you say, we're afraid to make those mistakes. Or I don't know, maybe our society now is so much more visual. I know I, you know, sometimes I'm like, oh, thank goodness there was no social media when I was growing up. Oh my god. Right. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, you know, um I don't know what the difference would be, but but it would have been very hard for her, even as a woman, to do those things because I'm assuming, because I haven't followed much of her over the years, but I'm assuming that men were probably not impressed at that time frame.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Yeah, I mean, she she had one advantage in that aviation was very young. So it was it wasn't super regulated. There weren't really any airlines yet. So women could get into it. And there were a lot of women who took up flying. I mean, a lot relatively. It wasn't, it just wasn't so regimented. But then the disadvantage for women was a lot of men learned during World War I how to fly. They were actually trained, and the women didn't have that official kind of training. But later on, there were issues as the airlines were developing. You know, there were women who knew how to fly and they wanted to be pilots and have a job doing what they like to do. And there was one woman named Helen Ritchie who was hired to be a pilot, and the men, the male pilots were just outraged and they didn't want to let her into the union because they said, you know, when she's on her period, she's not gonna be safe to fly.

unknown 19:47

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Or she's gonna get too scared during a storm, or they just thought that she wasn't um that women were hysterical or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yeah, yeah.

Writing The Book Through Hard Times

SPEAKER_00 19:57

And Richie kept trying to do it, but ultimately she quit because they were cutting back her hours and everything. And Earhart was outraged by that and wrote a very pointed letter that she knew was going to be leaked, describing just the outrage that these men who she I'm paraphrasing described as way more delicate than this tough woman, can't even handle having a woman pilot next to them.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Wow. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

So I mean, you know, she did fight those fights.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Yes, yes, wow. Well, thank you for sharing that. International Women's Day is coming up, right? And March 8th. So that's um that's a that's a great story for us. So thank you for sharing that for sure. So, what's the hardest part? Well, what was the hardest part for you to write the book?

SPEAKER_00 20:52

There was just so much information and figuring out how to corral it all into a story that made sense and was true and was fair. It just and also, I mean, I I did have a couple two family members who died while I was working on it, and just being able to, I mean, writing is a very requires a lot of focus.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

And being able to do that during challenging times was hard. Although on the other hand, having a big project like this, that's my project, you know, that I was I was the only one working on it. It expressed what my thoughts was also a good thing to have during during difficult times, like COVID as well.

Personal Connection And Marriage Letter

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Yes, yes. Wow. So was there a moment in the process where you felt especially connected to her story at all?

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Um yeah, I kind of went in and out of feeling connected. Because part of me says, Oh, well, I would never have done that. I'm not the risk taker that she is. Yeah. But she when she got married, she ended up marrying her. Her publicist, who is this hard-charging book publisher named George Putnam. And he he was the one responsible for her first flight across the Atlantic. He was the he managed her career. And he asked her to marry him over and over again. And she kept saying no. Finally, she agreed to it, but then she kept putting off the date. And but then she decided to go through with it. But she wrote him a letter basically saying how nervous she was about getting married. And, you know, why don't we just give it a year and see how it goes? And sometimes I'm gonna need to go off by myself. And maybe we're gonna find other people, but that's okay. We can we'll decide to separate. And just that feeling of, you know, almost marriage was a bigger risk for her than flying across the ocean. It made her feel more vulnerable. But she also she was also thinking through what she needed. And you know, I have never written a letter like that, but just this idea that she wasn't automatically just going forth and doing things, but she was she had doubts. Yes, she had fears they might not be the same thing, yeah, that we have, but they're similar. I mean, yeah, that's a big step.

Legacy, Loss, And Family Grief

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Yeah, when you were talking, my thought, my what was popping into my head was the the maybe the feeling of losing her freedom, yeah, I think so. Yeah, because she definitely just did what she wanted. And when you're married, you've now consult and you're sharing that life. So, and yeah, that that's very, very, very interesting for sure. Wow. So, what do you hope that the readers will find when they close the final page of your book?

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Well, I would like them to think about Earhart the person, and also what it means to lose someone like her. I mean, I do write about in the book that her family, she uh her niece was alive until just last year. So she did have family, and her sister and her mother were alive when she disappeared. And of course, they mourned her and wanted to know what happened, but they after a certain point, they said, We've made our peace with it. Why haven't all these other people, all these strangers, yeah, haven't gone through the grief process that we've gone through? And so I would like people to think about like her disappearance isn't just a puzzle to be solved, it's a real person. She's a real person who had a real family, and that the price of that for them is something that we can't see, but we also just need to keep in mind that it's not just it's not just a puzzle to be solved, it's not just a way to connect to a famous person, it's uh you know, a member of a family who's gone.

Takeaways For Women Today

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Yes, yeah, and that's true. We quite often with people from history or people that are famous, we we put them on a pedestal, but we forget that there's all this other they have family, they were born, they have mums and dads and siblings, and yeah, sometimes we forget that. And yeah, they're yeah, and so her death is leaving or her disappearance is leaving a lot of people hurting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Oh, Rachel, this was so good. I I'm getting this book. I can't, I I can't wait to read it. I'm definitely going to be purchasing the book. It's um you've got my curiosity piqued now. I'm good. I'm glad. There's so many other questions I want to ask you, but then I'm like, well, maybe she doesn't want to answer them and we don't want to give away the give away the books.

unknown 26:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Whatever you like. Yeah, it's um uh I just uh yeah, I it it's and I think for women in this day and age, it's important to read it. We you know, we all need inspiration and and and it's important to know about the about the ladies that came before us. Yeah, you know, helped us along the way. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So my final question to you, but I think that you've already answered it, is what do you want women to take away from this book? I mean, you know, the first was about readers, but what about women themselves?

SPEAKER_00 27:21

Just to be bold, you don't have to be perfect in order to take a big step. You don't have to, I mean, I know I said you should prepare and everything, but you don't have to have everything in a row, perfectly planned to take a leap. Just sort of trust that you can do it. At some point, there's only so much preparation.

Release Details And Closing Salute

SPEAKER_01 27:47

Yes. Perfectionism can is a is a dream killer. Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah. And if Amelia did that, well, we wouldn't might not be sitting here right now talking. Right. You know, right.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

She wouldn't have gotten off the ground. Yeah, no, wow.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Well, everybody, just to let you know, all of Rachel's information is going to be in the show notes. So you will be able to reach out to her, find her book. She's going to have the website information there for you. And the book is released March 3rd, 2026. So if somebody's listening to this in 2027, the book's already out. So make sure you grab it. And yeah, and so all of that information will be there. So, do you have any closing words that you'd like to say to the audience at all before we before we close?

SPEAKER_00 28:37

I'm just saying that I don't want to denigrate the people who were searching for the what happened because I think they were also being explorers too, and also being adventurous and taking risks. And even if their path isn't totally clear or their solutions aren't totally based on a lot of hard evidence, I think that they've really done a powerful job of trying to find out more about history and the world we live in. And so I I salute them for that.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

Yeah, beautiful. Well, thank you for that. Wow. Thank you, Rachel. That was thank you for writing thank you for writing the book and honoring her. I think that that's beautiful. And okay, everybody. So that is the end of our episode for today. And hopefully we'll see you another time on the Women Like Me Stories and Business Podcast. Take care, everybody. Bye.