Expedition Unknown (2015) s01e01 Episode Script

GATES: Amelia Earhart is on one of the final legs of her historic flight around the world when something goes terribly wrong.
[Airplane engine roars.]
She is never seen again.
Today, more than 75 years after her disappearance, new leads send me across the world in search of answers.
JACK: If you want to get more information, head down to Rabaul.
Get to Rabaul.
Yeah.
[Ground rumbling.]
Earthquake.
Whoa.
[Children screaming.]
Holy [bleep.]
We heard that your tribe has found wreckage in the jungles.
Look at this.
Rob, come here.
September 1940 a man named Gerald Gallagher found a partial skeleton.
This might be Amelia Earhart.
Did they go through the underside of this house with a fine-tooth comb? Nope, no further investigation.
We've heard reports of some aircraft wreckage.
They think it may be Earhart's plane.
And the only way to know is to go out and see what we can find.
Oh! Rod, I got a plane! Rod, I got a plane, for sure! Come here! Look at that.
That's a [bleep.]
plane.
It all leads to a series of amazing discoveries.
It's an airplane engine, yeah? Oh, definitely an airplane engine, yeah.
Unbelievable.
[Radio beeps.]
Definitely an airplane.
Look at that.
This does not look like coral to me.
I got a bone down here.
[Birds squawking.]
My name is Josh Gates.
With a degree in archaeology and a passion for exploration, I have a tendency to end up in some very strange situations.
There has got to be a better way to make a living.
My travels have taken me to the ends of the Earth as I investigate the greatest legends in history.
We're good to fly.
Let's go.
This is Every year, thousands of people go missing, never to be seen again.
But there is one cold case that looms above all the rest Amelia Earhart.
Just the name evokes a sense of wonder.
Her disappearance during her attempt to circumnavigate the globe in 1937 is perhaps the most iconic unsolved mystery in the world.
Now, with breakthroughs in technology and the discovery of new evidence, we may be close to solving the puzzle once and for all.
[Crowd cheering.]
Amelia Earhart is arguably the most famous woman in America, a pioneer in the field of aviation and a living legend.
On July 2nd, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, are set to make history as they begin one of the last legs of their daring trans-world flight.
They take off from an airfield in Lae, Papua New Guinea, bound for remote Howland Island in the Pacific.
Along the way, Earhart, her navigator, and the famed Lockheed Electra vanish.
[Airplane engine roars.]
In the last 75 years, there have been countless dead ends, false leads, and wild conspiracy theories, but no answers.
Well, all that may be about to change, because recent developments in two different parts of the world may finally crack the case.
Theory one a team of experts recently identified a piece of aluminum debris on the Pacific atoll of Nikumaroro, just south of Howland, which they believe may be a part of Earhart's Electra.
Human bones were also discovered on this same deserted island in 1940, only to be shipped to Fiji and lost.
Could these be the bones of Amelia Earhart? A new search is currently under way in Fiji to locate the remains and identify them.
Theory two Earhart circled back toward Papua New Guinea and crashed on or around the island nation she took off from.
It's a long-standing hypothesis that's never been fully explored.
But now one local tribe claims to have found wreckage deep in the jungle, and there are new reports that there's also an underwater wreck just offshore.
Either could be Amelia's plane.
I have been fascinated with Amelia Earhart for my entire life, and I'm eager to know if these new leads may bring us closer to the truth, or whether the world is looking in the wrong place.
The only way to find out is to join the search.
There is new evidence that Amelia Earhart's plane may have crashed in the nation she last took off from, so I'm here to investigate.
Wheels down, Papua New Guinea or "PNG," as the locals call it.
Inside the terminal, the local baggage claim is less of a belt and more of a deli counter.
Order up! This is an interesting system, but it works.
Thank God my umbrella made it.
Oh, sorry.
What are the odds? Two guys with the same umbrella.
Mine must still be coming.
While I wait, it's clear that some of my other equipment may not have made it here, either.
I'm missing 799 and 872.
At least it's not warm in here.
That would really make this frustrating.
Perhaps the customer-service reps know where my bag is.
Looking good.
Perhaps not.
Eventually, I'm resigned to never seeing my extra underwear, sensible evening shoes, and whatever else was in case 799.
Well, time to hit the streets.
There are international capitals in the world with worse reputations, but not many.
This is Port Moresby, capital of Papua New Guinea, also the largest city in the South Pacific.
Has kind of a rough reputation.
Can be a little dangerous, a little gritty.
But if you can look past its imperfections, it's actually a pretty cool spot.
I like to think of Port Moresby as the Mos Eisley spaceport from "Star Wars.
" On one hand, the cantina bar has a good happy hour.
On the other hand, Han Solo might shoot you in the face.
In other words, it pays to watch your back, which is exactly what these guys are here to do.
Hey, Josh.
Are you Dean? I am.
Nice to meet you.
Good to meet you.
Yeah, good to meet you, too.
Hi.
I'm Jack.
Hey, Jack.
How are you? Nice to meet you.
Good, thank you.
Yourself? I'm good.
How are things here in PNG? Good, thanks.
Looking safe and secure? As safe as PNG can be.
Yeah? How safe is that? In case it's not safe.
Yes.
Great, perfect.
So, why the muscle? Well, with rampant political corruption and gang-controlled neighborhoods, the capital can get a little interesting.
But I like interesting, and Port Moresby is the gateway to one of the wildest nations on Earth.
It's made up of 1,000 different ethnic tribes, speaking more than 800 languages.
Even the National Parliament House is diverse a modern government building fused with an ancient tribal spirit house.
The people here, generally speaking, are fiercely independent.
Locals are more apt to identify with their clan than with their fellow countrymen.
Case in point the Asaro Mudmen.
Legend has it that this tribe was once on the cusp of defeat in battle and retreated into the nearby river.
When they emerged, caked in dried white mud, their enemies believed they were evil spirits and fled in terror.
I can't say I blame them.
Hi.
Not very talkative.
[Conversing in native language.]
Oh, it's heavy.
Those are real teeth? I'm not gonna ask where those came from.
Today, thousands of years later, they still pay homage to that legendary battle, and the tradition continues with me.
It's okay? Yeah? MAN: Yeah.
What do you think? [Laughs.]
I think I'm an honorary Mudman now.
This vast melting pot of Papua New Guinea played center stage as one of the last stops on Earhart's 'round-the-world flight.
But I'm not just here for nostalgia purposes.
There are those who believe that Earhart didn't just take off from PNG, but that she may have circled back here.
Newly discovered wreckage in the jungles and in the ocean are waiting to be examined.
So from the capital, I'm boarding a flight to investigate the last documented sighting of Earhart's Electra.
It's a 45-minute trip from Port Moresby to Lae, where Earhart began one of the final legs of her fateful journey.
Lae is a bustling industrial port that links the coastal waters of PNG to the wild highlands of the interior.
I'm here to meet with a local tribe who has information on a recently found wreck.
But first I have an important stop to make.
In the middle of town, this narrow field of grass is today an empty lot, a place to stack shipping containers.
Its true significance has been overgrown by the dense wilderness of history.
Doesn't look like much today, but this is the old Lae airfield.
This is the very last place that anybody saw Amelia Earhart alive.
On May 21, 1937, Amelia Earhart departs Oakland, California, in an audacious attempt to be the first woman in history to circumnavigate the globe.
Over 21 days and 25,000 miles, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, make stops along the top of South America before crossing central Africa, the Middle East, India, and southeast Asia.
Finally, she lands in Papua New Guinea.
It was here, on July 2, 1937, in this very spot, that a fuel-heavy Lockheed Electra plane gained momentum and took off into the blue for the very last time.
Whole world was watching, and that shiny Lockheed Electra would have come right down here, taken off right over the Pacific, never to be seen again.
I don't know.
For me, as someone who loves Earhart, who really has been obsessed with her for a long time, to be here in this spot is kind of I don't know, emotional.
It's kind of a powerful place.
With only 7,000 miles left to go, it's easy to imagine the excitement she must have felt at being in the home stretch.
But she still had to face her most difficult challenge crossing the immense Pacific Ocean.
Amelia's next stop is Howland Island, about 2,500 miles and 18 long hours away.
Howland is merely a speck in the vast South Pacific Ocean.
But the plane must land and refuel for the final onward flights to Honolulu and Oakland.
Earhart transmits one of her last radio messages to the United States Coast Guard ship Itasca, which is stationed offshore to help guide her to the island.
The Itasca receives the transmission, but Amelia apparently can't hear the Coast Guard's response.
Her radio is likely damaged.
Soon after, Earhart, her navigator, Fred Noonan, and the Electra disappear.
[Airplane engine roars.]
The only evidence here in Lae of that historic flight is this, a weathered and, by the looks of it, mostly forgotten memorial to a woman whose daring adventure still soars in our imaginations.
Having made the pilgrimage here, I feel even more inspired to search for answers.
To find them, I've arranged a meeting with a tribal chief to discuss the news reports of a recently found wreck in the jungles to the north.
At the end of a long dirt road, I'm walked to a makeshift wall of what looks like jungle fronds.
[People singing, drums banging.]
human bones under your house? It freaked me out.
It never, ever came back into my life until I read this thing about Amelia Earhart.
Was the rest of that crawl space under the house thoroughly explored? No, not at all.
Really? Never.
I got a bone down here.
My goodness.
There's more down here.
There's more down here.
It's everywhere I look.
I mean, I'm putting a skeleton together down here.
GATES: I'm in Papua New Guinea, in the South Pacific, following new leads in the search for Amelia Earhart.
I've come to a local village to meet with a chief who has information about a wreck that's recently been found in the jungles.
He leads me to what appears to be a wall of palm fronds.
[People singing, drums banging.]
This is the craziest welcome I've ever seen.
And I assume it's a welcome.
I could be murdered in the next 10 minutes.
I don't know.
This is not a tourist attraction.
This is not a theme park.
This is the real deal.
It's called a sing-sing, a ritual in which villages come together through song and dance.
Reasonably certain that I'm not gonna end up as a human pincushion, I relax and enjoy the welcome.
Like many other tribes in Papua New Guinea, its people are caught between the past and the present.
It seems only fitting that I meet them halfway.
Good look for me, right? [People singing.]
[Singing, drumming stops.]
[Laughter.]
Thank you! Good night! Thank you, Lae! We'll be here all week! Okay, I may not be Ringo Starr, but my drumming is good enough that my crew and I have been invited to don the tribe's colors and join the clan.
It's a genuine honor, though something tells me that they use more than food coloring in the strong-smelling paint.
Saliva? Is there saliva? Yeah.
Great.
What do these markings mean? [Speaking native language.]
Brave warrior? Yeah.
Yeah, right.
Village idiot, probably.
Is that it? MAN: Yeah.
Okay, how do I look? [Crowd cheers.]
I am joining the tribe.
Once the sing-sing winds down, I'm granted an audience with the village elder, named Iru, while my security guard serves as translator.
So, how many people live here in the village? [Speaking native language.]
More than 2,500.
More than 2,500? Wow.
Yeah.
GATES: I'm not the first Westerner to come here.
These are the direct descendents of the tribes that Earhart met in 1937.
Through oral tradition, they have preserved the memory of her time in PNG.
So, listen, you know, we're very interested in Amelia Earhart, and I've been told that you have some knowledge, some stories about her.
What can you tell me? [Speaking native language.]
INTERPRETER: According to our elders, when she landed here, it was very exciting for our village and for Papua New Guinea.
At that time, airplanes were very uncommon.
Most people had never seen a plane.
Some had never seen a white woman.
It was a big event when she took off.
But other tribes say that she circled back here, that the plane crashed not far form their village.
GATES: Those tribes weren't the only ones who thought she'd crashed in PNG.
In 1945, an Australian corporal was on patrol in the same jungles and stumbled upon something that has baffled experts a rusted and badly damaged airplane engine.
Though he didn't know his exact position, he did jot down a partial serial number on a weathered map.
Intriguingly, S3H1 is the same model series as the Electra, and 1055 matches the construction number of her plane.
And has anybody since then been able to find the wreck? [Speaking native language.]
INTERPRETER: Just a few weeks ago, we heard from the village that the Baining tribe in Rabaul found the wreckage.
They think it might be a plane her plane.
GATES: Due to the largely impenetrable jungles, the plane spotted in 1945 has never been relocated.
But now it sounds like this remote tribe may have finally stumbled across the mysterious wreck.
So why wasn't anyone searching here earlier? Within hours of Earhart's disappearance, the U.
S.
launched one of the most extensive manhunts in history, but based on fuel calculations, only searched a four-hour flight radius from Howland, which included the nearby Gilbert and Phoenix islands.
But some experts believe those calculations are wrong.
To keep the plane as light as possible, Earhart left key navigational instruments behind.
Though she should have had only four hours of fuel remaining when she reached Howland, if she was off course, and if she flew conservatively, researchers have argued that the Electra could have limped back to PNG, only to crash before landing.
JACK: He says that if you want to get more information, head down to Rabaul, and then check the people up in the tribes out there.
Go for the search.
Get to Rabaul? Yeah.
Okay.
And and the tribe in Rabaul, they're friendly? They can be aggressive, but you'll be okay.
I'll be okay? You'll be okay.
Thank you very much.
Your village is incredible.
[Children screaming.]
Whoa.
Earthquake.
[Ground rumbling.]
Whoa.
Whoa! Whoa! Watch out.
Whoa! Holy [bleep.]
GATES: I'm in Papua New Guinea, investigating the theory that famed pilot Amelia Earhart could have crash-landed here.
One of the villagers has new information that a fellow tribe to the north has found a wreck in the jungle that could be her missing aircraft.
JACK: He says that if you want to get more information, head down to Rabaul, and then check the people up in the tribes out there.
Go for the search.
Get to Rabaul? Yeah.
[Children screaming.]
Whoa.
Earthquake.
Whoa.
[Ground rumbling.]
Whoa! Watch out.
Whoa! Whoa! Holy [bleep.]
Whoa! Holy [bleep.]
[Rumbling stops.]
That was insane.
It happens a lot.
It happens a lot here.
That happens a lot here? Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that was like the whole planet just went went like this.
[Laughter.]
Massive earthquake during an interview check.
I made it through unscathed, and so did the rest of the village even the pigs.
Life goes on, and so does my search for Earhart.
With a substantial lead in the jungles to the northeast, I'm carrying on with my investigation.
From Lae, I'm traveling about 400 miles to the island of New Britain and touching down in the former capital of Rabaul.
The island, like much of PNG, looks to be a paradise on Earth, and it is.
But it also has a dark history.
Just beneath the jungle canopy, long-silenced anti-aircraft guns still point to the skies, a reminder that this paradise was once a war zone.
PNG's strategic location just north of Australia made it prime real estate for the Japanese during World War II.
If you look closely along the side of the road, you can still catch site of foreboding tunnels that bore into the mountains.
Inside is another world.
This is actually remains of an underground Japanese hospital.
All told, there are more than 500 miles of tunnels underneath Rabaul, and a lot of them are filled with bats and creepy-crawlies.
After capturing Rabaul in 1942, the Japanese Empire immediately set their army to work digging miles and miles of serpentine tunnels to shelter their forces from Allied attacks.
By 1943, Rabaul was home to over 100,000 Japanese troops.
Ghosts of the past are everywhere tanks, weapons, bombs.
One tunnel even contains the decomposing remains of massive Japanese landing barges.
I have to wonder with all these abandoned relics of war, there must have been hundreds of downed planes here, which makes the hunt for Earhart's Electra a nightmare.
Nearby, I descend into one of the most historic bunkers in the world.
This fortification was the base of operations for the commander in chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
This is Admiral Yamamoto's bunker from World War II.
He's the guy who orchestrated the attack on Pearl Harbor at Midway, and this was the Japanese base of naval operations in World War II.
You can still see writing on the walls.
It's all perfectly preserved under all this concrete absolutely astounding piece of World War II history.
From this austere war room, Admiral Yamamoto's forces coordinated the theater of war in the Pacific until his plane was shot down leaving Rabaul in 1943.
Back above ground, I make my way to a nearby market to meet with a World War II aviation expert and PNG historian who can shed more light on the rumors of a wreck in the jungles of Rabaul.
While I wait for him to arrive, I have time to sample PNG's favorite addiction.
You may notice that nearly everyone here has a red-stained mouth.
That's because of this.
Buai is a seemingly random recipe of betel nut, mustard stick, and lime.
GATES: Show me how I do this.
I use my teeth to open it? Yeah.
Already, it doesn't seem like a good idea.
That's not good for your teeth.
Okay.
Oh, I need I want the middle piece.
I see.
Soft piece.
Boom.
The whole thing? Yeah.
Okay.
Ugh, it's bitter.
Now what? Small one, in the lime? The ingredients are combined and chewed, producing torrential amounts of bright-red saliva, which Papuans spit on just about every surface in sight.
No, that's enough.
Believe it or not, this is the fourth-most-consumed drug in the world after nicotine, booze, and coffee.
It is definitely not recommended by the American Dental Association, and for the uninitiated, the chemical combination can be a little intense.
Whoo! Starting to feel a little dizzy.
[Women singing in native language.]
It's good.
What does it do? Your eyes open.
I don't know about that.
My eyes are about to close.
[Laughter.]
Whoo! Hoo! Where'd all these people come from? Okay, I'm just gonna lay here for a while until the world stops spinning.
Moments later, I'm back on my feet, sort of.
Apologies just give me a moment, here.
It wears off fast.
I'm good.
Let's go.
Finally feeling less dizzy, I'm ready to meet up with historian Rob Rowenson.
As an aircraft expert with the Organization of Pacific Wrecks, Rob lives here and speaks Papuan dialects, making him a critical intermediary between outside investigators and the remote tribe that claims to have found a downed plane in the jungle.
We've had someone report, say there was an engine there, and some parts of an airplane.
Of course, you get these reports, and then you have to go there yourself and try and determine what sort of airplane it was.
Yeah.
What's the road like out to this village? It's rough.
You need vehicles that can handle those sort of conditions.
I do know of a vehicle that might help you out.
Okay.
[Chuckles.]
Once airborne, we loft up over the island of New Britain and head toward the unknown.
The helicopter will fly us 40 miles inland, to the remote village of Vunalama.
Below us are some of the wildest and least-explored jungles on Earth.
Papua New Guinea is often referred to as "the lost world," and for good reason.
More new species are discovered here than anywhere else on Earth, an average of two a week.
The tribes that live in these jungles exist off the grid and far from the reach of modern laws.
There are still isolated reports of murder, cannibalism, and sacrifice associated with sorcery and tribal beliefs.
Rob's contacts have given us the rough location of the Baining village that reported the wrecked plane.
But all we're seeing is jungle.
I'm genuinely concerned here, since landing in the wrong tribe's territory could be a fatal mistake.
But with the weather worsening, we've got one shot at this, so we touch down in a nearby clearing.
We're good.
We're down.
My cameraman leaps out first to film the landing, and before I can unhook my harness, he realizes that we've got company.
They're here to meet us? With my helicopter pilot not sticking around to see how this turns out, we are on our own.
Wait, wait! Wait, wait, hey, hey! GATES: I've just been dropped into the jungles of Papua New Guinea, looking for a local tribe with information about a plane wreck that could be Amelia Earhart's.
Good.
We're down.
I'm not sure if this is a welcome crew or a war party, but at 6'3", I'm a pretty easy target for a well-aimed projectile.
Wait, wait! Wait, wait, hey, hey! How are you? Good.
All right.
Nice to meet you.
What's your name? Uh, Bill.
Bill? Yes.
You don't look like a Bill.
[Both laugh.]
Nice to meet you! Hello.
Hello.
What's your name? Clement.
Clement, nice to meet you.
Do you have a place we can get out of the rain? Yeah? Someplace with cover? [Speaking native language.]
Yeah.
Yeah? [Conversing in native language.]
Okay, great.
Let's go.
It turns out that Bill and Clement are more likely to offer me tea than the pointy end of their spears.
[Laughing.]
I don't know.
That was a little touch-and-go there for a minute.
You were worried they were gonna put a spear through you? Yeah.
The show of force is just a ritual greeting of the Baining tribe, and the children from the village run out to have a good laugh at our expense.
Evan, I found an umbrella for your camera.
I mean, what kind of "Land of the Lost" leaf is this? Here you go.
Stay dry.
With the rain coming down, we need to get to the village as quickly as possible before the downpour destroys our camera equipment.
Did you catch Rob's translation? The Baining tribe, like many Papuans, speak pidgin that consists largely of English and German words repurposed into a unique language.
Though the vocabulary is familiar, it sounds like total gibberish.
This is the first time they've ever had any people out here with cameras.
Really? Yeah.
Wow.
That's what I was asking.
I'm thankful when we finally arrive at the village, and even more thankful that these jawbones aren't human.
Okay, first order of business is just to get dry, to get the equipment dry, yeah? It looks like they are, like, in real time, making a shelter.
Can I help? What can I do? These first? Up, up, up? Yeah.
We're in the middle of the jungle, but in no time at all, our new friends have built us a cozy guest house.
This is now a couch they've made, and they're adding banana leaves as cushions.
Amazing.
This is the fastest construction crew I've ever met.
Five minutes flat addition to your house.
This jungle is their home, and the tribe has welcomed me with five-star accommodations and a complimentary beverage.
I'm anxious to speak to the chief about the wreck they discovered.
But first, the tribe insists on welcoming us with a sacred fire dance.
This is a seldom-seen ritual.
So, the women the women have gone away? Why's that? Wow.
Only men are allowed to participate or watch.
If any women in the village were to witness this, they would be killed.
The men tend the fire, feeding it until the flames begin to devour the darkness [Staves pounding rhythmically.]
at which point, the dance begins.
[Men chanting.]
The dancers are completely barefoot and attempt to ward off evil spirits by passing directly through the flames and embers.
He goes right into the fire.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
The dance is performed to initiate young men into adulthood, or, in this case, to celebrate visiting outsiders.
The dance itself is frenetic, wild, and not for the faint of heart.
And I feel totally overwhelmed at being able to witness it firsthand.
With the ceremony complete and my eyebrows singed, I'm granted access to the chief to discuss the plane wreck in the jungle, which could be Earhart's lost Electra.
That was incredible.
I've never seen anything like that.
Thank you for welcoming us here.
Thank you.
[Speaking native language.]
We heard these stories that your tribe has found wreckage in the jungles.
[Speaking native language.]
Yeah, there's some wreckage in the bush.
Yeah.
They don't know who it came from.
Is the wreckage definitely from an airplane? [Speaking native language.]
It's from a plane.
It's from a plane? From a plane.
How far is the wreckage from the village? [Speaking native language.]
He says the wreckage is close by here.
And could we have permission to go and to look at the wreckage? Can you guide us and show us where it is? [Speaking native language.]
People who know exactly where it is they will guide us.
Terrific.
Let's do it.
Come on.
Okay.
GATES: The jungles of New Britain are no joke, especially at night, but some believe that Earhart's Electra could be out here, waiting in the darkness.
[Exhales sharply.]
These are real-deal jungles.
A lot of predators out here snakes, spiders and we're very far from a hospital, so we have to be very, very careful going through here.
Ooh, big hole right here.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, big hole.
Drops down.
What do you think, impact point? Could be, yeah.
In 1945, in these very jungles, an Australian army patrol stumbled on a crash site they believed was Earhart's, but no one ever found it again.
Could this be the same wreck? Well, that's a piece of wreckage for sure.
Look at this.
Rob, come here.
It's an airplane engine, yeah? Oh, definitely an airplane engine, yeah.
They've taken propellers off.
Let's get the vines off it.
Earhart's Electra was a twin-prop plane.
We've found one engine, and I'm desperate to find another.
The problem is the wreckage is scattered all over the jungle.
Rob, check this out.
There's an interlocking piece there.
It looks like a fold.
Maybe this is the strut? Part of the strut.
Part of the strut for the wheel, maybe? Yeah.
This like looks What do you think, part of the exhaust or something? Exhaust, or something like that, yeah.
Yeah.
I would say that when the plane came in, it burned.
It burned quite severely.
Something over there? MAN: Yeah.
Let's go look.
More.
Rob, we got more over here.
Unbelievable.
Look at this.
GATES: I'm in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, investigating a wreck that could be Amelia Earhart's lost plane.
Suddenly, we find a crucial piece of evidence.
Something over there? More.
Rob, we got more over here.
Unbelievable.
Look at this.
What is this part? It's not the landing gear.
Is it part of the undercarriage? ROWENSON: It's undercarriage, yeah.
So we're looking at part of the wing, yeah? Yeah, this'll be part of the wing.
And it's been fairly badly burnt, too.
Yeah, it looks very burned.
All right, let's pull out that schematic of the Electra.
So, Electra's a twin-engine Lockheed.
This looks like a twin or a single to you? Well, I think it's a twin.
And what leads you to believe that it's a twin engine? Because this is a very strong undercarriage.
Right.
On a single-engine airplane, it's usually just the one strut.
Right.
We have a twin strut here.
It's a radial engine, too.
Same type of engine design, right? Same type of engine design.
All right, well, she's still a candidate, then.
There should be another engine here somewhere.
Have you found a second engine? MAN: No.
One only? I mean, if it hit so hard, I mean, it could have gone Electra had Pratt & Whitney engines.
That's right, yeah.
Can you tell if that's a Pratt & Whitney or not? Well, I can't.
That's the problem.
It may well be a Pratt & Whitney.
Well, if we can get close and see some identification on it.
Let's see if we can get some identifying marks off the engines.
GATES: In 1945, an Australian army patrol found a Pratt & Whitney engine here in this jungle, and they were convinced it belonged to Earhart's Electra.
If this is the same engine, we might have struck gold.
God, I wish we had a propeller or something like that, 'cause on propellers, you had dates on them.
Someone's taken a lot of the stuff away from here.
Although Rabaul is littered with wrecks, Earhart's plane has features that distinguish it from most World War II aircraft.
It was designed with a unique twin tail, unpainted aluminum body, and was packed with a dozen fuel tanks in the fuselage and wings to feed the twin Pratt & Whitney Wasp engines on her long flight.
Any tags or identifiable parts with serial numbers have either been stolen or destroyed.
Most of what looters left behind is burned beyond recognition.
So we can't really tell if it's a Pratt & Whitney or not.
Maybe, because we can't find any identifying marks on it.
Right.
There's got to be something we're missing.
I've just realized something.
This is the undercarriage leg of a dual-leg undercarriage.
The undercarriage on an Electra is a single oleo leg with a wishbone on the bottom and the wheel between them.
Forks over the wheel.
That's right, it forks over the wheel.
It indicates to me a much heavier aircraft.
This wreck has two full struts on each side of the wheels, but Earhart's Lockheed Electra had a single strut for each wheel, with a wishbone that wrapped around the tire a subtle but damning piece of evidence.
My opinion is, at present, it's not an Electra.
Now, what I think it is it's probably Japanese, and the only way to identify that is to take this information that I have now and compare it with information that I have back in Rabaul.
So, wheel structure doesn't match the Electra, so we know it's not Earhart's plane.
Definitely not.
But still a mystery.
Still a mystery.
And an important mystery.
Yeah, well, people died here, so it deserves our attention, most certainly.
It's not Earhart's plane, but with further investigation, this wreck will solve a different mystery and answer questions about the demise of another downed pilot.
Thank you very much for showing us this.
Also, we're gonna need somewhere to sleep.
[Laughs.]
[Chuckles.]
Helicopter will be back in the morning.
All right, we're down to our very last torches, here.
Let's get back to the village.
Otherwise, we're gonna be like this plane we're gonna be out here forever.
[Chuckles.]
By the light of a new day, we leave the jungle behind and head back to Rabaul.
The wreck may or may not be the same one that the Australians found in 1945.
Either way, we know that it isn't Earhart's plane.
But this isn't the only developing lead here in PNG.
Locals believe that unidentified underwater wreckage off the coast of Rabaul may in fact be the missing Electra.
After grabbing a set of wheels, I'm rumbling my way over to where Rabaul used to be.
Back on the ground, headed over to Old Rabaul, or what's left of it.
That is an active volcano named Vulcan.
Still active, very much alive, very dangerous.
This is one of two very pissed-off-looking volcanos that loom over Rabaul.
But its twin brother, Tavurvur, is the one to keep an eye on.
In 1937, an eruption killed more than 500 people, and less than a month before my arrival, it decided to wake up again.
MAN #1: Oh, geez! MAN #2: Holy smokin' Toledos.
Along the side of the road here, you see this big wall it's just 10 feet tall of ash, and we're just driving over volcanic ash.
All of this is just from the most recent eruption.
Looking up at the hills, nearly every palm tree in sight is scorched to bits.
Okay, we should be coming into Rabaul.
As I approach the crater and the coordinates of Old Rabaul, it might seem like I'm in the wrong spot.
But the town is here, I'm just driving on top of it.
Peeking up from the ash are the ghostly remains of an entire city, destroyed by the volcanos in 1994.
Motels, night clubs, banks, entire city streets gone.
Perched atop the Ring of Fire, PNG is one of the most volcanic nations in the world.
The earthquake I felt in Lae is not a good sign, and judging by the billowing smoke rising from Tavurvur and the boiling water coming up by my feet, I'm suddenly struck by a question What the hell am I doing here? Well, nobody said looking for Earhart was going to be easy or safe, so I'm challenging my inner explorer and pressing on with the search.
The wreck in the jungle was one of two leads here.
Next, I'm going to explore another promising theory that Earhart crashed in the waters off Papua New Guinea.
Next stop here is to meet with a guy named Rod, a dive expert and a World War II historian, and he knows more about downed aircraft in these parts of the waters than anybody.
Recently, local divers reported seeing wreckage off of Rabaul that they believe looks like the Electra.
To check out the report, I make my way down to the harbor, which is today, home to a listing collection of ghost ships decimated by the volcano.
But amidst the waterlogged fleet are a few seaworthy vessels, one of which is captained by Rod Pierce.
Hey.
How are you? Are you Rod? Josh, g'day.
Yep.
Yeah, nice to meet you.
Pleasure.
So, I hear you're the man in the know about airplane wrecks.
Yes, yes.
Been researching them since the '70s, and there's a lot of them here.
From World War II, there's over 500 in the Gazelle area alone.
Amazing.
I look for MIAs.
Uh-huh.
Seek closure to a lot of people, from pilots of all nations Japanese, Australians, Americans.
How do you locate these wrecks? Basically with sonar.
Mm-hmm.
And that will draw you an outline of a plane, or a wreck, or whatever you're looking for.
We've heard reports, recent reports, of some aircraft wreckage out here near Rabaul, and some people sort of whispering that they think it may be Earhart's plane that may have come back here.
Have you heard those stories? I've also heard that.
Do you think it could be her plane? Anything's possible.
The only way to know is to go out, investigate it, and see what we can find.
As we head out to sea to search the coordinates where divers claim to see a wreck matching the Electra, I'm captivated by the possibility of finding the plane, but also a bit unnerved.
After all, we're cruising in the shadow of two active volcanos, one of which is still smoking.
Even more alarming, the entire harbor is a volcanic caldera.
The ash cloud was so huge it darkened the skies of Europe for a year.
Rod, walk me through this.
This looks like a missile.
Okay, this is This is a towfish.
The idea is to run it about 5 to 10 meters above the bottom to get ideal footage.
Cool.
Looks like a pretty serious piece of equipment.
Very serious piece of equipment, capable of picking up a nipple on a mermaid.
[Laughs.]
But it will do the job, I can assure you.
I'm just hoping for the nipple on a mermaid at this point.
Okay, Rod, here we go.
Here we go.
She's gone.
All right.
Keep it going.
Okay, she's out.
Let's see what she sees.
With the sonar in the water, the search begins.
We're scanning a largely unexplored area near where the divers reported seeing a wreck.
Lockheed only produced 147 Model 10 Electras.
Only four ever visited Papua New Guinea, and three are accounted for.
So if Rod and I find an Electra in this harbor, it's Earhart's.
This kind of a waiting game now.
We've got this side-scan sonar in the water.
We're towing it behind the boat, and it's just giving us a beautiful image of the ocean floor, and we're just kind of we're going back and forth, eliminating each sector as we go through it, and looking for wreckage while we go.
Rod has been investigating Papua New Guinea's waters for over 30 years.
Needless to say, he calls the shots and I take beverage orders.
Josh, do you know how to make tea? Cup of tea coming up.
And I want it before Christmas.
Aye-aye.
It's like I'm with Quint from "Jaws.
" Oh, for a splash of rum.
Don't have to take this abuse much longer.
I got the kettle on, so let's see what we got here.
Peanut butter baked beans condensed milk.
[Whistling.]
Okay, tea coming up.
Okay, cup o' tea coming up.
Oh, thanks, Josh.
There you go.
Cheers, mate.
Cheers.
All the best.
Hows it looking up here? Good, good.
All right, I'm headed back to my station.
Not the manliest mug.
Oh, Rod! Got something! Rod, come here! Off the starboard side! PIERCE: Coming.
Something big right off the starboard side.
See it? Oh, yes, yes.
Oh, that's nice.
That's a big ship.
You think so? Yeah, that's a big ship.
Okay.
World War II How big do you think what's the scale? It's probably around about 3,000, 4,000 tons.
[Exhales sharply.]
Unbelievable.
Lying upright.
Crazy.
Okay, so, not a plane, but we got a wreck.
Not a plane, unfortunately.
Okay.
All right.
We'll keep going, but we're hot to trot.
Keep going.
Hot to trot.
We're on it.
We're finding wrecks.
The harbor is eight miles long and six miles wide, and slowly but surely, we're scanning every inch of it.
Oh! Rod, I got a plane! Rod, I got a plane, for sure! Come here! Look at that.
Look at that.
That's a [bleep.]
plane.
GATES: I'm in Papua New Guinea, using side-scan sonar equipment to scan Rabaul harbor for Amelia Earhart's missing plane, and we just got a major hit.
Oh! Rod, I got a plane! Rod, I got a plane, for sure! Come here! Look at that.
Look at that.
That's a [bleep.]
plane.
That's a plane, right? Now, that is definitely a plane.
Great.
That's amazing.
One wing's buried in the sand.
Or missing.
Or missing.
Look at that.
That's a plane.
We'll put the anchor down.
Let's do it.
That's a plane! Let's get wet.
Based on the sonar readings, there may be multiple wrecks scattered beneath the boat, and we descend into the murky depths to investigate them.
[Radio beeps.]
The million-dollar question is whether this could be the Electra.
As we scour the wreckage, vital clues come into focus, including a slot on the bottom of the plane.
From 1940 to 1945, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero was the infamous symbol of Japan's air power.
A legendary long-range fighter responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Zero was light, fast, and deadly.
If this is a Zero, we may be able to find the Hinomaru, the red, circular sun that adorned the wings of Japanese warplanes.
The second sonar hit is located only a short distance from the Japanese Zero, and it's another shot at finding Earhart's plane.
Rod and I scour the wreck to look for more identifying markers, but this plane is badly mangled.
The cockpit on the Electra had a wide field of view, but short, narrow windows.
The cockpit area here looks like a much more open design.
Based on the configuration, Rod believes that this is a Grumman TBF Avenger, an Allied torpedo bomber that proved indispensable in defeating the Japanese.
Shockingly, it appears the three-person crew are still trapped in the cockpit.
The plane and the soldiers inside are likely either from New Zealand or the United States.
Even though this isn't the Electra, it's a major find, since Rod and his team can now begin the important work of identifying the servicemen who died here, and having these heroes repatriated home.
Perhaps in time this will bring closure to someone searching for these missing pilots.
It's time for me to bid farewell to the exotic shores of Papua New Guinea.
After exploring the jungles of New Britain and scanning the harbor of Rabaul, we've eliminated two high-profile leads in the case.
With so many aircraft wrecks yet to be identified here, it's easy to see why people believe Earhart's could be among them.
But at the end of the day, I don't believe there's enough physical evidence to support the theory.
Furthermore, I remain personally doubtful that she could have had enough fuel to limp all the way back here.
But my search for answers has just begun.
There's another breaking lead in the case one that's so compelling, it has recently captured worldwide attention.
There's stunning new evidence to suggest that once Earhart failed to locate Howland Island, she headed someplace much closer than PNG, just 400 miles south of her target, crash-landing on the uninhabited island of Nikumaroro.
A renowned expert believes she may have died on this lonely island as a castaway.
And the kicker he may actually have a piece of her plane to prove it.
human bones under your house? It never, ever came back into my life until I read this thing about Amelia Earhart.
Was the rest of that crawl space under the house thoroughly explored? No, not at all.
Really? Never.
I got a bone down here.
There's more down here.
There's more down here.
It might be time to call the police department to come over here and take a look, 'cause a couple of them could be human.
I don't know.
GATES: I'm flying at about 35,000 feet and headed to Wilmington, Delaware, to interview an expert on the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.
On one of the last legs of her trans-world flight, Earhart was supposed to travel 2,500 miles from Lae, Papua New Guinea, to tiny Howland Island in the middle of the South Pacific.
But she never reached her destination and vanished without a trace or so we all thought.
Ric Gillespie is the executive director of TIGHAR, an organization dedicated to finding Earhart's Electra.
He believes that Earhart missed Howland Island and crashed on the nearby atoll of Nikumaroro.
When we started this organization, my attitude toward looking for Amelia Earhart was, "Look, she probably just got lost looking for a tiny island in a big ocean, ran out of gas, crashed at the sea.
The technology doesn't exist to find such a small target in such a big ocean.
" And it wasn't until two of our members, who were retired military aerial navigators, came to us and said, "The things that Earhart is known to have said on the radio "make perfect sense to a navigator.
"She was doing exactly what she should have done, "and that should have brought her to one of two islands that she had enough fuel to get to.
" And nobody ever looked there.
Earhart's final transmissions indicate that her and Noonan believed they were in the right spot but couldn't see Howland.
If, in fact, Earhart followed that line, it would have likely passed near the Phoenix group, leading straight to Gardner Island, known today as Nikumaroro.
Okay, if all those radio signals people thought were genuine were real, then the airplane would have to be on land.
"But we've looked on the land, "and there's no airplane on the land.
"Therefore, the radio signals must be somehow bogus.
Let's go look in the ocean for a floating airplane.
" And that's what they did, and they didn't find one.
They didn't find anything.
How many times have you been out to Nikumaroro? I've been to Nikumaroro 10 times.
And not an easy island to reach.
No, it's one of the most remote places on Earth.
And what's your level of confidence that that's where she set that plane down? No doubt in your mind.
We just established last week that a piece of aluminum that we found on that island in 1991 matches in every respect a unique part of Earhart's airplane.
When Earhart was in Miami she had a special custom-made window on the right side of the airplane replaced with a plain aluminum patch.
It has a unique rivet pattern, unique proportions dictated by the size of the hole it was covering and the structure of the airplane.
Right.
So a piece of Amelia Earhart's airplane ended up on that island.
Critics will say, "Yeah, well, it could have floated up there," 'cause we found it washed up.
Mm-hmm.
And if that was the only thing we'd ever found on Nikumaroro, you could say, "Yeah, well, maybe.
" But it's not the only thing we've ever found.
September 1940 there's a man named Gerald Gallagher.
He went down there and found a partial skeleton.
Total of 13 bones, and it looked like this person had been lying under a tree and had died there.
And he looked at this, and he said, "This might be Amelia Earhart.
" Gallagher was a colonial soldier who landed on Nikumaroro as part of a British settlement.
He packed the skeleton he discovered into a box and took it back to Fiji for analysis.
The bones were sent to the School of Medicine and given only a cursory examination, in which the doctor concluded they were from a male.
Before anyone could test to see if they belonged to Earhart's navigator, the bones disappeared somewhere in the island's archives.
But we have the notes the doctor took of the measurements of those bones, and we've given those measurements to two independent forensic anthropologists.
Plugs it into the databases available now.
What comes out of the computer is "white female of Northern European descent who stood 5'7", 5'8".
" Well, there's nobody else like that missing out there.
That's a description of Amelia Earhart.
It's an amazing lead.
But the question remains what became of the bones? Fiji's main newspaper is now reporting a new lead in the case.
If the bones can be found, it may finally close the greatest missing-persons case in history.
Time for me to head back to the skies, get to Fiji, and join the search.
Since the dawn of aviation, every pilot and passenger has seen this view the endless cloudscape that swaddles planet Earth.
It was just over a century ago, on a windy stretch of beach in North Carolina, that the Wright brothers launched the first powered aircraft the fragile-looking Wright Flyer I.
The plane may have only flown for 12 seconds, but humanity's terrestrial shackles were finally broken.
The world would never be the same.
It's hard to know to what extent early aviation pioneers like Earhart envisioned what would follow, but she probably never imagined Richard Branson, seat-back TVs, or double-decker jumbo jets.
And yet, despite this technological golden age of aviation, some things haven't changed.
We still lose planes.
In fact, more than 80 aircraft have completely vanished since the end of World War II.
Many aspects of Earhart's disappearance seem eerily relevant with the recent loss of Malaysia Flight 370.
It serves to remind us that our dominion over the skies is not absolute, and that an awe-inspiring remain unexplored.
Thanks to brave aviation pioneers like Earhart, my modern jumbo jet will make the 5,000-mile trip across the Pacific in a matter of hours.
I touch down in the Fijian capital of Suva, a bustling and cosmopolitan town with a laid-back island charm.
This is the last place the missing remains from Nikumaroro were taken.
Exploring a new culture is always an eye-opening experience, and Suva is no exception like seeing these authentic Fijian recliners.
I like your chairs.
Do you mind? May I? Oh, this is very nice.
Oh, yeah.
You guys got it all figured out here.
Are you guys working right now? Yeah.
Yeah? You are? You're not allowed to drink beer when you're working? Yeah.
Are you allowed to sit in a wheelbarrow? [Laughs.]
[Laughs.]
I'm in town to meet with Nemani Delaibatiki, the editor in chief of the Fiji Sun.
His paper recently published a new report on the missing bones that came to Fiji from Nikumaroro, where Earhart may have perished.
According to the article, a Dr.
Kenneth Gilchrist, the former head of the Fiji Medical School, may have been in possession of the bones.
The doctor has passed away, but three Fijian employees were named as beneficiaries in his will.
All three men have also died, and investigators believe that the box of bones may have been inherited by one of their family members.
There was three Fijians who were close to the doctor and apparently had knowledge of the box.
The mystery is, which one got the box? Two of the men's families have already been interviewed, and neither have the bones.
The third man's son has yet to be found.
If I can find him, and the box, DNA testing could prove whether the bones are the remains of Earhart or her navigator.
We heard that one of the three people lives in Navala, a remote village.
Navala.
Navala village, on the western side of Fiji.
With no time to lose, I'm heading to the village to investigate.
Since I'll be showing up uninvited, it's important that I don't go empty-handed, so I'm heading to the market to pick up a gift.
We got spices.
We got beans.
We got whatever that is.
Since I'm not seeing any Starbucks cards or vanilla-scented candles, I decide to go with a Fijian classic.
Kava you have lots of kava.
Yeah.
I need to buy some.
The roots of the kava plant are mashed and turned into an intoxicating sedative that's wildly popular in this part of the world.
How much is it? Yeah.
Sounds like a fair price.
Yeah.
I don't know how much kava's supposed to cost, so I trust you.
[Speaking native language.]
Okay, I'll take a kilo.
Do you drink kava? Yeah.
Does he drink Kava? No.
No? He doesn't like it? No.
It's an acquired taste.
Look at that.
That looks amazing.
Could play Quidditch with this thing.
Thank you.
Bye.
With my offering in hand, I'm starting my journey to the village.
I'm hopeful to find the man who may be in possession of the missing bones.
Here, in Fiji's rugged backcountry, may be the answers to one of the world's greatest unsolved mysteries.
This is where it happened? Right there.
There's got to be a better way to make a living.
When you found the box Yes.
did they go through the underside of this house with a fine-tooth comb? No.
This looks like bone.
It might be time to call the police department to come over here and take a look.
We don't need any cameras.
Leave those cameras.
GATES: I'm on the island of Viti Levu in Fiji, searching for a man who may be in possession of bones that were brought here from a remote Pacific island in 1945, and which could be the remains of Amelia Earhart.
After picking up a traditional offering of kava plant, I'm heading off the grid to search a remote village where the man was last known to live.
Beyond the capital, Fiji reveals her true colors.
These islands are an undeveloped wonderland brimming with stunning natural beauty.
While the small village of Navala is just 55 miles northeast of Suva, the road system isn't exactly state-of-the-art.
Fiji's rustic charm may be pleasing to the eye, but it does come with some minor drawbacks.
No rush.
[Goat bleats.]
Okay, that may be the end of this road.
Hopefully the village is not too far from here.
Here we go.
In this part of the world, reaching a remote village involves more than just a bumpy ride down a dirt road.
In this case, I'll have to channel my inner Huck Finn to reach my destination.
Bula! MAN: Bula, bula! Are you going to the village? To the village? Yeah.
Can I have a ride? Okay.
Think I'm about to sink your boat.
All right, we're floating.
A few generations ago, an outsider like myself arriving uninvited at some Fijian villages could have become the main course in a cannibalistic feast.
While I'm not afraid of winding up on the menu these days, I am worried that it's going to take me a month to paddle there on what the locals call a bilibili raft.
This is the 2014 model of the bilibili raft.
Comes with full bamboo.
Sunroof, obviously.
Natural air-conditioning.
Manual transmission.
Here? Village? Yeah? Okay.
I don't really know where the emergency brake is on this thing, so I'm just gonna smash it into the rocks here.
Okay, my friend.
Vinaka vakalevu.
Vinaka.
Bye.
It wasn't exactly an express trip, but the journey comes with an instant reward.
The traditional village is beautiful beyond words, and the brilliant smiles of its youngest residents make the journey well worth the effort.
Bula.
This village is reportedly home to a man who may have inherited the possible remains of Amelia Earhart.
But an outsider doesn't just waltz in and start snooping around.
First, I'll need to get approval from the village chief.
[Women singing in native language.]
I'm immediately led to the chief's hut.
His word is law here.
With the future of my investigation riding on winning him over, I'm hoping my kilo of kava helps grease the wheels.
[Men and women singing.]
Uh-huh.
BULIWA: Now the sevusevu.
The men take away the root, mash it, and turn it into a drink.
Though it's consumed by millions of people throughout the Pacific, to outsiders, kava is an acquired taste.
Yes, it's bitter, gritty, and resembles muddy water, but it also comes with a warm wave of euphoria, thanks to its properties as a natural sedative.
I pass to you? Or this way? I have to finish it? Yeah.
Kava is more than a drink.
It's ceremonial.
Not finishing every last drop is considered an insult.
So bottoms up.
Vinaka.
And now it all comes down to the chief.
His is the final approval.
GATES: I'm in a small Fijian village, looking for answers to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.
A recent news story reported that a man in this village may have a box containing her bones.
If I can find these remains, it may solve one of the greatest puzzles in modern human history.
But first I need to win over the chief, who is the absolute authority here.
Without his permission, I won't be able to stay in the village and continue my investigation.
After downing a few cups of ceremonial kava, the chief is ready to make his decision.
Hopefully, he thinks I'm a good drinking buddy.
Oh, that's very nice to hear.
Thank you very much.
Vinaka.
Thank you very much for allowing me to come here and for accepting the kava and for sharing the drink with me.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Vinaka.
Let's get some pizzas up in here, huh? Mnh.
If I give you one inch Yeah? don't take one mile.
[Laughs.]
Okay.
Sounds good.
[Speaking native language.]
Bula.
[Laughs.]
Okay? Yes.
The chief thinks I need one for the road.
After obliging, I head out into the village to begin my hut-to-hut search for the man who might have the mysterious box that experts believe could contain the bones of Amelia Earhart.
Bula.
How are you? Good, thank you.
And you? I'm good.
Bula.
Hello.
Hello.
Listen, I'm trying to find these men.
Do you know these men? Do you know these names? Do any of them live here? No.
No? Strike one.
Okay.
Next.
No.
No? None of them live here? No.
Vinaka.
Strike two.
Just as I'm about to give up, I meet with one last man in the village.
Bula.
Bula.
How are you? I'm good, I'm good.
I'm looking for these three men.
Do any of these names look familiar to you? Uh-huh.
Kalaviti.
He was in the village, but he passed away.
He passed away? Passed away.
Does he have any family here still? Uh, no, not what I know.
And we're looking for these men because they may have been in possession of a box with human bones.
When this man died, did he have any possessions here in the village a box, maybe? Kalaviti doesn't have any belongings when he passed away.
Right.
There wasn't any box.
Okay.
I think there's another man you should see.
He's staying in Suva.
In Suva? In Suva.
Who is that? His name is John Grey.
John Grey? That's a familiar name to me.
John Grey is who? He was the one who found some bones in the box.
Yes, many years ago he found bones, right? Yeah.
The name John Grey has long been linked to the Earhart mystery.
As a boy in 1968, he was exploring a crawl space underneath his home in Fiji when he made a startling discovery.
He found a box of bones that included a human skull.
Furthermore, the house had previously belonged to an employee from the Fiji School of Medicine.
Some believe that these bones could be the very same ones that went missing from Nikumaroro.
But in a maddening twist, these bones have also been lost.
My trip to the village has confirmed that the last man mentioned in the article didn't have the bones.
But a new lead is drawing me back to Suva.
Could John Grey provide any new insight about the bones he found nearly 50 years ago? Perhaps he holds the key to solving this epic mystery.
So, you were about how old when this happened? 13.
And so 13-year-old boy, you find human bones under your house? How did you come to be digging under your house? Me and my cousins decided that we needed to go and check the place out.
And I crawled under this house and looked, and lo and behold, there was this box under there.
As we took off part of the covering, we saw this roundish, whitish-brownish thing.
And then, having pulled it out and seen what was the skull, it freaked me out.
Yeah.
[Laughs.]
And it's buried under your house.
Absolutely! I mean, this is, like this is like "Poltergeist.
" This is like a horror movie.
Yeah.
And then what became of the box and the bones? It was all given to the Fiji Museum.
I just really didn't want to have anything to do with that skull again.
Right.
So, it never, ever came back into my life until I read this thing about Amelia Earhart.
Something clicked in my mind, to say, "John, that skull that you had is, perhaps, that.
" Do you think there's a chance that it's still in the museum? Well, I hope so.
Was the rest of that crawl space under the house thoroughly explored? No, not at all.
Really? Never.
Even if I did want to, I couldn't, 'cause someone else owned it.
Now, though, it is a possibility? The current owner is amenable to us going in there and excavating if we need to.
And you do think it's possible there could be other material remains under the house? Absolutely.
You do? Absolutely.
She needs closure.
Hm.
Amelia needs closure.
John made arrangements for us to search the crawl space tonight.
In the meantime, I want to further investigate his claim that the bones he found could still be in the archives at the Fiji Museum.
The museum boasts an impressive collection that spans nearly 4,000 years.
There are authentic Fijian rafts, and even the rudder from the infamously mutineered HMS Bounty.
But much of the collection is devoted to Fiji's violent cannibal past.
These islands were once a hotbed of human consumption.
One missionary was even eaten right down to the soles of his shoes the one part the natives found too tough to eat.
In a museum brimming with human remains, I'm not feeling very optimistic about finding a single box of bones handed over by a teenage boy in the 1960s.
But I've come this far and plan to leave no stone, or bone, unturned.
I'm fortunate to be granted access to the museum's archives.
However, what little hope I have shrinks as I realize that this place is essentially that room at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark.
" This might take a while.
I comb through row after row of jumbled, disintegrating files.
Eventually, I do manage to turn up some intriguing reports about Earhart but no potential remains.
As I continue to comb through the museum's collection, I find countless weapons and relics, but they're not what I'm looking for.
Ooh.
Box.
Check this out.
That kind of fits the description.
As he said, it's got clasps on the front.
GATES: I'm at the Fiji museum, looking for a lost box of bones that some think can be traced to Amelia Earhart.
Ooh, box.
After scouring the archives, I've come upon a box that matches the description.
Nothing.
Can't win 'em all.
My search through the museum's archives doesn't turn up the remains.
It costs me the day, but I haven't lost all hope.
I'm traveling to the childhood home where John Grey found a box of bones over 40 years ago.
The police never searched the crawl space after John made his discovery, so there could still be more evidence buried in the dirt.
GATES: This is it? GREY: This is it.
This is your childhood home.
This is the home.
Does it look the same? A little overgrown with shrubs and things like that, but the house looks exactly the same.
All right.
Well, here we go.
So, this is where it happened.
This is the entry.
Right there.
Okay, so, You decide you're gonna go into that crawl space.
Yep.
I got into that, crawled under the house, and there it was this box.
Do you think anybody has been under here since 1968? By the looks of things, no.
The box of bones that John found in 1968 was strikingly similar to the one that went missing decades before.
If there are any more remains buried under this house, they very well could be Earhart's.
I'm not thrilled about poking around under an old house, looking for Earhart's bones in the dark, but I've come this far, and there's no way I'm turning back now.
Where under here did you find the box? Right in there, where that timber stump is.
I see it, yeah about halfway back.
That's correct.
And it was just sitting there, or it was buried? It was sitting there, so if you get there, that's where the box was.
Well, that seems like that's our spot to start digging around.
Here we go.
So, please, just caution as you go through.
Uh, okay.
Definitely some spiders.
God.
So, John, you're talking about that post there? Correct, right in the middle of the house.
If I find any money under here, I keep it, right? [Laughs.]
[Exhales sharply.]
Doesn't look like anyone's really been down here in the past 40 years.
I found a button.
Looks like a button off a piece of clothing.
This is the first thing I've really found down here that looks from the human world.
Lots of broken bits of pottery.
[Clink.]
Some glass.
Looks like a child's marble.
Yeah, we used to play with those things in the younger days.
You've lost your marbles, John.
[Laughs.]
Okay, John, I'm pushing over toward the area where you found the box.
[Sighing.]
Oh, boy.
There has got to be a better way to make a living.
Is it this beam right here, this small one? Yep, you're there.
You're right there.
That's it? That's it.
Okay.
So this was where the box was.
[Sighs.]
Lot of coral down here.
They must have, when they were building the house, used this as part of the landfill.
John? Yeah? Just making sure you didn't go home.
When you found the box Yes? did they go through the underside of this house with a fine-tooth comb? No.
I just wanted to get rid of the box.
But the police didn't come down here.
No.
You would think after they found this box filled with bones, they would have come down here and done a more thorough search, but I don't see anything around there other than a lot of dirt and some of this coral.
Hold on.
Let me see what's down here.
This does not look like coral to me.
This looks a lot like bone.
Hold on.
Let me see what's down here.
GATES: I'm in Fiji, searching underneath a home for bones that some believe may be the remains of Amelia Earhart.
After a bit of digging, I may have found something.
This does not look like coral to me.
This looks a lot like bone.
I got a bone down here, for sure a big piece of bone.
I don't know if it's human or not, but this is definitely bone.
Wow.
That is a bone.
I mean, that looks like a human bone to me.
Another one part of a vertebrae.
My goodness.
More.
In a million years, I didn't think I was gonna actually find bones under this house, but I'm looking at a handful of them right here, and I'm just barely scratching the surface.
Amazing.
There's more down here.
There's more down here.
I mean [bleep.]
There's a [bleep.]
skeleton down here.
There's bits of bone all over the place down here.
More bones.
I mean, what is that from? It's everywhere I look.
I mean, I'm putting a skeleton together down here.
It might be time to call the police department to come over here and take a look, 'cause a couple of them could be human.
I don't know.
All right, I'm coming out.
Oh, my goodness.
[Sighs.]
Well, there's more under the house, John.
Vertebrae.
This, obviously This could be a chicken bone, something much smaller.
This could be a cow bone.
But this I mean, things like this, I don't know.
That could be human.
We assumed that what was in the box was all that there was.
And for a 13-year-old kid, you'd never want to go back in to find out if there's anything else.
[Siren wailing.]
Yeah, okay.
I got to I got to Please, we don't need any cameras at the moment.
Oh, yeah? Yeah.
No cameras.
Okay.
GATES: The bones that I found under the house transformed our television production into a criminal investigation.
After lengthy questioning at the police station, the Fiji CSI unit has bagged the evidence for review, and I've got no choice but to head back to my hotel for a much-needed shower.
The next morning, I return to the scene of the crime, only to find more investigators crawling under the house.
Hazmat suits.
Why didn't I think of that? [Police radio chatter.]
The police tape says it all.
The case is now out of my hands, and I'm told that analysis and DNA testing could take months.
However, the lab has already confirmed that at least one of the bones is human a revelation that turns out to be front-page news.
As I make my way back to the airport to bring my expedition to a close, I have a lot to reflect on.
The shocking discovery of human remains beneath John Grey's house is a genuinely newsworthy lead in the search for the queen of the skies.
In addition, the potential identification of the aluminum panel from the island of Nikumaroro makes it tempting to conclude that Earhart did indeed crash on or around the remote island.
But much of the evidence, though hugely compelling, is still circumstantial.
Until her bones or the full wreckage of the Electra is identified, no one can say for certain.
Back in Papua New Guinea, the overgrown World War II wreckage that we found in the jungle, and the eerie wrecks beneath the waves, are, in a sense, every bit as important as Earhart's plane.
After all, pilots went missing.
Lives were lost.
My hope is that the bones from the sunken Allied plane can be identified and repatriated home for the burial they deserve.
At the heart of Earhart's world flight was a commitment to opening new frontiers, and to unite the many cultures of the world.
In that regard, her mission has been a success.
She helped herald in the modern age of aviation, which now serves to connect every nation on Earth.
In the end, I'm most drawn to the unanswered question Why do we continue the search? To me, the magnificent thing about Amelia is that in the eyes of the world, she never died her fear never witnessed, her failure never recorded.
Earhart's legacy of inspiration is amplified because her adventure is perpetual, unbroken by gravity.
We simply think of her as missing.
And perhaps that's where she belongs somewhere over that limitless blue horizon.