About Tod Swindell’s Investigative Research and Forensic Analysis Journey
Born in Yonkers, New York, Tod Swindell was raised in Southern California and Bucks County, Pennsylvania. A Cinema Arts graduate of the University of Arizona, his curiosity toward Amelia Earhart’s 1937 disappearance first took form in the early 1990s, while he was researching stories for the CBS television series, ‘Miracles and Other Wonders’ hosted by Darren McGavin. The premise of the show was later spun into, ‘Encounters of the Unexplained’ hosted by Jerry Orbach, that featured Tod’s original research in an episode devoted to the Earhart mystery. His interest in the subject further escalated in 1996, the year he came to know Lost Star author, Randall Brink, who introduced him to renowned Amelia Earhart world-flight investigator, Joseph A. Gervais, a meeting that ultimately led Tod to embark on his own Earhart truth-seeking journey.
A veteran of the motion picture industry, beyond specializing in the research and development of film properties, Tod is also a free-lance journalist with published articles on the subjects of sports and pop-culture. His film, ‘Protecting Earhart’ is dur out in the fall of 2022.
“Protecting Earhart” writer and filmmaker Tod Swindell
Tod Swindell (L) during his 2021 filmed interview with 100 year old, Lt Colonel Dean Ladd, USMC (Ret). Dean Ladd learned key information about Amelia while he was stationed in the Pacific Theater during World War Two.
My Earhart Journey
BY TOD SWINDELL
After embarking on a career in the film industry, in the 1980s and 1990s I found myself on location a lot. While in between shows I researched and developed motion picture properties for a satellite NBC-Universal company (Desperado Films, Inc.) and my interest in what really happened to Amelia Earhart took hold after a movie script caught my attention. It was titled, “Amelia Earhart: The Final Chapter” by accredited WGA screenwriter, David O’Malley. His effort was largely based on the 1980s investigation of T.C. “Buddy” Brennan and Mike Harris, and it affected me to a point where after reading it, I reached out to David O’Malley. After that I began to more deeply study the other Earhart disappearance investigations I had earlier perused; Fred Goerner’s groundbreaking work from the 1960s, and the other significant ones that had been led by individuals I personally came to know; Randall Brink, Joseph A. Gervais, and Rollin C. Reineck.
Further down find some images from the documentary film journey I also embarked on, dedicated to correctly profiling the interrelated life stories of Amelia Earhart and the highly enigmatic woman who was reluctantly dragged into the limelight in 1970, Mrs. Irene O’Crowley Craigmile-Bolam.
My main work, an MSS titled, Protecting Earhart, went through a number of revisions before its first ‘complete’ version was copyrighted after I inserted a one-hundred page section that featured forensic comparison elements. [Of note, on record no one had forensically compared Amelia to the ‘post-1940 Irene’ in question before.] Beyond the samples from the complete analysis that appear in Irene-Amelia.com, the MSS itself has yet to be formally published — with the exception of private editions of my own pressing.
Prefacing what the overall, Amelia Earhart & Irene O’Crowley Craigmile-Bolam effort entailed; in the 1930s, when the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile was a budding pilot, she and Amelia Earhart knew each other. For sure this was true, except, according to the two most formidable World War Two veteran researchers I came to know, Gervais and Reineck, it was the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile who entirely went missing those decades ago, not Amelia Earhart… entirely… as history promoted since 1937.
The late Joseph A. Gervais, who was the original ‘Amelia became Irene‘ advocate — and who from 1965 to 2005 (the last forty years of his life) was more knowledgeable than anyone else about it, explained his version of the story this way: The original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile’s left-over identity ended up being given to Amelia Earhart for her later-life use under a Federal Witness Protection Program, so the former world famous pilot could live out the rest of her days privately, away from the limelight. He included how unknown to the public, Amelia’s new name and identity acquisition most likely took place during the late World War Two era with highly instrumental, albeit surreptitious help from the indomitable, J. Edgar Hoover. Gervais determined that Hoover, in alliance with the U.S. executive branch and U.S. military intelligence, had learned that Amelia Earhart quietly managed to survive her so-called disappearance, and that while doing so she ended up being subjugated by trying circumstances. [Thus, her later life friend and confidante, Monsignor James Francis Kelley’s comment: “After all she’d been through she did not want to be the famous Amelia Earhart anymore.”]
Gervais first, and decades later, Rollin Reineck as well, ascertained that such a truth first surfaced in the mid-1960s, before it was publicly revealed in 1970, but it failed to gain a foothold in the annals of official history when it was strongly rejected by the post-1940 Irene and a contingency of individuals that supported her, that included some of Amelia Earhart’s survived family members.
The two war veterans were also clear to point out that Amelia’s post-war alias was more a product of a tight inner circle than of a vast conspiracy.
Due to the limited amount of people who were clued-in about it, and the ‘official silence’ always observed by the U.S. and Japanese governments toward the matter, the story that broke in 1970 about Amelia’s post loss existence as Irene, ended up being regarded as a ‘hoax’ by the general public. This is why the debate over who the post-1940 Irene O’Crowley Craigmile-Bolam really was, or used to be, never reached a hard conclusion… until recently, when the forensic analysis results displayed the obvious reality of Amelia’s post-1940, name-changed existence.
First Photo: noted Forensic Anthropologist, Dr. Walter S. Birkby, was an advisor on the human comparison analysis and was instrumental in providing a document examination expert as well.
Second Photo: Joseph A. Gervais accepting his Amelia Earhart Society of Researchers achievement award in
February of 2000.
Before I began orchestrating the forensic analysis, I had noticed Gervais and Reineck’s level of seriousness and combined it with the good nature of their characters. After all, both had served in the Air Force during World War Two, with Gervais eventually retiring as a Major, and Reineck as a Colonel. I then conducted an initial assessment of the common conclusion they drew, that was backed by decades of their own investigative research. Ultimately, I wanted to determine if what they professed to know about Amelia Earhart was actually true. I recall asking myself, “if they’re so certain, then why has this still not been settled?”
Either way, I felt that answering the, ‘did Amelia became known as Irene’ question once and for all provided an automatic hook for a documentary. I may as well add, though, getting it done proved far more challenging than I originally anticipated.
Why?
For starters, let’s just say Amelia Earhart’s family, the original Irene’s family, the Zonta’s and the 99’s, (prominent organizations Amelia had belonged to) a couple of college history professors, and people at the Smithsonian Institution either laughed at the idea or outright signaled me to, ‘hit the road, Jack!’ when I asked them to weigh-in on what I was doing.
Needless to say… I kept going anyway, and in the end some key truths bout Amelia Earhart’s post-loss existence managed to clearly shine through.
In the First Highlighted Photo of Irene: “She was not the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile, and anymore it is obvious
that she was highly congruent to Amelia Earhart. DSo much begs the question: Did a post-World War Two pact made between the governments of the United States and Japan prevent the general public from embracing some withheld truth about Amelia’s ongoing existence as ‘Irene’ in the United States after the war?” Tod Swindell
In the Second Digital Composite: Amelia digitally combined with the post-1940 Irene.
A First Person Review; Twenty Years
of Amelia Earhart Investigative Research
A DIFFERENT LOOK AT THE STORY OF AMELIA EARHART
In the Protecting Earhart Illustration: Graphic artist, David Harlan designed this illustration to be included in the promotional material for my Protecting Earhart book and documentary. Note the ocean waves vectoring toward the ‘Carmen Sandiego’ looking Amelia on both sides–and her inverted plane image that is shown flying away from Howland Island.
Amelia took the veil-faced photo of herself while looking into a mirror before she became famous. (An AE ‘selfie’.)
In the Group Photo to the Right: a portion of a larger group photo taken at the Joseph A. Gervais Amelia Earhart Society of Researchers ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ ceremony held on February 5, 2000. Top row left to right: Then head of the Oakland Western Aerospace Museum, Ronald Reuther; Amelia Earhart historian-journalist, Tod Swindell; Mr. & Mrs. John Bolam, the post-1940 Irene O’Crowley Craigmile-Bolam’s survived in-laws. (Both recognized their later life sister-in-law as the ‘former’ Amelia Earhart.) Bottom row, left to right: 1967 Amelia Earhart World Flight duplicator, Ann Holtgren Pellegreno; Amelia Earhart Lives author, Joe Klaas; and the renowned Amelia Earhart disappearance investigator being honored that day, Joseph A. Gervais.
In the First Photo Above: Filming Protecting Earhart with cameraman, Doug Peters. From 1999 on, production took place in California, Kansas, Hawaii, Nevada, and Washington DC. I shelved it to further develop the forensic analysis so I could ultimately include it. I copyrighted the analysis in 2017, and am now in the process of delivering my film, Protecting Earhart.
In the Second Photo Above: A frame from my near two-hour long filmed interview with my friend and collaborator, Major Joseph A. Gervais, USAF (Ret.) It was the last ‘broadcast quality’ interview he gave. From 1965 to his dying day in 2005, he never disavowed his claim that stated Amelia Earhart lived well beyond the World War Two era after assuming the identity of Irene O’Crowley Craigmile, a name that originally belonged to a budding pilot Amelia was acquainted with in the 1930s. It turned out that the forensic analysis concluded three different Twentieth Century women were attributed to the same Irene O’Crowley Craigmile identity, and it was at least conceivable that at some point after 1940, Amelia Earhart became the third one. If anything, it can now be said that those who doubted Joseph A. Gervais’ assessment were too quick to judge.
In the Third Photo Above: A frame from my interview with Joe Klaas. Joe was a WWII POW in Germany for over two years. He authored the 1970 controversial book, Amelia Earhart Lives, that was chiefly inspired by the decade long investigation of Amelia Earhart’s 1937 disappearance conducted by Joseph A. Gervais. Klaas’s book boldly included Joseph A. Gervais’ 1965 discovery and photo of the post-1940 Irene O’Crowley Craigmile-Bolam, who sued he and Gervais for libel, although not for implicating her as the former Amelia Earhart was was widely assumed. I consider my interviews of both Gervais and Klaas as great achievements.
In the First Photo: Pilot-Author, Ann Holtgren Pellegreno, who in 1967 duplicated the world flight journey of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan, (successfully…) gifted me this great photo she took over the left engine cowling of her Lockheed Electra as she zoomed by Howland Island that year. Howland was the target Amelia and Fred failed to locate thirty-years prior to 1937, just before they went missing. Somehow I ended up working on two film projects that featured man and woman flying duos in peril in their airplanes; ‘Six Days and Seven Nights’ and ‘Spin.’ It’s interesting how few ever noticed another Earhart-Noonan cinematic homage, where at the end of the classic motion picture, Casablanca, a man and woman climb aboard a Lockheed Electra that takes off and disappears into a dense fog, shown in the second photo. It was Victor Laszlo and Ilsa Lund who were aboard the Lockheed Electra that takes off at the end of ‘Casablanca.’ Once they get through the fog their weather report was, “ceiling unlimited.” This timeless-classic, atop many a personal list of all time favorites, was directed by the unheralded Michael Curtiz. It premiered five years after Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were declared missing in Amelia’s Electra.
Two side-note metaphors: In Amelia’s day, Lockheed named its airplanes after stars in the sky. In 1932, the plane Amelia flew solo across the Atlantic in–that made her the first woman and only the second person to ever do such a thing–was a Lockheed “Vega” the brightest star.
“Electra,” on the other hand, the name of the plane Amelia flew when she went missing, is a star in the Pleiades ‘seven sisters’ constellation. The sister-star named ‘Electra’ is referred to as the “weeping sister” because her illumination is not as bright as her other sisters. Electra is also referred to as the “lost star” since it is hard to see her, but you know she’s there. This is how my friend, Randall Brink, came up with the title for his classic, 1994 best-selling Amelia Earhart investigative book, Lost Star: The Search For Amelia Earhart. Amelia Earhart truly did become a lost star akin to Electra of the Pleiades. For after July 2, 1937, although she couldn’t be seen anymore, many people continued to believe she was still alive and out there… somewhere, including Amelia’s mother, Amy Otis Earhart.
Pilot ‘Grace McGuire’ took this photo shown of me in 2017, while I was being interviewed for her documentary in front of her rare Lockheed Electra ‘Model 10’ edition, the best existing replica of the Lockheed Electra 10E that Amelia Earhart owned, flew, and went missing in with Fred Noonan.
Grace worked hard for years restoring this beautiful aircraft. She recently transferred ownership of it to the Atchison, Kansas Chamber of Commerce that raised funds to build a Museum-Hangar for it at its municipal airport. Atchison was Amelia’s birthplace and original hometown. Grace McGuire was friends with Grace Muriel Earhart Morrissey, Amelia’s sister, and as a tribute to their shared namesakes, Grace named her Lockheed, “Muriel.” (Muriel Earhart Morrissey,
knew the post-1940 ‘Irene’ in her later life years, and Grace met her as well.) Into the 2000’s, Grace had been planning a world flight adventure in ‘Muriel’ with Larry Heller, the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile’s 1934 born son, slated to serve as her flight navigator. The flight never materialized but for awhile it appeared to come close to doing so. Grace also once visited and even slept on Howland Island in a tent! She is a very special person. I’m not the only one sporting that opinion of her.
A THEORY OF RELATIVITY?
Note the 1985 photo of Amelia Earhart’s sister, Grace Muriel Earhart Morrissey, with Lockheed Electra restorer and pilot, Grace McGuire. Colonel Rollin C. Reineck took this photo while the two were together in Hawaii commemorating the 50th anniversary of Amelia’s solo Hawaii-to-Oakland flight.
People have often remarked about Grace McGuire’s strong resemblance to Amelia. It may well be no coincidence, just as Irene O’Crowley Craigmile’s sudden post-World War Two resemblance to Amelia Earhart was likely no coincidence either.
Grace McGuire is a terrific person, except she as well is somewhat of an enigma. She was raised by adoptive parents in Scotland before she relocated to the U.S. in the 1960s while in her teens. She has mentioned that she is ‘related’ to Amelia Earhart, without specifying the way she is related. I suggested to her that she may be Amelia’s secret granddaughter; she negated that, although I had brought it up in reference to a never confirmed rumor of Amelia having experienced a family-secret pregnancy in 1924. If such a rumor were true, Grace would fit the bill age-wise as Amelia’s granddaughter. There was also some connective tissue: Grace was a friend of Amelia’s sister, Muriel, before Muriel’s passing took place in 1998, plus she knew Monsignor James Francis Kelley, who stated that he helped Amelia to become ‘Irene’ after the war; she affirmed she had ‘acquainted’ Irene O’Crowley Craigmile, (the post-1940 Irene) and she has long been a friend of the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile’s son, Larry Heller, leaving a remarkable woven-web of separate interrelated elements.
While the ‘secret granddaughter’ notion may seem far-fetched to some, beyond the, “I’m related to Amelia Earhart” mention of Grace’s, there is actually no public record to back it up. So one has to start somewhere with that information.
My ninety-page screen story, “Amelia’s Blessings” that Rollin C. Reineck expounded on in the last chapter of his book, Amelia Earhart Survived, is a historical novella that covers Amelia’s missing year (biographically) of 1924. It suggests that Amelia possibly concealed a pregnancy and gave birth to Lloyd Royer’s child in Canada, (Lloyd Royer was a plane mechanic friend and business partner of Amelia’s who proposed to Amelia before she abruptly sold her plane and left California with her mother in 1924, to head for the east coast by way of Canada) and how eventually, her still concealed child was taken in to be raised by the O’Crowley family of Newark, New Jersey, after Amelia suddenly became famous in 1928.
Is it insanity to suggest such an idea? As mentioned, Grace herself says it isn’t true. Yet another part of the forensic research study did solidly determine that the person in the photograph directly below, who was positively identified to me by the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile’s 1934 born son as, “my mother, around 1940”, was not the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile, nor was she the post-1940 Irene O’Crowley Craigmile-Bolam, who so strongly resembled Amelia Earhart.
It is a less-focused-on part of my study results that says no one knows who the person in the photograph below really was or where she came from. In 1984, an elder O’Crowley family friend described her as a young ‘live-in helper girl’ of the O’Crowley’s who was about “16 or 17” in 1940. Where no evidence of such a ‘live-in helper girl’ exists from later O’Crowley family interviews, it could make sense where this person was she. Not to leave out, this very same photograph, and more of the same girl came from the post-1940 Irene’s own photo collection that was bestowed upon her later life friend, Diana Dawes:
A THEORY OF RELATIVITY?
To the left is a 1985 photo of Amelia Earhart’s sister, Grace Muriel Earhart Morrissey, with Lockheed Electra restorer and pilot, Grace McGuire. Colonel Rollin C. Reineck took this photo while the two were together in Hawaii commemorating the 50th anniversary of Amelia’s solo Hawaii-to-Oakland flight.
People have often remarked about Grace McGuire’s strong resemblance to Amelia. It’s no coincidence in my book, just as Irene O’Crowley Craigmile’s sudden post-World War Two resemblance to Amelia Earhart was no coincidence either.
Grace McGuire is a terrific person, except she as well is somewhat of an enigma. She was raised by adoptive parents in Scotland before she relocated to the U.S. in the 1960s while in her teens. She has mentioned that she is ‘related’ to Amelia Earhart, without specifying the way she is related. I suggested to her that she may be Amelia’s secret granddaughter; she negated that, although I had brought it up in reference to a never confirmed rumor of Amelia having experienced a family-secret pregnancy in 1924. If such a rumor were true, Grace would fit the bill age-wise as Amelia’s granddaughter. There was also some connective tissue: Grace was a friend of Amelia’s sister, Muriel, before Muriel’s passing took place in 1998, plus she knew Monsignor James Francis Kelley, who helped Amelia become ‘Irene’ after the war; she affirmed she had ‘acquainted’ Irene O’Crowley Craigmile, (the post-1940 Irene) and she has long been a friend of the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile’s son, Larry Heller. That’s quite a woven web of separate interrelated elements.
While the ‘secret granddaughter’ notion may seem far-fetched to some, beyond the, “I’m related to Amelia Earhart” mention of Grace’s, there is actually no public record to back it up. So… one has to start somewhere with that information.
My ninety-page screen story, “Amelia’s Blessings” that Rollin C. Reineck expounded on in the last chapter of his book, Amelia Earhart Survived, is a historical novella that covers Amelia’s missing year (biographically) of 1924. It suggests that Amelia possibly concealed a pregnancy and gave birth to Lloyd Royer’s child in Canada, (Lloyd Royer was a plane mechanic friend and business partner of Amelia’s who did propose to her before she left California with her mother in 1924, headed for the east coast by way of Canada) and how eventually, her still concealed child was taken in to be raised by the O’Crowley family of Newark, New Jersey, after Amelia suddenly became famous in 1928.
Is it pure insanity to even suggest such an idea? As mentioned, Grace herself says it isn’t true. Yet another part of my Study did solidly determine that the person in the photograph directly below, who was positively identified to me by the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile’s 1934 born son as, “my mother, around 1940”, was not the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile, nor was she the post-1940 Irene O’Crowley Craigmile-Bolam, AKA the former Amelia Earhart.
It is a less-focused-on part of my study results that says no one knows who the person in the photograph below really was or where she came from. In 1984, an elder O’Crowley family friend described a young ‘live-in helper girl’ of the O’Crowley’s who was about “16 or 17” in 1940, as she recalled. Where no evidence of such a ‘live-in helper girl’ exists within the O’Crowley family archives, it could make sense where the person below was she. Not to leave out, this very same photograph, and more of the same girl came from the former Amelia Earhart’s own photo collection bestowed upon her later life friend, Diana Dawes:
At the attorney’s office in Manhattan and in writing as well, the person to the left was identified by the 1934 born son of the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile as, “my mother, around 1940”. The analysis results left it certain she was not his biological mother, and she certainly was never known as ‘Amelia Earhart’ either.
Evidently, after the original Irene’s son was imprinted with her at a young age, the person above went on to serve as his surrogate mother. The above photo was more likely taken in the mid-1940s. Based on her dress and formal pose, it is possibly a college graduation photo from when she was twenty-one or twenty-two. (Leaving her birth year estimate to have been, ‘around 1924’ as conveyed by O’Crowley family friend, Lucy McDannel in 1984, who recalled their ‘live-in helper-girl’ as “16 or 17 in 1940.) To this day no one knows who this person really was or where she came from. My postulation that she may have been the non-recognized biological daughter of Amelia Earhart and Lloyd Royer is only that, a ‘postulation’ or ‘educated guess’ based on an, ‘if this, then that’ supposition.
Logic includes an awareness of how this photo (and others of the same girl) came from the post-1940 Irene’s own collection bestowed upon her later life friend, Diana Dawes. Diana died in 1998, just a few months after Amelia’s sister, Muriel, died. Diana Dawes, by the way, (see news article clip below) firmly believed her later life friend, the post-World War Two only Irene O’Crowley Craigmile-Bolam, did used to be known as, “Amelia Earhart”. Tod Swindell
Excerpt was part of a 1987 newspaper article.
In the last photo: a 2016 photograph of Lou Foudray, Earhart historian and former caretaker of the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum on the front porch of the home where Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas. Lou lived there for many years and was one of several ‘Earhart-learned’ individuals who spoke of Amelia’s rumored ‘family secret’ pregnancy from her pre-fame years.
“Foudray calls the investigative research of Gervais and Swindell, “”Just the tip of the Iceberg.”” “All the evidence all put together, I feel like she [Amelia] did survive. I think she survived and came back to the United States, but that she wanted her privacy.” Lou Foudray, former proprietor of the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum in Atchison, Kansas, quoted from interviews conducted by Lara Moritz of KMBC TV, Kansas City, and by The Topeka Kansas Capital-Journal’s, Jan Biles.
“Your work relating to Amelia Earhart and Irene O’Crowley Craigmile is absolutely outstanding. There is no other way to describe it.”
Author-historian, Colonel Rollin C. Reineck, USAF (Ret.) in response to Tod Swindell’s Amelia Earhart investigative forensic research and comparison analysis.
In the photo: USAF Colonel, Rollin C. Reineck in 1944
Senator Hiram Bingham
& Amelia Earhart
Distinguished and proud with her wings and pearls.
Digital Composite of Irene and Amelia
Irene-Amelia composite, Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia in 1976. Note the signature flower-pendant she was often seen wearing.
In the First Photo Above: Amelia Earhart, 1937.
In the Second Photo Above: Digital Composite.
The post-World War Two only Irene O’Crowley Craigmile in East Hampton of L.I. New York, in 1965. [Gervais photo.] She appeared nowhere as ‘Irene O’Crowley Craigmile’ before the end of World War Two. Is that because she used to be Amelia Earhart? If so, the world public was never supposed to know such a thing.
First Photo: an old newsprint photo of the original Irene Craigmile shown in 1930 with her then-husband, Charles Craigmile, who died the following year, and her father, Richard Joseph O’Crowley. In the second photo they’re enhanced.
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
– ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUR
“Toward the end of her defamation lawsuit that ended in 1976, the post-1940 Irene O’Crowley Craigmile-Bolam, told a newspaper reporter, “I’ve always been the same person.” That was a true statement she made, although she did change her name during the course of her lifetime.
People sometimes change their names for different reasons. Stefani Germanotta did it for a professional stage-name reason. So did Alecia Moore. Cassius Clay and Lew Alcindor did it as homages to their religious beliefs. Amelia Earhart? She would have done it for her own deep rooted personal reasons–and out of respect for the three countries she ended up being unwaveringly devoted to during the course of her lifetime; the United States, England, and Japan.
If you feel this is stretching things a bit, it actually isn’t.
Try to visualize, if you can, that the reason any ‘name-changed’ reality of Amelia Earhart was kept out of the public eye would have been more practically based and easier to comprehend why than most people realized.
According to the conviction displayed by the post-1940 Irene and the post-World War Two viewpoints maintained by the United States, England, and Japan as well, it is fairly certain that a common vantage point would have come into existence from a post-war agreement the averring that no one from the world public was ever supposed to know that Amelia Earhart lived-on after she went missing — and that in time she changed her name for the sake of her own future privacy.
It appears clear enough by now that such a thing would have marked a multi-nations endorsed happening that was conjointly solidified by a Federal Witness Protection Program [FWPP] carefully arranged via the U.S. department of justice. Such an arrangement, then, would most likely have been spurred ahead under the guise of J. Edgar Hoover and the U.S. federal government.
Consider this as well: No executive government branch from any of the three above mentioned countries has ever come close to offering an opinion about the ‘Amelia became Irene’ suggestion, even though it is certain all were aware that it made national-news headlines in the U.S. in 1970.
It is equally true as well, that the executive branch of the U.S. federal government has never officially investigated the 1937 disappearance and subsequent missing person case of Amelia Earhart. If it ever offered an opinion about it at all, it was in an off-hand, non-committing way.” Tod Swindell
ABOUT PROTECTING EARHART
The Protecting Earhart MSS and Forensic Analysis [1997-2020; copyright registrations: TXu 1-915-926 & TXu 2-061-539] mark one Investigative Journalist’s comprehensive forensic research evaluation combined with a human comparison analysis.
After meeting some World War Two veterans who insisted that Amelia Earhart privately lived well beyond the war years, Writer-filmmaker, Tod Swindell, developed a consuming interest in the facts attributed to Amelia Earhart’s disappearance and missing person case, that led him to orchestrate a comprehensive forensic research study that featured an in-depth ‘Amelia to Irene’ comparison analysis, the first one ever done.
The complete Study was inspired by the original findings of Joseph A. Gervais [of the ‘Operation Earhart’ investigation Gervais conducted from 1960 to 1970] and a long time collaborator of his, Author Randall Brink. The study features over ten-thousand pages of rare documents, analytical text, photographs, human physical and character trait comparisons, maps, charts, and past-obscured, but once again revisited investigative research findings.
The condensed Protecting Earhart MSS features 415 total pages; 110 of which exclusively exhibit logistical and visual elements drawn from the overall ‘Amelia to Irene’ Comparison Analysis. From a layman’s viewpoint, the Study results appear to exhibit Amelia Earhart’s ongoing existence after World War Two with the re-purposed name of, ‘Irene O’Crowley Craigmile’ applied to her person. (Surname of ‘Bolam’ added by marriage in 1958.) It also examined the post-World War Two, ‘let’s move on‘ logic that left the general public out of the loop of the complexities that surrounded Amelia’s 1937 disappearance. Simply put, a year and a half after she was declared ‘missing‘ in 1937, Amelia Earhart was declared ‘dead in absentia‘ in 1939, a declaration that has never changed.
The intention to keep the name ‘Amelia Earhart’ exclusively associated with a dead person no matter what, evidently came into strong focus during the final days of World War Two. The controversy over the post-1940 only Irene was most notably exposed by a close friend and confidant of the post-1940 Irene’s, former Seton Hall College President, Monsignor James Francis Kelley. In the 1980s and 1990s, Monsignor Kelley admitted to select individuals that his friend, Irene, actually did used to be known as Amelia Earhart, and that he had helped her to become Irene Craigmile during the final days of World War Two. Non-believers insisted that the well-known monsignor was ‘senile’ and his mental condition caused him to fabricate his statements about his friend, Irene. People who knew Monsignor Kelley well, however, remarked that the monsignor was ‘quite lucid’ when he described to them what he did about Amelia Earhart quietly living on and becoming known as ‘Irene’.
When regarded seriously, what would have theoretically been Amelia Earhart’s post-loss FWPP (Federal Witness Protection Program) that allowed her to become the new Irene O’Crowley Craigmile from the 1940s on, would have been something most likely put in place under the omniscient guise of the federal government’s long time FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI’s ‘Amelia Earhart’ file contents from the World War Two years, that included Mr. Hoover’s signatures, indicated an awareness that he had gleaned pertaining to indications of Amelia Earhart’s ongoing existence during the war years under the auspice of Japan. Mr. Hoover was still the Director of the FBI when the ‘did Amelia become known as Irene’ assertion first surfaced in 1970, and he was sure to remain silent about it, where otherwise he would have been expected to weigh-in with an FBI opinion. Hindsight also reveals that no one from the Federal Government of the United States offered an official opinion at all toward the Amelia-Irene matter after the controversy surfaced, and it remained that way ever since.
Importantly as well, the 1970 claim stating that Amelia lived-on and became known as ‘Irene’ from the 1940s on, was never disproved.
The complete Study is available for review on a selective basis. The portions displayed here are revealing of the overall Amelia-Irene congruence controversy.
Questions? Comments? E-mail admin@protectingearhart.com