A groundbreaking DNA extraction project at Simon Fraser University could help solve an old mystery: the disappearance of pilot Amelia Earhart on her attempt at a round-the-world flight in 1937.
Health sciences student Justin Long and Dongya Yang, a forensics professor, have teamed up to extract DNA from cells in Earhart’s saliva left on sealed letters she wrote over 70 years ago.
If recovered, the DNA will be cross-matched to bone fragments found on Nikumaroro, an island in the South Pacific near the area her plane was thought to have gone down, Long explained. “We’re not only making an historical leap with the letters, but also a leap in forensic analysis,” he said.
Long explained that the project itself should get started in two months, since the technique will be practiced on other sealed envelopes from the same time period before the actual Earhart letters will be analyzed.
These envelopes contain handwritten letters from Earhart written in the 1930s. They are part of a collection of 400 letters belonging to Long’s grandfather Elgen Long, a prominent Earhart historian and author of Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved.
“Growing up, I’d always listen to his stories and I’ve read his book twice,” Justin Long said.
“Over Christmas he started joking about how he had [Earhart’s] DNA.” Eventually the two got serious about it, Long said, especially when Justin saw the intact seals.
“I was like, ‘What are we waiting for?’” he said.
Justin and Elgen Long are not alone in their enthusiasm. Many historians have devoted years to investigating the mystery behind Earhart’s disappearance.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), based in Wilmington, Del., has been researching the Earhart mystery for years. According to TIGHAR executive director Ric Gillespie, Earhart may have ended up on Gardner Island, now called Nikumaroro, in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati.
This hypothesis differs greatly from those of other historians like Elgen Long, who posit that her plane ran out of fuel over the ocean, crashed, and sunk to the bottom.
“No one can search an ocean . . . but we reasoned that it should be possible to search an island. The closer we looked, the more we found,” Elgen Long said.
After a few expeditions, the TIGHAR team uncovered more bone fragments that may be Earhart’s. Their hypothesis is that Earhart’s plane, the Elektra, crashed on the reefs surrounding the island, where she was stranded for days before her death.
Gillespie said he welcomes the project at SFU, but with a grain of salt.
“There will always be a question of whether or not [Earhart] licked the envelope — unless the profile matches the Earhart profile we already have,” he said, referring to a DNA analysis they have done on a surviving family member. “We still have more questions than answers,” a TIGHAR Facebook update reads.
