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November 2009

 

Search party ends work to find Amelia Earhart

 

 

 

Page 2

 

Frank Cotolo

 

...continued from page one

 

Clique also despised LuPonte. "We were searching off the coast of Scotland once and Brian said to me, 'Did Amelia have long hair?' and I asked 'Why?' and he said, 'Because maybe her hair got into her eyes and she couldn't see where she was flying.' I had no idea what that had to do with where she might have crashed."

 

I told each of the surviving search-party members that a report recently claimed that the legendary aviatrix probably died on an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati.

 

"I never heard of that place," said LuPonte. "Besides, it can't be anywhere near as great as Lisbon."

 

"We looked there," said Monet, "or at least we looked in a place that sounded like that place and found nothing."

 

"That can't be," said Clique, "because there is no landing strip on that island. At least none that have lights and we all know you can't land in one piece at night without a landing strip that has lights."

 

"Who told you that?" said Boulier. "Was it Stenchford? Because he lies like a rug."

 

"Roland Stenchford," said Monet, "is the only member of the original search party to have died before we stopped searching. He was a Brit and he quit the crew because after two search trips he figured Earhart was really a man and that he landed somewhere and just started a new life, that the whole pilot thing was a hoax and he just did it to set up a getaway."

 

Boulier said, "Stenchford died - and this is strange - in Lisbon. What does that tell you?"

 

LuPonte said, "Is Boulier claiming I had something to do with Stenchford's death? Well, did he tell you that someone stole Stenchford's body from where they buried him?"

 

I learned from a Stenchford relative that his body was stolen from its resting place in a Lisbon cemetery. Stenchford suffered a massive heart attack while doing dentistry on his own mouth. His body was never recovered. Stenchford's family tried to create a search party to find the missing body but no one cared to join such a party.

 

"As far as I can tell," said Clique, "the broad is lost forever and the mystery will continue until the world ends. But foremost, though we hate one another, I feel I speak for all of the members of the search party when I say that we pretty much wasted our lives looking for Amelia Earhart."

 

Reportedly in production, a movie about Ms. Earhart will star Hillary Swank. A source claiming to be close to the producer told me that Ms. Swank was so involved with playing Earhart that she wanted it put into her contract that she would disappear after making the movie and have a search party created to find her.