Hypothesis #1: Amelia Earhart Perished on a Lonely Pacific Island. Hypothesis #2: Amelia Earhart Lies at the Bottom of the Ocean. Hypothesis #3:Who Cares? We're Having a Helluva Good Time Not Finding Her! (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine January 2002

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Hypothesis #1: Amelia Earhart Perished on a Lonely Pacific Island. Hypothesis #2: Amelia Earhart Lies at the Bottom of the Ocean. Hypothesis #3:Who Cares? We're Having a Helluva Good Time Not Finding Her! (Cont.)

If kammerer has a polar opposite, it's Ric Gillespie. Five-foot-ten with graying blond hair and a beefy build, Gillespie, 54, cuts a swashbuckling figure in the geeky realm of airplane buffs. Inside TIGHAR, he's known for being highly opinionated but is also respected for his diligence and deliberate nature. Since 1989 Gillespie has made six trips to Nikumaroro to search for artifacts. So far he has recovered a load of curious stuff, ranging from parts of a woman's size nine-narrow shoe to pieces of Plexiglas that "are consistent with that of Earhart's Lockheed Electra."

"There's no doubt in my mind that we've found the right place," Gillespie told me from his office in Wilmington, a month before the sixth expedition. "I can convince academics all day long. But to put an icon like Earhart to rest, we have to find definitive evidence. We need the Any Idiot Artifact." Meaning the one thing that any idiot would accept as proof that Earhart's crash site had been found—in this case, the plane or some kind of DNA evidence. "Where it exists, I don't know," he said. "But it doesn't really matter; it's so damn much fun to look."

When he heard about the Nauticos expedition, Kammerer had a realization. "One of these guys is gonna find her," he said. "In this deal, you better cover your bet."

Gillespie's most tantalizing scrap of evidence can be seen on a TIGHAR-produced videotape that Kammerer showed me. (There's also a book, Amelia Earhart's Shoes, in which four fellow TIGHAR volunteers set down their research in painstaking detail.) After various shots of Gillespie pointing at maps of Nikumaroro and indicating hot spots, he displays a satellite photo, taken in April 2001, that shows a rust-colored speck clinging to a reef on the western edge of the island. Gillespie speculates we may be looking at rusting plane parts lodged in coral crevices. This is followed by footage of an interview Gillespie conducted in 1999 with a Fijian woman who briefly lived on the island with her family in 1940. Asked about possible wreckage on Nikumaroro, the woman says she remembers seeing the remains of an airplane. Asked where, she eerily points to the same spot on the map where the rusty pixels appeared in the sat photo.

It's circumstantial but, to Gillespie and Kammerer, intoxicating. Since making the media-rights deal with Kammerer, however, Gillespie has been forced to adjust his pace to handle the barrage of ideas drummed up by the TV advertising mogul. Last August, just before Gillespie and his 12-person archaeological team were scheduled to depart for Nikumaroro, the captain of an Australian-based salvage tug discovered TIGHAR's search plans on the Internet and decided to take a look for himself. Though the salvager was unsuccessful, word of the attempt set Kammerer on a crusade to protect his investment in undiscovered booty from what he called "unauthorized trespass." He hatched a plan to hire professional sky divers to tandem himself, a film crew, and a former Miss World USA named Natasha Allas onto the island, along with several thousand pounds of supplies to sustain them for three weeks until the TIGHAR ship arrived. Natasha, he explained, would be there to act as a spokesmodel for the expedition.

"I'm doing this to protect the archaeological and ecological sanctity of the island," he elaborated. "I'm also wondering what it might pay off as a publicity stunt. I'd like Natasha to go because the fact that a woman would do this makes it more dramatic."

Gillespie was...unimpressed. If the scheme went bad, he would be forced to suspend his expedition to rescue the hapless sky divers and prevent Nikumaroro from becoming a more ridiculous version of Survivor.

"The phrase 'loose cannon on a rolling deck' comes to mind," Gillespie said of Kammerer. "But we took his money. All of this year's research happened because of Mike's participation, bless his heart."

The skydiving plan never left the ground, but it would not be Kammerer's last Homeric poke at contriving an adventure.

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