A forensic imaging specialist from Woodinville, Washington is lending his analytic skills to the latest search for the pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart. This analyst discovered a possible upturned landing gear in a historic photo of a tropical atoll. A $2 million expedition to that South Pacific location takes place this summer.
A newspaper article more than a decade ago prompted private forensic examiner Jeff Glickman to volunteer his services. The Northwest man joined a team trying to solve the enduring mystery of Amelia Earhart. The trailblazing aviatrix disappeared over the South Pacific in 1937.
Glickman reviewed grainy, black-and-white photos of an uninhabited coral atoll called Nikumaroro.
"I noticed something in this one image that just wasn't quite right," he says.
Something is sticking out of the water at the edge of a British Navy sailor's landscape photo taken a few months after Earhart vanished.
"There are telltale signs that lend themselves to strongly suggest that it is in fact a landing gear," Glickman says.
Which appears to match Earhart's airplane.
The non-profit International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery plans a high-tech underwater search this summer to see if they can locate any wreckage at the spot Glickman identified.
Previous expeditions have targeted this South Pacific island. Searchers found possible relics of a castaway but nothing directly traceable to Amelia Earhart.
On the Web:
The Earhart Project search:
http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/AEdescr.html
"The Bevington Photo" - Hiding in plain sight?
Jeff Glickman's forensic image processing company is called Photek:
http://www.photekimaging.com/index.html
Copyright 2012 Northwest News Network
