From experience investigating and interviewing witnesses, it is well documented that
the first statement is usually closer to the truth than later versions.
I have always found the Randolph case intriquing and one of the best of the Voice receptions.
It would seem a teenager making up stories and going to his parents and police, especially
given the racial issues in 1937, would make a hoaxer hesitant to invent a story.
So given the newspaper reports of June 7th, the fact he knows the call signs,(or close), and ship on reef, is exciting.
However, in reviewing old newspapers, I do not see the same exact story being told immediately on the July 5th editions and in later editions. It seems in the first telling of the story, there was no mention of plane call signals at all. Dana in fact denied hearing any at first. A July 5th recapture link is below, and I have found one other July 5th paper and it stated the same thing. So there does not seem to be anything in his orginal Randolph story that was not already in the July 3rd New York daily news besides ship on reef south of equator. Which is no better than other hoax reports of 200 miles north of Howland as far as the listener knowing something unique and proven.
If anyone else has a different July 5th paper, would love to read it, that would be the earliest reporting and the one least likely to suffer later embellishments. I think he heard something, but it may have only been the word Amelia repeated over and over along with some numbers he did not understand or write down.
http://trib.com/news/local/casper/a-look-back-in-time-into-the-depths/article_bc835e25-ee8e-59ad-a2cd-774ecb12c3c6.html