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Author Topic: Betty's Notebook  (Read 24070 times)

Ric Gillespie

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Re: Betty's Notebook
« Reply #15 on: January 26, 2016, 08:52:37 AM »

If Fred was sick then one could assume he died before Amelia. In that case she would presumably have made some effort to bury him. Not easy in that environment but she certainly wouldn't enjoy just having the body decompose. I recognise I may have missed it but I haven't seen any mention of using ground penetrating radar around possible camp sites. That would, I think, show up a shallow grave. If this has already been covered I apologise.

We tried GPR at the Seven Site in 2010.  We found that the porous coral rubble substrate defeated the radar's ability to detect disturbed ground.  Small pockets of air showed up as buried objects. After painfully excavating a number of "hits" and find nothing, we concluded that the technology is not a useful tool in that environment.
The question of whether and how AE may have dealt with Noonan's corpse is an interesting one. Niku is not an easy place to bury anything except in sandy parts of the beach.  Trouble is, in the first big storm the sand goes away.  Bones rumored to have been found scattered near the shipwreck by the early colonists may be the remains of the four Norwich City casualties whose bodies washed ashore and were buried by the survivors.
During the visit by the Betchart Tourist Cruise last summer, one of the tourists noticed a linear and possibly unnatural pile of large coral stones near the NW tip of the island, prompting speculation that it might be a cairn covering Noonan's remains.  The walking stick in the photo is four feet long.  It's acknowledged to be a long shot but the next time someone from TIGHAR visits the island the feature will be investigated further.
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Ron Taylor

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Re: Betty's Notebook
« Reply #16 on: January 26, 2016, 12:22:05 PM »

I suppose, if I think about it, a cairn is much more likely than a burial. I'd also forgotten that GPR does not work well with salt contaminated soils. Certainly think that coral pile would be worth investigating. Getting way ahead - are there any living relatives of Fred to enable DNA analysis if his remains were ever found?  A pity that using cadaver dogs on the island is impossible.
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: Betty's Notebook
« Reply #17 on: January 26, 2016, 12:39:51 PM »

...  A pity that using cadaver dogs on the island is impossible.


In his earlier post to the Forum, Ric called them "forensic dogs."


See that post for further details.





LTM,

           Marty
           TIGHAR #2359A
 
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Ron Taylor

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Re: Betty's Notebook
« Reply #18 on: January 26, 2016, 12:48:35 PM »

I'm not sure much is to be gained by debating definitions however "forensic" covers a range of capabilities (drugs, explosives etc) . I specifically meant Human remains detection (HRD) dogs (aka Cadaver dogs) but really not worth debating since it is moot as using dogs on site is impractical.
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Betty's Notebook
« Reply #19 on: January 26, 2016, 07:07:47 PM »

The dog people are sensitive about terminology. They would tell you that the training and capabilities of "forensic dogs" are very different from those of "cadaver dogs." In any case, as I reported earlier, we do have some apparent confirmation via forensic dogs as to exactly where the bones were found in 1940.

We have tried but have been unable to find any living relative of Fred Noonan. However, if we had an intact skull it should show a dental bridge in the front of his mouth, according to a story that he fell and knocked out some front teeth in Hawaii while flying with PanAm.
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Monty Fowler

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Re: Betty's Notebook
« Reply #20 on: April 07, 2016, 04:48:41 AM »

I'm curious, at some point are we going to post scans of all the pages in Betty's Notebook, along with any other documentation TIGHAR has relating to it, such as the letter to Goerner, etc.? That would help immeasurably in overall context and further analysis, I would think.

LTM,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 EC
Ex-TIGHAR member No. 2189 E C R SP, 1998-2016
 
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: Betty's Notebook
« Reply #21 on: April 08, 2016, 08:47:02 AM »

I'm curious, at some point are we going to post scans of all the pages in Betty's Notebook,

Scans of all of the pages of Betty's Notebook that contain Earhart-related entries, plus scans of two pages that are typical of pages that do not contain Earhart-related information, are on the TIGHAR website in Betty's Notebook.

along with any other documentation TIGHAR has relating to it, such as the letter to Goerner, etc.? That would help immeasurably in overall context and further analysis, I would think.

Betty never wrote to Goerner.  The correspondence with Goerner was done by her neighbor John Hathaway.  Those letters are on the TIGHAR website as the Goerner-Hathaway Letters.
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