"Your work relating to AE and IB is absolutely outstanding. There is no other way to describe it. I'm convinced you have solved the mystery. I just wanted you to know that I have nothing but admiration for you and I am honored and proud to be on the winning team." Note from USAF Colonel Rollin C. Reineck (Ret.) to Tod Swindell. Colonel Reineck was also one of the four original recipients of the first distributed forensic analysis results. In 11/04 Reineck's book Amelia Earhart Survived was published through the Paragon Agency, duly crediting Swindell's forensic argument achievements. Featured in the book from pages 156 to 165 are several samples and photos separating the different identified 'Irene's' reproduced directly from Mr. Swindell's then still-in-progress analysis.   

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Another Forensic Study Reaction: 

Note: Below find the ambiguous reaction of Bill Prymak, 1989 founding President of the Amelia Earhart Society. Though Mr. Prymak had befriended Joe Gervais and Rollin Reineck, and enlisted them as foremost honorary AES members from its onset, he always refused to advocate their common claim of Amelia Earhart having changed her name to Irene Craigmile during the WWII era, after she turned up missing in 1937. He also adamantly refused to support the 2002 past shared identity discovery of Irene Craigmile Bolam made by Tod Swindell, who had teamed up separately with Randall Brink, Joe Gervais, and Rollin Reineck in the mid 1990s. To convince Mr. Prymak of the shared identity reality, it was decided he should be included as one of the four recipients of the initially assembled forensic study packet. Here below was his written response, e-mailed to Mr. Swindell well over a month after Mr. Prymak was copied for inclusion of the initial study packet:         

"Tod, this is your creation, nobody else’s. My personal feelings… stay the course… your current product will not diminish by protecting it, for the moment, from the tumultuous events certain to befall you if you go public… nourish your product, refine it." "Public acceptance of your work at this time may be tenuous. Wait until you can strengthen your position…. I believe in you… Rollin believes in you… we have to get the rest of the world to believe in you… so mature your product towards this goal… Bill"
E-mail from Bill Prymak, the 1989 founding President of the Amelia Earhart Society. Mr. Prymak was also one of the four original recipients of the forensic analysis that separated the Non Gervais and Gervais-Irenes, and displayed the haunting congruence shared by the Gervais-Irene (AKA Irene-Amelia) and Amelia Earhart. (Famous pilot Ann Holtgren Pellegreno was the forth recipient, although she never commented about the study results in writing.) (*Please see the "Follow Up Note" about the independently wealthy Bill Prymak, who has long been strongly persuasive against making public the truth about Irene. (Found in the bottom paragraphs of this page.) Plus, note his influence over the 2006 National Geographic special following the "Beyond 37'" statement in the "Is This Just Slight of Hand" paragraphs.)

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A Beyond 37' Statement:

"Following years of trying to locate any, and after extensive exchanges with her Son since 2004 and two face to face meetings with him in 2006, (to include a contractual agreement with him for the rights to his version of his Mother's life story) it has been assessed how no photographs dated prior to the mid-1940s are evident, that identify the same Irene Craigmile Bolam's image photographed by Joe Gervais in 1965... as 'Irene O'Crowley,' 'Irene Craigmile,' or 'Irene Heller,' ...all the surnames history attributed to Irene Craigmile Bolam prior to the mid-1940s. In a forensic sense it is quite obvious how the woman, who in April of 2006 Irene's seventy-two year old Son identified as his early childhood 'Mother' was an entirely different human being than the one Joe Gervais met and photographed in 1965, even though it was later falsely conveyed they were one in the same person.

It was the same Gervais-taken 35MM photograph that was later included in the 1970 McGraw-Hill book by Joe Klaas, Amelia Earhart Lives. (The book was co-copyrighted by Gervais and Klaas.) What's more, based on the discovered photo forgeries it is also difficult to accept the woman identified by Irene's Son as his childhood Mother..., as his true birth Mother.

These recent-years revelations are something history needs to responsibly catch up to. Otherwise it smites of forgery, fraud, and deceit of the highest order engaged in the past to protect a contrived historical falsehood. In essence, I have no problem accepting or administering said new-found reality, of how it was Amelia's "old pal," the original "Irene O'Crowley Craigmile Heller" who actually ended up missing forever way back when... as opposed to Amelia Earhart. Therefore, pure forensic-logic alone now dictates how Amelia Earhart did somehow survive her 1937 ordeal, and during the WWII era she managed to change her name and slightly alter her appearance, with help from high places no doubt, in order to live further in the United States in anonymity as a new 'Irene Craigmile.'

To myself, about the only tangible reality that appears in the book Amelia Earhart Lives is the photo of 'Irene' Joe Gervais took in 1965 at the Early Birds of Aviation gathering on Long Island. While there Gervais was introduced to Irene by Amelia's old friend, Viola Gentry. Ms. Gentry had invited Joe Gervais to lecture to said club of senior fliers, (many of them well known) on his five years of Amelia Earhart investigations. From the moment he first looked into her eyes he said he "knew," and Gervais lived the rest of his life until he died in 2005 never disavowing his belief. 

So too, I can only believe anymore based on my years of arduous examinations, how such a Gervais photo-document first clearly displayed to the public, the survived body-evidence of the former Amelia Earhart in the context of the book Amelia Earhart Lives when it was published in 1970. This I can profess, in spite of a multitude of what I refer to as 'less informed romantics' and myriad misleading 'self-proclaimed authorities' whom strongly profess not to, and all but demand of the American public to do the same... even though they lack any solid forensic argument to support such a demand. It's a real shame, but recent documentaries such as Orwell Rolls In His Grave and even America: From Freedom to Fascism display how media spin and control can work, and how masses of people can be unjustly brainwashed by such media influences. To quote fictional newspaper mogul Citizen Kane, 'The people will think what I tell them to think.' Or, a more dated newspaperman quote from the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 'When legend becomes fact, print the legend.' The legend became the Earhart story ended as a full-blown mystery. The truth is, some parts of it still are and may always remain a mystery, but the most important parts, the biggest parts were solved long ago. Sure it can be offered how the famous public person known as Amelia Earhart died on July 2, 1937. But her body continued to exist afterward with a new name. It's really that simple. Try not to let bullying nay-sayers complicate it for you." Tod Swindell, 2010.

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"But is this just slight of hand?" 
Narrator, the National Geographic Channel's Earhart Special, 11/06.

Concerning the unfair treatment of the long term investigative research efforts of Joe Gervais, Rollin Reineck, and Tod Swindell by AES President Bill Prymak and the National Geographic Channel in 2006: 

"National Geographic's Director, Noel Dockstater following his 'your science is solid' statement to further lure my involvement, along with his initial agreement to reference and display the 2002 'past shared identity' discovery of Irene Craigmile Bolam in his National Geographic Earhart special, ultimately refused to do such a thing. Instead, after teasing its audience with the Irene-Amelia conveyance by displaying portions of my work, Mr. Dockstater with National Geographic did their best to reduce the decades old and highly backed controversy to a degree of non-significance. On film they interviewed Rollin Reineck and myself for several hours in 2006, then whittled our screen time down to a mere few minutes each. They further downgraded the Irene-Amelia claim by suggesting the seven-year Forensic Analysis to have been nothing more than a 'slight of hand' endeavor, and by engaging a forensic detective to discount the comparison work by describing how 'many people' could have shared the congruence to Amelia Earhart the post-1930s Irene Craigmile Bolam exhibited. Said detective also pointed to minor 'differences' he noticed where non-existing (in the public realm) medical records left his unfairly controlled ignorance to opinion it as 'non-advisable' to pursue the Irene-Amelia claim. National Geographic also avoided addressing the multitude of other key items the long term forensic research yielded (same handwriting & voice, same social backgrounds, and again... not to mention the two other Irenes who used the same identity) over time that so strongly backboned the decades old Joe Gervais 'Irene-Amelia' claim.

Be that as it may, and though they were pre-advised on said matters and had filmed solid evidential offerings of it, National Geographic irresponsibly refused to show on its program the Irene Craigmile identified by her own Son as his childhood Mother. That being so, where face and eye-rim tear duct misalignments display how the Mother he recognized from his childhood was obviously a different human being than the woman Joe Gervais met and photographed in 1965..., and where face and eye-rim, as well as head to toe full body alignments displayed such a haunting overall congruence to Amelia's face and full body when compared to the 1965 Joe Gervais photographed Irene Craigmile Bolam, the question is begged: Who then was the 1965 Joe Gervais photographed person the National Geographic Channel displayed as Irene Craigmile Bolam on its special, if she was not the Mother of her own Son? By now such a query answers itself as 'the former Amelia Earhart' to the most informed, where it concerns the near half-century old, yet still very seriously regarded and increasingly more accepted... Irene-Amelia conveyance." Tod Swindell, 2010

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Medical Realities:

"Did procedures such as dental work, skin tightening, and rhinoplasty exist in the 1940s in the orders suggested by the slight changes observed in Irene-Amelia? It is clearly evident they did. As well, with women in particular a significant weight loss episode combined with a hormonal imbalance (caused by menopause for example) might also cause noticeable physical appearance differences in a woman in later years. All of these notations and many more exist in the realm of medically providable explanations, based on the information educationally conveyed to myself over the years. Still, the explanations for noticeable changes need to be pre-accounted for. If they are not, true human ID experts, especially those medically trained may prefer to shy away from the task of any precise explanations they'd be left to estimate themselves. Especially if one is engaged to provide the final answer to a huge historical question such as the Earhart mystery. It's almost automatic for one to safely resort to a null-hypothesis method, enabling he or she to point out any noticeable differences at all, (which happened in the case of two engaged experts, not to mention the one who appeared on the National Geographic special) while steering away from having to exact the medical reasons or explanations that could have caused such detected differences. But really, any of the noticed differences were ultimately explainable in basic, if not somewhat elementary medical terms. Hence, based on my experience, I can offer how only a mere few would be willing to otherwise stick their necks out. Indeed, all consulted with or engaged experts exhibited common opinions similar to the ones expressed here, as well as a their reluctance to publicly lay their opinions on the line in favor of Amelia's survival as a re-identified person. This, regardless of the solid forensic argument that includes a history of forty-years of  comprehensive forensic research, a haunting overall head to toe congruence that was shown to exist between Irene-Amelia and Amelia Earhart (that again, realized only a mere 'few' medically possible alterations noticed) and ultimately, forensically  demonstrated the past 'plural-Irenes' discovered reality.

If this issue were to be tried in a court of law with honesty and justice allowed to prevail..., based on the overwhelming preponderance of accumulated evidence, many other non-disproved key evidential offerings, and the recent years provided forensic comparison arguments, it is certain it would be proved that Amelia Earhart at some point returned to the United States sporting a new identity, even though she was reported as 'missing over the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island' in 1937, and was legally declared 'dead' two years later." Tod Swindell, 2008

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*Follow Up Note about the 'historical opinion' of AES President Bill Prymak, pertaining to the long recognized Irene Craigmile Bolam controversy:

The Amelia Earhart Society's 1989 founding President Bill Prymak, a very wealthy and influential retired businessman from Denver, Colorado who always displayed a curiously obsessive and dogmatic stance over Amelia Earhart's disappearance case, was also a long time proponent of keeping the Earhart mystery in a status quo category. For years he had been unjustifiably arbitrating against those who supported the Joe Gervais 'Irene-Amelia' claim. Curiously, but perhaps not so ironically Mr. Prymak first met and cajoled Tod Swindell in 1998, after learning of the early forensic comparisons Mr. Swindell had embarked on. He refused to support Swindell's initial findings, and even after the study yielded the controversial positive ID results it did years later, Mr. Prymak refused to publicly share said results contained in the comprehensive forensic study packet he received. He also ceased any further amicable communication with Mr. Swindell, and within a short time after he sent the above complimentary message strongly suggesting Mr. Swindell "not to go public" with his study results, he commenced a personal onslaught deriding Mr. Swindell's, Joe Gervais', and Rollin Reineck's characters and reputations in the eyes of the public, and he began describing them to his Amelia Earhart Society members and to the media as individuals whose off-base Earhart opinions should not be seriously considered.

As well, since 2006 Mr. Prymak and a cohort of his, a European physicist by the name of Dr. Alex Mandel have been offering to those curious about the Irene-Amelia study, how a police forensic detective named Kevin Richlin who appeared on the National Geographic Channel that year had at long-last proven the Gervais Irene-Amelia claim as false, even though such a statement was and still is, simply not true. Again, Kevin Richlin himself never advocated that he forensically proved the Gervais Irene-Amelia claim was a false claim. Yet Dr. Mandel even managed to coerce the on-line public-info provided encyclopedia, 'Wikipedia' into believing he did. Realistically, in the course of the National Geographic Earhart special Kevin Richlin briefly appeared in, he merely referenced the medically explainable post-war augmentations cited and thoroughly accounted for in the forensic analysis and within this website. No surprise either, Bill Prymak was credited as a research consultant on the same 2006 National Geographic special, and no doubt he heavily influenced the slant pre-ordained by National Geographic's constituency all but described by its program director Noel Dockstater, to not draw any controversial conclusions, and to not present anything potentially unexplainable in its 2006 profile of the Earhart mystery. Thus, although National Geographic was aware of and filmed the different Irene Craigmile identified by family as the way she appeared in the early 1940s and on Irene's 1982 Memorial Dinner program cover, it did not show her image in its final edited program at all, nor did it mention the recent shared Irene Craigmile identity discovery it was made fully aware of, and previously referred to as based on 'solid science.'

Mr. Prymak's influential involvement with the National Geographic Channel was not the first time he had diverted attention away from the reality of the Irene-Amelia claim. Indeed, it appeared to be a consistent habit of his. Another 'forensic detective' opinion example he engaged took place back in 1993. That year Bill Prymak organized an Amelia Earhart symposium in Morgan Hill, California where he invited retired New York forensic detective, Jerome Steigmann to lecture to the attending audience. Mr. Steigmann suddenly claimed to know the "truth" about Irene Craigmile Bolam at the event. Yet, Steigmann's was easily the most bizarre explanation to try and explain the enigma of Irene's person up to that point. (Realize, 1993 was over twenty years since the controversy surrounding the enigmatic Irene first made national headlines, yet people were still debating who she really was, or had been.) To the audience of close to a hundred Amelia Earhart Society constituents personally invited to attend the symposium by Prymak, who all but paid for and arranged the event, Mr. Steigman conveyed how the Irene Craigmile Bolam who Joe Gervais met and photographed in 1965 had been "placed on the seen" by the CIA and the FBI and "made up" to make Joe Gervais think she was the former Amelia Earhart. (Gervais and Reineck both attended the symposium and didn't buy this at all.) He offered how Irene was actually working for the government to distract Gervais in 1965, because Gervais was getting 'too close to the truth.' Steigmann even implicated the 'planted' Irene to have been a Russian spy. Amazingly, many of the people left the symposium believing such malarkey. And even into the late 1990s Bill Prymak was still pushing such a crazy idea on those who asked his opinion about Irene Craigmile Bolam. Yet no one considered; neither Bill Prymak nor Jerome Steigmann ever attempted to contact Irene's OR Amelia's family about Irene's life-long history; schools the Irene in question attended, past family and wedding photos... something any true investigator would have done first off. Hence, the subject of Irene's true history and past shared identity was never broached by either of them. And it gets even stranger...

In 2002 before Mr. Steigman died, he mentioned to Beyond 37's Tod Swindell how he had "black bagged" (burgled, really) Irene's home when she was not there in the 1970s, in order to obtain personal items and information to prove her true identity. (Something he had previously conveyed to others.) He claimed he'd been hired by the McGraw-Hill company to do such a thing. But again, it appeared no one considered how McGraw-Hill, one of the largest and most reputable publishing houses in the world back then would consider stooping to such a thing. After all, somehow they published the book Amelia Earhart Lives in 1970 that displayed her (Irene-Amelia's) picture and implicated the then 'alive and well' Irene Craigmile Bolam as the found Amelia Earhart, without ever interfacing with her at all. That in itself appeared strange. And there's more: Mr. Steigmann also referred to former Seton Hall University President, Monsignor James Francis Kelley as a 'drunkard' and a 'senile lunatic,' while claiming the true basis of his relationship with Irene Craigmile Bolam was that they were "secret lovers." As well, Mr. Steigmann claimed in order to keep him from publishing a book about the truth he had learned, the government paid him "hush money" years before.

The very idea that such a person was even invited to speak to a group of Earhart enthusiasts and was at all taken seriously is hard to fathom. But he was. Later, it seemed for lack of supplying a better explanation in an effort to decry Irene as the former Amelia Earhart, which he always appeared to be on his own personal mission to do, Bill Prymak, who all but self funded and ran the Amelia Earhart Society after founding it in 1989... and injecting himself as the only president it ever had, personally solicited such a tale to be told to his all but captive audience, and he never hesitated to describe former detective Steigmann as a 'good friend' of his ever after.