A newly unearthed photo shows Amelia Earhart survived her final flight, investigators say

Related Link Daily Beast thinks it has evidence debunking theory

What happened to Amelia Earhart?

That question has captivated the public ever since her plane vanished over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 as she attempted to become the first female pilot to fly around the world.

Now, investigators believe they have discovered the “smoking gun” that would support a decades-old theory that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were captured by the Japanese: a newly unearthed photograph from the National Archives that purportedly shows Earhart and Noonan — and their plane — on an atoll in the Marshall Islands.

“I was originally skeptical until we could get the photograph authenticated,” Shawn Henry, a former FBI assistant executive director who is now helping privately investigate the Earhart disappearance, told The Washington Post. “The fact that it came out of the National Archives as opposed to somebody’s basement or garage somewhere — that to me gave it a lot more credibility.”