Mystery of Amelia Earhart is solved!

I can report with near certainty, I know what happened to Amelia Earhart. 

She died.

She is with Lucca Brazzi.

Maybe she crashed at sea. Maybe she and Fred Noonan putzed along for years like Gilligan and Mary Anne on some desert isle.  She might have drowned fishing for snapper. It could be she was swept away in a typhoon. She could have met her end via snakebite or a peck from a rabid seagull. As the Munchkins might say "And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead."

In the end, she met the fate of many intrepid explorers and seekers of adventure.  She failed.

The millions of dollars spent at the time of her disappearance and since will not change that unalterable fact.

Like Robert Scott, Earhart remains a historical figure only because her failure resulted in tragedy and death.

But my wife did live in a residence hall at Purdue University named after her, so there is that.