What Happened to Amy Bradley: Unpacking the Disturbing Theories About Her Disappearance
Did Amy Bradley fall? Did she jump? Was she pushed? Or could she be alive somewhere?
These are among the questions her family still has, 27 years after Amy disappeared in the middle of a Royal Caribbean cruise.
The 23-year-old from Chesterfield, Va., was vacationing with her mother Iva Bradley, father Ron Bradley and brother Brad Bradley, then 21, aboard the Rhapsody of the Seas when she went missing on day four of their seven-night excursion.
Ron recalled waking up early on the morning of March 24, 1998, and going to look for his daughter.
“I thought I’d find Amy in just a few minutes,” he said in the new Netflix docuseries Amy Bradley Is Missing, “and everything would be good.”
But he never saw her again.
By the next day, the gripping mystery was international news.
FBI agents flew in to investigate, while the Marines, Navy and multiple branches of Coast Guard joined in what was ultimately a baffling search.
“If she came off the ship or fell off, we would get a body,” Curaçao Harbor Police Chief Adtzere “John” Mentar, who was Chief of Island Police when Amy vanished, said in the Netflix series. “I know these waters. We have sharks, but she wouldn’t have been eaten completely.”
Courtesy of Netflix
The question of what exactly happened to Amy remains unanswered. Amy Bradley Is Missing dives into the heartbreaking aftermath of her disappearance and the suspicious theories about her fate that have kept people engrossed for three decades.
Iva replays the trip in her mind “every day,” she said in the doc. “Not occasionally, not every other day, not once a month.” Added Ron, “You wake up thinking about it, go to bed thinking about it. Just everything around you reminds you of her.”
Here is what to know about the case:
Courtesy of Netflix
When did Amy Bradley’s family last see her before she disappeared?
On the night of March 23, 1998, 23-year-old Amy Bradley and her family had dinner aboard the Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas, then went to a pool party, according to details shared by mom Iva Bradley, dad Ron Bradley and brother Brad Bradley in Netflix’s Amy Bradley Is Missing.
Amy’s parents went back to their cabin, while she and Brad went to the ship disco at around 1 a.m. Brad left first, he recalled in the series, and eventually got back to the family’s cabin at 3:35 a.m. Five minutes later, he said, Amy returned to the room as well.
Brad said they talked for 30 minutes outside on the balcony before he went to bed.
Ron said that he woke up at 5:30 a.m. and he could see Amy’s legs on a lounge chair outside. He recalled thinking at the time, “Well, she’s safe.”
Less than 30 minutes later, “Something woke me up again,” Ron continued, and “she wasn’t there.”
Courtesy of Netflix
What happened after Amy Bradley was reported missing?
Ron assumed Amy was having coffee or taking pictures—the Longwood University grad was planning to enter a photography contest after the trip and had just moved into her own apartment—and he went to look for her.
Guest relations manager Brent Hunter said in the Netflix series that 7 a.m. was too early to do a ship-wide voice page, as that might be “intrusive” to other passengers, but recalled telling the family he’d connect them with a security officer.
And much to the Bradleys’ dismay, the day’s excursion into Curaçao was moving along as scheduled.
“I was begging them,” Iva recalled in the series, “can you back the ship off the dock, don’t put the gangways down, stop everything.”
But they had an itinerary to keep, as remembered by ship cruise director Kirk Detweiler.
“That’s one family’s unfortunate incident,” he said in the series, “but we still had 2,400 people who paid a lot of money. And as cold as that sounds, that’s the reality.”
Courtesy of Netflix
What happened during the initial search for Amy Bradley?
The crew conducted a “Charlie drill” at 9 a.m., Detweiler said in the series, the intent being to search every inch of the 10-deck, 1,000-foot-long ship.
Ron said that, after about an hour, the captain told them that Amy was definitely not on the ship.
Curaçao officials said in the series that they expected Amy’s body to turn up due to the positioning of the boat, wind force, sea current and wave height.
“It was the biggest search that we ever had,” Curaçao Coast Guard’s Henry Vrutaal said in the series, noting the area between the ship’s previous stop in Aruba and Curaçao. “But she was nowhere to be found. Not even a piece of clothing, nothing.”
Added Curaçao Harbor Police Chief Adtzere “John” Mentar, “If she came off the ship or fell off the ship, we would get the body.”
Courtesy of Netflix
What evidence is there in the Amy Bradley case?
FBI agents boarded the Rhapsody of the Seas on March 26, two days after Amy disappeared. They noted in Amy Bradley Is Missing that there were no signs of a struggle in the family’s cabin or on the balcony.
Amy’s sandals were “neatly placed together” by a little table outside, recalled FBI Special Agent Victor McCollum, and the table was pushed up against the balcony glass. “You could speculate, ‘Did she jump?’” he said, “but there’s no direct evidence of that.”
The cabin had been cleaned already, according to FBI Special Agent Erin Sheridan, so if there had been any evidence, “there was no preservation.” Trying to collect fingerprints and fibers from the sheets was futile. And, she added, maybe the cleaning crew had moved the table outside.
The only “concrete point of fact,” Sheridan said, was the electronic record from the key cards logging when each family member entered cabin No. 8564 that night, including Amy at 3:40 a.m.
The agents interviewed Ron, Iva and Brad—together and separately—but, Victor said, “We found no evidence that led us to consider a family member as a possible culprit.”
Courtesy of Netflix
What was Amy Bradley doing before she went missing?
When Amy got back to the cabin, Brad said in the series, she told him that she was drinking and talking with bass player Alister Douglas from the ship’s band, and “he made some sort of physical pass at her.”
But Amy, Brad continued, “didn’t make a big deal of it, just kind of mentioned it in passing.”
He characterized his and Amy’s state that night as “tipsy,” but “not crazy” drunk.
Courtesy of Netflix
Were there any suspects in the disappearance of Amy Bradley?
Douglas admitted to investigators that he had flirted with Amy, McCollum said in the series, but that was as far as it went.
Results from a voluntary polygraph test were “not conclusive,” the FBI agent said, but Douglas “vehemently denied” having anything to do with her disappearance.
Sheridan said in the series they couldn’t confirm the time of a fellow passenger’s alleged sighting of Amy and Douglas before 6 a.m. the morning she disappeared. “If we had concrete evidence, were working with the local police department,” the agent said, “[Douglas] would’ve been arrested, but we didn’t have that.”
Courtesy of Netflix
What has Alister Douglas said about Amy Bradley?
Alister was never arrested or charged in connection with Amy’s disappearance.
His daughter Amica Douglas said in Amy Bradley Is Missing that her father’s reaction was “just weird” whenever she brought it up.
In a phone call to him made on camera in the Netflix series, Amica pressed him to talk about what happened.
“I don’t want to go through this again,” Douglas told her. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Everybody that had anything to do with cleaning her room, serving her drinks, we were grounded,” he said on the call. “When they realized nothing was involved, we continued to work.”
Courtesy of Netflix
Why does Amy Bradley’s family hold out hope she’s still alive?
Alleged sightings of Amy have been reported over the years and the FBI’s investigation remains open.
David Carmichael saw the case on America’s Most Wanted and was “100 percent” sure he saw Amy on the beach in Curacao in August 1998, he said in the doc. She approached him, Carmichael said, but then a man came up, stared at Carmichael and motioned her away.
“I think about this every day,” Carmichael said. “If I had 10 seconds more, what would I have done?”
Navy veteran Bill Hefner was in a Curaçao bar in 1999 when, he said in the series, a young woman told him her name was Amy Bradley and she was “being held against her will.”
He admittedly didn’t say anything at the time, but when he saw her on a magazine cover several years later, Hefner said, he contacted the FBI.
In 2005, someone emailed Amy’s parents a photo of a woman who resembled their daughter that, according to the FBI, was found on a website advertising sex workers in Venezuela and the Caribbean. A forensic analyst examined the photo, Special Agent Sheridan said in the series, “and believed it was Amy Bradley.”
Judy Maurer saw the case on Dr. Phil and told the FBI that she saw Amy in Barbados in March 2005. She was using a souvenir shop bathroom, she recalled in the series, and there was a distraught woman at the sinks who said her name was Amy. There was also a man by the door, Maurer said, and she recalled telling her husband, “That girl is being forced to do something.”
Courtesy of Netflix
Where is Amy Bradley’s family now?
While Amy’s mom called the FBI’s photo analysis a “stab in the heart,” she also took it as a potential sign of life.
“I never thought that she wasn’t out there and neither has her dad,” Iva, 71, said in the series. “Neither has her brother. We’ve got to get to her.”
Brad, now 47, said they all had a “gut feeling” Amy was alive. Moreover, he added, “The lack of closure, or the not knowing, allows us to continue to hope, so I actually prefer it that way.”
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