How to Talk About Amy Bradley
Hi, everybody. I'm your host Chloe, and today it's just me. Em and I are still on summer vacation for about another month, but when we come back, we are gonna have one of our biggest episodes yet covering one of the biggest cases that's been happening recently. For now, stick with me as I tell you about something that's become a little too common recently, cruise ship disappearances. This is the case of Amy Lynn Bradley.
Chloe Smith:So, I've been on three or four cruises in my lifetime, and I've always thought the worst thing that could happen on a cruise ship is either getting thrown overboard or getting knocked off overboard. Somehow, just in general going overboard. That is until I've heard about some of the alternatives. Let's start here. Our story begins in 1998 with Amy Bradley, just 23 years old, freshly graduated from college.
Chloe Smith:She had just secured a full time job, got a new apartment, and was about to begin the rest of her life. Her family decided they should go on one more family vacations. So Amy, her mom and dad, Ivan Ron, and her 21 year old brother Brad decided to go on a cruise. This was going to be their last family trip before everyone started to really go on with their adult lives and have kids of their own to vacation with, they decide to take a cruise and head to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where they board their Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Rhapsody of the Sea, on March 21 along with 2,000 passengers. Amy was a little hesitant at the idea even though she was a strong swimmer, having been on her high school swim team along with her brother.
Chloe Smith:She was apprehensive towards the idea of being on a giant boat in the middle of the water. Something felt a little off about that with her, which I think a lot of people do. But her family reassured her everything would be fine. Millions of people go on cruises. Everyone's fine.
Chloe Smith:And her brother wanted her to go, so she did. And when she got on, she saw what all the fuss was about. The ship was beautiful. They had a gorgeous room with a balcony that overlooked the water. Amy was starting to like it.
Chloe Smith:The second night on the ship, the Bradleys got all dressed up to attend their dinner. And for those who have never been on a cruise, they have designated dining areas times in these gorgeous ballroom esque dining halls. And sometimes cruises will have a formal night where the rule is to dress up and have, like, a nice fancy dinner in your fancy outfits, and so that's what the Bradley's did. Amy and Brad got their family photos on the way into the dinner and had their dinner and headed back into their rooms to change out of their dress clothes and head to the upper deck for a party. After a few hours of partying and drinking and dancing, Iva and Ron decide around 1AM that it's probably time to throw in the towel, and they're gonna head back to their rooms for bed.
Chloe Smith:They say goodnight to the kids, tell them they love them, and head back to their rooms. After their parents leave, Brad and Amy decide to head off to the nightclub where more people their own age were, and they sort of split off. Brad had met some girls and wanted to hang out with them, and Amy went and did her own She mingled with some of the other passengers and crew members, but specifically, one of the crew members of the ship's band, Blue Orchid. Amy was seen hanging out with the bass player, Alistair Douglas, who went by Yellow, around 03:30 in the morning. Around the same time, Brad decides he's gonna head back to the room and leaves Amy dancing at the nightclub.
Chloe Smith:Once back in the room, Brad decides to sit out on the balcony for a while, and before long, he hears the door open. And, I just wanna throw this in there right now, because, like, I kind of started to notice it right here and, like, didn't before, but yes, this guy's name is really Brad Bradley. I'm, like, I'm yeah. I'm I'm just gonna pass over that one. Brad decides to sit on on the balcony for a while, and before long, he hears the door open.
Chloe Smith:He knows it's Amy, and she joins him on the balcony for a quick chat about what they were going to do later in the day as the ship was going be docking in Curacao, and what they'd already done. And Amy briefly mentions the guy she'd been dancing with all night, yellow, and how he made a physical pass at her. She just kind of mentions it in passing, and after their short chat and smoke, Brad heads in for bed. Amy stays out on the balcony saying that she wants some fresh air, and unfortunately, this is the last exact whereabouts of Amy that we have. The next part has been very misreported.
Chloe Smith:So, I've seen at least four different timelines of what supposedly happens, and I've watched the documentary, I've listened to a couple different podcasts. So, with all of that, let me give you my version of what I think I've pieced together. Around 05:30, Ron wakes up in his room and sees Amy still out on the balcony. Knowing his kids are safely in the room, he closes his eyes and falls back asleep. Not long after, around 6AM, Ron is startled awake.
Chloe Smith:He doesn't know by what, but he knows something woke him up. He looks at the clock, sees at 6AM, and looks out onto the balcony where Amy is no longer sitting. He gets up and goes to check the kids' beds, where he sees Brad, but no Amy. Her only things missing are her cigarettes and her lighter. Even her shoes are still outside on the balcony, along with the yellow polo shirt she had been wearing the night before, and the balcony door was left slightly open.
Chloe Smith:Here's where some of the misreporting comes in. A lot of people and sources out there say that Amy left early morning with her lighter, her cigarettes, and no shoes, but we don't actually know that. All we know is that her shoes were left behind, whether it be on purpose or not, and the only things of hers that were missing were her cigarettes and her lighter. Even though Ron said he wasn't super worried at the time, he decides to get up and go start looking for Amy, thinking maybe she'd gone out to one of the upper decks for a smoke or some pictures, and he could find her pretty easily. Now, I know what some of you might be thinking.
Chloe Smith:That's kind of a suspicious act of the dad, since he didn't know his daughter is missing, why is he immediately going to look for her? But, I think what we can kind of do to rule out the family is realize that Ron was probably a lot more worried than he let on, and it was just that parental instinct, that intuition that parents get that they know something is wrong. As Ron's looking, he's starting to realize, as some of you might be, that looking for one person around a giant cruise ship with no cell phone and no way of reaching that person is a lot harder than he may have thought. You could be looking for someone as they're looking for you and just be walking around in giant circles and miss each other every single time. So, as he's checking, no Amy on the deck, no Amy in the halls, he's getting more panicked and decides to go back to the room to tell Iva and see if maybe Amy had come back.
Chloe Smith:Ron gets back to the room, sees Amy still isn't there, and wakes up Iva. Iva said that when Ron woke her up, she could barely recognize him. He looked so frazzled and panicked. 7AM. Iva immediately sprung into action and starts to help Ron look for Amy.
Chloe Smith:But as they're looking, Iva also realizes the ship is too huge, and it's gonna be a lot harder to do just the two of them. So she decides that maybe they should ask for some help, and they go to guest relations and ask them to make a statement or a mass alert or something on the overhead speakers to tell people that their daughter is missing. However, this wasn't a little kid who couldn't find their way back to their room. This was a 23 year old woman, and so the ship officials refused. They didn't want to instill widespread panic, They didn't want to scare their passengers, and they didn't want to make a broadcast at 7AM.
Chloe Smith:So, they make one small announcement to say, would Amy Bradley please contact the purser desk? And that's it. They won't even tell their crew members yet. At the height of the parents' panic, as the ship won't help them look, things are about to get much worse. The ship was docking, and all 2,000 plus passengers that could have valuable information were about to get off the ship.
Chloe Smith:If something had happened to Amy on the ship, they needed to keep all the people on the ship to control the situation and potentially find their daughter or at least find information about what had happened to her. But with everyone getting off the ship, they were now losing valuable time, information, and potentially people that could find and help their daughter. They beg officials, please, please don't let anyone off the ship. But at the end of the day, these people have a business to run, and they weren't police officials. They didn't have to listen to US policies and customs.
Chloe Smith:And the jurisdiction gets really fuzzy on cruise ships, and they let everyone off the ship. While passengers are off, they do conduct an official search of the ship, but they don't find Amy. The parents' next step is to find local American embassy to ask for some help. They decide maybe they should start by looking in the ocean because, of course, that is a very big possibility. Maybe Amy fell overboard even though she was a strong swimmer.
Chloe Smith:That's always a potential possibility on cruise ships. She was last seen on the balcony. Maybe she accidentally fell over. We know she was seen around early morning dawn hours, but wasn't in the room by six. But maybe she went somewhere else with the balcony.
Chloe Smith:However, the Harbor chief of police says if she fell off or jumped off or somehow went overboard, the body or at least some of her clothes would have washed ashore. And these people know the water, and they know what they're talking about. These people do this for a living. But they send coast guard officials out to search the path of the boat anyway and wind up empty. During the search, the FBI gets involved to investigate foul play, thinking maybe someone had done something to Amy on the ship and or managed to smuggle her off.
Chloe Smith:FBI make it onto the ship to do their own investigation and search, but find that Bradley's room had already been cleaned before they'd even boarded, making it now impossible to search for physical evidence such as fingerprints or fibers. But they managed to create a very fuzzy outline of Amy's last steps. A videographer filming a promotional video for the cruise line was at the nightclub and had what we now know to be the last ever footage of Amy on the cruise ship and in general, and she isn't alone. He gives the footage to security officers of the ship, and what we see is Amy dancing in the club, pretty near to that bass player yellow. The video confirms that Amy was seen with him over and over throughout the night.
Chloe Smith:Now, there are a few little chips in this video China bowl. Like I said, the videographer gave the clip to ship officials, and he gets this call from security saying they want the master version of this video, to which videographer says he doesn't give out to anyone, and security says, well, you have to give it to us because the FBI wants it. The videographer says, that's fine, but if that's the case, then they need to have the FBI contact him for it. Fast forwarding a little bit, the videographer says, when this became a big case a few years later, the clip he took is never actually shown or even mentioned, and so he finally makes contact with the family, and the family had never even heard of it, let alone knowing anything about the FBI wanting it, which makes the cruise ship look pretty suspicious, like they were trying to bury this video because it had one of their crew members in it with Amy. While nothing sinister happens on the tape, the crew member Yellow becomes pretty spotlighted to the FBI because they're seen dancing closer and closer together throughout the night, even holding hands at one point.
Chloe Smith:Amy is seen with and without yellow throughout the night until around 03:30 in the morning, and this is the last time she is seen on footage, around 03:35, and it's her waiting by the elevator. 03:40AM, Amy's key card swipes into her room where she meets Brad on the balcony. FBI brings yellow for a polygraph, and his answers aren't lining up. He tells FBI he last saw Amy around 1AM, they had a drink at the nightclub, and he took staff elevators down to his room and went to bed. However, we know from the video that this is a lie because he was with her until at least 03:30.
Chloe Smith:When Brad gets wind that the FBI is investigating Yellow, he gets a chill remembering something that happened the morning Amy went missing. Something that didn't stand out at the time, but now, looking back is kind of concerning. The very morning Amy went missing, Brad was sitting by the pool when Yellow came up to him and said he was sorry to hear about what had happened to his sister. Now, Yellow later says he said this because a staff member woke him up early in the morning around 6AM to ask him if he'd seen her since he was with her the night before. But, if you remember, I told you guys that when Iva and Ron went to ask officials to make a statement, they wouldn't, and they said they wouldn't even tell their crew members.
Chloe Smith:So, how, at this point, did Yellow know his sister was missing? The only person who knew about Amy at that point was wrong. So, again, we know this is a lie. This, along with remembering how his sister told him Yellow had made a physical pass at her, really starts to make Brad concerned. To further this suspicion, two girls found the Bradley family to let them know that they saw Amy and Yellow together around what they think was 05:45 in the morning after she and Yellow passed the two girls, going in an elevator back up to the nightclub, even though it was closed by this point.
Chloe Smith:Then fifteen minutes later, Yellow walks right past the girls again, but now he's alone and won't even make eye contact with the girls. The family also remembers something that happened at their formal night dinner, which again, at the time didn't seem like too much, but looking back is more cause for suspicion. Remember how I said the family had their photo taken, specifically Brad and Amy, before going into their dinner? Well, this is common on a cruise ship. Again, for anyone unfamiliar, before before you go into dinner, and just a lot of the time, there will be a cruise ship photographer that will take your picture and put them up on a wall so that when you're done eating or doing an activity or whatever, you can see them and potentially purchase them.
Chloe Smith:Well, guess whose photos on the wall are missing? Missing? Every single photo with Amy in it is gone from the photo wall. The Bradleys go and ask the photographer where they are, and he says he distinctly remembers printing them out and placing them right there on the wall, and asks if maybe someone from their party came and got them. When the Bradleys say, Nope, none of us picked them up, they ask if we can get the photos retaken, to which the photographer says, Sure.
Chloe Smith:And those are the last known photos of Amy Bradley. The FBI interview multiple people on the ship and do multiple searches, including an intensive interrogation with Yellow, but the results of his polygraph are inconclusive, and eventually, the cruise is over, the ship docks, people go on with their lives, and the FBI was unable to find anyone or anything worthy of an arrest. The Bradleys go back home to Virginia and make a website for Amy, trying to get any national news for her, but nothing helps. Brad and make trips back to Curacao to search, hoping maybe that's a good place to start. And once they get there, they think maybe they're right.
Chloe Smith:Once Ron and Brad get to Curacao, a taxi driver approaches them with one of the the many Amy Bradley missing posters. He asks Ron if he's her dad and says, your daughter didn't fall off the ship. Your daughter wasn't thrown off the ship. Your daughter is here on the island, and I hope you can find her. He tells them that she'd approached his taxi a few months ago and asked to use a phone.
Chloe Smith:The taxi driver pointed to the payphone across the way, and she walked away in the opposite direction. The taxi driver tells them there are a couple places they should probably look, but warn them that it's dangerous, so Brad and Ron go to the Harbor Police Chief who escorts them to these places. While they're out looking in the middle of the night with the chief, Brad is convinced he hears Amy shout his name in a passing car. Brad whips around and asks everyone else in the car if they heard it, which they respond they did, so they spin around to follow the car. They follow the car through a neighborhood, up along a bunch of hills, and eventually the car pulls over.
Chloe Smith:An old man gets out, and they walk up to see the rest of the car, but no Amy. In fact, there's no one else in the car. Ron and Brad were heartbroken, and they wouldn't know if they'd made any progress or were searching in the right place until May 1999 when a new lead comes in. America's Most Wanted featured Amy's story, and a hot tip comes in. A Canadian scuba diver named David calls in with a tip to say that he saw Amy.
Chloe Smith:He says in August 1998, just five months after her disappearance, he saw this girl being walked alongside the beach by two big, tough looking men, is how he put it. He says there was this weird interaction where he felt like she wanted to tell him something, but the men intervened and said she looked just like the girl on America's Most Wanted. But David didn't just see Amy. He also tells FBI that one of the two men he saw her with was the same man whose face is all over America's Most Wanted, Alistair Douglas, aka yellow. At first, the people taking this tip are a little skeptical, but then their skepticism is revoked when he begins to describe Amy in yellow.
Chloe Smith:He says she has these prominent tattoos, like a Tasmanian devil on her shoulder blade that she designed on her own, a gecko on her stomach, and a couple on her ankle, and the FBI said this was the most credible lead they'd gotten, and sent their people out to investigate. But, this is eight months after David had seen her, and the FBI weren't able to find this woman or determine if she was Amy, and therefore, yet again, didn't have enough to arrest Yellow. When August 1999 rolls around, they decide to take a more proactive approach and find a PI. They find Frank Jones, who says he's ex Special Forces with a team of men who specialize in these recovery types of missions where people have been taken, kidnapped and are brought home safely. But, he says, let me poke around first and see if I can find out if she's even on the island.
Chloe Smith:After a few weeks, Frank comes back to them with amazing news. She's been seen on the island with a couple of scary dudes, which fits with the description that the scuba diver gave. Frank says he can hire a team to get her out, but he's going to need $20,000 to complete it. The family sell their car and raise money however they can, and they give it to Frank. Again, after a few weeks, they hear back from Frank with more good news.
Chloe Smith:He's made contact with the men. They do have Amy, but now they're demanding a ransom. He says, don't worry. We're not going to play their ransom game. I think I can get in with my team and rescue her, but it's gonna be pricey.
Chloe Smith:It's gonna be pretty expensive. I'm gonna need about a $100,000. Of course, the Bradleys will pay anything to get her back, but they're not stupid. They say we want something, anything, to prove that she's alive and that we know you have eyes on her. Frank says, okay, and gives them a couple of pictures.
Chloe Smith:Here's what we see. A woman walking the beach. We can't see her face. She's wearing a hat, but she has the same tattoos as Amy. And, this is enough for the Bradleys, and they send Frank the money.
Chloe Smith:Frank lays out this plan and tells them that what they're doing is dangerous, and they're gonna need to be ready to get Amy as soon as they can get her out, and so they need to fly to Miami. He says to stay in Miami and wait for his call, and when he calls, they need to have a jet ready to get Amy. They won't have a lot of time to waste. The Bradleys do everything. They get bags ready for Amy.
Chloe Smith:Iva even prepares doctor's appointments for when she gets back, and they head to Miami and wait for Frank's call. And they wait. And they wait. And after a week, they finally get a call from Frank, and it's terrible news. Frank says they had to abort the mission because when they went in to get her, a gunfight broke out and some of his men were injured.
Chloe Smith:The Bradleys are absolutely devastated. They don't know what to do or where to turn or if they'll ever get to see their daughter again or if she's even alive at this point. And as they're packing up their bags to head back to Virginia, they get a call that leaves them dead in their tracks. A man the Bradleys had never met calls their hotel to say, listen, I work with Frank Jones, and I think he's scamming you. I over heard the conversation he had with you about what we're doing and what we're observing with these men, but we haven't been doing any of that.
Chloe Smith:I think he's using your money to live a lavish lifestyle on the island. Now luckily, Frank was prosecuted and sent to jail, ordered to pay the money back to the family. But at this point, the family was so distraught and disappointed because at least before with Frank, they had hoped she was alive and could see her again. So, the money didn't mean anything after what hope Frank brought and destroyed. The family wouldn't get another lead until May 2002.
Chloe Smith:In May 2002, a young American comes forward and says that he was in the military and was in Curacao January 1999 at a brothel. He's walking into the brothel when the door guy stops him and says, Where are you going? He responds that he's going to the bar, and the guard says, Oh, okay, you can go ahead. But, he noticed he was armed. He shrugs it off, and he walks in, starts to head up the stairs, but when he does, he noticed there's four people walking down.
Chloe Smith:Two guys, two girls, and both of the guys have guns. And he spots the two girls sitting alone and goes down to sit with them. One girl walks away and the other turns to him as he says, please help me. They're holding me against my will. I owe them 200.
Chloe Smith:He thinks it's a popular ruse from working girls to get money because he'd seen so many of these working in the military. But then she said, My name is Amy Bradley, with a subtle southern accent. She said she got off the ship voluntarily to score drugs for her and her brother since they were partying, but now she's stuck with these two guys. He noticed she was talking very quiet so no one else could hear. He's super confused.
Chloe Smith:He doesn't know what's going on, and he says, you know, if you need help, there's a navy ship just down the way, and they can help you, not understanding the severity of the situation. She tries to explain, you don't understand, I can't leave, but gets quiet as the other girl comes back, and then is pulled away by the guys and vanishes. Now, the man had said he didn't know Amy Bradley's case, because, yes, again, he was in the military, and he wasn't allowed to be at a brothel, and thought that if he tried to help the girl, he could get in a lot of trouble. And, guys, this just goes to show the average bystander mindset of it's everyone else's problem. He didn't wanna help her because he didn't wanna get in trouble, and he assumed someone else would.
Chloe Smith:Guys, if someone is coming up to you saying they need help, just go ahead and help them. That's I I feel like that's an unspoken rule. Anyway, the guy didn't understand the severity of what happened until he got back to The States and saw a People's article about Amy Bradley in 2002 and remembered her name because of the interaction, but this was years after he saw her. By the time officials could investigate this brothel, it had burnt down to the ground, and they were no closer to any new information. Years slowly passed by until a new lead comes out of The Caribbean in 02/2005, when an online advertisement with a woman named Jazz or Jazzy looks so much like Amy.
Chloe Smith:Both women have high defined cheekbones, square chins, long thin noses, similarly shaped eyebrows and spacing from the eyes, similar widow's peaks, similar lip shapes, etc. Granted, the woman from the website looks older and like she'd been through a lot of stuff, but if Amy had been sold into sex trafficking, she would look a lot older and rougher like the woman in the ad. The family had this photo sent to a specialist who works for the FBI, and he said he would almost bet his career on the fact that this is Amy. But, even if it was, they weren't able to track it back to any specific person or location. Years pass, and in 2014, a guy from Australia named Anthony stumbled across the Amy Bradley case on a true crime discussion board, and became pretty entranced with it.
Chloe Smith:He said her story moved him in a lot of different ways, and he felt like all of her information in the case should be put in one place so that people can access it, and created the website amybradleyismissing.com. Anthony and David, the Canadian scuba diver, worked together and used the site to track the IP addresses of everyone who visits the site and find a particular pattern of use from Bridgetown, Barbados. They're seeing that someone routinely checks the site from thirty to forty five minutes at a time on milestone events like birthdays, holidays, or anniversaries. Now, David thinks that one of two things about this pattern could be going on. One, he thinks that it's people being curious about the case and want to see how close they are to catching someone.
Chloe Smith:Or two, it's Amy. He thinks she could be checking the sights on these monumental dates to see how her family is doing and make sure everyone's still alive and safe, especially if she's being threatened or told she can't leave or her family will get hurt, which is a very common threat in trafficking cases. Our last lead was in 2017 when the Bradleys received a voicemail from someone very close to the investigation, claiming she may have information. This person was Yellow's daughter, Amica Douglas. Amica said that her mom had told her that before she was ever born, her dad had come home from a cruise one day and was simply different.
Chloe Smith:He came home and said a lot of hurtful things to his wife, even though she was pregnant and he had always been kind before, and this time he had brought home a new bag. The wife was so shocked by Yellow's sudden switch up in behavior and confused that she decided to look and see what was inside the bag. Inside the bag, she found hundreds of pictures of white women. Amika confronted her dad about this when she was older and when her mom told her, and said his reaction was, quote, weird. And whenever anyone tries to bring up Amy around Yellow, he immediately shuts it down and doesn't like talking about it.
Chloe Smith:For those who may be wondering why Amy hasn't called or emailed home if she is alive with all these spottings, her dad says that maybe it's Stock home syndrome, or maybe she's had children and they're threatened, or they're threatening them, or maybe she's just trying to play it safe. Here are the few reoccurring theories of what might have happened to Amy. Number one is she fell into the ocean, but with them being so close to Curacao, and with the harbor chief thinking that that's just impossible because they would have had some trace of her, the family and most of her friends believe she very well could held on until the search party came or have swam back to shore and waited for her family, not including the fact that the cruise railings are almost four feet high and it would be really hard for her to just fall over, even if she was intoxicated, which is doubtful because Ron checked her tab and Amy only had seven light beers from 6PM to 03:40AM, and her friends say that she could handle her alcohol very well. Therefore, the most common and widely accepted theory is that she was sold into sex trafficking on the island.
Chloe Smith:Maybe Yellow drugged her with that dark drink he gave her and smuggled her off the ship through staff elevators. And her family even thinks the reason her photos were missing is because somehow, someway, she was targeted, and they just don't know why. And remember how I said earlier in the episode that Amy was apprehensive about even going on the trip? While a lot of people have speculated whether that was just general anxiety or fear about being on the cruise ship like her family had originally thought, or maybe she knew something might happen to her or just had a gut feeling. Unfortunately, this is all we know about Amy's case, and she is still missing and has not yet been found or recovered.
Chloe Smith:So if you were on that Royal Caribbean cruise ship leaving from Saint Thomas in March 1998 and may have any helpful information, please call the FBI or a tip line of any sort and come forward because this is still a family that is grieving, and they are still looking for that one missing piece to help them find their Amy. And similarly, if you are ever on a cruise ship and see someone go overboard, stand still. Don't move. Keep your eye on that person in the water and your finger pointed towards them at all times, and scream as loud as you can for someone to come help. But do not take your eyes and your finger off the person in the water.
Chloe Smith:You could be the one that saves them. Thank you so much for listening to me today and today's episode, and I hope you will join Emerson and I next month to hear our version of the Karen Reed case on how to talk about murder.