Amy Bradley is Missing /// Part 1 /// 862 | Forensic Files

Welcome to Off the Record. I'm your host Nick Crime. >> It's good to be seen and it's good to
see you. Off the record. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling a friend. >> True Crime podcast.
>> Be good. Be kind. And don't live. >> Gather around. Grab a chair. Grab a beer. Let's talk some True Crime.
>> Welcome to True Crime Garage or Off the Record. You heard that fantastic guitar
riff there, the intro put together by the captain for Off the Record. We're going off the record this week and
bringing in a good longtime friend of the garage to join us here today to talk about a story that everyone seems to be
talking about. Amy Bradley has been missing for over 27 years. Her family and many others suspect foul play.
During the early morning hours of Tuesday, March 24th, 1998, Amy went missing from a Royal Caribbean
cruise ship. She was only 23 years old at the time. Her family has never stopped looking for Amy. They have
spared no expense trying to find their daughter and sister, and they will never give up until she is located. This
missing person case has recently found renewed interest, I would say, worldwide because of the recently released Netflix
three-part documentary series titled Amy Bradley is Missing. Longtime friend of the garage, we go back before The Garage
even existed. We have true crime author and podcaster. He's been on TV. He's done it all in the world of true crime
and even has some really good fiction books out there as well. His name is James Rener. He's joining us here in the
garage. James, how are you doing today? >> I'm great. I'm great. I'm happy to be
back in the uh the true crime garage. Thanks for uh thanks for having me. I I'll shut the door behind me.
>> And of course, we got the captain sitting here. He's going to hold down the fort and keep me in line. I want to
go into the timeline for this. As said, this is a podcast that you can listen to
whether you've seen the documentary or not. We're going to set the table for you here so you can understand this
mystery and the three of us are going to try to dissect it along the way and add
some thoughts here at the end. Amy Lynn Bradley was born on May 12th, 1974. The Bradley family is a family of four.
Amy is the oldest of two kids. She has a younger brother. His name is Brad. He's
about two years younger than Amy. Brad and Amy's parents are Ron and Iva. They are growing up in a nice house in a nice
community in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This is Chesterfield County. Amy graduated from Elsie Bird High
School. Amy was one hell of an athlete. She competed and excelled in volleyball,
soccer, softball, swimming, and baseball. She went to Longwood University on a full basketball
scholarship, graduating in 1996. During college, Amy came out to her family. Amy was working as a waitress
just before this cruise excursion and she got a new job with a computer company. So, it sounds to me, guys, like
she was transitioning from this waitress job into working for this computer firm
right around the time that this cruise takes place. Now, why are they on this cruise? That's because Amy's father,
Ron, well, he's good at his job. He wins an alexpense paid trip on the wraps of the sea of the seas. This is a seven-
night voyage on Royal Caribbean International Cruise Line. Brad comes home from college because of this trip
because Ron is taking his wife and the kids on this awesome vacation. The kids are all grown up, but they are close.
They are very close family of four, and they are going on this trip together. The only part about this right out the
gate from the kids standpoint is sharing a room with mom and dad. You know, you're an adult. Even when you're a kid,
you don't want to share a room with mom and dad, but anybody that's been on a cruise ship, I've been lucky enough to
go on two. The captain's been on a bunch and captained a few of those ships as I
understand it. And Mr. Rener has been on more cruises than I have. My experience,
gentlemen, has been that those the rooms are very small, like significantly smaller than your traditional hotel
room. >> For sure. Yeah, it's uh it's close quarters. They had a uh a larger room on
the eighth floor of the cruise ship. The parents had a bed and then there was a foldout couch that Brad and Amy shared
and sometimes Amy would also sleep on the balcony. The night that she disappeared into that early morning, she
was on the balcony sleeping. >> Yeah. So, let's start on Saturday, March 21st. We have the Bradley family of four
boarding the ship. They will embark in Puerto Rico, flying from Virginia to Puerto Rico and then hit the high seas.
The ship was bound for several stops in the Caribbean, including Carousel. According to FBI.gov, gov. On Saturday,
March 21st, the vessel departed San Juan, Puerto Rico, and traveled to its first port of call, the island of Aruba.
Day two is Sunday, March 22nd. This is typically, for me anyway, the time when I would really start to explore the
ship. And these ships are huge. It's like a high-rise building in a shopping mall had a big huge overweight baby that
floats and scoots about in the ocean. Day three, this from the FBI is Monday, March 23rd. They departed Aruba and they
were traveling in international waters to the next island port of Carouso during the early morning hours of
Tuesday, March 24th, 1998, Amy Lynn Bradley went missing. Now, gentlemen, before we get into the
known events and timeline of late in the day, March 23rd and the early morning hours of March 24th, let's talk about
the complications of investigating a crime that takes place on a cruise ship that
is in international waters. James, we'll start with you. >> Oh, it's a it's a headache. you know,
where people from the United States take for granted the the freedoms and protections that they have here in in
our country, and those don't apply on cruise ships. And and it's weird. Uh it's it's kind of all messed up because
of the way that these major cruise lines hide their money uh for tax purposes. So, the ships uh find a home port um and
that's where all their like that's where they they file their taxes and you know
the the money kind of loops through that home port and not a single cruise ship of these major cruise lines like Royal
Caribbean, uh Carnival, things like that. None of them consider a United States port their home port. So, they're
all like weird countries. And at at the time, Rapsidy of the Seas was flying the
flag of Liberia. So when something goes wrong on the ship, you know, if if nothing goes wrong
on a cruise ship, you're going to have a great time. Uh on the off chance that something goes terribly wrong on a
cruise ship, you're you're in a lot of trouble because >> who's investigating that crime? Uh it
supposed to fall to that home country. Now, at the time that Amy went missing, that was Liberia, and Liberia was in the
middle of a very violent civil war, so they could care less. Sometimes it falls to the jurisdiction of the port, if
you're lucky enough to be close enough to a port. In that situation, it's Kiraasau, which is an island under
control of the Netherlands. So, the Netherlands had some sort of uh authority. The Dutch had some sort of
authority over it. The FBI had no jurisdiction, but they do have uh a an office in um San Juan, and that office
is kind of in charge of any sort of uh American citizen getting into trouble in the Caribbean. So, they sent out a
couple agents, but those agents had to get permission from the cruise line to even enter the ship. And there was they
were very limited in what what they could do. If if they if they interviewed a suspect in Curissau and he confessed
to the crime, they couldn't arrest him on the spot. Uh if they got that lucky, they'd have to get have to go through
the whole extradition process and uh it it gets very complicated very quickly. So, the first line of defense is the
security team aboard the cruise ship. And because of the nature of that, they're beholden to the corporation,
Royal Caribbean, and what they're looking to do is is, you know, um you you cover your ass type of thing. So
yeah, when Amy went missing, the Bradley's found out pretty quickly that there was little to be done in the way
of a proper investigation. >> This was borderline shocking to me because when you the cruises I've gone
on went out of Miami, right? So I'm on I'm on US soil stepping onto this boat. The all the commercials that you see for
Caribbean cruises are on American television. They have American names. >> Yeah.
>> Most of the passengers are American. The crew appear to be American. And then you
learn that no that there's a lot of reasons that make a whole lot of financial sense for these cruise liners
to not have anything really to do with the United States other than picking up a whole bunch of passengers there
because it's it's a way to save money not just on their taxes but also they can avoid certain like other countries
don't have the employment laws, rules and regulations that we have. They also can skirt around certain wages for those
employees that are on their ships. So, it's like everything else sadly. It comes down to the old bottom line and
how much money can you make? And this is just a really good way for them to make
a whole bunch of extra money. And what we don't realize boarding that ship is that it's putting us in a vulnerable
more than normal vulnerable situation. >> Well, I also think just the size of the
ship Yes. >> comes into play and the fact that it is a ship. So, it's it's not just like this
wide open building. There's all these nooks and crannies because you have to be creative when you're coming up with
storage solutions. And then I think the other the other thing in play here is the staff. Like James said, these this
staff, this is their livelihood. And so they have to protect that in some uh capacity. But also there's some very
strict rules for these staff members. And so let's just say you you did hook up with a guest on the ship, but you
took them to your room. Well, that's grounds for firing. So if something bad happens to them, and let's say you're
not involved at all, there's reasons to lie and protect yourself if you did something that would cause you to lose
your your career. The majority of the staff at least on the rap city of the seas comes from they come from other
countries around the world. There was several from uh you know India, you know, many from the Caribbean islands
themselves and they're they go on these tours that are like you know six months or so and then they go back home and the
money they make in those six months is equivalent to like a couple years worth of salary for a menial job back in their
home country. So it's very important for them that they that they not get fired.
But yeah, if they do get caught, for instance, hooking up with a passenger, that's that's immediate and automatic
dismissal, >> even if the passenger gave a fivestar review. >> But I've had a lot of friends that have
gone on these cruise ships because you don't have to pay room and board and your meals are taken care of and then
things like alcohol or cigarettes, you get those at a discounted cost. So, it it was a way for a lot of my musician
friends to get out of college, do 6 months to to maybe a year on a cruise ship to save up a bunch of money and so
they could come back to the States and and move to New York or Nashville or LA to start their music careers. Day three,
detailed information here. This from the Richmond Times. So, at the Aruba stop, Amy and her brother Brad spent some time
ashore and later visited the ship's nightclub, the Calypso Lounge. Amy was seen dancing with members of the band.
Their band name is Blue Orchid. Especially a crew member named or nicknamed Yellow. This is one of the
band's members, the bass player. Real name is Alistister Douglas, but better known to everyone, especially after this
documentary, as Yellow. He was seen drinking and dancing with Amy Bradley. So, the two, this is brother and sister
Amy and Brad, stayed up late dancing and drinking at the disco party on the 9inth
floor deck. Multiple sources confirmed that Amy was drinking and smoking but not heavily intoxicated that night. the
photo, the now infamous formal photo. This is the one where we see it on the documentary. I've seen it on other
shows. I've seen it all over the internet well before the documentary came out. This is of Amy standing solo
in a black a very nice regal looking black dress. This I guess would be at the formal dinner. And if you go digging
a little bit more, you can see photos of her standing with her brother Brad who's
in a tuxedo. These are from my understanding the photos that the crew the cruise ship takes and they will try
to sell them to you later. Like I these are the photos that I hate taking because usually there's somebody there
directing you and they're like oh stand closer you know hold her like this or you know use stand there with this
posture in a in a manner that I would never stand but it's the photo that we see a lot throughout the documentary and
that is known well to everybody listening to this. This photo, from my understanding, guys, was taken
approximately 12 hours before she disappeared. So, this would make sense that this would be around dinner time on
that day. Some of the very key details here that we will get into, this was compiled from a few different sources.
So, we have tab.com and from a Reddit thread. So, tab.com reporting their timeline is according to ship records
and family accounts. And then the Reddit post, the post is Amy Bradley is missing
cutting through Netflix's narrative is compiled from multiple sources. So we kind of mash those two together to come
up with this. We are at Tuesday, March 24th here in the small hours at around 100 a.m. to
1:30 a.m. Amy and Brad are still at the club. Ship photographers snap pictures of Amy dancing. This account states that
these photos later appeared in the ship's gift shop without the family's consent. This statement from the FBI
files. Yellow later claimed that he left this party, left the disco around this time. And again, that's 1 to 1:30 a.m.
This next one, guys, is new to me, but it was on one of the timelines that I found. And it states that at 3:30 a.m.,
Ron Bradley, so this is Amy's father, reportedly checked on Amy and Brad, who were still at the disco, and walked them
back to their cabin. This is published and it's according to where I found it, according to family statements. It
doesn't seem to ring true with what's on the documentary. So, um, yeah, the the timeline is a little wonky, uh, because
of of how things have been reported and and when they've been reported. And over
27 years, it's it's changed a little bit. I've been reporting and researching the story for about a year and a half,
working on a book uh, on the case that'll come out next summer. I met with the Bradley's at their home in Virginia
last summer. Spent I think five or six hours with them. We spoke for a while and then we had lunch. Iva made some
very nice pulled pork sandwiches and uh and then we we talked some more. And at that time, what I was told is
that uh yeah, around 3:30, Amy and Brad were still at the uh the Disco Tech up at the Viking Lounge at the the back of
the ship. And that's when they decided to come back to the room. And Brad's key card shows that he entered about exactly
3:30. And then Amy came in five minutes later. Now, at no point during the hours
and hours of conversation with the Bradley's did they mentioned that that Ron, their father, came up and and
checked with them, which is odd, and that's not at all to suggest the family had anything to do with what ultimately
happened, but um I'm I'm a little disappointed that that wasn't mentioned at the time. The the reason we found out
about that is some Redditors have dug up early early newspaper reports and that's
how we and then Brad himself has has talked about this on TikTok since the those newspaper reports were found. And
that's how we learned that that Ron, their father, woke up, I think it was closer to 3:00 a.m. and came up to the
disco. I don't believe he even talked to Amy. I think he talked to Brad and said,
"Hey, look, it's it's late. why don't you guys come come down to bed? And then Ron went down and then about 20 minutes
to a half an hour later, Brad uh and Amy came came down. So that's kind of how that played out. So there's some
discrepancy, too, about Alistair Douglas, who was the bass player for Blue Orchid. He was up there. He's
caught on video. Actually, there was a videographer up there who was taking B-roll for a corporate event. um where
another business, Vanstar, brought a bunch of their employees on the cruise and hired this videographer to take like
uh what he called happy face videos so that anybody from that corporation could have this video after the cruise and see
what a great time they had. So, he just accidentally happened to catch images of
Yellow and Amy dancing in the the disco. And at first they're dancing kind of far
apart, but then a after a time they're very very close together and Alistair's kind of grinding on her from behind. Uh
which you know the the '9s kids uh what we would call twerking I guess. And uh so they were very close. He says he
came down at 1, but it's I think his key card shows that he came back to his room
a lot later than that. So yeah, there's some and he should not have have been up
there and should not have been dancing so close as uh he was actually considered an officer on the cruise ship
because of his position with the band. So he had a he he had a pretty decent room, but he shared it with a guy named
Oscar Alexander. So, you know, he he had a roommate that was there when he checked back into his room. But if he
would have been caught by, you know, a higher ranking officer, he would have been in some trouble. Or you're allowed
to socialize with with passengers, but you're not allowed to like like fraternize with them. You're not
certainly not allowed to twerk with them. So >> you're you're encouraged to socialize
with them because the whole what you're selling is fun. You're selling the experience and you want you don't want
somebody sitting there bored like, "Oh, I had to read a magazine the whole time because there was nothing to do." And
some people just aren't overly social or have a hard time getting into the mix of
things. You can disarm them and really get people into the vibe if just by, hey, how's it going? Oh, you having a
good time? There's a dance over here. And yeah, so I think that there are there's a high percentage of truths in
these these following statements and things that I know you've already covered, but from the timeline in front
of me says 3:30 a.m. Ron Bradley reportedly checked on Amy and Brad. Okay. >> I think it was a little bit before that,
but yeah. Yeah. >> So around that time, he's checking in and as you said, probably just made
communication with Brad, touch base with him. And you're right, like these two, Amy and Brad are in their early 20s.
>> One thing that I've learned the older I get on vacations or, you know, you go on
a golf trip with the boys, the amateurs, they go very hard night one or they go very hard night two or three and then
they are spent for the rest of the trip. They they are no good the rest of the trip. And this is dad just checking in
like, "Hey guys, it's late." And these these cruise liners, they have a whole bunch of fun stuff that you can do
during the daytime. So, it's in your best interest not to sleep the day away. And yeah, I have 330 to 338 Brad returns
to the family cabin. Now, one thing that is very interesting and really will turn
some speculation into absolute fact is that we have his key card entry, >> right? Each passenger has a key card and
when they go to get back into their room, they have to put that key card into the door and that is going to
trigger a catalog. It's it's going to catalog his return to the room. And then Amy, all reports say that, like you said
there, James, she was roughly about 5 minutes behind her brother. She enters their room and then at some point the
two of them, brother and sister, are sitting having a nice night together talking on the balcony, but Brad goes to
bed before Amy and Amy decides to stay out on the balcony for some time long. >> How long were they out on the balcony
for >> together? Well, um the the report is that what Brad has said is that when he
came back, he did go out to the balcony and they talked for a little bit and then he went to bed and she stayed on
the balcony. And then her father says he woke up around 5:30 in the morning and saw that Amy was still sitting on the
balcony and decided to go back to sleep. wakes up about a half an hour later around six and she's gone and and then
he immediately starts to search for her. At first he thinks she's gone up to like
a higher deck to grab a smoke or um to see the ship pull into Curissowl cuz they have to go up this channel under a
huge bridge and then uh up to the dock. So he thought maybe she'd gone up to take some pictures and grab a smoke, but
he couldn't find her up there. >> So on the chair in the room, we find this yellow shirt that she was wearing.
So we we feel like she came back to the cabin. She took off her shirt, but she had a white undershirt on. She had jeans
on or >> jean capries. And then she has these sandals. I'm guessing she is wearing the
sandals when she's at the nightclub. But those sandals are also found on the balcony as well.
>> So that that's that's the crux of the mystery. And you know the the big question is what happened? Where did she
go from there? And in some ways, this is this is why this this case attracted me.
Um because like the Moa Murray case, the disappearance of Moa Murray, there's so
many possibilities of of what happened according to every everybody's different stories. Did she
even did she even leave the balcony? Did she go overboard? What did she fall? Did
she intentionally go over the side? Um, and then if she did leave the the room, what happened to her then? Was it foul
play? Was it was it walk away? I mean, every possibility is is technically still on the table.
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Treat yourself today. Check out quint.com/g. [Music] Yeah. And so the the reports I have fall
in line with what you're saying there, James. It's it's sometime in that 5 to 5:30 a.m. Dad wakes up and he says in
his statements that he recognized two things. Brad is sleeping in the room and from what he can see, Amy is lying down
outside. I think he says something like he could see her leg through the glass door and he's thinking that she's laying
positioned as that she would be lying down on the chair out there or you know some fixture out there and then wakes up
approximately 30 minutes to maybe even 45 minutes later and then notices that Amy was gone. back to what the captain
was questioning earlier that all reports I've seen including the Netflix information was that according to Brad
they sat out there talking that night for anywhere from about 25 minutes to maybe 45 minutes before he goes to bed.
She stays inside >> or she stays on the balcony. Yeah. >> Yeah. Stays on the balcony. And then
later Ron wakes up and says that her sandals are still there. Her room key is still there. Balcony door is slightly a
jar. He noticed that Amy's cigarettes and lighter were missing. >> But also, don't they find her wallet as
well? >> I think they found everything but Amy. The clothes on her back and her cigarettes and lighter.
>> Not to jump too far ahead, but you did mention what I think becomes a very important clue there, which is that the
balcony door was a jar. Uh when Amy was missing, the family seems to think that she left the cabin without waking them
up. If you've ever been on a cruise ship, which I I think we all have, inside the room, are notices um and and
you learn this through experience, too, that you're not supposed to open the cabin door with the balcony door open
because the air in the hallway is pressurized. And what happens when you have the balcony door open and you open
that cabin door is uh a vacuum. And uh it creates a wind tunnel through the room that is very loud and in fact it
causes the cabin door to slam shut. And there are reports of crew members who have opened the cabin door to clean to
and the balcony door was open and it slams the door shut so hard they've lost a finger in the door. So I I'm
that to me is a very important clue that to me suggests that she did not leave the cabin that morning. You know, other
people will argue, well, they're, you know, the the ship's going very slow up the canal if in fact that's where they
were at the time. And so the the it wouldn't be so much of a an issue. Um, but I don't I don't know that that I
necessarily buy that. >> Yeah. The FBI says to this day there's no proof that she left. One of my
problems with that and and not my problem with the FBI, the FBI, especially these two agents, would know
way more about this than any of us. When the FBI gets onto the cruise ship, we go, "We're looking for Amy. She's not in
this room. Let's search every nook and cranny." Nope. She's not here. So, now let's go look at security footage.
And nowhere on the documentary do they tell you how many cameras or anything, but the cruises I've been on, there's
been a decent amount of security cameras. So, one would think if we know where her room was and we can just
assume that she got out of the room and that she was going to get off at port, there would be only so many locations
that she would then pop out from. If she went down the hallway to the left, she would have been picked up on this
camera. Or if she went to the elevator and got off at floor number four, we would see her on this camera there. So
to me, and they they don't really dive into this in in the documentary, but how much was that footage investigated
>> right there? There were, you know, it's 1998, so there weren't as many cameras
>> then as there are now. From my understanding, there were not cameras that would have u been focused on the
sides of the ship to to show if she fell off the balcony. But you're right, there
were definitely cameras in like the main pool area, which is it's usually where you would cross over to like the
breakfast area, the where this um Adal Vice dining hall. Um you have to kind of pass an easy way to get there is to pass
through the pool area. So, there are a number of common areas that have cameras and uh if the FBI is saying they have no
proof she ever left that room, that to me says she was not on caught on camera in any of these common areas. So, that
idea that she went up to the decks and to see the ship pulling into port um doesn't really work because she she
definitely would have been caught on camera somewhere. And also the debarcation area certainly had cameras
showing people coming on and off. Um, and it appears that she she wasn't on those either.
>> But at the same time, they're saying we don't have proof that she something happened to her on the balcony or that
she went overboard as well. It's it's kind of, you know, they're they're a little bit forced to deal with somewhat
in absolutes where they're like, you know, until until we find the body, we don't even know that she's dead. Until
we have evidence that this occurred, we don't know that anything happened. And I
feel like the Dora jar is one of those, it's one of those line items in any story, not just this one, any story,
that I absolutely hate. Why? Because the only person that the only person that saw this was her father.
>> Mhm. >> Could he be misremembering? Yes. Slightly a jar. I hate that. What kind
of description is that? >> Yeah. >> Slightly a jar could those sliding glass doors. It's so easy to not close them
all the way. Slightly a jar could mean that it's open half an inch or it could mean it's open three feet.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Amy's family does not believe that she committed suicide, that she jumped off of that
balcony, that she jumped into the water. They don't believe that. While I am on their side, if that is they're hurting,
they lost a loved one. They want to find out what happened to their loved one. And I agree with their statements that
they don't think that she jumped off the side of that that balcony. I I don't find everything that's been presented to
me about Amy's character tells me that that's not a high possibility. Not a high percentage on that.
>> I agree with you, but I I disagree with this idea, and we see this in a lot of
true crime cases or missing person cases where they go, "She absolutely wasn't suicidal." Well, she doesn't have to be
leading up to six months before that day. >> Correct. >> She could have she could have been
having depressed thoughts >> in that 60 seconds. >> Right. And her brother Brad is saying,
man, she was afraid of heights. She wouldn't even get near the rail. So, >> that's the part that steers me away from
the idea that she would have jumped in. And and look, jump in. There were other people that said that something to the
effect of, well, she was a really good swimmer. And didn't somebody say like she was going to jump in and swim to
port before the boat could get there? >> Yeah. She was uh overheard um by a witness, I think maybe even at the
disco. Um, but sometime that that evening saying making a joke about when she saw the lights of Curissau, she was
going to jump because she thought she could swim there faster than the than the boat could get there.
>> Yeah. And I think there's just a lot more possibilities. Let's just say she was depressed in that moment and
decides, hey, I'm going to jump off the boat. So then she jumps off the boat and
okay, she committed suicide. She's dead. And then but there could be all these other things like what if she had a
moment of weakness and decided to jump off the boat and then by the time she hits the water she goes hey I don't want
to die and I swim ashore or is it as simple as she told somebody I'm going to jump off the boat but I've been on those
boats to be on the eighth level that's pretty high up you might not be so worried worried about swimming to the
port, but to me, you'd be more worried about the fall. You know, one statistic that I
I thought was pretty shocking uh that I learned while researching the story is um once you go over the side of a cruise
ship, whether it's on purpose or accident, and no matter how decent of a swimmer you are, the chance of survival
once you're in that water is 20%. Which is is shocking. You know, even you would
think that once once you're over, you know, because of the the currents, because of the water, because of all,
you know, you fall down. Sometimes people get sucked under the boat and into the propeller, and then you're
gone. You know, the chance of survival is very, very low. Many people say that Amy was not suicidal and that's probably
true. But she was at that moment in her life in a very stressful situation because when she came home from that
cruise, she had a very important decision to make. And um that was to either live her life the way she wanted
to be, which is open and gay, which is how she identified. She identified as gay. She identified as lesbian. She did
not identify as by with her friends. So, um, she had just gotten back together with her girlfriend Molly.
And so, when she came home, she could either live that life and she felt that if she did, she would disappoint her
conservative parents, >> right? >> Um, and that family was very, very tight, but they did not support Amy
being gay. or she could continue to, you know, go against her nature and try to date men to appease, you know, to make
things calm and and easy. So, she there were a there was a lot going on inside her mind at that time. She was changing
jobs. She had just moved into an apartment. This is a very stressful moment in her life. And um, Captain, I I
think you were touching a little bit on this idea. She doesn't have to be suicidal to be on that balcony and feel
that urge. Um, it's what the French, there's a fancy French term called lapel duvid, but in English we call it the
call of the void. Even Freud talked about this, you know, hundred years ago, he called it the oceanic feeling. When
you're when you're faced with um, you know, that infinite horizon of the ocean, there is this kind of call that
you feel on a very instinctual level. And so I wonder if she wasn't sitting out there and the thought came in her
mind, well, let me just see. Let me see what happens. You know, by taking that action, by going over the railing, she
would have been forcing some sort of decision. you know this is going to you know either be the ultimate solution
which is which is death or you know it's going to cause action and um you know I don't know would they accept her in
the face of you know uh we almost lost her but now she's living I don't know um but you know it's just that idea that
this decision is going to cause some sort of action some sort of decision and my life at least won't
the way it is at this moment. >> Yeah, I I agree with you. I mean, when watching your interview with Yellow, I
think he points out some interesting things and I think later we can dive deeper into that
interview, but he he's saying she's chain smoking. I believe her bar tab was seven beers, seven light beers, and I
think that started at 6:00 p.m. So, that's not a ton of drinks. But, I think one of the things we're not taking into
account is there's not that many young people on this cruise ship. >> That's true, too. Also, consider this.
you know, the the uh beverages that they're counting are the beverages that she bought herself. And
>> exactly. >> How often are um you know, how often do men buy women the drinks that they're
having throughout the course of the night? >> A 23year-old female is going to get some
free drinks. >> Well, and I think that that's another thing that the family is saying, "Hey,
look, the weight staff was just paying her a lot of attention." I think a lot of that had to do with well the staff is
normally of a younger age and she's one of not many 20some attractive females on
that cruise ship. >> Mhm. >> So again, how many drinks did she have, >> right? >> Don't know. And I don't think that's
something we'll ever know. And that alters your mind state. And I think as much as the parents want to say, well,
part of us not being okay with her living a gay lifestyle or being gay is, oh, it was the '9s. And so, I do
sympathize with them on that. But they also make, I think, interesting statements. if she was engaged to be
married and she always talked about wanting to have kids and blah blah blah, maybe you would say, uh, you know, we
didn't get to share certain experiences with our daughter. We're never going to meet our grandkids, especially in the
'9s. Not every state could even get married. >> Mhm. >> To have a gay marriage, let alone to be
able to uh adopt kids or have kids. in in another way. So I I I find that statement by them to me, as much as
people can look at this story and go, well, she was openly gay and yes, her parents weren't supportive, but that's
not that big of a deal. I think there's little statements that they say during the documentaries
almost 30 years later that you go, "No, no, this was a this was a huge deal in in Amy's life." It was um you know and I
waited until the end of our interview to even bring it up. Um the Brad Iva Bradley was very helpful in getting me
in touch with one of Amy's good friends and uh you know even during that conversation you know it it didn't come
up that Amy was gay and I I had to do some more digging on my own to find her other friends who were supportive of her
being gay and those sources were not given to me by the family and there was an effort to keep that information from
seeing the light of day. I knew at the time Netflix was doing a documentary. We were kind of overlapping on our sources
and chasing after the same information. And I had a conversation with their producer when I found out that Amy was
gay. And I, you know, we talked about how they were going to handle it because they they found the same information I
did around the same time. And you know, we we talked about how to uh come at it respectfully as as best we can, but I
was the first one to bring it up with the family. And Iva did not want that in there. She didn't want it known in
either my book or the documentary. She said it had nothing to do with anything that it was, you know, it doesn't
matter. And I do think it's uh I think it could be the crux of actually what happened to Amy. I think it does relate
to whatever happened to her. >> Well, when you have so many possibilities still sitting on the
table, some of those being she walked off and started a new life. One of those being she jumped off the side of a boat.
You have to keep that in mind because that's something that is real. That's something that's going on in her life at
that time. that's something that's going on her in her family and in her mind constantly. I was a little surprised. I
mean the with the time period I think part of that being you know growing up in Columbus, Ohio especially in the the
late 90s early as we had a much higher gay population than most major cities. So, it's it seemed like a little I don't
know. I I hate to say use the word normal, but going back to '989, that's the word I would have used. But I think
the captain is absolutely right. When you hear mom say something like, "Well, we didn't even get to experience our
grandkids." To me, that's not just, "Well, we're not okay with this." This is refusing to accept it.
>> Yeah. >> Right. Like, if you lose a leg, you don't get over it. You don't get over
losing your leg. You learn to accept it. And those that don't learn to accept it,
they're they have a whole different life than anybody else. This is refusing to accept it. This to me implies that it's
mom and dad having a conversation. And if they choose to share that information with anybody else, the conversation is
this. Well, it's probably just a phase. You know, she was off at college and you
know, she'll she'll grow out of this. She'll get into the real world. And that's what I gather from this that a
statement like we didn't get to experience our grandkids. >> I think you're absolutely right.
>> That's why I was telling you earlier, James, I I really do think these interviews that you've been putting out
on your YouTube channel are so important because here we are. We're in the garage. Three white, mostly straight
men. >> Mostly white, mostly straight men. mostly white, mostly straight men talking about
this young 20some year old woman coming out to the world in the '9s. And I really think your interview with Cat,
a woman that Amy had a relationship with, is is very important to understand this this conflict in Amy's life.
Because I couldn't imagine how much relief one would feel by just saying, "This is who I am. This is my
sexuality, and this is how I want to live." and and how how much pride they should have in coming out and how and
how freeing it would be and hoping that your support system then doubles down the love on you where she had
individuals in her life going, "Okay, finally she's going to live her best life and be her best self and her truest
self." But then you have this big support system of her family going, "We're we're not all okay with this."
And >> yeah, >> be hush- hush about this. I mean, I'm I'm sure that she even was told by her
family like, "Well, we support you and we love you, but we might want to not tell everybody in the family about
this." Well, and that that's why I was coming down so hard on the statement of well, I woke up and I noticed that the
balcony door was slightly a jar and then I noticed Amy was missing. Because to me, what I'm what I'm pointing out here
is just like with her coming out, okay, we've we've all seen it, experienced it at some point, I believe. I know I have.
I can't speak for the both of you, but at some point in our lives, a friend comes out, they talk to their parents.
It's sometimes it's mom or dad reacting and going, I just don't know where we went wrong. We, you know, we had a nice
house. We grew up at, you know, we raised her in a nice neighborhood. We raised him in a sent him off to nice
schools and we did everything we could. Where what did I do wrong? You know, they they look inward and they blame
themselves for something that's really not a problem. And to me, I think let's double down on the idea of child commits
suicide. They're they're naturally going to think that as well. And if this is the reaction to her coming out, I I
guess what I'm it's a really long- winded way of me saying that that statement, I have an issue with it
because it seems like it aligns with mom and dad's best interest that Amy left the room walking out the front door
rather than jumping off the balcony. and the door, the balcony glass door being slightly open is an indicator that she
came back into the room and left. However, the flip side of that coin is this is not a dumb kid. If her room key
remained inside that room, I can make up a million reasons why she left that room. The hurdle that's hard for me to
clear is her room key being in there. If that if that part of the statement is factual and true, I think that's more
suggestive that something else happened. I I do want to say, you know, since we brought up Cat, um just a a couple
things that I thought were interesting that that Cat talked about. You know, Cat was her partner throughout college
or at least for a time in college. They started out as uh friends and then roommates and and then it became, you
know, something more. And uh you know, Cat still has love for her after all these years. Um it was her first love.
Uh Amy was and you know they were very close for for a time and uh you know Cat talked about staying with Amy's family
one summer and you know had to keep everything on the down low. She also says she loves the Bradleys. They're
very tight family that you know and that's that's one thing when you meet the Bradley's they really pull you in
that you you feel the love there. you know, there is kind of that disconnect with um you know, if you go on the
social media and see the types of things that come up on Iva or Brad's page. I mean, they're they're deep deep into
MAGA culture and, you know, there are some homophobic things that have popped up on Brad's social media accounts and
what I would call uh you know, o over the line things. And especially if Amy is out there still living and she sees
those social media posts, I I wouldn't know what she was thinking. Um or how that would affect her. But um you know,
Cat talks about specifically Amy's identity. And you know, the the the family said over and over, oh, she was
by she was by uh that's what she told us. And you know, I you know, in some way, I think that's trying to downplay
her sexuality. Um you know, >> soften the blow a little bit. She was >> she knew it was going to be difficult.
>> Um >> you she wasn't looking forward to having that conversation. >> No. And and so it came out in college
that their their secret was kind of exposed through their friends and they realized that word was probably going to
get back and so they had to come out to their families and you know uh so they both Cat and a Amy went back home one
weekend and Cat told her family and the reaction they got she got was essentially like yeah okay. But Amy went
home and it it was very difficult. And her father wrote this three-page letter about how disappointed he was when she
sent to Cat. And that really affected Cat. That really hurt her. >> But that's freaking bizarre.
>> Yeah. >> In high school and college, if I broke up with somebody and I was a little
down, my mother or father was, you know, they'd go, "Oh, yeah. I'm sorry you're down. I'm sorry it didn't work out." But
I had a conversation with my dad one time where he's like, "I feel bad for you and you know, you're just going to,
you know, every day you wake up, it's going to get better." And then he said, then he asked me, "What was her name
again?" And so the fact that he and and I understand that Cat stayed with him for
a time period, but it it's bizarre to write a three-page letter to Cat to explain your thoughts and feelings on
this matter. >> Again, it's an indicator that they are refusing to accept that this is who she
may be. They're looking at it more as something as something she is experiencing or
going through and a lot of outside uh persons or players h have their hands on the reigns of of what she's going
through. >> And we don't know what kind of conversations the parents were having
with her. If you're going to do something so bizarre as to write a three-page letter and I'm going to like
Ross Geller would say front and back, but you go, what is he saying to his daughter? What is the mother saying to
the daughter? Or is is it a situation that every time they're around her, they're trying to convince her to live a
different lifestyle? And so when you have in one interview Yellow the bass player of the cruise ship band saying
well she was saying how she didn't really want to come on the trip. Is that because this issue hasn't been ironed
out and did she feel like well if we're on this cruise are the parents going to try to convince me otherwise to live
otherwise? And one of the things I find interesting, and I'd love your take on this, James, to me, you have to connect
the dots. You have to there has to be some story that makes some sense. And so, I think sometimes with these
family members, obviously, they want their loved one to still be alive and to still be out there. a lot of the
stories, like just a simple one of, okay, well, maybe she did go out of the room and decide that she was going to go
off port um go off the boat, go on the island, and maybe try to get some marijuana.
>> And and then you'll have the family go, absolutely not. This is a family that's
very um wrapped up in the the image that remains of of Amy and and I can understand that because she's she's
gone, you know, even if she's alive that Amy she they knew is is long gone, long
gone. Um, and so they're protecting her legacy and her image and they want to portray her as um as as great as as they
possibly can. So I I think when you get into the idea that she might have gotten
off to get drugs or gotten wrapped up in something like that, they're very protective of that. Um, and you know
they you mentioned these sightings and to this day the Bradley's believe she is alive that she was forced into some
situation beyond her control, human trafficking. Um, and the the Netflix documentary brought that up and you know
did their narrative in a way to make it seem more likely I think than it actually is. But there are a number of
these sightings of her that occur after the disappearance um on Kurissowl um and
also these pictures that show up on an escort website out of Margarita Island uh years later. So um they they believe
that uh these these sightings are uh legitimate and they're hanging a lot of hope on on that fact. Well, I we've seen
this with a lot of missing person cases. My deep dive into the Brian Schaefer case, his father was trying to control
the narrative. That distorts the actual details of this person and hinders people looking into investigating what
happened or could have happened. And I think the same thing happened in Amy's case. I think the same thing happened in
Mar's case as well. And but I don't fault the family. I don't want to seem like I'm just piling on the family
because I'm I understand why they're doing it if they're even conscious that they're doing it.
>> Cuz I I think sometimes it's not like they're the family sitting behind this wall of secrecy and and um masterminding
some plan. >> Yeah. I think it's and we'll move on here, but I think it's a bit human
nature because for the parents, especially the parents, but also for loved ones and people that are very
close to the person that vanishes, that person is frozen in time for them, >> right?
>> Kind of like what James was talking about that this is 27 years later. Brad is, you know, well into his 40s. The
parents are are probably in their late 60s, mid60s by this. And so for them, some stuff has moved on and and some
things in their lives have changed obviously, but for them, their loved one is frozen in time. And whatever was
going on in that loved one's life around the time of their disappearance is such
a small percentage of what they know that person to be for the entirety of the life that they knew them for. And so
I think they weigh and lean toward the majority of their experience and understanding of that person rather than
what was going on right at that time. And in that short time leading up to their disappearance,
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Amy Bradley is Missing /// Part 1 /// 862

Part 1 of 2

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Amy Bradley has been missing for over 27 years. Her family and many others suspect foul play. During the early morning hours of Tuesday, March 24th, 1998 Amy went missing from a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. She was only 23 years old at the time. Amy would be 51 years old today.

Amy is a caucasian female. She is 5 feet 7 inches tall with brown hair and green eyes. At the time of disappearance, Amy was approximately 115 pounds. Her ears were pierced multiple times and navel is pierced. Amy has the following tattoos: a Tasmanian devil spinning a basketball on the back of her shoulder, a green and blue gecko lizard around her navel, a Japanese symbol on her right ankle and a primitive Japanese sun tattooed on her lower back. The FBI have age progressed photographs available showing what Amy may have looked like at 42 years of age.

The FBI is offering a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to the recovery of Amy Lynn Bradley and information that leads to the identification, arrest, and conviction of the person(s) responsible for her disappearance. If you have any information concerning the disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley, please contact your local FBI office, or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate.

Special thanks to James Renner. Please check out his show True Crime This Week on YouTube.

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Brief Summary

Amy Lynn Bradley disappeared from a cruise ship in 1998, sparking ongoing investigations and theories about her fate.

Key points

The Disappearance of Amy Bradley. Amy Bradley went missing from a cruise ship in 1998, sparking a long investigation.
Renewed Interest in Amy's Case. A new Netflix documentary has reignited interest in Amy's disappearance.
Cruise Ship Investigation Complications. Investigating crimes on cruise ships is complicated due to jurisdiction issues.
The Mystery of Amy's Disappearance. What happened to Amy after she left the balcony? The case remains unsolved.
Survival Odds After Falling Overboard. Once in the water, survival chances are shockingly low at 20%.
Amy's Identity Struggle. Amy faced a critical choice about her identity and family acceptance.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This missing person case has recently found renewed interest.

Discussion about renewed interest in Amy's case.

1:25WatchAug 13, 2025

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