This blog is about the disappearance of American woman Amy Lynn Bradley in 1998. Amy was travelling on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship with her family when she disappeared. There are many conspiracy theories about this one and some people believe there is a chance that Amy could still be alive.
Amy Lynn Bradley was born on May 12, 1974 in Petersburg, Virginia. Her parents are Ron and Iva Bradley, and she had a brother, Brad.
At the time of her disappearance, Amy had been living in Chesterfield County, Virginia. She attended Longwood University and graduated with a degree in physical education. She attended the university on a basketball scholarship.
Amy enjoyed sports and was well known for being a strong swimmer. She had previously worked as a lifeguard.
After her graduation, Amy was planning to start working at a computer consulting firm. She had plans for the future – she had just moved into a new apartment and had adopted a bulldog named Daisy that she was due to pick up shortly after her cruise finished.
Amy decided to go on the cruise with her family in celebration of her graduation. On March 21, 1998, Amy, Bradley, Iva and Ron boarded the Rhapsody of the Seas. Their destination was Curacao. The group had a family suite. The ship departed from San Juan and made its first stop in Aruba. The ship was only one year old in 1998. It stood 11 stories tall and 915 feet long. Ron had won the cruise through his job in insurance sales. The prize only covered costs for he and Iva, but they had offered to pay for Brad and Amy to also attend.
The first few days of the cruise seemed uneventful. Amy sent this postcard to a friend. “Hey Girl!. It’s gorgeous here. We leave for Aruba Tomorrow. […] I’ll be home Sat. at 10:00.”
Amy had taken 15 rolls of camera film with her on the vacation. She told friends that she wanted to create a photo collage for her coffee table.
After the family got off the ship and enjoyed a day in Aruba, they got dressed up and went to a black-tie dinner at one of the restaurants. The family had photos taken there by a professional photographer.
On Monday March 23, Amy and Brad decided to go to the nightclub on the ship. The ship’s band called ‘Blue Orchid’ were playing. Amy and Brad were drinking alcohol.
Amy was seen drinking with one of the band members that night – his name was Alister Douglas, also known as Alister. We will refer to him as Alister ongoing. They were captured by a videographer dancing together at one point.
Brad would later say that Alister danced a ‘little too close’ to Amy and that “she had to tell him to back off a little bit.”
Alister has since said that he left the party at around 1am.
Some reports indicate that Ron woke up at 2.45am and was quite worried that Brad and Amy were not back. Brad had apparently almost gotten into some trouble for dancing with a married woman earlier that night. Ron went to check on the kids and found them in the Viking Lounge, which was another nightclub on the ship. He said Brad was dancing with some other women, and Amy was chatting with crew members.
Brad decided to go back to the family cabin at around 3.35am. The ship used a key card system that recorded Brad’s key being used to access the room at that time. Amy’s key was used to access the room around five minutes later.
Brad has said that he went onto the balcony with Amy and they chatted for a while. He said he went to sleep and that he believed Amy stayed up for a little longer before going to sleep herself.
Ron has said that he woke up between 5.15am and 5.30am on March 24. He said he got up to check on the children and saw that Amy was sleeping on the lounge chair on the balcony of the cabin. He would later tell the media that he “could see Amy’s legs from her hips down. […] I dozed back off to sleep. The balcony door was closed, because if it hadn’t been closed, I would have gotten up and closed it.” Some reports say that Amy had been feeling seasick and perhaps was sleeping outside so that the fresh air could help.
Ron woke up again at 6am, and by that point, Amy was gone. Her cigarettes and lighter were also missing. He said that the balcony door was open to 14-16 inches wide. The shoes that Amy was wearing that night were found in the cabin, as well as her ID.
He later said, “I left to try and go up and find her. When I couldn’t find her, I didn’t really know what to think, because it was very much unlike Amy to leave and not tell us where she was going.”
After Ron searched the common areas of the cruise, he woke up the rest of the family and told them Amy was missing at 6:30 am.
Two passengers would come forward and say they saw Amy at around 6am. They said she had her room key, cigarettes and a lighter and that she was riding the elevator to the top of the ship.
Another witness would say that she saw Amy around the same time, with Alister.
“I saw Amy and the band member walk over and up to the next deck above us,” alleged the witness. “And about 10 minutes later, he came walking around by himself.”
One witness said that they saw Alister give Amy a drink containing a dark liquid around this time.
After Amy’s family realized that she was missing, they reported it to employees of the ship. The ship was about to dock in Curacao. 2,000 people were about to disembark and carry out their day trip.
The family pleaded that everyone be asked to remain on board so that a search for Amy could be carried out. Employees told them that it was too early to make a ship-wide announcement over the PA system.
By 7.50am, most of the passengers had disembarked to go to the port and the crew then agreed to make an announcement. “Will Amy Bradley please come to the purser’s desk?”.
Amy’s mother pleaded with captain Kjetil Gjerstad to distribute a picture of the missing girl around the ship, but he turned her down, saying: “I cannot do that. I will not alarm the passengers.”
For a whole (?) 45 minutes between 12.15pm and 1.00pm, cruise ship staff searched for Amy. During that time, they apparently searched all 999 rooms, restaurants and other amenities.
The Bradley’s got off the boat and went into the town to see if they could find Amy. They were told by the captain that the boat would not wait for them to return. Even if they did not find Amy, they had to be back on the ship that evening as it was due to set sail again.
After no sign of her was found on the ship, the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard carried out a four day search that ended on March 27, 1998. Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines also chartered a boat to search for her. The Coast Guard used three helicopters and a radar plane to search for Amy.
The general consensus from within the Royal Caribbean camp was that Amy had ‘fallen’ over the balcony and had died at sea. Ron has said that he never bought this theory as when he first woke at 5.30am, the balcony door was closed. He said by 6am it was open, indicating that Amy had left the cabin in that time period.
Ron’s employer flew down to Curacao to offer his help. He chartered a private plane to take Ron and Iva to St Martin, which was the next port of call for the ship. When no trace of Amy was found there, the couple demanded a meeting with the ship’s captain. They told him that the FBI wanted to come onto the ship to investigate. They were told by Royal Caribbean that this was not allowed – the ship was not registered in the US and was in foreign waters.
Eventually, Royal Caribbean did agree to let two FBI agents on board. They requested that the authorities be dressed in plain clothes, so as to not alarm other passengers.
The FBI did not seem to make much progress in the investigation. They did apparently say that they thought Amy did not plan to be away from the cabin for long as she had left her ID behind.
It was also discovered that during the 45 min search of the ship, only common areas and crew quarters were searched. The captain said that he did not want any passengers who had remained on board to be disturbed.
The FBI agents did question Alister. He told them that he had danced with Amy until 1am, when she had basically told him that she was not interested and he went on his way. Brad would say that on the morning of Amy’s disappearance at 9am, he was out searching for his sister. Alister approached him and said that he was ‘sorry about what happened to his sister’. This was before any announcement had been made publicly on the ship or before the situation was more widely known.
Amy’s family looked back on the cruise and realized that there had been some other strange events. On the night before Amy vanished, she went to the casino with Brad. Their parents had drinks with some of Ron’s colleagues. There was a crew member who had apparently been giving Amy ‘the creeps’ since they had been on the cruise. He asked Ron and Iva to pass on an invitation to Amy to go drinking with them in Aruba. They told Amy and she said that she did not want to go.
We also mentioned that the family had gotten dressed up in black tie and had professional photos taken. Ron went to get the photos later and found that all the photos of Amy had been taken. The photographer said they had definitely been printed out, which means that someone else took them.
Amy’s family eventually flew back to Curacao, where the ship had docked on the day of her disappearance. They thought it may be most likely that she had been somehow trafficked off the ship or that something had happened to her and she was still in that location. They ended up having to return home without their daughter.
Over the years, there have been many reported sightings of Amy.
One month after she disappeared, a Curacao cab driver contacted Amy’s family. He said that he had seen her while the ship was docking and that she was running through the parking lot, looking for a phone. He said that he vividly remembered her green eyes, which had been described on her missing person poster. He also claimed to have seen Amy other times on the island but his claims have never been verified.
In August 1998, two Canadian divers reported seeing Amy on a diving beach in Curacao known as Playa Porto Marie. One of the men, David Carmichael, testified for a Federal Grand Jury. He said that Amy was with two men, one who matched Alister’s description. David yelled out to a friend asking about diving equipment. When Amy heard him speak English, she walked towards him. David said that the man resembling Alister came and ushered the woman away. David said that Amy would keep looking at him and trying to subtly communicate. David was sure that this woman had the same distinctive tattoos as Amy – a Tasmanian devil on her left shoulder, blue gecko on her navel, Chinese character on her ankle, and Japanese sun on her back.
In January 1999, US Navy Petty Officer William Heffner said that he saw a woman at a brothel in Curacao and that she claimed to be Amy. He said Amy was with a Hispanic woman. He stated she told him that “her name was Amy Bradley and [she] begged him for help”, explaining that she was held against her will and not allowed to leave.
“She said, ‘My name is Amy Bradley. Please help me,’” Ivy said. “He didn’t know anybody was missing. He told her there was a naval ship five minutes down the dock, that she could leave. And she said, ‘No, you don’t understand. Please help me. My name is Amy Bradley.’”
William said he did not do anything about this encounter at the time as he believed he would be in trouble for being at a brothel. He came forward to authorities after he retired (three years later) and recounted his experience.
In 1999, a man named Frank Jones approached the Bradley family. He was a self-proclaimed Navy Seal. He said that he had experience and a team who may be able to work with him to rescue Amy. He told the Bradleys that Amy was being held by Colombian personnel in a high security housing complex. The team apparently gave accurate descriptions of Amy’s tattoos and also reported about a lullaby that Amy’s mother used to sing for her.
Over the coming months, the Bradleys gave Frank $210,000 as funding for the search for Amy. Frank would eventually admit that he had made the whole story up and it was a scam. He was charged with mail fraud in 2002 and was sentenced to five years in prison.
In 2005, a woman named Judy Maurer claims to have seen Amy in a department store restroom in Bridgetown, Barbados. Judy said that Amy entered the restroom, accompanied by four men. The men were threatening her regarding an alleged deal they had made. The men left Amy so that she could use the restroom. Amy then spoke to Judy and said her name was Amy and she was from Virginia. The men then re-entered and dragged her away.
Judy called authorities and composite sketches of the men and the woman were created and made public.
Amy’s parents appeared on Dr Phil in 2005. On the episode, they discussed a photo of a woman that had been emailed to them. The woman resembled Amy. The Bradleys said the photo suggested to them that Amy had possibly been sold into sexual slavery/trafficked. The photos had been found by a member of an organization that attempted to track victims on sites that featured sex workers.
The photos were on a website advertising “all inclusive erotic vacations” for $2,750.
“When I first looked at the picture, it wasn’t the Amy I know,” her mother said. “The picture looks like a harsh and tormented Amy”.
The woman in the photo was a sex worker known as Jas.
More witnesses reported seeing Amy in 2007, this time at a restaurant in Aruba. They said she was having dinner with four men.
In 2010, a jawbone washed up in Aruba. You will remember that this is the same place that Natalee Holloway vanished from, so many people thought the remains could have belonged to her. Once authorities cleared the jaw as not belonging to Natalee, they apparently did no other testing. This is despite there have been at least nine other vacationers that had gone missing in the area. No DNA testing was done on the remains. The bone is said to be human and of caucasian origin. It had one tooth still attached to it.
“Using the dental records of Natalee Holloway, such as the location of wisdom teeth and fillings, a comparison was made with the jawbone recovered on Aruba,” a release said. “Based on these comparisons it could be excluded that the investigated bone material and molar came from Natalee Holloway.”
This seems wild??
In 2021, Amy’s parents made a statement on InternationalCruiseVictims.org:
Amy, our beautiful 23-year-old daughter, who had recently graduated from college, vanished in the Caribbean on March 24, 1998.
My husband, son, Amy and I were leisurely traveling as a family during the time of her disappearance. The cruise ship was in the docking procedure in the port of Curacao, Netherlands Antilles.
F.B.I. and the following day, they boarded the ship in St. Thomas. The cruise line ‘attorney’ was present during ALL interviews, yet we were prohibited. He was also present during our interview with the F.B.I. as well.
Again, there are so many questions that require answers…Why would a multi-million dollar cruise line not help in the search for our daughter, Amy? To this date, the cruise line has failed to cooperate with our family by way of information or assistance.
The only known facts that we have are: My husband and I took a cruise with our two children and returned home WITHOUT our daughter, Amy…Her brother, Brad, returned home to Virginia WITHOUT his sister.
The F.B.I. has done an extensive investigation into Amy’s background…Her friends were interviewed… our neighbors were interviewed…her co-workers and friends were interviewed. …her college coaches were also interviewed. My husband, Ron, Brad and I took polygraph tests.
On ‘America’s Most Wanted’, the F.B.I. stated they found no reason for Amy to leave her family or cause harm to herself. Amy took 15 rolls of film with her to make a collage for her coffee table. While in Aruba, she bought presents for her friends back home and also sent postcards from Puerto Rico to her friends – On one postcard, she wrote, “Hey Girl, it’s gorgeous here. We leave for Aruba tomorrow! Take care, tell Madison and Niles hello. I’ll be home Sat. at 10:00. See ya, Amy.” On another, she wrote, “Hey, it’s beautiful here. Old San Juan has got some amazing buildings. I am taking pictures. Maybe you can see them at Easter? Wish you were here. Amy.
On the day before we left for vacation, Amy had adopted a female bulldog, and she was to pick up ‘Daisy’ when we returned from our cruise. She had just moved into her new apartment and was starting a new job on the following Monday. She had so many plans and was so happy about all of them.
Since the time of her disappearance, we have continued to search for our daughter and seek answers for finding her. It is believed that there are certain individuals in the Caribbean, and possibly even in South America, who have knowledge of Amy’s disappearance. All we want is the safe return of our daughter. We continue to plead with anyone who may have knowledge of her whereabouts.
Please help us find our beautiful and loving daughter, Amy! If you have or know someone who may have any information (as minor as it may seem), PLEASE, PLEASE contact us!
Amy was declared dead on March 24, 2010, twelve years after she disappeared. As of April 2025, when we are recording, Amy has been missing for 27 years. In May 2025, Amy will be 51 years old if she is still alive.
SOURCE LIST
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Amy_Lynn_Bradley
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/kidnap/amy-lynn-bradley
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/family-fear-daughter-sold-sex-25559167