The Strange Disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley: What Happened to Her?

To this day, her disappearance remains shrouded in rumor, conspiracy theories, and speculation. So, what really happened to Amy Lynn Bradley?

Who Was Amy Lynn Bradley?

Amy Bradley was born on May 12, 1974, in Petersburg, Virginia. A Virginia native her whole life, she attended a local college, earned a degree in physical education, and was planning to take a new job at a computer consulting company.

To celebrate this major accomplishment in her life, her father, Ron, mother, Iva, and her younger brother, Brad, decided to turn the cruise Ron had won at a work competition into a family vacation. The trip itself was a Caribbean cruise aboard the Royal Caribbean cruise line Rhapsody of the Seas.

The itinerary had the family departing San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Saturday, March 21, traveling to Aruba on Monday, March 23, arriving at Curacao on March 24, and then going onward to Saint Martin, St. Thomas, and finally docking back at San Juan a week later on March 28.

Amy’s family was excited about the trip, considering the cooler-than-normal wintry weather that still embraced central Virginia at that time of year. But little did they know that this family vacation would turn into their worst nightmare.

The Disappearance Of Amy Bradley

At first, Amy was apprehensive about the trip. Though she had been a trained lifeguard who was a strong swimmer, being out in the middle of the ocean was a little daunting for her. However, after reassurances from Amy’s family, she decided to go on the trip.

After arriving in San Juan, the family boarded their cruise ship after spending a day in the city. The first port call was in Aruba, one of three islands of the Netherlands Antilles.

Once Rhapsody of the Seas departed Aruba on Monday the 23rd, the next night was going to be short before they pulled into port early the next morning in Curacao.

That is where Amy Lynn Bradley supposedly met with disaster.

During that alcohol and party-fueled night, Amy Bradley and her brother Brad were partying pretty hard. Their parents, Ron and Iva, decided to call it a night and leave the wild partying to their children. CCTV footage from that night shows that the two siblings partied well into the early morning hours.

At one point, their father, wanting to make sure Brad was not getting into any more trouble after accidentally trying to make a move on a married woman, went to the dance floor to check up on his kids.

There, he found his son dancing away to Jazz music played by the band Blue Orchid while Amy was talking to some of the crewmembers on the upper deck. Satisfied that his children were fine, he went back to bed.

After partying into the early hours of the morning, the two siblings called it quits around 3:30 a.m. Thanks to the electronic key logs on their family cabin, it is known that Brad entered the cabin at exactly 3:35 a.m., and Amy followed soon after at 3:40 a.m.

According to her brother, they spent a short time talking on the balcony before he went off to bed while Amy continued smoking cigarettes.

Amy’s father woke up around 5:15 to 5:30 a.m. and saw his daughter slumped over in a lounge chair on the balcony, probably asleep. When he got back up for good at 6:00 a.m., Amy Lynn Bradley was nowhere to be found. But where had she gone?

At first, Amy’s family believed she had just wandered off somewhere to smoke a cigarette since the balcony door was open as if she had left in a hurry. After all, it was quite windy that morning, and she may have gone to a more secluded place to have an easier time lighting her cigarettes.

However, after searching the cruise ship for a few hours, it was clear Amy was nowhere to be found. With Amy’s sandals, all her other shoes, photo ID, and personal belongings still in the cabin, it was evident that if she had left, she should have returned by now.

Worried, her family begged crew members not to let any of the nearly 2,000 guests off the ship before a thorough search could be conducted. However, cruise ship authorities decided against that.

Instead, they let everyone off the ship that morning and made a ship-wide announcement for her to come to the front desk. Amy Lynn Bradley never answered that call.

After conducting a more thorough search of the ship and finding no evidence of Amy or foul play like her being thrown overboard, Royal Caribbean authorities pleaded with the Netherlands Antilles Coast Guard to help conduct a search for Amy.

During the course of that four-day search, the Coast Guard found zero signs of Amy.

Despite not finding her, Royal Caribbean also chartered their own search vessel to try to find Amy. But after two days of combing the surrounding waters between Aruba and Curacao, this ship also could not find Amy.

With both searches having turned up nothing and there being no foul play suspected, the cruise line told the Bradley family that the most likely scenario was a fall overboard in the early morning hours of that third night at sea.

However, Amy’s family refused to accept that theory, and there was plenty of testimony afterwards to conclude that Amy never went overboard that night.

Was Amy Lynn Bradley Ever Found?

Not satisfied with Royal Caribbean’s official story, the Bradley family, with the help of the FBI, began their own investigation into her disappearance. They started with some of the last known people to see Amy alive that night, besides her brother Brad.

Multiple eyewitnesses and CCTV footage showed that Amy was spending a lot of time with a member of the ship’s band that night, a man named Alister Douglas, nicknamed Yellow.

When authorities interviewed Yellow, he claimed that the last time he had seen Amy was around 1:00 a.m. after the show had ended. Suspicion landed squarely on him since he had been seen getting up close and personal with her, like grabbing Amy’s legs and buttocks.

But with no other evidence to refute his claim, and with it difficult to establish who was actually at the ship’s nightclub in those early morning hours, investigators and her family looked elsewhere. That is when Iva Bradley made a startling discovery.

When the Bradley family first arrived on board, a cruise photographer took their photo. When Amy’s mother returned later to retrieve the photograph, the same cruise photographer could not find it anywhere.

Was this incident a mere coincidence or perhaps an indication of a larger cover-up?

Through the investigation, the Bradley family discovered that there had been rumors of a slavery ring operating in the Caribbean, with particular value placed on white female women.

With no evidence of Amy having fallen overboard on the ship’s deck and no concrete evidence of her reaching land despite being a strong swimmer, Amy’s family concluded the most likely scenario was she had been abducted. And there have been numerous eyewitness accounts to back this up.

The first of these comes from a local taxi driver. He claimed that after Rhapsody of the Seas pulled into port, a frantic, single white female who looked frightened approached his cab.

She kept saying she needed a phone. However, thinking she was probably just a drunk tourist who had a bit too much to drink, he brushed her off, and she ran away.

The next sighting of her comes about five months later from vacationing Canadian engineer David Carmichael.

David claimed that in August 1998, he was sitting on a Curaçao beach when he saw a woman matching Amy’s description being escorted by two men. The woman looked frightened and wanted to talk to him. However, the two guys motioned her away.

While this purported sighting might not seem credible, what gave this account validity is that he was able to describe some of Amy’s distinctive tattoos.

Among these distinctive tattoos included a Tasmanian devil spinning a basketball on her shoulder, a Japanese sun on her lower back, a Chinese symbol on her right ankle, and a gecko by her belly button.

The chance of David Carmichael’s testimony being a coincidence is just too low. After all, how many women in Curacao are walking around with a Tasmanian devil tattoo on their shoulder?

The next purported sighting of Amy came in January 1999. The unidentified witness was a sailor in the US Navy at the time when his ship docked in Curacao.

During this port visit, he said he visited a local brothel. During that visit, a woman approached him and said her name was Amy, and she needed help. Like the cab driver, he brushed her off and saw another woman instead.