Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘Amy Bradley is Missing’ recounts the events surrounding the yet unsolved disappearance of Amy Bradley. She went missing on March 24, 1998, from the Royal Caribbean International cruise liner called ‘Rhapsody of the Seas.’ She was last seen by her father, Ron, at around 5:30 am, but was nowhere to be found half an hour later. The 23-year-old’s disappearance led the family and the investigators down a path that is yet to yield any results, but has given rise to many theories about what may or may not have happened to her over the course of the years.
The Hope of Amy Bradley’s Return was Kept Alive by the Sightings
One of the major reasons behind the enduring mystery of Amy Bradley’s disappearance is the fact that no remains have been found to confirm that she is dead. At first, the investigators believed that she may have fallen off the railing of the balcony where she was last seen by her father. However, the local officers, like the coast guard and the harbour police, believe that the currents around that part of the ocean are so strong that they would have brought the dead body, or at least some parts of it, to shore. While this is a compelling theory, there is another reason that Amy’s parents have been holding on to the hope of her return.
Over the years, as the case gained nationwide attention, several witnesses came forward to reveal that they had crossed paths with Amy at one point or another, supporting the theory that she might still be alive. The first person to mention a sighting was David Carmichael. According to him, in August 1998, he was at a popular diving beach in Curacao with his friend when a strange woman approached him. She came close enough for him to see her clearly, but before she could say anything, two men flanked her, one of whom looked pretty weirdly at Carmichael.
The diver says that he would have forgotten this experience if it weren’t for the weird man’s intense stare. He could sense that something was going on with the woman, and more interestingly, she seemed to be trying to show him her tattoos, one of which was a Tasmanian Devil. At the time, Carmichael didn’t think much of it, but it was later that he came across Amy Bradley’s case while watching a TV programme and immediately recognised her. He remembered the tattoo as well as the man, whom he identified as Alister “Yellow” Douglas.
The Sightings Point Towards a Dark and Tragic Fate for Amy Bradley
If this wasn’t enough to prove that Amy was still in Curacao, another sighting came forward a few years later. In 1999, Bill Hefner landed in Curacao. At the time, he was an officer in the US Navy and had two years left before he could retire. When he left his ship, he ventured into the darker parts of the town and ended up in a bar where he came across two women. As soon as one of them went away for a minute, the second one turned to him and said that her name was Amy Bradley and that she was trapped with some bad people. She asked him for help, while mentioning that she couldn’t just run away because the people she owed money to were too dangerous.
Hefner left the bar, but he didn’t report the incident. To begin with, he wasn’t yet aware of Amy Bradley’s case. Moreover, he felt that he could get in trouble if he spoke of this incident to someone because then he would be questioned about why he was in that area in the first place. It wasn’t until much later that he found out about the search for Amy Bradley. By now, he was already out of the Navy, so he didn’t have to worry about any repercussions on his career. So, he came forward with the information, though it didn’t lead to anything because the bar was long gone by now. Another major sighting reportedly happened in 2005. Judy Maurer and her husband were on a cruise of their own when their ship docked in Barbados.
They stepped out with the idea of buying souvenirs, and they ended up in a shopping mall. When Judy went to the bathroom, she was in a stall when she heard some people come in. She knew that it was one woman accompanied by men. The men were talking about some deal that was supposed to go down soon, and they warned the woman not to mess it up. When they left, Judy came out of the stall and found the girl still there. She tried to talk to the girl, who said her name was Amy from West Virginia. Before she could ask her anything more, the men were back in the scene. Scared about her own safety, Judy quickly left the scene, but the thought of that woman trapped with those dangerous men haunted her.
Later, when she watched the episode of Dr. Phil with the Bradleys on it, she realised that the woman she’d met in the bathroom was Amy Bradley. While she reported the sighting, it wasn’t enough to figure out where Amy could be. All of these things point to the fact that Amy was most likely abducted from her room and somehow ended up in the hands of human traffickers. With Yellow emerging as one of the, if not the, only suspects in the case, one can be inclined to believe that he, in association with one or more people on board the ship, was involved in capturing Amy, getting her out of the boat, and trafficking her.
Details from the Day of Amy’s Disappearance Appeared in New Light
The theory that Amy had been abducted and trafficked gained more traction when the Bradleys received an anonymous email with the link to a website focused on catering to sex workers in the Caribbean. One of the pictures on the site, which referred to a woman identified only as “Jas,” seemed strikingly similar to Amy, which led her parents and a lot of other people to believe that perhaps Amy really was still out there, though in some very bad circumstances. The more the Bradleys thought about it, the more plausible this seemed, especially after they looked back at certain events of the day, which they had brushed away as meaningless in the beginning.
For example, at first, they made a joke of how the staff on the cruise was particularly attentive to her. But in hindsight, this seemed a little weird. At one point, a waiter asked them if Amy would like to join him and his friends at a club on shore, an idea Amy immediately rejected. Then there is the case of a weird man whom Iva noticed lurking in the shadows and looking at her daughter. Later, when the family tried to get their pictures from the photographer, they discovered that the pictures had been stolen. The identity of the thief was never revealed, and it didn’t seem like much at the moment, but years later, as the Bradleys reflected on this, they became convinced that their daughter was marked by the bad guys and was abducted.
It is stuff like this that has kept their hope alive, but the desperation to get their daughter back has also led the Bradleys to trust some questionable people. At one point, they were duped by a man who claimed to be a former Navy SEAL and promised to bring their daughter back at all costs. He extorted hundreds of thousands of dollars out of them before his fraud was caught and he was punished by the authorities. Still, this and other attempts to scam them haven’t dampened the Bradley family’s hope for their daughter’s return. The FBI has kept the case open, with a reward of $25,000 offered for information that could bring Amy back. The family has also put up a considerable reward.
There is also a website dedicated to the case, courtesy of Anthony Willis, a true crime enthusiast who took a particular interest in it and compiled all the necessary information on the site. Willis also used the data from the website to determine that on holidays and birthdays, the site receives a lot of traffic from Barbados’ IP addresses. This has led the family and several others to believe that this is Amy checking up on her family, when she probably misses them the most, or someone is keeping tabs on the family and the ongoing investigation to ensure they aren’t caught. The problem is that despite having the IP addresses, there are no legal grounds for the authority to investigate them and find out where the website traffic is coming from.
Amy Bradley May Not be Alive Today
With no dead body and three sightings, it seems all but confirmed that Amy Bradley has become the victim of human and sex trafficking, and as long as she is alive, there is a possibility for her to come home someday. As much as everyone wants Amy’s safe return home, there is another possibility that might not seem so hopeful. Considering everything that has come out about the case so far and the years that have passed since Amy’s disappearance, there is a high possibility that she has passed away. She was 23 years old when she went missing, and if she was abducted and thrown into the dark world of trafficking, one cannot ignore the fact that it is too brutal a world for a person to survive in for a better part of three decades.
The accounts revealed by the witnesses confirm that Amy was caught up in a very bad situation, which seems to get worse from the time David Carmichael allegedly met her to the time Molly McClure says she crossed paths with her. One can only imagine the kind of people she would be surrounded with at all times, which makes the possibility of her survival pretty low. A more compelling argument suggesting that Amy has passed away is also the most plausible explanation of what might have happened that morning between 5:30 to 6:00 am.
To begin with, none of the sightings have been verified or led to any conclusive evidence that Amy was the person that the witnesses actually saw. Memory is a tricky thing, and the human mind is prone to latching on to the familiar and making people believe that they have seen a person who turned out to be someone else. Moreover, there have been cases where witnesses claimed to have seen the victim when it later turned out that the victim had died long ago. Since there is no objective proof to suggest that it was actually Amy, which brings us back to the balcony.
It must be noted that the night before, Amy had quite a lot to drink, much like everyone else on the ship. One could say it wasn’t more than what she had handled before, but it must be considered that she was drunk on a ship, which means that seasickness might also have factored into the equation. Supporting this theory are Brad Bradley’s words, where he revealed that when he stepped inside to hit the sack, his sister decided to stay behind in the fresh air. This means that she might have been feeling nauseous because of the alcohol and the ocean, and it makes sense that she did not want to be in a closed space.
Amy Bradley Most Likely Died Within the Half-Hour Window
The time window of when Ron Bradley last saw his daughter and when he woke up to realise that she was gone is pretty small for someone to enter the room, abduct Amy and get away with it would causing a fuss. Yes, the door was open, and the cigarettes and the lighter were missing, which suggests that Amy may have left the room. However, a greater possibility is that she woke up to have a smoke, felt nauseous, tried to puke over the railing, lost control, and fell off the ship. Even if she were an Olympic-level swimmer, trying to brave the ocean waves with a hangover is not an easy feat.
On top of that, there are other unforeseeable factors, like how she hit the water and whether she was sucked under the boat by an engine or some other force, that could have factored into her death. In fact, her fall might have been the thing that suddenly woke her father at 6 am. The investigators initially considered this theory, that she either fell or jumped. The possibility of her jumping to her death willingly was brushed aside by her family and friends because, according to them, she had no reason to die and every reason to live. She was on the verge of starting a new chapter of her life, which she was excited about. So, there is no reason to believe that she jumped of her own volition or walked out of the boat with no intention of returning to her family. This gives even more ground to the fact that she may have fallen off.
One could say that her body should have been found if she fell in the ocean, but again, there are too many factors outside of one’s purview that could have impacted the reason why none of her remains washed ashore. Or maybe, they did come up but were not found. In the same vein, there is a chance that she left the cabin to meet someone, was killed by them (accidentally or not), and then thrown overboard by the killer. This opens another can of worms, which is why the most probable thing to have happened is for her to have involuntarily fallen from the balcony of her cabin, never to be seen again.
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