Transcript of The Disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley New

Hey weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Alayna, and this is Morbid in Me. This is Morbid.

Early morning afternoon.

Exactly, it's brunch, Morbid.

Early afternoon.

Yeah, it's—

oh, I would love some brunch right now.

Me too, I'm really hungry.

Yeah, she just said at 11:30 AM, not even that she wants a burrito.

Yeah, there's— honestly, burritos are for any time because there's also breakfast burritos.

I was actually just going to say, I was like, you know what, that is valid because breakfast burritos are in fact a thing.

So saying burrito could all-encompassing, really space and time. Oh, and I really want one.

My mouth is kind of watering now.

I want a burrito.

Maybe we can get them for lunch.

I might get a burrito. Okay, girl, maybe I'll order one while you're talking.

Are you going to get Taco Bell?

Maybe.

I cannot get Taco Bell.

Burritos Sick nasty.

We've been eating so much fast food lately. I know, my stomach is like, bitch, would you just eat a vegetable? Cuz I also just moved and I don't have an oven right now, so it's like takeout. Oh my God, I— breakfast, lunch, dinner, takeout, takeout, takeout. Like, my— I'm not functioning. Every food that I'm eating right now is beige. It's not good. You're like a toddler. No, I'm on a beige toddler diet.

Damn. No bueno. No way.

You know what I did get last night?

What?

If you're from like, I think it is the 99 only a New England thing.

No, I think it is. Is it?

I think it might be. I think it was invented in Boston. Not invented, but you know what I'm saying.

Headquarters is Woburn. Woburn.

Yeah, I got the 99 last night. If you're ever in the East Coast area, in New England in specific, You got to get the $9.99.

I got—

you can get a side of a biscuit and gravy.

Oh damn.

So it was so beige and so delicious. That's so beige. And then I got the Gold Fever wings, which are kind of orange.

No, the Gold Fever wings and their buffalo wings are A+.

Next motherfucking level.

So good.

Yeah, so good.

Recommend.

And then I— oh, and I got sweet potato fries. Oh, I went nuts. Yeah, yeah.

See that color in there?

That's me eating.

And that's a sweet potato.

Yeah, period.

So there you go. So they say. Sure.

Yeah, it was a sweet potato at some point. Number one. But I can't wait until my oven gets delivered and I can cook in it.

Yeah.

And like eat. I was like, Drew, we need vegetables so badly. And he was like, no, he was like, we really do. I'm gonna be making the most delicious home-cooked shit.

Hell yeah. Yeah.

So that's a little about me.

So yeah, go to the 99. You need to eat better food right now. And is there a 99 in New York?

New York City? Because maybe you could go to the 99 if you come see us at Radio City Music Hall.

I was— that was a good segue. I don't think there is one in the New York area, but if you road trip, yeah, from somewhere, you can stop it.

You could stop at Massachusetts and you're bound to find a 99. Yeah, the 99 Restaurant, great meal, great deal. Oh, the best. We would like go there like, like after, before dances all the time. Oh, just so good.

Yeah, so good. And they have like kids eat free if the Red Sox win.

It's the most— it truly is. I was like, this is such a New England thing.

Like, for sure, that makes sense. Uh, but yeah, come to our New York show at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Tickets left that you could purchase.

It's, um, it's one night only.

One night only. We just are about to finalize merch. Yeah, and there is some good shit. We got you guys options.

I'm actually really excited for the merch.

I'm stoked. And it's gonna be a fun time.

It's gonna cool atmosphere. We're going to make it very fun, very, you know, interactive. Yes, all that good stuff. So do it, it's going to be fun.

And don't forget, we also— not to like make this like super businessy, but we also just dropped a shit ton of merch. Um, you can get that on the SiriusXM store, or if you're international, on Pod Swag. Yeah, yeah, I was looking at my—

Pod Swag? Pod Swag?

The links are in our bio on Insta.

Yeah, it's some fun stuff.

Fun stuff. Also, somebody is mowing the lawn, so hopefully you don't hear that.

And also, uh, if you want a signed edition of The Butcher Legacy, because some of you— oh, I had a hiccup. Some of you were looking—

you looked surprised. You were like, if you want a signed edition— I was like, is this part of the bit?

No, it's a hiccup snuck up on me.

You're funny.

Uh, but I know some people were looking for signed copies because they ran out at Barnes Noble for now. Um, for now, there's a limited run of signed copies. They are signed. Like, I'm signing them in the pod lab, period, of The Butcher Legacy. That's going to be on premiercollectibles.com/butcher. The link is in our bio. Go get them.

Get them.

And if you go, go preorder them and then I'll try to sign more if you want more. Yeah. So keep, keep preordering them and I'll keep signing them.

And either way, buy the book because if not, you might be a loser.

Do it. Yeah.

Do it, do it, do it.

Okay, people like Patricia Cornwell and Richard Chismar liked it.

That's the thing, like, don't you want to be at the same table as them? I do. So let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. Exactly, back to our softball days.

There you go.

Okay, all right, to bring it to a place of morbid, we are going to be talking about a very famous case. I would be surprised if a lot of people hadn't heard about this one. I think most of you probably have. Um, this is the disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley. Yes, I actually— the first time that I heard about this disappearance was around like last year sometime when the documentary came out, and I devoured all 3 parts of this. And I find this case just to be like— I got so sucked in.

It is a crazy case.

I just have to say off the bat, right off the bat, I do not believe that she jumped off or fell off the boat at all.

I don't either.

I do not believe it in any way, shape, or form. And I honestly, like, I respect everybody's opinion and like, everybody have your own, but I don't know how anybody could think that she did.

I respect your opinion, but it just— what the fuck?

That's the thing.

Yeah.

So let's get into it. And if you don't know this story, hold on to your butt because this is twisty and turny.

A true hold on to your butt moment. It is.

So we're gonna start off in the winter of 1998 when Ron Bradley, who's Amy's father, got a pretty surprising phone call at his home office where he worked as an insurance insurance agent. As it turned out, he was one of the top 35 agents with the company who sold over $145,000 that year in premiums.

Look at that.

So they said, honey, guess what? You have won an all-expense-paid family cruise on Royal Caribbean.

Damn.

Yeah.

Good for him.

I know, right? Okay. Ron, snap, snap.

Yeah.

And now here's the thing too. That call could not have come at a better time. It had been a super dark, super cold winter in Virginia. So Ron and his wife Iva saw the cruise as one last opportunity to take a vacation with their kids because their kids were getting older. They were about to start living their own lives, strike out on their own. At the time that, like I'm saying right now, the dynamic of their family was starting to shift a little bit. Their daughter, 23-year-old Amy, had just graduated college and moved into her own apartment, and their son, 21-year-old Brad, was also just about to finish college. By the way, Brad, his, uh, he's Ron Jr., but he goes by Brad. Okay, so Brad is not his first name. Brad Bradley. Brad Bradley. That's his middle name.

Oh, good call.

Yeah. So the Bradleys, they'd always been a really close family. So while everybody was very excited for Brad and Amy to start these new chapters in their lives, the shift into adulthood was a little bit bittersweet for their parents. There were just 2 years between Amy and Brad, so they had been best friends their entire lives. And whether it was neighborhood basketball games or the school swim team, they were both incredible athletes. They both loved sports growing up. They were really, really good at pretty much all of the ones that they tried, but it was Amy who managed to leverage her success into something more than just a hobby. Her mom, Iva, said Amy was the only girl on the boys' basketball team, and she always had a tremendous amount of confidence because we raised her that there really wasn't anything she couldn't do if she wanted to do it.

Hell yeah. Which is how you should raise your kids.

Hell yeah. So after graduating from L.C. Byrd High School in 1993, Amy got a full scholarship to play basketball for Longwood University. In Farmville, Virginia. And at that time— this is crazy— she was the only student in the school's history to ever receive a full athletic scholarship. Holy shit. Yeah, like, school's history. Can you imagine that being your kid?

No.

Like, the level of proud that you would be.

Yeah.

So after graduating college in 1998, Amy had a lot to look forward to. She had a job lined up for herself. She was going to be working with her uncle at his electronics company. She, like I said, had moved into her own apartment, and she got a brand new bulldog that she named Bailey. Bailey, the dog named Bailey. There's pictures of Bailey. She's so cute. Things did get a little tense between her and her parents when Amy came out as bisexual a few years earlier, but they had really worked on their relationship. They had talked a lot about this, and they were easing into this new relationship with Amy as an adult being able to make her own decisions. Now, when Brad and Amy heard about the free Caribbean cruise, they said, hell yeah, let's have one last big family vacation. Like, that's gonna be awesome.

Yeah, why not?

But while Amy was excited, she did have some reservations about being on a boat.

Ooh.

She was a champion swimmer on her high school team, and she also served as an assistant to the swim coach at Longwood. But she found the idea of being out on the open ocean a little more frightening than just like your typical body of water.

I understand that cuz I also had that same fear.

Yeah. Being out in the middle of nowhere is when you're on a cruise and you just look out into the vastness of the ocean and you don't see any land for as far as your eye can see. That's a freaky feeling.

Yeah, I have a healthy respect and a healthy fear of the ocean. Same.

And you guys don't fuck with that. Yeah, absolutely not. And also, like, whenever you look over the balcony, it's just like the freakiest feeling in the world. And you get that weird, like, um, it's called something, like, it's like a sensation or like intrusive thought.

It's like intrusive thoughts that, like, literally you're like, what if I just fell? Right, or like, what if I just jumped? Yeah, like, ah, like you're not going to, but you're like, oh my God, it's that weird like primitive like psychological thing in your brain that's like when you're holding like a knife chopping something and you're like, what if I just chopped off my hand? Like, why do we do that?

Because we're weird creatures.

We are.

Now, according to journalist Richard Foster, Amy, quote, wasn't crazy about swimming in the ocean. Mainly she was afraid of what else might be swimming in it.

Honestly, it's so very fair.

I think she was super valid in all of these fears.

Yeah, very valid fear.

Fortunately, though, Brad stepped in and convinced Amy that cruise ships were incredibly safe and the trip would be fun. So she agreed. And that's the thing. They're supposed to be very safe.

Yeah.

But the ocean is lawless.

But like, why would anyone think something like this would happen? You know, like you go on a cruise, it's supposed to just be a fun time.

That's the thing. And you also have to think this was the '90s. Like we don't have— I feel like now there's a lot more stories that come out about things that happen on cruise ships. Boats, but yeah, there weren't as many back.

No, definitely not.

So a week before they set sail, Amy and her mom and her Aunt Mary, they all went out shopping. They got their hair, their nails done together, and while they sat together getting their nails done, Amy told her aunt how excited she was to go on this trip, which was going to start in San Juan and then it would take them to Aruba, Curaçao, and St. Martin and St. Thomas, and then it would return back to Puerto Rico. She also told her aunt how excited she was to get home and start working with her Uncle Mike when she got back. And at the time she was, um, just waiting tables at a steakhouse. So this new job, it really felt like she was finally taking a step in her professional life.

Yeah.

Starting to build it.

Hell yeah.

So things to look forward to. That's the, the key here to remember.

Yeah.

At 7:00 AM on March 21st, Amy and Brad boarded a flight at Richmond International, and about 5 hours later they met their parents in Puerto Rico. They all spent the night in Puerto Rico before they boarded the gigantic ship that was the Rhapsody of the Seas. They spent the afternoon before that, Amy and Brad together, walking through the neighborhoods of San Juan, and Amy bought a bunch of rolls of film and postcards to send back home. I think she also was in a photo competition, or she was going to enter one from like the pictures that she was taking.

Oh, okay.

Now the next morning, the Bradley family arrived at the dock and they were stunned by how huge this ship was. The ship was 11 stories high and over 900 feet long.

Holy shit.

And on this particular voyage, it was going to be carrying over 2,000 guests and more than 1,000 employees.

Whoa.

So this is like a city on the sea.

Yeah. A village on the sea.

Yeah. So the Bradleys opted to share a single cabin on the 10th floor with a private balcony overlooking the ocean. Very lovely. But it was a smaller room. Now the first couple of days on the ship passed pretty casually. They were doing cruise things. There was dinner and drinks by the pool, dancing in the nightclubs. Amy and her mom went to an art auction. Just, you've been on a cruise, you know.

Yeah.

Cruise life.

Cruise life.

Cruise life, baby. Now on March 23rd, the ship docked in Aruba and the passengers disembarked to spend some time on the island. After spending some time shopping in the downtown area, the family decided to skip the guided tour and instead they rented a Jeep to explore the island on their own. This did not turn out to be an awesome decision because they found themselves kind of lost at one point.

Oh damn.

But eventually they found their way back to civilization and they decided to spend the rest of the day at the beach not too far from the boat. Ron even managed to convince Amy to join him in the water. And remember, like, she does not like swimming in the ocean, uh, so she was just kind of clinging to him the entire time. But it was like a cute little memory that they had together. So back on the boat that night, everybody went back to the cabin to shower and change for what was going to be the formal dinner. There's always a formal dinner when you're on a cruise.

Of course you get— is it the captain dinner?

I think it is. It's something like that. You get all dolled up. The men wear tuxedos, you wear gowns. And that was sort of the point. So they get to this dinner, and that was sort of the point where Ron and Iva started to notice how much attention Amy seemed to attract on the ship wherever she went. After dinner, they were having drinks with one of Ron's business associates who was also on the cruise, and a waiter came up to them. And earlier that— they recognized him because earlier that night they'd seen him talking to Amy, and he seemed to just be gushing over her. He came over though and asked her parents to see if Amy wanted to join him and some of the other crew members that night at a bar, Carlos and Charlie's. That might sound familiar.

I was just gonna say, why does that sound familiar?

Because coincidentally, that was the last place that Natalie Holloway was seen. Wow, that—

as soon as you said that, I was like, I, I like looked up at you like, wait, yeah, do I know this?

Isn't that chilling?

That's really chilling.

That hadn't happened yet, obviously, but Carlos and Charlie's would become famous for that. I think it's closed now. Um, so Iva passed along the message to Amy, but Amy was like, hell no, I'm not getting off the boat with like a bunch of people I don't know. No, absolutely not. She was kind of weirded out too at this point by all the attention she was receiving. At the more formal dinner earlier that night, the staff had been so attentive to her that her family actually started to joke that if anybody needed anything, they should just say that Amy needed it and it would be there like in the blink of an eye. Yeah, like it was over the top.

And it's like, what's going on here?

Exactly.

That would make me uncomfortable.

Yeah, well, this would make you even more uncomfortable. They ran into another weird occurrence that night when Amy and her mom Iva went down to the photo area to pick up some pictures that they, they had taken earlier that night. Because remember, they're all dressed up. I think Amy was in like this black spaghetti top, um, like dress. Yeah, you know, she looks all nice. And Brad was dressed up, so they took pictures together, and then Amy took some just on her own. But when they got to the shelf where their pictures should have been, they were gone.

What the fuck?

Yeah.

This would alarm me in a big way.

Yeah. And you have to—

when you put it together with all the attention.

That's the thing.

I just feel like, what's going on?

It was unsettling for sure. So they thought it— they definitely thought it was weird, but they were like, okay, like, can you just reprint them? And the attendant was like, yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

But looking back on it, Iva remembered yet another weird occurrence that same night at dinner. A man was just staring at their table. And at first she thought he was staring at their family, and then she realized he was just intently staring at Amy. So this guy's just staring so intensely at their table that Iva put out her hands and basically was like, what do you want? Like, hello? Like kind of looking at the guy like, what? But she, the group was getting up from the table and as she bent down to get her, her purse or whatever she had, she looked up and the guy was gone. Okay. Now looking back after Amy's disappearance, those were all blazing red flags.

Yeah. But during it. Obviously it's much easier in hindsight. Exactly.

In the moment, those things didn't seem as dire. They just seemed like— also, like, no offense, you run into weird people on cruise ships. Of course you do, because you run into weird people in life.

Anywhere that a bunch of people are gathered, you're gonna get a whole fucking crop of strangers.

Yeah, you got a medley of weird-ass people that it's like, unfortunately, just human. I met a woman on an elevator one night on a cruise, and she was literally just staring at my tattoo, and then she finally said, 'Who's that?' And I told her she should have said, 'It's you.' I wish I had.

And then just stared at her the rest of the time until she left. I would— missed opportunity.

I was just like, uh, it's just a lady. It's you. Like, what?

I don't know.

She was like, 'Oh, it's not anybody.' I was like, 'Just stop talking to me.

Just stop it.' I'd be like, 'I've been waiting to meet you.' Oh my God, you're so weird. Thank you for coming.

You are inherently such a weird girl. Like, I'm pretty weird, and like like obnoxious, I would say, but you're just deep down a weird bitch, and I, and I love that.

You are correct. I love it. You are very correct.

So, but yeah, you, you meet weird people and you see weird things going on, so you're just like, I don't know, like, I'm gonna stick to myself.

Yeah.

So the night went on, and their parents relaxed after dinner with some drinks, and Amy and Brad changed into more comfortable clothes, and then they went to the casino. They played some slot machines, and then they went to the top deck for the Calypso party, which featured the house Blue Orchid.

Okay.

Nancy and Ron finally made their way up to that deck and they found Amy and Brad in the middle of this big limbo contest going on. Uh, Brad eventually won the contest.

Hell yeah, Brad.

And he gave his crown to Amy. It was literally like a prom king crown.

Oh, that's cute.

So they were just like really having a nice time together.

Yeah, just doing the cruise thing, man.

Yeah. Now while they were at the party, like on this top deck, the boat was leaving Aruba and heading to Curaçao. Curaçao, excuse me. So Brad chatted with some of the other passengers after the limbo competition. They were like, hey, limbo king.

Hey, limbo king.

And Amy struck up a conversation with Blue Orchid's bass player, a man named Alistair Douglas, and his nickname was Yellow.

Okay.

So she danced with him for a while. They chatted, whatever. Around 1 AM, Ron and Iva were like, hey, we're going to bed for the night. And a few hours later, Brad headed back to the cabin alone, but he had motioned to Amy that like he was going to go down. Like she knew that she was by herself.

Yeah.

And she was just finishing her drink on the top deck. So she got back to the room about half an hour later, and she and Brad decided to have one more drink together on the balcony before calling it a night. So they're back at their cabin, but in their— on their private balcony.

Okay.

So they, they're drinking, they're looking out at the ocean. They talked about their plans for the next day, about what they were gonna do when they got home. Amy did mention during this conversation that Alistair Douglas from the band had made a pass at her while they were dancing.

Oh.

Which like, I think she didn't— she wasn't super comfortable with that, but she wasn't super upset either.

She was just kind of like, yeah, I'm not into it.

But I did whatever. What the hell? Kind of just like people on the ship are wild, kind of. Yeah.

You know, like they need to chill the fuck out.

Now, a short time later, just before 5 a.m., Brad finally ran out of steam and he was like, okay, I'm going inside.

Damn.

So he said goodnight to his sister. He said he loved her and he would see her the next day. And she was like, okay, I'm going to be in shortly. But she wasn't feeling great, so she wanted to just experience some more fresh air.

Yeah.

Before she went into bed. So again, he said, love you, see you in the morning. And that was the last time anybody in their family spoke to Amy.

What the fuck?

So the noise of Brad coming back into the cabin woke Ron up very briefly from his sleep. And without sitting up, he just glanced around the room to kind of check in on things.

Yeah.

And he checked out on the balcony and he saw Amy's legs and her drink in her hand. So he knew she was out there just sitting there.

Yep.

He was very comforted by the fact that both of his children were back at the cabin, so he went back to sleep. And he said later, it seemed like just a few minutes, and then something woke me up again close to 6 AM, and I looked out on the balcony and Amy wasn't there.

Okay.

So he looked over and he saw Brad sleeping in his bed. But remember, this is a very small room. He's scanning the room and Amy's nowhere to be seen. At first, none of this struck him as that unusual because he saw that Amy's yellow polo she was wearing the night before was laying on the chair in the room. He saw that the balcony door was slightly open and her cigarettes weren't out there. So he was like, okay, maybe she got dressed, went upstairs to grab a coffee or take some pictures as we pulled into port in Curaçao.

Yeah.

So who knows? So he got dressed himself and headed out to find Amy. He checked all the places he might have found her, but he didn't find her in any of them. So then he started to grow a little more concerned and he started to wander the ship's outer decks, the hallways, other open spaces, hoping just to bump into her. But after an hour, he still hadn't found her and his concern was now growing into panic. It was not like Amy to just wander off without telling anybody where she was going.

Yeah.

And Ron was sure that if she was planning to go somewhere that morning, she would have told him or her mom. So walking back to the cabin, he actually ended up running into the ship's head of security and explained that he couldn't find his daughter. The security officer tried to calm him down. He was like, this is a big ship. This kind of thing happens, but I will help you look for her. Like, what does she look like? Let's check it out. So they looked around. They didn't find her. So Ron went back to the cabin and he woke up Brad and Iva. He didn't want to scare them, he just wanted to let them know that he needed help trying to find Amy. But he apparently was not very good at hiding his own concern, which I don't blame him. No. Iva said later too, I've known him since I was 13. I've known him 32 years and I've never seen him look like he looked. I didn't have any idea what was wrong. He just said, I can't find Amy.

Because the pan— and it's like, at first they were chill about it because it's like, she's 23 years old. Yeah, it's not like this is like a 7-year-old that is now not in your room, you know what I So at first it's like, okay, yeah, like they're 23, whatever.

Her cigarettes are gone. Maybe she went to get a coffee.

Yeah. But then walking around the ship and still not finding her and having security help, like, I can't imagine that sudden realization of like, oh shit.

Well, and then over the course of a couple hours, like that's starting to set in that you're still not finding her.

Yeah.

That must feel like you're trapped in it in there.

Oh, that makes my stomach hurt.

So the family threw on some clothes and they went to speak with one of the senior administrators on the ship to report what was going on. And to ask if somebody else could help them look for Amy. It was very clear that the family was pretty distraught, but the admin didn't seem super concerned. They didn't suspect foul play and they were like, Amy probably just went off to explore the ship. So there's no reason to be that worried. He explained it was still very early and that the family at this point was like, can you just make an announcement? Like, hey, where Amy, if you're on the ship, come to this area.

Please come to this part.

But they didn't want to make any announcements that would unduly alarm the other passengers. And they felt like it was too early to do that. To do so.

Here's the thing, that's stupid as fuck. Yeah, that's just objectively stupid as fuck. Yeah, because it's not gonna alarm the other passengers in a way that is detrimental to have them keeping an eye out for someone you can't find.

Exactly.

This person isn't dangerous. It's not like you're saying like, hey, hello passengers, there's a psychotic serial killer that's running around, can you keep an eye out for him?

Right.

No, you're being like, hey, there's this girl, her name is Amy, This is what she looks like. We're just looking for her.

Yeah.

Can you keep an eye out? Exactly. If you see her, tell her we're looking.

Exactly.

That wouldn't stress me out as a passenger. I'd more be like, oh, I want to keep an eye out for this lady.

That's the thing. It would help people be vigilant.

And people on a cruise, I feel like they get all like familia, you know what I mean? Yeah, you do. Like they all feel like they're on this like community together.

It's true. You make friends with people.

You get these people looking for something.

They're going to find— They're going to look for her. Yeah, they're going to find someone.

Like I've heard things like this happen before. Like they'll look out. So it's like, I think that's the part of this case that drives me the craziest.

Yeah, there's a, there's a lot. So they just refused to do it.

They—

and the thing is, I was just saying, I was saying to Alina before we started this, when I watched the documentary, there was a woman in the— in it who, she lost her daughter on a cruise ship and she became like an advocate for families that go through things like this and like an advocate for cruise, uh, cruise safety.

Yeah.

And she was saying when you're on a ship like this, there's— you're in the middle of international water, so there's no police or anything like that. The best you have is the security on the ship, but they're hired by the cruise line.

So it's like, it's all It's tough. Yeah, that's tough.

So discouraged and frustrated, the Bradleys just went off on their own and kept looking for Amy.

Yeah.

Ron and Iva searched the outer decks, and Brad went to the pool to ask the other passengers around if they had seen Amy. At one point, he was sitting at a table just kind of like thinking over what was going on and what to do next, and he was approached by Alistair Douglas, the bass player from the night before who had made a pass on Amy, and she had mentioned it. Alister came by and told Brad he was sorry to hear about his sister and asked what happened. And he also said he was feeling guilty. The comment didn't necessarily register with Brad at the time because he was just so anxious in the moment.

Yeah.

But he said later, I was just kind of overwhelmed by the thoughts I was having and I was just like, yeah, you know, thanks. But later after they were off the ship, he realized the announcement about Amy hadn't gone out over the loudspeaker yet.

Yeah.

So it seemed weird that Alister already knew Amy was missing.

Sure is weird.

Yeah, he comes up in this a lot. Now, when a few hours had passed and they still hadn't found Amy, they went back to the admin desk and insisted, you need to make some kind of announcement.

Yeah.

And finally they did, but kind of begrudgingly. So they waited at the desk hoping that Amy would have heard the announcement and would meet them there. And another message came over the loudspeaker that they were— they were about to be docking in Curaçao very shortly. So the message sent a jolt of panic through Iva And her mind went to the worst possible scenario.

Of course.

If someone had taken Amy and was like hiding her in their room or something like that, allowing everybody to disembark the boat would give them the opportunity to get away and they might lose their daughter forever. Of course. But the admin on the boat wouldn't listen and they were like, we had a bunch of other paying customers and we can't disrupt their vacation, so we're allowing them off the boat.

We can't disrupt their vacation for a possible, like, for a missing person. This is where I'm talking like the lack of humanity that we have because it's money is really gross.

It is really gross.

And it really is like all money because it's like, well, they paid for this. And it's like, yeah, okay, personally I don't give a shit. If I found out a family is missing their daughter, I'd be happy to stay. I'd be happy to stay on the boat a little longer.

I'd be happy to stay on the boat, which offers endless entertainment. The other thing, it's not like just a boat. You can go to the casino, you can go see a show, you can get a spa treatment. Like, there is a myriad of everything at your disposal. Fuck off.

That's the thing. It's like, it's not like you're dooming these people to a shitty vacation.

Come on.

Because I have to stay on the, the floating city, literally, for a couple more hours. Exactly. I just think it's like the way this was handled was so callous. It was the idea that like they are literally missing a member of their family. This would piss me off if I was outside of this family on that, on that ship, because I feel like You were letting me go about my life and like letting me jump off this ship and then get back on. Yeah. With a potential dangerous person.

Yeah.

On there.

Exactly.

You didn't warn any of us. Yeah, I'd be pissed too. I'd be pissed. You're not worried at all about your reputation here?

Yeah.

Like on like the, the gnarliest level, you're not worried about your reputation?

Right. Exactly. Like, damn. Now later when they were interviewed by the American authorities, officials from Royal Caribbean told investigators that They didn't believe any crime had been committed and they were very convinced that Amy was still on the ship. So they said there was no reason to keep everybody on board.

Okay. I mean, it's like, you don't know that.

Well, it's like, did your gut feeling tell you that? On what basis? You just didn't believe them?

That's the thing. Like, I don't— I know it's like not obvious that a crime has been committed here. Like you don't have—

But it's also not physical evidence that says something happened here.

Like, there's no—

you have a missing woman.

That's the thing. But then, but you do have circumstantial evidence that's saying something happened here.

And also, it's not like she— like, this was a concern at 7 AM and then you found her and you— when everybody went on their merry way. She's been missing since, since 6 AM. It's now hours later.

That's the thing.

And you've had people help the family search. The family's been searching and she's nowhere.

Like, like, that should—

I think something happened here.

That should ring a little bit like, hey, maybe we should start locking stuff down a little bit and figure it out.

Obviously, like, there's a lot that goes into it that we're not even aware of, I'm sure. But it's hard to— it's hard to say.

It makes it like, come on.

Exactly. So hoping to appease the family while the passengers were off exploring the island, the captain did agree to gather the security crew and search the ship from top to bottom. And he assured the family that if Amy was still on board, they would find her. Okay, now the thing here is that the family was basically told to go sit in their room and wait, so they really didn't have any way of knowing if the ship really was searched top to bottom, which is a little tough. I'm not here to say that they didn't, but I'm— I also can't promise that they did. And you can understand that the family would be a little like, oh yeah, I would want to be following along. Yeah. And I'm sure they did. So they waited anxiously, hoping that the ship staff would find Amy. But several hours later, after they said they searched every inch of the ship, the captain returned to the family and said they didn't find Amy anywhere. Now, they couldn't keep the ship docked any longer than planned because remember, the ship is going to other islands.

Yeah.

So the captain gave the Bradleys two options. They could get back on the ship and leave with the boat, or they could stay in Curaçao to look for Amy there. Not really knowing what to do or even where to look for Amy at this point, they chose to stay on the island.

Okay.

So Royal Caribbean did pay for their hotel and Ron's friend and coworker Mike and his wife also stayed behind on the island to just try to help. Yeah. Now, now completely alone on the island other than their, their family and their friend here, Ron, Iva, and Brad did not know at all where to begin.

Yeah.

So Ron later said, when they put us off on the island, we didn't have any instructions. It was just, you're off the ship, so you kind of have to fend for yourself. Health. So they checked into the Otra Banda, which is a casino hotel on the island, and then they went straight to the American Embassy to explain what happened.

Smart.

Which is a really smart first step. It was the first time that somebody took their concerns seriously that day, but they were very disheartened by the response. It is incredibly rare, but passengers do go missing from cruise ships, usually by jumping or by falling overboard, and that's what the staff at the embassy believed happened to Amy. They said either she jumped or she fell, most likely.

Which obviously you can understand why that would be a first thought.

Well, it's the—

from people who don't know her, unfortunately.

Like, exactly, from people who don't know her, it is the most logical thought.

Of course, because what else are you thinking? You know, like, there's, there's very little other options here, right?

So at 6 AM the following morning, embassy security coordinated with local officials and started developing a grid using the ship's coordinates between the last time that Amy was seen and when she was discovered missing. So this was really interesting. Yeah, they used 3 helicopters, a British warship, several low-flying planes, several small boats. Like, the Navy was involved here. It was intense.

Yeah.

So they searched that whole area where the boat had been, like that whole grid area. But by the end of the afternoon, there was still no sign of Amy whatsoever. And the thing is, in that area, the current is really strong. So had she jumped off the boat or been pushed off the boat, it was likely that she would wash up at some point because of how strong the current is, especially like where it would have happened. So the fact that she never has is very interesting. Now, having little success with the local authorities and virtually none with the ship's captain, the next morning Ron called his brother in the US and had his brother get in touch with the FBI to report Amy's disappearance. And that's when the investigation truly got moving. But at that point it's 2 days later. Yeah, we've all seen the first 48.

Yeah.

So a liaison from the FBI got in touch with the captain of the ship, and several agents along with the Bradleys ended up flying to St. Martin to reboard the ship. Oh wow. So the involvement of the FBI made the ship's captain and Royal Caribbean much more cooperative, but because they were docked in foreign territory, the FBI didn't have jurisdiction. Oh And they weren't able to make all the demands that they might have been able to make if they were on our soil. But still, the captain agreed to let two agents board the ship to conduct interviews as long as they were inconspicuous and dressed in regular clothing.

We're so worried about freaking everyone out here.

They, they really were.

They really were. I'm not a cruiser, so I don't know the ins and outs of this, but I mean, obviously it's going to create some kind of spectacle.

But at the same time, like you said earlier, maybe if I find out the situation, I would be happy that the FBI was involved.

Yeah, I'd be like, I want to look for this girl.

But on the other hand, I obviously can see how it might lead to like mass pandemonium with people wanting to get the fuck off that ship.

It's a double-edged sword. So I can see that side because you don't want the mass chaos, but you also want people being informed, right? And being able— because also, is some— is a dangerous person on the ship?

Well, I think that's the biggest thing. Exactly.

Yeah, more alert here.

It's, it's messy.

It is.

So FBI agents immediately searched the Bradley family room and they started interviewing the staff and the passengers on the ship. Up speaking to as many as the almost, or maybe over, 3,000 people on board as they could.

Wow.

One major issue that they ran into immediately was that the cabin the family was staying in had already been cleaned.

Oh yeah.

So any hope of finding any evidence was gone. It was unlikely, obviously, because the entire family was in the cabin at the time that Amy probably disappeared, but still, you might be able to find something on the, on the balcony even.

Yeah, I mean, anytime you're missing a piece piece of the puzzle now, it makes it 100,000 times harder.

It does, exactly. One thing was that Amy's shoes, her Birkenstock sandals, or Birkenstock style, were still out on the dock— or out on the, uh, balcony. The balcony, thank you. Now, in interviewing a group that size, they actually were surprised that several people remembered seeing Amy the night that she went missing. Uh, most of the passengers in the dance club that night remembered seeing her with Alistair Douglas, the bass player. Including two young women who remembered seeing the two of them together in the elevator. And they weren't completely sure about the time, but they were fairly confident that it was after 4 AM and before sunrise.

Okay.

Now that was significant because the last time that Amy used her key card to get into the family cabin was 3:40 AM, and her father had last seen her out on the balcony sometime around 5 AM.

Okay.

So the fact that these two girls think they saw her between 4 and sunrise. Yeah, means she could have left the room. Yeah, and been seen without—

been bopping around, right?

So after conducting countless interviews, the one solid lead that agents had was that Amy had been spotted with Alister. So they brought him up to the captain's office for an interview. This is where it gets a little weird. Okay, he acknowledged that he spoke to Amy on the night of the party, but he denied having been with her in the early morning hours, and he said he knew nothing about her disappearance. Which is weird because if you remember, he approached her brother and said he was sorry to hear about it and he was feeling kind of guilty.

Huh.

Yeah. According to Douglas though, he said they danced, they talked for a while that evening, but that was that. And he agreed and ultimately passed a polygraph examination, which like, you know how we feel about that—

hot dog in a trench coat.

But because of that, he was ruled out as a suspect. But when he left the office after the interview he was seen smiling and giving thumbs up to his friends and bandmates. Like, oh, went well.

Like, did it? Yeah. Like, I mean, like, did it? Like, passed it?

Yeah. Which, that's the thing, it could be like, whoo, like, we're in the clear. Like, I have nothing to do with this and I'm so relieved. Or it could be like, hey, I had something to do with this and like, hell yeah, I just got out of it. Yeah, it could be either two.

It could, like, it could be like, like, looked at as either of those two things.

Exactly. So when agents finished up their investigation on the ship by the next morning, they were not any closer. To finding Amy than they had been when they boarded the previous day. So with nothing else to do on the ship, the agents and the Bradley family disembarked the boat for the last time without their daughter.

Oh man.

Iva said later, none of us wanted to leave. That's one of the single most difficult things. I don't really have words to describe what it was like to leave as I flew over the island and I didn't have Amy beside me.

Oh, that's horrific.

My whole entire body just got chills. Like, you flew there together and you had all this time together on the cruise and then suddenly she's just gone. Yeah, and you have to go home without her. And now you just go home and like live and you're like, is she on an island? Is she like—

where is she? She could be in the middle of the ocean. Like, what's going on, right?

So based on what little they learned on the ship, the agents didn't quite know what to make of this situation. On one hand, they did know, like we've been saying, that most cruise ship disappearances are the result of accidental death or sometimes suicide. But on the other hand, the family insisted that Amy's fear of the ocean meant she never would have gone close enough to the railing to even fall overboard.

Yeah.

And on top of that, her psychological profile was that of somebody future-oriented with healthy supports, a positive outlook on life. She's going home to all these different opportunities. She didn't necessarily match the profile of somebody who was depressed and considering ending things.

Yeah. And she was— she went into this being concerned. About the ocean.

That's exactly right.

That's not someone who, who's gonna jump into the ocean.

Yeah, there was this, this— I think this is insane, but there was this rumor that she was telling people at a party while she was on the cruise that she was gonna, uh, jump into the water and try to outswim the boat to the dock, like the next dock, which, like— but I think that's just people talking shit because if you remember, one, like you just said, she was terrified of the ocean anyways.

Yeah.

And two, at the beach she was literally clinging to her dad, like, afraid terrified. I just think that's like, yeah, what? But that's the thing here is like you interview all these people and you start hearing all these different things, so it does influence the investigation.

Oh yeah, the game of telephone.

Exactly. Now under the circumstances, agents were inclined though to agree with the Bradley family that Amy had met with foul play and was likely kidnapped or something similar, but any theory beyond that was just speculation. The best lead they had, Alistair Douglas, had passed a polygraph test and aside from unreliable eyewitnesses, there wasn't anything exactly tying him to the disappearance. And to make matters worse, or more complicated, there was a significant chunk of time that couldn't be accounted for.

Yeah, which sucks, right?

Now, Brad had been the last person to see Amy around 4, and then nobody noticed she was missing until like 6, 7 AM, just like around there. And as far as FBI agents were concerned, anything could have happened in those 3 hours.

Yeah.

So on March 28th, the FBI agents and the Bradleys returned to Virginia to continue their search from home. Ron and Iva were continued to keep the momentum going, so they set up a website to receive tips, and they started speaking to anybody in the media who would listen. Amy's Aunt Mary told a reporter on March 28th, it has to be an abduction because no other scenario works. And now the real question is, are we going to find her? Are we going to find her alive, or are we going to find her dead? Knowing it was going to be the first thought on everybody's mind, she went on to preemptively cut off any suggestion that Amy had ended her own life. Her aunt said, "She was getting herself all excited for the glamorous nights that you have. Those aren't the actions of somebody who might consider suicide." And that's a quote. She also addressed the possibility that it could have been an accidental drowning, something that the Netherlands Coast Guard had suggested to the Associated Press. Mary said, "There's no indication she was heavy drinking either." As far as she was concerned, there were two possibilities.

One, somebody threw her off the ship, or two, somebody has her, which is horrifying.

I was gonna say, which are just the most horrifying possibilities. Yeah.

And also, just for anybody, I'm sure people are wondering, like, aren't there cameras on this ship? There were cameras, but they were really in like common spaces. They weren't—

yeah, I mean, it's not like now.

They're not armed like they're every angle.

Yeah.

So while the family worked tirelessly just to talk to the press and get everything out there, The FBI started interviewing Amy's friends and her coworkers in an effort to definitively rule out suicide as a possible explanation.

Mm-hmm.

Special Agent Bradley Bryan said, I found that Amy was very outgoing, a very friendly person. She had an upbeat personality. Pretty much everyone I interviewed said she had a lot of friends. She was the kind of person who would strike up a conversation with anyone and often did. And the same thing was said to them a lot during the investigation that actually happened on the boat. Boat, a lot of people they talked to said that they recognized Amy on the boat. Like, she was the life of the party. Yeah, people loved her. So the interviews unfortunately didn't turn up a lot of useful information, like, necessarily a lot of hearsay. Yeah, but they— and they provided even more evidence to support the belief that she hadn't faked her own death, she hadn't ended her own life, nothing like that.

Yeah.

So that meant she'd fallen overboard or she'd been kidnapped. Now, yeah, if she fell overboard, it was highly unlikely that investigators were going to find her remains in the vastness of the ocean. They felt. But there were people in the area that said, like, the people, the authorities in that area said if there's a body that fell overboard or ended up in the ocean, it would wash up because of the current. So it's kind of like a back and forth.

That's interesting.

But if she'd been kidnapped, enough time had passed by then that she could have been transported literally anywhere in the world.

Yeah, which is horrifying, which is a nightmare.

By the end of the month, the family had announced a reward of $100,000 for Amy's safe return. and in the weeks that followed, they increased that amount to $250,000. The reward prompted a seemingly endless stream of tips pouring in from all over North America, but none of those tips led to any significant discoveries, and by the end of the summer, they weren't any closer to finding Amy. On May 12th, 1998, Ron and Iva held a party to celebrate Amy's 24th birthday. Friends and families brought gifts. They shared stories. Just hoping that Amy was gonna walk through that door at any moment. Yeah, but days later, the gifts were all packed away in what was once Amy's bedroom, and they put the cake in the freezer.

Oh, that's so sad.

By that time, the tips and reports of potential sightings of Amy had considerably slowed, but the FBI agents kept putting in work on the case, and they followed up on every single tip, no matter how trivial or unrealistic it seemed. Agent J. Perry Smith told reporters, the investigation is very thorough, and we're not done yet. We have an unexplained disappearance which may be a crime on the high seas, and we will investigate until we're satisfied as to what happened. That was in 1998.

It's like, let's go.

However committed they were to finding the truth though, the fact remained that investigators had virtually no leads to follow and no evidence that a crime had even been committed. Yeah, like obviously it seems that way, and I do believe that a crime was committed, but there's no evidence whatsoever.

That's the thing.

So eventually they were just hitting dead end after dead end. With the FBI's investigation into Amy's disappearance in danger of going cold, Amy's family stayed very committed in their pursuit of any evidence or lead that might help them find her. That summer, Ron and Brad actually went back to Curaçao to hand out flyers, and that had like all the details about the disappearance, and they just tried to talk to anybody they could who might know something.

The helplessness that that family must feel is is so immense, I can't even comprehend it.

You also have to think, like, they're from West Virginia, or from Virginia. They get this opportunity to take this really awesome vacation.

This is what happens.

They all fly out together and it's a super fun thing. And then the next time you're flying out to that area is to follow up on leads about your missing daughter and sister.

And he, like, the, the family, like, the father worked really hard for this, and this was like, it was supposed to be like a prize, reward for working his ass off, right, and being good at what he did. That That sucks. It does, like, in so many different ways.

Exactly. So they're in Curaçao now, and it was while they were handing out flyers one afternoon that Ron got approached by a local taxi driver. This is when the story takes a wild turn. This taxi driver came over and told him, I want you to know your daughter did not fall from that ship. She's here on this island, and I hope you can find her.

What? Yeah, why would you say that, sir, unless you know?

He claimed that one night a few days after the cruise ship left, uh, Curaçao, a woman who matched Amy's exact description came up to his cab and seemed to be in distress. She said she was in trouble and asked where she could find a pay phone, so he pointed her in the direction of a pay phone and he never saw her again. Oh, he claimed if Amy had been kidnapped and was still on the island, she would likely be in one of three places, and he gave them directions to all three of those places. They ended up reaching out to an officer named John Mentar who worked with the Harbor Police, and something about the tip compelled him, so he offered to help them get around to these 3 different locations. This officer, so that he literally said, he was like, if they weren't with an officer, it would have been real bad for them because the areas, areas that this man said he may have been in were super dicey.

Yeah.

So the first location was a large old resort on the outskirts of town, just at the edge of the island. But when Ron and Brad arrived, there was almost no one there to speak of aside from a handful of employees, and nothing came of it. They checked the other two locations the cab driver mentioned, but they also proved to be dead ends. Ugh. Now this particular trip to the island would set a seriously heartbreaking pattern where the Bradleys would get their hopes up only to have them dashed a few days later when the latest and most exciting lead would just fall apart.

That makes me so sad for them.

This is so chilling, this next part. So John Mentar drove them around the entire island one night following up on another lead. And as they were driving in the car, just like in these dicey areas, looking around for Amy or any sign of her, Brad swore that in the night as a car passed them, he heard Amy call out to him. He swore.

My whole body just fucking went crazy.

He said, I heard Amy call my name. Pretty distinctive all my life. The way she would say my name and call me. And like, to this day, it seemed when I watched this part of the documentary, he's still convinced that he heard that.

I believe him.

I believe him too. And so did you know— you did— well, that he said, he's like, I've heard her call my name.

Obviously very close. It's like, I believe him.

So they believed him too. John Mentard and his father. So they chased down the vehicle that Brad thought, uh, the call had come from. And they finally caught up with them at a light. But when they reached the driver's side window, the driver was alone and nobody had yelled out the window.

But maybe it was the wrong car.

It could have been the wrong car, yeah. Or maybe she was in the brush somewhere, like, I don't know.

Yeah, you don't know.

So 2 days later, Ron and Brad had to board a plane and return home to Richmond again without Amy. While they were at the Miami airport waiting for a connecting flight, Iva called Ron and said she'd got a call from one of the FBI agents They had found a body on a beach in Curaçao and it matched Amy's description. She said, I can remember immediately starting to vomit.

Yeah, don't blame me.

Once again, it seemed like the case was about to break wide open, but when the medical examiner finally conducted the autopsy, the body was not Amy Bradley, which is obviously the outcome you want, of course, but for a brief moment at least the unknown was taken away.

Yeah, but replaced with something catastrophically tragic that you would never recover from.

Exactly.

So it's like, that's what a horrifying, harrowing situation all the way around for her family.

It's like a conundrum.

There's no good outcome there. I mean, this is a good outcome, but then it keeps opening up the outcome of the— well, okay, we still don't know what happened.

Exactly. Oh, so almost a year went by with no new information. Then, after the story appeared in a segment on America's Most Wanted, investigators got a call from a man in Canada with a pretty compelling tip. A man named David Carmichael had been vacationing in Curaçao in August of 1998. When he saw a woman who he firmly believes was Amy Bradley on the beach. According to him, the woman was walking on the beach flanked by two men he described as aggressive. They seemed to be manhandling her and almost pulling her along. And he said, the moment she heard I spoke English, she picked up her pace and was putting distance between her and the two people flanking her.

Oh.

He followed them for a while, hoping to get a chance to check on the young woman. But eventually they entered a restaurant and he lost sight of him. What made this tip different from the others was that David Carmichael described tattoos on the woman's back, including a Tasmanian devil on her left back shoulder.

That's so '90s.

It's so '90s, and it's pretty distinct. Distinct, exactly. It matched Amy's tattoos. So either he had seen a woman with tattoos remarkably similar to Amy's who was in trouble— who was in trouble— or Amy had been on the island several months after she disappeared from that same island. But here's the thing, if she had been there the previous summer when David Carmichael saw her, she may have still been there now. Yeah, absolutely. Not like, like now when they were there.

Yeah.

So because, uh, Curaçao is a Dutch territory, I think I mentioned earlier, the FBI does not have jurisdiction up there. So they had to work with the assistance of a governmental attaché to continue their investigation. Doesn't that sound so fancy? Even with their assistance though, the FBI agents still clashed with local authorities because people gonna people, always agencies are gonna agency. And after a few weeks of investigation, there was nothing to show for their efforts and they left the island. So by summer of 1999, the search for Amy had basically stalled out. With no new leads, the FBI couldn't do much. And while the case was still technically open, the agents assigned to Amy's case, they just had to turn their attention to more current cases. Yeah, that they had more leads for, right? The family though had no intention of giving up their search, obviously. And in August, they found themselves turning to an unusual source for help. One afternoon, uh, that summer, Iva got a call from a friend who heard about a local man named Frank Jones who ran a kind of private detective agency that dealt with cases like Amies, where the kidnapped individual might have been trafficked.

Desperate, Ron and Iva contacted him and set up an initial meeting. After that meeting, things started to move very quickly. He told the Bradleys he had a team of men who were very skilled at finding and returning people who had— who were trafficked.

That kind of sounds like Taken.

It does.

I have a very particular set of skills.

Exactly.

That's immediately what I thought of.

Exactly. So the Bradleys were convinced, and they cut him a check, and he and his team traveled to Curacao. Now, within days, Jones contacted Ron and Iva to say he did believe that Amy was still alive and being held against her will on the island.

Oh, I hate it.

He said he received several reports of a woman matching her photo that had been spotted on a local beach in the company of various men. Oh, he felt very confident that he could get Amy off the island, but in order for the operation to continue, he would need more money, several thousand more dollars.

I don't know how this pans out right now. And in my brain I'm screaming, I know, I don't want people to people here.

I know. So he needed several more thousand dollars if he was going to, to get this done. So Tim Buckholz, a member of his team, later said, what we had was a list of hunches and clues that, uh, and past history on the island supposedly, and we checked out all the locations that were on those. A few days later, Jones called Ron and Iva again. And said the team had learned that Amy was being held on the island in a house occupied by known drug dealers in the area.

Okay.

They found the location of the house. They identified some of these men, some of these dealers, and Jones believed that the men were holding Amy for ransom, and he was about ready to start the rescue operation, but he needed more money to pay his crew. Ron, Iva, and Brad had been disappointed several times by then, and they were starting to feel like he was leading them down another dead end.

Yeah.

So before they were willing to pay him any more money, they insisted on seeing proof that Amy was still on that island and that she had a legit hunch. A short time later, he sent them a photograph showing a young woman on the beach with unidentified men. The photo was kind of blurry and it was shot from far away, but that was also to be expected because he can't get like right up and be like taking pictures. In the photo, the young woman Jones claimed was Amy can only be seen from the back.

Back.

It wasn't super compelling evidence that their daughter was still alive, but in the photo, the woman did seem to have tattoos on her back in the same spots that Amy did. Okay, so who knows. So they, they felt compelled, and Ron wired Jones an additional $100,000 to finish the job and get his daughter back.

I feel this is not— they should not be having to pay this much to do this. Like, I feel really bad for this family.

So weeks passed with no words from Jones, and then finally in October 2000, a few weeks later, he contacted Ron and Iva to say that they were ready to move on the house where Amy was being held. And he told them to fly down to Miami— to Miami, excuse me— and be ready to fly to Curaçao to pick Amy up when he gave the word. They booked the flight, they waited to hear anything. Iva said it was a sleepless, exciting, but terrifying nightmare that any minute we were going to have Amy.

Oh, this is literally destroying my heart.

Ron and Iva spent the following week in a Miami hotel room just anxiously awaiting any word from Frank. When finally he called with some distressing news. They had started the rescue operation, he said, just as he'd planned, but they had to abort the mission when some of his men were, quote, injured in a gunfight with Amy's captors. He insisted that they would try again, but now they needed to regroup and let some time pass because the kidnappers were alerted now. Disappointed, they started packing up and were just gonna return back to Richmond. And that's when the hotel phone rang a second time. This time it was Tim Buchholz, who I mentioned before, a member of Frank's agency, with very surprising and very devastating news.

Oh no.

He had been working with Frank on what he believed to be a genuine human trafficking case, but in recent days he discovered that Jones was nothing more than a con artist. Who was using the Bradley family's money to fund a lavish vacation in Curaçao.

If that is true—

it is—

he is the epitome. That is so evil. Yeah, I can't even. I can't even.

It gets so much worse.

These grieving parents, you have them fly to Miami, you make them and give you hundreds of thousands of dollars claiming that you are rescue. You know their daughter is alive.

Mm-hmm.

You know she's being held in this horrific situation. So putting that in their heads that every night they're going to sleep being like, she's there being— God knows what's happening to her.

Yep.

And then telling them, I'm gonna get her out. You just have to pay me more money.

I'm so close. Book a trip to Florida and just wait for my word. That, that's how close I am.

See, you can come scoop her up.

The fact that that family, like the hundreds of thousands of dollars is one thing in and of itself, but for some reason For me, it's the fact that he had them fly out and sit in a hotel room and wait for his word.

Oh yeah.

And it was all a lie.

And just excited to see their daughter. Like, I can't— my— I don't know how you have that in you. It makes me so sad that the human species has the capacity for this kind of shit.

For him to just be like on an island living it up on of money that a family spent trying to get their daughter found, thinking that you're out there getting their daughter back, and you're just like tossing back Mai Tais. Are you fucking kidding me?

You gotta be devoid of anything.

There's so many things that I hope happened to that man that I could never say out loud on the show.

The dead shit that is inside where your heart should be is— should be studied.

Yeah. So they were obviously devastated to learn that they had been completely taken advantage.

I'm so fucking angry for them. Like, I have such a rage for this family. Like, I want throw hands right now. Me too. Like, I'm so mad for them.

Yeah, I can't imagine what this must have felt like. Iva said, he had taken time away from us being able to search for Amy because we put all of our eggs in that.

Oh yeah, they wasted time.

That's the thing. And for her to say that it wasn't about the money, it wasn't about the fact that they flew somewhere, we just could have been out searching for it. It was a waste of fucking time. They contacted the FBI immediately to tell them what had happened, and they immediately began investigating Frank Jones. When he got word that he was under investigation, he fled Curaçao and went back to Virginia. By the way, he's from the same place as them.

What a—

Like you're supposed to be, you're supposed to be a homie if you're from the same place as me. That leads to trust.

Yeah.

But agents arrested him on the tarmac at the airport.

Good.

When he was trying to get back to Virginia.

Good. Fucker.

Days later, he was indicted on charges of mail fraud and wire fraud. In their interview with him, they learned that that he had convinced a female friend to pose for the pictures that were supposedly Amy. They had been taken in Florida, not— they weren't even in Curaçao.

And, and also, who's the girl that agreed to do that? Yeah, because also, scoop that bitch up.

Scoop her. And the photos were taken, quote, while a male acquaintance stood nearby wearing a blonde wig.

Yep.

So find that guy too. Find him.

That guy too.

Scoop him up and toss him in jail. And throw away the fucking key.

The— when it— we've said this before, I don't know how these people find each other.

I have no idea.

I don't know how these kind of rotten-ass people find—

but they do.

But you know what, I say that, but lately with the way everything is, I can see it now how they find each other, because there's a lot of them floating out there.

Unfortunately, it's really sad. There's really just exceptions to the, to the rule. Yeah, that a lot of these people are just pigs, which is very upsetting. Now, in a statement to the press, U.S. Attorney Greg Navarro said Mr. Jones has clearly been living in something like a fantasy world, and he concocted an elaborate lie to steal nearly $200,000 from the Bradley family and the Nation's Missing Children Organization in Phoenix.

Oh yeah, see you later, goodbye. Yeah, like, that is—

what the fuck? Like, you're a piece of dog shit. Ew, you're a piece of dog shit.

I hate this.

In April 2002, Frank Jones pleaded guilty to mail fraud and was sentenced to 5 years in prison for what he did. Come on, guys, 5 years is not enough.

Christ.

He was also—

everything is so broken.

It is, it really fucking is. He was ordered to pay back those he defrauded as well.

Well, good. After, though, like, let's be Well, couldn't, couldn't be sure.

After his sentencing, Iva told a reporter, what he's done to our family is horrible and has caused a lot of misery. Of course.

I really hope he has the life he deserves.

Same. Not long after he was sentenced in the fraud case, a naval officer contacted the Richmond FBI to say that 4 years earlier, not long after Amy went missing, he encountered a woman in a Curaçao brothel who he believed was Amy. According to the officer, he had gone to the brothel with several other sailors, and while there, a young woman approached him and said, "My name is Amy Bradley and I need your help." Oh, so that's why you thought she was Amy Bradley. Yes, that makes sense. He said he didn't report the interaction at the time because he was afraid he'd be punished by his superior officers because they were not obviously supposed to be in a brothel.

Yeah, but she's a missing woman.

No, 100%. I'm not on this side.

Oh my God, I'm saying fuck everyone.

Yeah, like, come on, get it together. But he was reminded of the incident when he saw a story about Amy on the news, and he said he finally wanted to do the right thing.

Thanks.

Agents interviewed him and got as much detail about the interaction as they could, but by the time they arrived in Curaçao to investigate the brothel, it had burned down, and the women who had worked there were just dispersed around the island.

Oh Lord.

They tried to get more information about the brothel, but but if there was any more to get, the authorities in Curaçao were not interested in cooperating.

And I was going to say, I'm sure it's a little difficult to get the— yeah, the reports from those kind of places.

Not sure if you know, but brothels are usually kind of underground, kind of secretive. So throughout the next few years, other leads came in that unfortunately did not lead to much. But then in 2005— this is the part of the case that chills me to my fucking core— the family received a series of photos of a woman posing for a sex worksite in the Caribbean area. The woman bore a striking resemblance to Amy, which is why they were sent to the family in the first place.

The pictures are—

the pictures are— you gotta Google them if you're listening, and it's safe to Google right now. It's insane. Yeah, as soon as Iva saw those photos, her first thought was, that could be Amy. Oh, it's— it actually, like, I've been having nightmares lately about the pictures just because of— it's just so chilling.

Yeah, that, that's possibly what it could be, that she was on a cruise ship with her family and now what happened.

I can't stop thinking about this case. I can't. Ever since I watched the documentary, it's been haunting me. I want this case to be solved so badly, and I so badly want her to be reunited with her family because I firmly believe she's alive.

Yeah.

So the family reached out to their contact at the FBI, and a forensic analysis was done on all of the photos. Obviously, the Bradleys had tons of pictures of Amy throughout the years, all at different angles for comparison. So the analyst spent time with those photos measuring features like Amy's ears, her chin, the length of her arms, etc., all things like that. And then he did the same thing with the new photos that had been sent. When the analysis was complete, the analyst believed that based off of all of the measurements, the woman in the photos from the sex work site was Amy Bradley.

Holy shit. Like, and that's the FBI analyst, a forensic analyst, firmly believed that.

Yeah. Yes. Okay, so that confirmed a theory that had been floating around for years that Amy possibly could have been sold into sex trafficking against her will.

Horrifying.

So that gave the family hope that she was still alive. So to spark more interest and get their story out there again, they made an appearance on the Dr. Phil show and the photos were shown. A woman watching the show immediately recognized the woman in the photos as a woman who she had had a strange and very unsettling experience with in a bathroom in Bridgeport, Barbados. Oh, now Judy Moorer was on a cruise with her husband when the ship stopped in Barbados, and they decided to do a little shopping on the island. While shopping, Judy went to use one of the restrooms in the little stores, and while she was in the stall, she suddenly heard men in the bathroom at the door. Oh, so obviously that got her attention. Yeah, she said they were speaking to a woman about some kind of deal that she needed to be ready for, and they were upset with her. They were like, you better be ready, we don't want to hear it, you better not try anything, la la la. So when the men left the bathroom, Judy exited the stall and she saw a woman standing at the sink.

And she said this woman looked very upset, like she'd been crying. She was dressed in a short skirt and a tube top, and she said her hair was wild, which if you look at the pictures, the woman's hair is just like everywhere.

Yeah.

So she just started talking to her and she asked her name, and the woman said her name was Amy. She kept talking to her, Judy did, thinking that she was cheering her up maybe. And she realized— Judy did— that the woman had a Southern American accent, she said. So she asked where she was from, and she answered so low that Judy thought she said West Virginia. Amy's from Virginia.

Holy shit.

So she may have just said Virginia, but it was low, so she couldn't—

yeah.

The interaction got really strange when the woman kind of started getting in Judy's face, not really saying anything, but just like staring at her. Judy wanted to get the hell out of there because this all felt weird. So she opened the bathroom door to leave and was suddenly face to face with two men who just wouldn't move out of her way. So she kind of inched around them. She said she played dumb tourist. She was like, oh no, excuse me, I gotta go. So she got out of there and she found her husband in the store and she told him how strange all of this had just been. And as she was telling him, she saw the two men leading the woman out of the store with their arms looped through hers. So she couldn't really like make a break for it. So she was like, we have to help that girl. Like something's up here. But her husband said there wasn't anything they could do. They needed to get back to the ship, but Judy couldn't stop thinking about it. Like, she went back to the ship and she said she looked at the island and it's all she could think of.

Like, she wanted to do something to help. So, you know, the thought kind of left her mind a little bit, but it was always with her. And then she's sitting watching the Dr. Phil show that day and the pictures come up and she says, oh my God, that's the woman.

Holy shit.

Like, that's Amy Bradley, or it's at least a woman named Amy.

Yeah.

Yeah, so she called the FBI to report everything, but unfortunately there was nothing that they could use in the pictures to track down the location of that woman or even confirm if it was 100% Amy Bradley. Everything in the photos was very generic, like the bed frame. The woman is posed in a way that all of Amy's tattoos would be hidden. But that was not the last time that Bridgetown, Barbados would come up in the investigation. Which is interesting. At some point, an online investigator named Anthony Willis became really interested in this case, and he started a website where he compiled every photo, every sighting, theory, tip, anything that had been recorded throughout the year since Amy's gone missing.

And it's, um, amybradleyismissing.com, which is good to have like one single place for all that stuff.

And that's the thing, he couldn't believe that there wasn't— there was just like everything kind of floating everywhere. So he gathered up everything.

Damn, that's badass. Yes.

Now he ended up connecting with David Carmichael, the man I mentioned earlier who believed that he had seen Amy on the beach in Curaçao. Oh yes, right after she went missing in '98.

Mhm.

David is a telecommunications networking specialist, so they kind of started working on the website together, and that's when they realized that they could use string data and IP tracking from the website to kind of work on the case and get some more leads. Actually pretty genius.

That is actually very Pretty smart.

So they started looking for patterns and they realized that there was a lot of IP activity coming from Bridgetown, Barbados, the last known sighting of Amy. Now specifically, a lot of these, uh, a lot of the activity from the IP specifically coming from Bridgetown is on family birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, and Thanksgiving.

Huh.

These IPs in Bridgetown will spend 45 minutes or so on these pages. Absolutely. Now, they specifically linger on the pages too of the site that feature updated family photos, pictures of Amy's car— she had got like this brand new red car before, like right around the time that she left— um, and pictures of her dog that have been put on the site.

Really?

Yeah.

So that's interesting.

It is. David Carmichael says his theory is that it's either the people that are involved in this are curious and they want to know how close they are to being caught The second thing is it's Amy. Yeah, like wanting to see how her parents are aging and, oh my God, what her family is doing on these days.

That's honestly soul-crushing. It is to think of.

Now, with the last sighting in Barbados, that's where the public credible leads kind of end. The FBI does report that Amy's case is still very active, and it's a very— it's very much an open investigation. They follow up on every lead, and the Bradley family does continue to hold out hope that they'll find Amy alive despite nearly 30, almost 30 years having hadn't passed. They promote the case whenever they have the opportunity. Iva recently said in the documentary that I've mentioned, something happened to Amy. We don't know what that is, but we've got to have answers. If you know something, please give us that one thing that we need. Please do that for us and do that for Amy. Oh, and Brad echoes the same sentiment. In a video released by the FBI, he said, myself and my parents have had to endure a lot of sadness this, but the last thing I ever said to Amy was, 'I love you,' before I went to sleep that night. Knowing that's the last thing I said to her has always been very comforting to me.

That just destroys me. Yeah.

So if any— we always say at the end of these cases, a cold case is never cold whatsoever. So if anybody has any information about the whereabouts of Amy Bradley, they are encouraged to contact the family through the website amybradleyismissing.com. Or to contact the FBI at tips.fbi.gov.

Anything, because there's stuff, there's pieces, there's a lot here. The strings, there's pieces, there's leads. It's just— I feel a couple more little things.

I've never heard a missing person's case quite like this. No, where this many sightings. Yeah, and like somewhat credible. That's— you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not saying somewhat to be an asshole. I'm just saying, like, obviously you have to take sightings with a grain of salt, but like, a lot of these do feel credible.

And the pictures are— and for the FBI analyst to say, we've analyzed these and that this seems to be Amy, if you have something—

you guys should really watch the documentary. I, I definitely recommend it. It's 3 different parts, and I think the third part is when they go over the pictures. They literally morph a photo of Amy into that new photo. Like, they kind Yeah, like progress it. It looks so much like her.

Oh yeah, when you look at it, it's shocking. And I'm not saying that people can't look like other people, obviously, like that's— no, but these measurements, but the measurements and then the place that these are taken.

Yep.

And how that is also being connected to certain things. And now the website hits are coming from, like—

exactly, that's something. And one thing they do say in the documentary is like, because I know obviously people are like, why would that be her if she has access to the internet? Yeah, that's not that likely. One, yeah, it is. And two, she might have children now that she's unfortunately, you know, been in a position to maybe have had. So, or she might be like, that, that might be what's tying her to the island and like why she's not reaching back out. Or she might be being told, we'll kill your whole family if you try to reach out. Like, she's being told if she's alive and and if that is the case, she's being told horrible things and that's why she's not reaching out.

So it's not that crazy to think that, of course, that could be what's happening. For sure.

It's horrifying. This case haunts me.

Yeah, truly.

It really does.

No matter what the outcome is, it's horrific that she's endured—

if she is alive, she's enduring something horrible.

And it's like, I, I just wanted to have a, a period on the end.

Exactly. And you want that for the family.

Yeah, that's all I want for that family is for them to have— know what's going on and be able to either move forward with the information or do something about it.

Exactly. Or hopefully, like, I just hope that they can be reunited one day.

I know, you know, because this is also one of those families that like has never even let up for a minute.

No, never.

So it's like, I just want I want it to pay off for them.

I know, I do too. So sad.

So here's my fun fact. Okay. Dragonflies shoot water out of their butts.

What?

It's used for jet-propelled escapes when they're tired.

That's iconic.

Which is like pretty sick.

You just shoot yourself up with water.

They're like, ah, I'm tired, I'm just gonna propel myself through the air.

They're just like, fire it out. What the hell? It's like a reverse enema.

Wow. Right?

I don't want to think about that too much. I love that.

But I can't stop thinking about it. I love it. It's honestly one of my favorite facts. It's a good one. Because now every time I see a dragonfly, I'm going to be like, are you tired?

You just— You bursting through the air with water coming up your butt. What if that's landed on you? Like, you know, when it's like about to like trickle rain and you're like, oh, I felt a drop. What if that was actually just water coming out of a dragonfly's ass? Maybe. That's crazy. That's crazy. That's crazy. We'll think about that for sure. And with that being said, we hope you keep listening, and we hope you keep it weird, but not so weird that if you know something, you don't say something.

Yes, if you know anything, contact the things we have in our show notes.

Say it.

Do it.

Let's get this case solved. Let's go.