What happened to Amy Bradley? Netflix doc explores chilling case

One of the eeriest missing person cases of the last several decades is being revisited in a new Netflix docuseries, Amy Bradley Is Missing.

Amy Lynn Bradley was traveling on the Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas cruise ship with her family in March 1998 when she vanished. Law enforcement and cruise officials theorized that Amy had fallen overboard, but her father, mother, and brother believed something more nefarious had happened. As they sought to spread the word of her disappearance, the case was dissected on the news and on programs like America’s Most Wanted.

Now, 27 years later, the Bradleys continue to speak out in Amy Bradley Is Missinga three-part series from directors and executive producers Ari Mark and Phil Lott.

So, what happened to Amy Bradley? Here’s what we know.

Who is Amy Bradley?

At the time of her disappearance, Amy was 23 years old and living in Chesterfield County, Va. She was an athlete, having attended Longwood University on a basketball scholarship and graduating with a degree in physical education.

Amy was on Rhapsody of the Seas with her parents, Iva and Ron, and her younger brother, Brad.

What happened to Amy Bradley?

According to the Richmond Times-DispatchAmy was last seen on March 24, 1998. As the ship sailed towards Curaçao, Antilles, her father awoke in the early morning hours to see Amy smoking on the balcony outside their cabin. When he woke again around 6 a.m., she was gone, as were her cigarettes and lighter. Her whereabouts remain unknown.

“About 6 a.m., something awoke me again. I got up, looked out on the balcony and the balcony door was open about 14 to 16 inches and Amy wasn’t on the deck,” Ron would later tell Unsolved Mysteries. “And I had a little funny feeling at that time, because it was unlike her to be up that early in the morning.”

The previous night, Amy and her 21-year-old brother, Brad, had been at a party until roughly 3:30 a.m. A timeline published by the Times-Dispatch shows Brad returning to the family’s cabin at 3:40 a.m. and Amy arriving five minutes later.

The ship docked in Curaçao around 6 a.m., during which time Ron began searching the ship for Amy. Unable to find her, he woke Iva and Brad and alerted the ship’s crew. The Bradleys asked the staff to forbid passengers from disembarking, but they refused, per the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Over the next several days, Royal Caribbean conducted a thorough search of the ship and brought in FBI agents with trained dogs, per the Miami Herald. The Netherlands Antilles Coast Guard conducted a four-day search of the area, but found nothing. Cruise officials believed she fell overboard, but the Bradleys feared she was kidnapped.

Unsatisfied, the Bradleys worked to get the word out about Amy’s disappearance, publishing internet sites about her case and appearing on shows like Unsolved Mysteries and America’s Most Wanted.

Did anyone see Amy Bradley after she disappeared?

In the months and years after Amy’s disappearance, the Bradleys were made aware of several potential sightings of her.

The Times-Dispatch reported that a Curaçao cab driver told Ron that as passengers disembarked from the ship, Amy “urgently” asked him where she could find a phone, but walked in the opposite direction when he advised her on where to locate one.

Two women who had met Amy on the cruise also reportedly spotted her aboard just minutes before 6 a.m. with Alister Douglas, a.k.a. Yellow, who played in a band on the cruise. Per the Times-DispatchAmy had been speaking with him in the hours before she disappeared.

Brad later recalled being approached by Douglas as he and his parents searched the ship for Amy. Douglas reportedly told Brad he was “sorry about your sister” and that he felt “guilty,” per the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Douglas was publicly named a suspect on America’s Most Wantedthough, as the Times-Dispatch reported, a spokesperson for Royal Caribbean said Douglas voluntarily submitted to a polygraph test for the FBI and passed.

His shadow over the case continued to loom, however. A diver named David Carmichael claimed he saw a woman resembling Amy in the company of two men in Curaçao, one of whom he’d later say was a dead ringer for Douglas, per the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Carmichael said that when she heard him speaking English, she caught his eye but was quickly shuffled away to a nearby bar, where she continued to make eye contact with Carmichael. He only made the connection months later, after learning of Amy’s case on America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries.

He and his companion not only recognized her eyes, but also her distinctive tattoos, which included a Tasmanian Devil spinning a basketball on her shoulder, per an FBI report.

“I was stunned,” said Carmichael, who, as reported by PEOPLElater went to visit the Bradleys to share his story. “I am haunted by that encounter with Amy. I know it was her.”

Another notable potential sighting involved William Hefner, a U.S. Navy veteran who admitted to being at an illegal brothel in Curaçao in January 1999. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatchhe claimed that a “desperate” woman whom he assumed to be a sex worker told him her name was “Amy Bradley” — though he heard it as “Bratley” — and that she was in “trouble” and being held against her will.

When he advised her to seek help in a U.S. ship at the nearby port, she told him that wasn’t possible. The conversation ended when one of the men she was with interrupted them.

It was three years later, in May 2002, that he reported the incident after seeing a photo of Bradley in PEOPLE magazine.

Where can I watch Amy Bradley Is Missing?

Amy Bradley Is Missing is now available to stream on Netflix.

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