Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this article:
- Amy Bradley was 23 years old when she went missing while on a Caribbean cruise with her family in March 1998.
- Despite multiple investigations and alleged sightings, she has never been found.
- Her case is the subject of a new Netflix docuseries Amy Bradley Is Missing.
Early on the morning of March 24, 1998, Ron Bradley caught a glimpse of his daughter, Amy, sitting on the balcony of their family’s cruise ship cabin. The next time he looked outside, the 23-year-old was gone without any explanation.
More than two decades later, Amy’s disappearance continues to haunt the entire Bradley family and bewilder investigators. The unsolved case is getting a fresh look with Amy Bradley Is Missing, a new three-part docuseries on Netflix.
The project examines that fateful day aboard the ship and multiple purported sightings of Amy in the years since. While authorities have declared Amy legally dead, her family remains steadfast that she is alive and the case will one day be solved.
Amy was on the cruise with her parents and brother
On March 21, 1998, Amy Bradley boarded Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with her father, Ron, her mother, Iva, and her younger brother, Brad.
Ron worked as an insurance agent and won the cruise after selling more than $145,000 in paid premiums for Illinois Mutual Life. In order to bring their two children along, Ron and Iva bought extra plane tickets and paid $2,000 additional dollars for ship accommodations.
The Bradley family was very close. According to Richmond.com, Amy and Iva went grocery shopping every week and frequently called each other over TV shows such as Mystery Science Theater 3000. Amy was also looking forward to spending time with her brother, a student on break from George Mason University.
With the cruise ship docked in Aruba, the quartet spent the night of Monday, March 23, together. They attended a Mardi Gras party and a midnight buffet. Per the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Amy and Brad returned to their cabin sometime around 3:45 a.m. Tuesday. But by the time Ron was fully awake at 6 a.m., she had vanished from the cabin balcony. The door was left ajar.
There are multiple theories for her disappearance
After Amy’s parents reported her missing, ship personnel launched a preliminary investigation. The FBI joined the search by the next day.
Ron and Iva immediately suspected foul play. According to Iva, two college-aged women on the cruise claimed they saw Amy board an elevator to the ship disco with Alister “Yellow” Douglas, a bassist for the Blue Orchid band onboard, around the time of her disappearance. The teens said Douglas left the disco without Amy a few minutes later.
Cruise employees questioned Douglas about Amy’s disappearance and searched his room. He was publicly named a suspect but voluntarily took a polygraph test for the FBI and passed. There was no direct evidence of his involvement, and Douglas was never charged in the case.
Amy’s family has posited she might have been kidnapped and forced into sex trafficking. Two Canadian tourists and a U.S. Navy officer claimed to have seen her at a Curaçao beach and brothel, respectively, in the year following her disappearance. In both alleged instances, she appeared frightened and was accompanied by two unidentified men.
Other theories include that Amy accidentally fell off the ship, died by suicide, or was killed before her body was thrown overboard.
Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or self-harming behaviors, call or text 988 to get help from the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
The Bradley family fell victim to a financial con
With the initial investigation offering few clues to Amy’s whereabouts, her family turned to an outside source in desperation.
In August 1999, a private investigator named Frank Jones, who said he was a former Green Beret in the U.S. Army, emailed the Bradleys with details of alleged sightings of Amy in Curaçao. He also offered to form a team of ex-Army Rangers and Navy SEALs for a rescue mission, and the family decided to hire him. According to Investigation Discovery, the Bradleys paid Jones a total of $210,000, largely from funds raised by a national missing children’s organization.
However, the entire story was a con: Jones never served in the Special Forces and had no knowledge of Amy’s location. He had staged fake photographs of a man and woman on a beach and claimed they showed Amy and an unknown captor.
In 2002, Jones pleaded guilty to mail fraud. He was sentenced to five years in prison and required to repay the money he received.
“If there’s a chance—I mean, what else do you do?” Ron told ABC News. “If it was your child, what would you do? So I guess we took a chance. And I guess we lost.”
Amy’s disappearance remains unsolved
Other sources have come forward with alleged sightings of Amy, including a husband and wife who claimed to recognize her from an episode of America’s Most Wanted. The couple believed they saw her in San Francisco in April 2003. However, leads from these apparent sightings never resulted in a positive identification.
In 2010, a human jaw bone washed ashore in Aruba, leading to speculation it could be Amy’s remains or that of Natalee Holloway, an American teenager who disappeared from a graduation trip to the country in 2005. Dental records quickly confirmed the bone wasn’t Holloway, but additional testing that might have tied the discovery to Amy wasn’t conducted.
Authorities declared Amy legally dead in March 2010, even though she has never been found and her body hasn’t been recovered. She remains on the FBI’s most wanted missing persons list with a reward of up to $25,000 for information aiding the recovery of her remains.
Watch Amy Bradley Is Missing Now
Amy Bradley Is Missing directors Ari Mark and Phil Lott interviewed Ron and Iva Bradley for the new docuseries and were able to examine some of Amy’s former belongings, including her car and duffel bag.
“The more we got to know the Bradleys in the subsequent months, the more two things became abundantly clear: First, that the family’s belief that Amy is still alive was and continues to be unbreakable, and second, that maybe they’re right,” Mark and Lott said in a statement to People.
All three episodes of Amy Bradley Is Missing began streaming Wednesday, July 16, on Netflix.
Tyler Piccotti joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor and is now the News and Culture Editor. He previously worked as a reporter and copy editor for a daily newspaper recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors. In his current role, he shares the true stories behind your favorite movies and TV shows and profiles rising musicians, actors, and athletes. When he's not working, you can find him at the nearest amusement park or movie theater and cheering on his favorite teams.
