The Disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley

Amy Lynn Bradley (born May 12, 1974) is an American woman who went missing during a Caribbean cruise on the Royal Caribbean International cruise ship Rhapsody of the Seas in late March 1998 at the age of 23, while en route to Curaçao.  Searches turned up no sign of her and investigators believe it unlikely that she had fallen overboard. There have been possible sightings of Bradley in Curaçao; in 1998, tourists had seen a woman resembling Bradley on a beach, and in 1999, a member of the U.S. Navy claimed a woman in a brothel had said she was Bradley and had asked him for help.

Case history

On March 21, 1998, Amy Lynn Bradley, her parents, Ron and Iva, and her brother, Brad, left for a weeklong cruise on Rhapsody of the Seas.  On the morning of March 24, Bradley had been drinking with the ship's band, Blue Orchid, in the dance club. One of the band members named Alister Douglas, known as Yellow, claimed he parted ways with Bradley at about 1 am.  Sometime between 5:15 and 5:30 am, Bradley's father, Ron, saw her asleep on the cabin balcony. When he got up at 6 am, however, she was no longer there. He later said, "I left to try and go up and find her. When I couldn't find her, I didn't really know what to think, because it was very much unlike Amy to leave and not tell us where she was going."

The ship was en route to Curaçao, Antilles, at the time Bradley was last seen and docked there shortly after it was realized that she had gone missing. Extensive searches on the ship and at sea produced no signs of her whereabouts.  The Netherlands Antilles Coast Guard conducted a four-day search that ended on March 27, and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines chartered a boat to continue looking for her, but they ended their search on March 29.  Bradley was a trained lifeguard and investigators said there was no evidence that she had fallen overboard and none that she died by suicide either.

There were possible sightings of Bradley in Curaçao in 1998 and 1999. Two Canadian tourists reported seeing a woman resembling Amy on a beach in Curaçao in August 1998.  The woman's tattoos were reportedly identical to Bradley's. Bradley's tattoos included a Tasmanian Devil spinning a basketball located on her shoulder, the sun placed on her lower back, a Chinese symbol located on her right ankle, and a gecko lizard on her navel. She also had a navel ring.  A member of the United States Navy stated that he had seen Bradley in a brothel in 1999. He claimed she told him that "her name was Amy Bradley and [she] begged him for help," explaining that she was held against her will and not allowed to leave.

There was another potential sighting in 2005, when a witness named Judy Maurer claimed to have seen Bradley in a department store restroom in Barbados. The witness claimed a woman entered the restroom accompanied by three men, who proceeded to threaten her if she did not follow through on a deal. The witness alleges that after the men had left, she approached the distraught woman who then said that her first name was Amy and that she was from Virginia before the men re-entered to take her away. Maurer called authorities, and they created composite sketches of three men and the woman based on her account.

Bradley's mother and father appeared on the November 17, 2005, episode of Dr. Phil. An image of a young woman resembling Bradley that was emailed to her parents was shown on the program, and it suggests that she might have been sold into sexual slavery.

There is currently a $250,000 reward offered by the Bradley family for information leading to Bradley's return and a $50,000 reward for information leading to her verifiable location.  The FBI is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to her recovery.  Her case has been featured on America's Most Wanted and by the television show Disappeared.  It was also the subject of episode 59 of the Casefile podcast. It has also appeared on the podcast Crime Junkie.

Renewed attention was paid to her case after the the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in 2005.