Criminology - Amy Bradley Part 1

Episode Date: August 17, 2025

In the spring of 1998, 23-year-old Amy Bradley boarded a Royal Caribbean cruise with her parents and brother. Just a few days into the cruise, Amy vanished. Her father, Ron, said he last saw her on the balcony early in the morning after a night of partying. But when the family woke up, Amy was nowhere to be found. Join Mike and Morf for part 1 of 2 on the disappearance of Amy Bradley. This case has been followed closely for years by amateur sleuths on sites like Reddit and Websleuths. It has gained even more attention with a recently released documentary on Netflix. What happened to Amy Bradley is a question that so many, none more so than her family, want answered.   You can help support the show through Patreon. We'd love to connect with listeners on social media. We are available on the following platforms: Facebook - Facebook Discussion group - Instagram - Threads - X Formerly Twitter - Blue Sky - Twitch - Tik Tok  Criminology is an Emash Digital production hosted by Mike Ferguson and Mike Morford. 

In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 372 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Mike Morford, how you doing this morning, buddy? Having some technical difficulties, having some, a little bit of traffic nightmare, some computer issues, and finally meeting here with you to record and running a little bit late. So sorry about that. No, that's all. It's just kind of all kind of culminated, right?

In a series of incidents that, uh, that caused us to run a little late. No biggie. Yeah, maybe that better to have that in one setting than spread out during the week. Hey, you got to look at it sunny side up somehow. You got to make sense of it. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had new support from candy and we really appreciate that. Yeah, thank you so much, Candy and thank you to everyone else that helps support the show.

Anyone else that would like to head over to patreon.com slash criminology to get started. So this episode is dropping on August 16th, which means we're just under three weeks away from CrimeCon Denver. And I have a big announcement. Something has come up that's going to keep me from going to CrimeCon this year. And I'm really bummed about it, morph, because this is the first one. that that I've missed. I've been to every crime con. Yeah, that bummed me out when you told me that too.

And because we don't get to see each other that much, we're not in the same state. So I look forward to hanging out with you and Gibby at least a few days a year. And that's not going to happen this, though. No, but the good news is you'll be there. Gibby will be there. So, you know, we're still going to have the meet up and all of that.

And hopefully Gibb and I can carry the load. At crime con's happening at the gay, Lord Rockies Resort, September 5th through the 7th, and you can stop by, see us on podcast Row, and on Saturday night at 9 p.m. We'll have our annual criminology T-Cat meetup with listeners. It's going to be, again, 9 p.m. Saturday night at the Mountain Pass Sports Bar, so hopefully people will stop by, hang out, and have a little fun. And all I can say is have one for me. We'll pour one out for you. Yeah, exactly. Now that we have all of that out of the way, let's dive into this week's episode and this is a case that's making a lot of headlines right now people are

talking about it a lot of people are because it's the subject of a really well done documentary on Netflix we're talking about the case of amy lind bradley and that documentary is called amy bradley is missing while the documentary is pretty new discussion of amy's case on online forums like reddit and web sluice is not and there are so many components. to Amy's case, so many possibilities and unanswered questions, that we need to cover this over two episodes. So this week, this is part one of Amy's story. Amy Lynn Bradley was born in Petersburg, Virginia on May 12, 1974, to Ronald and Iva Bradley. She has one brother, Ronald Jr., who goes by Brad. He was born about a year and a half after Amy, and the two had a close relationship.

Amy was a very gifted athlete and excelled in basketball. In fact, she earned a full basketball scholarship to attend Longwood University, and she graduated in December 1996, earning a degree in physical education. Starting in the summer of 1997, she worked as a waitress at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. So more, have you ever been to a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse? First of all, it's very hard to say. Yeah, it is. I did go once a long time ago, and I hate to say that I'm not a big steak fan, so I'm not really

enthralled when I hear about steak places. Oh, well, you're dead to me, as I am a huge fan of steak. And Roots Chris is a good one. Yeah, I've heard it's, if you're going to go for steak, that's the place to go. In the spring of 1998, when Amy was 23 years old, her father Ron won a trip from Illinois Mutual Life, where both he and Iva worked as insurance agents, it was a week long all expenses paid crews for two with Royal Caribbean International. Rather than Ron and Iva going by themselves, they decided to make it a family getaway

and purchase two tickets for Amy and Brett. Because of the way that the tickets were purchased for the trip, Iva and Ron were on a different flight from Virginia to Puerto Rico than Brad and Amy. The parents left Richmond International Airport around 6 a.m. on Saturday, March 21st, 1998, and the siblings followed about an hour later. They spent most of the time listening to music together using Amy's portable CD player and a pair of headphones. The four family members arrived safely in San Juan, and they all boarded the ship around 4 p.m. The crews officially began when their ship, Rhapsody of the Seas took off from San Juan Puerto Rico.

So there's two things I want to touch on. The first is I have a question for you, and that's, have you ever been on a cruise? I never have. My wife and I keep talking about it, and something else comes up, and then it just gets showed to the back burner, but I'd like to try one one day.

Yeah, my wife and I have been on maybe four or five with the kids. And, you know, when they were younger, it was mostly carnival because they kind of catered to kids. our last one was actually on a Royal Caribbean ship and it was so much fun. I love cruises. Now, it gets scary when we do some of these cases centered around, you know, people going missing on a cruise, but they are a lot of fun. And then the second thing that really kind of jumped out of me is, you know, we're talking about 1998 and Amy and Brad listening to a portable

CD player. And it's just, I don't know why, but I had a flood of memories. I remember getting my first portable CD player, thought it was the coolest thing in the world, just CDs in general. I mean, you and I are old enough to go back and remember tapes, obviously. I mean, eight track tapes, I kind of remember, but I never had any myself. But tapes, I listened to a lot. And then when CDs came out, it was like, you. you're telling me that you can just pick any song and you don't have to rewind, fast forward. And now you think about today with Apple music and all of those types of things. You can listen to any song you want at any time.

Imagine if we had that when we were kids. Yeah. I mean, I went from carrying around the big boombox to then the cassette walk man. And then I think I was the first kid in my neighbor to have the CD walk man. I got it for Christmas. And I remember a couple of my friends, oh, let me check it out. Let me listen. Is it any better?

And it would skip when you're walking. So definitely come a long way as far as that goes. But I think cruise ships, to your point, they are huge. They're like their own floating city. A lot of times they have their own medical facility, their own security, and lots of stuff to do all kinds of things for the kids, for older family members. So it's it's really neat the amount of stuff you can do on it. But I guess it presents different hazards and different things like a city would.

And I think some of that we're going to probably touch on as we go along in the story. Well, and then you add on top of that the fact that there are stops, right? And you're getting off the ship and you're potentially going into some places where, you know, there's some crime element. that could happen. I think the last ship we were on, I want to say it was like, had 18 floors.

I mean, it was massive. On Monday, March 23rd, the ship made its first stop and docked in Aruba. Instead of touring the island with the rest of the cruise passengers, the Bradley family rented a Jeep and headed out on their own journey. They ended up getting lost for much of the day and their tropical Oceanside Paradise turned into a desert as they took dirt roads through the wilderness.

Luckily, they managed to find their way back to port and made it back to the ship in time. Although the family was tired from their day, they were all in good spirits. They all rested before attending a formal dinner, in which they wore a very nice clothes with Amy sporting a long black dress. After the dinner, the Bradley family would all be getting portraits taken. Oddly, later on when the family went back to collect the portraits that had been taken, Amy's was missing from its spot on the wall, and she had to retake her photos,

which can be seen online and in the documentary. According to Amy's family, she was getting a lot of unwanted attention on the cruise, especially during dinner. This was hard for Amy to deal with because she was friendly and outgoing, so it was likely hard for her to pull away from people she didn't necessarily want to be around

after the family had finished eating. Brad and Amy left the restaurant to go play slots in the casino and a waiter went up to Ron and Iva and asked them to invite Amy to a bar or nightclub in Aruba called Carlos and Charlies where he and other waiters would be hanging out. As a side note, Carlos and Charlies was one of the last places. Natalie Holloway was seen alive on the last night of her trip to Aruba in 2005. Iva later as a guest on the Dr. Phil show said that when she told Amy about the invitation by the wait staff to hang out at the bar, Amy reportedly replied, they're creepy, and I'm not going anywhere with them. After dinner, the Bradley's all went back to the room to change out of their formal clothes because at around 10 p.m., a party began on the pool deck, so they wanted to be more comfortable. The whole family and most of the guests on the ship attended it. A Calypso band Blue Orchid was playing that night, and Brad won a limbo contest. It was a fun night for everyone, and there were no signs that anything was wrong.

The ship left Aruba, heading for Curacao, sometime after midnight. At about 1.30, Ron and Iva decided to head back to the room and go to sleep. Amy and Brad both stayed behind and went up to the disco, which was the only thing still opened on the ship. At around 3 a.m., Ron woke up and realized that Brad, and Amy weren't in the room. He got up, got dressed, and went up to the disco to check on them. Brad was on the main floor of the disco and Amy was near one of the DJ booths talking to a few people. They all ended up going back to the cabin shortly after this. Brad got back to the room at 3.35 a.m. And Amy returned to the room just five minutes later at 3.40. These times are verified

because each member of the family had their own electronic key to the room and each use of those key cards to gain entry was locked. However, when a guest opened the door and exited their room, that movement was not recorded. And that's going to be an important detail in this case as we go on. Once in the room, Amy and Brad sat on the balcony, smoking and talking until Brad decided to call it enough. Amy was feeling nauseous.

So she stayed outside for the fresh air. She had also been alternating between sleeping in the room and sleeping on the balcony, since she and Brad had to share a pull-out couch, just a few feet away from their parents. And that is the one thing that, you know, I will say about cruise ships. Depending on what room you get, most of them are, you know, on the smaller side, especially if you've got four people. a little cramped. I know you said you've never been on one morph, but I can remember when we took the kids when they were younger, they had like these beds that kind of swung out from the wall,

like swung down, right? And then you could put them up during the day just so you could walk around. That's how kind of cramped it was. I can imagine that being worse when the kids are adults and full size. So that room probably gets a little bit small. and I can't blame Amy for wanting to, you know, maybe just get her own space out there and lay on the deck, especially if the air felt nice and cool. Well, and, you know, she may not have been thrilled to have to sleep, you know, next to her brother. Who knows? Ron briefly woke up that morning at 5.30 and saw Amy, although a few reports stayed it was at 4.30.

He could see her through the sliding glass door to the balcony, and he could clearly see her legs. She was sitting in one of the deck chairs. When Ron woke up again a short time later, Amy wasn't on the balcony anymore. She wasn't in the tiny room either. But the shirt she had been wearing was draped over a chair, and the sliding glass door to the balcony was wide open. The sound of the wind and the ocean is likely what woke him back up. Amy's cigarettes and lighter were gone too.

Ron figured that Amy had changed and went up to the deck to get some coffee and take pictures of the port at sunrise, and he decided to go join her. but after making his way up to the deck, he couldn't find his daughter. He checked everywhere he could think of, hoping he wouldn't have to wake Iva and Brad in a panic. But Amy was nowhere to be found. And I know that the cruise ships have gotten bigger and bigger, right, as the years have gone on. But even back then, the ship would have been pretty large. I mean, you're talking about thousands of people, not easy to find someone.

And I always think about in these cases that moment where the panic sets in, you know, whether you're a parent and it's a young child, in this case, it's an adult child, it doesn't matter, right? Panic is panic. You realize that you can't find your child. And you and I have discussed it before. That feeling is, it's rough. Yeah, and on a ship that big, where do you start?

I mean, it makes sense that Ron would go to the place that she most likely would be at where he thought she would be at. But when she's not there, where else would you go? You know, it seems like you're not, you know, she's not probably going to go down wandering around in the room. So it would be someplace up where people gathered, most likely. But if he's looking around and doesn't find her there at some point, it seems like he's got to try and get some help to find her. At around seven, Ron found Brent Hunter, the guest relations manager on the ship, and told him that Amy was missing. Although there was no evidence that Amy was at risk or in trouble, the fact that she wasn't around just made her family uneasy. The Bradley's plea for a loudspeaker announcement about Amy's disappearance to be made was rejected because they were told it was too early in the morning and it would disturb other.

passengers who were sleeping. He told them to keep searching for half an hour and come back if they didn't find her. Cruise director Kirk Detweiler, who was interviewed for the Netflix documentary, called Amy's disappearance one family's unfortunate incident and defended Royal Caribbean's actions stating that they weren't going to stop everyone's cruise because there was a missing girl. Just a quick note about this guy, Kirk Detweiler, he, He's not really a fan favorite of people who have watched the documentary. You know,

a lot of people said that he came off as arrogant without empathy or any real understanding for the Bradley family. I guess because, you know, he was a little cold and, and he made some callous statements in the show. Yeah. Some people just rob you the wrong way. And I think they show who they really are.

And to me, this guy, Kurt Detweiler, you know, showed what the kind of person he is. He just really seemed cold. And, you know, I would guess he probably doesn't have any kids of his own because, you know, he had no empathy for this family. So I don't blame people for not being fans of his. At 7.35 a.m. after still not finding Amy, Ron Bradley informed the ship's security chief, Luke Costello, of his daughter's disappearance.

At 7.50 a.m., a page was sent out. asking Amy Bradley to go to the purser's desk. By the time the announcement was made, the ship had docked, the gangway had been lowered, and many passengers had already left the ship. Shortly after this, Brad says that a man named Alistair, who goes by the nickname Yellow, the bass player from Blue Orchid, came up to him and basically offered condolences for Amy being missing. And that was surprising to him at the time.

And it still is. It feels suspicious to him. because there hadn't been any official announcement that Amy was missing yet. So why was he apologizing and how did he know anything was wrong? It turns out that Alistair had been woken up shortly after 7 a.m. by Cruz staff since he had been seen dancing with Amy the night before. He was asked if Amy was in his room, but she wasn't. Although Cruz staff were forbidden from inviting guests back to their room,

it still would have been welcome news if Amy was found there. But unfortunately, she wasn't. And this guy, Alistair, or yelling, is, you know, he comes up a lot in this case. Now, I understand Brad kind of being suspicious, right? How does this guy know that Amy is missing? There's not been an official announcement yet, but he's coming up and giving condolences. But if he's woken up very early by crew staff asked about Amy, it makes sense to me that they would have told him she's missing. Yeah. And I think people maybe are suspicious of him, you know, maybe going up to the family, sort of if he had

something to do with it, maybe rubbing it in their face. But it could also simply be because he genuinely felt bad. After all, he had spent time with her. Around lunchtime, Iva asked the captain of the ship to distribute flyers with Amy's picture on it, but he refused. In a Flint Journal article, Iva recalled. him saying, I will not alarm the passengers. However, a full search of the ship was ordered, though there is a dispute about how thorough

it was. First, all staff members were ordered to search their own cabins. The Bradley family says that only the common areas in the staff rooms were checked, but the cruise director said they basically did a bomb suite, which includes checking drawers and closets. It's not clear how long a complete search of the ship would have. taken. But no doubt it wouldn't have been an easy task. To whatever extent it was searched, no sign of Amy was found. Yeah, the fact this captain refused to let Amy's family distribute

flyers with her picture on it, I just feel that's a major smack in the face. This is a family that's spent money entrusting their safety to you and your cruise line. And their daughter goes missing on your ship and you're not going to let them, you know, at least post some flyers. I mean, we talked about this is like the size of a city. Any number of people might have seen her might have some information and just seeing that that flyer might help them recognize her and maybe come forward with some information that leads to what happened to her. So I feel it was irresponsible and, you know, again, a slap in a face for Amy's family

for this captain to refuse that request. But in this case, I really get the sense that the company and, you know, by extension, the captain, the crew members, all of that, you know, they're, they're trying to maybe walk a line between being helpful, trying to find Amy, but also not to alarm passengers or make people fearful or give the company a bad name. Yeah, I do get the part of not wanting, you know, I don't know how many passengers around there, but having all those passengers in panic, worried, wondering what might be going on, are they at risk? You know, on one hand, that does maybe upheave their vacations or getaways a little bit. But again, I go back to maybe one of those people has some information and it might make the difference between Amy being found and not being found.

In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. The Bradley's were trying desperately not to panic, but they feared that Amy had met with foul play, and they began to wonder if any of the people Amy had crossed paths with might have been involved in her disappearance.

Alistair isn't the only person the Bradley's wish would have been looked into more thoroughly. The man in the room next to the Bradley's room, who was on the cruise by himself, remembered seeing Amy and the disc are around two in the morning. He was also often on his balcony after midnight, sometimes until 4 a.m. He and Amy had talked one night while they were both on their balconies. The people in the cabin on the other side of that man's room apparently heard a TV or radio blaring into the early morning after Amy's disappearance, and they could hear him talking loudly, but he was reportedly traveling alone and in his room by himself.

His room was searched, but Amy wasn't there, and neither were any of her belongings. With no clues to go on or progress in the search for Amy, the family decided to stay in Curacao so that they could look for her. They had been assured that there was no way she was still on the ship and they didn't want to risk getting any further away from her if she was out there to be found. The Otra Banda Hotel would become their temporary home base as they figured out how to find Amy.

Though there were at least 40 surveillance cameras on the ship, most of them were not recording footage. You could view and monitor what was happening in real time, but you couldn't rewind or preserve anything to watch later. The ones that did record apparently caught nothing that could help in the search for Amy. At 6.30 p.m., the Bradley's watched as the Rhapsody of the Seas took off from Curacao, heading on its way to the island of St. Martin. And you can't help but feel for the family. I mean, they are in such a tough situation at this point. First of all, you know, they have to make a decision.

Do we stay here? Do we stay on the ship? And we know they decided to stay off the ship because, why? I think it's because, you know, they thought searches of the ship had been done. Okay, how can she be on the ship? She has to be here. So we have to be here. And I completely understand that.

How could you leave? Yeah, they definitely had to have mixed feelings as that ship pulled out of the port. You know, on one hand, they feel that she might be on this island. But I'm sure a small part of them wondered still, could she still be on that ship someplace? And we just missed her. And now the ship's leaving. And I almost wonder if it would have made sense maybe for one of them to stay on the ship just in case. and while the two other ones are on the island,

and then they could cover both areas. Yeah, I get that thought. I could also see the family saying, well, we don't want to separate. We're already missing one person. Let's all stay together and we'll search together. Yeah, that's a very good point. The last thing you want to do is get separated after something like that happens.

Local authorities began searching the waterways near where the ship, was when Amy went missing, fearing that she may have wound up in the water. That search for Amy didn't begin until 6.30 a.m. on Wednesday, about 24 hours after she was last seen, deciding they couldn't take sitting there and waiting any longer. The Bradley family decided to fly to St. Martin and get back on the ship to keep looking for clues. On Thursday, agents from the FBI were finally allowed to board the ship and conduct an investigation, though they had to wear plain clothes. The FBI had no actual jurisdiction because the cruise was in international waters when Amy disappeared, and the ship wasn't registered in the United States.

Agents separated Ron, Iva, and Brett. They were each questioned individually to establish their timelines and to try to quickly rule them out as suspects so that the investigation could move on. Unfortunately, by the time anyone from the FBI was able to see the Bradley family's cabin, it had already been cleaned by the ship staff. Alistair, the base player from Blue Orchid, was questioned by the FBI, and he also voluntarily took a polygraph examination. On Friday, March 27th, the Bradley family disembarked on the island of St. Thomas. Without answers, the next day, they flew home to Virginia, and the Rhapsody of the Seas returned

to San Juan. By March 31st, the official. physical search for Amy Lynn Bradley was over. Dogs had found no scent to follow, and boats and planes had spotted nothing in the water, no bodies, and none of Amy's clothing or belongings. And sadly, in many ways,

that's where the investigation still stands today. So we talked about Alistair. We talked about this guy who was in the room next to the Bradley's, kind of reportedly on his own, by himself, you know, the FBI comes in. They're limited in what they can really do because they don't have jurisdiction. There's a couple of things that kind of stand out to me. One is that the room was cleaned. And so you're really not going to get much from that if there was anything there, you know,

to get to begin with. And then this guy, Alistair. voluntarily takes a polygraph. Now, the polygraph turned out to be inconclusive. I don't know more if, I know me personally, I wouldn't take a polygraph no matter what. But if I had done something and I knew I was guilty of something, I surely wouldn't take one.

Yeah, I think that, you know, is a powerful thought because if this guy had something to do with Amy going missing, it seems like the last thing he wants to do is volunteer to take a polygraph. Now, maybe he thought he could beat it or he wasn't that bright and didn't really know what he was doing when he agreed to it. Or, you know, he just didn't want to look suspicious by not doing it.

But whatever reason, they didn't have enough to say whether they felt that he was lying or it was just inconclusive. So I wonder if he's a red herring, but he definitely gets a lot of attention in this case and a lot of negative things are said about him and a lot of suspicions cast on him. What's frustrating about this case up to this point is there's no clear cut direction looking. You know, they search the ship, they searched the waters outside the ship, they went on the island. There's not one piece of information that leads them in a specific direction.

So they're sort of casting a wide net all over the place looking and not finding anything. So I think that's one of the frustrating things in the case that there's just no way to, no direction to head in. And then you talk about frustration for the family. They would have been frustrated during this whole time, obviously. But then when the official search is declared over, I can only imagine what a horrible feeling that would be for the family. It's like, okay, they haven't found anything.

and now they're no longer looking. And I think even worse is that Amy went missing so far from home. If she had gone missing like in their home state of Virginia, they might be able to keep pulling resources, getting volunteers, organizing searches, things like that to keep the search ongoing. But how do you do that when you live in Virginia?

And this is the Caribbean where this happened. You do set up a permanent baser. that's got to be a lot of expense and you'd have to take time from your job and everything else to do that. So it's sort of an impossible situation not being able to be where she actually went missing from. Well, and we mentioned Natalie Holloway earlier. I remember in her case, I think it was at least her mom, maybe both. I think she kind of did make a permanent residence for a while. Yeah, and I don't blame her mom for doing that.

And I wouldn't blame Amy's parents for trying to do that either if they could because you want to sort of be where the action is. You want to be close to where the situation unfolded and being back in Virginia. You're not close. And if anything, it probably reminds you that she's gone, just looking around and seeing her empty room, her belongings, that kind of stuff. And knowing you don't know what happened to her, just got to make it even worse. One of the most common theories about what happened to Amy is that she fell overboard somehow. Her family has been very clear that she was incredibly afraid of the open ocean and of heights, so there's no way she was doing anything dangerous like trying to walk on the railing

or climb from their balcony to another. But one of her friends did mention that she was adventurous and liked to walk on the edges of things. Amy clearly wasn't afraid to be out on the balcony as she had slept on it. We should point out that there's a wall or a wall. or clear glass barrier to prevent someone from falling over the side, and it was pretty tall. From the looks of it, you'd need to climb up on it on purpose to go over. Even if Amy was drunk, it'd be hard to fall over the deck. But even if she did fall overboard, Amy's been described as a very strong swimmer,

and she once worked as a lifeguard, so many people believe that she could have made it to shore or swam long enough to be discovered. Some people believe that Amy did go overboard that morning, but that it was no accident. And that for whatever reason, she decided to take her own life and jumped overboard. Amy's family thinks that this is the absolute least likely option. She seemed happy. And she had plans. She had recently graduated from college and was about to start a new job.

But these plans, they also meant a lot of. lot of pressure. The job Amy was going to start was her first full-time job. That can come with a lot of anxiety and a lot of worries about not being able to measure up and make it as an adult. On top of that, she planned to keep working at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, cutting back her hours, and working three nights a week instead of her usual five. There's also new information revealed in that recent Netflix special about Amy's sexuality and how that may have affected her state of mind that morning. Multiple friends say that Amy came out to them as gay, while her family seems to believe that

she was bisexual. From the little information we have, it seems like her family may not have been completely accepting of that at the time, which many people believe could have weighed on Amy. In the documentary, Ron said of Amy's coming out. It wasn't what we would choose for her, but it's her life and we loved her unconditionally. As parents, we were concerned that in 1995, those feelings would not be welcomed by the general population. One thing that came to light in the documentary was that just months before the cruise, she

and her girlfriend broke up because Amy kissed another person while she was drinking. One month before her disappearance, Amy wrote her a letter, rolled it up and stopped it inside a bottle because she felt stranded and alone waiting to be safe. So there's a couple of things here. You know, obviously pressure is something that some people struggled to deal with. My oldest just started her first full-time job after, you know, graduating with her graduate degree. She's, you know, experiencing some of that pressure right now. There's anxiety. It's all new. I remember that time in my life, your early 20s, you're sort of deciding what to do with yourself. And there's certainly a lot of pressures. I think most people go through that. And some people add some of that

pressure on themselves. They want to be perfect. They want to please people. They might be wrestling with something like Amy was coming out to her parents. So it may have been a little tougher on her than some other people. But I go back to everybody saying that she was in good speech. And spirits, you know, the night she was last seen, she seemed happy. She was dancing, talking to people, and, you know, everything according to her family was normal. So I can understand why they don't think that's the outcome. And I think you, you have that in a lot of these types of cases where one possibility is that a missing person made the decision to end their life. But, you know, all the kind of facts or things around them seem to point the other way, right?

They're happy. They've got good things going on in their life. They've got plans, this and that. But the other thing to talk about is being gay in 1995. It was a lot harder than it is today. A lot of people just couldn't come to grips with that, couldn't accept that. Now, her dad said they loved her unconditionally, but did say, you know, it's not what they would have chosen for her. And make of that what you will.

People that believe Amy may have taken her own life say that any number of things could have led to that outcome, including the way which her parents took the news of her coming out. In a recent interview, the bass player, Alistair, who was dancing with Amy before she vanished, recalled that Amy's chain smoking so much. that had bothered him. So he asked her why she felt the need to smoke like that. He says that she told him her family had found out that she was gay and then forced her to come with them on the cruise. But according to interviews with some of Amy's friends, she was excited to go on the trip and looking forward to it. It didn't seem like she was down or depressed and hadn't been forced to go on the trip. And as is often the case, right, you have some conflicting information, which kind of muddies the waters.

We see that quite a bit. A mochi moment from Sadie, who writes, I'm not crying, you're crying. This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi, because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP1. He understood, and I felt supported, not judged. I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy. Thanks, Sadie.

I'm Myra Amit, founder of Mochi Health. To find your mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com. Sadie is a mochi member compensated for her story. Now a lot has been made of the attention multiple males were giving Amy while on board the ship, whether this is true or not. Either way, it could have made her extremely uncomfortable. If she did receive a bunch of unwanted attention and had a lot of men looking at her or trying to flirt with her, it could have been awkward for multiple reasons.

She wasn't interested in any male advances in the first place. Also, she'd be stuck on a boat with any man she turned down. Lastly, her family seemed to be making a big deal out of the attention. Bradley described joking about how if anyone at the table wanted something fast. They should just tell the waiters it was for Amy so they would bring it right away. This seemed to be something that not just the family hurt. It could have been annoying. embarrassing or even uncomfortable for Amy if she felt pressured to reciprocate male attention

or to be around someone she wasn't comfortable with. And we don't know maybe if Amy wasn't comfortable around some of these men, perhaps it was because she knew or had learned something about them that made her uneasy. If Amy went over the balcony accidentally, on purpose, or as the result of foul play, we may never know. As we mentioned, no sign of her was found in the water or washed up on local beaches. Most people familiar with the currents in the area seem to agree that her body would have washed ashore. The fact is, she may have walked right up the door of her room while everyone was asleep and met her fate after that. As we touched on, the electronic system that logs when the key cards are used doesn't record when the doors are open from inside the room,

so only arrivals to the room are tracked. And I do think this is a big deal more. You can only track when someone, you know, enters the room. Exits can't be tracked. So, you know, there is a piece or pieces of information that are missing. Just by that very fact alone. By November of 1998, no one felt that they were any closer to finding Amy, James Weber, special agent and charge.

charge of the FBI San Juan field office told the Flint Journal, we pursued every angle from whether there was foul play, a suicide, or an accident. And we have basically not gotten anywhere. Many people paint Alistair, the base player for Blue Orchid, as a suspect. Interviews with the family indicate that they still think he could have had something to do with Amy's disappearance. According to Iva and the Dr. Phil episode about Amy, Amy told Brad that Alistair was a real jerk. The narrative on an Unsolved Mysteries episode about the case also paints Alistair as a creep.

In that segment, Brad said, she said that when they were dancing at the disco, he tried to, you know, dance a little too close and she had to tell him to back off a little bit. Two college freshmen claimed to have seen Amy with Alistair that morning at around 5.30. a.m. in the glass elevator that would take them to the top deck. According to these witnesses, Amy had a camera in her possession. About 15 minutes later, they saw Alistair again. This time, he was coming the opposite way and he was by himself. And instead of trying to flirt with these girls, like he usually did, he walked right by them quickly without even looking in their direction. The story that one of those girls tells about Alistair in the Netflix documentary is completely

different from the statement she made at the time, Amy went missing. Early on, she reportedly said of Alistair that he acted normal and that he even spoke to them. Over the years, the detail that Alistair gave Amy a cup of dark liquid to drink has popped up in these eyewitness accounts. So these college girls reported that they saw Amy with a camera. But according to Brad, the camera, his sister was said to have been carrying was found in the safe in their cabin. Now, this could mean a few different things. First, that whoever was seen by the girls with Alistair that morning wasn't actually Amy.

Or if it was Amy, the eyewitnesses were mistaken about what she was holding. The third possibility is that they did see Amy with the camera and that she made it back to her room with it and put it into the safe. if the eyewitnesses were mistaken about Amy holding a camera, then what else could they possibly be misremembered? And if they're mistaken altogether that they saw Amy and it was someone else with Alistair, then where was Amy during this time? And I think this is, you know, one of the big problems with eyewitnesses, right?

They don't always get it right. some people think they saw something they're not quite 100% sure what they saw and then when you talk about a case that's 30 years old well maybe things change over time the memories change of what they thought they saw yeah and some of the details they gave early on are just completely at odds with what they said in the Netflix documentary so unless they you know that was a a misquoted statement from them early on to what they said in the documentary. It seems like they have shifted over the years. But what does that mean?

Is it just, you know, failing memory or is there something more behind it? Again, it's just a part of the mystery, right, of a case like this, in this case specifically. Even Alistair's own daughter, Amika, suspects he could have had something to do with Amy's disappearance, though she wasn't born when the cruise happened and she was only about one or two years old. When her parents divorced, she's talked to her mother about him and Amy, throughout the years and was interviewed for the Netflix documentary. It was Amika's mother that told her about an incident on a cruise ship her father was on. She also said that everything changed suddenly after one cruise he went on and that she found a bag with pictures of Caucasian women in it.

This has been blown up into him having suitcases full of pictures of women. That is daughter stumbled upon, but that is not at all what she has described. One reason she is suspicious of her father is that he gets upset with her when she brings it up. Now, playing devil's advocate, it may be a case of Alistair not being happy that his daughter started questioning him about something he felt the FBI may have cleared him four years ago and the fact she doesn't trust him or has suspicions of him makes him angry. And let's be honest, we said it more of this guy, Alistair. You know, he's taken quite a bit of shots over the.

the years. You know, when you look at the online forums, and this is before the Netflix documentary came out, he has been called a suspect by a lot of people and maybe even more than that. So if you were in that position, would you be angry when people bring it up? Let's say if you had nothing to do with it. Yeah, I'd be very upset if somebody accused me. of something like this and I knew I didn't do it. Now, some people might say, well, how come he's not out there shouting it from the rooftops? Why is he sort of staying in the shadows and not coming out to defend himself?

And, you know, is that because he's got something to hide or is it because he doesn't want to make it an even bigger thing than it already is? I don't think we know that. No, we don't. But no matter which way he went about it, it's, it's, it. it's not going to go away, right? If he comes out and shouts it from the rooftops, then he's just trying to deflect.

If he doesn't say anything, well, that's suspicious too. Now, I'm not saying this guy didn't have anything to do with it. I'm just saying if he didn't, that's kind of a no-win scenario for him. Chris Fenwick, a video editor who was working shooting footage on the cruise and interviewed in the documentary wanted to help.

He was on the cruise working for his company tasked with capturing video of some of his coworkers and their time on the ship. He realized that he may have video footage of Amy that may help determine what happened to her. So he decided to check his footage and see if he had anything that could be useful. Sure enough, he immediately spotted Amy and his footage

dancing with Alistair. The two seemed to be having fun and there was no sign of any issues between the two of them. even though most descriptions of Alistair from that night have him being a creep or a jerk and show that Amy wasn't interested in him, it looked like they really had a good time. They were dancing pretty intimately compared to everyone else, who were either doing cheesy dance moves or twirling their partners around. There was no smoking gun as far as clues in the video.

According to Chris Fenwick in the Netflix documentary, the crew's security came to him and wanted his original videos, and he refused. According to him, he made copies and eventually turned them over to the FBI. So the dance video didn't provide a smoking gun. Was there anything else that night that stood out or was eventful? At some point that night, a man confronted Brad and told him to stop dancing with his wife. Brad said he had no idea that she was married and that there were no hard feelings. It apparently didn't escalate beyond that.

And there was no indication Amy was involved in the conversation. Other than that, there doesn't seem to be a lot about that night. This stands out as unusual. What complicates this case is the number of sightings of Amy that have been reported following her disappearance. There are fellow cruise passengers who have claimed that they saw Amy after her father last saw her on their balcony. And there are people who swear they have run into her years after her disappearance. We'll get into all these possible sightings, as well as, as the possibility Amy is alive today.

And we'll also share our opinions on what we think happened, all coming in our next episode, part two of Amy Lynn Bradley. So as we wrap this one up more, you know, like we said, Alistair gets a lot of attention in this case. I mean,

you know, he was dancing with Amy that night. One of the big questions that I have is why Amy was dancing with this. guy. If, as some people have claimed, she said that she thought he was creepy or, you know, a jerk or something like that, that part seems strange. Now, maybe she just couldn't get away from him, but that's not really the, the descriptions that I get, right? The video that was taken seems to imply that, you know, they were both having a good time.

Amy was having a good time. But that's one thing that is kind of sticking with me. Well, I think we hit on it earlier, too. Amy is the kind of person that was very friendly and maybe polite and didn't want to offend somebody. Maybe she didn't want to seem rude by telling him, he didn't, she didn't want to dance with him and she sort of stayed there just being nice. Or if something happened, maybe if he said something or tried something, or tried something,

maybe is after at the point they danced that she became upset with him and later called him a jerk. We just don't know all those details. But one thing that we do know is that after that dance, the main reason Alistair comes up as such a suspect is because they had dance that night. But we do know that after that dance, according to Amy's father, he saw her, he saw her. he saw his daughter in their room out on the balcony after that dance. So unless Amy somehow went back out of the room and met with Alistair again, it seems like that clears Alistair at that point.

And I just don't think there's any evidence to this point in the discussion that we can see they clearly met up after she was seen in her room. Well, that's one of the problems with the key cards, right? she could have left the room and there would be no log of it because that's just not how it works and it makes me wonder if alister is maybe a red herring everybody's focusing on him but what if she left her room and she did meet with foul play but it could have been any one of the staff passengers on the ship could be a number of different scenarios that don't involve alister yeah and we'll explore the scenarios further in the next episode but

there are a lot of different scenarios here that could have happened. Accident. Amy deciding to end her life. Meeting with foul play. It's part of the big mystery of this case. But that's it for part one on Amy Lynn Bradley. We'll be back with you next Saturday night with part two. If you love the show, but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a review,

leave a rating. also keep telling your friends. A word of mouth about the criminology podcast really helps us out. If you want to find us on social media, we're on all major platforms. Just search for criminology podcast. And you can find us on our website, criminologypodcast.com. And if you want to join discussion with other criminology listeners, head over to our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast discussion and fans.

So like I said, we'll be back next Saturday night with the second. and final part on Amy Lynn Bradley. So for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.