RedHanded - Episode 52 - Cruise Crime: The Disappearance of Amy Bradley

Episode Date: June 27, 2018

One morning 23 year old Amy Bradley got up, got dressed, grabbed her cigarettes - seemingly went for a walk - and vanished. And what makes this case even stranger is that Amy was on a ship, out at sea on a Caribbean cruise with her family. How does one just disappear from a ship, never to be seen again?   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And this is Red Handed. To a holiday maker, cruise ships may seem like the perfect luxury. There's staff on hand to tend to your every whim, endless beautiful sunsets, and dinners at the captain's table. But crimes on cruise ships are not unheard of, despite what Royal Caribbean want you to believe. These ships are so large that they are almost like floating cities, and just like cities, they have crime. Compared to cities on land, these crime rates are almost negligible,

but sexual assault rates on cruise ships are notably quite high. And rather worryingly, apart from the onboard security officers, there really isn't anyone else impartial to report a crime to or keep things under control on these ships. Cruise ships are also governed by the laws of the country that they are registered to and by ancient maritime laws, not necessarily the laws of the country they leave from. So put simply, if something goes wrong, if something happens to you or your family or the people that you're with, no police or government agency from your country can set foot on the ship to launch an investigation without permission from the government of the country that the ship is registered to. It would be like Scotland Yard marching into Estonia and

demanding to conduct an investigation of a crime committed against a British national on Estonian soil. Of course international cooperation does happen though but hardly ever without slowing down the process of an investigation. The best you can hope for is cooperation between the two countries. But sometimes there just isn't a lot your home country can do. And you lose precious time. I think that's the key thing. Usually these investigations do happen, but you're losing days. And with a case like this one, especially, time is so important. Absolutely. The first few hours of an investigation,

and especially the first 24 hours when a person has gone missing, are, as we know, absolutely the golden window. And while you're waiting for sort of diplomacy to take place and for cooperation between two countries that may or may not have, you know, decent diplomatic relations to come together and cooperate and allow this to happen, like you said, you're just wasting so much time. But despite all of this, out of all of the places in the world to go missing, a cruise ship seems a pretty unlikely one. When at sea, there simply isn't a way on or off that isn't just jumping into the ocean.

And as we know, anyone who ends up in the water always turns up eventually. So how is it that 23-year-old Amy Bradley from Chesterfield, Virginia, on holiday with her family, seemingly disappeared into thin air on the 24th of March 1998? Amy was, according to her family, a happy young woman. She'd recently graduated university with a degree in sports psychology and she had plans to do a master's. She was a keen basketball player, adept swimmer, swimming coach and a fully trained lifeguard. Amy's dad, Ron, had won a cruise through his work and he was keen to spend it with his wife, Ivor, daughter, Amy and younger son, Brad. And you did hear that correctly. They named their son Brad Bradley.

Good. Strong American name. It's cruel, I think think calling your child Brad Bradley. I went to school with a girl who recently had a baby and her married name is Edwards and she called her son Teddy which is obviously like a shortening of Edwards so her son is called Edward Edwards. That is like she's chosen that name years ago then met her husband and like fuck your surname is Edward it doesn't matter I'm still gonna call my son Teddy. Think about it. Fucking hell. It's like that politician David Davis, though.

I just look at him and I'm like, of course your name is David Davis, you grey-faced, boring. He is the most David Davis-looking person in the world. Absolutely. His parents were spot on naming him David Davis, though, weren't they? Yeah, most definitely. And we don't know Brad. Maybe he was just so Brad that he had to be called Brad Bradley. Like so Brad they named him twice.

According to Brad Bradley and his parents, Amy was a little bit reluctant to go on this cruise because despite being a trained lifeguard and swim star, she was afraid of the ocean. And I did try and look up what, to be qualified as a lifeguard in Virginia, what tests you have to do to see if there was any open water swimming. And I wasn't able to find out if there was or not.

But I do think a lifeguard that's afraid of the ocean is kind of like, I don't know. But if you're only ever a lifeguard in like a pool, then you could be. I'm a good swimmer. I've never been a lifeguard. But open water swimming is scary. The ocean is scary. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose. It'd be weird if she was like a triathlete and scary. The ocean is scary. Yeah, yeah, I suppose. It'd be weird if she was like a triathlete and she was scared of the ocean.

Yeah, that's true. I suppose there is quite a big difference between pool swimming and open water swimming. Massively. It does seem a little bit odd, but you're right. The ocean is scary. Terrifying. So Ron's job as an insurance agent, so this is Daddy Bradley, had awarded him this cruise around the Caribbean, kicking off and ending in Puerto Rico.

So they start in Puerto Rico and they do a round trip, stopping off at Aruba, Curacao and St. Martin. Ron's boss, Mike McCourt, was also on the cruise. Why the fuck are my job not handing out cruises? Like, I need to get into this insurance racket. What kind of job just gives out cruises to their staff? That's insane. Sorry, it's sales. You need to get into a sales job, Hannah. job just gives out cruises to their staff that's insane sorry it's sales you need to get into a sales job hannah oh i'd be fucking awful it's like tops sales people you're getting all sorts of incentives 100 if you want perks like that

sales we need to get into the sales game oh i'd rather die that's the thing you'd have to do day-to-day sales just to go maybe get a trip doesn't seem worth it really to me and you'd have to be the best salesperson to get that yeah not just giving it to you because you're a sales person that's not gonna happen is it that's so crushing ronnie bradley must have been pretty good at his job and at 23 i can kind of understand why amy may not have been super keen to go on this trip whether she was actually afraid of water or not. Also, like, she was setting up her new life. She'd adopted an English bulldog called Daisy

and the pick-up date was the day after the cruise ended. So I can understand why she... But still, you're 23. Your dad gets, like, an all-inclusive paid trip for a cruise around the Caribbean. I'm going. Yeah. They seem fine, don't they?

I know, but I'm just trying to get my head around why she was reluctant to go. That's what I doesn't, because in every single interview, her family mentioned the fact that she didn't really want to go. Yeah. It seems like an odd detail to me. Maybe it's just them projecting the guilt of being like, she didn't even want to go and we made her go and now this has happened. Yeah, maybe. But whatever her reasons, Amy did eventually suck it up and agreed to go on this cruise, maybe. But whatever her reasons, Amy did eventually suck it up and agreed to go on this cruise with her parents

and her younger brother, Brad Bradley. We're just going to keep calling him Brad Bradley, right? Yeah. I am going to keep calling him Brad Bradley for the rest of my life. That's absolutely fair. So the family departed on the Royal Caribbean cruise ship

Rhapsody of the Seas, which, I mean, seriously. It's still about. It's still cruising about, doing its thing. What a fucking name, Rhapsody of the Seas. Royal Caribbean have loads of different ones. They've got, like, the Celebration of the Seas. They've got lots of different names.

That's hideous. That's a hideous name for a ship. But anyway, Rhapsody of the Seas. It departs from San Juan on the 21st of March, 1998. And before boarding, Amy sent two postcards to friends telling them how beautiful San Juan was. The Rhapsody of the Seas, despite having a terribly shit name, was a very impressive boat. At over 279 meters long, it had capacity for well over 2,000 passengers and 700 crew. The Bradleys checked into their cabin,

suite 8564. They were all in one room together. From what I can gather from the room's layout images on the Rhapsody of the Seas website, there was a double bed and two singles and it was all fairly open plan. Basically, they were all in the same room and there was a balcony separated by two sliding doors. So in order to get to the balcony, you have to walk past the beds and the people sleeping in them. Once on board, the Bradley settled into their room as the Rhapsody of the Seas set sail for Aruba.

Amy unpacked 15 pairs of shoes for the week-long trip and nine rolls of film. 15 pairs of shoes for a week? Yeah, I'm not a shoe person particularly, so I find that outrageous. I feel like I have to really love a shoe to wear it all the time. I couldn't imagine myself loving 15 pairs of shoes enough to take them on a week-long cruise.

That's crazy. And their first night on board, the Bradleys attended a formal dinner. The Rhapsody of the Seas, like every other cruise ship, is desperate to squeeze as much money out of you as they possibly can at every single juncture. And one of the ways they do this is by having an onboard photographer take pictures of all of the guests. And then these shots are displayed on a board and the passengers can go and presumably take about an hour to find themselves among the 2,000 other people who have been photographed and pay an extortionate rate for a copy of the photograph. Can you even imagine that happening now with mobile phones? I know. It's so so funny isn't it? I think that is really key with this case as well. This is 1998. Yeah so much of it relies on photographs and videos that today would just be on people's phones. 100%. Amy and her family had their picture taken by the on-board photographer

that evening, the formal dinner evening, and when they sat down to dinner, Amy attracted the attention of three of the waiters in the dining room. They told Amy that they wanted to take her to Carlos and Charlie's on Aruba the next night. Incidentally, Carlos and Charlie's is where Natalie Holloway disappeared from seven years later. Natalie Holloway's mum, Beth Holloway, now hosts a TV show called Vanished with Beth Holloway, where she investigates other disappearance cases, including that of Amy Bradley. Amy, surprisingly, wasn't into this invitation from the waiters at all. She told her dad that the waiters gave her the creeps and she wouldn't be going anywhere or doing anything with any of them. I'm going to say good call. Good call, Amy. Do not go to a bar with some waiters that you've met.

Absolutely not. Especially not when there's fucking three of them. Exactly. Why would you do that? Oh my God, no way. Of all the stupid risks I've ever taken, that is not one of them. But the rest of the dinner, after this weird invitation from these waiters, went off without a hitch on their first night on the Rhapsody of the Seas.

So after dinner, Amy and her brother, Brad Bradley, went and did a little bit of gambling at the onboard casino. But none of the Bradleys did anything too wild that evening. They all went to bed keen to enjoy the next day in Aruba hungover free. The next day, the Bradleys posed for a family picture as they disembarked the ship. It would be the last one of them all together ever taken. They spent the day together in Aruba. They hired a jeep, they had a look around, they did some shopping and, you know, just like other normal touristy things. Back on board that evening, there was a calypso party and a local dance troupe from Aruba were welcomed onto the ship to perform. In later interviews,

the Bradley family claimed to have noticed that there were other people allowed onto the ship from Aruba who were not part of the dance troupe. It struck them as odd that people would be allowed onto the ship who were not paying customers and who were not giving a performance. Here is my problem with this, because quite a lot is made of this when you watch interviews of the Bradleys retelling the night before. They make quite a big deal of the fact that there could have been like a breach of people coming onto the ship. And I understand why they do that.

But the Rhapsody of the Seas has over 2,000 passengers. They have barely been on board for 24 hours. There is no way in hell they have memorized the faces of every single other passenger on the ship so how did they know anything about these people that they assume to be local on one hand yes i absolutely see your point the other i feel like i can absolutely see these cruise ships just being like let this dance crew on if there's other people that might come on locals to come spend money at their bar they're so money grabbing igrubbing, I would feel like they'd just let them on. Oh yeah, I think it's possible. And I also feel like the people on these ships,

Royal Caribbean, 1998, around the Caribbean, I'm going to guess it's a lot of white people, white middle-class people on that ship. And I reckon other people who weren't would probably stand out a bit. Yeah, that's true. Just going on the demographics of what I can imagine a cruise like that would be made up of. No, I completely agree. Brad also noticed Amy speaking to two ladies in uniform, but it was not the uniform of the ship. Years later, he would claim that these ladies were wearing the uniform of the Scientology ship, the Free Winds, which happened to be docked in Aruba that day too. That I find hilarious.

Me too. Like, was she snatched by Scientologists? We don't know. And also that's not Scientology's bag. They're not there to fucking kidnap you. Yeah they've got Tom Cruise. They don't need you. Hasn't he left now? Oh has he? I mean I think I hate celebrity news so I actively avoid it but I think I might have accidentally read a headline that said Tom Cruise leaves Scientology. No way. Might be making it up. I'll find out. They'll kill him. Who knows? Who knows? But no Scientology aren't fucking kidnapping you. They want you to come of your own free will and then they'll hold you hostage if you try leave and tell people things. So apparently these women from the Scientology ship appear to be very animated when talking to Amy, but very reserved when approached by Ron and Ivor. I do just take this account with quite an enormous pinch of salt, and so do the FBI,

because this information has never been corroborated by them. The photographs that had been taken by the onboard photographer the night before at the formal dinner had been put up for the guests to have a look at. Amy and Brad went to go and have a look but there were no pictures of Amy and in some accounts the pictures of Amy were there a few hours before and in some accounts there were just never any of her. That's very odd. Out of all of the people on the ship she was the only one with no pictures and as much as you know with the whole thing of like how do they know these local people are coming on board? With this one, I feel like there are 2000 guests. Could the family really have looked through every picture and known Amy is the only one whose

photo is not here? I see 1999 other faces. Exactly. But Amy's face isn't here. How could they be sure that Amy's photo was the only one that was missing? That's what I think. And I think there's so many, obviously, because this case is quite famous. There are so many theories of someone has taken her pictures down because they don't want anyone to be able to identify her or blah, blah, blah. Or they're in the picture with her and they wanted those taken down. Yeah, but I just really don't think they can know that she was the only

person whose picture wasn't there. And also at this point, she hasn't gone missing. She's still there. So this person would have had to have the foresight to know I'm in those pictures with her at the dinner. She's going to go missing by tomorrow because I'm going to do something to her. And I better get rid of those pictures now because tomorrow once she's missing, they're going to look at those pictures and know it was me. That's ridiculous. That's absolutely ridiculous. I don't buy into this.

But that is how very often this part of the story is represented. That Amy was the only one not on the photo board and that the photos must have been taken by someone. Was she really the only one out of 2,000 people? I think probably not. Ivor Bradley, Amy's mum, asked the photographer where the pictures would be if they weren't up on the board. And he said he would have just put them with all the

other photographs. But according to Ivor, he admitted that he couldn't find the photos of Amy on the board either and agreed to redevelop the photographs. There's just a lot being made out of this. I'm not really sure it's anything. Yeah, I agree. So after the photo incident, Ron and Ivor went to bed and bradley and amy stuck around on the deck for the rest of the calypso party calypso party it just fucking cruises sound like my worst nightmare oh me too so gross they seem very like itinerary heavy and when i'm on holiday like i just want to get drunk on the beach like a normal fucking person like i don't want to be like we have to do this thing that you have an allotted hour to have

fun here and then come back. It's not my vibe really. Thing is, I think you would hate to go on holiday with me because I am quite itinerary heavy, but I like to make the itinerary myself. I don't like to be told to. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like I go out and do stuff, but I don't want a timetable. And I'm not about a fucking Calypso party on a boat with 2000 other tourists. And I assume they dock overnight.

Oh no, they don't dock overnight or no, no, they don't dock overnight. They keep going, right? You would be sailing, not sailing, boating, cruising. This just gets worse and worse. Brad won the limbo competition because yes, there was a limbo competition at this onboard calypso party that evening. Of course there was. It's not a calypso party without a limbo competition. Absolutely. And it's also not a calypso party without a band named the Blue Orchid because Brad and Amy danced all night to these guys. And later on in the evening, the party moved to the onboard 24-hour nightclub.

Which, honestly, if I thought the calypso party sounded bad, that sounds like literally the seventh circle of hell. Doesn't it? I can't imagine anything worse than a 24-hour nightclub. On a fucking Royal Caribbean cruise ship called Rhapsody of the Sea. That's the thing. You can't leave. You're trapped.

Oh my God. It's actually making me feel quite anxious. No wonder fucking Amy didn't want to go on this cruise. This is probably why. Yeah. Maybe Amy was just cooler than Ron Iver and Brad. And she just didn't want to do this. Well, it's not hard to be cooler than your brother when he's called Brad Bradley.

Poor Brad. Poor Brad Bradley. Amy and Brad keep dancing to Blue Orchid, keep drinking and keep having a good time. I don't know if there was any more limboing. There may have been. I imagine that if you've won a limbo competition. You're going to want to show it off. You're probably going to just keep on going.

You don't want to keep that to yourself. The bass player from Blue Orchid, Alistair Douglas, or Yellow to his friends, took a particular interest in Amy. There was also a videographer on board the ship whose job was to film everyone and make a short video to show on the last night of the cruise.

Oh my God, so much organised fun. To be honest, it sounds like you might have quite a good time. Me? If you get to do the organising. I don't like to organise things like this. No, I'm not very much a drinker when I'm on holiday. I don't really drink at all when I go away

because I just feel like I'm wasting time by being hungover the next day. I just like to climb things, but we've talked about this before. I love a good hike. I love a good view and a sunrise and a temple. Not this. Not let me film everybody and show it to you all on the last night. I'm not fucking mental. Do you know what is wonderful about everyone having phones now is that you don't have to sit through slideshows of people's holiday photos anymore. That is a blessing. When did you do that? Oh my God, my granddad used to make us do it constantly. Awful, absolutely fucking awful. We're like, yes, we've seen them.

We've seen these ones before. Oh, that's adorable though, when it's an old person. And of course, copies of this video could be purchased for, I imagine, quite a lot of money. And the videographer on board was called Steve Reeves. And he captured footage of Amy and Yellow dancing that night on three separate occasions. Every time they are shot, they're dancing closer and closer together until eventually they're touching and holding hands. Yellow was behind Amy doing that standy-uppy spoon dance, and it is pretty gross. And the final shot of them dancing together was captured at three o'clock in the morning brad left the disco at about 3 30 and the door locking system on their cabin recorded him returning at 3 35 amy stayed behind only five minutes longer and is captured on camera by the lifts in the disco at about 3 35 a.m According to the ship's door locking system, she entered the family's cabin at 3.40.

Amy and Brad sat out on the balcony and chatted whilst their parents slept inside. Brad went to bed at about 4 o'clock. Amy stayed out on the balcony and fell asleep. Doesn't that seem like a strange thing for a person who's afraid of the ocean to do? To just fall asleep on the balcony? She's been out till 4 in the morning.

Yeah, that's true. I think I'm not going to be too hard on her for that. I think entirely possible she was just too tired and drunk to move. So we'll just leave that one. Ron woke up at about half past five and saw Amy through the closed glass door stretched out on the chair. He didn't see her face, but assumed that she must have been sleeping

due to the heavy night Amy and Brad had had the night before. So he decided to leave her to it. Amy's cigarettes and lighters were on the floor next to her. The Rhapsody of the Seas was due to arrive in Curacao that morning, and all of the Bradleys would have to get up early for breakfast, so Ron, thinking Amy would be glad of the extra snooze, dozed off again himself. When he woke up again at 6am, just half an hour later, Amy, her cigarettes, and her lighter were gone, and the glass door was open about 16 inches, but Amy's shoes were still there so she couldn't have gone far Ron thought to himself but Amy had changed into

some jeans and a different top so she must have been going somewhere. Ron thought Amy must have gone for a cigarette on one of the upper decks to watch the ship come into Curacao so he got dressed and went looking for her but he couldn't find her anywhere. How far could she have gone though? She only had half an hour head start, absolute tops, if Ron was right about the timings. So Ron continued to search for Amy. And as more time passed, he became more and more panicked. Ron ran into the head of ship security, Lou Costello, who understandably was not that bothered

when Ron told him that he couldn't find his daughter. After all, at this point, she's only been missing about half an hour and she is an adult. Surely this must have happened multiple times before. It's a massive ship and people must wander off all the time. Just before 7am, an exasperated Ron returned to his cabin and tells Brad and Ivor that he can't find Amy. And in Ivor's telling of this moment, she woke up and knew instantly by looking at Ron that something was gravely wrong. Which, it's been an hour and Amy is 23. That seems a little bit odd to me. Like, were you really that panicked when she'd only been gone an hour?

She's not a child. She's perfectly capable of looking after herself. At this point, she has to be on board. There's nowhere else she can be. They haven't even got to Curacao yet. And you're right. I just think it's very weird, like, how panicked they are at this point that Amy's missing. But Brad and his parents walk every deck of the ship together, but still no luck. They approach members of staff and even the captain to put a call out over the tannoy for Amy, which would seem like the next logical step.

I mean, that's what you do, like, when kids get lost in the supermarket. But the captain refuses to put a call out. He thought it was far too early in the morning for loudspeakers. And why cause a panic? I find it weird that he won't just do this. Why is it causing a panic? You can just put over the tannoy, Amy, Amy Bradley, report to wherever.

Come check, your parents are looking for you. Whatever, like, it's really in the tone of your delivery. You're not like, ah, Amy, where are you? Like, you're fucking, like, why are you causing a panic? Just make a tannoy announcement. There are a lot of things like that in this case. Because a lot of people do think that Royal Caribbean sort of had a hand in it. And I don't think they did.

But there are multiple instances of things like this when you're like, but why didn't you just put a call out then? Exactly. If't have anything to hide that's the thing I find that weird but I wonder as weird as it sounds to us like not causing a panic maybe there is a different mindset and a different mentality when dealing with a bunch of people on a ship yeah I've been thinking about that too that as the captain obviously you're responsible for everyone on there and crowd control has got to be quite a lot of your job. And maybe he's just like, this isn't worth it. But it seems weird.

But anyway, at about 8am, the Rhapsody of the Seas made it to the port of Curacao and the gangways went down. Now, this is when you really start to like, this becomes more dangerous because now there is a way off the ship. Which is why it's even weirder that he wouldn't do anything when there was no way off the ship apart from if Amy had fallen off. At about 8am, the Rhapsody of the Seas made it to the port at Curacao and the gangways went down. The passengers started to leave the ship and go onto dry land. And this really is panic stations now because the ship is no longer the only place Amy could be. The Bradley family begged for the gangways to be blocked so that they could be sure no one had taken Amy off the ship. But again, the captain refused, not wanting to cause a panic. I find it weird that already the family are jumping to the conclusion somebody is trying to take Amy off the ship.

Is that weird? I think that's weird too. Like, if I was them, I would just stand at the bottom of the gangways and watch everybody go off and check where Amy was. I mean, we know now that Amy is missing and they were right to be so worried. But why were they so worried given that she's a 23 year old woman and she hadn't been missing that long? I find that quite strange. It's not like they were all on land and they were getting back on the ship and she hadn't returned. That I'd be like, yeah, fuck yes, you should be panicking. And it's an hour. She's been gone an hour. Two hours, max. Ron saw her at 5.30 and her cigarettes, everything was gone. She changed her clothes. Someone is kidnapping you. Are they like,

you need to change. You need to change into some jeans and that top I like and bring your cigarettes and your lighter. It's very strange. But after more pleading from the family, the staff finally agreed to put a call out for Amy. But at no point did they mention that she was missing. The call simply said, Amy Bradley, please contact the purser's desk. Again, does it matter that they didn't say she was missing? What, they'd be like, Amy Bradley, you're missing. Come to the purser's desk. That seems like a perfectly logical Tannoy announcement. It just seems like it came too late. And there must be policies in place for stuff like that. This must happen all the time. Yeah.

It seems really bizarre to me that the call isn't put out. The staff, Luke Costello, the head of security and the captain of the ship assured the Bradley family that they had conducted a thorough search of the ship and that Amy must have gone on shore because she wasn't there. I mean, I think they were probably just telling the family like, Amy's gone ashore, probably thinking that you can't be far behind her. So this will just all turn out to be a big misunderstanding. But either Ron and Brad were unconvinced. Ivor especially was adamant that Amy would never have gone anywhere

without telling them where she was going. And although I might have been a bit snarkasaurus about Amy being a 23-year-old woman and not a child, I do feel like leaving the cruise ship onto an island without telling your mum and dad where you're going is a bit much like i can understand why at this point because the bradley's are saying like there's no way she would have gone off the ship without telling us where she was going that i understand being caused for concern but also what i've been thinking about is the only thing we have to go on about amy's personality is what her family say about her so who knows she might have been the type of person to just sort of wander off. We only think that she's not because that's what her parents say.

It's a difficult one. Brad continued his search of the internal decks, and he ran into none other than Yellow, the bass-playing spoon dancer from the night before. Yellow told Brad that he was sorry to hear about his sister going missing, but categorically did not offer to help them look. But then I kind of feel like you meet a girl one night, you dance with her. He's probably hungover. I mean, I don't know him. Maybe he's fine.

But he's probably just like, whatever. She's just some random girl I dance with. Oh, that's exactly what I think. Yeah. Why would you bother to help look? I'd just be like, oh, that's weird. I saw her last night good luck some people say how did he know she was missing because no announcement had been made but the news would have like people would have been talking about it this is what i'm saying yeah like i've known quite a few people who've ended up working on cruise ships and it's just a rumor mill like news spread so quickly and also like people would have seen him dancing with her the night

before their family are running around yelling about the fact that she's missing there has been a tannoy announcement and brad is running around looking for her as well like all it would have taken is one person that worked there to overhear that she'd gone missing and tell yellow hey that girl you were dancing with has gone missing isn't that weird yeah i don't find that that weird no me and if you're it's like and it's like we always say if he had fucking kidnapped her or killed her he probably wouldn't have come out and been like oh sorry dear your sister's gone missing because that would have made him look suspicious at about lunchtime the captain told the bradleys that there was still no sign of amy and perhaps they should consider that she may have fallen overboard i think i think you should just really consider

the fact that she may have fallen overboard and died. She might have just fallen off. Have you considered that, parents? What the fuck? Brad and the Bradleys are not having, and to be honest, I'm not either. Cruise ships are specifically designed for people not to fall off them. And the very rare instances where people do go overboard on cruise ships, they were either climbing on something they weren't supposed to be climbing on

or they jumped intentionally. And I'm not saying that Amy couldn't have been suicidal. I think there are loads of things that we don't know about Amy. But I don't think she jumped because no body was ever found. And bodies in the ocean always wash up eventually. There was a very small window for her to jump as well. They were so close to Curacao. This is not open water. If she had jumped and died, she would have washed up because she's so close to land. And even if she had taken an accidental tumble off the cabin balcony,

there was a shelf just underneath it built specifically to catch drunk people falling off balconies. And also, she's a swim coach and a lifeguard even if her fear of the ocean and its inhabitants is real i find it really hard to believe that she couldn't swim less than three miles on a calm day when her life depended on it the only thing i could buy is if she fell off and hit her head but even still her body would have washed up i could buy that she could fall over. She was probably really hungover. She was out until four. I've definitely been hungover and been on a boat the next day.

I could have fallen over. I was hanging over the edge, vomiting continuously for about six hours. So I could imagine falling over. But yeah, her body would have washed up. That's what doesn't fit with her falling overboard. But just in case, the Coast Guard were called and they embarked on a three-day land search Yeah, why her body would have washed up. That's what doesn't fit with her falling overboard. Yeah. But just in case, the Coast Guard were called, and they embarked on a three-day land search and sea search, but nothing showed up.

The captain and crew assured the Bradleys that Amy couldn't be on board. They had been searching all morning, and they hadn't found her. So they advised the family to look on land. The cruise ship terminal on Curacao in the 90s was a pretty open affair. The holiday makers had to pass through customs, but this is pre-911 Caribbean island customs. So is it beyond the realm of imagination that someone could have smuggled Amy in a laundry basket or in a bin past the customs agents? No, it's not at all. They ask you where you're going, they stamp you,

they send you on your way. It's pretty lax pretty lax oh absolutely when I lived in Costa Rica I went to Nicaragua on the bus you have to cross the border on foot so you are all you're on the bus with all of these other people and then the driver takes all of your passports in one big go and takes it into the customs office and then brings them out again so the customs agents aren't even checking if you are the person in the photo. They're just like, here's another busload of people. Stamp, stamp, stamp. Definitely. There are places in South America where I went through like Peru.

They were just exactly the same thing. They got on, took everybody's passports off the bus and they were just like, yeah, off you go. I was like, OK, cool. But fucking hell, I think I crossed about 16 times between Chile and Argentina. That is some hardcore, intense checking they do. But this is like two years ago, back in the 90s. I'm guessing they were just waving people through. And they're on a Royal Caribbean cruise. I think it's just like, don't mess with these people. Just let them go. Just let them go have a good time. Don't, you know, ruin it for them. So I can totally imagine that these people would just wave through at security. I did some document awareness training at work.

Passports are UV dull. So if you shine a UV light on them, it won't glow up. So one of the ways you can check for a fake passport is if it glows bright blue under a UV light. So the way people used to fake passports to make the UV light dull is they used to dip them in sun cream. And who thought something called document awareness training could be so interesting? Literally, it was the best training I've ever done. It was amazing. I know so much about passports now. Wow. But the point is, we could definitely be persuaded that security at the cruise terminal at Curacao could have let Amy just slip by knowingly or unknowingly through their fingers. Once ashore, the Bradleys contacted the US Embassy and the Curacao officials.

They were told that the FBI were on their way, but that they would not be able to get to them, crucially, for 24 hours. And as you said at the beginning, that is the golden window in missing persons cases. Now, the Bradleys are stuck with one hell of a choice. Do they get back on the ship or continue to search on the island? Thinking that

the captain and crew would surely be doing the best they could on board the Rhapsody of the Seas, Ivor, Ron and Brad decided to stay on Curacao and wait for the FBI. They gave a description of Amy to anyone they could. She was 5'7", 120 pounds, athletic, short brown hair and she had green eyes. Amy also had a 90s checklist of tattoos. She had a Tasmanian devil spinning a basketball on her right shoulder, a Chinese character on her ankle, a sun on her lower back and a blue and green gecko around her belly button. That really is every single 90s tattoo. She had all of them. It truly, truly is. Like I can't think of one that's missing. Amy also had multiple earrings in each ear.

She has a lot of defining features. The Bradley family was shocked that they were not offered more help and the US had no jurisdiction over this incident. International laws do not apply either because Amy went missing within 12 nautical miles of Curacao and therefore the laws of that land govern the investigation into her death or disappearance. As we said at the start, neither the FBI nor the US Navy could do shit about Amy's disappearance before they gained permission from the country that the Rhapsody of the Seas was registered to, which is Norway. And a quick side note, it is incredibly rare for a cruise ship to be registered to the USA because it is super expensive and the laws around who you can hire are incredibly tight. So Royal Caribbean may be registered in Florida but you can

bet that none of their ships are because it gives them a lot more freedom to circumvent the American legal system. The Bradleys really have no choice at this point but to wait for the FBI to get there and once they do on the 26th of March they are allowed access to the Rhapsody of the Seas. They are given full clearance of CCTV footage and to conduct staff interviews. It is at this point that the FBI uncovered that no full search of the ship had ever been carried out. So when the captain had assured Mr and Mrs Bradley that the staff had conducted a thorough search of the ship that was a complete lie. Only the common areas and the toilets had been searched. There were literally thousands of places she could have been

that they hadn't looked. Honestly, the common areas and the toilets, that's where you're fucking looking. Yeah. It's outrageous. It really is. And that's what we see with this case, is that the level of negligence is astonishing.

And once aboard, the FBI met with the captain, head of security Lou Costello, and a risk management representative for Royal Caribbean. And if you think that sounds like a made-up job title, you would be absolutely right, because this member of the team was actually an attorney there to cover Royal Caribbean's arse. The Bradley family were not allowed to attend this meeting, so they have no idea what was said and neither do we. But they did decide to stay on the ship for the rest of its voyage back to San Juan. This doesn't necessarily mean that Royal Caribbean had a hand in Amy's disappearance. Although it does appear furtive and uncooperative, it's just standard corporation arse covering nonsense. And I think with all of the

negligence that we see from Royal Caribbean, a lot of people see them bringing in a lawyer right away as sort of an indicator of guilt, but like they're just a massive company. They're just protecting themselves. It's just sensible. Even if it was an individual, even if you're not guilty, fucking get a lawyer and don't open your mouth. Yeah. It's standard practice. The Bradleys, unsurprisingly, didn't really see it that way. They felt that Royal Caribbean captain and crew were being defensive and not cooperating. I don't really blame them for feeling that way because there is nothing more exasperating than the only person who can help you not helping you and not because they can't, because they won't. Yeah. The FBI also conducted interviews with the Bradley family,

and the Royal Caribbean attorney was allowed to be present for these interviews. The interviews took place before any crew were questioned. So you do have to wonder whether everything the Bradleys were saying in the meeting is just getting fed back to the staff so they can sort of compare notes or get their story straight. But again, I really don't think that this means Royal Caribbean were in on Amy's disappearance. They were just trying not to be sued for negligence like every other major company ever in the history of existence. Yellow and the other members of the band had their rooms searched by the FBI, but to no avail. Yellow was interviewed and took a polygraph test because this

is the 90s and clearly the FBI was still pretending took a polygraph test because this is the 90s and clearly the FBI was still pretending that a polygraph test actually meant anything. Anyway, he passed, not that it matters, but he did pass and Yellow claimed in this polygraph approved interview that he had seen Amy for one drink at about 1am and then they had gone their separate ways. He also said that crew searched his room on the morning Amy disappeared at about 6am. But wait a minute, because Ron would not have bumped into Lucas Tello until at least half past six. So there's no way staff would already have been searching Yellow's room at 6am because no one would have known that Amy was missing yet.

As Yellow left the interview room, this is also really fucking weird, he turned to Ron Bradley, smiled and gave him a thumbs up. Why did you smile and give him a thumbs up? His daughter is missing and they think it's you. Yeah, it's weird and horrible but like I think it's more of a like, I passed, kind of maybe. I mean it's a weird thing to do, but Yellow is a weird guy. On the 27th of March, two women approached the Bradley family on board the ship. They had been looking desperately for them over the past few days because they had vital information about Amy. These women were sure that at 6am on the 24th, the morning Amy disappeared,

they saw Amy and Yellow. They saw Yellow give Amy a drink of dark brown liquid that they assumed to be coffee or coke they then saw the pair go into the lift together 10 minutes later they saw yellow come out of the same lift alone but these women if their story is true then the bradley's have another half an hour of the story and they know that that last half hour was spent with yellow and because of the video footage they know he's full of shit already because he's saying i saw her once at one o'clock the video shows he was with her at three and also anybody who still questions the validity of polygraph testing he told them he left her at one

past the polygraph test but the video evidence shows that he was with her until three i think you're right i think he's just like oh whatever like i saw her maybe didn't even know what fucking time it was like if i was out yeah exactly I saw her. Maybe didn't even know what fucking time it was. Like if I was out. Yeah, exactly. And someone was like, what time did you even get home last night? Sometimes I don't even know what time I got home. I can just imagine him as like some waster layabout. I don't think he necessarily was involved in her disappearance, but I think he just doesn't do himself any favors.

And by this stage, as I'm sure you can imagine, the rumour mill on the ship was in full swing. And Steve Reeves, our videographer, started to hear a lot of chat about the girl who had killed herself, because that's what most people on board thought had happened to Amy. And this got Steve wondering whether he had any footage of the missing and presumed dead at her own hand, Amy Bradley. And of course he does. He has the footage of Amy dancing with Yellow in the disco just hours before she was last seen. And we know the timestamp on the tape proves that she was dancing with Yellow at 3am.

Steve pulls this footage and he gives it to Ron's boss, Mike McCourt, and asked him to pass it on to the Bradleys. And he promises that he will. Steve wrote his name and his room number on the tape. So the next morning, Steve received a call from Luke Costello demanding the master copies of the tape for the FBI. Steve explained that morning, Steve received a call from Lou Costello demanding the master copies of the tape for the FBI. Steve explained that he couldn't give him the master copies and even if he did, they wouldn't be in an accessible format. Steve told Lou that if the FBI

wanted them, that they could get in touch with him and that he would provide them with broadcast quality copies of the tapes. But Steve never heard again from Lou or from the FBI. Why do the FBI not know that the tapes are there? And if they do, why are they not asking Steve for them? They just don't know. And also the tapes never actually make it to the Bradley family. So they never see this footage either. But what's interesting about it is Lou's doing more ass covering by just trying to get rid of them. I really don't think the FBI asked him for them. I think he's heard about the tape and he wants to get rid of it. So the Bradleys never got the tapes either? Not till years later.

But Steve gave the tape to Ron's boss. Yeah, yeah. So Ron's boss doesn't share these tapes with the Bradley family? No, it would appear not. And the FBI presumably never realised that there are any tapes? Well, yeah, which also does seem weird because... They would surely know there was a videographer running around. Exactly. It's weird. It's really weird.

And these are videos showing the final evening of Amy before she goes missing. Yeah, you would really hope that the FBI would be able to connect those dots. Why doesn't Bradley remember that there was somebody running around with a videotape? With a video camera? Who knows? Once the Rhapsody of the Seas and theadley family made it back to san juan on the 27th of march nothing had been resolved yellow was never named as a suspect and either ron and bradley headed home to virginia with no amy that is horrifying can you imagine being on that flight

with an empty seat where your daughter isn't. That's absolutely horrific. So when they get back, they set up a 24-hour hotline and a website and campaigned tirelessly for information. And as always, they had their fair share of false alarms. But only four days after they set up the hotline, they received a call from a taxi driver in Puerto Rico who said that he saw a woman matching Amy's description being forced into a taxi by a man in a baseball cap

on the same day the Rhapsody of the Seas returned to San Juan. The overjoyed Bradleys passed this tip on to the FBI, but the FBI wouldn't follow up on it for over a year. And when they did eventually interview this taxi driver, yes, he was able to pull Amy out of an identity parade, but remember, her photo was everywhere by then. So I don't think this really proves anything. I also think it's the day the Rhapsody of the Seas comes back to San Juan. So what, they've kept her on the boat the whole time. That also seems unlikely.

And unsure by this point what else to do, and funded by Nice Guy boss Mike McMoneybags, Brad and Ron fly back to Curacao to continue the search for Amy. The Bradleys also promised a $250,000 reward to anyone who had information that led to the safe return of Amy. Okay, Nice Guy boss Mike McCourt, who's just like funding all of this stuff, if he's that bothered,

why the fuck didn't he pass that video on to the Bradleys? I don't know. It's one of those things. This case is full of these things that are just baffling. I don't know why he didn't pass it on. Apparently, it's Steve Reeves's brother, like years later, was watching a documentary on Amy, Amy's disappearance. And he's like, they haven't got the footage. It's not in the documentary.

And then he saw another one. He's like, oh, it's not in that one either. Maybe they don't have it. So he sends to the bradley's like years later that is not slipping your mind no mccourt's is up to something surely is he paying for all this stuff because he has a guilty conscience you don't believe in ghosts i get it lots of people don't i didn't either until i came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows,

uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry.

The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry.

Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part,

Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me, and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health.

This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. In Curacao, another taxi driver came forward, this time saying that he had been at the cruise terminal in Curacao the morning that Amy disappeared and he said he saw a woman fitting Amy's description and that she had asked him where the nearest phone was. She looked hurried but not in distress.

Brad and Ron try everything they can in Curacao but still no luck. No leads come to anything and the Curacao law enforcement were of little to no help. So, dejected, Brad and Ron returned to Virginia. The hotline stayed open 24 hours a day, and leads trickled in, but none of them led anywhere, and for the next 11 months, nothing much happened at all. Amy's face was everywhere. There were multiple TV specials and newspaper stories on her, and people really just could not get enough of the story. And I also found it really interesting that the press call her Amy Lynn and this case has become widely known as the Amy Lynn Bradley case. But that's not what anyone called her. Even on the court documents

later on, she's just called Amy Bradley. Lynn is her middle name. It's not hyphenated. So it's like if I went missing and the press suddenly started calling me Hannah Mary so why did that happen I feel like it could be that Amy Lynn sounds a bit more innocent and a bit more sort of all-american so was it an attempt to pull at the heartstrings of the American public maybe but I was also thinking about this and I wonder if it's just because Amy Bradley is quite uh like a common name oh that's a really good point if you think about it with like serial killers and stuff, everyone's like, oh, serial killers always have middle names. And it's like, no, like loads of people have middle names.

It's just because John Gacy might have just been a really common name. So it's like John Wayne Gacy. It's just like a distinguisher. Because even when I was just reading through the notes earlier this morning, I wanted to just see, you know, is it still in the headlines? Are the FBI still talking about it? So I just Googled Amy Bradley and loads of random other shit comes up, like loads of other people's LinkedIn profiles and stuff like that. The minute you put in Amy

Lynn Bradley, it's only about this case. I think it's maybe just to keep people more on piste. There was also an America's Most Wanted episode about Amy and a Canadian computer engineer, David Carmichael, was watching and he recognized Amy immediately. He contacted the Bradley family as soon as he could. He had been in Curacao on a diving holiday the August after Amy vanished. He had been washing off his diving gear when he saw a young woman walking across the beach with two men either side of her. According to David, as soon as this woman heard him speaking English, she walked quickly towards him pointing towards her tattoos, especially the tattoo of a Tasmanian devil, the gecko, and the Chinese symbol, and they were all

in the same places as Amy Bradley. The woman looked frightened, and David attempted to follow her, but the men she was with motioned Amy away from him and gave David a threatening look. Now, in some tellings of this story, David claims to have followed this woman into a bar where he lost track of her, and when he saw the America's Most Wanted episode and saw Amy's picture, he was sure that it was the woman he had seen. He was so sure, in fact, that he flew to Virginia to meet with the Bradley family. But again, nothing significant came out of this sighting of Amy either. My problem with the tattoos is if you are going to kidnap someone with so many distinguishing features, I think you're getting rid of those tattoos. She's so high risk. She's on a cruise

with her family. She's not like a runaway or somebody on the streets. And she's got so many distinguishing tattoos and stuff. Why the hell are you even bothering to risk taking her at all? Either there's something about her that makes her very valuable that we don't know, or it's something else entirely because she is incredibly high risk. I can't think honestly what it could be about her that would make her so valuable to go through all of this risk if what happened to her was that she was taken. In June 1999, Ron Bradley started legal proceedings against Royal Caribbean. He filed suits against them of negligent security, defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Which, who knew that was illegal?

I know loads of people who intentionally inflict emotional distress. Because he was a customer of theirs and they had obviously entered into a contract and he was suing them. That's a good point, actually. Maybe it takes on a different... Legal twist. Thing if you're a customer rather than just living your life inflicting emotional distress on people. If you sign on to a contract with somebody in a hospitality sense to go on a cruise, they owe you a duty of care, maybe, and that's why.

I don't see how that's not covered by negligence and defamation, though. It just seems like a weird add-on. But all three of these suits were dismissed by a judge in November of the same year, and the Bradley family were charged with perjury and committing fraud in court. And this was because, in their case against Royal Caribbean, they presented three eyewitness testimonies, all of which detailed Amy being cited in distress and being held against her will. They did not present the many tips they got that Amy had been seen on Curacao looking totally fine

and not in distress at all. And according to some sources, the Bradley family received hundreds of these tip-offs. The Bradley family were accused of attempting to mislead the court and their case against Royal Caribbean was thrown out. I think that's just they've just been given poor legal advice. I don't think that's them trying to cover anything up. I don't know it's really difficult. After this terrible blow the Bradley family received yet another tip from Curaçao. This time it was from a woman called Judith Margaritha. Margaritha claimed that she often saw Amy Bradley on Curacao, at the shop, in the gym and hanging around with a blonde man with one arm covered in tattoos. He has two arms, by the way.

Just one of them has tattoos. I just realised the way I said that made it sound like he only had one arm. Everyone in this case is so distinctive. They are, aren't they? Margaritha was able to describe all of Amy's tattoos. Not super impressive. She's been all over the news for months. And she claimed that Amy was living in a complex with the blonde tattooed man being guarded by armed Colombian men. But what really convinced Ivor Bradley that Judith was telling the truth was that she hummed a lullaby that Ivor used to sing

to Amy when she was a child. What? That was it. The Bradleys were sold. Amy was alive and well and living on a compound in Curacao and they just had to get her back. What the fuck? That is so bizarre. How is this woman, Margarita, getting close enough to Amy while she's supposedly being kept in some sort of weird compound by these armed Colombian men to hear her fucking singing a lullaby well enough that she can remember the tune and hum it back to her mother. What?

You don't just walk along the beach fucking singing a lullaby while you're allegedly being held against your will. Like, what the fuck? It's such a bait detail as well, isn't it? It's like, oh, and I sang a lullaby. Who sings lullabies that their mother sang to them? Just walking around in the gym, at the shop. Casual.

Hey, Margarita, you heard this one. It's an absolute banger. Let me hum it to you. Like, what the fuck? And also, like, what? She's been kidnapped, taken off the ship, snatched away from her family. It's all over the fucking news everywhere. And they're just going to keep her in Curacao?

Yeah, right. What the fuck? The first thing you're doing is getting her as far away from there as possible, if that's what's happened to her. That's such a load of rubbish. I don't buy it at all. The Curacao authorities were again uncooperative. Because really, where's the crime here? Like, it didn't seem as if Amy was being held against her will. Perhaps she wanted to live in the compound with a blonde tattooed man. So they can't just storm into someone's house and accuse them of living peacefully and not calling their mum. So when it looked like no one would help the Bradleys, Frank Jones approached them. Frank was a former special forces operative and he claimed to have a team of ex-marines and navy seals who were more than capable of getting Amy out of Curacao.

All they needed was time to observe where Amy was living and figure out how to get her out. And money. Of course, they would need quite a lot of money. Frank Jones was given a total of $210,000 by the Bradley family and their supporters. Again, on Mike McCourt's dime. So Frank Jones and his team take this money and they were flown out to Curacao on a reconnaissance mission. Essentially, Jones was a PI with a team of like ex-military behind him. Frank Jones kept in constant touch with the

Bradleys. A year and a half after her disappearance, Frank Jones told the Bradleys that he had found Amy, but that she was in a dangerous situation and he needed more time to work out how to rescue her. He told them he had seen Amy being driven by a blonde man with a sleeve tattoo. He also said that his men had been staking out where she was being held and that they had been shot at by 10 men. It just sounds like a fantasy story already at this point. And he also told the family that any attempt to rescue Amy would be a fool's errand. The island needed time to cool off. Eventually, Jones said he was ready for the

final mission. He just needed more money to pay his men. So the Bradleys agreed to send the money if Frank Jones could provide them with proof that Amy was still alive. So Frank responded with photographs of a man and a woman on a beach with their backs to the camera. The man had blonde hair and a sleeve tattoo and the woman was wearing a big sun hat that you can clearly see a Tasmanian devil tattoo on her right shoulder. This was more than enough for the Bradley family. They were so relieved Amy was alive and they had proof and they had Frank Jones working to free their daughter from her captors. Ron and Brad flew to Miami and waited for the word from Jones. They waited for a week with no news. But then,

crushingly, the family received a call from Tim Buchholz, one of Jones's men on the ground, who had suffered a crisis of conscience. He had overheard Frank Jones talking to the Bradley family on the phone, telling them that everything was under control and that they were ready to rescue Amy. But actually, Jones was just getting drunk in bars with their money. Buckholtz had been stationed outside the compound where Amy was supposedly being held. He had watched the house for days and he had seen the people who lived there. They were totally normal people and most certainly not Amy Bradley.

The photos that they'd sent the Bradleys were fake. They were just a man in a wig and a woman Jones knew on the island who just happened to have the same build as Amy. They also had a transfer of the Tasmanian devil tattoo made just for the photograph. If Amy was kidnapped, her kidnappers had absolutely nothing on Frank Jones because what an absolute piece of shit. I hate him. I have never, it's so weird and probably says something about me but when I was reading about him like I just had such a gut reaction of hatred. He's just taking advantage of a grieving family. Absolutely, he's preying on them and it's why I find things like mediums and people like this just really gross because you're preying on

people's grief and their vulnerabilities at the time when the worst possible thing in the world has happened to them and hope is the most dangerous thing the most tragic thing to give a person if it's false and what what an absolute piece of shit more so he'd never even been in the special forces he's a complete fraud and he did eventually get five years for fraud in february That, it doesn't seem like nearly enough time to me. It never does for fraud. Same thing with John Darwin. The emotional connection to the thing he does makes it seem like he should go away for the rest of his life.

But legally speaking, he just comes in fraud. It's disgusting. So the timing and the correlation between Frank Jones and Judith Margarita's story does also seem to suggest that the two may have been in cahoots. And although Margarita remains adamant that she was telling the truth, her son Giovanni has since come forward claiming that his mother was a liar. And she told the story for the $8,000 reward money. I think Frank Jones put her up to it. Absolutely. She said exactly the same story. It's either that or the story that Margarita said came out, Frank Jones heard about it, and then he just replicated that story because it was the most recent one to

be out there. But the timing seems quite suspicious. What else can the Bradley family do now? They just have to wait for more leads. And more leads do surface. In 2005, American Judy Mora was on holiday in Bridgetown in Barbados. She was in the toilet at a mall where she had a woman being threatened by several men outside her stall. According to Mora, these men were telling the woman that the deal was ready to go and she better not fuck it up. When the men left, Mora came out of her stall and spoke to the woman who was shaking over the basin. Apparently, this woman said to Judy Maura, my name is Amy and I'm from Virginia. And then either Amy walked out or Judy Maura does.

I've seen Maura tell this story both ways. But either way, it's the end of that short exchange. I don't trust Maura at all. Firstly, somebody telling quite an important part of that story two ways is very suspicious. Either you left or Amy left. And also, why would Amy just say, my name is Amy, I'm from Virginia? Wouldn't you be like, I'm Amy, I'm the one that's been all over the news for years? She's full of shit. I think people were just drawn to the story because it had so much attention on it. And either people did it for the money or just for the fame. Judy Moore does seem like the kind

of person who'd swear up and down anything you want just to get on TV. But she was sufficiently shaken up by the incident to report it to local police in Barbados and to the FBI. In 2004, the Bradley family was sent photographs from a website selling Caribbean sex holidays. Excellent. And we will put the picture that they were sent up on the Instagram so you can make up your own minds. But in the photos that they were sent, there's a woman who could be, I guess, like an older, harsher looking Amy Bradley. These photos from the sex holiday website also tie in with a sighting of Amy in 1999 by a navy officer he anonymously came forward claiming that he had been stationed in curacao and he had been in a brothel

when he was approached by a woman who appeared to be working there she told him her name was amy bradley and she begged him for help he refused to help her okay good as a consolation prize he did tell her that there was a Navy ship stationed at the island. What, so she could go look for help there? He claimed that he didn't know that Amy was a missing person and that's why he didn't help her. So, what, if she's not a missing person and no one's looking for her, then it doesn't matter that this woman in a brothel is begging you for help? He also said that it took him a few years to come forward

because he didn't want his commanding officers to know that he had been in a brothel. Right. I mean, this guy's just, just a real hero, isn't he? This man said that he saw this woman claiming to be Amy Bradley being forced upstairs in this brothel by two men. It wasn't until he saw Amy's picture in People magazine that he even gave this incident a second thought, which probably says quite a lot about him as a fucking person because I'm going to guess if somebody comes and begs me for help and I refuse them, I'm going to remember that. But not this guy. He really is just that special kind of asshole because he's literally just saying,

I didn't think she was important enough to help, so I didn't. I didn't know she was a missing person with a family who were looking for her. Fuck him. Yeah, fuck this guy, mine. Like, the way he tells it as well, he was like, oh, like, I didn't say anything because I didn't know she was a missing person. Fuck you. Absolutely. But this sighting, when he did eventually come forward, was investigated by the FBI. But it was two years too late. And by the time they got to the brothel, it had been burnt

to the ground. I think personally, he was in it for the reward money. But whatever we think, the photo from the website and this sighting in the brothel do go along with the prevailing theory about Amy's disappearance that she was abducted and put into human trafficking and like sex slavery. It does fit into that story. Loads of people think that Amy was snatched from the ship and sold into the sex trade, which is rife in the Caribbean. And Curaçao is one of six islands in the Dutch Caribbean and therefore is governed by Netherlands laws, which means that regulated sex work is legal. Sex tourism is huge in the Caribbean and just because it's regulated doesn't mean that it is carried out in a lawful manner all the time. Trafficking is a problem just like it is everywhere else.

But I've never been totally swayed by this theory. Why would you take someone like Amy? She's so high risk. Was there something about her that made her worth snatching? And how would they have singled her out that quickly on the ship? Like, what is it about Amy Bradley that was so special that she's worth all of this trouble? And how could they know that within two days of her being on the ship?

Just like I said before, I honestly can't think of a reason that she would be so valuable. It sounds awful, but if she was like a 12-year-old girl, I could see why she might be valuable. But why? Why is a 23-year-old woman covered in tattoos, highly identifiable tattoos, on a cruise with her family, so high value? I don't get it. That's such a high risk to take. And I really think that the path of least resistance is that Amy just walked. And obviously that her family don't believe it.

And it does seem like Amy had no reason to disappear she had a puppy to pick up and a job to go to when she got back from the cruise she just graduated and she was ready to get on with her grown-up life but it wouldn't be the first time that a family hasn't been honest as we've seen with the McCann family a global campaign to find your missing daughter and all the money in the universe isn't always enough to convince everyone that you weren't involved in her disappearance. She had everything going for her. Why go on this cruise just to then disappear? Wouldn't it have made more sense to say absolutely no way I'm coming on this cruise, let her family go and

then vanish? To disappear on this cruise and to make it happen like we talked about in the John Darwin episode, How to Fake Your Own Death, everyone was looking for her. She stood out. How would she have been able to disappear herself if she did just walk away? I think, coming back to what we said at the start, you know, sexual assaults on cruise ships happen. They're not out of the ordinary. that maybe something happened to Amy and somebody needed to get rid of her to keep themselves safe. Maybe it was yellow. Maybe it was somebody else. But we can never really know what happened. Either there was something about Amy that was worth the insane amount of risk brought to you by an abduction, or there was something in her personal life serious enough to make her want to disappear.

Either way, there is something about Amy that we don't know. I do understand why people were so obsessed with this case. It's horribly fascinating. I'm just baffled by it. I think that it makes more sense to me that she just walked. Like that seems the simplest version of events. There's still so many questions that I don't have the answer to. Imagine what a cold hearted, stone cold fucking psychopath you'd have to be to walk away from your family without telling them anything and then watch them because

no way she would have missed all of the news coverage about herself and watched her mum and dad probably be on TV crying about her and to just let them suffer through that. What could they have done to deserve that? It is crazy, but maybe there's just, I just think there's so many things about her that we don't know, that it's not impossible. Nothing's impossible in this case, and it's just one of those really odd cases where there's no blood,

there's no big crime scene, there's nothing. It's just one minute she's there, Ron goes to sleep, wakes back up, and she's gone. And they never see her again. And that's absolutely terrifying. And I can't imagine, like, living with that level of zero closure because what that must be doing to them. Yeah. And all the people that have preyed on them as well. I feel so sorry for her family.

And for Amy, whatever's happened to her, it wasn't good. So thanks for listening, guys. And do let us know your theories on where you think Amy is and you can follow us on social media at red handed the pod on twitter and on instagram if you would like to help support the show as now over 200 of you are which is just incompletely incredible and so humbling and it just makes us so happy and it really really helps out if you would like to you can do so at www.patreon.com slash red handed see you next week bye bye they say hollywood is where dreams are made a seductive city where many flock to get rich,

be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing.

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