AMY LYNN BRADLEY: LOST AT SEA?

AMY LYNN BRADLEY: LOST AT SEA?

One of the most fun vacations one can take is a cruise. It is a floating restaurant, hotel, and entertainment center that occasionally drop you off in an interesting destination. But for the Bradley family, Ron, Iva, their son Brad and daughter Amy Lynn, their family cruise turned into a nightmare when their daughter just disappeared.

                On March 24, 1998, Amy Lynn Bradley was last seen asleep on the balcony of the family’s stateroom at about 5:30 a.m. by her father. He decided to let her sleep. When he went out to the balcony a half hour later, she was gone. The only items missing with her were her cigarettes and lighter. All her shoes were left behind. How far could she go barefoot? The family went on a search of the ship to locate their daughter.

                Four days before, the family boarded the Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas. The night before she went missing, Amy was seen at the night club with her brother. She wanted to stay while Brad returned to the stateroom leaving Amy with a band member named Yellow.

                The family asked the captain to not let anyone leave the ship when they docked that morning, but he did not want to upset the guests.  After the guests left, the ship was searched, but only the public rooms, not the individual staterooms.

                The Bradley’s felt that some of the crew had given “special attention” to Amy throughout

the cruise and perhaps she had been smuggled off the ship and sold into sexual slavery. Before the disappearance, three of the waiters made friends with Amy and when they arrived in Aruba, they asked Amy to go to Carlos & Charles, the last place that Natalee Holloway was seen. Amy told her father that these waiters gave her the creeps and she refused to go with them.

The night the waiters had asked Amy to go with them, the next day, all the photos that had been posted of Amy were missing, even though the photo supervisor remembered seeing them there.

The cruise line made very little effort to find Amy. Royal Caribbean said she was probably drunk and had fallen overboard. Eventual the Bradley’s had to go home, but Mr. Bradley and his son returned to Aruba.

                . He called the Bradley’s and described the tattoos and said he was 100% sure it was Amy. Later, the tourists identified the man with Amy as “Yellow” from the cruise ship.

Unsolved Mysteries
There were numerous sightings of Amy during the following years. Five months after the disappearance, two Canadian tourists saw a woman who looked like Amy on the beach in Curacao. She had the same tattoos as Amy, a Tasmanian devil, the sun, a Chinese symbol, and a lizard. They said Amy tried to talk to them, but her companions rushed her away. Amy walked into a nearby café, still looking back at the couple. One of the tourists saw Amy on

                In 1999, a naval ship docked in Barbados and one of the seamen went to a local brothel. He claimed to have seen a woman who told him she was Amy Lynn Bradley and had been kidnapped and needed help to get away from the people keeping her at the brothel. The seaman left and did not tell anyone since he was not supposed to be at that brother. It was not until he retired that he contacted the Bradley’s with his story. By the time they got to the brothel, it had burned down.

                Also, in 1999, a man named Frank Jones contacted the Bradley’s claiming a Columbia gangster was holding Amy in Curacao. Jones said he was a former Special Forces and offered to help find Amy for free. But as we know, there is no such thing as a free lunch!

                Jones said a female cook described Amy’s tattoos and repeated a lullaby Amy taught her. Jones sent two Navy seals to determine her location. At this point, Jones asked for money for the rescue. The Bradley’s requested to see proof that the Seals had found her. Jones supplied a photo, and the Bradley’s eventually gave him a total of $210,000.

               

He had Ron Bradley go to Florida to wait for the call that they had Amy. He sat in that motel room for a week waiting for that call. He finally got a call from one of Jones’s associates and determined that he and his family had been duped. Jones was arrested and plead guilty to mail fraud and got a 5-year sentence and restitution.

                Six years later, a woman, Judy Maurer claimed to see Amy in a bathroom in Barbados. Amy told her name, but two men came into the bathroom and talked loudly at Amy. They threatened Maurer and frightened, she hid in the stall until the men left. When she left the stall, Amy was still there, hunched over the sink. She said she was Amy from Virginia. At that point, the two men returned and crudely took Amy out of the bathroom. Maurer identified Amy to the FBI.

               

In 2005, the family received an email with a photo of a woman lying on a bed in underwear. An organization that locates victims of sex trafficking, thought it looked very much like Amy.

                In 2010, the turmoil from Hurricane Tomas unearthed a human jawbone on the beach in Aruba. It was tested to see if it was Natalee Holloway. It was not her, and  all testing stopped at that point and it was never tested to see if it was Amy or the nine other woman who had disappeared in the Caribbean.

                Amy has never been found but her family has not given up, hoping that she will come home eventually. Anyone who has sighted Amy Lynn Bradly or has information on her location, please inform the FBI.

REFERENCES

Bibliography

Gibbons, P. (n.d.). Shocking facts about Amy Lynn Bradley, the woman who disappeared at sea. Retrieved from Unbreakable Crimes.

Serena, K. (2018, March 7). The mysterious case of Amy Lynn Bradley, who vanished from a cruise ship. Retrieved from All That's Interesting.