Amy Lynn Bradley (lost Rhapsody of the Seas cruise pictures of missing woman; 1998)

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This article has been tagged as NSFL due to its discussions of alleged sex trafficking.



Amy Lynn Bradley.jpg

A picture of Bradley before her 1998 disappearance.

Status: Lost

IF YOU HAVE ANY DETAILS ON THE WHEREABOUTS OF AMY LYNN BRADLEY, PLEASE VISIT https://tips.fbi.gov/ TO SUBMIT AN ANONYMOUS TIP.

Amy Lynn Bradley is an American woman of who went missing in 1998, during a family trip on the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Rhapsody of the Seas. This has sparked several investigations to this day trying to locate her whereabouts, with many theories about the disappearance following in the years since.

One such theory is that Bradley was kidnapped and sold into sex trafficking, with many witnesses and their alleged sightings in regards to her seeming to lend much credence to the idea. One significant element to this theory is that the cruise pictures of Bradley went missing the night before she disappeared, and remain unaccounted for to this day, as other passengers who had their photos taken had theirs accounted for.[1] The pictures in question, in the context of this theory, were used to sell Bradley in to this industry.

Background: March 24th, 1998

Bradley, who at the time was 23-year-old Longwood University graduate, had plans to start a new job at a computer consulting firm in the autumn of that year.[2] To celebrate, her family (consisting of her brother Brad and parents Ron and Iva) took her upon a cruise ship, this being the Royal Caribbean-owned Rhapsody of the Seas, of which was headed for the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao. They boarded upon the ship on the 21st of March, 1998.[3]

On the 23rd of March, Amy and Brad partied into the late hours of the night in the Mardi Gras nightclub of the ship, where the band Blue Orchid was playing.[4] One of the band members Allister Douglas (better known by his nickname 'Yellow') could be seen in video footage dancing with Amy during this time by videographer Chris Fenwick (who was a corporate client for the Royal Caribbean company at that time)[5] - footage of which would become prominent after her disappearance, as it is the last known video recorded of Amy to this day.[6] Early on the next morning, both Brad and Amy sat on their family suite's balcony, before the former went to sleep.[7] The last confirmed sighting of Amy was between 5:15 and 5:30am, whereby Ron came to see her sleeping on a balcony chair.[8]

However at 6am, she went missing with Ron being unable to find her, alongside her cigarettes and lighter, something of which was unusual for Ron, noting in an interview on the Dr. Phil TV show that 'When I couldn't find her, I didn't really know what to think, because it was very much unlike Amy to leave and not tell us where she was going.'[9] He later informed the rest of the family about the disappearance.

In turn, the family alerted the matter to the crew, in which they begged them to stop the boat from disembarking and to make an announcement about Amy's disappearance. These calls were rejected however, on the grounds that it was too early to do so. From here, the ship disembarked, allowing the 2 thousand passengers to leave the ship for Curacao, with an announcement on her disappearance only now being allowed at 7:50am, albeit a brief one that asked Amy to come to the 'pursuer's desk'.[10] Further searches (of both the island and the ship) by the family, the crew, the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard and the FBI among others were also conducted, albeit to no avail.

In the years since, there have been many investigations and alleged sightings concerning Amy, especially after initial conclusions concerning her possibly drowning after throwing herself off the boat (either by accident or suicide) were quickly ruled out, due to Amy's strong swimming and athletic prowess (having graduated with a Physical Education degree)[11] and an overall lack of evidence to support that idea.

Sex Trafficking Theory and Role of Missing Pictures

One of the more popular theories surrounding Amy's disappearance was that she was kidnapped and subsequently sold into sex trafficking.

Many of the alleged sightings of her provide evidence to support this idea. The earliest in August 1998, by a Canadian tourist called David Carmichael who was unaware of the case at the time, detailed an English-speaking woman being handled by two "minders" in Curacao trying to get Carmichael's attention in a cafe - Carmichael noted that after reading about the case, he felt '100% certain' that it was her, especially in relation her distinctive tattoos. Another sighting in January 1999, that of a US Navy officer, concerned him allegedly meeting Amy in a brothel on the Caribbean island, where someone begged him for help, on the grounds that she was held 'against her will' (this sighting wasn't reported immediately, due to the officer's concern of being in trouble for visiting a brothel, only doing so after he had retired and the establishment being burned down in unknown circumstances). In 2005, another tourist in Judy Mawer claimed to have also seen Amy in Bridgetown, Barbados, whereby she encountered a woman in her 30s in a woman's toilet claiming to be Amy before she was violently removed from the premises by two men. had.[12]

In relation to all of this, the missing cruise pictures play a part. On cruise ships, it is a common feature that passengers will have their pictures taken, in order to be sold later. Amy and her family were no exception to this, having their pictures taken individually by a professional photographer following their return from the Caribbean island of Aruba.[13] However, the night before she disappeared, Amy's pictures were missing from the picture display and their whereabouts remain accounted for to this day, with the photographer in question having no recollection of what happened to them after printing them off.[14]

This in turn has led to accusations that not only was Amy trafficked, but that the crew were in on it as well, with much circumstantial evidence to suggest this. This mainly includes much of the staff being very attentive to Amy in particular, with one episode (whereby one waiter who had given Amy 'the creeps' for much of the cruise journey giving her parents an invite to Amy to join him on Aruba once they arrived there and Amy declining it)[15] highlighting this. Meanwhile, it would also help to explain the crew's reluctance to grant the family's aforementioned request to not disembark the boat before arriving at Curacao, going as far as to have the ship captain Kietil Gierstad refuse to share a picture of Amy in relation to alerting others of her disappearance, on the grounds that it would alarm other passengers.[16] The aforementioned Douglas meanwhile told Brad that he was 'sorry about what happened', despite only Amy's family and the ship security knowing she was missing.[17]

Availability

Since Amy's 1998 disappearance, the pictures have yet to resurface, and will likely never do so, due to the photographer not knowing where such images now are, and (if the sex trafficking theory is true) being possibly handled by criminal trafficking gangs, the issue of Amy being found notwithstanding.

Beyond those images meanwhile, the only known footage of Amy on the boat was the aforementioned video footage that is publicly available due to Fenwick making it so on his YouTube channel, in helping with the search. Meanwhile, sexually explicit photos of a sex worker called 'Jas' in 2005 were sent to the family, due to the resemblance to Amy that 'Jas' apparently had.[18]

Amy was legally declared dead on the 24th of March, 2010, 12 years to the day that she was went missing, and the case currently is cold.[19]

IF YOU HAVE ANY DETAILS ON THE WHEREABOUTS OF AMY LYNN BRADLEY, PLEASE VISIT https://tips.fbi.gov/ TO SUBMIT AN ANONYMOUS TIP.

Gallery

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Fenwick's aforementioned footage of Bradley dancing with Douglas, the last known footage of her alive.

  1. https://youtu.be/fEk4nXc_0i8?t=1153
  2. https://www.journeyranger.com/stories/the-case-of-amy-lynn-bradley/
  3. https://allthatsinteresting.com/amy-lynn-bradley
  4. http://chrisfenwick.com/home/2010/3/1/amy-bradley-is-missing.html
  5. http://chrisfenwick.com/home/2010/3/1/amy-bradley-is-missing.html
  6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqzW5QNmxk4
  7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTgnDtQ8tso&ab_channel=Dr.ToddGrande
  8. https://thecasualcriminalist.com/podcasts/the-disappearance-of-amy-lynn-bradley/
  9. http://www.drphil.com/slideshows/the-search-for-natalee-amy-bradley/
  10. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TheSecretSits/the-disappearance-amy-lynn-bradley
  11. https://thecinemaholic.com/what-happened-to-amy-lynn-bradley-was-she-found/
  12. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/family-fear-daughter-sold-sex-25559167
  13. https://thecasualcriminalist.com/podcasts/the-disappearance-of-amy-lynn-bradley/
  14. https://thecasualcriminalist.com/podcasts/the-disappearance-of-amy-lynn-bradley/
  15. https://thecasualcriminalist.com/podcasts/the-disappearance-of-amy-lynn-bradley/
  16. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TheSecretSits/the-disappearance-amy-lynn-bradley
  17. https://medium.com/crime-scenes/vanished-what-happened-to-amy-lynn-bradley-174c75befbe1#:~:text=Amy%E2%80%99s%20brother%20Brad%20also%20had%20a%20strange%20interaction,and%20the%20ship%E2%80%99s%20security%20knew%20she%20was%20missing.
  18. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/family-fear-daughter-sold-sex-25559167
  19. https://historydaily.org/amy-lynn-bradley-disappearance-everything-we-know