Amy Bradley Is Still Missing

Amy Lynn Bradley disappeared from the cabin she shared with her family aboard a cruise ship in the early morning hours. The 23-year-old has never been found, nor have her family or dear friends heard from her since 1998. The question of what happened to Amy remains a mystery, but there is a possibilty she's still out there somewhere.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hey, Hey, welcome back to Autumn's oddities. I'm Autumn. I'm
just gonna jump right into today's case. There's quite a
lot of theories, speculation. It is unsolved. It's one that
you may or may not be familiar with since it
did happen in the nineteen nineties, but there was a
recent Netflix series about it, so maybe you have. The

(00:56):
nineteen ninety eight disappearance of Amy Bradley continues to garner
public interest and puzzle even the most seasoned of investigators. Today,
after the American college graduate's bizarre disappearance from a family
cruise ship, there has been no conclusive sign of the
missing Virginia woman. Theories and leads, however, remain as active

(01:17):
as really since she disappeared, especially in light of new
social media like TikTok and true crime salutes bringing light
to the case. Amy Lynn Bradley was a twenty three
year old recent college graduate who lived in Petersburg. Amy
Lynn Bradley was a twenty three year old recent college

(01:38):
graduate who lived in Petersburg, Virginia, about twenty five miles
south of Richmond. She held a degree in physical education
and she loved to play basketball. She was really really sporty.
She's what people in the nineties would have called a tomboy,
and we're going to get more into that later. It
doesn't have anything to do with her disappearance, but just

(02:00):
more about who she was, maybe still is. In March
of nineteen ninety eight, she joined her parents, Ron and
Iva Bradley, and her twenty one year old brother Brad
for a Caribbean family cruise a board Royal Caribbean's Rhapsody
of the Seas. Her parents were both insurance agents and
they had frequent you know contests, I guess for their

(02:21):
best producers, and her parents won this cruise and they
were super excited when they found out that they were
allowed to take their adult children with them. They were,
you know, all of legal drinking age. They were a
super super tight knit family. If you watch the Netflix
series Amy Bradley Is Missing, it's they were just like

(02:42):
the family everybody wishes. They had, just super super close,
always laughing, always together, and you know, they kind of
had like an open door policy. There's their house was
like the cool hangout house. So it was one stateroom
and that's important for you know the detail of this case.
They were in one stateroom that had like a pull

(03:03):
out couch and they were all sharing it. So two
adult children and their parents all in one room. That
does make a difference. Later on, Amy's mother wrote a
blog on the International Cruise Victim's website giving a glimpse
into her daughter's life before she disappeared. And this is
what she knew about her daughter's life. Anyway, I think

(03:25):
there were some maybe some things that she did not know,
she said. On the day before we left for vacation,
Amy had adopted a female bulldog and she was to
pick up Daisy, which is one of my former dog's names.
When we returned from our cruise, she had just moved
into her new apartment and was starting a new job
on the following Monday. She had so many plans and

(03:46):
was so happy about all of them. And again that
speaks to her state of mind when it comes to
theories about what happened to her. Amy took with her
fifteen rolls of film on the trip to create a
cold lodge for her coffee table. According to Iva Bradley,
she reportedly purchased souvenirs for her friends and wrote postcards

(04:07):
from Puerto Rico explaining that she planned to be in
Aruba the following day. You know, you've never been on
a cruise. That's how they work. They go, you know,
you leave, you have a day at sea, you go
to a port wherever that is. You got like a
day there, got another day at sea, then you go
somewhere else, depending on how long it is. On March
twenty first, nineteen ninety eight, Rha City of the Seas,

(04:30):
and that's the name of the ship. It was a
massive ship. I think it was maybe the largest at
the time in the world. It departed San Juan with
the ship's first port of call in Aruba. It left
for the Dutch Caribbean island of Curasau two days later,
on March twenty third. However, Amy would disappear under mysterious

(04:50):
circumstances in the early morning hours of March twenty fourth,
shortly before arriving at Cirosau, which is just north of Venezuela,
which I did not remember. It is believed that there
are certain individuals in the Caribbean and possibly even in
South America who have knowledge of Amy's disappearance. Missus Bradley
wrote in the blog all we want is the safe

(05:12):
return of our daughter, and it's really sad. In the
Netflix series, they use like present tense when they speak
about Amy. They say, when Amy comes home, they really
truly believe that she is still out there and that
she is still alive. They've kept all of her belongings,

(05:33):
they kept her meata. They like, keep it shined up
and you know, make sure that it's running. They raised
her dog that she got literally the day, like the
day before she left. They all her stuff still and
they say it's waiting for her when she comes back.
It's incredibly, incredibly sad. It's really great that they're hopeful,

(05:55):
but man, it's been a long time. So on the
night of March twenty, nineteen ninety eight, Amy Bradley and
her brother Brad Brad Bradley I know, attended an onboard
Marty Grow themed disco, according to FBI special agent Aaron Sheridan. Again,
if you've never been on a cruise, they've got like
night clubs. They do themed things all the time. There's

(06:16):
always something to do on a cruise. I've been on
maybe like five. Photos released by the agency showed Amy smiling,
dancing and surrounded by her fellow passengers and they spoke
to people aboard the cruise ship. They spoke to staff,
and Amy and her brother and her family were really
like the life of the party. Everybody on the boat
knew who they were, Like they just were down to clown.

(06:39):
They were making the most of that trip. They got
a free friggin trip to the Caribbean. Like they're going
all over the place. That's seriously for like a twenty
one and a twenty three year old. That's that's top
tier free vacation where everything is included. Hell yeah, including alcohol.
So they had a good time. By the morning of
March twenty fourth, nineteen ninety eight, her parents go and
try to search for her, but she's nowhere to be found.

(07:02):
So that's the state of things. In the morning, her
dad wakes up. He says, you know, middle of the night,
the sliding door to the patio or the balcony of
the stateroom is open, he said, like fourteen to sixteen inches,
and Amy's not there anymore. So yeah. At the disco,

(07:22):
Amy was spotted with members of the live band Blue Orchid.
They you know, cruise ships have onboard entertainment like singers
and bands and dancers and all that, including a man
named Alistair Yellow. Douglas Yellow is his nickname. Douglas later
told CNN that he and Amy parted ways at around
one am, and that he left for the staff elevator

(07:44):
while Amy headed in the opposite direction. The next thing
he knew, he was awakened in his cabin at around
six am, when cruise employees inquired about Amy and searched
his room. The vessels digitalized locking system logged Bradley returning
to the family suite at three thirty five am, and
brad told authorities that his sister followed just five minutes later,

(08:08):
and that can be accounted for the key card scanned
when someone entered the room, but there was no digital
recording of when people exited the room. The siblings spoke
for a few moments before Amy went to the balcony
and sat in a lounge chair. She said she wasn't
feeling well. She just wanted some fresh air, so she
went on like one of those long lounge chairs and

(08:28):
just laid down. And at around five thirty am, Ron
Bradley you know, went to check on the children, finding
his daughter asleep on the balcony. As he expected, Amy
had been sleeping out there a lot of nights. It
was warm, it was nice, and you know, again the
fresh air. He said that he could see Amy's legs
from the hips down and she looked like she was

(08:49):
resting comfortably. So he went back to sleep, and the
balcony door was closed, because you know, he said, if
it hadn't been closed, he would have gotten up and
closed it. He wasn't gonna like lock it and lock
her out, but he was going to close it just
so that there wasn't like a ton of wind and noise.
The father woke again at six am and reported a
funny feeling. He said, again, like I said before, finding

(09:10):
the balcony door fourteen to sixteen inches open and Amy gone.
Relatives believe Amy left the balcony with her cigarettes between
five thirty and six am and changed her clothes, though
she was never positively seen again. That's the timeline. That's
all anyone knows. Those are the hard and fast facts.

(09:32):
Everything else speculation. She did change her clothes because the
clothes she was wearing to the club, she had on,
like a yellow polo shirt and jeans, they were in
the room. She had changed her clothes, and she had
taken her pack of cigarettes. So that's all anyone knows. Oh,
and the there was like a little side table on
the patio balcony whatever they want to call it, pushed

(09:54):
up like toward the railing. And yeah, that's that's the
way they found the outside. Amy Bradley's family, you know,
realizing she's not there, her dad gets up. He doesn't
want to freak his family out. He's like, oh, you know,
I bet she's you know, gotten up. She's going to
get some coffee, something to eat, maybe, you know, gone
to the top deck. He goes and looks for After

(10:16):
half an hour or so, he's like, I can't find her.
So he goes back to the cabin. He tells his
wife and his son, I can't find Amy. I just
looked all over the boat. So again they all go look,
they can't find her either, So they go to you know,
the cruise employees who in the documentary Jesus, they are

(10:38):
like the cruise director on there. He's some like once
semi attractive, egotistical, just jackass who seems to think he's
he's like the show. He seems to think like he's
the reason people took the cruise. It's like, dude, don't
nobody know, you don't nobody care. He was very extremely
insensitive about the whole thing. He's like, greeted everything, right,

(11:00):
it's not a big deal. Everybody else is on their
cruise too. It's like, no, you couldn't have known at
the time, but you are missing a passenger and you
are indeed responsible for that passenger that it is aboard
the ship, at least the cruise company is. So they
go to you know, officials on the cruise ship. They say,
we can't find our daughter and they're like, oh, well,
she's an adult and it's a ship, she's got to

(11:20):
be here. They're like, can you please just you know,
our parents are like, can you please just put out
like a like a page across the intercom and on
cruise ships the intercom system is also in everyone's room.
And as it was really early, they're like, no, we're
not going to do that. We're not going to wake
everybody up. And her parents are like, please before we

(11:40):
dock and cure us out, because like they were, they
were docking while this was going on, and there's chaos
all over the ship. You know, everybody's getting ready to
get off for the day. Go on their excursions and
they're like, oh my god, if this boat docks, what's
going to happen. You know, we don't know where she is.
But no such alert went out until later that morning.
Most guests had already disembarked, you know, because the cruise

(12:03):
ship didn't want to disturb other sleeping passengers, which I understand,
and I also don't like they're telling you they've looked
all over this boat and they can't find their daughter.
I don't know, just maybe put out a page. You
piss off some people for a day, But it kind
of seemed like people were up anyway because they're disembarking.
The Bradley family has been outspoken about how onboard personnel

(12:26):
handled the initial searches. I don't think they handled them
well at all, questioning how much of the ship was
thoroughly searched. So they the ship had their employees like
search their own cabins, And I'm like, but if somebody
did something to her that worked for the cruise line
and they, you know, they're responsible for searching their own cabins,

(12:48):
well they would just lie, now, wouldn't they. You know,
maybe do your due diligence. But that didn't happen, and
the FBI stated that the Rhapsody of the Seas carried
on with its usual route, which left curis Ou for
the island of Saint Martin and then to Saint Thomas,
So they really didn't skip a beat. This family stays
on the boat. They're searching everywhere for her. They can't

(13:10):
find her. The cruise you know, officials are like, yeah, everybody,
search your own cabin. We're not going to send somebody around,
a trusted person to search everything, or a team of people. No.
They literally just tell people, self, search your cabins, to
the employees and to anybody else, self search your cabins,
and tell us if you find this woman. And nobody

(13:32):
finds her obviously, and they're like, oh, well, she must
have gotten off the ship. And to that, I say, well,
I don't know about nineteen ninety eight, but now you
have to scan your like cruise card when you disembark
and when you get back on, so that they have
a record of you getting off that boat. There was
no record of her getting off that boat. And when

(13:53):
the ship left, that's it. She was gone. You know.
Her family stayed behind to look and according to I
have a Bradley's blog post on the International Cruise Victim's website.
The FBI finally joined in the searches on March twenty fifth,
and an attorney representing the cruise ship was also present.
Yike's cruse like maritime law when it comes to cruises

(14:15):
is honestly some of the scummiest, scariest legal dealings I've
ever seen, and to this date, the cruise line has
failed to cooperate with our family by way of information
or assistance. Missus Bradley alleged, and I don't really think
it's an allegation. I think it's true. In response to
a nineteen ninety nine lawsuit filed by the Bradleys against

(14:36):
Royal Caribbean, it said it acted quote appropriately my words,
appropriately and responsible or responsibly at all times during the
course of the investigation. I don't think so. Yes, I
do understand that other people are on a cruise, but
one of your passengers is gone. They're gone and you

(14:58):
just take off, So remember that next time you get
on a cruise. I'm gonna mention more missing people on
cruises cases at the end of this episode. There's a lot,
and they're scary and moral of The story is, if
you want to disappear, or you want to disappear, someone
go on a cruise because they ain't gonna do a

(15:21):
damn thing about it, and it's in international waters and
the legal red tape is an absolute disaster to get
anything done. So at theie Agent's reportedly used search dogs
on the ship, while the Netherlands Antilles Coastguard conducted a
four day search of the waters. According to a March
thirty first, nineteen ninety eight archive by the Richmond Times Dispatch,

(15:44):
the family has dismissed the notion that Amy could have
taken her own life, and they also don't believe that
she fell overboard. Important to know they were like really
really close to docking and curous out when Amy, Like
in the timeframe that Amy could have disappeared. So if
she jumped overboard, if she fell overboard, they would have

(16:08):
found her body. And experts who live in the region,
who sail, who you know no curasow, they all say
the same thing. They're like, our waters and our tides
are rough, and if she fell out of the boat
or or she jumped off the boat, her body would
have washed up. They're like even if sharks had gotten
to her. They don't eat everything. Something would have come

(16:29):
up on shore and nothing ever, did nothing. The family
spokeswoman Marianne Noblin told The Times Dispatch that her family
believes Amy met with foul play, somebody threw her off
that ship, or somebody has her, Noblin claimed. Shortly after
Amy vanished, two women reported possibly seeing her at around

(16:51):
six am taking an elevator to the top deck, just
before the ship docked in Curasou. Another person claimed on
Unsolved Mysteries that she saw Amy around the same time
with a member of the band and that member was
Alistair Douglas or Yellow. I saw Amy and the band
member walk over and up to the next deck above us,

(17:13):
alleged the witness, and about ten minutes later he came
walking around by himself. A taxi driver in Kirosal also
later reported seeing a woman matching Amy's description on the
morning of her disappearance, saying that she urgently needed to
use a phone. Compounding suspicions, Amy's brother, Brad claimed Blue Orchids,

(17:34):
bass player who was never charged in connection with Amy's case,
danced a little too close to Amy earlier in the
morning and that she had to tell him to back
off a little bit. And there's video of all this.
I'll get into that in a little bit. There's video
of all of this, and it is indeed true. The
guy's like up on her for an extended period of time.

(17:54):
And uh, there's a reason that would be unwanted that
I'm gonna get into later. I have a Bradley also
told former NBC News correspondent Dan Abrams that when they
were out the previous evening, a creepy waiter asked for
Amy by name, expressing his desire to take Amy to
a bar on Land and so that I'd be like, go,

(18:16):
get fucked my friend, Like, you're not taking my kid
even if she's you know, twenty three, it does not matter.
It's like you are a stranger, this is a foreign country.
You're not taking my kid to a bar. Like the
fuck out of here with that. And this part's really odd.
Years later, I've a Bradley told doctor Phil who is
not a real doctor, that she had gone to purchase

(18:39):
the photos for sale on the night before her daughter's disappearance.
So on a cruise they you know, you have like
a formal dinner night. There's a photographer that goes round
the boat and takes pictures of people, and then they
post all the pictures like on the wall, and you
go pick your picture up if you want it, and
you buy it. But anyone can buy the picture. Yeah.

(19:01):
And while the cruise photographer remembered printing pictures of Amy,
they were gone as though collected by another person, So
either somebody else bought them or they stole them. Weird huh.
And it was a solo portrait of Amy in a
formal dress for formal dinner night. Alleged sightings would go

(19:21):
on for years, with loved ones worrying that Amy was
potentially kidnapped and trafficked into sexual slavery. We also know
there's a tremendous amount of drug trade. Missus Bradley told
NBC News that's not a secret from Venezuela through those
islands up through the United States or wherever they're going
with the drugs, all over the place with the drugs.

(19:41):
Tips and leads abounded over the years, lots of them,
though a few promising ones stood out above the rest.
Two Canadian tourists reported seeing a woman they believed that
or a woman they believed was Amy on a Curious
Out Beach in August nineteen ninety eight. What made this
report stand out amongst the others was that the pair
spotted the woman with tattoos matching the ones that Amy had,

(20:06):
including one on her shoulder of a Tasmanian devil spinning
a basketball and a son on her lower back, a
Chinese symbol on her right ankle, and a gecko around
her pierced navel. And I'm like, you had that good
look at her to see all of those tattoos, because
they're all in different areas of the body. I don't
know about that. I think maybe they saw a picture,

(20:28):
but who knows. Really, that's an accurate sighting. The two
Canadians that saw Amy on the beach in nineteen ninety eight,
they described her tattoos, her demeanor and they did not
know she was missing. And that's according to Missus Bradley.
One of the tourists, identified as an engineer named David Carmichael,
said he was certain the woman was Amy and that

(20:48):
she was flanked by two men. He said that she
looked frightened like she was about to say something when
one of the guys motioned her way, and it was
on a beach in Curusel like she was walking flanked
by two guys. She got like ahead of them for
a second, came up to the dude David on the
beach and looked like she was going to say something,
and then one of the guys is like, no, khm here.

(21:09):
So I don't know again if that's accurate or not.
A US Navy officer claimed that he saw Amy at
a Curisow brothel in nineteen ninety nine, but he didn't
say anything at the time because he feared getting in trouble,
you know, for being in an unauthorized area. According to
Amy's parents, he apologized to them for not doing more.

(21:30):
This is according to the sailor. He said that a
woman walked up and said, my name is Amy Bradley,
Please help me. He didn't know anybody was missing. He
told her there was a naval ship five minutes down
the dock and that she could leave, and she said, no,
you don't understand. Please help me. My name is Amy Bradley.
According to missus Bradley, two men arrived and removed her

(21:52):
from the bar and told her to go upstairs. The
naval officer claimed that he reported what he saw only
after he retired and saw Amy's bodo in a magazine.
Another possible sighting came in two thousand and five, when
a woman named Judy Mahr came forward with claims that
she saw Amy at a department store bathroom in Barbados.

(22:15):
This woman was in the stall in the bathroom stall,
she said, she heard, you know, the door open, people
come in. She heard the voices of several men, she
believes three. They left the restroom, and they only briefly
left the restroom and she came out started talking to
the woman in the bathroom who looked afraid, and they're like,

(22:35):
are you gonna behave are you gonna take off again?
This was the conversation she heard, and allegedly, per this witness,
she said Amy said, if this was indeed Amy, can
we go see the kids? And was like really excited
when the men said that she could go see the kids.
So I don't know, perhaps she had children and they
were using them as leverage to keep her in sexual slavery.

(22:59):
But the woman in the bathroom allegedly tells this Australian
tourist that her name's Amy Bradley and that she was
from Virginia. Soon the men allegedly returned and escorted Amy away.
So far, investigating authorities have neither publicly confirmed nor denied
possible sightings, leading to a whole lot of speculation over

(23:22):
the years. A reward of up to twenty five thousand
dollars is still available for information leading to Amy Bradley's recovery.
Tips can be submitted to the FBI's electronic tip form
or through the FBI's field office or the nearest American embassy.
All tips can remain anonymous. Amy's disappearance was brought back

(23:43):
into the spotlight with the Netflix docuseries Amy Bradley Is
Missing and That aired in July of twenty twenty five,
and it hasn't really left the streaming charts since. Across
three episodes, the show pieces together a detailed timeline of events,
revisits at major theory, and introduces some newly surfaced evidence.

(24:05):
But what's made it hit so hard? Well, the access really.
The series includes never before seen interviews with the Bradley family,
FBI agents, and key eyewitnesses, some who are speaking out
only for the first time. It goes beyond the surface
level horror and shows the emotional toll of living with
just a mystery like this. So a little more on

(24:30):
Amy and the day of the disappearance. So Amy Lynn
Bradley was twenty three, she was fresh out of university
and she was on a family cruise through the Caribbean
when she disappeared in March nineteen ninety eight. She was
a confident swimmer. She was a former lifeguard. Amy had
been out dancing on the ship's nightclub before turning to
the family cabin at around three forty am. Her dad

(24:51):
last saw her on their balcony just before dawn, and
by six am she was gone. Despite an extensive, allegedly
extensive search of Rhapsody of the seas and the surrounding waters,
there was no sign of Amy, and they were very
close to shore. No body, no belongings, no concrete leads.
Authorities initially floated the idea that she fell overboard, but

(25:15):
her family never believed it. She was too strong, a swimmer,
too savvy, and the sightings that followed, the ones I
talked about you know of a woman matching Amy's description
in Curisow and neighboring islands pointed to something much darker.
As it turned out, on board the cruise ship that
Amy vanished from. Was a video editor who had been

(25:35):
hired to take some video of the cruise. I think
it was like for a company or something, you know,
their company retreat, who used some of the cc TV
footage in his work. He was one of the first
people to see the final known footage of Amy Bradley
and has revealed what stood out about it to him,
and he's also in the documentary. Footage shared on YouTube

(25:57):
showed Amy Bradley on the night out you know, before
her disappearance. The clip is from CCTV on the boat
and clearly shows Amy on the dance floor alongside Yellow
you know, the nickname of Alistair Douglas, who was part
of a band on the ship. You know that was
all there. After this, Amy could be seen dancing near

(26:17):
an elevator. The video was uploaded by Chris Fenwick, an
editor who had been working on the ship at the time.
His job was to produce an entertaining video for his client.
The video was to be shown on the last night
of the cruise. Because of the nature of editing in
this short turnaround environment, he said he spent nearly the
entire duration of the cruise in his cabin working, so

(26:39):
he didn't enjoy the cruise at all. Chris explained that
on the morning that Amy disappeared, rumors began to circulate
aboard the ship regarding what happened. He worked closely with
a video engineer called Steve, who he claimed told him
had quote been instructed by ship security to make sure
that there were no images of the missing girl in

(27:00):
his cruise video. The type of videotape that you would
buy at the end of your cruise, showing all the
great things that you had done all week on board.
They're like, don't get that missing girl in there. That's
a bummer. It's like, well, she's missing, and she literally
was like the life of the party on the ship.
She's gonna be in a lot of those videos. Chris
recalled hearing rumors about Alistair Douglas, and again, Douglas has

(27:24):
always denied that he had any involvement in Amy's disappearance.
Nora knows what happened to her. Chris explained that the
day after Amy went missing that he took a break
from work to go to the disco on the eleventh
deck of the boat and have a soda and watch
people dance He said, he remembered seeing Alistair Douglas around
the disco and remembers thinking, Wow, there is that guy

(27:46):
that they think took the girl. He looks kind of creepy,
and yeah, he kind of did, honestly, he added, I
returned to my room and began scanning through tapes that
would have been shot on that night. Amazingly enough, on
the last tape of the night and the last shot
of the tape, there was indeed a shot of Amy
dancing on the dance floor. The part that was really
creepy to me was that the shot revealed that Amy

(28:08):
was dancing with Alister Douglas. Chris handed the tapes over
to the Bradley family and was later informed that they
had passed them over to authorities. He later claims that
the tapes themselves went missing. Speaking of what he thought
of the CCTV footage, Chris said, the images on the
tape are interesting and quite frankly, kind of creepy. However,

(28:30):
the pictures are not the most interesting thing about the videotape.
What is more interesting is the tape's story, its journey,
and its eventual disappearance. And I would agree with that
that's odd. In the summer of nineteen ninety nine, I
made another copy of the tape for the Bradleys. I've
spoken with Iva Amy's mother several times over the last
few years. Alister Douglas was questioned by the FBI. He

(28:53):
did take a polygraph test. To this day, he maintains
his innocence and has never been charged with any crimes.
In the documentary, Alister Douglas's daughter came to the Bradley
family and said that she wanted to have a conversation
with her father on camera, like she was gonna call
him and have a conversation, just point blank ask him

(29:14):
like that. She needed to know. She she drilled him
like she was desperate to know for father was involved
with this, and he adamantly denied it. And honestly, like
just hearing him talk, he's either the best liar in
the world or he didn't have anything to do with it.
So the most prominent photo of Amy distributed to the
public is understandably from the night that she went missing,

(29:37):
though it isn't what she went missing in. She wasn't wearing,
you know, a dress when she went missing. It showed
her dressed up for the formal dinner wearing a black
and jeweled necklace, shiny earrings, and a black dress. It
wasn't until this new documentary that I and even internet
experts on the case saw more casual pictures and videos
of her. And this has to do like this does

(30:00):
have anything to do with her disappearance, I don't think,
but it does speak to her state of mind and
could discount some theories about like, oh, she went with
some band member, YadA YadA, And I'm not sure how
to explain it, but the second I saw casual pictures
of Amy Bradley, she had that you know, nineties lesbian
Jenna Sequah, you know, whatever it is, Amy has it.

(30:23):
In these new photos, Amy is all, you know, baseball caps,
She's got shorn hair, she's always in a polo shirt
and big old jeans. She's got a tattoo of Taz
from Looney Tune, spending a basketball on her back, and
in videos of her doing the trick shots her friends
say she was known for. She's got like a whole
lot of swag. Amy was. She was an out lesbian,

(30:45):
h she was not straight, and they're you know, I'm
sure her like it's really up for debate. How much
her parents knew about her private life. It was still
the nineties, yet amy sexuality was kept hush hush for
nearly three decades, and even a lot of subreddits that
were dedicated to her case were just rocked by that information. Apparently,

(31:07):
Amy had come out as a lesbian a few years
before the cruise, and her Virginian family had not been
thrilled about it. Her mother explains in the documentary, as
her parents, we were concerned that in nineteen ninety five
those feelings would not be welcomed by the general population.
So I guess she came out to her parents in
ninety five and Iva was not wrong. Butch lesbians in

(31:28):
the early nineties incredible, like really truly what courage? You know,
what must it have felt like to hear even the
most liberal politicians slam gay marriage and vote for Donas.
Don't tell you know, every single lesbian who was out
in the nineties, every single gay person should be given
the Purple Heart for their service, because that is a lot.
Amy being a lesbian and the erasure of her sexuality

(31:51):
do indeed matter to the case, no doubt, there are
people who know far more about Amy's story than really
anyone else ever will. But I want to speak to
you know the queer reveal and why it wasn't disclosed
until twenty twenty five. The film starts with Amy's mother sobbing.
She and Amy's father have not moved on at all.
Like I said, they think about her twenty four to seven.

(32:12):
They kept her car in the garage, they keep it polished.
They're just waiting for her return. They obviously really loved
their daughter. In an interview with one of Amy's best friends,
Sarah Luck, she claims that Amy's parents disapproval of her
sexuality definitely bothered her. Their whole college social circle drank
a lot, and it seemed to Sarah like Amy was

(32:35):
trying to kind of numb the pain of her parents rejection.
Her parents claim they didn't reject it, that they thought
she was bisexual, and maybe that is what she told them,
But according to her close friends, she was gay, like
straight up gay. Kat Loveless, the first of Amy's ex
girlfriends interviewed, says their relationship is why each of them
came out to their families. They wanted to be out

(32:57):
in the open. Afterwards, Amy's father wrote Kat a three
page letter blaming her for making his daughter gay. In
the documentary, Ron refutes this. He said, it's Amy's life.
It wasn't what we would choose for her, but it's
her life, Sir. That sounds disapproving, but he said that
they did love her unconditionally and remembered writing that in

(33:18):
the letter. Amy's brother, Brad, in follow up interviews after
the documentary's premiere, clarified that their close knit family was
actually fine with Amy's sexuality, but he says Amy was
never a lesbian. Sure she'd come out to them as bisexual,
but at the time of the disappearance. Brad claims that
Amy had a boyfriend. Her friend Sarah says that Amy

(33:39):
self identified as gay and if she did have a boyfriend,
it was a beard. This all would have been useful
to determine Amy's state of mind. She allegedly had seven
light beers and was feeling unwell when her brother left
her on the balcony at around three forty five or
something like that. Some theorized that she was drinking so
much because it was stressful to be trapped at sea

(34:00):
with her parents, or that she was sad about her
recent breakup with someone that she dated named Mollie and
this woman Mollie is I think she teaches at the
University of Kentucky and wrote her just a really sad
letter that I think I'm gonna get into later. Her
parents deny that Amy's disappearance was an accident brought on by,

(34:22):
you know, her drinking the pain away. They also insist
that she did not die by suicide. And I think
everything I talked about before, the brand new apartment, the
brand new job, the brand new dog, all of that,
and Mollie also. She and Mollie had broken up, Amy
continued to try and win her back. You know, they
were long distance, and Amy was kind of going back

(34:44):
and forth between Virginia and Kentucky. And then you know,
they saw each other right before Amy was going to
leave on the cruise, and they decided they were going
to make it work. It didn't matter, you know, if
there was distance or not, that they were going to
make it work. So she would have been in an, okay,
probably really good state of mind. She had literally everything
to live for. She was in love with this woman.
They decided to make their relationship work. She had a

(35:07):
brand new job, a brand new apartment, a brand new dog.
She had a dope ass miata she was out as
a lesbian, and she was like ready to live and
to them and to me, Amy didn't go overboard at all.
And as the years crept on, why would her family
want to think that their harsh response to her coming
out may have contributed to her disappearance. They wouldn't, you know,

(35:28):
The guilt would eat anyone alive. They say that Amy
must have been kidnapped, Amy must have been trafficked. Her
family paints a picture of a woman that men flocked to,
and sure she was magnetic. Everybody said the same thing
about her, like she was apparently getting hit on so
freaking much and so admired on the boat by someone

(35:49):
no one knows who. That her little, you know, formal
photo was stolen off the wall, which is very strange,
Like who would do that? You know, that's a total stranger.
You don't know who they are, even if you think
they're cute, Like why would you just take their formal
cruise picture? I think that's pretty odd, you know. Investigators

(36:13):
wondered if she could have just been lured by one
of those men who maybe sweet talked her to getting
off a boat into like a rougher area of curasew
and it's like, will y'all don't know something about her?
She probably wouldn't have gone with them for a host
of reasons. One, she had common sense, and you know,
I would assume she would say no to a group

(36:35):
of men that she's known for thirty seconds asking her
to disembark a boat into a foreign country at what time,
Let's say, you know, five something in the morning, in
a boat that wasn't even docked right, so they got
her off the boat. How that'll be for part two?

(36:56):
I think this is gonna have to be a part
two because, like I told you in the beginning, I
do touch on I think twelve or thirteen other missing
persons cases aboard cruise ships. Like there's a lot more
than I even realized. Some I've never heard of at all.
And I'm like, why don't we know about these? I

(37:18):
feel like this is something we should be talking about
back to Amy, though we can't ignore the world that
Amy was living in at the time. Matthew Shepard, if
you remember, was killed in a hate crime earlier that year.
Ellen DeGeneres very famously came out on an episode of
her sitcom Ellen and it ruined her career. You know,

(37:39):
at the time, she made a massive comeback, and now
everybody hates her for some reason. I have no idea why.
I also conversion therapy that was still in full swing.
Enough of you know, enough people had been through conversion
camps that there was even a movie made about it.
There was a newer movie with one Dusty Ray Bottoms

(38:02):
of Louisville and RuPaul's Drag Race. They were in that documentary,
I believe by their husband, who either directed or produced it.
I can't remember. Deepest apologies, but Dusty was had a
similar experience to the movie. I don't think it was funny,
like the movie was funny. I'm sure it was absolutely

(38:25):
horrendous and harrowing. But I do love the movie. The
fictional movie, the fictionalized, cutesy version called but I'm a Cheerleader.
It's a wonderful movie with Natasha Leone, who's not gay. Somehow,
I don't know. It's like if there's one person you
look at and you're like, they're gay, kind of like
Stanley Tucci. He plays a lot of gay roles, and

(38:47):
I'm like, he plays gay better than like I think
he plays himself in real life, like it's just too good.
But anyway, I digress like heavily. It would be understandable,
you know, if her family felt that saying Amy was
gay might endanger her, you know, with her kidnappers because
hate crimes were a plenty, or to make the general

(39:08):
public uninterested in her case. So you know, it could
entirely be that her parents didn't care. You know, they're like, whatever,
we love you anyway, we love you unconditionally. Maybe that
was the case. I don't know. Maybe they just thought, oh,
if this is about a gay kid, people won't care.
They'll be like, oh, you know, whatever, Hey again, hate

(39:31):
crimes were a plenty, so I doubt they would care.
If parents were like, our lesbian daughter is missing from
a boat, they'd be like, okay, great, we don't care,
and that would be the end of it, right, So
it may have been a strategy on the part of
her parents in you know, leaving her sexuality out of it,
because really, why would you need to tell news media

(39:52):
that I'd be like our gay daughter, I love our
gay daughter, you know what I mean, Like, you wouldn't
be like I love my straight kid. You know, nobody
says that that's really weird. And if you do say that,
why I should like to know if you introduce your
child as my gay child, let me know and please
explain to me why so really her sexuality though back
to that and why I'm even talking about it to

(40:14):
begin with. You know, it could have cleared up one
ding that I feel the case's primary suspect, like has
in the armor, one little think in the armor Alistair Douglas,
the bass player from the Ship's band. Right. He was
a dude, right, and people speculated that maybe Amy left

(40:35):
to hook up with him because she was seen dancing
with Alistair right before she went missing, and he could
have killed her afterwards. Amy being a lesbian also sheds
light on the racist and sexist fetishization I said it
correctly that has come out of Amy's story. Amy Bradley
is Missing. The Netflix documentary spends a lot of time

(40:58):
dissecting a set of photos of a sex worker. It
was an ad for a sex worker that the family
was emailed anonymously in two thousand and five. The woman
does look a lot like Amy, although you know, she's
got a ton of makeup on, she got teased up hair,
and you know, pink eye shadow. But she also doesn't

(41:19):
have Amy's tattoos. I don't know, maybe they're covered. Really,
it's a toss up. It's fifty to fifty on whether
the woman in those pictures is indeed Amy Bradley. I
gotta lean toward no. Again, there are no tattoos where
you know there should be tattoos. If it were Amy,
she had quite a few. She had them in pretty

(41:42):
visible places, and in the ads, most of those areas
were exposed, like you would be able to see a
tattoo if a tattoo were there. And I don't think
that you know these fictional sex traffickers who have Amy.
I'm not saying that's not the case, but I'm saying
in this scenario, they're fictional. The ones that I'm to
talking about. When they took that ad out for an

(42:03):
escort service or whatever, in whatever paper or newsletter, whatever
milieu they put it into, I doubt that they were like,
we have a photoshop budget for our seccess. I doubt
they were like, we have a photoshop budget for our
escort ads. We can afford to photoshop all these tattoos out.

(42:27):
You know, whi's the air brush It airbrush that we
paint over it. I mean, you can crudely paste some
skin over. I feel like it would be obvious. I
don't think they took the time, Like why would they.
They're like, nobody's going to recognize this girl. She had
really short, like blondish hair. Now our hair's dark and long,
and you know she dressed pretty androgynously before and this

(42:49):
woman's in a nightie and high heels, YadA, YadA. It
really it looks a lot like her, though, to be honest,
it does look like a scary amount like her, But
it really is anybody's guess. You could flip a coin
like nobody knows. And when witnesses come forward in the documentary,
it is mostly men with you know what could be

(43:12):
a rescuer fantasy and one you know, older Australian lady
who believes she saw Amy being man handled by a
pimp in a bathroom of a department store, so okay.
You know a guy who claims he saw her flanked
by two scary men on a beach weirdly described her
as tanned and in good shape. That is odd. I

(43:36):
guess I didn't think about it when I was listening
to that man talk. That is odd. Why would you
comment on someone you think is being sex trafficked as
tanned and in good shape? Okay, that is a little off.
The Navy seamen grow Up says that he was a
client of hers in a brothel and that she asked
for his help. Another admits that he and also that

(43:58):
guy didn't talk about it until he was retired from
the Navy so way after. Another admits that he talked
to her over their shared balcony on the ship. It's
the it's the guy in the cabin next door. He
likes to go on cruises alone. Yeah, he's a weirdo.
And he said, like you could just like look around
and see the person on the patio next to you

(44:20):
or the balcony next to you, and he just referred
to her as the girl next door. He was weird,
but I don't think he had anything to do with it.
I think he was just a loner who knew that
most people didn't like him because he's like, I'm a
bit of a I'm a bit of a loaner. People
say I'm too much or I'm too direct, YadA YadA,
and I'm like okay, So at least he accepts it

(44:42):
like good on him, I guess anyway, So it's really
just kind of like an amalgamation of like fears, you
know what I mean, like the classic tropes of good
Christian women being taken prisoner in foreign countries or just
like you know, good girls next door or whatever, you know,
some trope the Woman in the Bathroom describes stereotypical Latin

(45:05):
thugs threatening the hypothetical children that Amy has been forced
to bear. Amy Bradley has really been portrayed as a
person that she never was to serve a kind of
thriller novel fantasy narrative. I don't know, it's all very strange.
With the reveal of Amy's authentic self, the almost thirty

(45:28):
year old cold case becomes three dimensional and warm, like
you can maybe parse out some new theories. Gaps are
a little bit more filled in. Amy was a whole
entire person. She was not just some face in a
spooky viral TikTok or a salacious podcast episode like I'm
recording right now. But at least I'm I'm giving it

(45:49):
to you the best I got so that we know
who she was, and I'm not like say, I'm breaking
ground like this is completely new news, but it is.
You know, if somebody were to have done an episode
a couple of years ago, they wouldn't have known a
lot of these things because they were not public knowledge,

(46:09):
not knocking anybody. So her ex cat lovingly recalls the
first time Amy kissed her. Her more recent ex, Mollie,
takes out a very eerie gift. It is so strange.
Amy gave her a few months before she disappeared, a
message in a bottle. Yeah, And if you don't know

(46:31):
like the significance of that, it's typically from you know,
someone being stranded somewhere at sea or on an island
at sea, or shipwrecked or whatever, and they write a
message and they put it in a glass bottle and
they put a cork on it and they send it
out to sea and hopefully somebody will come and save them.
So she wrote one of these letters to her ex girlfriend,

(46:56):
it's said, and Mollie, the girl, the ex girlfriend, was
really reluctant to share it, like she did not want
to read it on camera. She had like literally every emotion.
She said that she could still she could still see Amy,
she could still smell her, she could still feel her,
I'm like, my god, and she gets so upset, she's

(47:17):
visibly reliving everything and cries and it's just so emotional,
Like can you imagine just not knowing You're like, this
person was probably the love of my life, is what
it sounds like for her anyway. I don't know if
that's true or not, but it sounded a lot like it.
And she was like planning a future with her and

(47:40):
all of a sudden she's just gone. Never found ever, nobody, no,
Like I mean, there have been sightings, but they really
have not. I mean they're I'm not going to say
they're all not credible, but I don't know. I just
don't know if that was the case. And also, to

(48:01):
you gotta think of another angle. It could have been
a grift, right, Like they could have been sending somebody
that looks similar to Amy, and who they is, I
don't know, but you know, somebody's just out there grift
in some con man is like, hey, you go over
to these men and we're gonna scam them and say
you're this girl who needs rescuing and gets you a
bunch of money or something like that. You know, that's

(48:23):
I'm just pitfalling. Let me riff, Let me riff either way. Yeah.
Mollie her poor ex girlfriend. She and Amy met at
a basketball tryout when they were fourteen. She said that
she noticed ma or she noticed Amy right away. She
had a mullet and she was just like really outgoing
and Molly was really shy. So they complimented each other,

(48:46):
and you know, they'd have sleepovers at Amy's house, and
of course, when you know you're laying in bed and
you're like potentially attracted to someone laying next to you,
they got feelings. You know, their hearts would start racing,
and the two started to fall in love. And after

(49:07):
a night of dancing at a gay bar, like after
they both graduated, the two finally got together, if you
know what I mean, in the biblical sense. They apparently
like one one of them was in like a really
long relationship, the other was single. The long relationship one

(49:29):
you know, didn't know whether or not the other one
was single. And then they you know, just met up
by accident at a bar after college and both of
them were single, so timing was there very upset about it.
She felt like she had betrayed Mollie, like this was
potentially her first love. And she felt really, really terrible.

(49:51):
Mollie does indeed feel that they would have gotten fully
back together. She did say they were making plans to
just make it work after Amy got back. And on
the same day that she learned Amy was missing, she
got a postcard in the mail from Amy that said,
wish you were here. I'm like, how many strange symbolic

(50:14):
things have to happen to this woman? That's just like,
that's terrible. She gives her a message in a bottle,
it's a love letter, and then she disappears at c like,
how what are the odds really? I want to know?
And then the very day that she finds out Amy

(50:34):
is missing, Mollie, who through tears says that she does
not like to think about the theories of Amy's fate, says,
for me and my making peace with and she says
that for me and my making peace with that she's
no longer here, the one that I have loved is

(50:57):
and she trails off, which is so sad. She said,
the fact is I'm living my life without her. That's
not going to change. That doesn't change, and that's really powerful.
She's like, if whether she's dead or whether she's missing
the fact of the matter is I'm living my life
without her and it's not going to change regardless, Like

(51:19):
obviously this is what's happening. The years are just going by,
the decades are going by, and I'm just living my
life without her and that's not going to change. God,
that is sad. Like this poor woman. I'm like, I, oh,
my god, that's the school I graduated from where she works,
the University of Kentucky, And I'm like, I would just

(51:39):
like to go to Lexington and talk to this woman,
because my God, not for you know, any any reason
of putting it on, you know, a recorded podcast episode.
I don't want to do that because this woman has
very clearly gone through enough. I would just like to
talk to her, like about the way she thinks about grief.

(52:02):
And I don't know, just the way she put it
was so eloquent, so accurate, so it's so succinct and
it's it's just spot on. So that is where I'm
going to end this part of Amy Bradley's case. In
the part two, I'm going to go into theories. There's

(52:25):
there's a few, and eh, they're all they're all kind
of possible, Like there's not one that you can say
that is just outright incorrect. It can be proven that
it's incorrect, Like we know it's incorrect. A thousand people
have corroborated it. It is completely incorrect. No, none of
them are like that. They're all really like pretty ambiguous.

(52:49):
They could have they could have happened, they could have
not happened again fifty to fifty. Really the woman in
the photo maybe it's Amy. Maybe it's not the woman
that these people saw on a beach and in a
bathroom and you know, in a brothel. Could it have
just been someone that looked like Amy. Could it have

(53:09):
been someone who had indeed been sex trafficked and had
learned of you know, maybe someone who looks similar to
them disappearing and they say, oh, I'm this girl, get
me out of here in the hopes of escaping. I
don't know. I feel like the Navy, the semen. I
feel like he could have and should have gotten around

(53:32):
like you. I don't think he would have gotten in
trouble for that. All you'd have to say to her is, hey,
don't tell them that I found you in a brothel.
And then you've saved an American woman who is being
sex trafficked abroad, like you're you're gonna be hailed as
a freaking hero. And I really don't think she'd turn
you in for going to a brothel. So I'm not

(53:54):
sure how believable that one is. It's it's really pretty scummy.
It's like, first of all, you know, you went to
al in a foreign country and you suspected people were
being trafficked, and you still stayed in that brothel. Hmmm.
Says a lot about you. You only tell people after
you retire from the navy. Says a lot about you
didn't tell anyone ever ever. Okay, whatever, I don't know

(54:16):
who it is, so you know what I mean. I'm
not like discrediting someone personally, like being like you by name.
I just credit what you're saying. No, not at all.
I don't know who it was. Don't know the name
of the person. Just know that he's a seaman. He's
a seaman, he's a man of the sea. Okay, just

(54:38):
grow up, everybody, grow up. I hope you're listening to
this early, and I hope it gets you all jacked up,
Like I really really do this part only rest of it, No,
the rest of it is all bad, bad things. Okay, anyway,
I'll get into what I think happened in the next episode.
I'm also going to I'm gonna probably have to record

(55:02):
more episodes on on cruise missings or cruise missings, good Lord,
missing people from cruises, people that went missing from a
cruise ship while they were on a cruise vacation on
an ocean, perhaps in a river. There are river cruises,
perhaps in a gulf, maybe a bay. I don't know,

(55:23):
me an estuary if they can get in there. You know,
we just don't know a straight now. I'm just trying
to think of all different kinds of waterways and it's
getting ridiculous. A canal. I just like, Okay, this is idiotic.
I got to bring levity to it because it's you know,
it's all bad. None of it's good. None of this
is good. No matter what happened, it's not good. You know,

(55:45):
she's again everyone that loves Amy Bradley is living their
life without her, and that's not going to change, you know,
just like Molly said. So I'm going to get into those.
K I'll probably briefly touch on those, because I mean,
it'll have to be an eight parter or otherwise I will,

(56:07):
you know anything I can find a good amount of
information on case wise, I will do another episode on
because really I did not know that there were currently
so many missing people from cruise ships. I really did
not know, or you know, suspicious deaths, what have you?
A lot? I don't like the number. It's too many. Really,

(56:28):
one is too many. You know, you want to feel
safe on a ship in the middle of nothing, miss
you know what I mean with God only knows how
deep an ocean for below you and what you know,
cryptid creature lives beneath or a UFO like I have
an interest in is it under it's underwater phenomena? I

(56:51):
think when you know it looks like UFO are traveling underwater,
right like that whole thing. I'm not going to get
into it. That's a whole other's. That is a whole
other spiel. That is an episode for another time and place,
not right now, not at all. So I'm going to
get into those. I'm gonna get into my theories. I

(57:12):
hope my voice doesn't sound weird. I feel like I'm
coming down with something and like it's kind of reverberating
in my head a little bit. The sound of my
own voice. Maybe I'm just talking loudly. Who knows. Maybe
I'm just really tired. It's probably that part. Aren't we all?
Aren't we all? We should all get some rest. What
do you think? What if I just like made noises

(57:36):
and was your noise machine for the night, would you
like that? I think you might. I think you might.
I have to sleep with a brown noise on even
if you didn't know. There's like a color spectrum of noise.
I don't know if that's like I don't know if
there's actually a color spectrum. But noise has different kinds
of names apparently, And I like brown noise. It's not

(57:57):
as sharp to me as white noise and some other
noise colors maybe like pink or green. Yeah, look into that,
it's very soothing. Look into what kind of noise your
brain likes and what gets you to sleep. Okay, enough
of that. Next episode, theories a plenty, there's going to
be a lot. It's gonna be a corniocopia of really

(58:22):
just wild theories and sightings and rabbit holes and YadA YadA. Anyway,
we'll get into all of that in part two, which
is going to be a split episode, you know with
the current missing people from cruise ships and my theories
on Amy Bradley and all the other stuff that I

(58:44):
just talked about. I'm gonna stop talking now, but if
you liked some of what you heard, if you liked
a little bit of it, you can listen every Friday,
released on all podcast platforms. You can find me on
social media on Instagram at Autumns Podcast, also threads at
Autumn podcast, Facebook at Autumn's Oddities, and Patreon at Autumn's Oddities.

(59:06):
If you would like to help support my tiny, Sweet
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You get you know, a little treasure trove of unreleased
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free episodes, which is pretty sweet. You get a sticker,
I think after three months of being part of the

(59:30):
group or the coven or the whatever you want to
call us, a Murder of Crows whatever, Yeah, all of
those things at Patreon that's where all of it is.
You should check it out. It's pretty pretty cool, pretty
exclusive club. It's hard to get into. It isn't it's not,
but there's there's a lot of cool people that are there.

(59:52):
If you want to check it out. I don't know,
maybe I'll see you there. Yeah. Maybe, Well that's cool
either way, it's cool, it's cool, we're cool. Right, you're
not mad at me? Okay? Uh? Those are the places
you can find me. And that's it, you know. As always,
I appreciate you listening, and remember, if it's creepy and weird,
you'll find it here.