Missing at Sea: The Disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley

Missing at Sea: The Disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley

Amy Lynn Bradley boarded a cruise with her family in 1998. By the next morning, she was gone—no signs of struggle, no evidence of where she went, and no real answers. The official story? She fell overboard. The reality? Much murkier. This episode unpacks the night Amy vanished, the disturbing clues that followed, and the long trail of silence, sightings, and unanswered questions that have haunted her family for over two decades.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On March twenty fourth, nineteen ninety eight, Amy Lynn Bradley
disappeared from a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, completely vanished, no splash,
no scream, just gone. The night before, Amy was on
vacation with her parents and her younger brother, Brad. They
were sailing on the rapp City of the Seas, a

(00:21):
floating buffet with an engine, headed toward Curisow. The family
had been having a good time, eating, drinking, taking photos,
and trying to avoid other tourists who thought Jimmy Buffett
was peak music. That night, Amy and Brad hit up
the ship's nightclub. It was called the Disco because apparently
Royal Caribbeans spared all their creativity for the towel animals.

(00:44):
They danced late into the night with a live band
and some members of the ship's crew. One of them,
a guy named Yellow, seemed to be especially into Amy.
Two into her if you ask her family. Around five
point thirty am, Amy and Brad went back to their cabin.
Brad went to bed, Amy stayed up. Her dad saw

(01:04):
her sitting out on the balcony at round five forty
five am, just quietly smoking a cigarette alone, awake, calm,
by six am. Just fifteen minutes later, Amy was gone.
No one saw her leave the room, no one saw
her walk down the hallway, and weirdly, none of the
security cameras picked her up either, not that they were

(01:26):
exactly high deaf in nineteen ninety eight, but still you'd
think someone would notice a woman disappearing off a lockdown
cruise ship. Her shoes were still in the cabin, her id,
her cigarettes, even her makeup bag all there, the kind
of stuff people usually bring with them if they're, you know,
going somewhere. The family immediately panicked and ran to alert

(01:47):
the crew, and that's when things got unhelpful. The crew
staff told them to wait, told them not to worry,
and most importantly, they refused to make an announcement over
the ship's PA system. Then they docked in Curisow and
then let everyone off the ship. Amy could have been
in one of those groups, walking off quietly, being taken

(02:09):
hiding whatever it was. If she had been on board
and still alive, that moment might have been the last
chance to stop it. But there were no announcements made,
they didn't lock everyone down. Nothing. Amy Lynn Bradley was
twenty three years old, a recent college grad, strong swimmer,
former lifeguard tattoo on her shoulder of a Tasmanian devil

(02:31):
green eyes five six After that morning, she was never
seen again, at least not officially. So here's what Royal

(02:57):
Caribbean landed on. He probably just fell overboard. Pretty simple,
cut and dry. Except no, Amy wasn't drunk, she wasn't reckless,
she wasn't dangling over the side trying to take a selfie.
This was nineteen ninety eight, people still printed photos and
had dial up. And more importantly, Amy was a trained lifeguard.

(03:20):
She'd been swimming competitively since she was a child. If
anyone wasn't going to accidentally tumble into the Caribbean and
disappear without a trace, it was probably her. Also, that
balcony railing was over three feet high. You'd have to
actually climb over it, not trip, not lean too far
full on. I've made some decisions energy. And here's the

(03:42):
thing no one wants to admit. If she had gone
into the water, someone would have heard something. The cabins
weren't soundproof and people were already awake. Her dad was
literally up within minutes of her being gone. There was
no splashing, no yelling, no sound, No one saw anything. Plus,
if Amy went into the water, you'd expect a search

(04:04):
of some kind, a real one, helicopters, boats, divers, But
the response was at best half hearted. It took the
ship hours to alert authorities, and once the crew did
finally say something, they treated it more like a minor
inconvenience than an emergency. Royal Caribbean also did a full
sweep of the ship, but according to the family, they

(04:24):
didn't search passenger rooms, didn't question everyone thoroughly, and didn't
stop anyone leaving when they docked in Curisow, which you'd
think they'd want to do if they actually believed she
was still on board or in danger. And there's one
more wrinkle to the story. Amy's family swears she would
never go off alone. I mean she even took her

(04:46):
brother to the nightclub the night before. Her brother Brad
was her wingman. Okay, so Amy vanishes off a cruise ship.
The official theory she fell overboard. The family not buying it,
and pretty soon neither was anyone else, because over the
years people started seeing her or someone who looked a

(05:06):
lot like her, and it wasn't just one wild eyed
psychic on a Facebook group. They were talking about an
actual human being in actual places with zero connection to
each other, all saying the same thing. I think I
saw Amy Lynn Bradley. The first real lead came from
a taxi driver in curisl who said a young woman
matching Amy's description approached him in a panic, asked where

(05:29):
the nearest phone was. Then she got pulled away by
two men that could have been brushed off into A
Canadian tourist claimed she saw Amy again on a beach
same island. The woman had the same tattoos, specifically the
Tasmanian devil on her shoulder and a distinctive gecko on
her ankle. She looked scared, like she wanted to speak

(05:51):
but couldn't. Just one of those moments that felt off.
But the woman was gone before the tourist could figure
it out. And then there's the creepiest on. A US
Navy petty officer walks into a brothel in Curisow. He's
led to a private room and the woman inside says,
barely above a whisper, my name is Amy Lynn Bradley,

(06:12):
Please help me. He freezes, She's rushed out of the room,
and by the time he reports it to his superior officers.
The brothel is already shut down, completely gone. Years later,
in two thousand and five, the Bradley family got an
anonymous email with an attached photo. It showed a woman
lying on a bed, makeup lingerie, vacant stare, the file

(06:35):
name jazz Jas, and even law enforcement couldn't deny the
woman looked exactly like Amy, same build, the same facial structure,
same haunting eyes. You look at it once and it
sticks with you, like she was trapped in some living
nightmare and no one could wake her from it. But
here's the problem with the sightings. They're always just out

(06:56):
of reach, no confirmation, no clear trail, no closure. And
through all of this, one question kept echoing louder. If
Amy didn't fall, if she was taken, how who? And
why not Reddit threads? Not some YouTube guy with twelve
views in a blurry map. Real possibilities that the FBI, INTERPOL,

(07:19):
and private investigators have all had to wrestle with because
the idea that Amy fell doesn't hold water, let's be honest.
And the sightings they're just too consistent to ignore. So
what does that leave us with here? Human trafficking? And yeah,
It sounds like the stuff of bad action movies, but
it's not far fetched. In the late nineties, sex trafficking

(07:42):
in the Caribbean was rampant. Cruise ships were seen as
prime hunting grounds, full of distracted tourists, zero real security,
and a rotating cast of international workers, where someone could
slip through the cracks without anyone really noticing. Amy had
been dancing with a member of the crew's band Yellow.
According to other passengers, he was extra friendly, like predatory friendly.

(08:06):
He was one of the last people seen with her,
and yet no one really questioned him. The crew said
he was cooperative, which as corporate speak for we didn't
really want the bad press. Her family begged the crew
staff to search everything, lock the doors, check the rooms,
stop people from getting off, and the response basically, we
don't want to inconvenience our guests. Now, this is the

(08:29):
part that gets real dark, real fast. Amy's parents have
been scammed multiple times by people claiming to know where
she was. One guy said he was ex military and
could rescue her for a fee. He took their money,
gave them false hope, and vanished. Then there's the cruise
line itself. They lawyered up almost immediately, no real apology,

(08:52):
no admission of fault, just silence and press releases. And
while Amy's family was putting up reward money, calling new stations,
begging for help, everyone else just seemed to just move on,
as if she was a headline from last week, as
if a twenty three year old woman didn't just disappear
off the face of the earth under their watch. No

(09:13):
one was arrested, no one seriously investigated, no one accountable,
And every time her parents got close, another wall went up,
another door shut, another voice went quiet. Because saying we
don't know what happened is one thing, but acting like
it's not your problem, that's a choice. It's been over

(09:34):
twenty five years since Amy Lynn Bradley vanished. Her parents,
Ron and Iva are still searching, still hoping, still answering
every unknown number just in case this one has answers.
They've put up hundreds of thousands in reward money. The
FBI added twenty five thousand, and every few years a

(09:54):
new tip comes in, just enough to reopen the wound,
never enough to close it. Amy's face aged through age
progressed sketches. Her name lives on in message boards and podcasts.
Like this one and those FBI missing posters that quietly
haunt the Internet, and somewhere between the silence of Royal
Caribbean and the noise of all those maybe sightings is

(10:17):
a young woman who walked onto a cruise ship and
never came home. Not an accident, most likely, not a mystery, really,
just a case nobody wanted to solve. Thanks for listening
to another episode of ten Minute Mystery. My name is Joe.
I'm the host, and I really appreciate you checking out
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(10:39):
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If you want to get in touch with me, you

(11:00):
can go to ten minute Murder dot com and reach
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listening to ten Minute Mystery.