Disappeared on a Caribbean Cruise With Her Family: What Happened To Amy Bradley?

NEW CLUES AND A NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY HAVE REINVIGORATED THE BRADLEY FAMILY’S DECADES-LONG SEARCH FOR THEIR MISSING DAUGHTER

- LIAM QUINN

It was a fun-filled trip—until the sun came up on March 24, 1998. Hours earlier, on the first stop of a Caribbean cruise with his family, Brad Bradley recalls touring the sunny island of Aruba with his sister Amy, 23, in a rented convertible SUV. Back aboard Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas, the siblings dressed for that night’s formal dinner and spent time with their parents, Ron and Iva Bradley, at a pool deck party before heading to the ship’s rooftop club, where they briefly parted ways to chat with other passengers. Sometime after 3:30 a.m. they were back together, Brad says, relaxing on the balcony of the family’s cabin as their parents slept inside: “I don’t remember looking at a clock, but at 4, maybe 4:10, I went to bed.”

Today Brad feels fortunate that he thought to say “I love you,” because those words may be the last he will ever speak to his sister. At around 5:30 a.m. Ron, 73, stirred in his sleep and glimpsed Amy on a lounge chair outside. But when he woke after dawn some 30 minutes later, she was gone without a trace. Nearly three decades later Amy Bradley’s disappearance as the cruise ship approached the port of Curaçao is an enduring mystery debated on TV talk shows and true-crime podcasts and recently spotlighted in Netflix’s hit three-part documentary Amy Bradley Is Missing. It has spawned a constellation of theoretical explanations—including an accidental fall from the balcony, death by suicide and abduction aboard the vessel by sex traffickers—and led to more than a half-dozen reported sightings over the years (see timeline), as well as a still-open investigation by the FBI. Yet to this day her anguished family, who have become dogged investigators themselves, don’t know what really happened to Amy. Still, they firmly believe she is alive. “People can’t understand the level of hope that we’ve maintained,” says Brad, 48. “We’re still waiting for that call.”