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Season Six: Overboard Part Two: The Greatest Escape Room Ever
186 Plays12 days ago
Part two of our crime on cruise ships series.
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Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Boat-related True Crime Fascination
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:58
Speaker
i I guess I got something that has happened to me in the fall related to boats, because every time the fall rolls around, for some reason, I start looking at these boat things.
00:01:10
Speaker
Like the whole... Tommy Thompson? Yeah, the whole series of Deep Gold, like looking at that, which is... I was thinking there'd be
Amy Bradley Case and Cruise Ship Disappearances
00:01:18
Speaker
movement on it. There is this documentary that kind of petered out. um and you had been the one who pointed me at the Amy Bradley case, who's like, you know, she's like this early 20s girl on a boat that, you know, in all likelihood, accidentally or on purpose fell from or jumped from a boat.
00:01:39
Speaker
Right. And now ah literally this year, a docuseries came out. about how her family's still waiting for her to come home. And I'm like, how is that possible?
00:01:50
Speaker
Right. And so that had all taken place back in 1998, but it got me like going down this rabbit hole and i started pulling out these facts. Did you know that since 2000, and and this this is a big number, 208 people have gone missing from cruise ships?
00:02:09
Speaker
Since when now? 2000. in 25 years? so in twenty five years Yeah, so it doesn't even include Amy Bradley.
Disney's Cruise Industry Involvement
00:02:17
Speaker
ah are they Do they continue to be missing?
00:02:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. like there No, I did not know that. No, I'm not just saying U.S. cruise ships when I say that number. Yeah, yeah i have no um I know that it's uncommon, but i mean that seems like maybe it's not so uncommon.
00:02:38
Speaker
Right, so 52 of them disappeared from Carnival cruise lines around the world. And I thought that was high. And then i started digging into that number and I came up with like like i some confirmation of that. And like I started kind of drilling down through them.
00:02:56
Speaker
I think we've talked about this before, and I know you know part of this. I did my internships with with Disney. like many years ago, like, like seriously, it's 30s ago.
00:03:09
Speaker
It's a really long time ago. And one of the things that happened, like while I was doing my, my internships is Disney was preparing to enter, I guess you'd call it the industry of like cruise ships. like They were going to be launching their boats.
00:03:26
Speaker
The summer that I first worked for them, there were these drawings in one of the places I worked that were all about the design of either one or two of the boats. And sure enough, like...
00:03:38
Speaker
in in the the years after that, like they they built the boat. and I think it finally launched, and I went looking for that. So that Disney boat that was, like I guess, the first one or the second one, it launched in February 1998, so it was a month before Amy Bradley went missing.
00:03:57
Speaker
It's February 23rd, and she goes missing March 24th-ish. um And I thought that was interesting that that had happened. And... you know Like you said, Ducky series just came out on Amy Bradley.
00:04:13
Speaker
i ended up going down a rabbit hole related to that Disney cruise ship that I was just talking about. And it was called the Disney Wonder. And Disney Wonder is is pretty interesting.
00:04:24
Speaker
um I pulled up a few facts on it. Oh, well, here's one to contradict what just said. It says yeah the second ship. Okay, so Disney Magic is the first ship.
00:04:36
Speaker
Disney Wonder is the second ship. And it enters service in 1999, but it launches on February 23rd, 1998. I was right about that part. Yeah. So its sister ship, Disney Magic, was first, and then Disney Wonderwood second.
00:04:52
Speaker
Then they have four other ships, Disney Dream, Disney Fantasy, Disney Wish, and Disney Treasure. So...
00:05:00
Speaker
I learned a bunch about cruise ships like chasing this down. I just thought it was interesting that one of the cases we had was tied to Disney, which fascinates me. Disney is a very interesting company in terms of when crimes and accidents and mysterious things happen, they are the first type of company that will put their fists down, open their wallet, and make it go away.
00:05:26
Speaker
Right, because it's very damaging. Yeah, they're a huge brand, and it would damage this massive brand that is the Walt Disney Company. Correct, and it's built on family entertainment and fun and safety.
00:05:42
Speaker
Right, right. So we have the Disney Wonder decorated in Art Nouveau style and Disney Magic decorated in Art Gecko style, and I had to like actually go look those two things up.
00:05:53
Speaker
And even now as I'm sitting here, I could not give you a very good explanation as to how they're different. Dude, I know exactly what you're talking about. What did say? I exactly what each one of them means.
00:06:06
Speaker
So Art Nouveau is more German, is that right? Well, I don't know. I have these mugs. And they have... And one of them is clearly the black noir. oh yeah, okay. And the other one is clearly the other thing.
00:06:21
Speaker
Okay, so Art Nouveau, Art Deco. Okay. And it's the style. Right. Is it more curly and elegant and simple, or is it like loud and bold and crazy?
Rebecca Coriam's Disappearance
00:06:33
Speaker
Right. So that's how they differentiate between these two ships. That's the only real difference.
00:06:37
Speaker
i knew And that's funny, because I never realized that they had segmented it off like that. But like if you... I mean, everybody... i Well, I assume everybody's been to Disney World, and you know the cruise line is just an extension of Disney World, right?
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah. um As far as it's a boat that has brought a little bit of Disney onto it. And ah they segment things off like that because you've got two different styles of of people, right?
00:07:05
Speaker
Yeah. That are looking for souvenirs. And that's how they kind of broke it down. I think there's more than two at this point, but it's just the different styles that they use. One would be more loud and boisterous and one is more simple and elegant.
00:07:17
Speaker
Right. And so other than that, these first two boats are pretty similar. And I want to go over some of those facts so that people can understand this. Because we're talking about these like the size of cruise ships, I think that matters. And I think like um I have limited experience personally with like cruise ships and that industry of getting on a boat and just riding around in a circle and coming back to where you just were.
00:07:41
Speaker
um I have limited experience with that, but I looked it up and I think I have a pretty good understanding. So I wanted to know how big are these ships and both of these boats, the wonder and the magic, they have 11 full size public decks.
00:07:55
Speaker
um They can accommodate 2,400 passengers. They each have public they have a crew of somewhere between nine hundred and twenty five and a thousand and ten people That's large.
00:08:13
Speaker
The length of these boats is around 300 meters, so they're almost 1,000 feet long. And they move along, like, cruising speed, which we talked about recently.
00:08:27
Speaker
It's around 25 miles per hour, give or take. The max speed is 23.5 knots, so that's around 27 miles per hour. I think it's safe to say that, like, it's way bigger than, like,
00:08:41
Speaker
You would think. Yeah. Yeah. It's like i try and say that this is how I'll put it out for for people. Imagine a football field. That is 13 stories high.
00:08:55
Speaker
So that's the size boat. These things are. They're enormous. Um, and while I was aware that like Disney was getting into boats, like once I'd left Disney, um I had done two internships with them, really specific type internships. And I didn't really stay in that like line of work and I didn't stay with that company.
00:09:18
Speaker
So I kind of just, the the whole Disney magic thing just kind of fell away from me and I didn't know like, they have this many boats or that they did all this stuff. In fact, the last time I really remember hearing about any Disney cruise ships was ah during the pandemic when they had a bunch of passengers get off in March 2020 over in California somewhere.
00:09:40
Speaker
um They had people get off and they were testing them for COVID. Remember how that became a huge deal when boats were kind of incubators for this stuff?
00:09:52
Speaker
um I remember that, yep so So they were checking all these people. And within like a month or two, they had a bunch of people who had tested positive for COVID. And that's really the last ah thing that entered my mind about a Disney cruise ship, even though I hadn't probably thought of them in 25 years when that happened.
00:10:12
Speaker
um But today's story is tied to this boat, the Disney Wonder. um Now, it also happens in March.
00:10:23
Speaker
It happens March 21st, but it's many years. It's 13 years after um the disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley. It's March 21st, 2011. 24-year-old woman, so around the same age, um her name is Rebecca Coriam.
00:10:42
Speaker
she goes missing from a cruise ship. I, at first I kind of looked at it and I was like, I don't know if there's enough to cover that, but I found these old guardian articles where this guy, John Ronson, which I know it's not the greatest source, but so it's long time ago.
00:11:01
Speaker
Um, he like gets on this boat in October, 2011. So, you know, the fall season, And like goes for a ride to see if he can figure out what happened to this woman. And he writes about it for the guardian in this massive piece.
00:11:15
Speaker
So when I saw that, and I saw some of the other stuff that was available on Rebecca's case, I was like, let me dig into this. Well, I started finding these websites in archive form.
00:11:30
Speaker
ah There was one that was called find Rebecca. um There were multiple like different pieces of coverage in sort of cruise news outlets.
00:11:43
Speaker
And like, she occasionally pops in mainstream media, but, but really from the perspective of like, you know, Disney lost a person on a boat and like, they had to settle this lawsuit, whatever. So that's how it pops.
00:11:57
Speaker
And looking at it, like in a glancing
Investigation Complexities and Theories
00:12:00
Speaker
overview, I was like, well, what happened to her? Which is, It's sort of the opposite of Amy Lynn Bradley. Cause like Amy Lynn Bradley, I look at that and I'm like, oh yeah, she either jumped or she fell and and she died.
00:12:12
Speaker
And that's like it for me. She's not coming back, not gonna be, you know, sitting somewhere on a tropical beach. She also was not trafficked or anything like that. So I started digging in and I wanted to know more about Rebecca Coriam, which is how we get here today.
00:12:28
Speaker
And she was a worker, right? She is a cast member for Disney. So technically she's a crew member because she's on a boat, but Disney's employees are known as cast members. Which is one of the first big differences, right? Right. It's one of the first big differences.
00:12:43
Speaker
So she was born March 11, 1987. She grew up in Chester. Chester is like a ah little city on the River Dee over in England. I think it's along the border with Wales, but I could be told I'm wrong on that. and I would get it. She had a sister.
00:13:00
Speaker
ah She had her parents and she had two foster brothers. Goes to high school. Everybody says like these things about People that tend to like build them up. She kind of has some of that stuff. She worked at the zoo. She was a volunteer. that's a pass review Yeah, revered.
00:13:16
Speaker
Yeah. From what I understand, while she was a teenager, she joined what's known as the Air Cadets. um She went to Plymouth University and studied sports science.
00:13:28
Speaker
which if I recall correctly, that's what Amy Lynn Bradley was studying. so I know I'm just throwing it out there. It's a random thing to have in common.
00:13:39
Speaker
She ended up getting the staff volunteer position within the air cadets, which kind of reads like either explorers or ROTC to me. um She participates in like their stuff She had undertook youth studies at Liverpool Hope University, which read to me like she was combining the sports science with the ability to become a coach or a teacher.
00:14:02
Speaker
And she ends up coming to the U.S. for four months to teach sports at this place called Camp America, which is up in Maine. In June of 2010, she goes to London.
00:14:14
Speaker
She has this Disney Cruise job interview, which the everything with Disney is sort of a spectacle and an occasion. And I remember even for internships for me in the 90s, like the interviews were a spectacle.
00:14:28
Speaker
And so she gets hired. She comes over to the U.S. again. She goes through training at the theme parks and And she spends about four months on cruises that are going out to the Bahamas, which if I which if I understand correctly, ah all of the Disney cruise ships are registered out of the Bahamas.
00:14:52
Speaker
She gets her two months off and she goes home to England. She comes back to work on the Disney Wonder. And at the time that she comes to work on it, it's based out of the port of Los Angeles. So it's on the West Coast.
00:15:05
Speaker
She visits all of the ports of call along the Mexican Riviera. She goes through the Panama con Canal. She ends up going home to her hometown, like to Chester, for two weeks.
00:15:19
Speaker
And we know this because she goes to attend a funeral. According to her family and according to all the sources I found, this is the last time anybody sees her in person, like from her family.
00:15:32
Speaker
She goes back to Disney Wonder, and it looks like she is sort of sports slash daycare person on the boat.
00:15:44
Speaker
And she's really there working with kids. um She keeps in touch with her family on Facebook and on Skype, but she's not going to see them anymore. She keeps in touch with her family on Facebook and on Skype, but she's not going to go home and see them again before this next part happens.
00:16:04
Speaker
So the the ship leaves Los Angeles, if I'm understanding everything. She, and one of the summaries screwed this up a little bit, so I'm going to read the sentence and then you and I are going to sort it. It says, on the day the ship left Los Angeles, six weeks later, the 21st of March 2011, she sent what would be her last message to her parents via Facebook to tell them she would call them the next day.
00:16:33
Speaker
And this comes out of the Chester Chronicle, which would be the hometown paper for Rebecca Corio. And Los Angeles time has reprinted this statement. And I'm least to like internet sources say this on the day, the ship left Los Angeles, six weeks later, the 21st of March, 2011, she sent what would be her last message to her parents via Facebook to tell them she would call them the next day.
00:17:02
Speaker
My understanding is the ship leaves Los Angeles, and then six weeks later is the 21st of March, 2011. And she's talking to her parents on Facebook Messenger, saying she's going to call them the next day.
00:17:17
Speaker
And I will be very honest, I do not know if Messenger was a thing yet or if it was just regular old Facebook. Is that how you interpret that? In 2011, Facebook Messenger was a thing, and that is how I interpreted what was being said there.
00:17:31
Speaker
as far as the March date was six weeks after it had left Los Angeles. It's a weird way to say it, but whatever. Yeah, I get the impression that there might be some Welsh and English people following this case and keeping up the summaries online.
00:17:44
Speaker
And they interpreted it a couple of different ways. And I think somebody just picked up a sentence that was like in the process of being structured somewhere and ran with it. But like I said, that comes from the Chester Chronicle. It's repeated in the Los Angeles Times.
00:17:56
Speaker
The Wikipedia had it. Several sources on Reddit had had that. um So I wanted to make sure that we're clear on all of that. I believe she's been on the boat for six weeks. Her mother becomes concerned because she says back to Rebecca, um all right, we'll talk to you then.
00:18:16
Speaker
She doesn't hear from her. and then 12 hours go by with no response. So at 9 a.m. m Pacific Daylight Time, the wonder is off the coast of Mexico bound for Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas.
00:18:32
Speaker
Rebecca does not show up for work.
00:18:37
Speaker
So someone starts to look for her just from the perspective of, hey, is everything okay Got to come to your shift. And you're on a boat. It's not like, you know, you went somewhere.
00:18:50
Speaker
i was going to say, like, I mean, that's a whole different kind of sick day, right? Right. And that's, like, that's one of the reasons this is also interesting to me, by the way, is because, like, it is a completely encapsulated world out there.
00:19:03
Speaker
um It's very contained. So they look around. She's not in a room. She's not on the boat. So they page her over the ship's public address system, which is basically someone is able to make an announcement and like speakers in the hallways and various public places will carry that announcement. Kind of like when you're in school and you would hear the announcements in the morning.
00:19:27
Speaker
um So the they don't get a response to this page. And when they don't get a response to that, someone in security starts reviewing the CCTV footage.
00:19:39
Speaker
And I think you can see this a couple different places online. So the CCTV footage shows an appearance of her supposedly at 545 in the morning. Now, another...
00:19:54
Speaker
now another
00:19:58
Speaker
This purported ah recounting of what happened from a crew member has, and this is not verified, I noticed several places say this, but they say it's not verified.
00:20:10
Speaker
They claim that someone saw her going overboard 3 a.m., but then we have this video at 5.45 a.m., m so I'm just putting that out there. Rebecca is seen talking on one of the phones that are like in-house phones. do Have you been on a cruise?
00:20:28
Speaker
I've never been on a cruise. I more than likely will never go on a cruise. Have you ever worked somewhere where you could pick up the phone and talk to somebody in another place in the same yeah building? Okay. yeah They have these phones on the wall that you can like grab. You can't dial out on them, but you can get to a central location. that most phones on a cruise ship probably are like that, given the nature of what a cruise ship is.
00:20:54
Speaker
Right. It's kind of like a hotel on, um, water. So think of it from that perspective, like this is a phone you can pick up that'll take you to the front desk and then they can potentially direct you to another room if you need it.
00:21:08
Speaker
Or you can pick it up and dial a specific like three or four digit extension and get a particular room. So she's talking on one of those in this video and it The description of her is that she is distraught.
00:21:26
Speaker
Someone walks up to her and appears to say something like, is everything okay? ah She talks to them. It appears that she just acknowledges that she is okay.
00:21:39
Speaker
She hangs up the phone and walks away, pushing her hair back. She puts her hands in her pockets. And friends and family seeing this video say that all of the things happening in this video seem like the Rebecca Coriam they know.
00:21:54
Speaker
Nothing else documents Rebecca being alive and potentially still on this boat anywhere since this moment of CCTV footage at 5.45 a.m.
00:22:11
Speaker
So she's just gone.
00:22:14
Speaker
The next thing that's going to happen is the crew looks for her on the boat.
00:22:21
Speaker
And. They end up notifying both the U.S. Coast Guard and the Mexican Navy that they need to look for her.
00:22:32
Speaker
And there's an unsuccessful search in essentially the local and international waters along the way. And they're basically backtracking from where the wonder is at the time she's gone.
00:22:48
Speaker
reported missing or doesn't show up for a shift back to the point that she's seen on the boat and they're trying to figure out where the boat would have been. Now, the Disney Wonder is registered out in the Bahamas, and I mentioned that a little earlier on.
00:23:01
Speaker
So that means the people who are going to investigate this are going to come out of the RBPF. So the RBPF is which I had no idea existed before I started reading about this.
00:23:16
Speaker
They operate with the ba Bahamian Ministry of National Security. From what I can tell, they're kind of the FBI of the Bahamas.
00:23:29
Speaker
They have, like, instead of a director, they have a commissioner who heads them up. Um... this is ah all incredibly fascinating to me. They're a member of Interpol.
00:23:41
Speaker
They have, uh, all the things that you would come to think of in our national law enforcement. So, and I'm going to say this and like, I think people understand it's like the FBI, the DEA, ATF,
00:24:01
Speaker
and like, the FBI's like hostage response team, all operating in one agency. And they coordinate with the DEA and the FBI.
00:24:13
Speaker
um You can go and read a little bit about them online. It's pretty interesting. They're non-military force. And the idea is they are taking care of major crimes for the Bahamas.
00:24:26
Speaker
So a detective has flown to the ship. And it's their job to investigate it once the boat has returned. So by the time this happens and we get this detective on board, three days have passed.
00:24:41
Speaker
According to various accounts of what he was doing, including an article in the Bahamas Weekly published in March of 2012, he is reported to have been on the boat for almost a week.
00:24:57
Speaker
And according to Rebecca's family, they fly the parents out from England. They meet the ship. They meet the detective. He tells them he's only been there for a day and then he's headed back home.
00:25:11
Speaker
Not that detectives have to be completely honest about everything that goes on, but... is a little dubious. um He seems to have indicated the family that he was only able to interview a few crew members and he did not talk to anyone on the passenger side.
00:25:28
Speaker
Now, this is where it gets a little Disney and a little conspiratorial. There are claims that Disney picks them up, puts them in a car that has blacked out windows, brings them on board through like a secret entrance,
00:25:44
Speaker
And they only do it after the passengers have disembarked. I don't know if this is limited to the detective or limited to the family. I've seen it reported both ways. I'm not sure which one is true.
00:25:58
Speaker
um i have a feeling it's probably both of those people are treated that way. and I think that's where the wrong turn really happens in all of this, because we kind of looked for that in the Amy Bradley case.
00:26:14
Speaker
But I think here, with it you know Disney being Disney, kind of organized capitalism at its best, imitation of organized crime, they don't want anything to damage their brand.
00:26:28
Speaker
And I think they probably screwed this up. Well, I mean, if that's what, had like, I'm not really sure, like, like, if they felt that way when it was happening, or if, like, they looked back and felt that way, because, like, how should they have been transported?
00:26:46
Speaker
like should it have been that different? Right. no You see what I'm saying? It's entirely possible. That's what happened, but like, there was nothing sinister about it. I don't know.
00:26:59
Speaker
I'm just saying like, it's a weird thing to call out. And if you're narrating something that's happened in retrospect and you've already got a skew to it,
00:27:13
Speaker
Then everything you can make everything fit. Right. I'm just saying i don't know what happened, but it there is this tinge that happens and it's all geared towards, you know, they say the Disney treatment because it's basically like we're going to cover up.
00:27:31
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And so I don't know, like, how should they have been brought to the boat? Oh, I don't know. i'm You know, this is a podcast. I'm telling a story. I'm making the sensational points of the point that there's been sensationalism about this. Like, I'm talking about it from the perspective of of how people have recounted it because I'm curious if it means anything or not.
00:27:53
Speaker
Right, and I would say maybe. i mean, i could ah i could see both sides of it, but I can also see where you could make it. You could think to make it mean something that maybe it doesn't.
00:28:06
Speaker
Right. They did bring them out, right? Right, they did. And, you know, I'm sure there's some kind of spin doctor sitting there for Disney whose job is to figure out the troubleshooting of problematic situations and to...
00:28:22
Speaker
Either write the check or solve the problem, whatever it's going to take to to do that. I'm positive that Disney would do that when one of their own cast members disappears from their own boat.
00:28:36
Speaker
um So the family talks to Wonders' captain, like to the guy who was in charge of the ship. He gives them condolences. He tells them or indicates to them.
00:28:48
Speaker
ah The word that I've seen used is expressed. So that sounds like Disney whitewashing it a little bit. But his idea was that she had been washed overboard by a wave while she was at this area known as the crew pool.
00:29:05
Speaker
the crew pool um Her parents don't buy this. They think that the high walls around the pool would have prevented that from happening. After they do this, they have like a little brief tour and they're just whisked away again.
00:29:20
Speaker
and they're taken off to a meeting with Disney executives and whoever that troubleshooter was that they had been speaking to that's arranged all all of this to happen. Now, here's where it gets a little strange.
00:29:32
Speaker
um The... Amy Bradley turn of this particular case is going to be about a year later. On the day before the first anniversary of this, so, you know, it's 2012 when this happens, but there's a email that comes in to Rebecca's father.
00:29:54
Speaker
And this email basically says, she says, look, I've seen Rebecca out in the wild. she says I'm 85% August, but last august so August of 2011, I saw Rebecca with a dark-haired man on the street in Venice.
00:30:11
Speaker
She believes she's seen Rebecca and she saw the family's website looking for Rebecca and that's what reminded her. According to Rebecca's uncle, it's all just an email, but he feels like it's legit and everybody thinks it's legit. And it's upsetting for everyone to think that she could be out there somewhere after all this time.
00:30:31
Speaker
And he wondered how she would have gotten there without using her passport. Because they do get her belongings back from her from her cast members' quarters, and the passport is in there. Right, and she didn't teleport, right?
00:30:44
Speaker
Correct. So doesn't that kind of answer itself? I mean, he says he believes it's legit, but how did she get there? oh I, like, don't.
00:30:55
Speaker
I think so, unless talking about Venice, California, and she just got off the boat. That's the only thing I've come up with that like might be... i think that the only time she could have gotten off the boat unnoticed would be specifically when she was missing.
00:31:12
Speaker
And I agree with that. So where I'm back to this that I have questions is why do people do this?
00:31:25
Speaker
Claim to see someone they probably could not possibly have seen. claim they're really sure about it. and Okay, so now 85% sure is not really sure, I don't think.
00:31:37
Speaker
um I think that it's... I think that she... i think... I don't think people do it... ah Maliciously? i don't think they're lying. Okay.
00:31:50
Speaker
um I don't know. i don't know for sure. However... Clearly, all the paths from where she was last seen, which is apparently on some CCTV footage on the Disney Wonder, you know, somewhere in the ocean, all the paths back to her being spotted in Venice, California or Venice, Italy require a path that doesn't exist.
00:32:16
Speaker
Right. Okay. And it is... I'm not going to say ludicrous because and i kind of understand the phenomenon involved in why this occurs.
00:32:29
Speaker
Because if you have hope that somebody did see her. Now, granted, in 2011, everybody had cell phones. See, okay, you you're where I am too. Go ahead. So, you know, the very first thing I'm going to do if I see somebody that is being, you know, looked for is I'm going to be taking a picture of that person. Right.
00:32:54
Speaker
Like subtly, um and I will be providing it to whomever is you know, looking, at who like how they sent an email, I would send the email with the information as to where, you know, the geotag on it or whatever.
00:33:10
Speaker
And that's what I would do. i wouldn't say one way or the other. However, then you get into this whole thing where like, if they did see her, doesn't that sort of indicate maybe she doesn't want to be found?
00:33:27
Speaker
I mean, so you brought the cell phone thing. Oh yeah. Take a picture of her and and taking a picture of her, but not just that. Like, okay. 1998, the Amy Bradley thing, I would buy that. Like there is still a chance somebody could get out in the world and like maybe slip through security and maybe not have a way to communicate for a minute and end up in a bad situation. That's not what I think happened with Amy Lynn Bradley.
00:34:02
Speaker
But I could see it happening in 1998 in the circumstances we're presented with here if they were to transport back in time 13 years and happened in 1998.
00:34:14
Speaker
The cell phones aren't just pictures and videos. They're also ways to communicate and locations. Yeah. So in my opinion, like it would be – infinitesimally harder or more difficult to disappear in 2011 in two thousand and eleven in And I know it happens. I know people do disappear, but like there's certain things that like don't make a lot of sense. Like why would you like, all right, having read through enormous amounts of actual human trafficking, it doesn't happen like this. They don't snatch people off cruise ships. That's incredibly difficult.
00:34:57
Speaker
um But one of the key elements in human trafficking cases is the traffickers take passports and identification and debit cards and cell phones. So like finding that stuff in her room, she's not being trafficked.
00:35:12
Speaker
Well, nor did she leave on her own. I don't think so. Yeah. I don't think she left her own. Well, she would need her passport. Well, I think, i don't know when the cutoff is for this. It becomes very difficult in my opinion, after 9-11, to get a false passport.
00:35:32
Speaker
Like, that's the cutoff. So I don't think we're talking about somebody who's existing in a time where she could have afforded, like, a passport and all of those things. Not to mention, like, why would she do that?
00:35:45
Speaker
Well, like, sometimes people really do want to get away. You and I both have... you know, seeing cases where people are found. You can typically trace that though, too.
00:35:56
Speaker
I mean, I would have to say that in the event I wanted to walk away from my life, I'm probably not going to do it on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean. Yeah. So I agree with you there. and I'm also going to say that like,
00:36:13
Speaker
She had already kind of walked away from her life. So why would she also walk away from her walk away from her life? She could always just go back to life, right? Right. She could go back to life or or back to doing whatever. I will say if something like that had happened, I think someone like her, the way she's presented, would have surfaced again in some way.
00:36:34
Speaker
Like we would know the ending of the mystery if there was to be one. Go ahead. go ahead Well, she just went to her grandfather's funeral and came back. so she was close to her family. Right.
00:36:48
Speaker
The very first place she would have gone if she had left the cruise ship would be to her family. i i think so. i mean, I i can't.
00:36:59
Speaker
like I have to bend my mind too much to come up with a different scenario that she's leaving her life or having some kind of depression or or whatever. And we don't have evidence of any of that. We just have the evidence that like apparently the passport was there.
00:37:13
Speaker
like you know The parents are pretty outspoken in this case, so we would know if something else had happened. um I mentioned that this case ends up getting the attention of John Ronson.
00:37:30
Speaker
So he does dig into this. i He goes looking for Rebecca.
Family's Search for Answers and Official Skepticism
00:37:39
Speaker
And so that happens ahead of the whole Venice thing.
00:37:42
Speaker
um In October 2011, John Rotten basically gets on the boat. He like gets on the boat, takes the ride, sees what he can see. He writes it up. The Guardian does ah pretty good job giving him a really good long amount of space.
00:37:58
Speaker
And it's worth a read if you're interested in this case or you're just interested in these type cruise cases. He peppered tons of facts in here. And I went kind of, I'm in the process of kind of like fact checking him, but like he's pretty spot on. Like he's not trying to be um super conspiratorial about all this, but he does see the mystery.
00:38:18
Speaker
And i think part of that mystery comes about, with like a little bit of a perfect storm. and then I'll come back to him. The perfect storm is you have a woman from essentially England on a U S cruise ship.
00:38:33
Speaker
That's registered out of the Bahamas who is on a ah Pacific ocean southward type cruise.
00:38:45
Speaker
And ultimately passing through multiple local waters and then international waters creates this sort of cluster of jurisdictional nightmares.
00:38:58
Speaker
because we've already talked about the fact that we have the Bahamas' answer to the FBI, we have the U.S. Coast Guard, we have the Mexican Navy. There's like all these different people involved. And that doesn't even account for the fact that this happens on a Disney boat.
00:39:12
Speaker
Who, for those of you who don't know, Disney has an intense level of corporate security in-house. And if there's something to investigate, they're going to investigate it, if nothing else, from the perspective of how do we cover our ass on this.
00:39:31
Speaker
They absolutely are going to do that, yes. So... Some of what Ronson found could fall into, all right, Disney planted some really good seas.
00:39:44
Speaker
um I found a little summary of what he published. The the article itself is fantastic. It's a good read. um Unfortunately, it is The Guardian, but still, it's it's worth reading.
00:39:56
Speaker
The title of his article is Rebecca Coriam, colon, Lost at Sea. And it's old. like it's It's got some age on it, so you'll have to like fact check some stuff if you go down this rabbit hole.
00:40:08
Speaker
But it is it's worth doing. So basically, ah the summary on this says, in October 2011, Welsh-American journalist and author John Ronson took the Disney Wonder along the same route and made discrete inquiries while aboard.
00:40:25
Speaker
After speaking with Rebecca's family with their permission, he wrote about his experience for the Guardian. Several crew members who had been on the ship at the time of Coriam's disappearance, none of whom wanted their name to use, spoke to him and suggested that more was known about her fate than Disney or the Bahamian police were publicly admitting.
00:40:43
Speaker
Many were circumspect with one bartender telling Ronson, it didn't happen. You know, that's the answer that I have to give. After touring the areas of the ship open to passengers, Ronson decided that Rebecca Coriam had probably slipped and fallen while jogging on the Deck 4 jogging track.
00:41:01
Speaker
The railings there were low enough for such an accident to happen. She regularly kept herself in shape by jogging. However, the track was well covered by disguised security cameras. Ronson shared this theory with a deck worker who told him he was mistaken and that Rebecca had actually gone overboard from the crew pool on deck five.
00:41:20
Speaker
The worker told him, i was on the ship that day. Everyone knows. He apparently to John Ronson cites that there was flip flop discovered in this area and that that was thought to be proof.
00:41:34
Speaker
I don't put tons of stock in that, but I'm throwing it out there. John Rodson goes home and he tries to find a woman that the Coriums had told to reach out to him.
00:41:47
Speaker
She had apparently done so under the name Melissa. She told him that the day after Rebecca went missing, the crew had put flowers on the wall near the pool, kind of like a memorial.
00:42:04
Speaker
Don't know if this is accurate information or not. There is a quote from this woman that pops up that says, It really stirred things up. Why were they putting them there? Nothing was clear.
00:42:17
Speaker
And the summary on Ronson kind of wraps up with, when Ronson took a look at the crew pool visible from the fore of Deck 10, he doubted these claims. Around the railings on the pool is a steel wall high enough to completely block any view.
00:42:33
Speaker
And another crew member had told him it was a popular place to go when not working as the crew's cabins, were very, very small. It was a place where crew members could relax away from guests and the view of guests.
00:42:49
Speaker
According to... go ahead. Which might be why the crew put a small memorial there.
00:42:59
Speaker
Because it was the place that they remembered her from? Well, it's the place that they could go as crew members to chill out. Oh, I see what you're saying. It's a community space for the crew members. It may have nothing to do with her disappearance.
00:43:14
Speaker
Right. and and And it also is away from the guests. They're probably not going to get lambasted too much you Yeah. yeah Yeah. So according to Ronson, there were obvious security cameras mounted here. ah He does say it's possible that like these cameras could have been put up after the fact, like to document this area.
00:43:36
Speaker
He still doesn't see how anyone could have jumped or fallen from this area. And this seems to sort of fuel the fire of, the mystery that we were talking about comes about with all of this.
00:43:47
Speaker
ah The crew members who spoke with Ronson insisted that Rebecca had gone overboard from this area. One of them tells him, Disney knows exactly what happened.
00:43:58
Speaker
Everything here is taped. There's CCTV everywhere. Disney has this on tape. So near the end of the voyage, another crew member who was looking for him explained in further detail that even though the walls around the pool are high, the seas get rough and she could have been tossed during a time when everything was rough.
00:44:23
Speaker
And this crew member talks about how the deck and the walls get slippery from the water. The worker said that he had a friend of his guided employee inside under similar conditions and the It was so egregious that they did this. Like, basically, they were in this area at a time when the seas were roped that the captain disciplined the employee and Disney made the decision to send that employee home as a risk, meaning they could potentially have become another Rebecca.
00:44:59
Speaker
What happened? So he said that they once had like a couple of employees and this worker that's talking to Ronson knew one of these employees who had brought a friend a particular way to this pool deck.
00:45:14
Speaker
That was dangerous. That was dangerous. It gets them in trouble. And that employee gets in enough trouble that the captain disciplines him. And when the captain disciplines him as a risk, Disney sends him packing.
00:45:28
Speaker
Yeah. I see. And we don't know like if that happened before or after. No, it just comes up in the course of this article, Rebecca Coriam lost at sea in the Guardian. Okay. It's ah one of these unnamed workers talking about it to John Ronson. But it's, you know, all of that stuff I think could be planted, but I will say one thing that sounds completely legit to me.
00:45:53
Speaker
If she disappeared from this area, if she disappeared from Disney property, my bet, Disney does have the tape. um I think that's possible, ah but i keep him I would say this. um On a cruise ship ah run by Disney or anywhere else, there's still, especially in 2011, there would have still been some um operator involvement in viewing, preserving, maintaining, that kind of thing with the footage.
00:46:32
Speaker
Yeah, you mean going back to that point in time and like being able to like make sure it doesn't get taped over, deleted, or destroyed? I doubt very seriously that they keep records of all of the footage.
00:46:46
Speaker
like I think it would probably be a situation where it was being constantly taped over. Right. um I think that they probably have security that watches the footage. Are they supposed to be watching the footage? Right.
00:47:02
Speaker
So basically, in the event, let's say that something did happen to her and it was caught on camera, if the person that was watching that monitor during that period of time was asleep.
00:47:15
Speaker
Yeah. they missed it and like if there was no like spot, like if they didn't spot it when it happened, depending on the setup, you know, it could be taped over or recorded over by the time they needed it. Because think of the vast amount of information, like completely useless information most of the time, right? Yes, yes.
00:47:44
Speaker
that they would be having to be storing or like beaming to a satellite to be stored off ship. or You see what I'm saying? Yeah, oh yeah, follow. And so I don't really know ah the stats. We don't have a lot of great stats on...
Analyzing Cruise Ship Disappearance Theories
00:48:02
Speaker
stuff that happens on cruise ships. I do believe that there are CCTVs on cruise ships. I also think, at least in 2011, they would have largely relied on security watching things that were happening, as opposed to using it as a point in reference to go back and try and backtrack.
00:48:23
Speaker
um Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. I agree with you. And I also think that, like, You could be storing so much information that maintenance issues happen.
00:48:34
Speaker
And like that gets a little dubious because like it just happens to be that one camera is out. But it could be that like an entire computer is not working and keeping the footage it's supposed to. It's really just live observations.
00:48:45
Speaker
Or the guy that was supposed to do it i forgot to check the box to keep, you know what I'm saying? So once you get into that realm of things, I really do think, you know, I'm not sure. um i do know, though, that for all the things that happen um that should have been caught on CCTV in any random circumstance, like the majority of the time, they're not for whatever reason. Yeah, yeah.
00:49:13
Speaker
well I mean, you see what I'm saying? Like, yeah I mean, hard yeah, I go through, that's one of the things I go through all the time, particularly with hotels. And I keep comparing this, uh, cruise ships to hotels because hotels are what I'm familiar with.
00:49:26
Speaker
And I cannot tell you the number of times that like, um, ah especially today, hotels have moving cameras in certain areas, like lobbies will have stagnant cameras. And if they have a ah blind spot that the the stagnant cameras can't see, they'll have a camera that's a pan zoom tilt camera.
00:49:44
Speaker
And it's, ah you know, you can move around with a little controller and like a little digital controller will take it away from the blind spot for a second. So you could lose things that you don't know you're losing because you're looking at something else.
00:49:55
Speaker
Yeah. Well, sure. and i And I do think that, you know, you're going to have security on cruise ships. And one of the best ways to keep eyes on everything at once would be through monitors.
00:50:06
Speaker
Yeah. As opposed to, like, having people having to walk around, Right. right Which I'm sure there were also people walking around. But that's the best way to keep up with, like, big things that could happen. Like a fire or, like, ah you know, a...
00:50:23
Speaker
ah revolt I don't know. I don't know what would happen on of the cruise ship. That would be bad. But in theory, it they would also see somebody fall off, right? In theory, yeah.
00:50:34
Speaker
Except if they didn't. Right. And so that comes up in like the theories portion of the summaries online. Anytime someone goes missing on a cruise ship, I think it's safe to say that like we've entered the missing person's escape room.
00:50:50
Speaker
Okay. That's what it feels like. don't Wait, anyway describe that. because I sound like that. it's like It's like, we're going to come up with every possible thing that could have happened except the most logical thing that could happen.
00:51:09
Speaker
right i would say that's an accurate description of this case. It's avoiding like you know the you know, gigantic elephant on the boat, so to speak. Right. Which is if somebody disappears from a cruise ship and there is literally no trace of them afterwards, I'm not sure why it's so...
00:51:43
Speaker
ah it it's like the lot It's not logical, but everybody goes with everything except they fell into the gigantic, never-ending ocean surrounding the cruise ship. Did
00:52:00
Speaker
did you ever watch the TV show House? Yes. um i I love that show. And... I always think of, I don't know who coined this, but I always think of that show when I think of this phrase.
00:52:16
Speaker
And i think it's a medical phrase and that's why they have it there. But when you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras.
00:52:32
Speaker
That is what all of these cruise ship cases sort of remind me of. Right. and But see, the true crime enthusiast, right, which is, again, where this whole escape room thing comes in. Right. um So missing people from a cruise ship are like the escape room of missing persons cases because you have to use every single clue and experience ah that you have, plus a very vivid imagination to figure out what happened to that person. Right. Yeah.
00:53:06
Speaker
when really it's all a facade and they're in the ocean somewhere. Yeah, like I cannot imagine being a human trafficker and like hearing all these stories about women disappearing from cruise ships or men disappearing from cruise ships and going, you know what, that's the best place I could possibly find a human trafficking victim. And in the event, okay, something happens on a cruise ship where one of the traditional motives for murder ah
00:53:37
Speaker
causes a murder to occur, right? Yeah. Love, money, revenge, right? Something happens, somebody dies. And you get into this mode where you've got to, you know, get all these crazy circumstances lined up where like, you know, they're being taken off in a suitcase. They're, you know, what's happening to the person, right?
00:54:01
Speaker
The problem is, They say that, oh, if she'd gone off, they would have seen her go off. Well, if she had been murdered, they would have seen her be murdered. Exactly. If she kills herself, murders herself, like all the same things apply. Exactly. and And obviously, when something does happen on a cruise ship, like...
00:54:26
Speaker
It's not like they the two people or however many people are involved in that incident are in a vacuum all of the sudden, right? Right. Then they're there with everybody else just like they have been the whole time.
00:54:39
Speaker
Right. And now you're trapped with your – if you do commit a murder on a cruise ship, you're now trapped on the cruise ship and you've still got the murder victim laying there. Exactly. And it's just – it's amazing to me because I do realize – I do understand why a family – like we were talking about earlier, i understand the sort of the idea that they want to not believe that their loved one ended up in the ocean.
00:55:10
Speaker
Right. And I get that, right? I really do.
Emotional Struggles of Families
00:55:15
Speaker
And I probably couldn't look a family in the face and be mean about it, right? Right.
00:55:23
Speaker
But you're ignoring a lot of logical steps to think that not only it did something else happen, that like either nobody saw anything or that every single person that saw something doesn't care enough about your loved one to not speak up.
00:55:43
Speaker
Yeah, and that gets weird because like – It does because it doesn't make – especially this is not a guest. This is a a cast member. And so that means it wasn't just like – she knew these people. She was having to live with these people, right? Right.
00:56:01
Speaker
but She's working on this cruise ship. And so anybody that knew anything, of course they would speak up unless they get thrown in too far in the conspiracy world. And then they're like, I'm not getting involved in that stuff. Right. Right. Because it's so outlandish.
00:56:19
Speaker
But it's so incredibly sad. Now, granted, I would be the person who's like, oh, well, my loved one clearly died because they disappeared while they were on a cruise ship in the ocean, right? yeah And then my loved one would be the person something had happened to, right? Like, besides just falling off into the ocean. Now, it seems to me, and I don't know if you've noticed this trend or not, the...
00:56:46
Speaker
you know, cruise ship mafia, which is like the captain apparently in these stories, right? um They always give the family an out.
00:57:02
Speaker
Yeah. And the out is they accidentally fell. Yeah. Right. And the family never takes that. They never say. Well, yeah accidentally fell because, see, the alternative isn't that she got carted off in a suitcase because somebody killed her.
00:57:19
Speaker
The alternative is she had a crappy night or she had like major depression and she committed suicide. Right. Right. And have you noticed that?
00:57:31
Speaker
Yeah, I've noticed it. The captains follow the logical chain of things here. Now, did a rogue wave wash her off of the boat? Well, we don't know. And actually, to me, that sounds a little far-fetched to give the family an out.
00:57:45
Speaker
It does. I was going to say the rogue wave is almost as statistically impromp as statistically improbable as the rest of it. Well, and so where's the video of the rogue wave?
00:57:56
Speaker
I, I, I, that's how we end up here today is you and I asking these questions. And you know, it's, they all, it just pay attention next time something, like somebody goes missing on his cruise ship that clearly something happened, right? Right. um Now, there used to be alarms i don't I don't know if they still exist. I don't know if they existed at this point in time or not.
00:58:22
Speaker
um A crew member clearly might know a way around an alarm. I don't know the dynamics that go into a cruise ship suicide because like nobody ever says, yes, it was a suicide. mean with Pause.
00:58:41
Speaker
um I don't know what the dynamics of a cruise ship suicide entail because like it never gets like nobody ever says this person is missing and clearly they jumped. Right. Because they but they don't want to publicize that and have it happen again.
00:58:57
Speaker
Well, plus there's so many intriguing things that can occur in between there. And like, again, the escape room of missing persons cases, because it's not just like, where are they?
00:59:09
Speaker
You have to get creative with it. Yeah. And... It defies logic to believe your loved one made it from the cruise ship to Venice with no trail in between.
00:59:22
Speaker
And yet they're willing to believe that. Yes. Right? And so that shows you that they're just looking for hope. And it's a way to tell yourself your loved one didn't die alone in the ocean.
00:59:40
Speaker
Right. Because if I'm being honest, that is probably the scariest way I've ever thought about dying.
00:59:51
Speaker
yeah Yeah, it's a pretty terrible way to go. um and And when they give them the accidental like thing that could have occurred, it's not ah because... it I feel like it's always that suicide's the alternative.
01:00:11
Speaker
It's not like it's a murder that's the alternative. And see, if you graciously accept it and say, okay, that must be what happened. They accidentally went off the ship.
01:00:22
Speaker
it's There's a stigma that like you have given up on your loved one. Right? Yeah. I do understand why youre what you're saying. Yeah. And that's sad because 20 years...
01:00:36
Speaker
You know, we're going to have another situation like the Bradleys where, like, the dad's like, when Amy comes home. Right. And that's just unlikely to happen. And so I don't know how you, like, balance that. Like, I would love to think that, um you know, she didn't.
01:00:56
Speaker
accidentally get swept off the boat but i realized that my relationship with my loved one is strong enough that she would have found a way to let me know she was still alive right right and she hasn't done that and so i'm i'm kind of forced to believe that something ah did happen along that realm now there was more to this particular story that like is super dramatic right right I don't know if you know what all it was, but like she was in a relationship with another member of the crew or cast member whatever you call it. Yeah. That's what I was about to get you. Yeah.
01:01:31
Speaker
Okay. There's like a whole lot of, there's a lot more dynamics to it. well Yeah. There's nuances to all of this and how it gets so weird. So there's this report that's done basically stating like we've investigated all of this and essentially road wave makes sense.
01:01:51
Speaker
And Bahamian police promised this to Rebecca's family. Rebecca's family has hired a lawyer. They're really not like focused in on the Bahamian police at that point. They're really focused on Disney and making Disney do the right thing, whatever that is.
01:02:06
Speaker
But the the people that get involved include like detectives who are more on the other side of the pond.
01:02:17
Speaker
So British detectives looking at this. They are like part of this whole group of people. like They get involved from the perspective of helping write the report.
01:02:31
Speaker
Now, the requests for these reports that exist, we know the reports actually exist. They are FOIAed multiple times, and the FOIA requests are denied The grounds are that it contains restricted personal information, which I'm interested in. I always want to know what the personal information is.
01:02:54
Speaker
That's not always stuff that makes it on the podcast, but that's stuff I want to know because sometimes it steers me one way or then the other. Well, I'm just kind of pointing this out. Like, a FOIA request doesn't necessarily apply to, like, everywhere in the world. Well, I got—I would say this.
01:03:15
Speaker
For one thing, i don't think anything exists. Okay? Okay. Another thing is, if she had been swept off by a rogue wave, I'm not sure that, um um I don't think that they're going to release that.
01:03:30
Speaker
Right. ah Because that could be a liability situation, possibly. i don't know. But they're certainly never going to release a crew member jumping off the boat. That was, like, jumping off the boat, having a safety issue on the boat, all of those things, I think, aren't going to be released, just in general.
01:03:48
Speaker
Right, exactly. And like, where does it like, so how many people would even know about that? Like somebody that possibly saw it and then like their supervisor or something. Right. we We get some from the synonymous person, Melissa, and we get a little information about what's happened here.
01:04:07
Speaker
That is that the internal phone system tapes the calls. So Melissa tells John Ronson, that Rebecca had been in this relationship and been having problems in this relationship. And she was very upset.
01:04:23
Speaker
It was very intense and it was kind of toxic rollercoaster type relationship. And she The report is, and this is kind of backed up by this person who's talking to Ronson, but not really anything else. So is it real? We don't know.
01:04:39
Speaker
That she wasn't talking to the romantic partner. She was talking to like a go-between. And that she was upset in this phone call. And that phone call is included in the report. And the report is private because of that being in there.
01:04:54
Speaker
Don't know if that's true or not. But once she goes ah missing and we have the anniversaries, her parents start talking about stuff. They say they've heard the names of this young woman and this older man on the ship and that there's this potential for ah love triangle and they don't tell us the source of this information. So it just kind of hangs there, but it makes its way into some of the local papers and people start putting it into the summaries and they state that like those people should come forward and tell the rest of the story
01:05:25
Speaker
The Rebecca's family also at one point states that like they've heard through the grapevine and probably the people they've met through this terrible tragedy for their family, that additional footage has been sent by Disney to the FBI for enhancement, but they won't tell anyone what they believe this footage might contain.
01:05:43
Speaker
i think that's all bunk, but I don't know. um They also debunk the idea of suicide because, and and I'll say part of this is true, they point out the fact that she's working for Disney and Disney hires a certain type of person to be their cast members.
01:05:59
Speaker
That is true, particularly with public-facing cast members. They're usually upbeat people. They're usually happy and bubbly people and people that able to be... kind and cheerful looking and able to be ah engaging with people. but But the truth is that doesn't mean she's not suicidal. That just means that that's the face she puts forward.
01:06:19
Speaker
Just because somebody doesn't seem suicidal doesn't mean that they're not. I agree with you. and Okay, I'm not saying that everybody would commit suicide. I'm just saying that, like, at the end of the day, a lot of suicides happen by people who people say they wouldn't have committed suicide. They were so happy.
01:06:37
Speaker
And sometimes suicide works that way. Well, they they point to all this other stuff that, like, ah she had gotten them passes to go to Disneyland Paris with her sister, and this was supposed to be some kind of surprise, but it was in, like, the...
01:06:53
Speaker
The belongings that they're taking away from her quarters. there's The other thing I wonder with ship ah cruise ship things is how spur of the moment when it is and how possible it would be to take back if it was possible, right?
01:07:11
Speaker
Well... I think that you suddenly find yourself in an environment that's potentially more dangerous and injurious than a normal hotel or apartment when you're able to be on this boat on the ocean and like you have that moment where you walk up to the edge.
01:07:28
Speaker
ah And I'm not saying this is
Cover-up Suspicions and Settlements
01:07:30
Speaker
a su suicide. I'm just saying because we're talking about the suicide, I do think it like there are certain things about it that might allow you make the decision faster.
01:07:41
Speaker
Right, and maybe not thought out as well, like especially if it's an erratic moment. i If alcohol is involved, I'm not saying it was involved here, but there are different factors that come into play, right? Right.
01:07:55
Speaker
That like it's not a situation where you've got to like procure the pills you're going to take, and then you've got to have a place to take them, right? You literally would walk up and jump off. Right.
01:08:06
Speaker
And so it's a split-second decision. Right. And I'm just saying that has to be taken into consideration in all of these situations. And I'm not saying that happened here. I'm just saying, like, how suicidal do you have to be to jump off a cruise ship? I would say it's not a lot.
01:08:25
Speaker
Well, so pointed all these Facebook messages back and forth with the family and they talk about it can't possibly be suicide. We have this woman who is a crew member going by the name of Melissa. She says she had seen Rebecca 11 p.m.
01:08:40
Speaker
She thought that Rebecca did go out to the crew pool. She describes it as being a place that she'd really like to go to be alone and to relax and or to be with friends. She posits this idea, and I guess this is to the family. um It comes up a couple of different ways. It it pops up.
01:08:58
Speaker
In John Ronson's article, it pops up in a later Hollywood Reporter article about the settlement and Disney more than about Rebecca. But she posits the idea that maybe she had climbed up and was simply sitting on the wall that everybody's talking about is too high.
01:09:12
Speaker
It'll block the rogue wave. And she's sitting up there and she describes Rebecca as a bit of a risk taker. So then we're really splitting the hairs on accident versus suicide.
01:09:23
Speaker
If she's someone who might like get a little bit of adrenaline from using her athletic prowess to get up and be able to see something other people can't see and to look at the boat a different way. And something happens at that point. And it actually would make sense because somebody that's doing that, like they're like, I'm never going to fall off of that. That's ridiculous. Right. that's Exactly. me Who would do it. Right. Exactly.
01:09:50
Speaker
And so that's another out, right? Right. It could be exactly what happened, but it's also another out. If she sat up there and accidentally fell, the issue is, like, that makes, you know, that's too logical. We have to go a different route, right? Yeah.
01:10:07
Speaker
Well, so then what happens is, like, the thing that, like, we know, you and I know can happen. The family has put out so much information, and there has been this sort of looming investigation of the escape route.
01:10:20
Speaker
which is what you described, and it's it's a perfect description for what happens to them. People start to take advantage of that. There's private investigators that pop up, and they say, hey, looks like her clothes are too big, those shoes that you have that were in her belongings can't possibly be hers.
01:10:36
Speaker
And they create these questions. But this case goes a step further than the normal problems that you would find. And an MP, like a member of parliament from Chester,
01:10:48
Speaker
chester named Chris Matheson, he like runs, you know, he's looking for a soundbite to get his name in there. He runs with the idea that Rebecca was a victim of a crime a crime, either a sexual assault and murder or like trafficking or something.
01:11:05
Speaker
And he ends up telling a local paper, and I think it's 2015 or 2016, like, like It's obvious that something happened here, and he says that he has a copy of the original police report and that he has compelling evidence to support his claim that like this is a crime and a cover-up.
01:11:22
Speaker
ah There's this private investigator, John Anderson, who had worked with him some and who had also worked with ah the family, Rebecca's family, and with Matheson saying,
01:11:35
Speaker
That records show that the seas were normal that night, which is weird because like ah the whole point of a rogue wave is you don't know what's coming. um And like he he says that any wave that could have taken her out of the pool or off of the ship would have caused damage.
01:11:52
Speaker
Or been on video. Right. It'd been on video. Just like any sort of sexual assault or murder would have some clues. Correct. And there's ah another guy, John Prescott, who is he's a deputy prime minister at one point.
01:12:09
Speaker
He gets involved and he believes that Rebecca was thrown overboard after having been murdered, which again, where's the video? Um, and he, or anybody that saw it, I, I feel like we kind of, um, give quite a bit of wiggle room, uh, for like in these theories of how many people would actually like cover up a murder. Right. Yeah. And so it's interesting that you say that because
01:12:41
Speaker
it just kind of leads towards my wrap up of this, the specific words you just said, like covering up a murder, the capability of covering up a murder, the number of people that have to be involved, particularly if you're covering up a murder that potentially either disposal of the body or the murder itself has been caught on video.
01:13:00
Speaker
like Like you have to get like all these people engaged in it. um And I did notice they had the perfect out here when some of the later coverage comes out.
01:13:11
Speaker
ah you have this lawsuit that happens and and things are talked about and that you can find it online. There's a couple of like little blogs out there about Cruz law and like the law of international waters. Most of them are American based, but like those things, they seem to all like have some interesting ah thoughts about this undisclosed amount of money that the Rebecca's family is settling for.
01:13:39
Speaker
And that there's some kind of non-disclosure agreement where they're not going to discuss the case publicly. But the other perfect thing that happens here is they point to Disney pointing to the Royal Bohemian Police Force.
01:13:53
Speaker
And the Royal Bohemian Police Force pointing back to Disney as like basically saying, we can't you know share all this stuff because there's personal information. We have laws. And Disney's saying,
01:14:05
Speaker
but like they're the ones who are working on this. It's not really us, which I don't really believe that it's not them, but we don't actually know if additional footage exists. We don't know if like tapes of this phone call exist.
01:14:20
Speaker
We end up with some really strange stuff happening, which I don't believe is people covering up a murder. Like you're,
01:14:31
Speaker
description there where you have to have so many people involved in the conspiracy for it to make sense and work i think and there's just not gonna be that many people to do it right i think disney looked at this and they went oh well there's an accident we're not legally required to turn over evidence of this accident It happened in international waters.
01:14:54
Speaker
We don't want the bad publicity. We really don't want to deal with this eventually legal fallout that we're going to have going on here. So they don't participate fully with the Royal Bahamian police force who gets limited information.
01:15:07
Speaker
So then it's not actually a coverup of a murder. It's everybody's covering their own ass to save their jobs and to not, you know, piss off their bosses because They think it's okay when they know a murder didn't happen.
01:15:25
Speaker
Well, right. and And that's how I sort of see it. like if Especially if there is a clear-cut something that occurred, right, that is literally – it takes the weight of a possible crime having been committed off of everybody's shoulders that is aware of it. Right.
01:15:42
Speaker
Right. Then they're like, well, we're not putting that out there because it would disparage you know the victim here. The missing person would be disparaged. Well, particularly if you have a security supervisor who says, we looked at the footage, we don't see her going off the boat. But then when they look at the footage, they see that the security supervisor is wrong.
01:16:01
Speaker
And she's clearly bouncing off the boat on this wave, but we can't release that because it's a woman bouncing off ah a boat on on a wave that's knocking her down. And you know what? She climbed up there to that place she's not supposed to be. So it's really her fault. It's not our fault.
01:16:17
Speaker
Well, right. But if they saw a situation where like someone was being murdered, like they're not going to cover that up. There's just not enough people in the line of what would have to happen there that would be willing to do that.
01:16:31
Speaker
I don't think. I think that's, I think that's what happens here. I think, I think a fall happens. I think by the time it's realized it's happened, it's so say that fall happens at six in the morning and it's three and a half hours later, she hasn't shown up for her nine o'clock shift.
01:16:50
Speaker
It's now nine 15, nine 30. So by the time you're doing that, you're 75 miles from where she fell off. And like, Oh, yeah. Like it's too – I mean not to mention – That's assuming if you do it right then.
01:17:05
Speaker
Well, right. But, do I mean, why do you immediately go to that? You don't. You look for her. You spend another three or four hours. It just happens that – say there was a crime and this is your crime scene.
01:17:19
Speaker
Your crime scene is scooting its little tush across the ocean. Well, right. And it is a it's an interesting phenomenon, right?
01:17:29
Speaker
Because it's so contained and yet it's also not so contained because it's it's one of the most non-contained contained scenes there can be. Yep.
01:17:41
Speaker
Because if there's something that occurs on a cruise ship, it's right there. And most of the time, there are a lot of witnesses, whether it's a passenger or a crew member.
01:17:52
Speaker
It's really hard to um to have a moment where everybody's not seeing something happen. Yeah. It sort of illustrated earlier when the crew members said that um they had the pool to relax, to stretch out and relax because they lived in such tight quarters.
01:18:13
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, the quarters were tight for the crew members. And so that means that in the event a murder occurred, that more than just the murderer would have known what was up, right? Yeah.
01:18:29
Speaker
I'm just saying, like, it all points... i I don't know ah what could be. I do think that either they don't have it or they do have it and they're But I think anything that they have, I don't think it points to other people. They're not going to protect criminals who are killing people on their cruises.
01:18:50
Speaker
Correct. They're not going to do that. And they're also not going to disparage a victim... who is no longer with us because of something that occurred accidental or otherwise. Right.
01:19:05
Speaker
I don't think they're not going to be like, watch this. It's just not a good look for them. And it go, it never ends right now. I don't know if her parent, her parents have settled ah the lawsuit that they had and they have a non-disclosure and was something revealed to them?
01:19:22
Speaker
I don't know. Like the last, and this is not the exact last line. It's the last line I've read as we were, putting all this together and I realized it's the perfect last line, um, for the episode.
01:19:35
Speaker
Do you have anything else on this overall? Cause I'm to say this and then we'll talk about this part, but this really is kind of interesting. It's Jim Walker.
01:19:46
Speaker
So he's an attorney based out of Florida who represents Rebecca's family in this ongoing lawsuit in the United States.
01:19:56
Speaker
His quote back in 2017, I think, I scribbled the quote down, but I apologize. i don't know where I got it. It says, the case has been resolved. They're pursuing an inquest in the UK, but I'm not supposed to talk about the case.
01:20:14
Speaker
That to me says probably Disney told the parents, if you sign this agreement, We'll show you or let you listen or something to something that we're not releasing.
01:20:30
Speaker
And suspect it is something weird that is completely innocuous. It could be that she was skinny dipping in the pool and climbed up a pole and fell.
01:20:45
Speaker
It could be that like, She was all by herself and somebody came by and warned her not to be out there by herself and she did it anyways. It could be anything.
01:20:56
Speaker
But the bottom line is I suspect that they know what happened and that it wasn't murder and it wasn't suicide. It was just a plain old accident.
01:21:08
Speaker
Right. So, i you know, I didn't know, like, what the rest of your feelings might be about this, but I felt like that was a good kind of wrap-up point. when i When I read Jim Walker saying that, like, saying the case has been resolved, they're pursuing an inquest or whatever, I think that inquest maybe doesn't come from her family.
01:21:25
Speaker
I think it comes from from the people trying to snag the spotlight on it. Yeah, I don't know. And also, I don't know, like, I don't know what that means. Like, did that just mean the lawsuit was resolved? I mean, he says the was resolved, like.
01:21:40
Speaker
you know And so you know we are just kind of left looming. But in situations like this, I mean, unfortunately, everybody already has the answer as to what happened to the person on the cruise ship, right? Right.
01:21:55
Speaker
I mean, they're in the ocean somewhere. And it sucks to have to say that so blatantly, like, I don't care. I do care. It's just... I do think the escape room of, you know, missing people, it can get out of hand, right? Right.
01:22:15
Speaker
As far as the narratives go. And I feel like, um, I was, I was saddened by some of these, I didn't realize how bad it was, I guess it would be ah the best way to say it.
01:22:26
Speaker
I didn't realize, you know, that Amy Bradley's family was still waiting for her to come home. Right. And why, why is that happening? It's because of the phenomenon, right? Yeah.
01:22:40
Speaker
And people not being able to say, for whatever reason, your daughter died that day and the ocean. Yeah. Yeah. And so I went, um here's why I say that Jim Walker's word is probably for me the last word.
01:22:58
Speaker
They're not keeping up the website anymore. Yeah. i And I think that i think that it there was an answer there. I would be surprised if there wasn't. um But everything is not for public consumption, right? Correct.
01:23:12
Speaker
Correct. And it murder is something that would be for public
Conclusion and Series Continuation
01:23:18
Speaker
consumption. And the fact that it's not for public consumption, it leans away from that. And I hate it for all the people who got called up in that, right?
01:23:26
Speaker
Yeah. i I hate it too, but believe it or not, um there is still more to come in the Overboard series. I have more stuff to tell you about. I just wanted to include her case because thought...
01:23:40
Speaker
i I find this to have a lot of similarities with Amy Lynn Bradley, although it takes place in a different time and like there's there's a lot of differences. ah But some of the similarities were just absolutely bizarre to me.
01:23:54
Speaker
ah So I wanted to include that here. But we will be back in the next episode with more overboard stories because I wanted to to kind of push through some of these.
01:24:05
Speaker
they're just It's fascinating to me. And i i i have to say, i totally agree with your sentence and your phrase and description.
01:24:17
Speaker
Disappearances from cruise ships really are the escape room mystery of true crime. They are, because we will go out of our way to figure out what happened to the person when it's staring us in the face, usually the whole time.
01:24:35
Speaker
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01:25:09
Speaker
No scars We're in trouble We took it too far
01:25:18
Speaker
I don't want to go but It's cause I'll disappoint ya It's all I've ever dreamed of Something I cannot let go of I hate the competition This culture's like a Jimin lost the motivation to
01:25:41
Speaker
True Crime Access is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through Patreon.com or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at TrueCrimeAccess.com.
01:25:59
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.