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Season Six: Overboard Part One
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Sources:
www.namus.gov
www.thecharleyproject.com
www.newspapers.com
Findlaw.com
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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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.
True Crime Series Trend
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:58
Speaker
I don't know what it is with this time of year.
Television Show Planning
00:01:00
Speaker
Like when we get into September and October, start looking at cases that I realized that either had to do with like missing persons cases near water or boats.
00:01:11
Speaker
I look at a lot of boats. We have like, we've covered a few of these over the years and we kind of covered this one. Like we've talked about this one, but this series is probably over there in the little playlist labeled something like overboard.
00:01:28
Speaker
Because i got a little frustrated with something that happened earlier in the year, and I wanted to cover some of these cases, but I wanted like to wait on some of them. And I figured I'd start with like one of the more famous ones, because it had some media this year.
Critique of True Crime Content
00:01:45
Speaker
and like So I went through the process of like pitching a television show with like producers and stuff for some of the things that we've covered. And there's still like three outstanding, but the like the first one got turned down.
00:02:00
Speaker
they They just went with like a different show on a different topic, but it's it's a pretty in-depth process. And in my opinion, we get a lot of true crime schlock.
00:02:13
Speaker
Oh, right. And we demand too much control typically.
Ongoing True Crime Cases Discussion
00:02:16
Speaker
So yeah, that's, that's the other problem that we would run into. So this year, I've seen a lot of like weird true crime stuff along the way.
00:02:27
Speaker
There are multiple competing parts of the Idaho 4 case. the I saw this Pike County thing. There's always like the ongoing episodic ones I tend to watch. You just recommended another one. that I put it in my queue and I'm going to watch it.
00:02:43
Speaker
This story that we're about to tell has one that I have not yet seen, but I put it in my queue and watched pieces of it. And i bring all that up because like it's not just the docuseries and stuff. like Every time I go on social media, like TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, everybody seems to be just randomly talking about true crime. And I hold back the word covering true crime.
00:03:11
Speaker
because there's not a lot of research going into it. Most of what we do has research basis.
Personal Involvement and Public Fascination
00:03:16
Speaker
There's stuff that we cover for the sake of covering it, but I know there's a serial killer story I want to cover.
00:03:23
Speaker
There's a missing persons case that I'm still working on getting documents for you know because I just don't have enough to do in my day. And i'm still chasing that. I'm i'm still pitching a series on J.Pole Hill for television.
00:03:38
Speaker
And I saw that you were talking about this case earlier in the year, and I put it on my list to watch. And by the time we're done with this Overboard series, I will have watched it and and will include
Case Introduction: Amy Lynn Bradley
00:03:52
Speaker
some of that commentary. But I wanted to start with this because I think I've come to the conclusion this is the most famous of those stories.
00:04:00
Speaker
Well, and this is a case, this is one of the cases I consider that's a case for the ages in some way. like a Maura Murray kind of case, that type of thing? Like John Benet, which she's not missing, but her murder.
00:04:13
Speaker
Maura Murray, ah Amy Lynn Bradley is right there on that list. Yeah, and I get so confused about this case because of the directions that that it goes.
00:04:28
Speaker
I've actually got what I feel like is quite a bit of clarity on the case. Is that from like some of the documentary stuff? and Well, over the years, I obviously follow i followed this case probably from it happened, right?
00:04:45
Speaker
Because I would have been a young ah youngish adult female, and this is a an adult female who disappeared. And so I followed all those cases.
00:04:56
Speaker
More has been revealed now. I guess it's a combination of stuff. um The docuseries, I don't know how many parts there were to it. It looks like three parts on the thing that haven't liked to do. Do remember that if that was... Is that what I was talking about?
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah. you like I think that something else came up. like There was something specifically that came up when we were recording other episodes. But like when we sat down...
00:05:25
Speaker
ah to do this one, you and I have had a text conversation about it and you had given me some of your observations. And I looked into, but this is part one. We're talking about Amy Lynn Bradley. So, and I'll get to her story in just a minute, but like us having that conversation made me remember I had a list of things I wanted to cover.
00:05:45
Speaker
And so those lists all kind of go together with her story.
Background of Amy Lynn Bradley
00:05:50
Speaker
Oh, I see what you're saying. um And so this is, You know, it's been since 1998 that she's been missing.
00:05:57
Speaker
And I think it just came out this year. I don't know how long they were working on it. i Sometimes I don't watch stuff right when it comes ah out, but I'm pretty sure this had just come out when I watched it. And it's basically her brother and Seems like there's other family members, too. i can't. It's been a while for me.
00:06:18
Speaker
i learned information that I had no idea existed from a combination of that. And then I guess like the launch interviews that her brother did.
00:06:30
Speaker
Let's um by launch, you mean when they launched the documentary? like He's doing interviews. I don't know if it was for the launch, but like around the docuseries, he's been on like several different... yeah He's on the press tour, basically. yeah Yeah, that's it. And so by listening to him talk several different times and... you know Each time he's answering a new set of questions, somewhere over the course of listening to that, ae I came up with a very plausible, likely scenario, which I never had before because I didn't know a lot of the elements of this case before.
00:07:07
Speaker
there there was you know This would be on like America's Most Wanted and Unsolve Mysteries. Dr. Phil covered it with like bringing people on and talking about it. Exactly. And so this was a very, it was a very streamlined exposure case because in 1998, you know, we barely had the internet, social media didn't exist.
Amy's Cruise and Disappearance
00:07:30
Speaker
It was a completely different world, basically. She was on a cruise ship, and then she wasn't on a cruise ship, indicating that either accidentally or on purpose, somehow she was you know fell off the ship, or she jumped off the ship, or whatever you want to say.
00:07:47
Speaker
She wasn't on the ship any longer. And so... it's It's baffling, right? Oh, yeah. It's one of those. like In my mind, you said Case for the Ages, and I agree with that. You said JonBenet, Maura Murray, those type.
00:08:00
Speaker
this is This is like the original version of Natalie Holloway for But there was a distinct difference in the two. And that is, I've always, in my opinion, known what happened here.
00:08:16
Speaker
i i I had one of two options, and they were never any of the things that were bandied about. um I didn't know what happened to her. it was a ah mystery because I didn't have all the information I needed. And then I got it all of a sudden.
00:08:32
Speaker
And I realized it's, I realized what made sense to me. And I don't know, you know, if we're going to talk about that or not, but. um Oh yeah. Yeah. We're definitely going to get there. I figured what I would do is just tell this story, which I know other people have told this story. I'm giving up summary because it ties into other things that like are part of the series that I find fascinating. um But also like the people I have questions about in the this particular series are not necessarily the family members, although some of them, I have some questions, um, or the victims even like, I really have questions about these people who get involved and they become a witness or they become an investigator and they say things that like people just run with.
00:09:18
Speaker
Right. Um, and I think in this case, it's a really good sort of, cause, cause all of the like, what we think of as like true crime coverage now, all of that came much later than the incident itself, right?
00:09:34
Speaker
Yeah. It wasn't like there was like this live play by play happening yeah and people have to go back, right? They have to go back and see um what happened.
00:09:45
Speaker
I can, I can tell you exactly where I was when I learned about her. um And it was it it was the tiniest blurb on CNN when it first happened.
00:09:59
Speaker
And it just
Timeline of Events and Witness Accounts
00:10:00
Speaker
happens that, like, I know where I'm sitting. i know what TV I watched it on, everything. And this case stuck with me maybe a year or And I've heard all of the things that people have heard along the way, but I just have never had, like, I've always been like, what is happening?
00:10:15
Speaker
And that's where the name of this series, Overboard, comes from. It's not just about the boat, but but it is. um So let's just cover this from the perspective of, like, if people if you haven't heard this, and if you have, I'm sorry, but...
00:10:30
Speaker
Essentially what I'm going to do is I'm just going to walk through like how we get here to like the Amy Bradley story from like the summaries you can find online.
00:10:41
Speaker
But I'm going to add some stuff along the way that like i've I've discovered. um And I'm going to let Meg add some stuff along the way. and And her case is going to lead us to some other stuff. But we're to start with her. So Amy Lynn Bradley, she is born to Iva and Ron Bradley in May of 1974. She has a little brother, which I think that this is how you and I got to talking about this. We realized his name would be Bradley Bradley, Brad Bradley.
00:11:10
Speaker
So they live up in Virginia. um Specifically, they live in an area called Chesterfield County, Virginia. This is a pretty small community.
00:11:22
Speaker
um it She goes to high school there. she ends up going to a place called Longwood University, which is in Farmville, Virginia. She's got a full scholarship for basketball.
00:11:35
Speaker
She gets a degree and graduates in December of 1996. I think that degree, depending on... where you read this, it's either exercise psychology or sports psychology that she gets in December, 1996. My understanding was it was sports psychology.
00:11:52
Speaker
Okay. So she's known for being a strong swimmer. ah she was a ah lifeguard at one point, uh, obviously an athlete kind of all around. And, I don't know like what people know about Virginia, but like, I'm pretty sure that if I, if I pull up Chesterfield County, Virginia right now on a map, uh,
00:12:12
Speaker
like it is not going to have more than three, 400,000 people. And it probably got one big city in there. I'm guessing it's Richmond based on that location, but I don't, I don't know that for sure.
00:12:23
Speaker
um So Virginia itself, it is ah progressive
Initial Response and Investigation
00:12:30
Speaker
Southern, but it's still Southern. um And one of the reasons I bring that up that She goes to Longwood University. So Longwood University, while it's a public university, it was originally known as the Farmville Female Seminary or and also, I think, Longwood College.
00:12:49
Speaker
So I've always affiliated that in my head, even though it's a public university, with having a lot of the things that like smaller religious faith-based schools would have. And I don't know that that's the case here.
00:13:03
Speaker
But I do know that according to her family, Amy Bradley, when she went off to college, she told her family that she was gay. and according to an ex-girlfriend that I have seen quoted in interviews recently, she stated that Amy had a lot of conflict with her parents about her sexuality and that they were essentially disappointed with her like girls.
00:13:35
Speaker
um Now, in the same breath, I have seen older footage and more recent footage of her father stating that it wasn't what we choose for, but it was what she wanted to do and we loved her no matter what, which is pretty much what you're supposed to say if, you know, your daughter disappears and 25 years later somebody is making a true crime documentary. You have to say all those things. I'm not saying you did anything wrong.
00:13:59
Speaker
I'm just saying it is what it is. And just for the record, you know, 1998, that was getting towards, like, less of a stigma.
00:14:11
Speaker
Right. But it was still stigmatized, right? Yes. It wasn't as stigmatized as, like, 90, but it was still, it wasn't, like, as un-stigma as 2020, right?
00:14:22
Speaker
Right. It was, like, it it wasn't, you know, we didn't have the Defense of Marriage Act yet. We weren't. deep into the acceptance that we should have today as a country.
00:14:35
Speaker
Um, but well, and also the, it, that is part of the story. I, I don't actually feel like that particular part of the story plays into what I feel like actually happened.
00:14:49
Speaker
However, that was not, uh, told. It was not disclosed. Disclosed. That was not disclosed. um So when I thought of, and it doesn't even matter to me, but I never heard anybody say it out loud.
00:15:05
Speaker
Right. um And it really doesn't matter one way or the other. um But it did get disclosed, at least in the documentary, docu-series.
00:15:17
Speaker
And I don't know was. Right, and just need in there. Right. I've seen it in the surrounding coverage. I haven't seen the docuseries itself yet. um Well, up until that point, though, I had no idea that ah she was gay, that she had come out as gay, that she had any struggles with it.
00:15:36
Speaker
And again, i don't think it it doesn't change what I think happened. Nothing about it changes it. Right. Yeah, no, that's kind of how I feel. um I pulled an article up from, i think
Speculative Sightings and Theories
00:15:50
Speaker
it's originally published in Style Weekly. It makes its way to richmond.com.
00:15:54
Speaker
The first version that I read of it was April 27th, 1999. There was another version that had a 2005 date, but I'm just telling you, April 1999 is the version i pulled from um It talks about them. It says, Friday, March 20th of 1998, Amy and her mom are having dinner at Aunt Mary's house. So Aunt Mary is Mary Christensen.
00:16:18
Speaker
And whoever her person is that she has in her life, there's someone named Iva. They, like, are always kind of placing Amy as the apple of their eye.
00:16:33
Speaker
The aunt Yeah. So she had gotten her hair done a little bit darker, and she was getting ready to go on this trip, this cruise.
00:16:44
Speaker
She's really excited. It was unexpected that they were going to get to go. Right. And the way that they get to go is dad is a insurance executive.
00:16:55
Speaker
And 35 agents for a company known as Illinois Mutual Life, They had all expenses paid family cruises if they had hit the certain sales goal. And he had hit it. He got past the $145,000 in paid premiums or whatever it was. So dad paid extra for the sale.
00:17:16
Speaker
so dad has paid extra Because the cruise they win is for basically the person who sold the insurance executive, the agent, insurance agent, and their spouse.
00:17:29
Speaker
Well, actually, the mom was an agent as well. they both were doing that. Like, they worked together. They're able to bring the kids along, and they end up paying, like, some little ah amount of money, couple grand.
00:17:40
Speaker
But it's a big deal that they're all going on this trip together. Iva, Mom, and Aunt Mary are having a good time talking to Amy about this, according it' to this article. And they're talking about the trip's going to go from San Juan toruba to Aruba to Curacao to St. Martin, St. Thomas, and they're going to come back through Puerto Rico.
00:17:59
Speaker
They're also talking about the fact that Amy has plans for when she gets back from the cruise. So she is going to start working as a marketing and office assistant for her Aunt Mary and her Uncle Mike.
00:18:12
Speaker
They owned a software company. So she had started talking to them about cutting her hours over at Ruth's Grift Steakhouse, where she worked full time, so that she could take this job. Now,
00:18:24
Speaker
I don't know what is true of this, but I've heard it rumored that like they were literally talking future plans that family was going to help with, including whether Amy was going to go and get her master's degree or maybe use the money that she makes from these jobs to do something ah more like entrepreneurial. I heard it rumored that somebody said insurance, somebody said sports bar. I don't know. like which one of those I believe, I think they're just people talking for the sake of having something to say.
00:18:52
Speaker
But Brad is going to be home for this cruise from George Mason University. So they're all having this dinner and the plan is the next morning they're all going to leave on the 21st and they're going to go on this cruise.
00:19:06
Speaker
And this is going to be a cruise on the Royal Caribbean International cruise ship Rhapsody of the Seas. So Amy Bradley was afraid of heights. She was initially
00:19:21
Speaker
apprehensive about the cruise due to the size of the ship and being out on the ocean. And I'm going to go ahead and tell you that like one of the things I did do for this is I read the transcript and watched vanish with Beth Holloway. Have you seen this?
00:19:39
Speaker
Yes. Okay. So Beth Holloway, who is Natalie's mom, Natalie, Natalie Holloway's mom did an episode about Amy Lynn Bradley. So they're gonna leave Saturday morning all on the ship together.
00:19:52
Speaker
On March 23rd, Amy and Brad, they stay up late, they're drinking,
Analysis of Eyewitness Accounts
00:20:00
Speaker
they're at a performance of the ship's band, which is apparently a band that's put together called Blue Orchid, and they're on the ninth floor deck of the ship at a disco party.
00:20:12
Speaker
One of the band's members is a guy named Yellow Douglas. And he is seen at different points in time drinking and dancing with Amy Bradley that night. But he claims that he left the disco party around 1 o'clock in the morning.
00:20:27
Speaker
And there's some footage in here. Did you see this of the two of them dancing? I've seen it. I don't know what you're looking at, but I've seen the two of them dancing. Yeah, it's in the Amy Bradley trailer. They show apparently Chris Finwell captured footage of the two of them dancing.
00:20:46
Speaker
So Brad, as the night goes on, he heads back to the family's cabin, which is a floor below the dance floor, if I'm understanding how all this works. um And so ships, like cruise ships like this, even in 1998, they have record keeping that goes on with the door lock systems.
00:21:07
Speaker
Not always perfect, but they're able to see when someone enters or exits. Right. Not exits. It doesn't, it what is registered is the key being used, the ah key card being used. So it doesn't actually know if the door is opened or closed, but if the key card's used, logic says that somebody just unlocked the door, right? yeah Got it. i follow what you're saying.
00:21:32
Speaker
Okay. wow And so that that's how they're able to track and confirm like when, and it's each separate person has their own. The key cards say that Brad comes to the suite 335 in the morning.
00:21:46
Speaker
And then Amy follows him and her key card sets a record in the system five minutes later at 340 in the morning. Does that sound right to you? Yep.
00:21:57
Speaker
Okay. So Brad reports that like they sit out on the balcony of this eighth floor suite and they're talking before they go to sleep.
00:22:09
Speaker
um Brad goes first and it's believed that Amy stayed a little while longer. Brad, according to what we know, um he says that he went to sleep and Amy is believed to stayed awake a little bit longer.
00:22:25
Speaker
Now, between 5.15 and 5.30 a.m. on March the 24th. So March 23rd is what we're talking about. March 24th, if I'm understanding it, is the same continuation, Right.
00:22:40
Speaker
so Where they came back at 335, that's March 24th. Between 515 and 530 a.m., m March 24th, dad, Ron, he gets up and he checks on the kids. He sees Bradley asleep in the lounge chair of the balcony on the suite.
00:22:57
Speaker
According to what he tells ah local newspapers, he says he could see Amy's legs from hips down and that she was like sitting with Brad on the balcony.
00:23:11
Speaker
He says he does back off and went to sleep again. And that's, uh, sort of different. Um, then I, then there's different sources that say different things. The most recent thing was Brad actually went inside and went to sleep.
00:23:26
Speaker
And Amy said, my stomach doesn't feel great. I'm going to stay out here for the air. and she was out and he didn't get up. He just kind of glanced around.
00:23:38
Speaker
Gotcha. So basically he was still laying in bed. he Yeah, he woke up. He wasn't sure what he woke up from. um And when he woke up, because he had been asleep when his kids had come back to the room, the room was tiny, um but he had been asleep. He saw that um Bradley Bradley was ah laying on the pullout couch bed that he and Amy were sharing.
00:24:04
Speaker
and he saw um her side of the leg of he
False Leads and Scams
00:24:10
Speaker
saw her feet and legs, but not her. upper part of her body because he would have had to have moved the curtain to see the rest of her, if that makes sense.
00:24:20
Speaker
Got and so he But he knew she was fine because he saw that. Got it. And he says the door was closed according to, this is from Unsolved Mysteries, he says, the balcony door is closed because if it wasn't, i would have gotten up and closed it.
00:24:36
Speaker
So... There are other words that come from different people during this time that say the balcony was open. I'm just telling you what this one thing from Ron said. When he gets up at six o'clock in the morning, Amy is gone.
00:24:52
Speaker
Amy's cigarettes and lighter are also gone. um ah Accordingly, Ron later says, I left to try and find her. When I couldn't find her, I didn't really know what to think because it was very much unlike Amy to leave and not tell us where she was going.
00:25:10
Speaker
So between this time and 6.30 in the morning, Ron is going to search a couple of the common areas of the ship, and then he's going to wake up the rest of the family. And at 6.30, he tells them he can't find Amy.
00:25:24
Speaker
So on the morning of the disappearance, there are three different witnesses that claim to have seen Amy Bradley on the upper deck with Yellow Douglas sometime between 530 and 545 in the morning.
00:25:38
Speaker
And that somebody had a camera.
00:25:42
Speaker
There's also people saying that Yellow Douglas gave Amy Bradley a drink. And I don't even know why that matters, but That's what it said.
00:25:57
Speaker
The same witness also says that Amy and Yellow arrive in the elevator at the same time and that Yellow was seen leaving the upper deck of the ship alone shortly after six in the morning.
00:26:13
Speaker
Okay, do you make much of all of this so far? um No, I mean, that that's pretty much the story. um There are... Because of the the nature of the case, right? They're on a boat. And the boat had left one port and was arriving on another port overnight.
00:26:33
Speaker
Right. And it makes it a
Conclusion on Amy's Case
00:26:42
Speaker
contained situation to some extent.
00:26:46
Speaker
And people start really um scrambling to
00:26:53
Speaker
kind of figure out what, what they can contribute to the case. Right. Right. um And so I would just keep that in mind, but I don't really make anything of it except people like, you know, scraping their memories, trying to help.
00:27:12
Speaker
Right. um There's a couple of things here to talk about related to like that time when, that time, i mean, When Amy's last seen, when Ron tells the family he can't find her, and when they come into port.
00:27:31
Speaker
Now, I did find that odd. Go ahead. Why do you find it odd? Well, I'm not sure that i would immediately... think to myself, especially if I had just seen her legs out on the balcony, i would assume she had gone to get coffee, right?
00:27:51
Speaker
That's probably what I would assume that time of morning, yeah. And so It's just, and it could just be me. It just seems like a leap to be like, you know, by 630 telling the family, I can't find her.
00:28:05
Speaker
Right. i the That's just my opinion. um i thought it was weird. I don't know that it's necessarily suspicious. And it's also somebody recounting. Right. And so,
00:28:19
Speaker
We don't know exactly the timing, but fairly shortly after he couldn't. and And the other thing was, like, why did he feel the need to go look for her right when he got up?
00:28:31
Speaker
Because she was, you know, 20-something, right? Right. right Right. 23. She was 23. And, it you know, 23-year-olds can go walk around the ship.
00:28:43
Speaker
And like I guess just part of, it just was odd to me that, like, he immediately went to go look for her. Like, why? Yeah, I you know i find a lot of this portion of events to be kind of over-scrutiny of somebody who's 23 years old.
00:29:00
Speaker
Now, given most people that I knew in 1998 that were 23 years old have not been missing for the last 27 years, six months by the time this comes out. i I think it's more of telling it and telling it in a way that...
00:29:13
Speaker
um not guilt because they did something, but guilt because, you know, they've missed their daughter terribly for so long right that, you know, they want to make it, uh, they want to make it clear. They did everything possible. It's just in doing so, i feel like some of it is a little erratic, like, or not erratic. It's just a little bit sort of like, really? You got up and because she was gone, you immediately,
00:29:41
Speaker
you know, went looking for her. You didn't, it just seemed like a lot because at that point, theoretically, he wouldn't know she was missing. So why would you be looking for her? Whatever though, I don't really want to I don't feel like her family did anything ah that contributed to her
Family's Trauma and Media Impact
00:30:00
Speaker
disappearance ultimately.
00:30:01
Speaker
So I don't want to put any shade on them. I'm just saying. yeah no, no, I'm not putting any shade. It's one of those factors that kind of clutters up the situation.
00:30:13
Speaker
I think that's the conclusion I come to, too, is that like this part of it makes it a little weird. And I also feel like some of the timing is a little off. But the way I understand it is Ron and the family pretty much immediately...
00:30:31
Speaker
for whatever reason, they report it as a disappearance to the crew, and they ask the crew to not let anyone disembark the crews and to make an announcement to assist in finding eight So the crew basically tells them it's too early to make like that kind of an announcement. But at 7.50 a.m., they issue an announcement, but it's after a majority of the passengers have left the ship. And remember that, that at 7.50, the bulk of these 2,000 people are gone.
00:31:04
Speaker
And they essentially announce, will Amy Bradley please come to the purser's desk?
00:31:11
Speaker
so the confinement of the scene what causes them to freak out at 7.50? Or
00:31:20
Speaker
before then? The fact that she hasn't shown back up is probably... you talking about the family are about the crew making announcement? Well, yeah, Well, yeah, they weren't... The crew was never freaking out about this. um The family was, though. The family was almost immediately panicked.
00:31:41
Speaker
Right. And I don't know. I agree with that, but I don't know why they're panicked. Yeah, me either. And I don't know. I wasn't there. I wasn't experiencing it. But to me,
00:31:53
Speaker
i the way that I am, I would it would take a little longer for me to start really panicking. Right. yeah the The ship that they were on was huge. There were a lot of people on that ship.
00:32:07
Speaker
And I just can't even imagine that I would have hit every single place my child could be. Nobody on a vacation, on a cruise ship, immediately thinks to themselves,
00:32:22
Speaker
my child's been abducted, especially not your 23-year-old child, right? Do you think? No. I think they're just telling it back. Now, we do know from records that the announcement was made, right?
00:32:36
Speaker
Correct. And they they didn't stop people from getting off the boat. They wouldn't do that, right? Correct. It'd be too many people. Keep in mind that from this moment on, everything is colored through a very specific lens.
00:32:52
Speaker
We know that Amy was a strong swimmer and a lifeguard. You know why? Because that supports the narrative that she couldn't have possibly fallen off this boat. Even though people who are trained divers in the Navy sometimes fall off of boats and are never found.
00:33:09
Speaker
But between 12.15 p.m. and 1 p.m., so this is right after noon to 1, the crew's staff searches the ship, and they can't find Amy.
Discussion on Investigative Technicalities
00:33:21
Speaker
there are I noticed this was in the Wiki, and I noticed it's in there's something else where they were talking about this.
00:33:28
Speaker
I think it's from 2020 or so article that they are pulling from an earlier article where it says, like the delay in launching an immediate search has been called a mistake that could have hurt the chances of finding Amy.
00:33:45
Speaker
With what likely happened to Amy, that didn't matter. At all. Like, it didn't matter, like, how quickly you looked for her. Right. The idea that it was, ah that the the delay, like, really messed up the case from the very beginning is that, like, somebody put her in a suitcase and, like, took her off when they pour they were at port, right? Right.
00:34:07
Speaker
Something like that. Which is, like, you know, just because we're statistics people, even though we're not math people, we are statistics people, the likelihood of that happening is 0.00001%.
00:34:18
Speaker
point zero Right. one percent right And I don't think I've ever actually heard of any cases where that happened.
00:34:29
Speaker
I know of like two cases in all the history I have of reading cases where someone has been placed in a cruise ship, ah not a cruise ship, has someone has been placed in a piece of luggage to be removed from somewhere.
00:34:47
Speaker
but I can tell you, actually there's a third, ah but I can tell you that all three of those people were dead when that happened and there was blood everywhere at the crime scene. but We don't have that here. Right. There was no blood, that yeah no no tangible.
00:35:03
Speaker
Right. That made anybody think that anything had happened. And I have never seen a case where someone physically moved someone in a suitcase that was a alive. have you experienced do Have you read about somebody taking somebody off of a boat in a suitcase?
00:35:19
Speaker
No. Okay. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like, I worked a case where someone had to move someone from apartment. It actually wasn't even a murder. um It was an overdose.
00:35:31
Speaker
Right. they're disposing of the body. And they put the body in a very large suitcase and put it on a hotel rack and they... took the rack out to their car and loaded the suitcase. And you watch it all on video.
00:35:42
Speaker
Like, I know, like, personally that that happened, but i also know that that wasn't a murder case. Well, right. And I wouldn't go so far as to say, like, people are never disposed of in luggage. They are, Right. But, you know, at the end of the day,
00:35:59
Speaker
um I've never heard of anybody being, for one thing, disappearing on a cruise ship. And for another thing, um being like taken off of the cruise ship in a piece of luggage.
00:36:16
Speaker
Because if if she wasn't taken off, concealed somehow, like the theory is they would have seen her, right? Right. Okay. Okay. And I don't i don't have like a lot more on this part of it.
00:36:30
Speaker
Now I'm moving into the portion where this whole thing goes overboard. And I'm not talking about just Amy going overboard. i'm talking about the whole thing. So they conduct a four-day search.
00:36:41
Speaker
that ends on March the 27th, where the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard gets involved. um According to records, there's a boat that comes out looking for her. The Coast Guard uses three helicopters and a radar plane to assist in the search.
00:36:56
Speaker
The FBI ends up interviewing Yellow Douglas, and he takes a polygraph test where it's inconclusive. um According to Ron, he said that Yellow Douglas came out of the interview and gave some kind of thumbs up Um, and i think that's part of the problem is that these, the family, I think the family themselves has trouble with the idea that their daughter accidentally fell into the ocean.
00:37:26
Speaker
Um, but I'm going to go ahead and tell you that Amy Bradley fell into the ocean. I do not believe she jumped into the ocean.
00:37:37
Speaker
I do believe that anything else that would have happened to her would have left her. I do believe that anything else that would have happened to her would have left far too much evidence to hide in the amount of time these people were trying to hide it.
00:37:50
Speaker
If somebody killed her, whoever these people are, that make sense. Yeah. um And, you know, the idea would be, you know, if something besides that happened, did it happen on the balcony? Cause that's not true. Right.
00:38:06
Speaker
right ah Because if somebody else had come in, there'd be a record of somebody else coming in. Right, right. The parents waking up and noticing somebody was there, right? That kind of thing.
00:38:20
Speaker
Yeah, so here's what we have, like, kind generally speaking. About a month after Amy Bradley's disappearance, her family travels back to these islands. They're approached by a cab driver who claimed to have seen Amy Bradley while the ship was docking on March 24th.
00:38:38
Speaker
This is like one of those people that pops up in the Vanished episode with Beth Holloway. And there's some mention of this in Unsolved Mysteries. But basically, someone tells the family that Amy was running through a parking lot in search of a phone.
00:38:54
Speaker
He stated that she remembered her distinct green eyes, which had been described in the rewards poster. The witness also claimed to have seen Amy in other locations on the island, but because the claims are completely made up, they're never corroborated by authorities. And i don't know why people report on them like they're credible, but that's sort of how we get started in all of this, less than a month after she goes missing.
00:39:20
Speaker
Well, and honestly, it started... before then when people saw her walking. Right. We get a number of things that people come forward and say.
00:39:32
Speaker
There's two Canadian people who are diving on one of the popular beaches in Curacao named ah Playa Porta Marie. In August 1998, they claimed that they had seen Amy.
00:39:45
Speaker
A witness named David Carmichael claimed that someone a woman matching Amy's description was in the presence of two aggressive men.
00:39:56
Speaker
One they describe as fitting yellow Douglas's description. I'm pretty sure they checked out yellow Douglas at this point. And I think they debunked that he could have been there. Just going to put that out there.
00:40:08
Speaker
I'm not a hundred percent on that, but I'm pretty close. The witness yells out to one of his friends asking if he had something in his dive gear. i don't know if he said snorkel or regulator or whatever.
00:40:23
Speaker
The woman, believed to be Amy, hearing the man speak English, reportedly spins around and comes back over towards him. So this witness claims that he sees the man resembling yellow Douglas out of the corner of his eye and that that man makes a threatening motion to the woman who looks like Amy Bradley and that for the rest of the time he's standing there, the woman would occasionally look at him and then look down like he thought she was subtly trying to communicate with him.
00:40:55
Speaker
The moment that this all happens in August, which this guy says that he was, you know, just a couple feet away from her and Allegedly, he describes her her looks, her eyes, her tattoos correctly.
00:41:09
Speaker
And he says that he recognized her because he had seen her photo on America's Most Wanted. And this guy, David Carmichael, says that he was haunted by this encounter. he says he knows it was her. He ends up phoning Amy's dad, Ron.
00:41:23
Speaker
He flies to Virginia and meets with the family. The FBI investigates it, but they say they can't corroborate what he was saying. Again, because he made it up. He saw what he wanted to see.
00:41:35
Speaker
Okay, yeah. I was going to say, I don't know that he made it up. I think that it's entirely possible that encounter did happen with someone. Oh, yeah. Like, from that perspective, like, a lot of these people could have seen something like what they're describing.
00:41:50
Speaker
I'm just telling you, they did not see Amy Bradley. Correct. I agree with that 100%. Like, for example, the cab driver, think that something could have happened.
00:42:02
Speaker
And... it was just another girl, right? Correct. And now, there's two sides of that because, yeah so they're seeing the narrative of the story on television and they're putting themselves in a place near where it happened because they were already, they were there. They went to vacation there, right? Yeah.
00:42:26
Speaker
And they, your mind can trick you into inserting things, right? Right. And, So I'm not, I don't want to say that these people have bad intentions or that they're like lying, 100% lying.
00:42:44
Speaker
It's just, it doesn't make ah anything easier for the family. Right. when ah they When they're essentially chasing a ghost because of the sightings, Right.
00:43:00
Speaker
And I wanted to, um there's several more sightings, but... The other thing the docuseries did, ah which I sort of had an idea of before, but like it just sort of bolstered it even more it To you, is Amy Bradley the kind of girl who is going to have the type of encounter that the ah scuba diver talks about, or the snorkeler, or whatever they were doing, that guy what that that guy talks about?
00:43:31
Speaker
did She does not have like an ounce of submission in her. I don't think so. I don't know her personally. i only know what I can like read and see now that she's missing.
00:43:42
Speaker
and i I personally think that in those moments where there's an English-speaking person, even though it's months later, even though allegedly she's been you know ah she would have to be trafficked at that point, which means so addicted to some drugs and whatever, I see the type of person described by Amy Bradley as the person who would not jump or fall from the balcony...
00:44:06
Speaker
is going to get away from those people. 100%.
00:44:11
Speaker
hundred percent And I don't understand why the family doesn't, and I don't know her either. I never, you know, I just know her from her case and what I saw of her case and the news initially, and then how, you know, these types of cases unfold.
00:44:28
Speaker
um And i couldn't figure out why what was so apparent to me wasn't readily apparent to them.
00:44:41
Speaker
well it's because they're ready they're they're not ready for it and they really want the hope. So they're hanging on to the hope. It's just unfortunate that the hope comes in either misidentifications or bullshit. Like you can pick whichever way you want to go with it. Sure. I i like to think it's misidentifications.
00:44:57
Speaker
like It's a mixture of the two. I don't think that they come up with it out of nowhere. Right. I think that's the encounters happen. And once you've seen her face and you know, like, oh, I was near there. Right. Or whatever.
00:45:10
Speaker
You insert it, especially when you have these moments in life that stick with you. Right. Yeah. Like like like thinking, i mean, the girl that was with the guy might have needed help. Right.
00:45:22
Speaker
But it wasn't Amy brow Bradley. That's the difference. Right. Yeah. that's what I think the difference is. yeah There's been every single it's like with each sighting of her.
00:45:35
Speaker
I'm more and more convinced they did not see her. And her family doesn't seem to think that. And I can't figure out if I missed something or if you're, like you said, they just are going to take whatever they can get.
00:45:50
Speaker
Well, so the last kind of sighting we have in like the immediate aftermath, and by aftermath, I'm talking like year or so from the time they go on this cruise.
00:46:02
Speaker
It's a U.S. Navy Petty Officer named William Hefner. He claims that he encountered a woman claiming to be Amy at a brothel in the islands in January 1999.
00:46:15
Speaker
He describes being seated in a bar area when a Caucasian woman approaches him, identifies herself as Amy Bradley, and pleads for his assistance. The story that he tells is that she was being held against her will and that she explained the situation, said she'd been on a cruise, she got off the cruise to seek some drugs and was now trapped here.
00:46:38
Speaker
So just so we're aware, that's not possible even based on the simplest narrative. So after retiring from the Navy, this guy reaches out to Amy Bradley's family in May 2002.
00:46:54
Speaker
He explains that he initially refrained from reporting this because he thought that his military career would be hurt by his presence in a brothel. tells the family that the woman he encountered was 100% Amy Bradley.
00:47:10
Speaker
The FBI attempts to investigate these claims and they find out that the brothel has burned down and that there's no evidence whatsoever that this was Amy Bradley or that Amy Bradley had ever been here.
00:47:22
Speaker
Then it gets bad. So that's January 1999. He reports it much later. In the fall of 1999, Amy Bradley's parents end up getting an email from a guy who says his name is Frank Jones.
00:47:37
Speaker
And Frank tells the Bradley family that he is a special forces officer with the U.S. Army. um He's retired out and he has a team of experienced soldiers who are going to rescue Amy Bradley.
00:47:52
Speaker
He claims that his team had seen Amy Bradley being held by heavily armed Colombian personnel in a housing complex surrounded by barbed wire. They also give an accurate description of Amy Bradley's tattoos and they sing lullaby that Amy Bradley's mother used to sing to her.
00:48:15
Speaker
Over the next few months, This guy named Frank is going to feed news to the family, providing reports on sightings of their daughter. And he tells them they're going to attempt a rescue of Amy Bradley, but that he needs more money.
00:48:32
Speaker
So the Bradleys have sent Jones a total $210,000 to all this up. They expect a call from Frank Jones and this team of special operations retired soldiers for the results of the rescue mission that they were going on.
00:48:48
Speaker
But then nothing happens. He never calls. Turns out he just made the story up and he was scamming the Bradley family out of money.
00:49:00
Speaker
So by February 2002, about three years after he does this, two and a half years after he does this, so federal prosecutors in Richmond, Virginia, They charged him with defrauding the Bradleys of around $24,000 and defrauding the National Missing Children's Organization of around $185,000.
00:49:22
Speaker
Frank Jones pleads guilty in April of 2002 to mail fraud, and he is sentenced to five years in prison. So that is complete bullshit, and that's why I said some things could be misidentification and some things could be complete bullshit. This one is complete bullshit.
00:49:39
Speaker
Right, and I actually, i feel like the um the brothel one, it's probably complete bullshit. Well, I mean, I could believe that guy saw a woman. I don't believe he saw Amy Bradley. No, but because he said that she said her name was Amy Bradley.
00:49:58
Speaker
that makes you think it's BS? Well, I guess a female there could be trying, I mean, if you know if it's an American who legit needs to be.
00:50:09
Speaker
i think he ultered his story with BS. I mean, it could be either. I could go either way on him. I mean, he could just be lying. Well, yeah. and the part of the reason he got credence was because, oh, this is like a guy in the military, right? Yeah. But he was a guy in a military at a brothel when he wasn't supposed to be.
00:50:26
Speaker
And you got to take that into consideration. And if that really happened, okay. Any guy, right. guy He just left her there? Yeah. That doesn't happen.
00:50:40
Speaker
i don't know. does i mean, I don't think so. I think if somebody legit was saying, look, I'm American, I've been kidnapped, and I need to be saved or whatever, it seems like I would take action.
00:50:55
Speaker
This is nonsense. I'm trying to be nice saying I think all of this is nonsense. rightkin I was going to say, you know, think about the women that are missing like um Natalie Holloway, like Amy Lynn Bradley. I mean, they're plastered everywhere.
00:51:13
Speaker
There's not a whole bunch of like... not plastered everywhere people that are missing, right? Right. In these types of situations. So that means it's not happening to anybody.
00:51:25
Speaker
So she's the only one? No, yeah like this is not a thing. Like this is not a thing that people can wrap their head around. The sightings get worse, not better. I mean, that's about as bad as it can get with this whole fraud thing. But I don't count that as a sighting of any kind. I just count that as a scam.
00:51:44
Speaker
Right. he he ah Everything that guy was saying was a lie. Like, he was just getting money. Correct. so so the next up we have, and April 2003, couple of people report seeing a woman they think matches Amy Bradley's description. And I think everybody's in concert here, so it's like people that are together.
00:52:04
Speaker
They're watching this woman watch a street musician in San Francisco, California. So we're no longer in the Caribbean. We're on the West Coast. And she's in the company of two men.
00:52:17
Speaker
And the witnesses asserted that they immediately recognized the woman as Amy Bradley. But upon realizing that that she had been recognized, the two men grabbed the woman and fled the scene.
00:52:32
Speaker
Witnesses claim that the woman casts some kind of pleading look to them as she's being taken away. and the FBI investigates this. They go so far as if you go on the VICAP page on FBI.com even now.
00:52:47
Speaker
um there's an Amy Bradley flyer. And if you click through the history of the flyer, which you may have to go to the most wanted part, and it may be removed from the current flyer, you can see a picture of two dudes that, like, it describes the first as an unknown male, number one, white in his late thirty s or early 40s, 5'11
00:53:10
Speaker
Balding with red hair and a red beard. The second, unknown male number two, as having been described as being in his early 30s, approximately five eleven with dark, wavy, shoulder-length hair of an indeterminate racial composition.
00:53:26
Speaker
So they take this seriously, even in 2003.
00:53:31
Speaker
In March of 2005, a woman named Judy Maurer, she claims that she saw Amy Bradley in a department store bathroom in Bridgetown, which is over in Barbados.
00:53:42
Speaker
So we're no longer on the other islands. We're now in Barbados.
00:53:48
Speaker
Judy Maurer says that she was using the restroom when a woman accompanied by four men who were discussing what sounded like a, quote, illegal deal, end quote, She's escorted by this. And she said the woman at one point asked them in if they could, quote, stop and see the children.
00:54:06
Speaker
It's unknown what children are being referenced here. Judy Maurer claims at that point they left the restroom. She exited the stall and she spoke to the woman. She says that the woman said something about being from West Virginia and softly said her name was Amy.
00:54:24
Speaker
So Judy Maurer contacts the authorities and they create more composite sketches of the men and this woman based on her account.
00:54:36
Speaker
November 17, 2005, the Bradley family comes on the Dr. Phil show. During this episode, a scantily clad woman resembling Amy Bradley, who a photo of had been emailed to her family, is shown on the program.
00:54:52
Speaker
And this photo is shown with the idea that like it is proving that she's been trafficked into sexual slavery. There are two photos discovered online by one of those groups that tracks people down from the websites. A lot of those people now do like the child sexual abuse materials tracking.
00:55:15
Speaker
You know I'm talking about? So the woman in the photo is described as being distraught and despondent, and she's apparently a sex worker known as Jazz. The authenticity of the photographs could not be determined by the FBI, according to someone named Aaron Sheridan, who at the time was an FBI special agent.
00:55:31
Speaker
They stated, we did follow the lead. The difficult part back then was information such as that or pictures such as that. You cannot tell when they're altered. A man who later worked with the FBI performing facial comparisons and his opinion said his opinion was that they were of Amy Bradley.
00:55:50
Speaker
And that comes from the episode of Season 9 of Disappeared called Troubled Waters. It's episode 3 from April 2018.
00:56:02
Speaker
Right, and that's probably like the worst thing that happens because like the guy is a former ah FBI guy or he is an FBI guy or whatever. Yeah. It's somebody like official saying, i think that picture is her. Yeah, like all of these people are people that are hearing hoof steps and thinking zebras.
00:56:25
Speaker
That's not what's happening with any of this. they should just hear horses because that's the way that this goes. You know, I've, I've heard different things about yellow Douglas over the years.
00:56:37
Speaker
Um, I've heard the I remember when the jaw broke jaw bone washed up in Aruba and they were trying to
00:56:46
Speaker
determine if it was with from Natalie Holloway, but like apparently they destroyed the remains and like, I, They thought they were from a Caucasian woman, but they couldn't figure out the DNA on it. Something happened to it.
00:57:01
Speaker
um Amy is declared dead March 24th, 2010. That's 12 years after the disappearance. No witnesses to what happened to her. Nobody has ever been found. And people start like laying out these theories. And I feel awful for Amy Bradley's family because we are still trotting them out today as much as we can to talk about this situation.
00:57:27
Speaker
Well, to be fair, the family did just do a huge like media docuseries situation. so like Right. They're they we're participating out of some kind of claim to hope.
00:57:42
Speaker
Correct. Yeah. Well, so we're going to get into this a little more as the series goes on, but I wanted to start with this part. Is there anything specific you want to say about what we just talked about and how some of the timeline is goofy?
00:57:58
Speaker
um You'll have more of an opportunity to talk about Amy Bradley because we have more, like the series is not just about Amy Bradley. I just wanted to start with her because she had the most clear cut examples of how these cases are so strange.
00:58:14
Speaker
um i I don't think there's anything like right this second. i and just I feel like the most the thing that i would like to emphasize the most here is how every single time there's a, like, quote, call for help, end quote, from the family, like, some damn person answers it.
00:58:37
Speaker
Yeah. And it's... It's, and I'm not saying like if it were really legitimate, would be one thing.
00:58:49
Speaker
But I feel like this is one of the
00:58:56
Speaker
I don't want to say clearest, but I mean, it's, it's very straightforward. There is a little bit of like, what the heck, but right knowing what the people closest to her knew, like I didn't have any question and it seems like it's fall tope, right? Yeah.
00:59:16
Speaker
yeah hundred percent. Regardless of, and and I'm not sure, like, I don't know. I'm having a lot of trouble with, um,
00:59:28
Speaker
Like a family... Do you tell a family they're out of touch with reality? i don't think they are out of touch with reality. I think they're experiencing the psychosis of trauma.
00:59:43
Speaker
Like, I think that, like, it's escaped people that, like, at some point in time, when you've had all these things happen... And i'm not it's not just the trauma of Amy disappeared.
00:59:57
Speaker
Because Amy fell in the water. like And you can have whatever opinions you want. I would never bash anyone's theory. I'm just telling you exactly what happened. Amy fell in the water. The jawbone in Aruba is not Amy's.
01:00:08
Speaker
Amy fell in the water, probably bonked her head on the way down, and is definitely in the ocean, dead. That is what happened to Amy Bradley. and Unfortunately, yes. I hate to be the one to say that.
01:00:22
Speaker
That's awful. That alone would cause you severe pain to know that it had happened as a family member of her. Being on the boat with her the day that it happened, you would feel guilt.
01:00:33
Speaker
You would feel pain. You would feel trauma. But on top of that, the suggestions that people have made jump to sex trafficking.
01:00:45
Speaker
So that is a new level of pain, guilt, and trauma. Right, which is not unnecessary. Right, it's completely unnecessary. because it's not and And I can say this with 100% confidence. If she was sex trafficked in... Anywhere. 1998. Right.
01:01:04
Speaker
right She's not being sex trafficked now. No. Okay. She was not sex trafficked then, but that were the case... I don't think she was either. And none of the, account I will say none of the accounts of her are how I perceive her through what is available for her to be perceived by. Right.
01:01:25
Speaker
my None of them are how she would have handled the situation. no And so I wish her family could like really think, it but you don't think about that, right? You're just like, Oh, somebody saw her, you know?
01:01:37
Speaker
And I wish that they would think it all the way through But like in the docuseries, just as an example, it comes up, her dad says, you know, when Amy comes home.
01:01:54
Speaker
Right. And that's like a conversation that occurred sometime during the filming of that docuseries so recently. And it's like, wow, like that, for whatever reason, that really made me go This is awful. Yeah, there was a podcast host that, like, popped up sometime this year and was like, I'll give a million dollars to whoever, like, brings her home safely.
01:02:22
Speaker
And, like, the only thing I could think is... The only thing that's really gone overboard here is how many people are capitalizing on the fact that Amy Bradley fell off a cruise ship.
01:02:34
Speaker
Well, she is a case, like, for the ages, like I said. Um... And if you think about it, i so there's a couple of things I think that people have discounted, and that's how they ended up sort of where they're at. Because for one thing, um they were...
01:02:59
Speaker
Very close to port at like six o'clock. Right. Right. Okay. And if it were to be that, let's say, for example, we know what time um that Bradley Bradley and Amy Bradley came back, right?
01:03:16
Speaker
Because they use their key to open the door. yeah And then Bradley has an account of what happened, which was like he went to sleep, and but his sister said, ah you know, i'm going to stay out on the um balcony because she wanted the air, right? Yes.
01:03:31
Speaker
And then the father's like, oh, you know, I woke up at 530 and i saw her legs on the balcony, ah which would mean she was laying out there. And like, well, what if that was 430? Right.
01:03:45
Speaker
Right? Yeah. Okay, well, they're an hour further out in the ocean at that point. Yep. Okay, and that didn't get searched. Correct. It's little things like that where it's not really a big deal, right? Except when you're going from port to port on a cruise ship, it completely changes everything.
01:04:08
Speaker
And it i do think that if she truly was there At 530 and then was gone from the balcony that close to the port, it would have been more likely she was found.
01:04:30
Speaker
But based on sort of the other information we've, you know, gleaned from all the different sources from all the years that, you know, we've known about this since it was on probably within the first week, right, of news, because it did become news.
01:04:48
Speaker
It seems like if they had known...
01:04:56
Speaker
Because they would go off of what the family said. And if they had known it could have been earlier searched from where she could have been, you know, let's say 350 to on forward, right? Because they would know where the boat was at those times.
01:05:13
Speaker
They may have had a better chance of recovering her, but I don't even know that that would have made a difference. I actually don't know what happens to somebody in the middle of the ocean,
01:05:25
Speaker
So, i mean, it's it's a pretty grim outcome. It depends on how injured you are when you hit the water, how high you fell from, um how conscious you are for how long you're going to float versus how long you it's going to take for you to drown.
01:05:42
Speaker
um You know, any injury that leaves you unconscious for even a short period of time, you're going to be drowned you're gonna be drowning fast. um And ultimately, you know once you're drowned, you either sink and become part of the ocean again, or you float for a little bit and you decompose and you attract the essentially scavengers.
01:06:04
Speaker
But you're not going be there for long. Is that what you mean? Yeah, like i just I don't know if um As far as recovering the body goes, I know that yeah like if you're on the beach and you get swept away by the waves, theoretically, your body should be found ah eventually, right? Because the waves change direction and they come back in when the tide turns, right?
01:06:28
Speaker
Yeah. Okay, that's not the case when you're in the middle of the ocean. Right. Unless... like Unless they had immediately thought back to the—because the last person who talked was her brother, Bradley Bradley.
01:06:44
Speaker
And he he said that you know he went in at a specific time. Right. And so if they had plotted where um the boat had been starting, like you know i don't know, five or ten minutes after that, going forward— They would have had a better chance. That that didn't happen at all.
01:07:06
Speaker
ah There was, like, this is just, it's the timing of it all. The timing of it means she's gone, but not from the perspective of like someone murdered her and just miraculously left absolutely no traces. Certainly someone took her off this boat alive with no one knowing that.
01:07:27
Speaker
um I don't think she killed herself either. I've heard. i think that's why they throw the fact that she was gay in there. Well, and I think that that's true, too. But there's a lot more to that.
01:07:40
Speaker
um I don't necessarily think she killed herself. um I'm happy for it to be considered an accident. It doesn't really matter to me. i think the point is it wasn't any of this other nefarious ah scenario stuff, right? Correct.
01:07:56
Speaker
And it
01:08:01
Speaker
I know that they've, I've heard people say that if she's, they go off of the father seeing her at 530. And by that point in time, she would have been close enough to the port that they were about to dog at. you could be remembering two days ago. well she should have been found. And so they've said, well, she hasn't been found. And I'm like, well, okay. But at the same time,
01:08:29
Speaker
I would say it's highly likely that he was off a little by the time. Yeah. i did And I feel like he really did think like, oh, it was, you know, later. I don't know why. i think he was trying to minimize the amount of time because, i mean, he popped up and was immediately looking for her. Yeah.
01:08:51
Speaker
It was weird. All of it was weird. But it seemed like maybe it was to minimize the time he didn't have eyes on her or know where she was, which it doesn't matter. She was 23, right? He nothing wrong there.
01:09:02
Speaker
Absolutely nothing. I don't think her dad did anything wrong. um I don't think her brother or her mother did anything wrong. I don't think the people in the cabins beside of them did anything wrong. um I don't think that anybody did anything wrong here at all.
01:09:17
Speaker
And I think that they were further out in the ocean than everybody thinks. And I think that that's why when I say she ended up in the water, it was further out than everybody thinks, which is why she didn't show up on the shore somewhere. Yeah, and when you're on a boat like that, i know there's slow traveling, but like you're thirty if you if you just miss it by minutes, where you were.
01:09:41
Speaker
here twenty to thirty miles away from where you were That's what I mean. And I know they didn't search that far. Right. Right. And, you know, depending on where they're at, they've got to be in the ocean where it's deep enough for that ah ship to travel. Right.
01:09:57
Speaker
Right. And there's a very, I don't know exactly how this is going to go, but there's a very specific set of circumstances that I think lend credibility to the fact that Amy is in the ocean and she's been there the whole time. As far as Amy Bradley goes, it's wrapped up for me. If you want to wrap up your side of it in this episode and bring up further commentary, that is fine with me. I'll cut and paste accordingly.
01:10:24
Speaker
Okay. Well, um, In the docuseries, ah it becomes clear, and it's interesting. She sent her girlfriend.
01:10:36
Speaker
um They got into a big fight. Amy had um betrayed her ah by kissing someone else. They were having a long-distance relationship.
01:10:49
Speaker
And so she regretted kissing the other person, and she told her girlfriend about it, and she said, um you know, please forgive me. and Amy wrote her a message in a bottle, and it captured her feelings, and she gave it to her girlfriend ah one month before she left to go on the cruise.
01:11:11
Speaker
And on the docuseries, the girlfriend actually has the bottle, and she reads the note aloud, and you know you can go watch that if you want to. But it it's very deep, deep,
01:11:24
Speaker
um regret from Amy's side of it. And up to that point, her girlfriend hadn't decided what she was going to do, like if they were going to get back together or not.
01:11:36
Speaker
And um the girlfriend sort of reveals that they did decide that, you know, they were going to get back together before she left to go on the cruise. However, ah there's video footage of Amy dancing with Yellow yeah and And when she came back to her room and went out on the balcony, she told her brother, Bradley Bradley, that Yellow had come on to her physically. Okay. and
01:12:11
Speaker
in a tired, ah somewhat drunken ah state, which there's no question she had been drinking, um based on like the bar tab and like her brother even saying like, you know, they both felt fine. They felt good because, you know, they'd been drinking.
01:12:31
Speaker
um I think that her brain could have processed the fact that like ah the guy coming on to her wasn't her fault.
01:12:44
Speaker
Right. and she had just finally got her girlfriend to forgive her. And I think that she was like, oh, no, now I'm going to have to tell her about this.
01:12:59
Speaker
I follow you. Yeah. and And while it obviously wouldn't be a big deal to, like, sober Amy, right? um Not sober Amy, who's out on the balcony,
01:13:12
Speaker
like having had, you know, drank and had a good time and then thinking about, oh my gosh, I just mess everything up again. i don't think it would have been, i think it's different when you initiate something versus when somebody initiates something at you. Right.
01:13:28
Speaker
right And I think that she could have explained that, but I think that her, ah the way that her brain, how, and I don't know how impaired she was, but she was impaired.
01:13:40
Speaker
And I think being impaired could have made that seem like an insurmountable thing. Yeah. And that's why i say, because what I've heard is like the railing was too high.
01:13:52
Speaker
um She couldn't have possibly ah fallen. Right. Right. All those kinds of things. Her shoes were left behind. um the All the little things that add up to, like, she didn't go over the side.
01:14:06
Speaker
Well, when I heard that particular accounting of things, I could really see that happening. Now, I'm not saying that is what happened. It's just a completely non-suicidal person could have a really dumb idea to jump off of the boat because of the fact that, you know...
01:14:28
Speaker
A guy just hit on her. And even though she stopped it, she was now going to have to tell her girlfriend that this guy had kissed her and she was never going to forgive her.
01:14:40
Speaker
And so her life was over, right? Is it blown out of proportion? Absolutely, it is, right? But if you hear, if you listen to her girlfriend read the note that she wrote, it gives a lot of texture to the context because she's very dramatic in the note.
01:15:02
Speaker
And it's like, she feels like her girlfriend is never going to forgive her. And like, she is so incredibly sorry that she's made this terrible mistake. And it clicked with me that that is ah the exact kind of thing that like an inebriated person who's, you know, not thinking clearly would absolutely jump off a boat for
01:15:28
Speaker
I could see that, too. I mean, all my contention here is that night, Amy Bradley, or early morning if you want to call it that, Amy Bradley went into the water.
01:15:42
Speaker
She did. And that is where she remains. I feel like this... that This case... So, I guess my point is, if they had looked further out, they probably would have recovered her that day, right?
01:15:59
Speaker
Potentially, yeah. ah They didn't, and the timeline as it sits indicates that she should have shown up, right?
01:16:11
Speaker
And that is simply her father saying, I saw her at 5.30 on the balcony. And if it was actually 4.30...
01:16:20
Speaker
then it's a whole different situation. I've never heard them explore those possibilities, right? But that accounts for why she hasn't shown up. um I also think, you know, i think that there's a myriad of, you know, little nuances here and there. I don't think anybody that has come forward as an eyewitness, except for maybe two or three people, i think that they legit are trying to help, but it's not helping, right?
01:16:50
Speaker
yeah And her family can't accept that she, for whatever reason, fell off the boat or jumped off the boat or she ended up in water that night. I don't think anybody pushed her. Okay. Her shoes were by her chair.
01:17:08
Speaker
And logic says if she was going to leave the room, she would put on her shoes.
01:17:15
Speaker
Right. And so because of that, It just makes sense. And, you know, I wouldn't cast it like one way or the other as far as what exactly happened.
01:17:28
Speaker
But I don't think there was foul play involved. People go a little crazy when they don't find evidence of a crime or evidence of an accident or evidence of a suicide or evidence of sex trafficking.
01:17:45
Speaker
And they jump and go... I'm picking the sex trafficking. That's the one that they land on. Right. Except there is evidence here. The evidence is that she was last seen on the balcony and that her shoes were out there.
01:18:04
Speaker
She is not out there. Right. Right. There is evidence. It's just, everybody just ignores it. Right. To me, that's just a shame.
01:18:18
Speaker
Well, yeah it is a shame. And there's more to this because there's other people who have disappeared this way that like we're going to talk about.
01:18:29
Speaker
And we're going to talk about how their cases are similar and different from the case of Amy Bradley in this series that we're doing called Overboard. Do you have anything else today on Amy Bradley that you want to add?
01:18:42
Speaker
No, that's it. Okay, so we'll come back and we're going to tell you yet another story of a missing person vanishing on the ocean and kind of what the aftermath looked like in that story in the next episode.
01:18:59
Speaker
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01:19:24
Speaker
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01:19:33
Speaker
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Speaker
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01:20:13
Speaker
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