The 2025 Netflix true-crime documentary series, Amy Bradley Is Missing, revisits a strange incident that occurred in 1998, when 23-year-old Amy Bradley disappeared during a Caribbean cruise. 26 years later, Amy is still missing, and her disappearance remains an unsolved mystery, with multiple theories about her possible fate. In short, this Netflix documentary is intriguing and chilling in equal measure, reflecting on the Bradley family's commendable efforts to find their missing daughter.
From a young age, Amy Bradley was a confident and courageous girl, who brightened the lives of her parents, Ron and Iva, with joy and love. Keenly interested in outdoor activities and sports, Amy discovered her talent for swimming and basketball during high school and decided to pursue the sport while completing her studies. She became the first student to receive an athletic scholarship to Longwood University in her home state of Virginia and quickly joined the women's basketball team. At home, Amy maintained a close relationship with her younger brother, Brad, and also with her parents, making them a very loving and close-knit American family.
Stars: Iva Bradley, Ron Bradley, Erin Cullather
In March 1998, Ron and Iva Bradley won an all-expenses-paid trip to the Caribbean islands with the luxury cruise line Royal Caribbean International, in a contest organized by the insurance company where they worked. The couple was very excited about the trip and even more so knowing they could also bring their two children. Although they couldn't get separate rooms for Amy and Brad, none of the four minded sharing the same suite, as a family vacation was much more important to them. On March 21, they departed on a cruise, leaving their home in the care of Erin Cullather, Amy's best friend and Brad's then-girlfriend.
The Rhapsody of the Seas cruise ship, operated by Royal Caribbean International, ran seven-day cruises every March. Their itinerary included departing from San Juan, Puerto Rico, with stops in the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curaçao, St. Maarten, and St. Thomas, before returning to San Juan on day seven. As their vacation began, the Bradley family did all the usual tourist things, such as recording videos of their trip and getting ready to enjoy the cruise staff's amenities. By day three, Amy had reportedly become a familiar face on the ship thanks to her energetic and cheerful personality, and several of the other passengers, as well as the staff, had befriended her.
On this third day, the ship stopped in Aruba and then sailed to Curaçao, with a party organized for the tourists on deck. While Ron and Iva retired to their room relatively early, around 1 a.m., Amy and Brad stayed behind to continue the party, as they both had the keycards needed to return to their cabin. A few hours later, Brad left the party and spent some time alone on the outside deck before returning to his cabin to call it a night. Before leaving, he had informed Amy of his decision, as they were both dancing with different groups by then, and he returned to the cabin at 3:35.
This time was confirmed by the electronic keycard used to enter the cabin, which recorded each use, and just 5 minutes later, at 3:40, Amy also returned to the room, using her keycard. The brothers spent some more time smoking and chatting on the balcony next to the cabin, and Brad finally went to sleep in his bed. Around 5:30 a.m., Ron woke up and thought about checking on his children, remembering that they had been out partying late the night before. He was relieved to see Brad in his bed, while Amy was asleep in a chair on the balcony. About 40 minutes later, Ron remembers waking up again and looking toward the balcony, but this time he couldn't see Amy.
The balcony door was open, unlike most times, and Amy's pack of cigarettes wasn't there, nor was the shirt she had worn the night before, which was on the cabin sofa. All of this suggested that Amy had left early in the morning, and Ron was convinced she must have gone up to the upper decks to take photos of Curaçao, as the ship was about to dock. Still, he decided to go out and look for Amy to make sure she was safe, but she wasn't found anywhere. Unfortunately, Amy Bradley was not found anywhere on the ship or in Curaçao, and she remains missing to this day, 26 years later.
FBI detectives began speaking with each member of the Bradley family individually, naturally suspecting some internal crime at first. From the outside, there seemed to be reason to consider the possibility that Amy had also committed suicide, as she didn't get along very well with her parents at the time. During her high school years, Amy realized she was attracted to women and eventually had several girlfriends. But she also feared that her homosexuality would offend and hurt her parents, and sought help from her friends on several occasions to confess.
Eventually, Amy told her parents and also told them about her girlfriend, Kat Lovelace, but the Bradleys weren't very happy about this revelation. In the documentary, they admit that they were too nervous about what others would think of their daughter and the difficulties Amy would face in her life because of this. Although there may have been some arguments in the Bradley household regarding this situation, the relationship between Amy and her parents didn't break down after she came out, and they remained together. Another minor incident, involving cheating on his girlfriend a few months before the trip and then terribly regretting the decision, was also considered a possible motive for suicide for a time. However, the matter had been resolved a few weeks before the cruise, and they had even gotten back together, meaning Amy's romantic life was pretty much settled by that point.
In addition to the lack of a significant motive, Amy's personality and outlook on life, as reported by her loved ones, also suggested that it was impossible for her to have committed suicide. Therefore, the theory that she had jumped into the water from the balcony seems very unconvincing, while the possibility that she had fallen accidentally could still make sense. After all, Amy had been drinking heavily that night and could have fallen overboard in the early hours of the morning. Given the extreme strength of the ocean current between Aruba and Curaçao, anything that had fallen into the water would undoubtedly have ended up on the shore. However, neither Amy nor her clothing or accessories reached the beaches, and an extensive search on land and water confirmed that she had not been found.
The most plausible theory about what may have happened to Amy Bradley is that she was kidnapped from the cruise ship and taken to the island of Curaçao, where she was held hostage and forced into some type of labor, likely prostitution. There are numerous reasons to believe this theory, starting with the fact that a taxi driver in Curaçao recognized Amy's photograph on her missing persons posters and told police he had seen her shortly after her disappearance. According to the taxi driver, Amy approached him and asked where she could find a pay phone, but eventually walked in the opposite direction he had indicated. Although police searched the area, no further clues were found. The theory of Amy's abduction was corroborated by multiple testimonies, and all of these individuals appear in the Netflix documentary series. In August 1998, a Canadian man named David Carmichael had gone on a scuba diving trip with a friend to the Caribbean island of Curaçao, and they had chosen the relatively isolated area of Porto Marie for their underwater adventures. During this trip, David allegedly encountered a group of three people, a woman and two men, and the interaction was particularly strange when the woman suddenly approached him after realizing he spoke English.
He thought the woman wanted to say something to him, but couldn't, as the two men accompanying her indirectly pressured her not to. David clearly remembers one of the men staring at him with an angry, threatening glare, and claims that this unusual gaze was what made him remember the entire experience. To his surprise, David Carmichael later recognized the woman while watching an episode of "America's Most Wanted" months later, in December of that year. It was Amy Bradley, whom David recognized by her tattoos and piercings, and he continues to state, with complete confidence, that he met Amy in Porto Marie, and it seemed very clear that she was being held against her will.
By 2005, Amy Bradley's case was already viral on the internet, with countless people searching for clues. One of them eventually sent her family a lead in the form of a series of photographs. These photos, obtained from a shady website that essentially served as an escort catalog in the Caribbean, showed a woman posing suggestively, resembling Amy Bradley. Her family decided to release these images to the public during their appearance on "Dr. Phil," and it was then that a woman named Judy Maurer claimed to have encountered the same woman in Barbados in March 2005, seven years after Amy's disappearance. According to Judy, she had encountered the woman in a public restroom, in a seemingly difficult situation, as she was possibly being forced into a deal by a gang of dangerous-looking men. The FBI later analyzed the photographs sent to the Bradley family, and the forensic expert concluded that the woman in the photos appeared to be Amy. According to this theory, Amy Bradley managed to reach Curaçao on March 24, 1998, either by choice or because she was forced to do so. It's possible that she wanted to get drugs and was told she could buy them somewhere on the island, after which she was captured and held hostage. It's also possible that Amy was overpowered on the cruise ship and forced to disembark, after which she managed to escape and approached the taxi driver to ask for directions to a pay phone. However, this means that Amy was recaptured and forced to work as a prostitute on the island, or that she was a victim of human trafficking after a while. However, the FBI conducted extensive searches of all the brothels on Curaçao but was unable to find any trace of Amy, nor was it able to analyze the location where the 2005 photos were taken.
The only suspect in the case of Amy Bradley's disappearance has been a man named Alister "Yellow" Douglas, who used to work on the cruise ship as the band's bassist. Amy and Alister became friends during the cruise, and Iva recalls how he, like some other staff members, would constantly ask about Amy whenever the family sat down to dinner. On the night of her disappearance, Amy and Alister were seen together by two female passengers on the ship. Although they claim it was around 6:00 a.m., which would mean Alister did have something to do with her disappearance, the time could not be confirmed.
However, there were several interesting facts about Alister, which his own daughter, Amica, revealed to the police. When Amica was young, her mother had told her that, before she was born, Alister had begun behaving erratically and violently toward his pregnant wife. The woman then went through a briefcase her husband carried and found photos of many young white women. The collection of photos looked almost as if it had been assembled with the intention of creating some kind of catalog, suggesting that Alister, and likely members of his gang, had been involved in a sex trafficking ring that particularly targeted white women on vacation.
Interestingly, the Bradley family had an interaction on the cruise ship before Amy's disappearance, which somewhat corroborates this theory. As part of onboard services, an official photographer took photos of all guests, who could then obtain personal copies in the onboard studio. But when the Bradleys went to retrieve their photos, Amy's had already been collected by someone else. The family wasn't overly concerned, as they were able to obtain more copies, but it later appeared that Alister must have collected Amy's photos and passed them on to someone else.
The man David Carmichael had seen in Porto Marie was also Alister, and he found him to be quite authoritarian and manipulative regarding Amy's actions. Although Alister Douglas seemed to have something to do with her disappearance, the FBI found nothing suspicious against him. Alister had admitted to flirting with Amy prior to her disappearance and even offered to take a polygraph test when he was brought in as a suspect, but the test also didn't suggest he was lying. Amica even confronts her father over the phone in the documentary series, but Alister insists he really had nothing to do with Amy's disappearance. Either the man is telling the truth, or he has strong connections to Curaçao's criminal gangs (of which there are many), which have managed to keep him out of the investigation.
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