Amy Bradley, 23, Disappeared from cruise ship en route to Curaçao, 24 March 1998 #4

[neesaki]

I disagree with item 1). David Carmichael claimed to have seen Amy with 2 handlers. The person he saw had a Tasmanian devil tattoo like Amy. No?
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Yes, that is correct. Contrary to what some here claim, there were some verified sightings. I have to wonder what would be the motivation for someone to dispute them, considering there’s no evidence to prove they’re not valid.

 

[Hiandmighty]

Yes, that is correct. Contrary to what some here claim, there were some verified sightings. I have to wonder what would be the motivation for someone to dispute them, considering there’s no evidence to prove they’re not valid.

There is no way to prove these sightings were "verified". There is no verification process for sightings.

 

[Hiandmighty]

Says who? Just asking, as in how could you possibly know this? A link or two? TIA

What part?

 

[trenchmouth]

Yes, that is correct. Contrary to what some here claim, there were some verified sightings. I have to wonder what would be the motivation for someone to dispute them, considering there’s no evidence to prove they’re not valid.

Agree. There seems to be an over the top opinion on this forum that all the sightings are not her and that she fell overboard. I don't get it. People need to keep an open mind.


To be fair though, I don't know how you verify a sighting? It could have been her but it also could have been someone else. The tattoo makes me believe it is more likely her than not.

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[Hiandmighty]

Long and interesting link about memory and eyewitness accounts:

"Prior experiences are capable of biasing the visual perceptual experi- ence and reinforcing an individual’s conception of what was seen. We also have learned that these qualified perceptual experiences are stored by a system of memory that is highly malleable and continuously evolving, neither retaining nor divulging content in an informational vacuum. The fidelity of our memories to actual events may be compromised by many factors at all stages of processing, from encoding to storage to retrieval. Unknown to the individual, memories are forgotten, reconstructed, updated, and distorted. Therefore, caution must be exercised when utilizing eyewitness procedures and when relying on eyewitness identifications in a judicial context."

http://opd.ohio.gov/Portals/0/PDF/W...prit_ Assessing Eyewitness Identification.pdf

"Recently, post-conviction DNA exonerations of innocent persons have dramatically highlighted the problems with eyewitness identifications.6,7 In the United States, more than 300 exonerations have resulted from post- conviction DNA testing since 1989.8

According to the Innocence Project, at least one mistaken eyewitness identification was present in almost three- quarters of DNA exonerations.9 In many of these cases, eyewitness identification played a significant evidentiary role, and almost without exception, the eyewitnesses who testified expressed complete confidence that they had chosen the perpetrator. Many eyewitnesses testified with high confidence despite earlier expressions of uncertainty.10"

 

[liltexans]

Do human traffickers usually choose women with tattoos for sex work? Particularly when choosing white American women? Amy was not a young girl. She was a 23 year old woman. IMO, she looks like she’s in her 20s, not younger. Why would she have been selected from all the women and girls on the ship? Surely there were teenagers on that ship or women who didn’t have identifiable tattoos. Or do people believe Amy went willingly at first and then became trapped in the world of sex work?

I’m trying to understand the trafficking angle because it sincerely does not make sense to me with this victim in this case. I don’t think it’s fair to say one doesn’t have an open mind because they don’t understand why the trafficking angle is so obvious to others. I really don’t see the evidence of it, but I don’t claim to know what happened to Amy.

 

[neesaki]

There is no way to prove these sightings were "verified". There is no verification process for sightings.

As far as I know, I haven’t heard of any proof they were not valid sightings. If there is I would love to see it. Hey, I’m open to all possibilities, but I’ve seen nothing so far , nothing.

 

[Hiandmighty]

"Human vision does not capture a perfect, error-free “trace” of a witnessed event. What an individual actually perceives can be heavily influenced by bias18 and expectations derived from cultural factors, behavioral goals, emotions, and prior experiences with the world. For eyewitness identification to take place, perceived information must be encoded in memory, stored, and subsequently retrieved. As time passes, memories become less stable. In addition, suggestion and the exposure to new information may influence and distort what the individual believes she or he has seen."

Same link.

 

[Hiandmighty]

Btw, the old sketch of the red headed handler looks *exactly* like my trainer. It's really close, but he is 28.

 

[trenchmouth]

Btw, the old sketch of the red headed handler looks *exactly* like my trainer. It's really close, but he is 28.

You need a new trainer [emoji23]

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[trenchmouth]

So really we have nothing new in this case in probably 10 years or more. No sightings that I'm aware of. No new tips. It will likely never be solved unfortunately. Where do we go from here?

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[Hiandmighty]

Agree. There seems to be an over the top opinion on this forum that all the sightings are not her and that she fell overboard. I don't get it. People need to keep an open mind.


To be fair though, I don't know how you verify a sighting? It could have been her but it also could have been someone else. The tattoo makes me believe it is more likely her than not.

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I personally haven't heard a kidnapping theory that makes sense to me. WHY?why her? Why a 23 year old American woman with a family with resources and who wants to find her.

A kidnapping theory has so many holes in it. Nothing about the aftermath theories makes sense to me.

 

[DakotaMayi]

Do human traffickers usually choose women with tattoos for sex work? Particularly when choosing white American women? Amy was not a young girl. She was a 23 year old woman. IMO, she looks like she’s in her 20s, not younger. Why would she have been selected from all the women and girls on the ship? Surely there were teenagers on that ship or women who didn’t have identifiable tattoos. Or do people believe Amy went willingly at first and then became trapped in the world of sex work?

I’m trying to understand the trafficking angle because it sincerely does not make sense to me with this victim in this case. I don’t think it’s fair to say one doesn’t have an open mind because they don’t understand why the trafficking angle is so obvious to others. I really don’t see the evidence of it, but I don’t claim to know what happened to Amy.

Maybe she was just an easy target? She was off going around the boat on her own, maybe the younger girls were over looked too much by nervous parents? Maybe Amy was more willing than the younger girls?

 

[DakotaMayi]

I personally haven't heard a kidnapping theory that makes sense to me. WHY?why her? Why a 23 year old American woman with a family with resources and who wants to find her.

A kidnapping theory has so many holes in it. Nothing about the aftermath theories makes sense to me.

Why not her? Because she has a family?... Having a family does not make you exempt. And maybe, she was the easiest target for Yellow. Maybe no one showed an interest in him.

 

[JSolt1210]

I think my biggest difficulty with the kidnapping theory is just the logistics of getting her off the ship.

By all accounts, she was a "star athlete," which to me suggests strength and agility. "She was very intense," her basketball coach, Diane Dockus, said, according to one article. To get her off this ship against her will, you'd have to incapacitate her, drug her. But how do you sneak out someone who's been drugged off of a ship without garnering any attention? Maybe not in the moment, since of course people are on vacation and going about their business—but after the fact, after word gotten out? Did anyone remember seeing two men leading a "drunk" woman off the ship? According to Wikipedia, the Rhapsody can hold about 2,435 passengers and 765 crew members. That's 3,200 people. I don't know if the ship was filled to capacity on that voyage, but even at half the complement, no one saw anything?

You could hide her in something. But you'd have to drug her enough that she'd be out, and then put her in something that can completely conceal and transport a 5'6" 120lbs young adult. How far up on the ship was the place where she was last seen? I don't know how simple that is without, again, garnering attention after the fact.

The attention to me is a big deal. If the ship docked and passengers were allowed off around 7am (I can't imagine it would be earlier than that, since sunrise was around 6:30am), and by the time the first page to Amy went out at 7:50am "most of the passengers had disembarked," according to Amy's mother, then this means that 2,000+ were moving about in the space of less than an hour. That's a lot of people in such a short amount of time, and no one saw anything strange?

Now, by all means, if anything like the above scenarios had been reported during docking, then I'd be more inclined to take more seriously the later sightings on the island.

 

[DakotaMayi]

Is it fact that Yellow knew that Amy was missing before the family had a chance to inform anyone?

 

[JSolt1210]

Is it fact that Yellow knew that Amy was missing before the family had a chance to inform anyone?

According to Amy's brother, Brad, at 9:00am, Yellow approached him and said, "Sorry to hear about your sister." At that time, the page to Amy had been sent over the ship—just for her to contact her family, I assume. The family says that no information about her disappearance had been disclosed at that point, so why should he offer condolences if nothing was wrong?

That makes sense to me. But she had partied hard the night before, and some reports say she had gotten sick. What if "sorry about your sister" meant something more like, "I'm sorry she had a rough night!" Just MOO.

 

[DakotaMayi]

According to Amy's brother, Brad, at 9:00am, Yellow approached him and said, "Sorry to hear about your sister." At that time, the page to Amy had been sent over the ship—just for her to contact her family, I assume. The family says that no information about her disappearance had been disclosed at that point, so why should he offer condolences if nothing was wrong?

That makes sense to me. But she had partied hard the night before, and some reports say she had gotten sick. What if "sorry about your sister" meant something more like, "I'm sorry she had a rough night!" Just MOO.

Do we have any links for when the announcement went out?

 

[JSolt1210]

Do we have any links for when the announcement went out?

http://unsolvedmysteries.wikia.com/wiki/Amy_Bradley

Under "Suspects" below.

 

[DakotaMayi]

http://unsolvedmysteries.wikia.com/wiki/Amy_Bradley

Under "Suspects" below.

Woh! I can't trust anything with any kind of "Wiki" in it lol. I was wondering if we had an LE or MSM link.