VA - Amy Bradley - missing from cruise ship, Curacao - 1998 #3

[RandyMcDonald]

That’s a really good point actually. I went to Grenada on my honeymoon in October 2020 and remember reading that consensual same-sex sexual activity among men is criminalized (on the State department’s website). It also says that Grenadian society is intolerant of general same-sex sexual conduct. And that’s today’s society.

I looked up what it says about other Caribbean islands —

Curaçao, Aruba, Saint Martin, Trinidad and Tobago, Bahamas, Dominican Republic: no laws or bans against LGBQT individuals or events

Barbados: same-sex relations are criminalized and carry a possible life sentence

Jamaica: specific prohibitions on physical intimacy between persons of the same sex; negative attitudes towards LGBQT individuals and communities are widespread and reports of discrimination and abuse are frequent (including assault, “corrective rape” of women accused of being lesbians, arbitrary detention, mob attacks, stabbings, harassment by hospital and prison staff, blackmail) and police have not been responsive in making arrests or prosecuting assailants in these cases

Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines: same-sex sexual activity is illegal

Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis: same-sex activity between adult men is illegal

Travel Advisories | Travel.State.gov

Travel Advisories keep U.S. citizens informed about destination-specific risks and essential precautions, making your travel abroad safer.

travel.state.gov

The Caribbean isn't a whole. Curaçao, like Aruba and the other Dutch islands, then seems to have been more liberal than most of the Caribbean, at least in part because of the continuing Dutch connection.

 

[RandyMcDonald]

well exactly, lol that was my point in asking. i'm not outright discounting ANY theory i'm just curious why some seem to lean more towards a jump or fall because maybe i missed something like neighboring rooms hearing a scream, thud, etc. I wonder what exactly the "commotion" was that her dad had heard

absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence absolutely, but also, weighing one theory more than another simply based on statistics ('more likely to have fallen than been ST') doesn't hold up for me at all.

MOO

The issue is that there is no evidence of a high-risk sex trafficking ring that operates by abducting tourists operating in Curaçao. The sex trade on that island operates with women who come voluntarily enough from neighbouring countries, Amy was not uniquely beautiful much less unique as a white woman (there were something like ten million white people next door in a Venezuela that was starting to have hard times), and the different sightings including the ones of her in California and Barbados are not credible. (Why, if she was a sex slave, would they smuggle her across international frontiers so that she could see street performers and walk on the beach?)

Something unlikely happened to her. A fall--the sort of accident that can easily happen, especially if you have been drinking a lot--is intrinsically more likely than an abduction that serves no obvious purpose but only creates massive liabilities for the perpetrators, and which runs against what we know of their established practices. (And, I should note, even if there was an abduction, the liabilities would still exist. Amy would not have lived long afterwards.)

As I and other people have noted elsewhere, the whole sex trafficking line of argument is best understood as the family working through their apparently unresolvable concerns about Amy being a lesbian. We did not know this at the time--some people may have suspected, but I am pretty sure this was not mentioned often--but knowing this now helps us make sense of this.

 

[333_OnlyHalfEvil]

well exactly, lol that was my point in asking. i'm not outright discounting ANY theory i'm just curious why some seem to lean more towards a jump or fall because maybe i missed something like neighboring rooms hearing a scream, thud, etc. I wonder what exactly the "commotion" was that her dad had heard

absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence absolutely, but also, weighing one theory more than another simply based on statistics ('more likely to have fallen than been ST') doesn't hold up for me at all.

MOO

I'm so curious if anyone else heard anything...there were people above and below their cabin, did no one hear or see anything? If she fell in, would she have bounced off of any part of the ship as she fell? But if she left the cabin, she must have stopped for a different pair of shoes in her luggage...did no one else sleeping in the room hear her rummaging around or the door opening/closing? Did she not use the toilet, after drinking all night? Had the parents been drinking also, or did they take sleeping pills at night?

 

[sasha17]

I'm so curious if anyone else heard anything...there were people above and below their cabin, did no one hear or see anything? If she fell in, would she have bounced off of any part of the ship as she fell? But if she left the cabin, she must have stopped for a different pair of shoes in her luggage...did no one else sleeping in the room hear her rummaging around or the door opening/closing? Did she not use the toilet, after drinking all night? Had the parents been drinking also, or did they take sleeping pills at night?

This is question I haven't seen answered. I know Amy's brown sandals were left on the balcony. Did she have other shoes with her on the trip? If so, are those other shoes missing? Or is it presumed she was barefoot when she went missing?

 

[RandyMcDonald]

I am reminded strongly of the insistence of the Sodder family, the parents especially insisting that their five missing children must not have died in the fire but were actually still alive elsewhere. The scale of the denial there was huge: They were apparently able to ignore the evidence of some remains in the ruin of their house, they paid for billboards asking for information, they incorporated cruel prank calls and mail into their scenario as proof of life, they even apparently ignored the eldest son who had apparently gotten into the children's room only to find them non-responsive. (He had tried to discourage his parents from keeping up the search.)

Why did they insist so much? This was their way of dealing with a horrific loss. Absent any clear proof that their children were dead, they preferred to believe that their children were alive. They even came up with really unlikely theories, like the idea that the Mafia did this to them in retaliation for the father's opposition to Mussolini, to explain what happened. (That the Mafia was actually a leading enemy of Mussolini, collaborating with the Allies when they invaded Italy, never got mentioned.)

Beyond that, there was also an issue of guilt. Two different people had apparently warned Sodder before the fire that the electrical wiring he had installed in the home he had built was of poor quality and could start a fire. The parents seem to have chosen to read these not as sincere warnings but rather as threats, coming from the same agency that would later kidnap their children. The alternative, that different people were warning the Sodders of an catastrophe that did come to place, would have been unthinkable. They would need to accept responsibility for the fire and the deaths, and that would plausibly break them.

So many of the same factors work here. Amy's parents and brother were unhappy with her declared sexual orientation, constantly trying to downplay it and to present Amy in a more heteronormative light. This had significant costs on Amy, enough that she began to drink heavily. If all this led to her having a fatal accident ... ? That would be something that would be very difficult for the family to deal with. So, you have a relapse into denial, a public denial that Amy was lesbian and a presentation of their daughter as obviously so attractive to men that she was a focus of attention from across the ship and beyond. Amy was such a compelling heterosexual that her presence was even able to get her abducted as a sex slave, because she was just that attractive.

What Amy would have thought of this--well, she is not here to speak for herself, and we only really learned about what she thought as a result of the documentary. The ongoing social media meltdown of her brother on X might be best read as him coming to terms with the idea that, now that we know more about Amy, the story the Bradleys have been telling themselves for three decades is starting to come undone.

 

[Sweetluv]

Yes, she had other shoes ..
Not sure , if she did leave the cabin, if she put on shoes or not.

 

[333_OnlyHalfEvil]

I remember reading previously that Amy had wanted to watch the ship dock that morning. Does anyone know where their cabin was in relation to where they were heading? Could she have tried to stand on the table to help see how close they were getting to land?

 

[TizerisT]

A western

The issue is that there is no evidence of a high-risk sex trafficking ring that operates by abducting tourists operating in Curaçao. The sex trade on that island operates with women who come voluntarily enough from neighbouring countries, Amy was not uniquely beautiful much less unique as a white woman

A white young female tourist from the US would be a priority target, precisely because of those values. As mentioned before, there are levels in terms of what kidnappers would want, and she ticks a lot of boxes. A lot of those guys wouldn't care about her looks too much as she fits the profile, especially with white people being in the minority in the region.

A white woman becomes much more desirable in far off lands than she would at home. The same way a Chinese woman becomes much more desired when she goes to Europe, for example.

 

[Sweetluv]

When I go on a cruise, it is announced what time the ship will pull into port, what time you can get off the ship if you choose, and what time you need to be back. When you exit the ship as well as return, they swipe your cruise ship card which records that you left or returned. Did they have this feature in 1998? Im thinking they did not....

 

[Sweetluv]

Also, there has been speculation if Amy left to buy drugs.
When you get off the ship at a Port...arriving back to the ship , your bag or purse is put through an xray machine like at the airport and you must empty your pockets.
.I assume this was not done either in 1998?
IF it was, I doubt Amy planned to do something like that and take a risk.

 

[RandyMcDonald]

A western

A white young female tourist from the US would be a priority target, precisely because of those values. As mentioned before, there are levels in terms of what kidnappers would want, and she ticks a lot of boxes. A lot of those guys wouldn't care about her looks too much as she fits the profile, especially with white people being in the minority in the region.

A white woman becomes much more desirable in far off lands than she would at home. The same way a Chinese woman becomes much more desired when she goes to Europe, for example.

There are five million or so white women in Venezuela just next door to Curaçao. That is just one country in the Caribbean basin. White people are just not scarce there, including desperate white people who might well voluntarily enter sex work.

I really do not understand how it makes sense to claim a young white woman from the US would be a "primary target". This would only be the case if they actually were abducted at a high frequency, but this just is not true.

This is especially true for Amy, since she was not the sort of traveller--a solo female traveller backpacking around the Caribbean say--who could be at elevated risk. This is probably what happened in 2007 in Syria to Canadian Jacqueline Vienneau, who was backpacking around the Middle East and apparently had one bad encounter. Amy was travelling on a cruise ship with her family, not even having gotten to a Curaçao which is actually one of the stablest places in the Caribbean.

Is there even a single case of a young white Western woman being abducted from a cruise ship to be made into a sex slave? Just one.

Sex traffickers deciding it makes sense to abduct a non-isolated young white American woman from the cruise ship where she is travelling with her family, to make her into a sex slave, when there is an abundance of white women locally who volunteer for sex work ... That is not how they work. Why would they risk themselves, especially when they do not need to do that? There are two hundred million white people living in Latin America, many of them much more vulnerable and much more willing than a random American.

As for many of the sightings, they are not credible. Why, exactly, would she have been taken to San Francisco to see street performances and Barbados to the beach? What would be the incentive to do that for sex traffickers who would literally be letting a high-profile abductee walk free? How would you even get travel documents from the Dutch without someone noticing things were up? Et cetera.

The whole myth of Amy as uniquely attractive is best understood as their family working out, badly, their problems with Amy being lesbian. "But Amy can't be lesbian, she looks so pretty when she dresses nicely!"

 

[333_OnlyHalfEvil]

There are five million or so white women in Venezuela just next door to Curaçao. That is just one country in the Caribbean basin. White people are just not scarce there, including desperate white people who might well voluntarily enter sex work.

I really do not understand how it makes sense to claim a young white woman from the US would be a "primary target". This would only be the case if they actually were abducted at a high frequency, but this just is not true.

This is especially true for Amy, since she was not the sort of traveller--a solo female traveller backpacking around the Caribbean say--who could be at elevated risk. This is probably what happened in 2007 in Syria to Canadian Jacqueline Vienneau, who was backpacking around the Middle East and apparently had one bad encounter. Amy was travelling on a cruise ship with her family, not even having gotten to a Curaçao which is actually one of the stablest places in the Caribbean.

Is there even a single case of a young white Western woman being abducted from a cruise ship to be made into a sex slave? Just one.

Sex traffickers deciding it makes sense to abduct a non-isolated young white American woman from the cruise ship where she is travelling with her family, to make her into a sex slave, when there is an abundance of white women locally who volunteer for sex work ... That is not how they work. Why would they risk themselves, especially when they do not need to do that? There are two hundred million white people living in Latin America, many of them much more vulnerable and much more willing than a random American.

As for many of the sightings, they are not credible. Why, exactly, would she have been taken to San Francisco to see street performances and Barbados to the beach? What would be the incentive to do that for sex traffickers who would literally be letting a high-profile abductee walk free? How would you even get travel documents from the Dutch without someone noticing things were up? Et cetera.

The whole myth of Amy as uniquely attractive is best understood as their family working out, badly, their problems with Amy being lesbian. "But Amy can't be lesbian, she looks so pretty when she dresses nicely!"

Yeah, yanking someone away from their family who is going to immediately miss them seems like a good way to get your criminal ring exposed. There are plenty of solo cruisers who would fit the bill without anyone noticing immediately if they disappeared.

 

[RandyMcDonald]

Yeah, yanking someone away from their family who is going to immediately miss them seems like a good way to get your criminal ring exposed. There are plenty of solo cruisers who would fit the bill without anyone noticing immediately if they disappeared.

If you were going to try to abduct a cruise ship passenger, going after a solo traveller would make more sense. Depending on how much they did or did not interact with other people, the disappearance might well go unnoticed for a very long time.

The Charley Project has a page on Merrian Lyn Carver.

Merrian Lynn Carver – The Charley Project

She went on a cruise to Alaska in 2004, leaving from Seatlte on the 27th of August. She was last seen on the 28th. The cruise returned on the 3rd of September, she did not board her plane back, and her family reported her missing on the 7th. That was a huge interval of time, something that would have allowed a killer to escape. (There, it seems like the tendency is to assume suicide.)

 

[333_OnlyHalfEvil]

Also, there has been speculation if Amy left to buy drugs.
When you get off the ship at a Port...arriving back to the ship , your bag or purse is put through an xray machine like at the airport and you must empty your pockets.
.I assume this was not done either in 1998?
IF it was, I doubt Amy planned to do something like that and take a risk.

Me personally, I would never leave a ship and set foot in a foreign country to get drugs. Having cash on you and trusting someone you just met, plus buying drugs in a place you don't know the law, and being able to trust that wherever this guy you just met is taking you is safe....Well that's an engraved invitation to a robbery at the very least, and even in 98 we could have seen through that. Amy seemed smart and educated. Would 6 light beers over the course of an entire night be enough to override her sensibilities?

The smarter thing to do is to let the contact go get the drugs, then buy what you want from him when he gets back.

 

[TizerisT]

She indeed would be a prime target, you ask any white woman who has travelled a fair bit. The notion that she would be considered average out there is fanciful at best. She would be among the most at-risk type of traveller and would have to be on high-alert the moment she steps out of her families view.

 

[K9Enzo]

Based on all the so-called sightings, AB was somehow in a brothel, on a beach, in a bar bathroom, and asking a taxi driver for help, all while never managing to actually get help or be found. It’s like everyone saw just enough to make a dramatic story, but not enough to make a difference. At some point, it stops sounding like evidence and starts sounding like imagination. You can’t be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I believe she went overboard from the family’s cabin balcony that morning. But if something else did happen to her, the hard truth is she likely didn’t survive more than 24 to 48 hours. imo

 

[RandyMcDonald]

She indeed would be a prime target, you ask any white woman who has travelled a fair bit. The notion that she would be considered average out there is fanciful at best. She would be among the most at-risk type of traveller and would have to be on high-alert the moment she steps out of her families view.

All white women travelling abroad are going to say that they were at risk of being sexually trafficked, truly?

Even in parts of the world with large white populations like the Caribbean basin?

 

[RandyMcDonald]

Based on all the so-called sightings, AB was somehow in a brothel, on a beach, in a bar bathroom, and asking a taxi driver for help, all while never managing to actually get help or be found. It’s like everyone saw just enough to make a dramatic story, but not enough to make a difference. At some point, it stops sounding like evidence and starts sounding like imagination. You can’t be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

I can easily imagine that many of these different witnesses did see different women in different circumstances, just failing to do anything about it. Assuming that they were all Amy is reductionist.

I believe she went overboard from the family’s cabin balcony that morning. But if something else did happen to her, the hard truth is she likely didn’t survive more than 24 to 48 hours. imo

The strongest possibility if she did not fall from the balcony is that something was done to her by someone on the cruise ship. This is entirely imaginable, especially since we know that the cruise ship industry now does have some safety issues, whether talking about passengers or crew. Cruise ship safety is a concern.

The thing is, this scenario does not allow Amy to be alive. This is the reason why the Bradleys have not advanced it.

 

[TizerisT]

No, you are deliberately trying to misquote me, and you'll be called out every time you try to do that.
They receive a higher degree of male attention than at home, maybe even much more depending on the region.
This is not breaking news. And again, caucasian people are very much in the minority out there, as we know.

 

[RandyMcDonald]

No, you are deliberately trying to misquote me, and you'll be called out every time you try to do that.

No, I am not.

They receive a higher degree of male attention, maybe even much more depending on the region.

Attention translating into ... ?

This is not breaking news. And again, caucasian people are very much in the minority out there, as we know.

They may be in the minority, but there are absolutely very large numbers of white people in the Caribbean, including many people who would be much more likely targets for sex trafficking than a white American woman travelling with her family.

There were something like five million white women next door in a Venezuela that, circa the 1990s, was beginning its breakdown; there are millions more white women in a Cuba that has been hemorrhaging population since the 1960s; there are millions more white women in the Caribbean basin beyond these two countries. Amy was not rare. A minority, yes, but not rare.

Moreover, we actually know a fair bit about the sex trade in Curaçao and elsewhere. We know that the prostituted women are drawn overwhelmingly from poorer countries in the Caribbean basin, Venezuela becoming more prominent as things have gotten worse. From what we know of the sex trade's operations

Travelling white American women might well get more attention, quite probably more negative attention. That sort of attention would translate most readily into attacks against women, like what probably happened to Jacqueline Vienneau in Syria back in 2007. That would not translate into the abduction of random women and their coercion into a sex trade that is well known.