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

[MesquiteO21]

Presuming the existence of a sophisticated operation that not only targets American tourists for abduction as sex slaves, but goes after people who operatives might think are lesbian, seems to me to be a really big leap.

Do we have any evidence that this ring exists in Curacao, anything at all?

I had shared a trafficking report earlier from the US State Department.
We know who gets trafficked into the sex trade: Poor women from adjacent countries in the Caribbean basin, usually Hispanic (Colombia, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, etc) and sometimes Haitians.

What, exactly, would be the point of abducting an American tourist?
We know who gets trafficked into the sex trade: Poor women from adjacent countries in the Caribbean basin, usually Hispanic (Colombia, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, etc) and sometimes Haitians.

What, exactly, would be the point of abducting an American tourist?
It would be an operation for no particular reason--Amy was attractive but not the stunning beauty that her parents imagine her to be; she was normal--with potentially huge negative consequences, all for no obvious gain.

(I would also suggest that her parents' statements that she was beautiful, so desirable as to become a target for sex slavery, now reads like a tell. These statements are a continued denial of Amy's sexual orientation, a restatement of their belief that of course she cannot be lesbian, that she is attractive to men.)

I would also add that if, by any chance, there actually was an abduction of Amy, she did not live long past the abduction. Whether she was attacked on the ship or whether she made it somehow onto the mainland early in the morning to buy drugs, she did not live long after. The idea that she was kept captive and shuttled around the Caribbean for years ... Why would they expose themselves to such risk?

I am reminded of the Sodder parents insisting that their abducted children had been kept alive long after the fire. What would be the point of the abductors continuing to expose themselves to such risk? The only scenario that I can come up with, as I mentioned earlier, is that the children were not abducted but rescued, that they did not want to return to their home for whatever reason. (This, I emphasize, is not a scenario that I believe was the case with the Sodder family, which seems to have been a normal large family.) What possible reason would Amy have to stay loyal to the people who were raping her in a foreign country?

these are questions i can't answer since i don't have the mindset of a trafficker, and i understand why you bring them up. i admittedly don't know much about ST and i too have heard that victims tend to be more at risk women than someone on vacation with her family.

that said, just because the statistics we view today tell us that a woman like Amy would be considered low-risk for ST, doesn't make it impossible or even unlikely for her to have been a victim back then. i feel like a lot of people get tripped up viewing this case through the 2025 lens instead of 1998/early aughts. Yes her disappearance made news in the US, but news in the US wasn't necessarily news in the Caribbean. Sure they had newspapers and magazines but news was slower to reach across countries. 1998 didn't have all the happenings of every place in the world literally at its fingertips like we do now. People in 1998 couldn't have predicted that, and couldn't have imagined that some day there would be technology to analyze facial features from pictures found on escort websites. i think it's interesting that the alleged sightings of Amy seem to have stopped after about 2005 i believe was the last one. The internet really started growing exponentially at that time and her captors could've realized that and stopped advertising her on websites and letting her out in public

what would be the point of taking a white American when most of the victims are Caribbean women? variety and rarity, to put it bluntly. if most of the girls are of one race, then a green eyed white American is going to be rare and what's rare is valuable.

i truly hope Amy wasn't a victim of ST, but in my opinion, the evidence leads more to that and i see zero evidence for any other scenario.

MOO

 

[Radial Loop]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1947069484012871840

I’m struggling to follow the timeline.

Amy was dating Tom and had plans to see David Letterman in NY when she returned home. He was in love with her but she supposedly didn’t feel the same intensity.

But Amy had met Molly at her apartment and had plans to meet and reconcile when she returned from the cruise. Amy had sent her a postcard and this is proven from the documentary that they were in contact at the time of the cruise.

So Amy was seeing and romantically involved with both Tom and Molly?

I also hate the use of the word “alternating preferences” in his earlier post. The word is sexual orientation!! This is such a common misconception - that a woman will be left for a man by a bisexual. There are many bisexuals who lean more towards women than men for various reasons and vice versa.

The more I research - read Brad's social media posts the more uneasy I become. Frequently, more so in recent posts, he comes off as "unhinged". And there's that comment in the documentary, words to the effect - " I am 48 unmarried and have no children".

What does his marital - parental status have to do with his sister's disappearance? Why even throw that out? It gets back to what I alluded to in another post; this family is simply dysfunctional and has been for an exceedingly long time.

 

[Bluebear15]

They are a business first and foremost. Advertising that they "lost" a passenger isn't really in their interest. Especially if one of their employees was the last person seen with them.

Brad was the last person to see Amy, in the cabin. Nobody saw her after that, which is why nobody knows if she left the room.

 

[MesquiteO21]

The more I research - read Brad's social media posts the more uneasy I become. Frequently, more so in recent posts, he comes off as "unhinged". And there's that comment in the documentary, words to the effect - " I am 48 unmarried and have no children".

What does his marital - parental status have to do with his sister's disappearance? Why even throw that out? It gets back to what I alluded to in another post; this family is simply dysfunctional and has been for an exceedingly long time.

full disclosure i haven't seen the doc, but from what i understand wasn't part of the point to show how Amy's disappearance has affected the family? i don't find anything odd about him saying i can't bring myself to have kids after seeing my parents go through this. in fact i don't think that would be an uncommon thought process for many people at all.

if he seems unhinged, well, to be honest after your sister disappears without a trace and you still don't have answers nearly 30 years later, yeah i can see how that could make someone 'crazy' and 'unhinged'

MOO

 

[Rtrnofthemac]

There's nothing new. She fell or was thrown overboard. Any "sightings" are not real.

 

[Quill]

Ok so… we have to remember it was the 90s and the stereotypes of gay people at that time. A woman with hair that short absolutely would’ve been assumed to be a lesbian upon seeing her (today I feel like many cis het women have haircuts like that and of course there are many more non binary people who are out, but in the 90s it was a “tell”)

In the trafficker’s minds, taking a lesbian may be a “cover” because who would possibly think (again in the rather homophobic 90s) that a lesbian would be taken for ST?

I’m not saying I fully support this theory, if she was ST it very well could’ve been absolutely nothing to do with her perceived sexuality. But I’m also not entirely discounting how a trafficker might think and why they might see a rationale for targeting a lesbian

MOO

Different perspective here. I wore my hair that short in the 80's and 90's and I was and am as straight as a board. I started wearing my hair short in the 80's because it was hard to manage because, like Amy, I played basketball. I was also a cheerleader, so there is also that. It was just easier. In the era of 80's big hair, I could have gone above and beyond the look (my hair was big without trying to be) but I actually didn't like it so I trended the opposite direction. I loved the short hair on Olivia Newton-John. Ha. I went back to wearing it short in the 90's when I was a young mom and it was just easier for me. I was never mistaken for a lesbian that I ever knew of, so there is my experience. I knew lots of girls/ladies who wore their hair short who were like me.
So I just don't see this as being a factor in her disappearance.

 

[Bluebear15]

I think she stood on the glass table with bare feet, leant over to feel the wind/see the sunrise and fell overboard. I've watched the documentary twice and don't see any actual evidence for trafficking. Eyewitnesses, unless they personally know the person, are notoriously unreliable. A fat fee from Netflix helps them embellish their stories.
Jmo, moo

 

[Quill]

There has been numerous cases of tourists going missing in similar circumstances. How can I tell how many of them were trafficked? You can't. It's a shady, out of view business by it's nature, not helped by cops on kick-backs, a 'snitches get stitches' culture and water everywhere.
As I already mentioned, I presume you've seen the AAV website and seen the looks on the girls faces on those, which tells us a hell of a lot regarding that whole operation.

and lest we forget certain employees of AAV who match witness sketches.

 

[RandyMcDonald]

these are questions i can't answer since i don't have the mindset of a trafficker, and i understand why you bring them up. i admittedly don't know much about ST and i too have heard that victims tend to be more at risk women than someone on vacation with her family.

that said, just because the statistics we view today tell us that a woman like Amy would be considered low-risk for ST, doesn't make it impossible or even unlikely for her to have been a victim back then.

Argh. No. This is not correct. Sex trafficking, like human trafficking generally, has always targeted desperate people without other close connections or other good choices. These can be as various as the teenage girl on poor terms with her family who is willing to do anything to prove her love for her older boyfriend, and the aspiring professional in a poor country who sees no way forward but to move to a rich country trusting they will be able to earn enough to move forward with their lives.

Outside of conflict situations where law and order has collapsed, there is no incentive for sex traffickers to abduct people, especially not ordinary people who they see have close connections with their family. This is not a matter of ethics but rather of practicality: Sex traffickers have no interest in calling attention to themselves and their work.

I feel like a lot of people get tripped up viewing this case through the 2025 lens instead of 1998/early aughts. Yes her disappearance made news in the US, but news in the US wasn't necessarily news in the Caribbean. Sure they had newspapers and magazines but news was slower to reach across countries. 1998 didn't have all the happenings of every place in the world literally at its fingertips like we do now. People in 1998 couldn't have predicted that, and couldn't have imagined that some day there would be technology to analyze facial features from pictures found on escort websites. i think it's interesting that the alleged sightings of Amy seem to have stopped after about 2005 i believe was the last one. The internet really started growing exponentially at that time and her captors could've realized that and stopped advertising her on websites and letting her out in public

But why would they even keep her to 2005,.never mind later? Having an unwilling sex slave kept for years exposes someone to do much danger: Why would they ever have let her out in public?

I would note, incidentally, that the claim to have seen her on Barbados is almost certainly false. How would she have crossed international borders without valid documents?

what would be the point of taking a white American when most of the victims are Caribbean women? variety and rarity, to put it bluntly. if most of the girls are of one race, then a green eyed white American is going to be rare and what's rare is valuable.

No, I am sorry, this is ridiculous bordering on offensive. Just south of Curaçao is Venezuela, a country that has not collapsed the way it has now but was still doing pretty poorly with low oil prices. That country has millions of white people, descended from earlier waves of migration from Europe to Venezuela when things were good there. Would it really make more sense to abduct a random American woman rather than just wait for one of those desperate Venezuelans to come by of her own free will?

And Venezuela is just one country in the Caribbean basin. There are many others, each with their own white populations. White people are just not a scarce population in the Caribbean.

i truly hope Amy wasn't a victim of ST, but in my opinion, the evidence leads more to that and i see zero evidence for any other scenario.

What evidence?

 

[TizerisT]

You'll have to do your own research I'm afraid. I've given you numerous examples but you continue to have your fingers in your ears and talk about LGBT instead. The type of places you claim don't exist, do exist and people who have followed this case for a long time are quite aware of that already.

 

[TizerisT]

and lest we forget certain employees of AAV who match witness sketches.

Indeed Quill.

 

[Quill]

I think she stood on the glass table with bare feet, leant over to feel the wind/see the sunrise and fell overboard. I've watched the documentary twice and don't see any actual evidence for trafficking. Eyewitnesses, unless they personally know the person, are notoriously unreliable. A fat fee from Netflix helps them embellish their stories.
Jmo, moo

The stories have never changed. Most of these people all testified before a federal grand jury under oath. Some of these witnesses gave statements and sat for hours on end with FBI sketch artists and their accounts have been verified by others who were in the same place at the same time. Mind you, no one knows for sure it was Amy, but their accounts of seeing the woman with the men have been corroborated by others. They are not made up stories. Positively ID'ing Amy is another issue. There are details, such as the sighting on Barbados, where others there corroborated that sighting. It has nothing to do with Netflix. The FBI has not discounted these witnesses. These accounts have been around for decades.

 

[Quill]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1947069484012871840

I’m struggling to follow the timeline.

Amy was dating Tom and had plans to see David Letterman in NY when she returned home. He was in love with her but she supposedly didn’t feel the same intensity.

But Amy had met Molly at her apartment and had plans to meet and reconcile when she returned from the cruise. Amy had sent her a postcard and this is proven from the documentary that they were in contact at the time of the cruise.

So Amy was seeing and romantically involved with both Tom and Molly?

I also hate the use of the word “alternating preferences” in his earlier post. The word is sexual orientation!! This is such a common misconception - that a woman will be left for a man by a bisexual. There are many bisexuals who lean more towards women than men for various reasons and vice versa.

Molly had taken a job in Kentucky, if I recall. I think they had tried long distance, Amy mentions in the letter "kissing someone else". I assumed it might have been Tom, due to her saying that it only confirmed her feelings for Molly. However, maybe not if she ended up dating him. I'm not sure if I can answer your question or not on timeline, but I am wondering if maybe the "kiss" with whoever it was, had happened during the long distance relationship, then there was a break-up and Amy began dating Tom. In any case, Amy had clearly realized who she wanted to be with prior to going on the cruise and was making plans to start her life (new job, apartment, adorable new pup, exciting new car) and she clearly communicated to Molly that she wanted her to be in it with her. It sounds as thought she was probably going to break up with Tom and I'm sure she might have had some anxiety over that, but making plans for a future life doesn't really sound like someone who would go over a ship's railing to me.

 

[RandyMcDonald]

You'll have to do your own research I'm afraid. I've given you numerous examples but you continue to have your fingers in your ears and talk about LGBT instead. The type of places you claim don't exist, do exist and people who have followed this case for a long time are quite aware of that already.

We are talking about Amy being a lesbian because this is something that her family has been actively covering up for thirty years, even to the ridiculous point of her brother claiming that she was bi and actually had a boyfriend even as she was sending her girlfriend that letter.

You are simply making wild claims without bothering to back them up. Sex trafficking just does not work the way that you claim, not generally and apparently not on Curaçao. Not bothering to provide evidence for this protean conspiracy, which is apparently able to abduct women off of cruise ships before they reach harbour but so careless as to let the abductees go on field trips, does not make your argument better. Quite the contrary.

The only virtue of this sex trafficking conspiracy is that Amy's family has said: It means there is a possibility that Amy might be alive even now. Compare the insistence of most of the Sodder family that the missing children were similarly removed by a conspiracy at once vast and fragile.

 

[RandyMcDonald]

The stories have never changed. Most of these people all testified before a federal grand jury under oath. Some of these witnesses gave statements and sat for hours on end with FBI sketch artists and their accounts have been verified. There are details, such as the siting on Barbados, where others there corroborated that sighting. It has nothing to do with Netflix. These accounts have been around for decades.

People believing something does not make their beliefs factually true.

 

[MesquiteO21]

Argh. No. This is not correct. Sex trafficking, like human trafficking generally, has always targeted desperate people without other close connections or other good choices. These can be as various as the teenage girl on poor terms with her family who is willing to do anything to prove her love for her older boyfriend and the aspiring professional in a poor country who sees no way forward but to move to a rich country trusting they will be able to earn enough to move forward with their lives.

Outside of conflict situations where law and order has collapsed, there is no incentive for sex traffickers to abduct people, especially not ordinary people who they see have close connections with their family. This is not a matter of ethics but rather of practicality: Sex traffickers have no interest in calling attention to themselves and their work.



But why would they even keep her to 2005,.never mind later? Having an unwilling sex slave kept for years exposes someone to do much danger: Why would they ever have let her out in public?

I would note, incidentally, that the claim to have seen her on Barbados is almost certainly false. How would she have crossed international borders without valid documents?


No, I am sorry, this is ridiculous bordering on offensive. Just south of Curaçao is Venezuela, a country that has not collapsed the way it has now but was still doing pretty poorly with low oil prices. That country has.milluons of white people, descended from earlier waves of migration from Europe to Venezuela when things were good. Would it really make more sense to abduct a random American woman rather than just wait for one of those desperate Venezuelans to come by of her own free will?

And Venezuela is just one country in the Caribbean basin. There are many others, each with their own white populations. White people are just not a scarce population in the Caribbean.


What evidence?

Sex trafficking, like human trafficking generally, has always targeted desperate people without other close connections or other good choices
you're gonna have to provide hard sources for that

How would she have crossed international borders without valid documents?
uh...are you aware of human smuggling between borders? if not, i can provide some information on that

No, I am sorry, this is ridiculous bordering on offensive
white as the beauty ideal and racism is offensive, i agree. doesn't stop it from being true unfortunately. White people are absolutely not the majority in many Caribbean islands

what evidence?
her formal pictures missing from the official cruise photos. the SW picture that strongly resembles her. the eyewitness sightings, including someone describing her tattoos who hadn't previously known about them. i'm aware of the holes that can be poked in these, for sure, i'm not denying that.
what evidence is there for anything else?

MOO

 

[RandyMcDonald]

Molly had taken a job in Kentucky, if I recall. I think they had tried long distance, Amy mentions in the letter "kissing someone else". I assumed it might have been Tom, due to her saying that it only confirmed her feelings for Molly. However, maybe not if she ended up dating him. I'm not sure if I can answer your question or not on timeline, but I am wondering if maybe the "kiss" with whoever it was, had happened during the long distance relationship, then there was a break-up and Amy began dating Tom. In any case, Amy had clearly realized who she wanted to be with prior to going on the cruise and was making plans to start her life (new job, apartment, adorable new pup, exciting new car) and she clearly communicated to Molly that she wanted her to be in it with her. It sounds as thought she was probably going to break up with Tom and I'm sure she might have had some anxiety over that, but making plans for a future life doesn't really sound like someone who go over a ship's railing to me.

We have no idea what happened.

A simple accident by someone who had a bit too much to drink and made just the right sequence of mistakes makes more sense to me than a suicide. We should also keep in mind that the moods of many people who plan to kill themselves improve, because they know they will die and their suffering will end.

The Tom thing—well, before my cousin came out to his parents, he paid one visit home at Christmas with his girlfriend. He was gay, she was lesbian, and they were each other's cover.

I think we should also consider the strong likelihood that Amy's family cannot be unconditionally trusted. Remember that the parents have already been found to have lied under oath in court.

Dismissal Upheld of Suit Against Cruise Line | Law.com

A Miami appellate court wasted no time telling the parents of a woman who disappeared while on a 1998 cruise that lying and perpetrating a fraud against the court won't be tolerated. One week after hearing oral arguments, the court affirmed the dismissal of a negligence suit brought by Amy...

www.law.com

Finding out that they have hidden Amy's sexual orientation and their problems with said, well. We should be skeptical of her brother's claims about her relationships.

 

[MesquiteO21]

I think she stood on the glass table with bare feet, leant over to feel the wind/see the sunrise and fell overboard. I've watched the documentary twice and don't see any actual evidence for trafficking. Eyewitnesses, unless they personally know the person, are notoriously unreliable. A fat fee from Netflix helps them embellish their stories.
Jmo, moo

I think she stood on the glass table with bare feet, leant over to feel the wind/see the sunrise and fell overboard.
where is the evidence for this?

 

[Silverstorm]

The more I research - read Brad's social media posts the more uneasy I become. Frequently, more so in recent posts, he comes off as "unhinged". And there's that comment in the documentary, words to the effect - " I am 48 unmarried and have no children".

What does his marital - parental status have to do with his sister's disappearance? Why even throw that out? It gets back to what I alluded to in another post; this family is simply dysfunctional and has been for an exceedingly long time.

He said(and Im paraphrasing) I am 48 unmarried and have no children.Because of what he has seen his parents (and himself)go through the daily trauma of Amy’s disappearance, he made the choice not to put himself in that position. At least that’s what I got from it. MOO.

 

[Quill]

People believing something does not make their beliefs factually true.

You're discounting witness statements from unrelated witnesses that have quite a bit of overlap. The sketches match actual people that these witnesses would have had no way of having previous knowledge of. These actual people are linked to businesses suspected of being involved. One is in prison as we speak for ST. There is more out there to be researched, if you dare.