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

[Serononin]

This part about "didn't feel well" so she didn't go to bed sticks out to me. Personally, if it was 4am and I was feeling ill, going to bed and trying to sleep would be top of my list of things to do. I wouldn't try to stay up even longer. JMO

That was my first thought, too. Especially if I were on a boat, where staying awake would mean being aware of any rocking motion

 

[TizerisT]

Question: One thing I have heard is that Yellow had a roommate who would have been awoken if he had been out and about in that time frame. Is that correct?

He did say in his youtube interview that he was sharing a room with another band member.

Whether the other guy was even there at the time, or would have spoken out, we dont know.

 

[HockeyMom330]

To suggest that only beautiful people get sex trafficked is completely ludicrous.

Stereotypically, it is vulnerable people who get trafficked. Amy did not fit into this category of being vulnerable. She was college educated, from a financially secure family, and in the presence of her parents and brother, in a controlled environment (the cruise ship has security) when she went missing.

 

[amyynkaa]

Even if, for the sake of argument, Yellow was a sex traffickers, why would he go after a passenger on a cruise ship where he was working?

We know that even the suspicion that he was involved has ruined Yellow's career. Why would he knowingly risk everything by going after someone he was seen with? The grooming suggestion would not work, not only because we know that Amy was a lesbian but because Amy was not really at risk. She was unhappy with her family and had not wanted to come on the cruise, but she had lots of good things going for her and some positive changes awaiting her on her return.

true, sex trafficking at work is a bad idea..
well she was sending letter for her partner or so saying that she wishes she was there.. do you think amy was not at risk? i think everyone can be on a risk if they are in a community that differs and they could not now the rules or so

 

[Bluebear15]

Regarding why she should would walk off at that time and maybe get off the ship:
> I don't think there was any intention to meet Yellow. Having already left him at 3:30, the chances of arranging to meet him again a mere 2 or 3 hours later is remote. Who does that?
> If she stepped off the boat voluntarily, we can surely rule out going to a bar to continue partying. It would have been 6-7am and she already declined an offer of going to a bar once docked with another staff member "because they're creepy"
> Which would leave only stepping off for a brief period, so brief that she didnt consider it worth leaving a note. Perhaps to fetch beer or cigarettes. She didnt plan to be gone long.

If all those criteria are met, I can only really see a scenario where she was followed - or accosted - during her brief excursion, whether by staff member, a predator on the dock or maybe even a dodgy taxi driver. It happens.

All opinion, not facts
There is no evidence to suggest sex trafficking or that Yellow was involved in her disappearance. The FBI cleared him.

 

[Quill]

I'm not convinced that sighting was of Amy. The witness said it was between 5am and 6am. If she leaves the room at 5.40 then anytime before that means it can't be her.
Jmo

But why would three people lie? At least two of these testified before a grand jury.

 

[Quill]

All opinion, not facts
There is no evidence to suggest sex trafficking or that Yellow was involved in her disappearance. The FBI cleared him.

Not being charged is completely different from being cleared. I have never heard of Yellow being cleared.

 

[TizerisT]

All opinion, not facts

Yes I'm throwing out theories which could be possible within the framework of what we know. They're not supposed to be facts.

The FBI cleared him.

And that certainly is not a fact.

 

[RandyMcDonald]

true, sex trafficking at work is a bad idea..
well she was sending letter for her partner or so saying that she wishes she was there.. do you think amy was not at risk? i think everyone can be on a risk if they are in a community that differs and they could not now the rules or so

There are things that she could have done that could have put her at risk, but she did not do them. Travelling with her family on a cruise ship to a Curaçao that is one of the most secure islands in the Caribbean is not that. It is not as if, to take an example at the opposite end of the scale, she was backpacking around rural Haiti by herself without a cell phone.

Beyond that, she was going to a Curaçao with known patterns of sex trafficking. She was not entering a war zone where women could be seized at random; she was on a boat that had not yet begun disembarkment on a normal island. Sex work on Curaçao follows a normal enough pattern, desperate migrants from nearby poor country being directed into sex work. She wasn't, I don't know, visiting Chechnya or Abkhazia during the civil wars there in the 1990s, where she plausibly would have been at very elevated risk of being enslaved.

 

[Bluebear15]

But why would three people lie? At least two of these testified before a grand jury.

Only one was on the documentary. I'm not saying that they were lying, however there were thousands of people on that boat. I find it difficult to believe that they would remember an innocuous view of one person, several days after it happened. Amy was a stranger to them. They could easily be mistaken.
Jmo

 

[otto]

Regarding why she should would walk off at that time and maybe get off the ship:
> I don't think there was any intention to meet Yellow. Having already left him at 3:30, the chances of arranging to meet him again a mere 2 or 3 hours later is remote. Who does that?
> If she stepped off the boat voluntarily, we can surely rule out going to a bar to continue partying. It would have been 6-7am and she already declined an offer of going to a bar once docked with another staff member "because they're creepy"
> Which would leave only stepping off for a brief period, so brief that she didnt consider it worth leaving a note. Perhaps to fetch beer or cigarettes. She didnt plan to be gone long.

If all those criteria are met, I can only really see a scenario where she was followed - or accosted - during her brief excursion, whether by staff member, a predator on the dock or maybe even a dodgy taxi driver. It happens.

The boat had not docked at 6 AM, so there was no reason for her to leave the room at that time to get off the ship. If she wanted beer or cigarettes, I'm guessing that is available on the ship. There's no record of her going shopping at 6 AM.

She allegedly left her room at 6 AM for a reason, even though she was not drunk, she was not feeling well, and she had not slept for 36 hours.

Why did she leave her room in the first place ... certainly not to wander around feeling unwell on a ship full of sleeping passengers. By all accounts, she was a high-functioning, normal, healthy, intelligent young woman. If she left the room at 6 AM, there must be a reasonable explanation.

 

[thebedbug]

But why would three people lie? At least two of these testified before a grand jury.

I think you are mistaken re: a grand jury.

 

[TizerisT]

She was not entering a war zone where women could be seized at random

Ted Bundy and the countless other similar predators did not do their deeds in warzones either. It can happen anywhere.

 

[Bluebear15]

Not being charged is completely different from being cleared. I have never heard of Yellow being cleared.

Innocent until proven guilty. There is no proof ergo he is innocent. The end of the documentary states that there is no evidence against him. That's the same as cleared imo.

 

[TizerisT]

The boat had not docked at 6 AM, so there was no reason for her to leave the room at that time to get off the ship.

Those are valid points and we could narrow this down a lot by knowing what time the ship docked. It's quite crucial.

If she wanted beer or cigarettes, I'm guessing that is available on the ship. There's no record of her going shopping at 6 AM.

I don't know about cruise ships, but if they're anything like airports, you might get charged close to double what you'd pay from a local store because they know you can't immediately go elsewhere.

 

[amyynkaa]

she could be their first victim to try it out and it has visibly worked but failed lmao

 

[RandyMcDonald]

Ted Bundy and the countless other similar predators did not do their deeds in warzones either. It can happen anywhere.

That would be the act of an individual predator, sure. That is the most likely thing to have happened to Amy if she did not have a simple fall.

That would be entirely different from the sort of conspiracy we are talking about. No other American woman has been abducted from a cruise ship? And they kept her alive for years on end, even helping her make trips outside of Curaçao?

Positing a conspiracy at once supremely capable yet also prone to make objectively terrible choices—what would have happened to everyone involved if, on crowded San Francisco's Embarcadero in 2003, she had begun screaming for help?—is a transparently bad idea. It does make some sense if this theory is read not as a serious explanation of what happened, but rather as a marker of the Bradleys' intense grief.

The sex trafficking angle seems to have emerged organically enough from the family's upset over Amy's lesbian sexual orientation. If that was something that was dominating their relationship, then it makes sense that concern would have been transferred over to their explanation of what happened.

 

[TizerisT]

Innocent until proven guilty. There is no proof ergo he is innocent. The end of the documentary states that there is no evidence against him. That's the same as cleared imo.

That is categorically not the same as being cleared.
Thats them basically saying "We're not sure"

 

[RandyMcDonald]

she could be their first victim to try it out and it has visibly worked but failed lmao

The problem with that is that it would first need to be seen as a viable plan with low chances of blowback. Kidnapping an American woman from a cruise ship and making her a sex slave seeks like something that would carry huge risks. It would be the sort of solution that could create terrible blowback.

It is also a solution to a non-problem: The number of desperate Latin American women willing to become prostitutes, even of white Latin American women, is effectively limitless.

 

[thebedbug]

Those are valid points and we could narrow this down a lot by knowing what time the ship docked. It's quite crucial.

I don't know about cruise ships, but if they're anything like airports, you might get charged close to double what you'd pay from a local store because they know you can't immediately go elsewhere.

I don't believe there is any information about the exact position of the ship. ChatGPT tells me it would've typically been somewhere between 1 and 6 miles from shore around the time of her disappearance. Take that for whatever it's worth.

I think there are also some maps of the ocean search area in the doc. My sense is they would've looked different if the ship had been docked when she might've gone overboard.