VA - Amy Bradley - missing from cruise ship, Curacao - 1998 #4

[lohrtabitha]

Do we know she grabbed another pair of shoes? I don’t recall that detail.

We don't. According to her family, she had many pairs of shoes. However, Brad stated in the documentary, he shut the balcony door when he came inside and they found the door opened to about 18 inches that morning.

 

[JSolt1210]

I have to say, after watching the Documentary and listening to what Amy called a "Message In A Bottle " which was sent to Mollie a month before the cruise after kissing someone else, has an eerie parallel to the Cruise. Some takeaway passages...there is an ocean between us...I'm on a desert island waiting for you to save me...my Message in a bottle, my only hope...save me please, stranded Amy.
IMO, Amy was going to try to make the most of the cruise..but I think her betraying Mollie weighed heavily and the combination of alcohol and internal sadness clouded Amy's thoughts and judgement. She had alot of time to sit out on that balcony and think.
I hope I'm wrong and always keep an open mind and allow new information to possibly sway me, but so far...

This makes a lot of sense to me.

I didn't know about Amy's "message in a bottle" but clearly she felt incredibly guilty for her prior actions. Just speaking for myself, emotions like those felt more intense in my early 20s, and it was easy to go from sad and brooding, to guilty and despondent.

That night, Amy had been having a good time at the bar, drinking, mingling and dancing with other people. Did she flirt with anyone? Or if she didn't, did she want to?

If so, that desire could've added to her guilt about what had happened with Mollie.

I can see a scenario where Amy gets back to the room, goes on the balcony, and starts to beat herself up over this: "I want to be faithful to Mollie and earn her forgiveness, but I'm still attracted to other people, and there was definitely some flirting going on tonight. Here I am, ready to make the same mistake and ruin things again. No wonder Mollie doesn't want to talk to me anymore. I hurt her, so I totally deserve what I got. I'm self-sabotaging, I'm not good enough, and maybe I'll never be" etc.

And then that line of thinking led her to make a split-second decision we've all been dealing with ever since.

 

[Wakefield6042]

I don't know why, but I think much of this hinges on why Amy left her room at that time of the morning. Certainly on holiday your guard can be down as you are in 'holiday mode'.
I've been on a cruise before and one time I remember going to get a hot drink at about 11pm at night. I never passed anybody, never saw another soul apart from a very few people sitting in bars, but they did not see me.
Someone told me that obviously passengers are not vetted before a cruise but in reality neither are staff. So basically anybody could be working on a ship and you would have no idea if they even had a previous criminal record.
I do know if I was wandering about a ship after the bars/clubs etc had closed, my head would be on a swivel. Very much so now, when you hear about what goes on in these ships. Murders, rape, theft, people vanishing. It really makes you think. Even on land, once I'm in my hotel room at night that's it. Door locked.

I do still find it strange that Amy would leave her room then, especially as she was tired/ill.

 

[TontonVador73]

Bonjour à tous

Désolé je suis pas fort en anglais et je suis tombé sur ce forum depuis la France.
Je suis obsédé par cette affaire depuis longtemps. C'est trouble.

Il y a eu des dernières infos comme quoi un gars avait créé un site internet avec ces infos et bizarrement tout les jours il y a une connexion de la Barbade et de curaçao. On pense que c'est soit amy qui essaye de donner un signal soit les ravisseurs qui ne voudraient pas être démasqué.

Apparemment Amy était gay donc pas de flirt avec des hommes. Amica la fille de Alistair douglas (yellow) a dit qu'elle avait vu un album photo de son père avec des femmes blanches. Son père avait dit au frère de amy "désolé pour se qui est arrivé à ta soeur".

Je pense que c'était un rabateur et qu'il cherchait des profils exotique pour la traite des êtres humains.

En plus il y a eu une info aussi qui dit que le frère a entendu amy l'appeler quand ils sont descendu du bateau. Je pense qu'elle a été drogué et emmené. Les membres du bateau était sûrement complices. J'ai cherché et même sur chatgpt ils disent que c'est régulier. C'est des îles propice au traffic d'être humain.

 

[Silverstorm]

I took a screen shot of the above post that was written in French and put it in Google translate. Here it is in English:

 

[Silverstorm]

Bonjour à tous

Désolé je suis pas fort en anglais et je suis tombé sur ce forum depuis la France.
Je suis obsédé par cette affaire depuis longtemps. C'est trouble.

Il y a eu des dernières infos comme quoi un gars avait créé un site internet avec ces infos et bizarrement tout les jours il y a une connexion de la Barbade et de curaçao. On pense que c'est soit amy qui essaye de donner un signal soit les ravisseurs qui ne voudraient pas être démasqué.

Apparemment Amy était gay donc pas de flirt avec des hommes. Amica la fille de Alistair douglas (yellow) a dit qu'elle avait vu un album photo de son père avec des femmes blanches. Son père avait dit au frère de amy "désolé pour se qui est arrivé à ta soeur".

Je pense que c'était un rabateur et qu'il cherchait des profils exotique pour la traite des êtres humains.

En plus il y a eu une info aussi qui dit que le frère a entendu amy l'appeler quand ils sont descendu du bateau. Je pense qu'elle a été drogué et emmené. Les membres du bateau était sûrement complices. J'ai cherché et même sur chatgpt ils disent que c'est régulier. C'est des îles propice au traffic d'être humain.

Bonjour! Et bienvenue! (hello and welcome!)

 

[lohrtabitha]

I took a screen shot of the above post that was written in French and put it in Google translate. Here it is in English:

Thank you!

 

[Moon at Sea]

Kat Lovelace, Amy's girlfriend of 2 years and later roommate, on the photo of Jas:

"There are some likenesses, but there's a part of me that thinks that's not her"

She also says the IP address thing does not change how she feels about whether that picture is Amy

 

[Moon at Sea]

Kat also says that the guy Amy was dating in college was a beard to keep her relationship with Kat a secret.

Kat says that Amy always referred to herself as gay or a lesbian. Not bisexual.

Lots of interesting info on this interview. Recommend.

 

[Amy0077]

True Crime This Week Investigates - Interview with Kat Lovelace, Amy Bradley's girlfriend.​

 

[avob00]

Kat also says that the guy Amy was dating in college was a beard to keep her relationship with Kat a secret.

Kat says that Amy always referred to herself as gay or a lesbian. Not bisexual.

Lots of interesting info on this interview. Recommend.

I assume the guy she was dating (Tom, who appears in the Curaçao press conference in the documentary) right before she disappeared was a beard then for her relationship with Molly.

I really don’t think we can trust anything the family says about Amy’s personality or sexuality.

What is the issue with saying she was a lesbian? I understand the family are not in favor of LGBT from Iva and Brad’s own Twitter posts and reshares from before the case aired.

Hope he can get Molly on as well or Tom as they’d offer better insights into Amy’s mental state since she spoke to both days before the cruise.

 

[Moon at Sea]

Kat also says Amy did not ever use drugs.

 

[HockeyMom330]

The mystery of Amy's disappearance is compelling because there are so many theories/possibilities. Personally, I believe that one of two things happened to cause her disappearance:

Theory #1: Amy accidentally fell overboard.
Amy was last spotted lounging on her balcony around 5:30 am, and mysteriously gone 30 minutes later. She was nowhere to be found on the ship by her dad, who immediately started looking for Amy before passengers started to disembark. Her sandals were left behind on the balcony, and a table was pushed up against the railing. According to Brad, Amy was tipsy and feeling unwell when he last spoke to her earlier that morning. The simplest explanation is that Amy was hungover, and she felt the urge to puke and started to make her way into her family's cabin to use the toilet (hence the slider partially opened), but then realized she wouldn't make it to the bathroom in time, so instead, climbed on the table, leaned over the railing, lost her balance and plunged into the sea. The unknown noise that woke her dad was the commotion of Amy going overboard.

I do not believe that Amy committed suicide. She had no known history of suicidal ideation, and no note was left behind. I do not feel that the 'message in the bottle' was a suicide note but rather a love letter. If anything, it showed that Amy had a high level of self-awareness, and was willing to take accountability for her actions. Rather than holding in her feelings, she expressed them to a trusted friend. Amy 'came out' to her parents in 1995. She disappeared in 1998. That's a lot of time for her family to gain acceptance. Her family was adamant that they loved her unconditionally, even if they were initially shocked and disappointed. I do not think that Amy's sexual orientation had anything to do with her disappearance.

Amy had a lot of positive things going for her around the time she vanished. She had gotten a place of her own, a dog, and a new job. Amy cherished her Miata. She had a solid network of friends, had patched up a relationship with an ex-girlfriend, was athletic, and had hobbies (such as photography) that she was involved with, even on the cruise. From both the videos, and Amy's family reports, she was having a good time on the cruise. The post card she sent home to a friend seemed to confirm this. None of this fits with suicide.

Theory #2: Amy met with foul play on the ship.
There were lots of suspicious incidents on the ship leading up to Amy's disappearance. Amy's family reported that the wait staff was being unusually attentive to Amy, and she is on video dancing with a member of the band (Yellow) after the formal. Amy's photo from the formal was missing from the gallery, suggesting someone outside of her family had taken it, which is weird. Reportedly, Amy had earlier been invited to go with crew members to Carlos and Charlies, but she refused. Why was someone trying to get her off the ship? Amy's mom reported an unidentified man staring at Amy. And Amy told Brad, when returning to their balcony after a night of partying, something to the effect that she was being hit on by a crew member but she brushed it off.

It has been theorized that Amy snuck off the ship to buy drugs; personally I'm more inclined to believe that she was lured into someone's room or an unauthorized part of the ship with the promise of something (some people suggest drugs, although it has never been established that Amy was into anything stronger than alcohol and tobacco). Amy and Brad separated at the tail end of their night of partying, so its possible Amy could have made plans with someone that Brad was unaware of. Maybe she lied to Brad about feeling unwell, using that as an excuse to stay out on the balcony instead of going to bed because she didn't want to fall asleep and risk missing a meeting. Somewhere in between 5:30 am and 6:00 am Amy grabs her cigarettes and re-enters the cabin through the slider (purposely leaving it open so the white noise of the sea masks her movements), slips on one of many 'unknown' pairs of shoes she brought, and quietly exits the cabin. Amy is then spotted by a witness (a young guest) in a glass elevator with Yellow heading up to the closed disco, supposedly (but unproved) within the time frame she went missing. A short time later the same witness observes Yellow on the deck but does not see Amy. Where did she go? Perhaps wherever she was lured to, someone made a sexual advance towards her and she resisted, resulting in her death. Her body was concealed in luggage, and removed from the ship at port in Curacao.

I favor the theory of foul play over sex trafficking because I've seen no evidence to support the assertation that the ship's crew was running an elaborate sex trafficking ring. If they were, there should have been many more mysterious cases of missing women before and after Amy Bradley. Besides, Amy was not a likely target. She was a well-educated, financially-secure, adult woman travelling in the company of her parents and brother. I didn't find any of the various sightings on the island credible.

 

[HockeyMom330]

This makes a lot of sense to me.

I didn't know about Amy's "message in a bottle" but clearly she felt incredibly guilty for her prior actions. Just speaking for myself, emotions like those felt more intense in my early 20s, and it was easy to go from sad and brooding, to guilty and despondent.

That night, Amy had been having a good time at the bar, drinking, mingling and dancing with other people. Did she flirt with anyone? Or if she didn't, did she want to?

If so, that desire could've added to her guilt about what had happened with Mollie.

I can see a scenario where Amy gets back to the room, goes on the balcony, and starts to beat herself up over this: "I want to be faithful to Mollie and earn her forgiveness, but I'm still attracted to other people, and there was definitely some flirting going on tonight. Here I am, ready to make the same mistake and ruin things again. No wonder Mollie doesn't want to talk to me anymore. I hurt her, so I totally deserve what I got. I'm self-sabotaging, I'm not good enough, and maybe I'll never be" etc.

And then that line of thinking led her to make a split-second decision we've all been dealing with ever since.

I also wondered if she felt any guilt/confusion after dancing with Yellow, and how that could impact her chances of mending her relationship with her girlfriend, but I don't believe she committed suicide. It seemed that the crew was way more aggressive in their pursuit of Amy, than she was towards them. She refused the offer to go to the island bar, and told Brad about the flirtation that she brushed off. I think Amy and Brad were close enough that she would have opened up to him if anything was bothering her, and even told him if she had a planned hookup with a crew member.

 

[Deleted member 363451]

The mystery of Amy's disappearance is compelling because there are so many theories/possibilities. Personally, I believe that one of two things happened to cause her disappearance:

Theory #1: Amy accidentally fell overboard.
Amy was last spotted lounging on her balcony around 5:30 am, and mysteriously gone 30 minutes later. She was nowhere to be found on the ship by her dad, who immediately started looking for Amy before passengers started to disembark. Her sandals were left behind on the balcony, and a table was pushed up against the railing. According to Brad, Amy was tipsy and feeling unwell when he last spoke to her earlier that morning. The simplest explanation is that Amy was hungover, and she felt the urge to puke and started to make her way into her family's cabin to use the toilet (hence the slider partially opened), but then realized she wouldn't make it to the bathroom in time, so instead, climbed on the table, leaned over the railing, lost her balance and plunged into the sea. The unknown noise that woke her dad was the commotion of Amy going overboard.

I do not believe that Amy committed suicide. She had no known history of suicidal ideation, and no note was left behind. I do not feel that the 'message in the bottle' was a suicide note but rather a love letter. If anything, it showed that Amy had a high level of self-awareness, and was willing to take accountability for her actions. Rather than holding in her feelings, she expressed them to a trusted friend. Amy 'came out' to her parents in 1995. She disappeared in 1998. That's a lot of time for her family to gain acceptance. Her family was adamant that they loved her unconditionally, even if they were initially shocked and disappointed. I do not think that Amy's sexual orientation had anything to do with her disappearance.

Amy had a lot of positive things going for her around the time she vanished. She had gotten a place of her own, a dog, and a new job. Amy cherished her Miata. She had a solid network of friends, had patched up a relationship with an ex-girlfriend, was athletic, and had hobbies (such as photography) that she was involved with, even on the cruise. From both the videos, and Amy's family reports, she was having a good time on the cruise. The post card she sent home to a friend seemed to confirm this. None of this fits with suicide.

Theory #2: Amy met with foul play on the ship.
There were lots of suspicious incidents on the ship leading up to Amy's disappearance. Amy's family reported that the wait staff was being unusually attentive to Amy, and she is on video dancing with a member of the band (Yellow) after the formal. Amy's photo from the formal was missing from the gallery, suggesting someone outside of her family had taken it, which is weird. Reportedly, Amy had earlier been invited to go with crew members to Carlos and Charlies, but she refused. Why was someone trying to get her off the ship? Amy's mom reported an unidentified man staring at Amy. And Amy told Brad, when returning to their balcony after a night of partying, something to the effect that she was being hit on by a crew member but she brushed it off.

It has been theorized that Amy snuck off the ship to buy drugs; personally I'm more inclined to believe that she was lured into someone's room or an unauthorized part of the ship with the promise of something (some people suggest drugs, although it has never been established that Amy was into anything stronger than alcohol and tobacco). Amy and Brad separated at the tail end of their night of partying, so its possible Amy could have made plans with someone that Brad was unaware of. Maybe she lied to Brad about feeling unwell, using that as an excuse to stay out on the balcony instead of going to bed because she didn't want to fall asleep and risk missing a meeting. Somewhere in between 5:30 am and 6:00 am Amy grabs her cigarettes and re-enters the cabin through the slider (purposely leaving it open so the white noise of the sea masks her movements), slips on one of many 'unknown' pairs of shoes she brought, and quietly exits the cabin. Amy is then spotted by a witness (a young guest) in a glass elevator with Yellow heading up to the closed disco, supposedly (but unproved) within the time frame she went missing. A short time later the same witness observes Yellow on the deck but does not see Amy. Where did she go? Perhaps wherever she was lured to, someone made a sexual advance towards her and she resisted, resulting in her death. Her body was concealed in luggage, and removed from the ship at port in Curacao.

I favor the theory of foul play over sex trafficking because I've seen no evidence to support the assertation that the ship's crew was running an elaborate sex trafficking ring. If they were, there should have been many more mysterious cases of missing women before and after Amy Bradley. Besides, Amy was not a likely target. She was a well-educated, financially-secure, adult woman travelling in the company of her parents and brother. I didn't find any of the various sightings on the island credible.

Why isn't Amy's family considering that she jumped overboard, when it's the most likely explanation? Has it got anything to do with the fact that if there was a death policy on her, the insurance company wouldn't have paid out if she's committed suicide? Her parents both worked in insurance. Nobody knows if she had suicidal thoughts, no matter how positive her life looked from the outside. Also, alcohol can exacerbate feelings and it is a depressive. I think it's likely that her brother had an argument with her on the deck. He had also left her earlier from the disco. All of these conspiracy theories are just madness IMO.

 

[Quill]

Why isn't Amy's family considering that she jumped overboard, when it's the most likely explanation? Has it got anything to do with the fact that if there was a death policy on her, the insurance company wouldn't have paid out if she's committed suicide? Her parents both worked in insurance. Nobody knows if she had suicidal thoughts, no matter how positive her life looked from the outside. Also, alcohol can exacerbate feelings and it is a depressive. I think it's likely that her brother had an argument with her on the deck. He had also left her earlier from the disco. All of these conspiracy theories are just madness IMO.

Because she was not suicidal and they knew her better than anyone. She was making many plans to start her life. IMO, the suicide theory is the biggest conspiracy theory there is. It goes against everything that everyone who knew her best says.

 

[lohrtabitha]

I assume the guy she was dating (Tom, who appears in the Curaçao press conference in the documentary) right before she disappeared was a beard then for her relationship with Molly.

I really don’t think we can trust anything the family says about Amy’s personality or sexuality.

What is the issue with saying she was a lesbian? I understand the family are not in favor of LGBT from Iva and Brad’s own Twitter posts and reshares from before the case aired.

Hope he can get Molly on as well or Tom as they’d offer better insights into Amy’s mental state since she spoke to both days before the cruise.

I hope Tom does an interview too. It will be interesting hearing him talk about the romantic part of their relationship if there was one. Maybe Amy had everyone fooled. Maybe she was confused about what she wanted herself. Imo

 

[GXP Sleuther]

Has it got anything to do with the fact that if there was a death policy on her, the insurance company wouldn't have paid out if she's committed suicide?

I never thought my Dad was suicidal until he hung himself a few days after my birthday (in 2015) and I still have no answer as to what could make him do that.

He was the only person I talked to every. single. day for my entire life. My Dad was the least suicidal person on planet Earth. I knew him better than anyone and am still lost but I know his spirit is with me.

 

[sunspun]

IMO if she’s had jumped/fallen off the side, something… anything… would have washed up. Even a small piece of clothing, a shoe or something. JMO

That may be true (although it also may not be true), but even if so, consider a hypothetical situation in which you (I do mean you personally, but also you in general!) were walking along a beach on your island vacation, and you see a pretty shell, but when you reach to pick it up, you notice a single shoe, maybe a lady's sandal or sneaker, lying in the sand near it at the water's edge. What would you do? Would you hurry off to find someone in authority to report this shoe to, taking time out of your limited happy holiday hours to engage in what could easily become a nightmare of bureaucratic red tape, foreign language hurdles, uninterested or unhelpful municipal employees, and who knows what other problems you might face in your noble effort, especially when you are aware that a single shoe on a beach may just as easily be totally unrelated to any crime, accident, or tragedy of any kind?

Would you be likely to somehow sense the possible importance of this artifact and also care enough to take time out of your holiday to go to all the trouble to report it at all?

Or would you instead pick up your pretty shell, maybe give the shoe not even a passing thought, and carry on your merry way?

And if not you, perhaps a shoe or scrap of clothing did wash up and was seen by a person who walks along this beach daily, a local person on their way to work, or maybe a local homeless type with a makeshift home near the beach, or even a local person of some authority trained to watch out for items of any significance that may wash up from shipwrecks or what have you, why would they or anyone be interested in the water-logged remains of someone's old shoe or scrap of fabric? I doubt that would ever lead anywhere, imo. Just trying to think rationally. Not that you're being irrational to pin any hope at all on it happening, but logically, if you think about it, why would that ever help or go anywhere?

Even if it's true that if she'd gone overboard, some evidence would surely have washed up, and that's debatable, imo, I think you'd be better off not thinking that the fact that nothing has been known to ever have appeared on shore must mean she didn't go overboard. I mean, even if it did wash up, it might never be seen by any vacationer or local or anyone at all, considering how many miles of shore there must be, and of course, how vast the oceans are. Sorry, but I've thoroughly convinced myself at least, after thinking it all through realistically, and I hope you too see it this way now and don't cling to this thing in particular in hope that Amy must still be alive, or at least that she left the boat alive. All my opinion and hope it didn't offend you.

 

[sunspun]

You missed my point. Just because we, as non criminals/human traffickers (at least i hope), cannot wrap our heads around why she would’ve been taken or why xyz would’ve happened, doesn’t mean it’s impossible. There are a lot of things that have happened in the world that I would’ve never ever thought possible and still struggle to believe actually occurred. I was on the bus to high school on 9/11/2001 and when it was announced on the radio that a plane hit a tower in NYC I thought it was an accidental crash. When I later saw the footage and found out it was terrorism I couldn’t believe it, and frankly still struggle to truly grasp it. Out of all the flights that happen every single day, crashes are rare, and intentional crashes into buildings even rarer. Does that mean it didn’t happen and we all imagined it? Again, Statistics do not equal actual hard evidence. You can use them to guide your thinking and support your theory, absolutely, but they can’t be used to outright dismiss something. Statistically rare things happen to people all the time.

Likewise, people who are adamant she was ST should consider many things like the picture isn’t an exact duplicate from photos of Amy, many people have a dead ringer doppelgänger in the world, it’s absolutely possible her body would’ve never been found even though they were close to port, we know all the issues with eyewitness testimony, etc

Discussion and skeptism for any/all of the theories is good IMO, but completely saying well that one for sure didn’t happen because I can’t make heads or tails of it is frankly just stupid when none of us have the answers.
MOO

The amazing thing about 9/11 wasn't that this awful thing happened, what's amazing is that it had not happened before that, imo.

All the elements of the perfect storm were in place that this should have surprised no one who was paying attention. But I know, it did.