Brother of woman who went missing onboard ship makes brutal dig at cruise director after Netflix doc about her
Amy Bradley's brother has spoken out against the director of the cruise ship their family was on when the 23-year-old went missing.
Virginia native Amy vanished from a Royal Caribbean cruise near Curaçao on March 24 1998.
Her family claim she was last seen on their cabin's balcony in the early hours of the morning.
Despite multiple alleged sightings in Curaçao and Barbados, she has never been found and her fate was ultimately never determined. And while Amy was declared legally dead in 2010, her family remain hopeful that she is still alive somewhere.
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Her mom Iva, dad Ron and younger brother Brad, who were on the cruise vacation when she disappeared - all feature in the recent Netflix documentary about the case, Amy Bradley is Missing.
The three-part series includes interviews with key people, including FBI investigators and the director of Rhapsody of the Seas cruise ship, Kirk Detweiler.
Amy's brother Brad has since criticized Kirk's 'flippant' approach in the documentary.
Speaking of how he handled the family's initial reports of Amy going missing - at around 7am in the morning - Kirk says: "We're not going to stop everybody's cruise because there's a missing girl," adding: "Life goes on. Cruises go on."
Viewers have gone on to condemn Kirk's response online, reportedly resulting in him shutting down his social media.
Now, in an interview with PEOPLE, Brad called out Kirk's 'zero-empathy' reaction in the Netflix show.
"The reaction online [to Detweiler] was kind of the reaction that we had when we were watching him, especially when he has this flippant attitude with zero empathy," Brad said, adding: "His inability to read the room in the situation… I’m not quite sure how you agree to do an interview and not understand you’re gonna come off like he came off."
Brad claimed the 'attitude' Kirk portrayed on screen was 'exactly kinda the attitude that we experienced'.
"I didn’t know the guy. I didn’t actually remember him until he first popped up on the screen. My wife’s sitting next to me, and she was like, ‘Who’s that?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know.’ And then we learned who he is," Brad explained.
Ultimately Brad reckoned Kirk's response reflected a bigger issue within the cruise industry.
"It’s my opinion that how he portrayed himself, his feelings and lack of empathy for his passengers is fairly representative of how these industries view their customers," he added.
Previously, Brad said the documentary was 'not a complete account and left out quite a bit of information', but could've easily gone on for '10 seasons'.
One of the tragic details left out of the documentary was that the family was conned by a fake private investigator who claimed to be attempting to rescue Amy.
Frank Jones, who claimed to be a former Navy SEAL, swindled the family out of $210,000.
In 2002, he pleaded guilty to mail fraud, was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to repay the stolen money.
Amy Bradley is Missing is streaming now on Netflix.
Topics: Cruise ship, Film and TV, Netflix, Streaming, True crime, US News, Amy Bradley
Ellie Kemp