Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Netflix, Film and TV, Crime, US News
Lucy Devine
Disturbing footage has revealed Amy Bradley's final hours before she vanished from a cruise ship 27 years ago.
Amy was just 23 years old when she went missing on a Royal Caribbean cruise in 1998.
Amy had embarked on the holiday with her family - her mom Iva, dad Ron and brother, Brad - when she went missing from her room after a night out.
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The baffling case is the subject of new Netflix documentary, Amy Bradley is Missing, which drops on the platform on July 16.
From conspiracy theories, to disturbing images and witness testimonies, the true-crime documentary delves into what happened to Amy, and how her family have never given up hope in finding her alive almost three decades later.
Amy is a woman from Virginia who was reported missing nearly 27 years ago, after she went missing on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship.
The ship departed from Puerto Rico on March 21, 1998, before calling at Aruba.
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It was traveling to Curacao when Amy went missing in the early hours of March 24.
Amy had been out with her family on the evening she went missing.
While there have been various theories about what happened to Amy, we know that she had said goodnight to her parents before staying out with her brother following a pool party and a limbo contest.
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"I said 'I love you', she said 'I love you too mom, I'll see you in the morning'," Iva recalled in the documentary.
Brad explained the pair had been at the disco dancing and listening to music, when he decided to go back to their room.
"I went out onto the balcony, about five minutes later Amy came back to the room. We were both finishing our drinks, hanging out and talking about the next day," he said.
"She brought up that someone she had been talking to and dancing with during the course of the evening made a physical pass at her. She told me it was the bass player from the band."
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Brad explained that Amy had said she wasn't feeling too good, and had decided to stay out on the balcony while he went to bed.
At 5.30am, Ron woke up and saw that Brad was in bed. Noticing Amy wasn't also there, he spotted her legs on one of the lounge chairs out on the balcony.
But just half an hour later, Ron woke up again to find that Amy was no longer on the balcony.
"Something woke me up again, I don't know what it was but when my eyes opened, I looked out again and she wasn't there.
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"The balcony door was open about 12-14 inches, I noticed her cigarettes weren't out there and the shirt she was wearing that night was laying on the chair in her room.
"The first thing I'm thinking is she's changed her clothes and went up, getting a cup of coffee, taking pictures because we were coming in to port."
Ron left the room to go looking for his daughter, which is when the family's nightmare began.
On the night Amy went missing, footage of her dancing at the ship's disco was shared with the FBI.
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A videographer who had been working on the ship went through his footage after he heard that Amy was missing, and ended up finding clips of her dancing with one of the bass players, Alistair Douglas - also known as Yellow.
The footage is the last known clip of Amy before she was missing and was crucial in creating a timeline of her whereabouts.
There are many theories about what happened to Amy during the early hours of March 24.
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Some believe she could have fallen overboard, while the possibility that she jumped into the water has also been explored.
However, her family believe she is still alive.
This is down to both a 'gut feeling' and a number of witnesses who have since come forward with sightings of a woman they believe to be Amy.
Two women believe they saw Amy and Yellow at somewhere between 5.30 and 6am, in a glass elevator to the nightclub.
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They then claim to have then seen Yellow walk past them - without Amy - on the top deck around 15 minutes later.
Despite the claims, the timings could not be confirmed.
Meanwhile, Yellow was interviewed by the FBI and later passed a polygraph test.
During the documentary, his daughter, Amica, rings her father and asks him about Amy's disappearance.
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He says: "They brought the FBI on immediately and then he said to me that they're trying to find this girl [and] I was seen dancing with her. Everybody that had anything to do with cleaning her room, serving her drinks, we were grounded.
"When they realised nothing was involved, we continued to work. And I continued to work on the cruise ship until two years later."
Six months later, an eyewitness named David Carmichael claimed to see Amy on a beach in Curacao.
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"I see three people walking towards us, there's one guy, a girl in the middle and then another guy who looked like he was from the island. As they came closer to me, she comes right up to me... I see a tattoo that looks like a Tasmanian devil," he recalled.
"She was just about to say something to me, when the person who was on the inside comes up, he stared at me, doesn't say a word. He motions her away. If he had not stared at me I would have forgotten everything. I think about this every day."
Amy is known to have a tattoo of the Tasmanian devil on her shoulder.
Another sighting was reported by a man named Bill Hefner, who was in the navy when he says he saw Amy at a brothel in Curacao.
Bill explained that a woman who claimed to be Amy had told him she left the ship to buy drugs.
"She said, 'they're holding me against my will, I need help. I owe $200 and I can't get my freedom'... I've heard all kinds of stories from working girls... I've heard it before.
"That's when she said, 'my name is Amy Bradley' then she told me she got off that ship and she left on her own because she was going to score drugs... 'and now I'm stuck here with these guys'."
Bill explained he left the bar shortly afterwards.
Fast forward to 2005, and the family received a series of images of a woman, from somebody who claimed the woman in the photos was Amy.
The images were allegedly from a sex website, and showed a woman posing on a bed.
After having the photos forensically analysed, experts came to the conclusion that the woman in the photos could have been Amy.
Around the same time, a third eye witness, named Judy Maurer, claimed she saw Amy in Barbados, after they popped into a souvenir shop, while on a cruise holiday.
Explaining she needed to use the restroom, Judy said she had been in the bathroom when she heard some people come in.
"There was a man by the door talking, I heard him say 'the deal is 11 o'clock and I warn you, you better be ready to go'," recalled Judy.
"I didn't know what it was, but then all of a sudden the man left. I opened the door and there was a young woman standing by the sinks.
"She had an awful look on her face, kind of crying. I walked over to the sink and I said 'hi, are you on vacation here?'."
Judy said she asked the woman her name, and claims she told her it was 'Amy'.
Judy only realised she could have encountered Amy when she saw her family appearing on Dr Phil weeks later.
Nearly 30 years on from the day she went missing, Amy's family are still searching and say they will never give up hope.
They have kept all her belongings, including her beloved car.
"Today is the 9,758th day we have been working to get Amy," said Iva.
"We will never give up on her. In the morning we wake up we say 'maybe today' and then when we get ready to go to bed at night we have a little kiss for Amy and say 'maybe tomorrow'."
While Ron added: "We keep her car in the garage at home, we keep it shined up, it's going to be pristine when she gets here, and she'll get to drive it again."
Amy Bradley Is Missing is available to watch on Netflix now.
If you have any information about Amy Bradley, you can contact the family’s tip line by calling (804)-789-4269 or by emailing [email protected].