Unsettling Video Captures Final Moments Before Woman Vanished On Cruise Ship

She was only 23 years old when she went missing in 1998 during a Royal Caribbean cruise vacation.

Amy had gone on the trip with her close family—her mom Iva, dad Ron, and brother Brad, but vanished from her cabin following a night of fun onboard.

The documentary explores a wide range of angles from unsettling images and personal witness accounts to strange theories.

It dives into the circumstances surrounding Amy’s disappearance and highlights how her family has remained hopeful of finding her alive even after all these years.

Who is Amy Bradley?

Amy Bradley was a young woman from Virginia who was reported missing almost 27 years ago, during a trip on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship.

The cruise had set sail from Puerto Rico on March 21, 1998, and made a stop in Aruba along the way.

On March 24, while the ship was heading towards Curacao, Amy disappeared during the early morning hours.

What was Amy doing on the night she went missing?

On the night she vanished, Amy had been spending time with her family, enjoying the evening events onboard the ship.

Although different theories have emerged over the years about what may have happened to her, what’s certain is that she told her parents goodnight and then chose to hang out with her brother after a pool party and a lively limbo contest.

“I said ‘I love you’, she said ‘I love you too mom, I’ll see you in the morning’.” Iva recalled in the documentary.

“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.”

At around 5:30 in the morning, Ron woke up. He saw Brad asleep in bed and then noticed Amy’s legs stretched out on one of the balcony lounge chairs.

However, just thirty minutes later, Ron woke up again. This time, Amy was no longer out on the balcony.

“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.”

Ron decided to leave the cabin to search for his daughter. It was at that moment the nightmare for the Bradley family truly began.

Is there any footage of Amy from the night she went missing?

Yes—there is footage from the night Amy disappeared that was handed over to the FBI, showing her dancing at the cruise ship’s disco.

A videographer who had been working onboard went back through his recordings after learning about her disappearance and came across clips of Amy dancing with a bass player named Alistair Douglas, who was also known as Yellow.

These clips turned out to be the last known footage of Amy before she went missing, and they played an important role in putting together a timeline of her final moments.

What are the theories surrounding Amy’s disappearance?

Over the years, many different ideas have been suggested about what might have happened to Amy during the early hours of March 24.

Some people think she might have fallen overboard by accident, while others wonder if she could have jumped into the ocean herself.

But her family has always believed that she’s still out there somewhere and that she may be alive.

Their hope comes from a combination of instinct and the accounts of several people who later came forward, claiming to have seen a woman they believed was Amy.

Two women, for instance, said they saw Amy with Yellow between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m. in a glass elevator heading to the nightclub.

They added that around 15 minutes later, they spotted Yellow again, this time walking by himself on the top deck, with no sign of Amy.

Even though these statements were made, the exact timing couldn’t be verified.

Yellow was questioned by the FBI, and he ended up passing a lie detector test.

In the documentary, his daughter Amica is seen calling him to talk about Amy and ask what really happened that night.

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 realized nothing was involved, we continued to work. And I continued to work on the cruise ship until two years later.”

About six months after Amy disappeared, a man named David Carmichael came forward, claiming he saw her on a beach in Curacao.

“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.”

It’s worth noting that Amy did have a Tasmanian devil tattoo on her shoulder, which matched the description.

Another man, Bill Hefner, who was serving in the Navy at the time, said he saw Amy in a brothel while he was in Curacao.

He recalled that a woman, who introduced herself as Amy, told him she had left the cruise 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 mentioned that he left the bar shortly after the conversation.

Years later in 2005, Amy’s family received a set of disturbing images from someone who claimed the woman shown in them was Amy.

The pictures appeared to be taken from a website connected to the sex industry and showed a woman posing on a bed.

After careful forensic analysis, specialists concluded that the woman in the images might actually be Amy.

Around that same time, another person named Judy Maurer also came forward. She said she saw someone who looked like Amy in a Barbados souvenir shop during her own cruise holiday.

Judy explained that she had gone into the restroom while shopping, and while she was in there, she heard a group of people entering.

“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 young woman for her name, and the woman said it was “Amy.”

It wasn’t until Judy later saw Amy’s parents on an episode of Dr. Phil that she realized the woman in the bathroom may have actually been Amy Bradley.

Even though almost 30 years have passed since that day, Amy’s family hasn’t stopped searching. They continue to hold onto hope that she is still alive somewhere.

They’ve kept all her belongings, including her cherished car, which remains in the family garage.

“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’.”

Ron also shared: “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.”

The documentary Amy Bradley Is Missing is now streaming on Netflix for those who want to learn more about this deeply emotional and mysterious case.