cover of episode Amy Lynn Bradley

Amy Lynn Bradley

2022/1/31
logo of podcast Forensic Tales

Forensic Tales

Chapters

The Bradley family embarks on a Caribbean cruise, but 23-year-old Amy mysteriously disappears from the ship, leaving her family desperate for answers.

Shownotes Transcript

Ryan Reynolds here from Int Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down.

So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium Wireless. How did you get 30, 30, how did you get 30, how did you get 20, 20, 20, how did you get 20, 20, how did you get 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month? Sold! Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes each detail.

The land down under has never been easier to reach. United Airlines has more flights between the U.S. and Australia than any other U.S. airline, so you can fly nonstop to destinations like Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Explore dazzling cities, savor the very best of Aussie cuisine, and get up close and personal with the wildlife. Who doesn't want to hold a koala? Go to united.com slash Australia to book your adventure.

To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com/forensictales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. On Saturday, March 21st, 1998, a cheerful family boarded the Rhapsody of the Sea, a luxury cruise ship destined for the Caribbean. The family trip of a lifetime.

After a beautiful first day, the family looks for their professional photos on the ship's wall. Everyone's photos are there, except for one. The photos of Amy, a beautiful, green-eyed 23-year-old, are gone. A few days later, the ship docks in Curacao. Amy's father wakes up eager to hug his loving daughter. But, like her photographs, Amy mysteriously disappears.

This is Forensic Tales, episode number 109, The Amy Lynn Bradley Story. Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings. Sharing true crime stories isn't just about the story themselves. It's about getting justice for the victims and their families.

True crime helps hold criminals accountable so they can't continue to cause us harm.

As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new exciting cases, conduct in-depth, fact-based research, produce and edit this weekly show. And for supporting the show, you'll get early ad-free access to weekly episodes, exclusive merchandise not available anywhere else, bonus content, shout-outs and episodes, and priority on case suggestions.

To learn more about supporting Forensic Tales, consider visiting our Patreon page at patreon.com slash Forensic Tales, or by simply clicking the support link in the show notes. You can also help support us by leaving a positive rating with a review. Now, let's jump right into this week's case.

On Saturday, March 21st, 1998, the Bradley family woke up excited for their family vacation. Ron and Iva Bradley, along with their two adult children, 23-year-old Amy and 21-year-old Brad, booked four tickets aboard the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Rhapsody of the Sea.

a brand new one-year-old luxury cruise line. It was designed to hold over 2,000 passengers and over 700 crew members from 50 different countries. Back in 1998, the Caribbean was the most popular cruise line destination. So if you thought about going on a cruise, you thought about the Caribbean. And even today, the Caribbean is still on the list of the top 10 cruise destinations in the entire world.

Ron Bradley won the trip from his insurance company employer. Initially, only Ron and his wife, Iva, were planning to take the trip together. But after a little bit of persuasion that only a father could get away with, Ron convinced the couple's two adult children, Amy and Brad, to come along. Ron and Iva were excited about spending some quality time with their children.

Once on board the Rhapsody of the Sea, the plan was to set out on a seven-day cruise around the Caribbean. It would be a vacation filled with bottomless cocktails, all-you-can-eat dinners, and stops at some of the most popular Caribbean tourist locations. After leaving the port in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the Rhapsody of the Sea would make stops in Aruba, Curacao, St. Martin, and St. Thomas, and then head back to Puerto Rico.

The cruise would be the trip of a lifetime for the Bradley family. But not everyone in the Bradley family agreed. Even though 23-year-old Amy was a trained lifeguard and excellent swimmer, the thought about getting on a cruise ship for seven days was terrifying. There was just something about the ocean she didn't like. Plus, she had just moved into a brand new apartment and was about to start a new job.

But she put her fears aside and decided to go on the family trip. Before the Bradley family left their home in Chesterfield, Virginia, Amy adopted an English bulldog named Daisy. Daisy would be ready to pick up the day after they returned from the cruise. The Bradleys traveled to Puerto Rico on Saturday, March 21st, 1998.

Before boarding the cruise ship, Amy sent a couple of postcards to a few of her friends. In one, she talked about the beautiful city of San Juan. In another, she said that she was going to take as many pictures during the trip as possible. She said she wanted to create a photo collage for her new apartment in Chesterfield. Once aboard the Rhapsody of the Sea, Amy felt calmer. The ship's staff was delightful. Everyone else on board seemed excited about the trip.

Things seemed a lot safer than she expected, and she started to relax. Maybe this trip won't be so bad after all. The Bradleys got their room key and itineraries for the trip. The itinerary outlined everything. What shows performed each night, the different dinner parties, the stops along the way. Once they got their keys, they had their photo taken and headed to their room.

They reserved a junior suite on Deck 8, cabin number 8564. It was a pretty good-sized suite that could comfortably hold all four of them. It had a private balcony and floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors. Amy and Brad would sleep on the two twin beds, and their parents would share the queen bed on the other side of the room.

Before dinner that night, Amy unpacked her suitcases. She brought 15 rolls of film with her to take as many photos as possible. She wanted to decorate her new apartment. That night, the ship hosted a formal dinner. Ron met up with some co-workers from the insurance company, and the family had a great first meal together.

After dinner ended, one of the waiters in the restaurant asked for Amy by name. He told Amy's brother Brad that he wanted to take her to a popular bar in Aruba called Carlos and Charlie's when the ship docked there the next day. Now, if that name sounds familiar, Carlos and Charlie's, that's because it is.

Carlos and Charlie's is the same bar where Natalie Holloway was last seen during her trip to Aruba in May of 2005. When Brad told Amy about this waiter who asked for her by name, she wasn't interested. She told her brother, quote, that that guy gives me the creeps, end quote. When the ship docked in Aruba, the family took another photo together out in front of the cruise ship.

They were excited to be in Aruba and have their first day off the boat. So they rented a jeep so they could tour the island. While on the island, Amy brought some gifts for a couple of friends. Before sunset, the Bradleys returned to the jeep and got back on the ship. The plan was to leave Aruba that night and then travel the 70 miles to their second stop, Curacao, another top Caribbean tourist spot.

That night, the ship had a dinner party planned. Even though they had a great time off the ship in Aruba, they looked forward to another nice dinner and entertainment. A dance group boarded the cruise ship in Aruba on the upper deck to perform. The dancers brought a group of locals on board as well.

Now, the Bradleys thought that this was odd. These locals weren't paying guests of the ship. They weren't performers. How could they just be allowed to board the ship? Oh, well, they thought maybe this was just something that happens on cruise ships. While the dancers performed, Amy and her mom, Iva, went up to the ship's top deck to look at the photos taken so far. The ones taken on the ship and those at their first stop in Aruba.

On most cruise ships, staff members will take family photos and then put them out for sale throughout the trip, just like they do at Disneyland. But when they looked for Amy's photos, they couldn't find a single photo of her, even though they found photos of Brad, Iva, and Ron. Iva asked one of the photographers standing by the photo wall where the photos were of Amy.

He said that he remembered putting some up, but that he had no idea where they went. So she asked if he could have the photos of Amy reprinted. He said, sure, no problem, and that they would have the photos ready by the following day. Amy and Iva walked away with a weird feeling deep inside their gut. Why would someone other than them want to take all the photos of Amy?

By March 23rd, the Bradleys enjoyed their third day of the trip. After the ship docked in Curacao, they went to a dinner party on its upper deck. After dinner, Amy and her brother Brad decided to go to the ship's disco nightclub while their parents went back to the room.

At the nightclub, Amy and Bradley had a great time. They both danced with many of the ship's crew members. They had a lot of drinks. They thought, hey, maybe this whole cruise thing with our parents isn't so bad after all. One of the people Amy danced with that night was a guy named Alistair Douglas, who went by the nickname Yellow.

Alistair Douglas, aka Yellow, was a member of the ship's band Blue Orchid. He was the band's bass player. The two of them struck up a conversation after the band performed and they ended up dancing with each other. The onboard photographer, Chris Fenwick, captured Amy dancing with Yellow that night. Around one o'clock in the morning, Yellow said that he and Amy parted ways and said goodnight to each other.

According to him, that's when Amy headed back to her room. At around 4 a.m., Amy and Brad briefly spoke to each other in the family's cabin. Amy told him that she wasn't feeling well and that she was going to go sit outside on the balcony to get some fresh air. Brad told his sister goodnight and that he loved her. Sometime between 5.15 a.m. and 5.30 a.m., Amy's dad, Ron, woke up and checked on his kids.

When he looked out through the room's floor-to-ceiling windows, he saw Amy asleep on the balcony. She was sitting on one of the balcony chairs. When he saw her sleeping, he figured she probably had a little too much to drink that night and just fell asleep on the balcony. So he turned around and went back to bed.

About 45 minutes later, Ron returned to check on Amy again. But she wasn't on the balcony. She was gone. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day. When your schedule is packed with kids' activities, big work projects, or podcasting like me, it's easy to let your priorities slip.

Even when we know it makes us feel good, it's hard to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. Therapy can help with things like how to set healthy boundaries or find ways to be the best version of yourself.

So if you're thinking about starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist or switch therapist anytime for no additional charge. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp.

Visit BetterHelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. Amy's cigarettes and lighter were also missing. Everything else was still inside the room, though, including her shoes, wallet, and ID, which told Ron that his daughter didn't plan to be gone very long. Maybe she just went somewhere else on the ship to have a cigarette, but

But he became more concerned when she didn't show up to breakfast. Right away, the Bradleys knew something was wrong. Amy wasn't the type of person to run off and just do her own thing. Plus, for someone afraid of the ocean and nervous about the trip, it seemed strange for her to suddenly go off on her own.

So the family reached out to the ship's captain to help look for her. But he didn't seem to want anything to do with the family. Amy was a 23-year-old adult, and she'd only been missing for a few hours. Maybe she stayed the night in one of the crew members' cabins.

In the captain's mind, he's got an itinerary. The ship was about to let everyone out for the Curacao stop. He's not going to delay any part of this trip simply because an adult passenger has gone missing for a couple hours. But the Bradleys are desperate. They didn't want anyone getting on or off the ship until they found their daughter.

Because if she's been kidnapped or something terrible has happened, they don't want anyone getting away. At the very least, they wanted the captain to page for Amy over the ship's loudspeaker to meet her family in their cabin. But he was concerned that paging Amy that early in the morning would disturb the other passengers, so he didn't.

The Bradleys continued to beg the captain to help look for her and to not let anyone off the ship until they found her. But the captain ignored the family's request and right on schedule, he docked the boat and allowed passengers to disembark in Curacao. Both passengers and crew members were let off the ship.

The Bradleys remembered how Amy said she was looking forward to the stop in Curacao. She wanted to get off the ship to buy some cigarettes there, so maybe Amy got off the ship on her own. Once passengers were off the ship, the captain assured the Bradleys that he and his crew would look for Amy. This allowed the family to get off the ship and look for her around town.

So once they got into town, they looked for Amy everywhere. They stopped every police officer they saw. They tried getting in touch with the U.S. Embassy, but it was closed. But there was no sign of anywhere of Amy on the island. Back on the ship, the crew finally started looking for Amy. They searched up and down the ship's ten floors, but she was nowhere to be found on the ship either.

So the family contacted the FBI back in the United States. Since Amy's disappearance happened on international waters, the U.S. doesn't have jurisdiction. When something happens in international water on a cruise ship, the jurisdiction typically falls on the nearest country or territory. But the Bradleys needed some help here. The family explained to the FBI that their daughter had been missing for almost an entire day.

She's not on the cruise ship and she's not on the island. The FBI agreed to help, but they tell them that it's going to be at least 24 hours for them to send agents to the island. Remember, they're in the middle of the Caribbean on this cruise ship, so it's going to take some time to get FBI agents out there. But there's another problem. The ship is leaving. It's got over 2,000 passengers ready to go to the next stop on its route.

So the family had a decision to make. Do they stay on the ship and meet up with the FBI at the next stop? Or do they stay on the island of Curacao and wait for the FBI there? This was a tough decision. Did she get off and is somewhere in town? Was she somewhere on the ship and no one had found her yet? They decided to stay on the island and the ship leaves.

Their gut told them that Amy got off the ship, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, and was somewhere on the island. Once the FBI arrives in Curacao, the family tells the agents everything they know about the last time they saw Amy. The FBI contacts the ship and learns that she still hasn't shown up. So the FBI flew the family out to the ship's next stop in St. Thomas.

When they get there, the FBI begins questioning the ship's captain about what they did when they first learned that Amy went missing. He tells the agents, yeah, we looked for her in all of the public common areas of the ship. The restaurants, the nightclub where she was seen dancing, places like that. The Bradley family then realizes they didn't search for her like they said they did.

All they did was send a few crew members out to a couple spots where Amy was seen to go, restaurants and the nightclub, but that's it. They didn't conduct this room-by-room search of the ship like they said they would do back in Curacao. The FBI conducted their own search of the ship. As they're searching for any signs of Amy, other passengers on board are starting to find out what's happening.

One passenger who found out what was going on was Crystal Roberts. According to Crystal Roberts, she saw Amy and Yellow, a.k.a. Alistair Douglas, a little after 6 a.m. on the morning she disappeared, more than five hours after he said he last saw her at the nightclub. Amy's brother Brad also had a strange interaction with Alistair Douglas.

Around 9 a.m. on the morning of her disappearance, Brad ran into Douglas in one of the ship's hallways. He said something to Brad like, I'm so sorry to hear about your sister. I hope they find her. Brad finds this interaction strange because he's thinking, how does he know my sister is missing?

The only people who knew about Amy's disappearance were her family, the ship's captain, and his security team, or possibly the crew members who he sent to search the public areas. So at 9 o'clock in the morning that particular day when she went missing, no one else would have known that she was missing.

Since Alistair Douglas was likely the last person to see Amy, the FBI sat down to question him. They also administered a polygraph test.

Now, it's unclear whether or not he passes this polygraph, although according to the Bradley family, when he left the interview room, he allegedly smiled at Amy's dad and gave him two thumbs up, suggesting like, hey, I'm all clear. It's not me who took your daughter.

While speaking to the FBI, Alistair Douglas seemed to change his story. At first, he admitted to seeing Amy that night, but then he backtracks and said that he was never with her. Now, we know that he and Amy were together that night, regardless of his story. We have video evidence showing him following her to the club that night, and we have video and photographs of them dancing together.

Again, the ship's photographer is filming the entire time that they're dancing. He's at that nightclub, the photographer taking photos and taking video. The video, which he captures, again, of Amy and Alistair Douglas dancing that night, I'm going to put that video and photographs up on our website. But again,

Just because Douglas changed his story and he may or may not have passed the polygraph, the FBI doesn't have enough evidence against him. Yes, they were suspicious about him and he might have had something to do with Amy's disappearance, but they simply didn't have enough evidence to hold him. So he's free to go. The FBI also learned about Amy's missing photographs on the ship.

Remember, eight to nine hours before Amy went missing, someone removed all of her photos from the wall, the photos that photographers take throughout the trip and are available for purchase. The FBI found this suspicious for a few reasons. Number one, did the person who removed the photographs also kidnap her? Number two, did someone remove the photos so people would have a difficult time finding her?

Remember, this is in the late 1990s. People didn't have cell phones and iPhones like they do now with thousands of pictures. And number three, did someone take the pictures as a part of a larger conspiracy? Like multiple people were working to kidnap Amy. All signs pointed to the direction that Amy had become a victim of foul play.

The Netherlands Coast Guard conducted a four-day search around Curacao and the ship's route. They were also joined by a search boat chartered by the Royal Caribbean. But the search turned up empty. There was no sign of Amy anywhere. It was like she had vanished from her balcony that morning. On March 29th, five days after she went missing, Netherland officials ended the search.

They said they found no evidence that she had either fallen or jumped over the railing in their report. So if she didn't fall off the balcony and she didn't jump overboard, what happened to her and who took her? The Bradleys eventually returned back to the U.S., still desperate to find their daughter. After a week, Brad and Ron flew back to Curacao to continue to search for her.

Once they got back on the island, they put up missing person flyers. They spoke with locals, asking them if they had seen Amy around the island over the last couple of weeks. And as they were talking with the locals, they came across a taxi cab driver. This driver claimed to have seen a woman matching Amy's description. He said the woman frantically approached him and asked him where the nearest payphone was before running off.

He said he remembered this woman because he could never forget how green her eyes were. This was the family's first solid tip that Amy was on the island. She made it off the cruise ship and at some point was alive in Curacao. Brad and Ron got back on a plane and flew back home to the States. On their way home, they had a layover in Miami.

While they're sitting at the airport in Miami, they get a phone call from law enforcement in Curacao. They called to tell them that they found some human skeletal remains on a beach and that they thought they might belong to Amy. But it's going to take them a few days to test them. When the remains are sent to a forensic lab, sex is one of the first biological characteristics that scientists want to identify.

They look to determine gender first because some methods of estimating other identifying characteristics, like age at the time of death and stature, are gender dependent. In other words, if they want to find out the age at which someone died, forensic scientists need to first determine whether the remains are male or female.

Also, in the forensic field, determining the gender of human remains immediately rules out a large portion of possible identifications. For example, if investigators are searching for a missing female and the remains are male, well, then that cuts the list of potential matches basically in half. Scientists can determine gender based on the shape and size of the remains.

Females and males have different bone sizes, genetics, and hormonal variations. Now, generally speaking, a female's skeleton is usually much smoother than a male's skeleton. Male skeletons are traditionally thicker, rougher to the touch, and underneath a microscope, they appear bumpier.

Males tend to have larger muscles than females do, so their skeletons require stronger attachment sites, causing their bones to be thicker and bumpier. Forensic investigators in the Caribbean determined that the skeletal remains found on the beach belonged to a male. Although the Bradley family was somewhat relieved that the remains weren't Amy's,

they were still no closer to figuring out what happened to her. For the next 14 months, little progress was made until a guy named David Carmichael called the Bradleys. In August of 1998, a Canadian named David Carmichael claimed to have seen Amy five months after her disappearance. But at the time, he didn't know who Amy was.

He said he saw two men and a woman walking on a beach near Point Maria in Curacao. When David Carmichael turned to speak to his friend in English, he said the woman who was walking with the two men immediately turned around and started walking towards him. Once she heard him speaking English, she knew this was her opportunity to get help.

Just as the woman was about to say something to him, one of the two men signaled her to walk away. He thought this whole situation was odd, so he followed the three of them to a small cafe.

While at the cafe, he said the woman continued to stare at him whenever she got the opportunity. It was apparent she was trying to tell him something. She was trying to communicate without using words, but using her eyes and using her facial expressions. But he didn't know what she was trying to say.

About a year later, David Carmichael said that he was watching an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, and in the episode, they covered Amy Bradley's case. He then realized that the woman he saw with the two men on the beach that day, months earlier, was in fact Amy.

By the time David Carmichael contacted Amy's family, 14 months after her disappearance, he claimed to be 100% certain that the woman he saw on the beach that day was Amy. He was even able to distinctively describe Amy's tattoos, a Tasmanian devil spinning a basketball on her shoulder, a sun on her lower back, and Chinese symbols on her right ankle.

According to David Carmichael, that woman he saw was Amy Bradley. She had all of those tattoos. Everything about her physical description was an exact match from Amy to this woman. This potential sighting from David Carmichael becomes another piece of the puzzle, but it doesn't prove that this woman was in fact Amy. It doesn't prove she's still alive, and it doesn't tell the family what happened.

But the potential sightings of Amy didn't stop there. A few months later, in the fall of 1999, an individual named Frank Jones contacted the Bradley family. He told the family that he was a former member of the American Special Forces and he knew where Amy was.

According to him, Colombian gangsters were holding Amy on the island of Curacao and that he's seen Amy multiple times. He's seen her at the grocery store as well as the gym. He said Amy would go to the gym with a tall blonde guy with tattoos. This Frank Jones guy told the family, look, I know where Amy is. You can trust me. I'm a former officer with the special forces.

But to get Amy away from these Colombian gangsters, I'm going to need a little bit of money. He's going to need some time to conduct surveillance. He will also need additional resources to get her out of the apartment complex where they're holding her. And all of this is going to cost him money. He's going to need some cash.

So at this time, as this Frank Jones guy is reaching out to the family, the Bradleys had offered up a $2,000 reward for any information that could lead them to Amy. It's unclear whether or not this Frank Jones person knew about the reward money, but this guy seemed credible. He claimed to be a former special ops agent.

But even more than that, he also told the family very detailed information about Amy. He was also able to describe her tattoos to a T. He even hummed a lullaby that he said he overheard Amy sing, a lullaby that Amy's mom, Iva, taught her when she was a kid. So all of this information looked promising. So the family agreed to pay him some of the reward money.

Over the next couple of weeks, the Bradleys think that Frank Jones is using the money to help find a way to get Amy out of there. But Jones later called the family asking for more money. He said he needed some more money for the actual armed rescue of her.

Initially, the Bradleys are a little reluctant before they give this Frank Jones guy any more of their money. They want to see some proof. They want to see some concrete proof that Amy is in fact under this guy's surveillance and that this woman that they've been watching is in fact Amy Bradley.

Frank Jones responded to the family's request and provided them a photograph of a tattooed woman who very much looked like Amy. Same skin color, same hairstyle, everything. So after looking at this photograph, the Bradleys agreed to send over the rest of the money in order to complete the rescue. In total, the family pays him over $210,000.

Once the Bradleys turned over the money, Jones told them to fly to Florida and wait for a phone call indicating that his team had rescued Amy. The family waited in a hotel for about a week before getting a phone call from one of Jones's associates. The man on the other end of the phone told the Bradleys he had terrible news. The entire operation to recover Amy was a scam.

The photos, the Columbians, the apartment under surveillance, all of it was a fraud. Not only did this Frank Jones character dupe them, but the guy on the other end of the phone was also duped.

Frank Jones, who has never been in the Special Forces, eventually pled guilty to mail fraud and received a five-year prison sentence in federal court in February of 2002. He was also ordered to pay the Bradley family restitution for the $210,000 that he stole from them.

Over the next couple of years, the Bradley family received tips from many people who believe they've seen Amy since she disappeared, including information the family got in 1999 when a member of the U.S. Navy claimed he met a woman in a brothel who told him her name was Amy Bradley and that she was being held against her will.

When authorities asked this man why he didn't come forward with this information sooner, he said that he was scared to speak to authorities because he thought that he was going to get in trouble for visiting a brothel, being a U.S. Navy serviceman. According to this guy, this woman claimed that she was Amy Bradley and, quote, she was begging for help.

When authorities went to investigate this brothel that this guy said he saw Amy, they were far too late. The brothel had already shut down, so any hope of finding out if Amy had been there were lost. In 2005, there was word about another possible sighting of Amy. A woman named Judy Marr came forward about a weird encounter she had with a woman in a department store bathroom in Barbados.

Judy told authorities that a woman walked in with three men behind her while she was using the restroom. She said she overheard the men threatening the woman that she would be in trouble if she didn't follow through on a deal. After the three men turned around and left the bathroom, she approached the woman. The lady said her name was Amy and that she was from Virginia.

According to Judy, just seconds after she said her name was Amy, the three men came rushing into the bathroom and escorted her out. Judy provided the authorities with a description of the three men, and law enforcement created composite sketches of them as well as the woman. Based on her description, the three men and mystery woman haven't been identified.

That same year in 2005, Amy's mom and dad made their first appearance on a Dr. Phil episode that originally aired on November 17th, 2005. On the show, Amy's parents talked about an email that someone sent to the Bradley family website. The email contained two photographs of a half-dressed woman in a somewhat provocative sexual pose lying on the bed.

The woman's got brown, wavy, almost curly hair down to her shoulders. She's wearing a black lace top with what only looks like underwear on the bottom. Then she's got on black heels. Now, someone who worked for an organization that tries to locate and recover victims of sex trafficking found these images on an escort agency's website and thought that the woman looked exactly like Amy.

The resort was known as Affordable Adult Vacations, located on an island in Venezuela. The organization said that the woman in the photos is a sex worker known as Jazz. These photos have become a big deal to this story. Many people believe that the woman in these photos that were turned over to the Bradley family is in fact photos of Amy. She looks exactly like her.

The only significant difference from the photos taken of Amy back in 1998 and these photos is her hair's length. Because back in 1998, she had short hair. In these latest photos, it's down to her shoulders. These photos provided the first solid piece of evidence that Amy was possibly a victim of sex trafficking.

These photographs gave rise to the popular theory that Amy was abducted from that cruise ship and then sold into illegal sex industry. The Bradleys worked with Wesley Neville, a highly respected forensic artist at the International Association for Identification in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Wesley Neville is well known for his work in forensic identification and is a former law enforcement officer from South Carolina. He's worked on cases involving 2D and 3D facial reconstructions, composite drawings, image enhancements, age progressions, video sketches. If it involves forensic art, he's worked on it. Throughout his career, he's worked on cases from all over the world.

So the family worked with Naveel to find whether the woman in these photos known as Jazz to find out whether or not this woman is in fact Amy. And after his evaluation of the photographs, he concluded that those photos from the Affordable Adult Vacations website are in fact Amy Bradley.

To conduct a forensic evaluation of the photographs, this expert looked at several of the woman's characteristics and features and then compared them to Amy's features. Starting with her eyes, he found that the woman's eyebrows were the same size as Amy's and they both had the same size and shape eyes. He found the same blemish underneath her left eye.

Next, he looked at her nose. Both the women in the photograph and Amy have what he described as, quote, a unique abnormality on the midsection of the nose, end quote. This is the part right over the top center of her nose. Next, he found the same unusual curvature of the upper portion of her ear. He also noted that the size and shape of the ears were identical.

Other similarities he found were the length of her arms, the distance between the hairline to the eyebrow, and identical cheekbones. Based on his forensic evaluation of the photographs, he's 110% sure that the woman in them is Amy Bradley. He's so confident that it's her, he's been reported as saying, quote, he would bet his entire career on it, end quote.

But it's not only the photographs that make many people believe that Amy's been sex trafficked. People also point to the U.S. Navy officer who told authorities that he saw a woman who looked like Amy at a brothel. This theory could also explain the cruise ship crew members behavior at her disappearance, like getting rid of all the photographs as well as the ship's captain refusing to look for her.

Then there was Yellow, the ship's band member who was last seen with her. He lied about his whereabouts that night before changing his story when he sat down with the FBI and he said that he never saw her. We have CCTV footage of him following Amy into the club that night, and we also have photos and videos of him dancing with her that night.

Many people wonder if Yellow was a part of this sex trafficking trade and he might have had something to do with her disappearance that night.

Five years later, the family learned about another promising lead. In 2010, a human jawbone washed up on a beach in Aruba. At first, law enforcement thought that the jawbone might belong to another famous missing person case from the same area, the Natalie Holloway case. She went missing in Aruba back in 2005.

So when they recovered the jawbone, they immediately compared it to Natalie Holloway's dental records, but they didn't match. It wasn't Natalie's remains. Since then, no DNA testing has been done on the jawbone to determine who it belongs to. However, nine other Caribbean vacationers have gone missing in the area over the recent years.

All we know is that the remains are human and are likely from a Caucasian origin. And authorities have not ruled out that it could be Amy's. After 2010, very few developments happened in the investigation. Despite the reported sightings over the years, Amy's case eventually went cold. Almost 25 years later, she has never been found to this day.

But her family has never given up their search for answers. The FBI's case file on Amy Bradley remains open. Currently, there is a reward of up to $25,000 for any information leading to her recovery, as well as any information that leads to the identification, arrest, and conviction of the person or persons responsible for her disappearance.

At the time of her disappearance, Amy was 23 years old with short brown hair, big bright green eyes, and was 5'6", 120 pounds. She has a Tasmanian devil spinning a basketball on her shoulder, a sun on her lower back, a Chinese symbol on her right ankle, and a gecko lizard around her belly button.

According to the latest information provided by the FBI, if you have any information concerning the disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley, you're asked to contact your local FBI office or the nearest American embassy or consulate.

Although it's been almost a quarter of a century since Amy was last seen on that cruise ship with her family, it's not too late to find out what happened to her. It's not too late to give the Bradley family the justice they deserve. Someone out there knows something. Someone out there is responsible for her disappearance. Was it Yellow, a.k.a. Alistair Douglas, the cruise ship's band member, dancing with Amy that night?

Was it some other member of the ship's crew? Was she killed and thrown overboard? Was she sold into sex trafficking? And finally, is that really Amy Bradley in those photographs? Decide for yourself at ForensicTales.com slash Amy Lynn Bradley. To share your thoughts on the disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales.

What do you think happened to her? And do you think it's possible she could still be alive? To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. This is where I get the opportunity to say what I think happened to Amy Bradley.

To check out photos from the case, be sure to head to our website, ForensicTales.com. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us. You can also help support the show through Patreon.

Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.

Thank you.

In addition, for supporting the show, you'll become one of the first to listen to new ad-free episodes and snag exclusive show merchandise not available anywhere else. To learn about how you can support the show, head over to our Patreon page, patreon.com slash Forensic Tales, or simply click the support link in the show notes. ♪

You can also support the show by leaving a positive review and spreading the good word about us. A true crime friend of yours is a true crime friend of ours. Forensic Tales is a podcast made possible by our Patreon producers. Tony A, Nicole L, William R, David B, Sammy, Paula G, Selena C, Nicole G, Christine B, Christina M, and Karen D.

If you'd like to become a producer of the show, go to our Patreon page or send me an email at Courtney at ForensicTales.com to find out how you can become involved. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com.

Thank you so much for listening. Your support of my show means the world to me. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.