Was Amy Bradley Ever Found? All the Alleged Sightings, Updates

What was meant to be a relaxing cruise quickly turned into a nightmare when 23-year-old Amy Lynn Bradley vanished without a trace.

Amy disappeared from Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas on March 24, 1998, while en route to Curaçao. She’d spent the evening prior dancing with her brother, Brad, fellow passengers and crew members in the ship’s nightclub.

Amy and Brad returned to their family’s cabin in the early morning hours of March 24. Her father, Ron, later saw her asleep on the balcony around 5:30 a.m. — but when he checked on her just 30 minutes later, she was gone.

Despite multiple alleged sightings over the years, Amy’s case remains unsolved. Netflix’s Amy Bradley Is Missing — which premiered on July 16 — reexamines the mysterious disappearance and explores new details that could shed light on what may have happened to Amy.

“My parents and I share this gut feeling that she is still alive, however unrealistic that may be to a lot of people. We’re never going to give up,” Brad said during a July 2025 interview with WWBT’s 12 On Your Side. “If you don’t take opportunities and follow leads, you know you’ve given up on her, and we’re not going to do that.”

So was Amy Bradley ever found? Here is everything to know about the case, including possible theories and alleged sightings that have emerged in the years since her disappearance.

Amy was last seen by her father sleeping on the balcony of their cabin

Amy was last seen in the early hours of March 24, 1998, aboard Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas, which was sailing from Oranjestad, Aruba, to Curaçao.

On the evening of March 23, Amy and Brad had gone dancing at the ship’s nightclub. According to The New York Times, Brad returned to their family’s cabin at 3:35 a.m., with Amy arriving just five minutes later. The two talked briefly on the balcony before Brad went to bed, leaving Amy sitting outside in a lounge chair.

“She said, ‘I don’t feel too good. I’m going to sit right here with all the fresh air and the wind,’ ” Brad recalled in Amy Bradley Is Missing. “Told her I loved her and see her tomorrow.”

Amy’s father, Ron, said he saw her sleeping on the balcony around 5:30 a.m. But when he checked again around 6 a.m., she was gone. Amy had left the yellow polo she’d worn the night before behind, but appeared to have taken her lighter and cigarettes.

Ron assumed Amy had stepped out for coffee or to take photos of Curaçao’s port, but when he couldn’t find her on deck, he searched the ship for over an hour before alerting his wife, Iva.

The family “begged” the cruise’s personnel to seal off the ship so they could find their daughter, Iva told NBC News in June 2005. But the ship made its regular stop in Curaçao.

Two passengers reported seeing Amy with a musician from the ship’s band around 6 a.m.

While at the ship’s nightclub, Amy was seen spending time with Alister “Yellow” Douglas, a member of the cruise’s house band, Blue Orchid.

Douglas told CNN that he left Amy and went to bed around around 1 a.m. However, in Amy Bradley Is Missing, passenger Lori Thompson claimed that she and a friend saw Amy and Douglas riding the elevator to the top deck between 5 and 6 a.m. Thompson then alleged that she saw Douglas walking 15 minutes later — alone.

In Vanished, Brad recalled a strange interaction with Douglas during the morning of March 24.

“He comes up to me and the first thing he says is, ‘Hey man, I’m sorry to hear about your sister,’ ” Brad said. At that time, only the family and the ship’s captain were believed to know that Amy was missing.

Douglas was questioned by ship security and the FBI, but authorities found no evidence linking him to Amy’s disappearance.

Her brother claimed he heard Amy was in Curaçao weeks after she disappeared

A few weeks after Amy’s disappearance, Ron and Brad returned to Curaçao in April 1998 to continue searching for Amy. A taxi driver recognized her from a flyer and told them he had seen Amy shortly after the cruise ship docked. She had been trying to find a phone.

Just days into their search, Brad believed he heard Amy call his name from a passing van.

“I heard Amy call my name — it was so distinctive, the way she always said it,” he shared on Vanished. They tried to follow the vehicle, but when they caught up, “it ended up just being an old dude by himself,” Brad recalled on Amy Is Missing.

A tourist believed he saw Amy in Curaçao in August 1998

In August 1998, Canadian tourist David Carmichael was scuba diving in Curaçao and believed he saw Amy on the beach with two unidentified individuals. Her tattoos — including a Tasmanian devil — matched Amy’s, he said.

Before she could say anything, one of the men stared at Carmichael and “motioned” her away.

“If he had not stared at me, I would have forgotten everything, but I can’t,” Carmichael said on Amy Bradly Is Missing. “I think about this every day. There isn’t a day goes by when I don’t.”

Despite Carmichael’s detailed account, authorities searched the area and came up empty.

A Navy officer claims to have seen Amy in a Curaçao brothel in 1999

Navy petty officer Bill Hefner reportedly encountered a woman in January 1999 at a brothel in Curaçao who identified herself as Amy.

“She told me she got off that ship and she left on her own, ’cause she was going to score drugs,” he claimed on Amy Bradley Is Missing. “She said, ‘Well, me and my brother were partying, and I went ashore to get drugs, and now I’m stuck here with these guys.’ ”

Hefner said he didn’t take action until years later because he was unaware Amy was missing until he later saw her face in a magazine.

The last reported sighting came in 2005

In 2005, the Bradleys received a series of “sickening” anonymous photos of a woman, whom someone claimed was Amy, Brad said on Amy Bradley Is Missing. The woman’s hair was longer and her makeup was styled differently, but Iva believed it could be her daughter.

“All I could keep thinking is, ‘Is that my daughter?’ ” Iva recalled on the docuseries. “We all looked at it — the nose, the chin and the hair — it took my breath away.”

The photos, featuring a woman identified as “Jas,” reportedly came from an adult website based in the Caribbean. An FBI analysis concluded that the woman in the photos was Amy.

Unfortunately, agents were unable to trace the website’s IP address.

That same year, a tourist named Judy Maurer says she was using a restroom in Barbados when she heard a group of men come into the bathroom. Once she heard the men leave, Maurer exited the stall and saw a woman with dark hair who said her name was Amy, Maurer recalled on Amy Bradley Is Missing.

Netflix’s Amy Bradley Is Missing explores several theories about her disappearance

After Amy was reported missing, a search of the waters between Aruba and Curaçao was conducted.

“The Marines, the Venezuelan Coast Guard, the Navy, everybody was looking in that area. Because of the position of the boat, wind force, sea current and the wave height, the body would have washed up. But she was nowhere to be found,” Henry Vrutaal, a member of the Curaçao coast guard, recalled in Amy Bradley Is Missing.

Once the search was underway, gossip spread on the cruise ship, passengers recalled in Amy Bradly Is Missing. Chris Fenwick recalled hearing that Amy had committed suicide, while another heard that she had tried to out-swim the ship to Curaçao.

Meanwhile, Wayne Breitag — who was staying in the room next door to the Bradleys — recalled hearing that someone had drugged Amy at the nightclub and kidnapped her.

One crew member floated another theory: Amy might have disembarked and was still on the island. Clinging to that hope, the Bradleys stayed behind in Curaçao to search while the ship continued on its route. Amy’s parents have long believed she may have been abducted and sold into human trafficking.

“My intuition as a mother is somebody’s got her,” Iva said on Vanished. “Somebody saw her, somebody wanted her and somebody took her.”

Another theory explored in Amy Bradley Is Missing suggests that Amy may have voluntarily left the ship and could be living in hiding overseas.

This possibility is backed by new evidence involving a series of IP addresses — traced to Barbados — that accessed the amybradleyismissing.com forum on significant dates, including family anniversaries and holidays.

Amy has never been found

Amy has never been found. However, her family believes that she is still alive.

“We will never give up on her,” Iva said in Amy Bradley Is Missing. “In the morning, when we wake up, we say, ‘Maybe today.’ And then when we get ready to go to bed at night, we have a special little kiss for Amy, and we say, ‘Maybe tomorrow.’ ”

Ron added that he still keeps Amy’s car in the garage. “It’s going to be pristine when she gets here, and then she’ll get to drive it again,” he said.

“We all have this gut feeling that she’s out there,” Brad said. “The lack of closure or not knowing allows us to continue to hope, so I actually prefer it that way.”