Amy Bradley is Missing /// Part 2 /// 863

Summary

True Crime Garage - Episode 863: "Amy Bradley is Missing /// Part 2" Summary

In episode 863 of True Crime Garage, hosts Nic and the Captain delve deeper into the mysterious disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley, exploring new insights, scrutinizing documentary portrayals, and discussing the ongoing search for answers. Special guest author and podcaster James Renner joins the conversation, bringing his expertise to shed light on overlooked aspects of the case.

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Case Recap and Timeline

The episode picks up where the previous installment left off, detailing the critical hours following Amy Bradley's disappearance on March 24, 1998. Amy's father, Ron Bradley, notices her absence around six o'clock in the morning and initiates a frantic search for his daughter:

Co-Host: "Ron wakes up, notices Amy's gone, and starts conducting his own search... they’re worried she could get lost in the shuffle as the boat pulls into port."
(01:15)

Despite extensive searches, Amy remains missing, prompting the Bradleys to urgently seek assistance from the cruise staff to make announcements in hopes of locating her amidst the chaos of passengers disembarking.

Eyewitness Testimonies and Documentary Critique

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around conflicting eyewitness accounts featured in a documentary about Amy's disappearance. The hosts express skepticism about the reliability of these testimonies, particularly regarding sightings of Amy with a man known only as "Yellow."

Nic: "Some reports suggest up to three separate witnesses saw Amy with Yellow. However, I lean toward there being only one credible witness."
(02:55)

James Renner counters by clarifying that two young women, acquaintances of Amy and her partner Brad, claimed to have seen Amy with Yellow on the upper deck:

James Renner: "These two women saw Amy go up the glass elevator back to the disco with Yellow. However, one admits uncertainty about the exact time."
(03:12)

Renner highlights inconsistencies in the documentary's presentation, noting that another supposed witness—a woman claiming to have seen Amy in a bathroom—lacks credibility:

James Renner: "This witness's account doesn't add up, especially her presence at the disco at 5:30 AM when it was still dark."
(07:43)

Questioning Documentary Integrity

The hosts critically assess the documentary's methods, suggesting that producers may have influenced witness statements to fit a predetermined narrative. They share personal experiences of being pressured to alter their accounts during interviews.

Co-Host: "The studio or Netflix has skin in the game... they may prompt witnesses to say things that aren’t true."
(08:36)

James Renner agrees, explaining how documentary writers often steer interviews to shape the story:

James Renner: "Writers think about the narrative and try to put words in the mouths of interviewees, altering their original statements."
(09:12)

This manipulation undermines the documentary's credibility, leading the hosts to caution listeners about accepting its portrayal at face value.

Wrongful Death Lawsuit and Legal Challenges

The episode examines the Bradleys' wrongful death lawsuit against Royal Caribbean, which was ultimately dismissed due to allegations of fraud. The court found inconsistencies in the family's presentation of eyewitness accounts, particularly the omission of sightings suggesting Amy was not under duress.

Co-Host: "Filing a wrongful death lawsuit while suggesting Amy is still alive creates legal contradictions that led to the dismissal."
(22:57)

James Renner elaborates on how fraudulent activities, such as the scam perpetrated by Frank Jones, further complicated the legal case:

James Renner: "Frank Jones conned the Bradleys out of over $200,000, providing fabricated evidence and false hope."
(23:40)

Investigating "Yellow" - Alistair's Involvement

A significant focus is placed on the suspect known as "Yellow," a bass player on the cruise ship. The hosts question his alibi and involvement, noting his continued presence on the ship post-disappearance:

Co-Host: "Yellow didn't leave the boat; he remained in the band, raising questions about how he could have facilitated Amy's disappearance."
(35:25)

James Renner shares his personal pursuit to interview Alistair, revealing the challenges faced in locating him in Grenada:

James Renner: "I flew to Grenada and met Alistair at a church service. He expressed remorse but denied involvement in Amy's disappearance."
(39:54)

Despite Renner's efforts, Alistair maintains his innocence, and no concrete evidence links him directly to the case. The FBI's stance remains that there's no proof Amy ever left her cabin on the ship.

James Renner: "The FBI has no evidence Amy left her cabin, making Alistair's direct involvement highly unlikely."
(44:40)

Misidentification and Human Trafficking Theories

Renner discusses the possibility that Amy was misidentified in escort photographs from a brothel on Margarita Island. He investigates the credentials of these photos, suggesting they were likely stock images used deceitfully by a local operator:

James Renner: "The woman in the escort photos resembles Amy but was actually Susan, an acquaintance from Daytona Beach, Florida, with no ties to Amy."
(14:52)

This misidentification casts doubt on human trafficking theories presented in the documentary, emphasizing the need for meticulous verification of evidence.

Search Efforts and Cruise Ship Negligence

The hosts criticize the cruise ship's search procedures, contradicting claims that there was an "all hands on deck" effort to find Amy. They argue that the actual search was limited and inadequate:

Co-Host: "The FBI states that the search wasn't thorough—only a few crew members were involved, contrary to the documentary's claims."
(35:25)

Drawing parallels from property management experiences, the co-host illustrates how easily items (or people) can be overlooked without a comprehensive search strategy:

Co-Host: "In property management, even lost keys can take months to find if not searched properly."
(36:27)

Conclusion and Ongoing Mystery

The episode concludes with the acknowledgment that the Amy Bradley case remains unsolved, with numerous unanswered questions and conflicting narratives. The hosts emphasize the complexity of the case and the importance of continued investigation:

Co-Host: "There are so many possibilities regarding what happened to Amy. It's negligent to settle on one theory without thorough exploration."
(28:57)

James Renner reiterates the necessity of scrutinizing all available evidence and remaining open to multiple avenues of inquiry:

James Renner: "Memory is malleable, and narratives can be constructed post-factum. We need to approach this case without preconceived notions."
(03:12)

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Case Details and Current Status

Amy Lynn Bradley

• Age at Disappearance: 23 (would be 51 today)
• Classification: Endangered
• Description:
  • Height: 5'7"
  • Weight: ~115 lbs
  • Hair: Brown (sometimes dyed blonde, may appear almost black when cut short)
  • Eyes: Green
  • Tattoos:
    • Tasmanian devil spinning a basketball (back of shoulder)
    • Green and blue gecko lizard (around navel)
    • Japanese symbol (right ankle)
    • Primitive Japanese sun (lower back)
• Habits: Smoker (Marlboro Lights), social drinker (Miller Light Beer)

FBI Offer:

• Age-progressed Photos Available
• Reward: Up to $25,000 for information leading to Amy’s recovery and the identification, arrest, and conviction of responsible parties.

Call to Action: If you have any information regarding Amy Lynn Bradley's disappearance, please contact your local FBI office or the nearest American Embassy or consulate.

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Special Acknowledgment:
A heartfelt thank you to James Renner, author, YouTuber, and podcaster, for joining the hosts in exploring the depths of Amy Bradley's case.

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Stay Connected:
For more in-depth analysis and updates on this case, visit James Renner's podcast available on YouTube and other platforms. Continue supporting True Crime Garage by subscribing and leaving a five-star review on your preferred listening app.

Remember:
Be good, be kind, and don't litter.

Transcript

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[Nichols]

Welcome to off the Record. I'm your host, Nichols.

[Host]

It's good to be seen and it's.

[Co-Host]

Good to see you off the Record.

[Host]

Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling a friend True Crime.

[Co-Host]

Podcast Podcast Be good, be kind and don't let gather around, grab a chair.

[Nichols]

Grab a beer, let's talk some true crime.

[Co-Host]

Where we left off guys, we got around six o' clock. Is is when Ron says he he wakes up, notices Amy's gone and then soon he's going to start conducting his own search, looking for his daughter. Eventually he will return after not finding Amy, wake up his wife and his son and they're trying to alert the ship staff, as they say, begging the staff to make an announcement to help them find their daughter, especially because they're getting ready or about around the same time they're pulling into port and a whole bunch of passengers like, almost like it's the Titanic, are going to be rushing off of this boat to get off of the boat and they're worried that if, if something's happened to their daughter that somebody could move her off of the boat or she's going to get lost in the shuffle. They really feel like if they're going to be able to find her locator, that this is the time. Now, while all this is going on, we have witnesses who claim to have seen Amy after the time that her father believes her to be missing. Right? Or at least missing from their room. Some reports I've seen have suggested or said as many as three separate witnesses later told authorities that they saw Amy on the upper deck with Yellow. She's, you know, he hands her a drink. I want to be clear on this because one thing I didn't love about when this goes from your TV screen and then somebody plugs it into the Internet, everybody always says, well there were two people that saw her. They were stand two women that were standing together, they saw Amy with this guy. At this time, I say nay because all I remember seeing on the documentary was one person sitting on camera. So she can say all day and night that she was standing with somebody else. But we don't have that other person to step in front of the camera and say the, the same thing. So I lean more toward. We got one person giving the state.

[James Renner]

I can clear up some of this because I have talked to the two girls who were. There were girls at the time who saw Amy with Yellow. Now these are two young women who met Brad and Amy actually at the airport in Miami when they were on their way to Puerto Rico. And so they were about the same age. One of them had kind of a crush on Brad or thought he was attractive. And so, you know, they, they hung out with Brad and Amy. So they, they knew them, you know, on site. And they were also at the disco that night dancing late into the, into the morning. And these two women decided not to go back to the room after the disco closed because they didn't want to wake up their family. And they, and it was so late already, they decided to stay out on the, on the deck until around six in the morning before they could go back. So they, they exist. I've talked, I've talked to them and they claim that they saw Amy go up that glass elevator back up to the disco with Yellow. Now the documentary makes it seem like they saw them for sure after Amy left her cabin at 5:30 or whenever it was the next morning, and then it was, you know, after that that they saw them go back up to the disco. Now I disagree with that because one of the girls that I talked to says that she can't be sure that it was that late in the morning and that it could be as early as 3:30 in the morning. So I think it's very possible she did see Amy and Yellow together, But I really think it was before Amy went back to her cabin, but we can't be sure. They said that they saw Amy and Yellow go up the elevator and then Yellow came walking across the deck alone and, and walked by them. So what happened to Amy there? I think that's probably when Amy went back to her cabin. But they, they, you know, they're not entirely sure, but they do suggest that they saw her after she came out the next morning. I, but it's, it's not, it's not 100% like the documentary makes you think. And you did mention the, there's this rumor of a Third witness, this woman who would hang out at the disco because she was taking antibiotics and she had to stay out of the sun. And she. She claimed at some point that she saw Yellow and Amy come up when nobody else was there and Yellow gave her a drink. That witness, I think, is totally unreliable. If she is in the disco because she's trying to avoid the sun, what's she doing there at 5:30 in the morning when the sun's not up? The sunrise that morning, I think, was around 6:30. Nothing about that witness makes sense. And it's my understanding nobody can locate that witness anymore. The witnesses aren't as reliable as the documentary would make you think. And there were a number of other witnesses that claim that they saw Amy on Curacao months after she went missing, suggesting that she did get off the ship, that maybe she was involved in human trafficking. But you got to remember that these are eyewitnesses that are coming at it in reverse. You know, they didn't know who Amy was. They encountered a woman that kind of looked like her, and then months later, they saw her picture on America's Most Wanted. The human mind is built to create narratives that, that make sense, that tell a story. And memory is not something like you see in TV and film, where suddenly there's this flashback in 4K and it's exactly how it happened. That's not how it works. Every time you access a memory, you change it a little bit, you rewrite it a little bit. It's not static. So I do believe that the witnesses believe they saw Amy, but I don't know. I'm not convinced that the woman they saw was actually Amy.

[Co-Host]

The three of us, we get to see kind of how the sausage is made, right? James may be more than myself and the captain, but, James, you've been involved in different documentaries, and as have I, True Crime Garage. And I can't say this was everyone's experience, but the studio or Netflix, whoever is putting out the documentary certainly has skin in the game, right? And I have experienced a particular situation where I'm sitting in front of a camera and they're getting ready to hit record, and they say, hey, why don't you say this? And I go, well, why would I say that? They go, well, because, you know, of what was going on at the time. I go, well, that wasn't the situation. That. That wasn't the case at all. Well, how about you just say it for the. For the camera real quick, Real quick shot here. Just go ahead and say it. And I go, no, I'm not saying that because it doesn't.

[James Renner]

Good for you.

[Co-Host]

It's not true. And maybe, maybe some people will do that because some people just want to be on camera. And, and in that moment, I'll defend people that say things that are untrue because I think that the way that I, I thought they were making me feel was that I had to say it or I was going to be, you know, asked to leave the room. But I, I didn't give it. I didn't give a shit. Like.

[James Renner]

Good.

[Co-Host]

I know. I know the story. I know. I know the facts of the story. And you can ask me all day and night to say something. If you want to find somebody else to say that for you, you can. Right. I'm sure there'll be a line out the door.

[James Renner]

Yeah. Most people don't realize that on these documentaries there's often a writer that's credited and that's, that's what the writer's doing behind the scenes is they're thinking about the narrative they already want and they're trying to put the words in the mouths of the people that are being interviewed. So it's not this. You know, a lot of times the documentaries you're watching, you're, you're listening to these statements. A lot of times that's not the statements that they made, it's the statements that were rewritten on the spot and then ask. They, like you said, they go to the witness and say, can you say it like this or can you say this?

[Co-Host]

I think that it gets difficult for the viewer to understand that when you're seeing somebody sit in front of the camera and tell you something, it's completely different than if they were sitting on the stand, hand on the Bible.

[James Renner]

Yeah.

[Co-Host]

And testifying to something in court. It's completely, completely different.

[James Renner]

For sure.

[Host]

Well, that's why anybody that is interested in this case and is doing a deep dive on Reddit, do yourself a favor, go watch these interviews that James Renner have, has done. I think it's some of the best stuff that you're, that you've been putting out.

[James Renner]

Thank you.

[Host]

But why has nobody mentioned this? I was watching the documentary, maybe 15 minutes in. I'm like, this is a great documentary. It's shot well. There's great B, B roll. It kind of made me miss the days of Paradise Loss and the grittiness to the original docu series, but nobody. I have not seen anybody mention this on the Internet. Her brother's name is Brad Bradley.

[James Renner]

Yeah.

[Host]

Don't, don't trust a man with two first names. Don't trust a man with the same name, just slightly altered.

[Co-Host]

And in all likelihood, his name is Bradford.

[James Renner]

No, it's. It'. He's Ronald Bradley Jr. And the, the story I got was. So instead of calling him Ron Jr. They were looking for a nickname and they thought he looked like a Brad, so they started calling him Brad Bradley or, or he had friends that would just call him Brad for short. So it stuck.

[Nichols]

He does look like a Brad.

[Co-Host]

Not gonna argue that.

[Host]

I'm not trying to poo poo on the family. Don't think I'm doing that. But I have seen a lot of online speculation that Brad might not be so great with the truth at times.

[James Renner]

I'd never caught. I don't think that any. I don't think that the family has outright lied about anything. I think they've withheld some information which got them in trouble during the lawsuit against Royal Caribbean 2.

[Co-Host]

Right.

[James Renner]

But I don't think they would outright lie about anything. And I certainly don't think they're ultimately responsible for, you know, doing anything to Amy. You know, they, they, in their heart, you can tell that they believe that she's still alive and desperately want to. To find her. I, you know, for me, at this point, if I was, if I was Brad, I would be deleting all of my social media history. You know, the. I mean, it's. If Amy's alive and reading his. His social media, I can't. It would have to be very painful, you know, so that bothers me a little bit. I've said it before. They were a very tight family. There was a lot of love there.

[Host]

What are your thoughts on the eyewitness that claims she saw Amy in the bathroom?

[James Renner]

So, yeah, this woman went on a cruise and ended up in Barbados and has this story about how she encountered a woman she believed to be Amy Bradley inside a bathroom and that she was being essentially guarded by three black men who were with her and trying to keep an eye on her. And that woman, the witness, she actually lives in Ohio. So I got to, you know, sit down with her. She lives in Columbus. And again, I think she believes that she. What. She says that she believes what she saw. I don't know that it was Amy. She has this story about the. This woman acting very bizarre in the bathroom, and she went up to her, got a sense that she was in some sort of trouble and said that the woman told her her name was Amy and that she was from. She thought, she said West Virginia. But in hindsight, you know, she said, well, it could have been like a town in Virginia, like Chesterfield, Virginia. And again, she's coming at that in reverse because she has this encounter and then a couple months later sees Amy's picture on one of the news programs like America's Most Wanted. And then I think it was on Dr. Phil, but Dr. Phil, yeah.

[Host]

The thing I thought was interesting about her telling of the story, and again, because I didn't talk to her face to face, I have to just go with what the documentary is saying. But it made it sound like she didn't have an aha moment until. It wasn't a picture of Amy. It was a picture of this sex worker that was on a website that some people think is Amy. Can you.

[James Renner]

Yeah.

[Host]

Dive into that? And are we. Are we learning any more about this individual that was on a website?

[James Renner]

Yeah, it's a very interesting part of the story. So I. I think you're right. I think it's possible that the woman that she encountered in Barbados was the woman from the escort pictures. And that woman is, in my mind, very unlikely to be Amy. So in around 2005, somebody sent the Bradleys a picture of a woman from an escort website that was running out of a brothel in Margarita Island. Now, Margarita island is fairly close to the ABC ABC islands of, you know, where Curacao is. And Margarita island is, in fact, on a good day, I think you can see Margarita island from Curacao. Margarita island is part of Venezuela, which is a very, very scary country. And there is a brothel on Margarita island called. It was run by a business called Affordable Adult Vacations, which was run by a Greek guy from Canada named Alexis Zaglinitis. And he was this weasel of a guy who always had his hand in prostitution down there. So this picture shows a woman who clearly has a resemblance to Amy Lynn Bradley and her. But her hair is kind of curly, frizzy. And to me, the first time I looked at that picture, I immediately just thought that this picture had to be taken in the late 80s or early 90s. Just kind of has that look. And so. But there's definitely a resemblance there. And so they did a lot of work trying to look into that brothel and the background of this guy. And so when I set out to do my research on this case, that was one of the main things I tried to focus on, because either that is Amy or it's not. And if it's not Amy, then who is that woman in the photograph? And if I can identify that woman, then it really. It really kind of puts. You know, it kind of takes away the idea that she was trafficked, because at that point, there'd be no. No evidence that she. That she was. So I set out to figure out who that woman was. Now I haven't been able to do that for sure, although I think I'm getting close. There are a number of other women whose photographs appeared on that same escort website. And on that page, she's on a page that refers to visiting escorts, not escorts that live on Margarita island, but escorts that would come in for a weekend to meet up with clients and make some money. And there are two other women on that page who I have been able to identify. And both of those women starred in adult films in the 90s, and it appears they were never at Margarita island, had nothing to do with it. So I believe what was happening is Alexis, the guy that ran the place, was taking still photographs of these white women from adult films, saying that they were visiting escorts as a kind of bait and switch. So these guys would come out to the island, and they're like, hey, could I get a date with Jazz? The name of the woman that looked like Amy? And he'd be like, oh, you know what? You just missed her. But we have these lovely women from the Dominican Republic and Colombia because the women that were working in the brothel were women of color exclusively, and, you know, partly because it was easy to. To obtain them. Now, I do think it was a bit of a human trafficking situation, although Alexis would have argued that, you know, the women had a choice to work there or not. Sure, they had a choice. They had to come on the island. But the money that they would make in that brothel would be 10 times the amount they would get working for, you know, any job at their, you know, in the Dominican Republic or Venezuela. So, yeah, they had a choice, but did they really? They were all women from. From those islands. And if you're involved in a criminal activity of some sort, you don't want to get the attention of the authorities. And a white woman in those brothels would have gotten a lot of attention, and I don't think it's worth the risk for them. So I. I don't think that Jazz is Amy. Now, after the documentary came out, I was contacted by a woman who claims to know who Jazz is and said that she was on Facebook one day, and this picture came up of. Of Jazz. And this was a couple of weeks before the documentary even. And when it came up on her page, she's like, oh, that's my. My old friend Susan. And she assumed that she was seeing something like an obituary or whatever. And then she realized that this was connected to Amy's case. And this woman claims that she knew the woman from the photo, her real name was Susan, and that she lived in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1994, which is four years before Amy went missing. And that this woman claims that she would do makeup for these photo shoots that her. That Susan's boyfriend would use to kind of promote her as a. As an escort or call girl. Now, it's. It's hard to verify that story. This woman's given me the names of a couple of her friends who also met Susan. So there is, you know, some circumstantial evidence there. But, yeah, we're still trying to figure out, you know, who the woman in the photo is, if, in fact, it's not Amy.

[Co-Host]

I almost never think, right. Anytime that we're seeing documentary or Dateline 2020, when they show a missing person and then they show a photo of somebody that might be. Or somebody thinks that it's a photo of the person, when they compare them, I almost never think that they look alike. Here's the other thing, too. There's a lot of people that haven't heard of this story until very recently because of the documentary. But this story has been featured a lot of times on other shows years prior to this documentary. So I remember things about this case and learning about this case from other shows way back when and seeing that photo way back when on those shows. And I remember at the time not thinking that it looked a whole lot like Amy, but for some reason, watching it on Netflix, I saw a lot of similarities. But the other vibe that I got was the picture. Let's pretend for a moment that it is Amy. It shows somebody that, again, I agree, looks a lot like Amy, but it would be somebody that's older, haggard. Right. That it would be. It would have to be a much more recent photo than when Amy went missing. That's the impression I got. However, I thought, it can't be Amy because everything about this picture, other than the person in it, is telling me that it was taken probably prior to her going missing. Like, that photo just screams early 90s to me.

[James Renner]

Yeah, it.

[Co-Host]

Like the. The. The. Everything in the background, early 90s. Everything about the woman. Early 90s. And so if that is true, then it can't be Amy. I do want to touch on something, though, because one thing that. Let's talk about the wrongful death lawsuit for A moment.

[James Renner]

Sure.

[Co-Host]

Because the family has, they, they make efforts to declare Amy Bradley dead so that they can take this wrongful death lawsuit against the cruise line, which I can agree with that. However, your lawsuit isn't going to have any legs if you are saying we are filing a wrongful death lawsuit, but at the same time saying that, well, she's still alive and living on a, an island somewhere.

[James Renner]

Right.

[Co-Host]

So it quickly is going to get tossed. Right. You can't, you can't be saying the whole crux of your case is that it was a wrongful death, not that, you know, it was a wrongful. She got off at the wrong stop on your cruise line.

[James Renner]

Yeah.

[Co-Host]

So that gets.

[James Renner]

They actually filed two suits against Royal Caribbean. One was the wrongful death and one was for negligence, I believe. And you know, they were kind of connected in that way and it forced them to. I think part of the reason they, they filed the lawsuit was to get some of the people from Royal Caribbean under oath in deposition, which they were able to do. They also, Iva and Ron and Brad were deposed. Unfortunately, it's been so long since they filed suit that those depositions have been destroyed. But I was able to get some information about the, the hearings and the court cases and things like that. And the suits were ultimately dismissed for essentially the reason you, you said, and the reason the, that the court stated they were dismissing it was due to fraud on the part of the Bradleys. And the reason they said that they were involved in fraud is because they apparently had over a hundred sightings of Amy and they only offered up the sightings that suggested she was under duress on the island and did not share the witness statements that showed her alone on a beach or alone at a restaurant, seemingly, you know, not under control, seeming, you know, to just be under her own power. So, you know, that that hurt them. And the reason that they gave at the time for not sharing that info is interesting because they, they say they weren't sharing it out of caution for her life because at the time they believed that Amy was being held by Colombian basically criminal syndicate in Curacao. And that has to do with another part of the story, which is this guy named Frank Jones goes to them and says, hey, I'm an ex special forces guy. I have information that Amy's being held by Colombians on Curacao. I need you to, you know, if you can fund my excursion there with my A team, we'll go, my ex Navy SEAL buddies, we'll go rescue her. And so at the time they really thought that by sharing that info, it might put her in danger because this operation was kind of underway that ultimately turns out to be a con. Frank Jones conned the Bradleys and a missing persons organization out of over $200,000 before he was ultimately caught and sent to prison.

[Co-Host]

It was. He receives, like, five years in prison, I believe, and it was over. It was like 28,000 and change from the Bradleys and about 180 to 190,000 from this missing persons fund that he frauds them out of. Meanwhile, what we learn is it's really just funding this lavish vacation where he's just at a bar and drunk all the time. And he even provides them with some photographs that he says is of Amy on a beach with a man that's controlling her. And later we learned that he fabricated those photos. It was a. A man that he knew and that posed with a woman that they hired. And they somehow put tattoos on this woman to make it look like. Because you don't see the woman's face. Yeah, it implies that it's Amy because of these unique tattoos that Amy had in the placement that they are seen on her body while she's sunning on the beach. One thing that I thought was shocking because I was like, I had no intention of watching the documentary because, like I said, I've seen the story covered several times before. We're so eyeballs deep in true crime stories, and there's so many cases that are in my head. The space, the room is not large enough. I need to purchase more real estate because it's scrambling the brain at this point. And so I choose not to watch certain things because it's overload. And there's a place down the road that I frequent. A few of the people that work there and work there a long time, they know what it is that I do for a living. So I come walking in there the other day. I haven't watched a documentary yet. I hear this conversation and overhear this conversation from afar. And I can quickly tell that they're probably talking about the missing woman from the cruise ship. And the documentary has recently come out. So they come over to me after they're having a lengthy discussion, and they said, this family, this poor family, why didn't they just hire a private investigator and send them to the island? I'm like, oh, right away. Then I'm like, oh, now I have to watch the documentary. Because they clearly left out a huge portion of this story. Story that was a large part of this. I mean, this Guy frauded these people for months and months and months. This was. Yeah, this was ongoing for a long time. And then they learn everything he's been telling them was complete. Why do you think that that doesn't make it to the. To the Netflix documentary? Do you think that that's like egg on our face, that the. The family is embarrassed that they believe this? Or do you think that it's Netflix trying to sell us a mystery, that maybe it's not so mysterious?

[James Renner]

I. I think it. It could be. My personal thought is it's a. It could be a number of things. One, that they had limited time and, you know, they only had three episodes for this series, so they concentrated on the. You know, some of the more interesting things that might be connected with her disappearance. I think it could be because they couldn't get anybody on record to give a little more information about him other than the family. Obviously, they, you know, probably couldn't get Frank Jones himself. I. I have talked to him a little bit. So, yeah, I. I think it was time constraints and. And lack of finding decent interviews for that.

[Co-Host]

Well, but, I mean, his situation's been adjudicated.

[Nichols]

Right.

[Co-Host]

You can go.

[James Renner]

Sure. You can get the closet records. Yeah.

[Co-Host]

And use that. I'm just saying I thought it was a little irresponsible in the presentation, because I get what you're saying. There's only three episodes. You only have so much. So much space and so much time. But at the same time, you also spent 10 minutes showing us every podcaster that's talked about this case from their basement, which I'm sitting there on my couch watching it with another person, and they're showing these different podcasters talking into microphones and on YouTube and whatnot about this story. And I'm going, holy, those are my colleagues. Like, I'm like, Like, how disappointing that those are. Those are my colleagues. They look like they haven't left the basement in. In. In months. And meanwhile, I haven't left the garage in 10 years. I say step out of the basement and into the garage, my friends. But yet, no, this. This story is huge. It's certainly huge right now. I love what you're doing with digging deeper and talking to people more on this story, because regardless of what you think happened, I. I think it would be negligent on anybody's part to. To sit there and say, I'm sold on this one idea. I think there's so many possibilities with what could have happened with this young woman. And I will. I will agree absolutely with the family. I'm so glad that they did file the lawsuit for the negligence of the the cruise ship because you are given a false sense of security when you walk onto those ships. I tell you, friends, it's not like going into a nice hotel here. It's, it's far more dangerous than any of that. And I think that the cruise ship did show a bit of a disregard for this woman's safety and for her family's concerns. Right. They, they delayed making any announcement. The and, and I thought, look, maybe the guy in real life is an absolute winner and he would be my best friend if I knew him off camera. But on camera, that cruise director came off douchey as can be. He's like, but the cruise goes on.

[Nichols]

Well, yeah, okay, good for you.

[Co-Host]

But the cruise goes on. And, and look, Amy's not the first person to come up missing on one of these ships. She's also not the first person that was missing for a period of time and then later found in Nothing wrong.

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[Co-Host]

One thing that the documentary missed as well was the how thorough was this search of the ship? They're like, well, yeah, we had all hands on deck. Every crew member was searching every nook and cranny of the ship. They weren't. We know that from later statements that didn't make it onto camera from the FBI. The FBI says as soon as they get onto the boat, they're talking to the captain, they're talking to the persons in charge and they're like, yeah, we, you know, we looked around for. We sent out some of our security personnel and looked around for it. No, it wasn't all hands on deck. It wasn't every nook and cranny. It was a couple guys looking for her. They didn't find her. I have a background security administrator for a very large property. If you told me to go find something on that property back then, I would have looked at you, James and Captain and said with all of the confidence in the world, I'll find that for you. Yeah, but I Can also sit here and say, no. I remember one of our staff lost a set of keys, building keys. This is a high security issue.

[James Renner]

Yeah, Right.

[Co-Host]

This is keys to the building. Dozens of keys on this key ring was lost in that building and on that property. That key, those keys, at some point, as the, as the boss, I was convinced they were gone. I was at some point convinced that somebody left with them, lost them off of the property, and we would never see them again. Nope. We found them two and a half months later.

[James Renner]

Wow.

[Co-Host]

Two and a half months later, we found those keys. Another situation in property management, many years later, somebody had lost their clipboard. It was drywalled over. And it wasn't until like four or five years later when they were removing the drywall, that that clipboard was ever found. So I'm here to tell you that, that, that that search is not a thorough search. The FBI says it wasn't. And I do think that there was some negligence on behalf of the. The cruise ship and in disregard for this young woman and their family's concern.

[Host]

The documentary is just kind of the tip of the iceberg. If you're going to dive in this rabbit hole. And I think the first episode, you start going, who is this Yellow guy? And this, He's a kind of a creepy bass player, which we, we know most bass players are, especially the ones that play on cruises, are creeps.

[Co-Host]

The captain was a base player that played on several cruise ships. So if anybody can vouch for the character of those stringed. Stringed players, it would be, well, we.

[Host]

Don'T have a lot to do in the band. So we have, we have time to think and, and, and, and look out into the crowd. But so part one, you go, okay, we need to know more about this individual. And then they kind of get away from it. And then episode three starts off with his daughter calling the Bradleys. One of my issues with him even being that good of a suspect is he doesn't get off the boat and he remains on the ship, remains in the band, still has to do his job for the rest of the time that that boat is gone out at sea. So did he sneak her off the boat and hand her off to some handlers? And then all these eyewitness accounts, you go, well, can we track Yellow's whereabouts? And was he even around or was he out? Because like you said, these contracts are sometimes for six months other than getting off at a port. You live on that boat, and you're on that boat for six months, sometimes a year at A time. Because some. Sometimes you get to the end of your contract and you're like, hey, I'm going home next week. And you get an offer, hey, we had a bass player back out. We'd like to have you renew your contract. And in those cases, because I have several friends that have done this, if they're in a pickle, they up your pay. And so there could have been six months, sometimes a year or more that he was on cruise ships. So how is he doing anything with Amy? Yeah, but like I said, it's just the tip of the iceberg. I think your interview with him is great. I think it just adds more details and gives you a better picture of everything that was going on. But what. What are your thoughts on yellow?

[James Renner]

Yeah, I think the documentary did yellow dirty. Yeah, they. They didn't get him on camera. They didn't get an interview with him. And, you know, for me, sitting here in Ohio, working on a book, I thought, you know, I realized how important it would be to talk to Alistair. He's very difficult to get to, though. He lives in Grenada, on Grenada, which is, you know, its own. Its own separate island. And I realized that I was going to have to try to find him there. Now, Grenada, like Curacao, it's hard to. You know, they don't really have phone directories that you can access online. So I was able to find that he was working for a church and that they would meet every Sunday. But, you know, he would. It's called the Church of the Nazarene, and they have a couple sites around Grenada, and he would alternate around them. So I decided to go to Grenada to see if I could find him. And so I flew there last October. And of all the places I visited for this story, Grenada was the only place I felt that I was in danger. It's definitely like a third world type of situation down there. Not a lot of police oversight. There's a lot of corruption there. Just the, you know, just the disparity of income is, you know, the people on the island are making next to nothing. Everybody on that island. I was driving. I was riding around in a taxi, and there were these, by the way, the taxis. When I say taxi, you're. I think all these taxis are like over 250,000 miles, you know, held together by duct tape and wishes. And I was in the back of this cab, and we were driving through these neighborhoods, and every house had a little wooden shack out front. And I'm like, it almost kind of looked like bus stops. And I'M like, hey, what are these shacks all about? And the cabbie said, oh, that's. Everybody has their own little shop. And they'll sell, you know, chips or soda or water or. Or rum or beer, because everybody's hustling. Everybody's got two or three different jobs because they're poor. And so it was a very different world down there. And I took this cab to the church, not knowing for sure that Yellow was even going to show up. But luckily he did, and he got out. And I went up to him and I said, you know, Alistair, you know, my name's James Renner. I said, I've come a very long way just to talk to you. Would you give me 10 minutes after your service? And he. And he nodded. He's like, I know. He's like, I know how. How far you must have come. He's like, I'll give you some time after the service. So I sat and watched his sermon, and he talked about working on the island as an exorcist, which is interesting. And, you know, he had a very nice congregation. They sang lots of songs. And he has a beautiful wife and a son who I think is like 12 or 13 years old. Then we talked after that, just he and I, and he sent everybody else out of the church, and we sat there and. And spoke. And I found Alistair to be very sincere, and he has a lot of regrets about the way he acted as a young man. And, you know, the. You know, he. He would call them sins, you know, trying to hook up with these young women on the. On the cruise ships. And, you know, he takes responsibility for that, but he's like, look, I didn't. I didn't traffic anybody. I didn't kill anybody. And I do think you know that. So you've got the witness that says that he saw Amy with Yellow on a beach in Curacao months after she disappeared. And would somebody, under the theory that Alistair had something to do with putting Amy in a trafficking situation, would he then go back to his victim months later in a public space where she's out and free to ask for help? He's just putting himself in danger in that situation. I just. I don't see it. And he has no history of violence.

[Host]

But also, we don't know if he was on a cruise ship at that time.

[James Renner]

Correct? Yeah. I'm sure the FBI has been able to piece together his, you know, when he was on the ship and when he. And if he was even available to be on Curacao that day. And I think it's very telling that the FBI has told the family, look, we have no evidence she ever left that room. Yeah, I think it's, it's highly unlikely. And in that case, you know, look at, look at what they've done to, to him. I mean, not just the documentary, but everything that the family has said on social media to this day. I mean, he's, there's so many people after watching that documentary that just assume, oh, my God, he's, he's guilty of sin. And, and, and he trafficked that poor woman.

[Co-Host]

Like you guys are saying, Netflix a documentary is a bit of the tip of the iceberg, if you will. Us talking about it here today, while we were able to dig into some other things and, and really kind of dissect some pieces and parts of that documentary and things that James has learned about this situation before the documentary came out and still exploring it. We could go on for hours. We could go on for days. There's a lot of stuff we didn't. So if there was something that your ears didn't hear today, folks, don't get upset with us. We are just a few guys hanging out in a garage trying to make heads or tails of a very difficult and mysterious situation. And like, you know, the reason why the story has to be that if Yellow did something, he most likely had to hand her off at port is because just like the cruise director said, the cruise goes on, the cruise has to go on. And it did. Right? The boat continued on with or without Amy. We still don't know what happened to her, but we know that the, the vessel later departed Carousel. It continued on to the island of St. Martin and then went to St. Thomas to the Virgin Islands, before returning to San Juan, Puerto Rico. This on Saturday, March 28, 1998. And then creating this huge, huge mystery of what happened to this young woman. James Renner, we appreciate your time. We appreciate you joining us once again here in the garage. You are one of the most recommended true crime authors on our show and so great true crime books. But for this story, for more on this story, go to his wonderful podcast. It's on YouTube as well. True Crime this week. You can check him out. Make sure you look into more of the Amy Bradley stuff. He's got a lot of it there for your earballs and your eyeballs. Thank you, James Renner, for joining us.

[James Renner]

Thank you.

[Co-Host]

This week.

[Nichols]

Amy Lynn Bradley is missing. She's been missing since March 24, 1998. She was 23 years old at the time of her disappearance. Amy would be 51 years old today. Her classification is endangered. Missing her family suspects foul play. Amy is a Caucasian female. She is 5 foot 7 inches tall with brown hair and green eyes. Sometimes Amy would dye her hair blonde and at times, especially when cut short, her hair may appear to be almost black. At the time of the disappearance, amy was approximately 115 pounds, ears pierced multiple times and her navel is pierced as well. She was a smoker and social drinker, mostly Marlboro Lights and Miller Light Beer. Amy has the following tattoos, a Tasmanian devil spinning a basketball on the back of her shoulder, a green and blue gecko lizard around her navel, a Japanese symbol on her right ankle, and a primitive Japanese sun tattooed on her lower back. The FBI have age progressed photographs available showing what Amy may have looked like at 42 years of age. The FBI is offering a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to the recovery of Amy Lynn Bradley and information that leads to the identification, arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for her disappearance. If you have any information concerning the disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley, please contact your local FBI office or the nearest American Embassy or consulate. A special thank you to author, YouTuber and podcaster James Renner for joining us in the Garage this week.

[Co-Host]

Please check out his show True Crime.

[Nichols]

This week, available on YouTube and podcast. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling a friend to support True Crime Garage. Please check out our sponsors and leave a five star review on your favorite listening app. Until next time. Be good, be kind, and don't litter.

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Finding the music you love shouldn't be hard. That's why Pandora makes it easy to explore all your favorites and discover new artists and genres you'll love. Enjoy a personalized listening experience simply by selecting any song or album and we'll make a station crafted just for you. Best of all, you can listen for free, download Pandora on the Apple App Store or Google Play and start hearing the soundtrack to your life.