On March 24, 1998, 23-year-old Amy Bradley vanished from a cruise, Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas. She had been vacationing with her parents, Ron and Iva, and brother, Brad, when she disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

The night before she went missing, Amy hung out with her brother at the ship’s nightclub and then returned her family’s cabin early in the morning. She was sitting on the balcony at 5:30 am, but just half an hour later, her father noticed that she was missing. The balcony was scrubbed clean before investigators could find evidence, and there was a ship full of potential witnesses, yet no solid answers about where she went.

The Netflix documentary, Amy Bradley Is Missing, explores the truly baffling case and the many theories about Amy’s disappearance. Some speculate that Amy was killed, fell overboard, or took her own life. Others believe she may have been kidnapped and sex trafficked — or even left the ship voluntarily and is still alive today. Is Amy Bradley still missing in 2025? Is she alive? Here’s a breakdown of the case details and theories.

Is Amy Bradley Still Missing 2025? Netflix Doc, Case Details

Theories About Amy Bradley’s Disappearance

Image Credit: Netflix

27 years later, Amy’s never been found, and there are still several plausible theories that could explain her disappearance.

There are a few accounts of people allegedly spotting her in Curaçao, where the ship was headed. In August 1998, a tourist named David Carmichael believed he saw Amy on the beach with two men. He noted a Tasmanian devil tattoo that matched Amy’s. David claims that one of the men with her stared at him and “motioned” her away quickly. “If he had not stared at me, I would have forgotten everything, but I can’t,” he said on Amy Bradley Is Missing. “I think about this every day. There isn’t a day goes by when I don’t.” Authorities didn’t find anything when they searched the area.

Retired US Navy seaman Bill Hefner says he saw Amy at a brothel in Curaçao 10 months after she went missing. “She told me she got off that ship and she left on her own, ’cause she was going to score drugs,” he says in the documentary. “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.’ ” He claimed he didn’t do anything about it at the time because he didn’t know that Amy was a missing person.

Image Credit: Netflix

It’s also notable that Amy spent time with Alister “Yellow” Douglas, a member of the cruise’s house band, at the nightclub, and some people believe they saw him with Amy in the morning. Douglas claims he went to bed at 1 am, but in the doc, passenger Lori Thompson says she and her friend saw Douglas and Amy in the elevator to the top deck between 5 and 6 am. Thompson adds that she saw Douglas walking by himself just 15 minutes later.

Douglas notably made an odd comment to Brad. “He comes up to me and the first thing he says is, ‘Hey man, I’m sorry to hear about your sister,’ ” Brad says in the doc. But at the time, only his family and the ship captain were aware that Amy was missing. Although Douglas was questioned and investigated, there’s no definitive evidence to suggest he’s responsible for Amy’s disappearance.

There’s also a possibility that Amy left of her own accord. There’s new evidence of someone logging into the amybradleyismissing.com forum on family anniversaries, and the IP addresses have been traced to Barbados.

“I don’t think the notion of her willingly walking off the ship was ever presented as a possibility until the [documentary],” executive producer Ari Mark told Netflix’s Tudum. “And I don’t believe that the eyewitness testimony or the IP information was really ever presented in any way to anyone.”

Despite all these possible hints and clues, Amy is still missing, and it’s unclear whether or not she’s alive. Her family still has hope, even after all this time. “We will never give up on her,” Iva says 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 still keeps Amy’s car for when she hopefully returns.

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