Amy Bradley went missing in 1998, disappearing off a Royal Caribbean cruise ship.
Bradley had gone on the cruise ship with her parents and brother, and vanished in the early hours of the morning. Amy’s brother Brad and her parents, Iva and Ron, have been heavily critical of Royal Caribbean, even suing the cruise liner for negligence.
While their lawsuit was unsuccessful, there have been many questions surrounding how Royal Caribbean acted in the hours after they discovered Amy was missing.
Much of this is the focus of Netflix’s new True Crime documentary, AMY BRADLEY IS MISSING. The doc includes fresh details and interviews surrounding the incident, including one in particular with Kirk Detweiler, the ship’s cruise director.
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Detweiler worked on the Rhapsody of the Seas, the ship Amy disappeared from, and has been heavily slammed on Reddit for his ‘cruel’ interview in the Netflix documentary.
After waking up in the early hours and discovering Amy had left her room, her father, Ron Graham, woke Iva and Brad, and they began searching for her at roughly 6am.
When they were unable to find her, they approached members of staff as recalled in the documentary by Brent Hunter, the ship’s guest relations manager.
The family asked to do a ship-wide announcement and turn around before the ship docked in Curaçao, where her family believe she was trafficked off the ship.
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Hunter informed them that they were unable to disrupt sleeping guests by making such an announcement at 7am, when he was approached, and Detweiler stated they were unable to stop their course to Curaçao.
When prompted to explain why, he said in the documentary: “That’s one family’s unfortunate incident, but we still had 2,400 people who paid a lot of money. As cold as that sounds, that’s the reality.”
Iva recalls telling them they couldn’t ‘let people off of this boat until we find her’.
The ship ended up docking in Curaçao, and Detweiler explained that at 9am, they had a ‘Charlie Drill’, in which staff do a full sweep of the ship, but nothing was found.
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The ship’s cruise director said that they set off the next day under ‘normal operating procedure’ adding: “Life goes on. Cruises go on.”
The Bradley family felt that Royal Caribbean staff on the boat could have done more, and viewers of the documentary were furious with Detweiler.
One comment on a Reddit post criticising him said: “I would simply LOVE to know how [Detweiler would] react if that was his daughter who was missing. Would we stop everybody’s cruise bc of an unfortunate incident?” Christ.”
One post in the R/AmyBradley subreddit said: “I just watched the Netflix documentary and [Kirk Detweiler] is such a f*cking asshole.
“I can't believe someone would put their employer above their own values (or lack thereof). It's a company that doesn't give a shit about him but he is willing to put the "business", as he puts it, above someone's life??”
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A third comment, on a post discussing the documentary on Reddit, said: “But the cruise ship director is so overly callous imo, it’s pissing me off.
“I know they edit these things to invoke more emotion but it’s like he forgot he’s speaking about a missing/dead person.”
Upon the ship's departure, the coastguard were then called to do a search of the waters, with the chief of Curaçao Harbor Police Chief Adtzere 'John' Mentar saying that, if she had fallen overboard, the strong currents should cause her body to wash up on shore or, at the very least, a piece of clothing.
An FBI investigation of the ship began two days later, but by this time, her room had been cleaned, meaning there was very little for investigators to go off. FBI Special Agent Erin Sheridan said there was ‘no preservation’.
AMY BRADLEY IS MISSING is available to watch on Netflix now.
Topics: Amy Bradley, Cruise Ship, Netflix, Royal Caribbean, TV, TV and Film, True Crime
Michael Slavin