Amy Lynn Bradley vanished from a cruise ship on March 24, 1999 (Image: Netflix)
The cameraman aboard the Royal Caribbean cruise ship, where Amy Bradley was last seen, shared the moment he found the final footage of the missing woman.
Amy Lynn Bradley disappeared on March 24, 1998, while vacationing on the Rhapsody of the Seas with her family. She was last seen by her father sleeping on the balcony of her family’s cabin at 5:30 a.m.; however, by 6:00 a.m., she was gone. Nearly 30 years later, here whereabouts still remain unknown.
Many questions still swirl around Bradley’s disappearance, including whether she fell overboard or made it on land after the ship docked in Curaçao, and never made it back on the vessel.
Chris Fenwick was on the ship the night Bradley disappeared, working for a corporate client for the ship. According to a blog post written on his website, Fenwick’s job was to produce a video for his client that was to be shown on the last night of the cruise.
“Because of the nature of editing in this short turn around environment, I spent nearly the entire duration of the cruise in my cabin working,” Fenwick wrote in 2001.
Amy Bradley and her brother, Brad Bradley (Image: Netflix)
On the morning of March 24, 1998, Fenwick shared that he had heard rumors on the ship that “some girl had committed suicide.” As sad as the story was, Fenwick explained that he still had a job to do and went back to working on the video.
The next day, March 25, the Royal Caribbean staff video engineer, Steve, invited Fenwick to see his edit suite on the ship. According to Fenwick, Steve informed him that he had been instructed by ship security to “make sure that there were no images of the missing girl in his ‘Cruise Video.'”
Fenwick first learned the missing girl’s name, Amy Bradley, later that day, after a flyer with her photo was posted on his door. He continued working, but heard later on that it was possible the girl didn’t commit suicide but may have been abducted.
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There had already been a suspect in the alleged kidnapping, said Fenwick. “His name was ‘Yellow,’ obviously a nickname, but he was the bass player in one of the ship bands.”
“Yellow” is the nickname of Alister Douglas, who had been a member of the band Blue Orchid. Bradley and her brother, Brad, were spotted dancing and drinking with the band on March 23. Later that night, Douglas was seen dancing with Amy Bradley; however, he claims he left the party around 1:00 a.m.
In his blog, Fenwick wrote that he remembered seeing Douglas at a disco on March 25 and thinking, “Wow, there is that guy that they said took the girl, he looks kind of creapy (sic).”
After a brief run-in with Amy Bradley’s mother, Iva Bradley, Fenwick wondered if he had captured any video of Amy and began combing through his tapes.
“Amazingly enough, on the last tape of the night and the last shot on the tape, there was indeed a shot of Amy dancing on the dance floor, the part that was really creepy to me was that the shot revealed that Amy was dancing with Yellow, the man that was suspected of having something to do with her disappearence.”
Fenwick immediately made a copy of the tape, intending to give it to the Bradley family, but couldn’t find them. The next day, he found a man claiming to be a family friend and handed over the tape. “The man told me that he would take care of it and thanked me for the help,” he wrote.
Later that day, Fenwick received a phone call from Lou Costello, the chief security officer on the cruise ship, asking him he was “the guy with the video tape of the missing girl.”
Chris Fenwick, a videographer, captured some of the last footage of Amy (Image: Netflix)
When Fenwick confirmed that he was the man with the tape, Costello demanded that he hand over his master tapes, which Fenwick refused. Costello told Fenwick that the FBI was involved in the case and wanted the original tapes, to which Fenwick said that the FBI would have to contact him.
“That was the last that I heard from Mr. Costello,” Fenwick wrote. “I finished my job, I packed my equipment, and the next day I got off the boat in San Juan, Puerto Rico and went home to San Francisco.”
Fenwick eventually spoke to the Bradley family a year after the cruise and learned that the man he had given the tape to was Ron Bradley’s boss, Mike McCord, who had given the tape to one of the FBI officers handling Amy’s case, but at the time of writing, this was the last the tape had been seen.
“The images on the tape are interesting and quite frankly kind of creepy; however, the pictures are not the most interesting thing about the video tape,” wrote Fenwick.
“What is more interesting is the tape’s story, its journey, and its eventual disappearance. I gave the tape to Mike McCord. Mike tells us he gave the tape to the FBI. Twelve hours later, I get a phone call from Lou Costello, head of security. Lou Costello is head of SHIP security, but he has no official connection, officially with the FBI.Mike McCord gave the tape to an FBI agent. It has never been seen since.”
Fenwick eventually made another copy of the tape for the Bradley family in the summer of 1999. “Everyone always asks me, ‘Did they ever find Amy Bradley?’ The answer, tragically, is no.
“There have been some very credible sightings by people who made positive IDs of Amy. The family has been swindled out of tons of money by people who prey on these types of victims. It really is a sad state of affairs.”
Douglas was questioned by the FBI, but his polygraphs came out as inconclusive. To this day, he maintains his innocence and there is no evidence connecting him to Amy Bradley’s disappearance.
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