‘Amy Bradley Is Missing,’ But the Netflix Docuseries Filmmakers Think They Know Where She Is

If you’re planning a nice family cruise vacation this summer, don’t watch Amy Bradley Is Missing on Netflix until after you’ve safely disembarked in your home port.

In 1998, 23-year-old Amy Bradley vanished from the cruise ship she and her family were vacationing on. A full search of the ship revealed nothing, leading officials to believe Bradley likely either jumped or fell overboard on the way to Curaçao. But a body is never found, and over the span of decades, multiple people report seeing Bradley alive on the Dutch Caribbean island (as well as an alleged sighting in Aruba). Evidence that Bradley may have instead been trafficked off of the boat — and potentially through the help of one of the ship’s entertainment staff — only gets weirder from there.

I had a lot of questions, and filmmakers Ari Mark and Phil Lott of Ample Entertainment had to sit through all of them. Read The Hollywood Reporter’s Q&A with the Amy Bradley Is Missing directors below.

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How did you come to tell this story? I admit I didn’t know who Amy Bradley was.

ARI MARK People know about Amy Bradley’s story if you’re in the true-crime, amateur sleuth-y world, which fortunately or unfortunately — however you want to look at it — I am. So I knew about the story. We have a small production company. We’ve done some cool stuff, but for us to really put the time into making and directing something, and being all in on it — it had to check the boxes from an industry standpoint. It has to feel like we have something that’s non-derivative.

On a human level, which I separate from the industry level, if you met this family the way we did, you look at them, you talk to them, you walk into their garage where they still have her [Mazda] Miata shined up with gas in it, and you really want to help. What we have found over the course of these years of doing these shows is that when it comes to true crime, mystery and the unsolved, these platforms can actually do good. I know that’s mind boggling, but they can. They can move the needle, and that was what we wanted to do.

PHIL LOTT This is a case that has existed in the true-crime-o-sphere, but it also exists in the fear of every parent. It’s super relatable. We’ve all crammed into a room on a vacation trying to save a few bucks. So they’re all crammed in this room, and then just the horror of waking up and finding that one of you is missing, and for good or for bad, no one seems to be listening — or at least not enough for a parent who’s just lost their child. I mean, this is terrifying.

You do want to solve it because of the the time that’s passed — the family has a commitment to that cause. Every single day they wake up and it’s as real as it was yesterday. But also, you have this very human idea that you want to help in some way to sort of mitigate the pain this family has been experiencing every single waking hour.

There are two ways a documentary can help: The filmmaking process could undercover new evidence, and/or the film could elevate the case to a level that demands (more) action. Which one were you primarily aiming for when starting this docuseries?

MARK It depends on the story. With [This Is the Zodiac Speaking], we really felt like we could solve it, as crazy as that sounds. Wwith [Amy Bradley Is Missing], it was initially the curiosity, then the challenge of, “Ooh, maybe we could find her.” When we first came into this story, and when I was first introduced to the key players, everyone from the FBI, family members, friends, experts, what have you, eyewitnesses — they all convinced me that we’re gonna find her.

And there was definitely a moment in this show where I’m looking at Phil going, “Are we getting on a plane and are we gonna, like, start walking around the Caribbean? And what happens if we [find Amy]?” I really got convinced because the credibility element was there. And when the credibility element is there, we could say whatever we want, we could question things and judge everyone. But when you look somebody in the eye and ask them the hard question, you could tell if the answer is real. You can tell if their story is authentic.

I don’t know if that answers your question, but I think with this one, we really thought we could find her. I had [Amy’s mom] Iva Bradley calling me every day, saying “All of our eggs are in your basket. We’re relying on you to find her.” That’s quite a responsibility. So the hope is that having this be on a platform like Netflix brings them one step closer. And I really believe it will.

It sounds like you believe she’s alive.

MARK Phil, me or you?

LOTT You go for it.

MARK Phil doesn’t have the guts to say this. [Both laugh.] I got to the point on this show where I became close enough with the people. Of course, we remain objective, and we were objective through the whole process. There are enough reasons to believe all of these things are possible. That’s what makes it compelling. But Brad, [Amy’s] brother, says, “I have to cling to the hope.” He’s like, “I’m not saying it’s definitely this, definitely that — but I have to cling to the hope.”

I’ve kind of gotten to the point where I have to believe she’s alive. And people will judge me for that. You immediately fall into a bucket of, “How could you believe the most far-fetched piece of this?” We’re always so used to calculating odds. “Well, the odds are this happened, and the statistics say…” All of those things are true. But if we’re telling a remarkable story, I think there’s just as much of a chance that there’s a remarkable answer.

Anything you want to add, Phil?

LOTT No, I think that was incredibly well said. When people watch this series, I think you will feel like your preconceptions have been compounded. The easiest thing in the world is to come up to us going, “Clearly, she fell off the boat.” I think we’re as guilty of that coming into this as anyone else. And as you go down the path, and you start answering the first five questions, they all lead to much bigger pieces of mystery. Well, now you have three episodes of that. It’s something that just gets bigger and deeper and more compelling.

MARK Our job is essentially to call “bullshit,” right? We go into these things calling “bullshit.” So as you go, “Ooh maybe we’re wrong,” it’s an evolution. It’s a process.

I don’t understand how people could deny the photo (advertising a prostitute in Curaçao who looks a lot like Amy Bradley would today)…

MARK You’d be surprised. I think a lot of people don’t believe the photo could be her — not because it doesn’t look like her, not because the characteristics don’t match up, just because the scenario is so hard for them to follow through with.

The most compelling part to me is that the woman was positioned in exactly the way that would hide each of Amy’s identifying marks: her birthmarks and tattoos (one Tasmanian Devil and a butterfly).

MARK That part really made us scratch our heads, too. The other piece that’s hard to ignore is how seriously the FBI took that photo. It wasn’t like they were like, “Oh, whatever,” they really did chase that down. They analyzed the bed frame, tried to figure out where it was made. They sent an operative down there to actually scope it out. And they did look into that website, and they brought in that trafficking expert — it’s hard to ignore.

The other incredible find here is that, on family birthdays and holidays, traffic to the Bradley’s tips website spikes in the same geographical area where Amy has supposedly been spotted. The FBI doesn’t have jurisdiction to pull the exact IP address, but they have the ability to, which is incredibly frustrating.

MARK It depends how you look at it. I think from the FBI standpoint, they’ve exhausted everything. From the family standpoint, they haven’t. So it’s a tricky situation. The FBI is an easy target because it’s always easy to say, “Why didn’t you pursue this or that lead?” And the truth is, most of the time, it’s because it’s not credible enough for them, and they don’t want to spend time on it. And by the way, they don’t like sightings. They don’t like them because they’re not black and white. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of gray area here, and that’s a hard thing to argue against. No matter how emphatic you are that you saw someone, if you didn’t video, it doesn’t exist.

[Writer’s note: The FBI did not immediately respond to THR’s request for an update on the case/search.]

It was a wild piece of information.

MARK That blew us away, too. Actually, that was presented to us in the very, very beginning of this, and it was part of what drew me to wanting to look into this because it was very convincing to me.

Do you guys cruise?

MARK I would never set foot on a cruise ship.

Why?

MARK I was always a little skeptical of cruise ships, just because I’d feel kind of trapped. I do think, though, since working on this show, I have developed much more of a kind of a — I don’t want to say “fear,” but definitely a sensitivity to the idea of bringing my kids on a cruise ship. I do think a ton has changed since 1998. There’s cameras everywhere, people have iPhones, etc. — but it’s still a multibillion dollar business with an agenda and you don’t have control.

Phil, are you a cruise guy?

LOTT I’m not. I’m from a small country, we’re a seafaring country. The idea of the sea is intoxicating for us, naturally. You put us near the water, we want to get out there on a boat. And in this situation — even perhaps more than most — the idea that the world comes to you is enticing. However, you sit for five minutes and talk to the folks who have real knowledge of the legalities, and also just the sheer amount of faith you have to have that someone’s looking after you when you go on these boats.

You hear how vulnerable you are, on a criminal level. You go outside the national waters into international waters — even just run yourself a thought experiment for a minute. Who is coming to help? Who do I even call? Who’s 9-1-1 for the middle of the sea? I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you. And now you put your duty of care to your own family into that equation, and it’s just one more level of terror that I think this whole story kind of brings to the forefront.

If William Hefner’s story is to be believed and Amy couldn’t get out of prostitution because of a $200 debt, why wouldn’t she (or the family) have been able to buy her freedom? It’s been 27 years.

MARK It’s a good question. I don’t know the answer. I think that it’s probably a similar answer to the one that Ron, Amy’s dad, gives when I literally said to him, “Why isn’t she calling you?” I think it’s a similar situation. Look, we don’t know what we don’t know. What’s been suggested in the show is, maybe threats were made against her family. Maybe she’s been told things that aren’t true. Maybe she’s on drugs. I don’t really know the answer to that. It’s really puzzled us, too. The only thing we could think of is that she’s in a difficult situation where they have some leverage.

How did you get Alistir “Yellow” Douglas’ daughter Amica to participate? Did he know the phone call was being recorded and, possibly, for a documentary?

MARK I spent months talking to Amica and her mother. There’s some details not in the show. And we really worked hard to try to be fair to Alistir [Douglas, aka “Yellow”] because there’s a side of this where he’s a guy whose life is being upended and he’s being vilified all over the internet for something where, frankly, there’s just no proof. So that’s his perspective, right?

Amica reached out to the Bradleys and then I reached out to Amica. This was very much something she wanted to do. She has been the recipient of a lot of this negative treatment online, as you can imagine. She has a daughter. She has spent her own time learning about this case and really trying to figure out if her dad’s involved. And she feels that something is off, right? So that, for me, was enough to say, “Well, you’re his daughter. So if you think something’s off, we should probably look into this.”

She gave a great interview, she was super emotional. She wanted to confront her dad. I had tried reaching out to Alistir many times. At one point, he was considering doing an interview, so he knew about us. So when she called him, he was aware of our existence. Let’s put it that way.

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Amy Bradley Is Missing is now streaming on Netflix.