After Amy Bradley Is Missing released on Netflix earlier this year, Amy Bradley’s ex-boyfriend has spoken out for the first time ever in a bombshell new interview.
The 23-year-old disappeared from the Caribbean cruise ship Rhapsody of the Seas in March 1998, where she was holidaying with her family. What happened to her remains a mystery 27 years on.
At the time, she was dating Tom, who was eight years older than her. They met at a steakhouse restaurant where they both worked in Richmond, Virginia, and grew close after the work Christmas party in December 1997. The pair got pretty serious and would see each other three or four times a week, even spending Christmas Day together.
Credit: East Idaho News
He last saw Amy on the Tuesday before she went on the cruise. After she was reported missing, Tom quit his job and flew to Curaçao to help Amy’s mum, dad and brother with the search by putting up posters across the island. When he was driving home one day after searching for Amy in Curucao, he swears he heard someone yell Amy’s name.
Speaking to East Idaho News for the first time, Tom, who didn’t want to reveal his surname for privacy reasons, said her disappearance still “worries him” and has been “on his mind for the last 27 years”. He remembers the day Amy told him she was going on the cruise, which her dad had won at work, and said she was really nervous because she didn’t like boats.
Tom recalled: “She was real apprehensive. She was like, ‘You know, I don’t know. I don’t really like boats.’ And I said, ‘Amy, look, a cruise ship is not a boat. A cruise ship is a ship. It’s a hotel on the water. I said, “Short of a hurricane, you’re never going to feel like you’re on the water, you know, and so it’s I said, you it’s you’ll have a great time.”
A few days after she left, Tom got a call from Brad’s girlfriend at the time saying: “They think Amy Amy’s vanished. They think that maybe she’s fallen overboard. We don’t know.” However, he never thought she fell overboard “for a second,” saying the whole idea was “silly”.
Speaking about what he thinks happened to Amy, Tom said: “I was convinced that somebody met her, liked her and took her and I still believe that to this day. Amy was super social with people. She would strike up a conversation with anybody. If you paid her attention and you were polite and you were courteous, she was she was always nice back to you.
Credit: Netflix
“So, it didn’t surprise me that she was social on the boat and met people and struck up conversations. That didn’t surprise me at all. But I wouldn’t have gone with the family to Curucao if I didn’t think that somebody took Amy.”
Tom truly thinks Amy could still be alive. He said Amy had the “tenacity,” “self-discipline” and “strength” someone would need to “survive it”.
He slammed speculation that Amy had a bad relationship with her family, adding: “I saw no tension in that family at all. None. Amy loved her dad. She loved her mother. She was a total daddy’s girl. She told me that if I wanted to get anywhere with her in like relationship wise that I needed to be the same kind of guy that her dad is in the way he treats her mother.”
Tom also insisted she didn’t disappear on her own: “If Amy wanted to start a new life somewhere, she would have just told her family she’s starting a new life. There would have been no dramatic disappearance. She would have just packed her bags and went. That’s the kind of person she was. She was super straight up and she would just go. She would find a job and move.”
He claims he was interviewed by Netflix for the documentary and told his whole story, but they didn’t use any of the content.
Amy Bradley Is Missing is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news and drops, like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.
Featured image by: Netflix and East Idaho News
