Amy Bradley’s brother has openly criticized the director of the cruise ship the family was vacationing on when Amy disappeared.
Amy, originally from Virginia, went missing from a Royal Caribbean cruise near Curaçao on March 24, 1998. Her family reports that she was last seen in the early morning hours on the balcony of their cabin.
Despite several reported sightings in Curaçao and Barbados, Amy remains missing, and her fate is undetermined. Although she was declared legally dead in 2010, her family continues to hope that she is alive.
Her family, including her mother Iva, father Ron, and brother Brad, who were traveling with her, are featured in a Netflix documentary titled “Amy Bradley is Missing.”
The documentary includes interviews with significant figures such as FBI agents and Kirk Detweiler, the director of the Rhapsody of the Seas cruise ship.
Amy’s brother, Brad, has criticized Kirk Detweiler’s seemingly indifferent attitude portrayed in the documentary.
Kirk, recalling the initial disappearance report made by the family around 7 a.m., commented: “We’re not going to stop everybody’s cruise because there’s a missing girl,” further stating, “Life goes on. Cruises go on.”
This response has led viewers to criticize Kirk online, eventually prompting him to deactivate his social media accounts.
In an interview with PEOPLE, Brad criticized Kirk’s lack of empathy as depicted in the Netflix documentary.
“The reaction online [to Detweiler] was kind of the reaction that we had when we were watching him, especially when he has this flippant attitude with zero empathy,” Brad stated, adding that Kirk seemed unaware of how his demeanor would be perceived: “His inability to read the room in the situation… I’m not quite sure how you agree to do an interview and not understand you’re gonna come off like he came off.”
Brad asserted that the attitude Kirk displayed on screen mirrored their real-life experience with him.
“I didn’t know the guy. I didn’t actually remember him until he first popped up on the screen. My wife’s sitting next to me, and she was like, ‘Who’s that?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know.’ And then we learned who he is,” Brad explained.
Brad believes Kirk’s reaction is indicative of a broader issue within the cruise industry.
“It’s my opinion that how he portrayed himself, his feelings and lack of empathy for his passengers is fairly representative of how these industries view their customers,” he added.
Brad previously mentioned that the documentary did not provide a complete account and omitted significant information, though it could have spanned ’10 seasons’.
A notable detail excluded from the documentary is the family’s encounter with a fraudulent private investigator, Frank Jones, who posed as a former Navy SEAL and defrauded them of $210,000.
In 2002, Jones pleaded guilty to mail fraud, received a five-year prison sentence, and was ordered to repay the money.
“Amy Bradley is Missing” is now available for streaming on Netflix.