NEED TO KNOW
It’s been 27 years since Amy Lynn Bradley vanished without a trace during a Royal Caribbean cruise. But for her brother Brad Bradley, the pain hasn’t dulled — and neither has his anger toward one crew member: the ship’s cruise director, Kirk Detweiler.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Brad doesn’t hold back about Detweiler’s appearance in Netflix’s new three-part documentary series, Amy Bradley Is Missing. Brad calls Detweiler’s demeanor “flippant” and accuses him of showing “zero empathy,” both in 1998 and today.
In the Netflix documentary, Detweiler says, “Life goes on. Cruises go on.”
He adds, “We’re not going to stop everybody’s cruise because there’s a missing girl.”
Brad tells PEOPLE that Detweiler’s appearance has made him “one of the most hated men in the world right now.”
“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,” he says, adding: “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.”
Courtesy of Netflix ©2025
Amy was 23 when she disappeared on March 24, 1998, from Royal Caribbean’s Rhapsody of the Seas as the ship docked in Curaçao. She had been vacationing with her parents, Iva and Ron, and her younger brother Brad. The family last saw Amy early that morning on the balcony of their cabin. Within hours, she was gone.
Courtesy of Netflix ©2025
Despite searches onboard and on the island, Amy was never found. The case drew worldwide attention especially after multiple witnesses claimed to have seen her in the years that followed, including a U.S. Navy sailor who said a woman resembling Amy told him she was being held against her will.
The Netflix series revisits the mystery and includes interviews with key figures, including Detweiler, who was serving as the ship’s cruise director at the time of Amy’s disappearance. His interview segments sparked outrage among viewers, and Brad says his family wasn’t surprised.
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“That attitude that he portrayed on the screen was exactly kinda the attitude that we experienced,” Brad says. “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 claims Detweiler came off as very cold — and says this was emblematic of a larger problem within the cruise line industry: a lack of accountability. “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 says.
The Bradleys have said that in the days after Amy went missing, they were met with resistance and indifference from cruise officials. Security didn’t immediately lock down the ship, and passengers weren’t fully searched before disembarking in Curaçao. For Brad, Detweiler’s comments in the docuseries reopened old wounds.
“We’ve all shared this kind of unexplained gut feeling that she’s out there,” he says. “And she may not be, you know. Obviously, we don’t know.”
The documentary — which details the unsolved case — explores what happened when Amy disappeared without a trace in March 1998 from a Royal Caribbean cruise sailing from Oranjestad, Aruba, to Curaçao.
Anyone with information on her disappearance is asked to contact their local FBI office.
Amy Bradley Is Missing began streaming on Netflix on July 16.
