The Disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley

The Disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley

Jun 04, 2022

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A cruise to the Caribbean can be a fantastic vacation getaway, for young couples, more mature couples and even families.  But what happens when someone on a fantasy vacation getaway just disappears in the middle of the vast open ocean?

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Welcome to The Secret Sits, I’m your host John Dodson.  Join us every Thursday as we uncover the Secrets behind the world’s most fascinating true crime cases.  You can find all episodes of The Secret Sits for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify or where ever you get your podcasts.  And if you like what you are hearing, reach out to us on Instagram and Facebook @The Secret Sits Podcast or on Twitter @SecretSitsPod. Now, on with our story.

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Royal Caribbean International Cruise Lines is one of my favorite cruise lines to go on vacation with.  In fact, as I am writing this episode, I am currently sitting on the Mariner of the Seas, a beautifully appointed ship, from Royal Caribbean.

The Ship I want to focus on today, however; is the Rhapsody of the Seas.  This ship made its maiden voyage on the 19th of May 1997.  Now by today’s standards, the Rhapsody is not a very large ship, it consists of 12 decks and it sits at 915 feet in length.  Just for a comparison, the largest Royal Caribbean Cruise ship today is the Wonder of the Seas, which just sailed its maiden voyage on March 4th, 2022.  The Wonder of the Seas consists of 18 decks and is 1187 feet in length.

Just one year after the Rhapsody of the Seas’ maiden voyage, would come its first scandal.  In 1998 Ron and Iva Bradley decided that they wanted to take their family on the vacation of their dreams.  The couple booked a week-long jaunt around the Caribbean on one of the newest, most modern ships currently sailing.  The family lived in Virginia, not the most tropical of locations, so this trip sailing through emerald waters with a backdrop of pristine Caribbean shores, was exactly what the family needed to get away, and for their daughter Amy this would be a celebratory trip.  You see, Amy had just graduated from Longwood University with a degree in Physical Education.  Amy had received a scholarship for women’s basketball and she had worked previously as a lifeguard.  At the time of this sailing, Amy was 23-years-old.

The couple’s son, Brad, was 21-years-old and he joined the family for this trip as well.  The family flew from their home in Virginia to the city of San Juan in Puerto Rico.  This was their embarkation point, or the place where they would board their ship, for their luxury cruise.

Ron worked as an insurance sales agent and he had won part of this cruise as a prize through his office, however; the prize only covered Ron and his wife Iva, the couple splurged on the two additional tickets so their adult kids could join them.  These two additional tickets cost the couple around $2000.00.  Ron and Iva flew to Puerto Rico first and the two adult children followed on a slightly later flight.  After all of the family had arrived, on March 21st, Amy purchased a few postcards to send home to friends. On one card Amy wrote, “Hey Girl! It’s gorgeous here.  We leave for Aruba Tomorrow.  I’ll be home Saturday at 10.”  The family spent the day exploring Aruba and purchasing some souvenirs for themselves and some people back home, the family re-boarded the ship and it once again set sail, into the Caribbean waters.

This evening of the cruise was one of two formal nights, on a 7-day cruise there are 2 formal nights on board, so everyone can dress up in their best and have dinner, maybe dance a little, or just get completely waisted and live your best life.  The family got all dolled up in their best outfits and headed to deck 5 for dinner.  Now on formal nights, when you head to the main dining room, there will be photographers set up all over that deck with backdrops for photos, think, prom posed photos in front of backdrops of cruise ships, or grand staircases, you get the picture.  For the Bradleys, this would be the last picture they would take as a whole family, the last picture, before their lives would be torn a sunder.

After their dinner in the main dining room, the family kept the night going, together in one of the onboard clubs.  This evening of the cruise there was a calypso party.  The family had a great time, dancing and having drinks, talking to the other cruise passengers, just the typical night on board a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean.  Ron and Iva decided to turn in for the night around 01:30am.  They walked back to the 8th floor where the entire family was sharing one family suite and laid down to sleep.

Amy and Brad, being 21 and 23 years old decided to stay up a while longer and really get everything out of this amazing vacation.  The ship had a band on board called Blue Orchid, Amy and Brad became acquainted with the band members during this evening and they began to hand around them on the ship.  The group went up to the Viking Crown Lounge on the 11th floor of the ship.  The Viking Crown Lounge is a nice club on the Royal Caribbean line of ships, it always sits very high on the ship and the views are amazing, except in the middle of the night, when it looks like you are simply staring into an inky abyss.

Ron Bradley awoke in his room at 02:45am.  As any father would, Ron worried about his kids, even as they entered adulthood.  Earlier in the night, when Ron and Iva had still been with their kids; Brad had been confronted by another passenger, who was extremely upset that Brad was dancing with his wife.  This was part of the cause for Ron’s worry when he woke up at 02:45am. Seeing that the kids were not back to the room, Ron decided to head up the 3 floors to the Viking Crown Lounge to check on Amy and Brad.  When he arrived, he saw Brad, still having fun and dancing with a woman on the main floor of the lounge.  Amy was standing away from Brad on the upper area of the lounge talking to some of the crew members.

All of the doors on Royal Caribbean ships have electric door systems, which record every time your door is opened and closed, for safety.  Because of this, we know exactly what time the door to the family’s suite were opened and closed.  The system shows that Brad arrived at the room at 3:35am, yes sea pass cards are assigned by name like credit cards, so they can tell that it was Brad who opened the door.  Around 5 minutes later Amy arrived at the room and used her card to open the door.  Brad and Amy sat out on the balcony together, just catching up on life and then Brad decided to head to bed.  Amy, who was having a bout of seasickness, decided to stay out on the balcony, as the night sea air soothed her sloshing stomach.

Later in the evening, or morning at this point, Ron woke up again.  He noticed that Amy was out on the balcony.  He stated that he could see Amy’s legs from her hips down.  He dozed back off to sleep.  The balcony door had been closed, Ron remembers this because if the door had been open, he would have gotten up to close it.  Around 06:00am Ron stirred from his slumber once again, he stood from the bed and saw that the balcony door was open, about 14-16 inches.  Rob also noticed that Amy was no longer on the balcony.  Ron said, “I had a little funny feeling at that time, because it was unlike her to be up that early in the morning.”

It was always custom for Amy to leave a little note, if she was going anywhere, or if things were simply different than normal.  Ron noticed that Amy’s cigarettes and lighter were gone, but there was no note, and Amy had left her ID in the cabin as well.  Ron said that he believed from the state of things, that Amy had changed cloths before she had left the cabin.  But maybe Ron was making a mountain out of a mole hill, so he decided to go for a morning stroll around the ship to look for her, he was careful not to wake his still sleeping wife and son.

Ron went through all of the places that family had spent time the evening before, nothing.  So, Ron decided to take a walk around deck 10, this is a large outdoor deck which contains a running track and other physical fitness areas.  There are also tons of lounge chairs, maybe Amy wandered up here and fell asleep in a chair, I mean, I have done that on cruised, it’s a probable assumption. But this was not fruitful either, no Amy.  Ron, now more worried than before decided to just walk through all of the common areas of the ship and let me tell you, this can take a while, these ships are huge.  However, the more places Ron checked, the more worried he became, and then his worry bleed into a full-blown panic.  Ron returned to his cabin, 8564, this means it is the 8th floor of the ship, and he shook his wife and son and told them to wake up.  Amy is missing.

The family immediately went to the purser’s office to report Amy missing.  Lou Costello, the chief security officer on the ship, was less than helpful.  The ship was pulling into dock, it had already entered the canal at Curacao and it was now maneuvering to its docking position so that the guests could exit and enjoy their next tropical destination.  The family asked for a simple PA announcement and a search of the ship.  If you have been on a cruise, you will know that they are free and easy with the PA announcements, they happen quite frequently, for everything from docking and disembarkation, to announcements about jewelry sales happening on board.

Lou Costello, refused, he said it was too early for a PA announcement, and then he implied that Amy was probably just shacked up in another guest’s room, and I mean, he is not that off base, that does happen quite frequently on ships.  He told them to just wait and she would show up.  But Ron and Iva, did not care what this man thought, he did not know their daughter, or her habits or lifestyle, and they felt they were running out of time, soon the gangplanks would be up for passengers to go ashore and then it would be too late.  Ron begged the ship personnel to postpone allowing guests off of the ship until it had been searched thoroughly, but they refused, people’s fun (and their money) is more important than your missing daughter.  The gangplanks were put out and soon over 2,000 passengers flooded out into the town, Amy’s parent’s fear was that with those 2,000 passengers also went either their daughter or someone who knows where their daughter is.

After passengers had started leaving the ship, Costello finally agreed to make an announcement, this was at 07:50am.  And do not be fooled, this was not an announcement with ship’s horns blaring and a true call to action, here is the announcement which was made, “Will Amy Bradley please come to the purser’s desk?”  And that was it.

Amy never responded to this call and her family was quickly becoming desperate. Finally, just before noon, Iva was able to speak with the ship captain Kietil Gierstad, while speaking to the Captain Iva asked him to share a picture of Amy around the ship to see if anyone could help located her.  The captain flat out refused to do this, he said he would not alarm the other passengers.  The crew seemed not at all pressed to help this family in crisis, probably because this type of thing happens all of the time.  Your adult age daughter is missing on a crews ship in the middle of the ocean, yeah she will show up at the buffet and let you know she hooked up with someone in their room last night, relax you are on vacation.

But as the day moved on, Amy still did not show up.  At 12:15pm, the captain had the crew assemble and search all 999 rooms on the ship, along with the ships’ restaurants, common areas and storage lockers, they found absolutely nothing and the search was completed at 13:00.

The Bradley family adopted a new strategy, they decided to go into Curacao and look around the town for Amy, perhaps she had slept somewhere else and she had gotten off of the ship on her own.  As the family made this decision the ship’s Captain warned them, the ship will not wait for you, if you chose to go ashore and search for your daughter, you must decide whether you will stay here and search or get back on board before we leave.  Because they had searched the ship and the crew had searched the ship, that they would stay in Curacao.

As the family left the ship to try and find their missing loved one, Captain Gierstad placed a call to Royal Caribbean International Headquarters.  He did not call them to ask for assistance in this matter, he called them because he wanted a company attorney on site, an attorney was flown to meet the ship the next day.  When the attorney arrived, they informed the Bradley family that they could no longer make any contact with the ship’s captain nor its crew unless the company’s attorney was present.

Royal Caribbean seemed like they wanted this entire mess behind them and so they decided that Amy Lynn Bradley had fallen from the railing of her 8th floor balcony and was tragically lost at sea.  And this was probably the simplest explanation as to what could have happened.  But simple does not equal true.  But Amy was a strong swimmer and also had a healthy fear of the ocean, she would not even walk out to the balcony without someone holding on to her and the railing was almost chest height on the girl, even when drunk the railings are hard to fall over, or else drunks would be falling in to the ocean like rain drops.

An air search of the ocean waters began 24 hours after Amy’s disappearance.  The Dutch Antilles coastguard sent 3 helicopters to assist in the search, there was a British Royal Navy ship, which joined the search and a plethora of small cargo boats and fishing boats as well.  The search lasted for 5 days and ended with absolutely no results.

The family refused to believe anything about this being a suicide, they maintained that the sliding balcony door was closed at 05:30am and then open again at 06:00am, meaning that Amy left the cabin herself and she was either still on that ship, or she had been taken off against her will at Curacao.  The electronic lock on the doors can only register who is coming into the room and not who leaves the room, so there was no real evidence to show that Amy had left the room between 05:30 and 06:00am.  There is, however; a witness statement from a college freshman named Crystal Roberts who wrote, “I saw Amy and the band member walk over and up to the next deck up above us. And about 10 minutes later, he came walking around by himself.”

 

It was the man who played base for the on-board band Blue Orchid who was identified by this passenger.  They had been seen going back up the stairs to the Viking Crown Lounge and then the man had returned on his own.  Amy’s family was done with Royal Caribbean’s bullshit at this point and they went to the US embassy to express their concerns and this was when the FBI became involved.

The millionaire CEO of Ron’s insurance company flew down to Curacao on Wednesday night to help with the efforts.  He then chartered a private jet to take Ron and Iva to St Martin, this was the next scheduled port of call for their ship’s itinerary.  The couple boarded the ship on Thursday morning and they demanded a meeting with the ship’s captain.  The couple informed the captain that the FBI would be coming to investigate, but the ship’s lawyer stepped in and informed the couple that US authorities had no jurisdiction on board the ship as it was registered in Nassau, Bahamas and on top of that, they were currently in international waters.

The FBI negotiated with the company and after a ridiculous amount of negotiating, they finally reached a settlement, they would allow two FBI agents onto the ship, but they had to be dressed in plain cloths and they could not alarm the other guests.

Ultimately, there was not much for the FBI to discover, they agreed that Amy had left her ID in her cabin, which to them, suggested that she did not intend to be out of the room for very long.  Royal Caribbean International later said that the FBI had found the furniture on the balcony suspiciously close to the railings, they had found what appeared to be foot prints on the small table and what appeared to be markings indicating that someone had sat on the railings.  The FBI called bullshit on Royal Caribbean for this, all of this seems pretty suspect in regards to the cruise company.

We later also find out that the ship wide search, ordered by Captain Gierstad was way less extensive, than the captain had said.  The crew had actually only searched the common areas of the ship and the crew cabins.  The captain did not want to wake up passengers who may still be sleeping, so if Amy was in any of the 999 guest cabins, she would not have been found.

With the second search conducted by the FBI, yielding no further results, the Bradley family flew back to Curacao and continued their search through the streets for their missing daughter and sister.  On Saturday, March 28th, the family, now consisting of only 3 members was forced to fly home.

One person of interest in this case was, Alister “Yellow” Douglas.  Alister or as he is better known Yellow was the base player for the Blue Orchid band on the ship.  Brad said that he noticed Yellow trying to dance too close to Amy at times and he observed his sister strategically move away from the man on the dance floor.  When the FBI questioned Yellow, he said that he and Amy had danced together until around 01:00am, after this she started to give him mixed vibes and sort of sent him packing.  The FBI gave Yellow a polygraph test and everything checked out.  But, if Yellow was not who the college freshman had seen and written about in her statement, who was that?  On the morning of Amy’s disappearance, Brad went up to one of the top decks, attempting to spot his missing sister in the crowds of the ship from a higher vantage point, while he was up there, around 09:00am, Yellow approached the young man and he said to Brad, “sorry about what happened to your sister.”  The problem with this statement was, at this point, no one on the ship had been told that Amy was missing, so how and why was Yellow apologizing?

It is possible that through the ship-wide announcement, and rumors amongst the crew, Yellow just surmised that something had happened to Amy.  The FBI ruled Yellow out as a suspect, but these strange sightings and conversations have kept him at the top of the suspect pool for anyone who has followed this story.

There had been other staff members on-board who had made Amy uncomfortable in the first days on the ship, particularly some of the servers.  I will say that some of the servers on the ships do get very friendly, but that is kind of their job, make the guests feel happy, they are on vacation, but some of these incidents went past the occasional flirting for a bigger tip.  The evening before Amy disappeared, she and Brad had left the main dining room and gone to the casino, one of my favorite places.  The two were playing the slot machines while Ron and Iva stayed at dinner having some drinks with Ron’s work colleagues.  As the couple sat drinking, the effervescence of the champagne bubbling up in their heads, a member of the wait staff approached them. 

This young man had been seeking Amy out repeatedly since they had pulled anchor in San Juan.  He told Ron and Iva that he wanted to invite Amy to go drinking with some of the crew when they arrived in Aruba.  The couple passed on the message, but Amy did not decide to go with the crew.  Let me interject here, that I know a lot of people who work on cruise ships, mostly as entertainers, but they are still considered crew, and they go out on ports of call and have a good time just like the guests, this is not something that is out of the realm of possibilities and could have been completely innocent.  I do understand how Amy’s parents, in the middle of their crisis, could have seen this as a ploy to lure her off of the ship for unknown purposes.

Another element of mystery in this case is this, you will remember me talking about the photos taken on formal night during the cruise, well these photos are automatically printed out and placed on big display walls at the photo gallery on deck 6.  You will go there and find the photos of yourself, if you want to purchase them, you can do so, if you do not want to purchase your photos, the ship will destroy them.  When the Bradley family went to the photo gallery to look for their photos, all the photos with Amy in them had been taken or removed.  The photographer stated that he definitely remembered printing the photos with Amy in them, which means, someone on the ship took them when no one was paying attention.

After learning all of these things, the Bradley family had a new theory.  They alleged that their daughter had been singled out by someone on board, she had been drugged and taken off of the ship to be sold into a sex trafficking ring.  This is a long held urban legend of sorts, that pretty young white women are a stolen while in the southern Caribbean and sold to sex traffickers.

A person in Curacao, a taxi driver, went to police and said that he was approached by a woman who matched Amy’s description.  She asked to barrow his phone but then ran away before he could give it to her.  A police cadet from Puerto Rico claimed that he saw Amy being forced into a taxi by a man in a baseball cap.

When the Bradley family arrived back home in Virginia, Iva and Ron turned their home office into a command center.  They opened a hotline and Ron hung maps and charted every potential sighting of Amy.  Iva sat by the phone for most of her days, waiting on it to ring.  In August of 1998, five months after returning home, an IT worker from Canada named David Carmichael had been vacationing in Curacao with some of his friends and they had a strange incident happen to them.  A woman was walking along the shoreline of the beach, with two tough looking men on either side of her.  As she saw the Canadian men walking by, she made a move as if she was about to speak to the men, but one of the men walking with her shushed her and they kept walking, as they passed the Canadian men, one of the tough guys looked at David and glared.

After David had returned from his trip, he saw news about Amy having gone missing in Curacao, this made him put the pieces together, he was positive the girl he had seen was Amy.  The description he listened to on the news described the girl he had seen perfectly, right down to her tattoos.  Amy had very distinctive tattoos, one of a Tasmanian devil on her left shoulder, a blue gecko on her belly button area, a Chinese character on her ankle and an Japanese sun on her back.  The FBI went to the island to follow up on this story, but the woman could never be located.

In 1999 an American Naval officer claimed that he was approached by a woman in Curacao, this woman was defiantly not an island native and was Caucasian.  The woman was just outside of a known brothel for sex workers.  The officer claimed that the woman identified herself by name, Amy, and aske him for help.  The officer told the woman which port his ship was docked at and went on his way.  This was three years after Amy had disappeared.  By the time the man spoke to Amy’s family, through their website, the building he had seen Amy at had burned to the ground.

And then, one day, Iva received an email while in her home command center.  This message was from a man named Frank Jones.  Frank was an ex-marine, and he ran a squad of military veterans

While the Navy sailor with a penchant for prostitutes was sitting on that potentially case-breaking lead, an even more promising one found its way to the command center’s inbox. The Bradleys received an email from professional mercenary Frank Jones. He was an ex-marine, commanding a squad of experienced military veterans, who did, let’s say off the books military work, think some movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jean Claud Van Dam.  Iva was ecstatic, this was the type of help they truly needed, let’s cut through the bureaucratic red tape and get some shit done.  Iva and Ron had Frank follow up on a lead from a recent tip: a woman named Judith Margritha claimed that she knew where Amy was being held, in fact she regularly saw the girl walking in her neighborhood, always under a watchful eye.  She claimed that this was a group of human traffickers from Colombia and they were staying in a fortified compound.

The woman provided a great description of the girl she saw, it seemed like Amy.  The woman then hummed a line from a lullaby which Iva had always sung to Amy when she was a small child.  This was all the proof Iva and Ron needed.

The FBI told the couple there was little to nothing that they could do without any true proof of life.  But Frank Jones was up for the task, he first wanted to organize a reconnaissance mission to the island to get eyes on Amy.  The team set up in an area where they could observe the fortified house pointed out by the local woman, and they waited.  A few days after their arrival, they saw a woman in the passenger’s side of a green SUV, driven by the same guards described by Margaritha.  All of this information was being communicated back to the Bradleys in Virginia.

One operative followed the SUV back to the compound and took notes of additional guards and all of the egresses from the residence.  They team kept the place under surveillance until they were spotted by the guards and the Colombian guards opened fire, the team barely made it out alive.

Frank told Iva and Ron about what had happened to the A squad and informed them that it was obviously the right place.  The new plan, for now was to observe from a distance and make sure Amy was never moved to a different location, if this happened, they did not know if they would ever be able to find her again.   So, this is what they did, as months passed by.  Finally, Frank told the Bradleys that the time was now, they needed to move in and take the compound and extract Amy.

For this part of the plan Frank Jones needed some capital, there would be expenses for this operation, expenses to the tune of $210,000.  But this was the couple’s baby, their little girl, so they asked for one more proof of life, before they agreed to send the money.  Frank sent the couple the newest photo they had of Amy, she is walking along the beach, with the same goons walking beside her.  Iva Bradley said, “When I got the pictures, I knew Amy was ok, and it was just a matter of time.”

After sending the money, the Bradleys flew down to Florida to wait on word that Amy had been rescued successfully and that she was safe.  Ron’s boss once again loaned him a private jet to go get Amy in Curacao as soon as they got word that she was safe.  But days went by, then a whole and still no news.  The Bradleys phone rang, but it was not from Frank Jones, it was Ex-Special Forces sniper Tim Buckholtz, he was the man positioned outside of the compound watching.  But what Buckholtz told the Bradleys was that there was nothing strange going on at this house in Curacao.  This was just a normal house, owned by a perfectly normal couple.  Everything Frank Jones had told the couple was a lie.  Buckholtz had overheard a conversation Frank had with the couple and he could not believe what he was hearing, Frank was just weaving a tangled web of lies and the Bradley were just stuck in it like a fly waiting on the spider to come.

Frank Jones was just a common con man, who had dupped this desperate couple out of a lot of money.  And the photos turned out to be fake as well, Frank had paid a woman to be made up to look like Amy and the guard with her was just one of Frank’s team members dressed up in a blond wig.

Frank Jones did not get away with this con though and he was charged with mail fraud in 2002.  He was given 5 years in prison and he was forced to pay back the Bradleys $24,444 and the National Missing Children’s Organization of $186,416.  This is who had provided the money for the operation.  It also turned out that Margaritha was a complete fraud as well, he own son turned her into the press and reveled that the woman had been paid $8000 to place the tip. 

The next sighting of Amy which seemed somewhat credible was in 2005.  Judy Maurer was on vacation in Barbados when she entered the restroom of a department store.  While in the restroom a woman walked in and she was being escorted by three large men.  Judy overheard part of their conversation which seemed to center around the woman trying to back out of some kind of deal.  As the quartet left the restroom, the girl, who matched Amy Bradley’s description, turned to Judy and said her name was Amy and she was from Virginia.  The men then grabbed the woman and shuffled her off, sketches were made of these men, but ultimately the tip led nowhere.

The Bradley, I am sure were starting to get disheartened by all of the false reporting or leads that went nowhere, but this was their baby girl and they would not give up trying to find her.  And then again in 2005, an email came in from someone who believed they had found new irrefutable evidence.  This evidence turned out to be photos, grabbed from an online site for sex workers in the Caribbean.  In these photos is a woman who seems to be on a bed and she is posing seductively in various states of undress.  The picture of this woman was almost an exact match to Amy, except for the new longer hair which is teased out and brushed back, there is also a hollow look to the woman’s eyes.  This was one of the most exciting tips the couple had received in a long time and they sent the photos to an ex-FBI agent who specialized in photo analyses.  This agent said he was absolutely certain the woman in the photos was Amy Lynn Bradley.

With no body of proof that Amy is truly still alive, she was legally declared dead in 2010, that same year a new piece of possible evidence literally washed up on a beach in Aruba, when a tourist found what appeared to be a human jaw bone.  This bone was tested and it was determined to be from a Caucasian woman, however; this jawbone has not been linked to Amy Bradley.

Ron and Iva have not given up on finding their daughter, Amy would be 48 years old this year and her parents have vowed to one day bring their daughter home.  At the time of Amy Lynn Bradley’s disappearance, she stood five foot six and weighed around 120 lbs.  She has naturally brown hair and green eyes.  We have also discussed all of Amy’s tattoos.  So if you are ever sailing on a luxurious cruise ship in the emerald waters of the Caribbean ocean, keep an eye out when you go to ports of call and you may be able to help solve this decades old case.  The FBI is offering a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to the recovery of Amy Lynn Bradley and information that leads to the identification, arrest, and conviction of the person or persons responsible for her disappearance.

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