Amy Bradley: The Prosecutor Who Put the Witnesses on the Record | Witness Wednesday: Gregg Nivala

Amy Bradley disappeared from a Royal Caribbean cruise ship in 1998. A federal prosecutor you've never heard of may have preserved the legal foundation to solve her case.

Greg Nivala was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Richmond, Virginia when a fraud case landed on his desk — a con man named Frank Jones had defrauded the Bradley family of over $200,000, convincing them he was a decorated Special Forces veteran with the resources to find Amy. Jones constructed an elaborate false identity, staged fake photographs on Pensacola Beach with a stand-in for Amy wearing counterfeit tattoos, and fabricated real-time reports of "having Amy in sight" in Curaçao. Nivella prosecuted him, secured a guilty plea to mail fraud, and got the Bradley's their money back.

But that's not why this interview matters.

As Nivala learned more about the broader case including the witnesses who had seen Amy after she disappeared, the sightings dismissed without serious investigation, a family carrying an investigation the federal system hadn't fully committed to — he made a decision outside the scope of his assigned case: he convened a federal grand jury and subpoenaed the eyewitnesses.

David Carmichael. Bill Hefner. Lori. Crystal. Crystal's mother. Elizabeth Lewis — who has since passed away, but whose sworn testimony remains on the federal record.

In this Witness Wednesday, Nivala speaks publicly for the first time about what those witnesses told him, why he found them credible, and what struck him across their accounts: three separate witnesses, at three separate locations, at three separate times, all describing the same dynamic — handlers managing a victim. 

If you have information about Amy Bradley's disappearance:
Call 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit a tip at tips.fbi.gov. Anonymous. $100,000 reward.

AmyBradleyisMissing.com
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