Killing of Gabby Petito
In August 2021, 22-year-old American woman Gabrielle Venora Petito was killed by her fiancé Brian Christopher Laundrie while they were traveling together on a vanlife journey across the United States.
After Petito's disappearance, Laundrie raised suspicion when he drove the van from Wyoming back to his parents' Florida home and refused to discuss her whereabouts.
After a month of speculation around Laundrie's whereabouts, and an extended search of the area around his home, his skeletal remains were discovered in Florida's Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park on October 20.
It was confirmed by an autopsy on November 23 that Laundrie had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, and the FBI later announced that he had admitted to killing Petito in his notebook, which was found near his remains.
In 2013, Petito and her step-brothers appeared in a music video to raise awareness about American gun violence in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
[10] To save money for the trip, she began working 50-hour weeks at Taco Bell[8] and as a nutritionist while Laundrie took a job at an organic juice bar.
[11] Petito documented her life and travels on social media sites such as YouTube and Instagram, where she described her interests as "art, yoga, and veggies".
[4] On August 12, 2021, a witness called 9-1-1 to report that a couple (later identified as Laundrie and Petito) were fighting in front of the Moonflower Community Cooperative in Moab, Utah.
"[14] Officers from the Moab City Police Department (MCPD) identified the van driving erratically near the entrance to Arches National Park and conducted a traffic stop.
They found Petito crying heavily in the passenger's seat, with police body camera footage showing that she then told officers: Yeah, I don't know if some days, I have really bad OCD.
"[14] Neither Petito nor Laundrie wanted to press charges as a result of the incident, which was characterized by police as a mental breakdown rather than domestic violence, which would have required an arrest.
Petito spent several days at a Fairfield Inn and Suites hotel near Salt Lake City International Airport, according to staff, and checked out on August 24.
[25] Petito's mother said that she last spoke to her daughter on August 25 and had been told that the couple were traveling from Utah to Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks.
On August 25, the final post was made on Petito's Instagram account, which consisted of photos of herself taken in front of a butterfly mural outside a restaurant in Ogden, Utah.
After about 20 minutes of sitting in the van, they eventually drove away and got on Highway 89, the road north to Bridger–Teton National Forest campsite at 2:56 p.m.[27] This was the last time Petito was seen alive.
[28] Eyewitness accounts of the couple thereafter were as follows: On August 27, a text from Petito's phone was sent to her mother which read, "Can you help Stan, I just keep getting his voicemails and missed calls."
On September 19, human remains matching the description of Petito were found at the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping area in Wyoming,[46] not far from where the Ford Transit Connect was previously observed.
[13][47] Her identity was confirmed and an autopsy determined that the manner of death was homicide by "blunt-force injuries to the head and neck, with manual strangulation",[48] which occurred three to four weeks before the body was found.
On October 20, Laundrie's skeletal remains (identified by forensic dentistry) and some of his belongings were found in the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park, in an area that had recently been underwater due to flooding.
[58] On January 21, 2022, the FBI revealed that Laundrie's notebook, which was found near his remains, contained an entry in which he admitted to killing Petito and deceiving people that she was still alive via text messages.
Michael Alcazar from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice believed Laundrie was "someone who doesn't want to own up to what he did" and was "trying to find justification for the actions he did".
[63][64][65] This heightened interest was attributed to several factors, such as the refusal by Laundrie and his parents to comment on Petito's whereabouts,[13] the amount of content on social media documenting the couple's lifestyle,[66] the video footage of the Utah traffic stop, the audio recording of the 9-1-1 call,[63][66][67] the video posts by witnesses which provided a lot of publicly available evidence, the idea that those involved were a young and attractive couple in a romantic getaway gone wrong,[64][66] the domestic violence incidents in their relationship, an increased interest in cross-country van-dwelling trips due to the COVID-19 pandemic,[66] and the general increased interest in true crime-related entertainment in the decade leading up to Petito's murder.
[71] While some posts on social media regarding the case were helpful in the investigation, many of them have been characterized as insensitive, unhelpful, motivated by potentially increased exposure or financial reward, or outright misinformation.
[63][66][72][73] Several outlets compared Petito's case to the approximately 710 indigenous people reported missing in or near the same location between 2011 and 2020, highlighting the stark disparity in media coverage.
[81] The lawsuit was dismissed on November 20, 2024, with the judge citing governmental immunity, though he acknowledged the case met the early standard to suggest the officers' conduct could have contributed to her death.
