The case of Brian Laundrie and his fiancée Gabby Petito both captivated and horrified the country when details of their ultimately deadly van life vacation became headline news. In the summer of 2021, the couple, who were both in their early 20s at the time, set off on a road trip across America, just over a year after their engagement.
The couple shared ample details of their relationship, engagement, and travels online. Laundrie, for example, wrote shortly after his engagement to Petito: “My biggest fear is that one day I’ll wake up and it will have all been a dream, because that is what every second has felt like since the moment we found each other. Till death do us part or until I wake up, I’m so happy the answer was yes, Love you hunny” (via Business Insider).
Such posts have since taken on a grim fascination for true crime enthusiasts, with the revelation that the couple’s trip of a lifetime eventually turned into a horrifying case of murder-suicide. Laundrie returned to his parents’ home at the start of September, but Petito was nowhere to be seen. After her family filed a police report, Laundrie went missing and was believed to be on the run. Petito’s remains were discovered in Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest on September 19, while Laundrie’s were later found submerged in water in a South Florida preserve on October 20, with an autopsy later revealing that he had died by suicide. Here is the horrifying story as told through the documents that now make up much of the evidence proving Laundrie was responsible for Petito’s death.
A police report from an encounter with the couple
On August 12, 2021, police officers in Moab, Utah, responded to what they later described as a “domestic problem” between two young people, which it later emerged were Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie. The incident later became headline news, with the police report written at the time, along with video footage of the couple’s interaction with officers, giving an eerie insight into their relationship prior to the deadly events that would come after.
As the police report made clear, that day they intervened in what was a physical confrontation between Petito and Laundrie after a member of the public spotted the latter slapping the former as they stood on the sidewalk before driving away. The police caught up to the vehicle — the onlooker had noted the Florida license plate — and found Petito in tears.
She told the officer questioning her, who later reported that Petito was confused and emotional, that she was struggling with her obsessive-compulsive disorder, and that she had panicked when Laundrie wouldn’t let her back into the van. “He told me I needed to calm down, but I’m perfectly calm,” she said. The officer convinced the couple, who said they didn’t want to press any charges, to spend the night apart cooling off. Though the couple’s social media channels would go on to paint a picture of an ideal vacation, they continued to argue violently, with a “commotion” in a Wyoming restaurant on August 27 also drawing attention from the public.
Laundrie’s notebook claimed Petito was injured
When news reports claimed that the first set of human remains had been discovered in September 2021 — remains which were later proven to belong to Gabby Petito — it seemed to confirm that the story of the couple whose “vanlife” trip had gone disturbingly awry was to come to a disturbing conclusion. At this time, Laundrie was still missing, with speculation going wild both in the media and online as to whether he was alive or dead, his whereabouts, and the degree to which he was responsible for Petito’s disappearance.
While still trying to locate Laundrie, the FBI released a statement confirming that alongside the remains they had also uncovered a notebook, which was later confirmed via handwriting analysis to have belonged to the missing man. Chillingly, it was soon reported that the notebook contained long entries from Laundrie concerning the events that had transpired between him and his fiancé, which were later published by the attorney of the Laundrie family.
According to WFLA, in the document, Laundrie describes a disturbing scene in which he says Petito ended up freezing and injured in a creek having seemingly fallen in, with a wound on her forehead and possible concussion. He claims that he carried her but couldn’t make it back to their van. Instead, he built a fire and attempted to warm her up with his body heat as she drifted in and out of consciousness as a result of what he seems to suggest was hypothermia.
Brian Laundrie’s disingenuous confession
The biggest bombshell revelation in Brian Laundrie’s notebook, however, was his confession. “I ended her life,” Laundrie wrote in his notebook, but claimed that the killing was not prompted by anger, nor did it take place in a heated argument, as many following the case had come to assume. Instead, Laundrie stated that he chose to end Petito’s life due to the severity of her injuries, despite giving only a vague outline as to how she got them. “I thought it was merciful, that it is what she wanted but I see now all the mistakes I made. I panicked, I was in shock. But from the moment I decided, took away her pain, I knew I couldn’t go on without her” (via WFLA).
Laundrie writes that after killing Petito he returned home to spend a last spell with his family, before leaving to die by suicide. “I have killed myself by this creek in the hopes that animals may tear me apart. That it may make some of her family happy,” he wrote, adding: “Please pick up all of my things. Gabby hated people who litter.” Laundrie’s remains were indeed found days later. But while his writing contains a confession, experts were skeptical at his attempts to portray the slaying of Petito as merciful.
Brian Laundrie’s fake text messages
After the discovery of Gabby Petito’s remains, Teton County Coroner’s Office concluded that she died of multiple blunt force head injuries and manual strangulation, and had been killed weeks before her body was discovered. After the killing, it is now known that Brian Laundrie returned to his parents’ home for around two weeks before abruptly disappearing.
It was around this time that the killer took disturbing steps to convince the world that his fiancé was still alive. As the FBI later revealed, Laundrie remained in possession of Petito’s cell phone after her death and sent multiple text messages from the device to himself and to Petito’s family members, including her mother, Nicole Schmidt (pictured), messages that appeared to be from Petito.
In one message, Laundrie, posing as Petito, wrote Schmidt: “Can you help Stan, I just keep getting his voicemails and missed calls” (via Business Insider). But rather than deceive Schmidt, the message alarmed her, as Petito never called Stan, her grandfather, by his name.
A disturbing letter from Laundrie’s mom
One final document which has made headlines in the years since Gabby Petito’s disappearance and murder was a letter written by Brian Laundrie’s mother, Roberta, to her son, which was recovered from the killer’s backpack when his skeletal body was discovered in October 2021. The letter, which was undated, included several eye-popping references to murder.
In the document, which is marked “burn after reading,” Roberta tells her son that she would be willing to bring a shovel to help him bury a body, or bake a cake containing a shiv if he ever wound up in prison. Roberta has claimed that the letter was written prior to Petito and Laundrie setting off on their ill-fated road trip, and that the dark imagery contained within it was purely an attempt to convey the unconditional nature of her love for her son.
The family of Petito, however, disagrees. Having filed a suit against the Laundries for emotional distress claiming that Brian Laundrie’s parents were aware of Petito’s death upon Brian’s return to the family home, but did nothing to raise the alarm. They argue that the letter contains direct references to the killing, and it stood to become a key piece of evidence in a civil trial between the two families. However, in February 2024 Petito’s parents and the Laundries reached a settlement meaning that the case will no longer move forward.
