Gabrielle Petito

Case background and investigation

Gabrielle 'Gabby' Petito, from Blue Point on Long Island, New York, left in early July 2021 on a cross-country road trip with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, travelling in a converted van and posting about the journey online. Sources give the departure date as July 2 (Wikipedia) or July 4 (CBS News). On August 12, 2021, police in Moab, Utah, stopped the van near Arches National Park after a 911 caller reported a confrontation between the two. According to CBS News, body-camera video shows Petito crying; no one was arrested and officers arranged for the couple to spend the night apart.

Petito's last Instagram post and her last phone contact with her mother were on August 25, 2021. Surveillance video from a Whole Foods store in Jackson, Wyoming, recorded on August 27, is regarded as the last confirmed sighting, FOX 13 Tampa Bay reported. Text messages were sent from her phone in the following days, which her mother found out of character. Laundrie arrived at his parents' home in North Port, Florida, on September 1 with the van and without Petito. Her family reported her missing on September 11, and police named Laundrie a person of interest on September 15. He declined to speak to investigators and then disappeared himself.

On September 19, 2021, searchers found human remains in Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming. The Teton County coroner confirmed on September 21 that they were Petito's and classed the death as a homicide, and on October 12 announced that she had been strangled, according to CBS News. Wikipedia reports that a federal warrant was issued for Laundrie on September 23 over alleged unauthorised use of a debit card. It was the only charge he ever faced.

Laundrie's remains were found on October 20, 2021, in the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park area in Florida. His death was ruled a suicide by a gunshot wound to the head. On January 21, 2022, the FBI said that a notebook recovered near his body contained written statements in which he claimed responsibility for Petito's death, and that messages sent after she died were an attempt to mislead, CBS News reported. Pages made public in June 2022 included the words 'I ended her life', according to FOX 13. Laundrie was never charged with or tried for the killing, so the FBI's conclusion has not been tested in court.

Civil litigation followed. On November 17, 2022, a Florida judge entered a $3 million judgment for Petito's estate against Laundrie's estate. Her parents also sued Laundrie's parents; Wikipedia reports that this claim was settled on February 21, 2024. A $50 million wrongful-death action against Moab and its police department was dismissed by Judge Don Torgerson on November 20, 2024, under Utah's Governmental Immunity Act, KUTV reported. The family appealed to the Utah Supreme Court on December 20, 2024, according to their lawyers, and KUTV reported that oral argument was set for March 4, 2026. No ruling on the appeal had been found at the time of writing.