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America's Most Infamous Crimes with Katie Ring
Gabby Petito: The Texts That Made Her Family Suspicious Pt. 2
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Narrator / Host (Katie Ring)
This is Crime House. All Gabby Petito wanted was freedom, life on the open road, chasing sunsets and building a career as a Van Life influencer. But that dream ended in a nightmare. In 2021, Gabby set off on a cross country trip with her fiance, Brian Laundrie. But she never made it home. So what really happened between her final Instagram posts and her disappearance? This is a story about control, isolation and warning signs missed in real time. Every crime tells a story about the people involved, the system that tried to stop it, and the nation that couldn't look away. Some cases are so shocking, so deeply woven into who we we are, that decades later we're still asking, how did this happen? I'm Katie Ring and this is America's Most Infamous Crimes. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I'll take you deep into cases that have a lasting imprint on society and still haunt us today. If you haven't subscribed yet, be sure to hit that button so you never miss an episode. This is the story behind the murder of Gabby Petito and how it broke the Internet.
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Narrator / Host (Katie Ring)
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Narrator / Host (Katie Ring)
In the summer of 2021, a lot of people were feeling hopeful. Pandemic lockdown restrictions were being lifted and things were getting back to normal. There were a lot of reasons to be optimistic and 22 year old Gabby Petito was no exception. She and her fiance, 23 year old Brian Laundrie were on a cross country road trip that would kick off the next phase of their lives. They'd modified a Ford Transit Connect van and planned to cruise all across the American West. While Gabby established herself as a van life influencer To Gabby's family, friends and followers, everything looked picture perfect. She and Brian seemed deeply in love with each other and everything they experienced on their travels. But that perfect social media feed was a total smokescreen, hiding a seriously troubled and dangerous reality underneath. The first major sign that things were off happened on August 12, 2021, when police in Moab, Utah, responded to a possible domestic incident between Gabby and Brian. But after Gabby claimed she had started it, they just asked the two of them to separate for a bit and didn't pursue things any further. Despite the fact that Gabby and Brian weren't even supposed to be in contact after the incident, they got back together that same night and drove on to their next destination. Gabby didn't mention the incident to anyone. She didn't post about it, and didn't tell any of her friends or her family. By all appearances, everything was just as great as before. But there were some things that couldn't be swept under the rug. Fifteen days later, on August 27, another couple watched a disturbing scene play out at a Tex Mex joint in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Brian went off screaming at a hostess in a seriously aggressive outburst that left Gabby visibly distraught and in tears. The evidence that Brian was controlling and emotionally abusive was piling up, but most of the people in their lives had no idea exactly how dangerous things were becoming. That included Gabby's mom, Nicole. Gabby checked in with her almost every day, and the last time they'd talked was during a FaceTime on Aug. 24. Gabby had told her mom that they were heading towards Grand Teton national park, which was close to where they had their big blowout fight at the restaurant in Jackson Hole on August 27th. And later on the 27th, Nicole got a text from Gabby saying that everything was okay and that Brian was going to camp in the woods for a few days while Gabby hung out in the van by herself. So Nicole didn't really have any reason to be worried. She didn't know about the incident in Moab or Jackson Hole. And then things got weird. Nicole got another text from gabby on the 27th. It said, can you help Stan? I just keep getting his voicemails and missed calls. Again, on the surface, this was a pretty normal text. Stan was Gabby's grandfather and they were close just like the rest of their family. But there was one problem. Gabby never called him by his first name. Nicole could sense something was off. This was weirdly out of character for Gabby, so Nicole texted her back, but got no response. After that, a couple days went by, but she wasn't freaking out just yet. But on August 30, she got another text. This one said no service in Yosemite. Here's the thing though. Yosemite is all the way in California, so she should have said Yellowstone, which is right next to Teton National Park. Nicole started to suspect Gabby hadn't sent those texts at all. Maybe it was just Brian who'd sent them for her. She had no idea that the day before, Brian had called his parents, Chris and Roberta. According to Roberta, the call started innocently enough, but when they went to say goodbye, his tone changed and he seemed really upset. After they hung up, Roberta felt like something was wrong. So she asked Chris to call Brian back. And when their son answered, he was frantic. He said that he might need a lawyer. He didn't explain why though. All he said was Gabby's gone. And two days later, on September 1, 2021, Brian showed up at his parents front door in Northport, Florida, alone. Whatever the laundries did or didn't know at this point, they weren't going to the police. Instead, they went camping. Just a few days after Brian's shocking return home, him and his parents drove 75 miles away to Fort DeSoto Park, a waterfront spot on the edge of Tampa Bay. Brian's 33 year old sister Cassie even stopped by the campsite with her own family. Later, Cassie would say that she had no idea that anything was wrong. She thought Brian seemed completely normal. They all had a great time and the laundries went back home to north port on September 8th. Meanwhile, Gabby's friends and family were in a palace panic by this point. Gabby wasn't answering Nicole's texts and she wasn't responding to any of her friends either. She hadn't called her best friend Rose on her birthday on August 29th and hadn't shown up for a hike they were supposed to go on that day either. Gabby's dad Joe, who remember wasn't married to Nicole anymore, also hadn't heard from Gabby. On September 9, the day after the laundries got back from that camping trip, Gabby's little brother called one of her friends. And like everyone else, she said she hadn't talked to Gabby in a while. This is around the same time when Gabby's family tried to reach out to the laundries. There's no reporting on why they didn't try and contact them earlier, but either way, Roberta and Chris didn't get back to them by September 11th. Nicole was tired playing the waiting game. That day she made one of the hardest calls a parent can ever make. She contacted the local police in New York to officially report her daughter as missing. Once the investigation kicked off, there was only one place to start the van. Since the vehicle was registered in Gabby's name and her last known residence was at the laundry's home in North Port, the authorities in New York reached out to their counterparts in Florida. Local officers in North Port were sent to the laundry's house, and what they found there confirmed Nicole's worst fears and set off a massive manhunt. There, in plain sight, was Gabby's white Ford Transit Connect van parked right in their driveway. And Gabby was nowhere to be found.
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Narrator / Host (Katie Ring)
Finding the van in the laundry's driveway with Gabby still missing was suspicious enough. But what happened next kicked those suspicions into overdrive. When Northport police officers knocked on the laundry's door, Brian's father, Chris, answered. Body cam footage from the encounter would show Chris looking clearly flustered and cagey. When they asked about Gabby, he told the officers that Brian was inside and that's all he'd say. They tried to squeeze more information out of him, but Chris just kept repeating that the family had hired a lawyer and that they wouldn't answer any more questions. It definitely seemed like the laundries were hiding something very bad. But that wasn't enough for the police to charge Brian or anyone in his family with a crime. Without definitive proof of foul play, the investigation officially remained a missing person's case. Still, it was plain as day that Gabby Petito was missing. She hadn't contacted her family in weeks, and her fiance Brian was back home with their van. Not only that, but he didn't seem interested in helping to find her. Over the next few days, investigators kept a close eye on the laundry's house. As crazy as it might seem, there wasn't enough probable cause for them to get a search warrant, so they had to monitor the laundries and hope they had slipped up enough to give the police a reason to get inside the house. While this was going on, there was also a massive effort to find Gabby. Formal searches were organized in Wyoming, near Gabby's last known location. And the police in North Port were trying every possible angle to locate her, including the tried and true strategy of following the money. On September 11, the same day that they went to Laundrie's house, detectives reached out to Gabby's banks to get a complete list of her recent transactions to see if there was any trail that they could follow. They learned that between August 30 and September 1, after Gabby had already gone silent, someone spent over $1,000 using her debit card. Some of those transactions were at gas stations along the route from Wyoming back to Florida. If this wasn't suspicious enough, there was another detail that really stood out. Investigators found a $700 Zelle payment from Gabby's account to Brian's, along with a message that read, quote, goodbye, Brian. I'll never ask you for anything again. If you want to be generous, you could see it as Gabby breaking up with Brian and giving him some money to get home. Or it could be Brian trying to create an alibi for himself and a paper trail making it look like Gabby was still alive. And there were also multiple texts back and forth from her phone to Brian's that were sent on August 29. One text from Brian said, quote, hey, honey, just calling to let you know I made it to Colter Bay. I think the campground is still a little ways up the road. I'm gonna go check it out. LMK when you're on your way. No rush with a smiley face at the end. Another one said, can't wait for you to see the mountains across the water. The timing was definitely suspicious, especially because Gabby hadn't been talking to anyone then. But for some reason, she would talk to Brian. None of it was lining up. Not to mention that the police were starting to learn that Brian and Gabby's relationship wasn't as great as it seemed. Also, on September 11, the police in North Port Court called their counterparts in Jackson, Wyoming, and asked for their help. Her last confirmed financial transaction before the suspicious debit card usage was two days before. Brian sent these possibly misleading texts at a gas station in Jackson, Wyoming. The same day they were seen arguing at a restaurant. So the Jackson police started at that gas station and went door to door, collecting security footage from every business in the area with cameras. After combing through hundreds of hours of tape, they finally caught a sighting of Gabby at Whole Foods. They didn't know it yet, but this was right after that argument. Their van pulled into the parking lot at around 2:11pm in the footage, you can see Brian getting out a few minutes later and closing the door pretty hard. He grabs a hat from the back, then Gabby joins him and they head into the store. Inside, you can see Gabby and Brian shopping together. They wander through the aisles for about 15 minutes without really talking or interacting with each other. Gabby keeps her distance from Brian the whole time with her arms crossed, and they leave without buying anything. They walk out of the whole foods at 2:30pm and head back into the van. They don't go anywhere for 20 minutes and then they leave. At 2:53pm Brian's behind the wheel and pulls onto Highway 89, the road leading to the Bridger Teton National Forest. The footage seems to tell them a few things. One, that Brian and Gabby didn't seem to be getting long before she disappeared. And two, they now had a better place to start looking for her. It didn't take long for news of Gabby's disappearance to make it to the news. The story got picked up in the tabloids, including one called the Daily Mail. A lot of people saw their coverage, including a comedian and writer named Paris Campbell as a new mom. Campbell found Gabby's disappearance extremely disturbing. She wanted to help however she could, so she spread the word to her 150,000 followers on social media. Her first post on September 13, just two days after Gabby was reported missing, featured a missing person poster and a powerful call to action, pleading with people to offer any information they could get about Gabby's whereabouts. Over the next few days, Paris posted more than 40 videos. They caught the attention of people around the world, including Gabby's family, who decided to add their voice to Campbell's effort. Thanks to Campbell's work, major news outlets started reporting on the story, transforming what started as a local missing persons case into a global obsession. All of a sudden, Gabby Petito was a household name. In a tragic twist of fate, she'd gotten the recognition she'd been working so hard to earn. But although it was too late for her to appreciate that, the overwhelming public interest proved to be a massive help to the investigation. Witnesses started coming out of the woodwork, giving the police more information to work with, and it painted a very dark picture.
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Narrator / Host (Katie Ring)
Spring, summer or fall, there's always yard work to do. TikTok shows quick, easy gardening ideas you can use today. No experience Needed. Download TikTok now. Thanks to the efforts of official and amateur investigators, the search to find Gabby Petito was moving at warp speed. By September 15, four days after Gabby was reported missing, the authorities felt confident enough to announce that Brian Laundrie was a person of interest in this case. That didn't mean there was enough evidence to arrest him or even get a search warrant for his house. But it was still a powerful message. And the next few days, things started to look even worse for him. When the body cam footage from their incident in Moab was released, millions of people saw the video, and the calls to do something about Brian got even louder. But the police couldn't just rush to Laundrie's house and arrest Brian because people wanted to. The same day that the footage was released, the chief of north port police held a press conference. He said that Brian was choosing to use his constitutional right to remain silent and that for now, the investigation was still being treated as a missing persons case. Without further evidence, Brian couldn't be charged with a crime. And as far as they knew, Gabby could still be alive. After all of this momentum, it seemed like things might be at a standstill. So Gabby's parents and stepparents decided to take some action themselves. On the 16th, they released a letter through their lawyer, publicly begging Brian's parents to finally come clean, reveal what they knew about Brian, and help them find their daughter. It was a heartfelt statement from parent to parent that they hoped would appeal to their empathy and human decency. But the laundries didn't respond, at least not at first. The next day, on September 17, they finally broke their silence. Roberta and Chris reached out to the police, asking officers to come to their house so they could talk about what they knew. It seemed like this could be it. They would finally get the answers they needed. But the meeting was almost a waste of time because the laundries didn't give any clarity on Gabby's disappearance. Although they did have something else to share. Gabby wasn't the only one missing now. They had no idea where Brian was either. Roberta and Chris said that they hadn't seen their son since the 4th 14th. Somehow, even with the police staking at the laundry's house, Brian was able to sneak out with being detected. According to their story, Brian had gone out for a hike at the nearby Carlton Reserve, a massive 25,000 acre nature area with over 80 miles of complex trails, and he hadn't come back. Later on, the police would reveal that they'd seen Brian leave home on September 13th. In a Ford Mustang and assumed he had returned on the 15th. But further review of the video recordings from the cameras they set up to monitor the laundry residence proved that the person the police thought was Brian coming home was actually Roberta. Brian had left town right under their noses. Now the case had really ground to a halt. There were no clues, no leads, and no direct witnesses to any crime. The authorities were at least able to obtain a search warrant to seize Gabby and Brian's van, an external hard drive, and the laundry's family's Ford Mustang. But they were missing the most important piece of the puzzle, the only person who could actually tell them where Gabby was. But the millions of people invested in her case weren't giving up. Amateur investigators pored over the body cam videos and the Whole Foods footage and did deep dives into Gabby's social media, looking for any hint they could, even if the trail ended in heartbreak. At the end of each episode, we're going to do an off the record segment where I talk about everything from my thoughts on the case to self defense and safety tips. So if you have any questions, make sure to comment below or send them directly to us.
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Interviewer
What do you make of the investigation as it played out from your coverage of other cases? Does it seem pretty standard or does it seem like the police flubbed it?
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Narrator / Host (Katie Ring)
In my opinion, the police completely the bed on this one. Not only were they clearly not educated on domestic violence and the dynamics between abusers and victims, but they also bonded with Brian in clear misogyny, talking about how women are just so dramatic and they understand how, you know, my wife does the same things and how a hot shower can help her. And watching this footage just made me so mad because if they handled this properly, there's a potential that Gabby could still be alive today, which makes me so frustrated. And I'm not the only one who thought this. Gabby's parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Moab Police Department and specific officers in November of 2022, alleging that the police had mishandled the domestic violence incident. When they stopped, Gabby and Brian failed to properly investigate and their actions increase the risk to Gabby's safety. All I completely agree with. The lawsuit sought about $50 million, claiming negligence and failure to follow required domestic violence protocols. But In November of 2024, a Utah judge dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds of governmental immunity, meaning the department and the officers are protected under Utah law from being sued for discretionary actions taken in the course of their duties. The judge acknowledged the family's claims could be factually supported, but said immunity barred the case at that level. Her family has appealed the dismissal, and the case is now being considered by the Utah Supreme Court as early as this year. So I hope they finally get justice.
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Interviewer
Paris Campbell's posts helped amplify this case. Do you think social media ultimately helped investigators or complicated their work?
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Narrator / Host (Katie Ring)
I think it's a little mix of both. Paris Campbell's TikTok post undeniably amplified the case at a critical moment to her wide audience. The advantage of social media in my perspective, is that nothing comes close to social media in bringing eyes to a case. I think it's a little bit of both. Paris Campbell's TikTok post undeniably amplified the case at this critical moment. And in my perspective, the advantage of social media is that nothing even comes close when it comes to spreading awareness about a case. And this is one of the most important things in cases. And what I love about what I do so much is you can help people get justice. Social media helped get Gabby's name in the national spotlight. It increases pressure on the police and the authorities. It can generate tips, it mobilizes online communities and can help with timelines and locations. Obviously, and especially in missing persons cases, sustained public attention can be a very powerful tool because it keeps momentum alive and encourages witnesses to come forward at the same time. One disadvantage is that large scale online attention can complicate investigations a little bit. Viral speculation can harm people's reputations if they're incorrect. Amateur sleuthing and misinformation can spread very quickly, which can sometimes overwhelm tip lines or muddy verified facts.
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Interviewer
Have you ever been involved in a case going viral like this? If so, what's that experience like?
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Narrator / Host (Katie Ring)
Obviously, I've covered a lot of cases, and one of the ones I'm most well known for is Karen Reid. But in the case of Karen Reed, the trial was already ongoing as I started covering it. So in cases where it's more present, like this one and the investigation hasn't thoroughly been done and there aren't all these facts out there, I think you have to definitely be more careful because I never want to spread misinformation. And speculating can also, like I said, be very damaging to people's reputations if you're wrong. So I never try and speculate. I think the only case that I did speculate was the very sad case of Emmanuel Haro, because when I saw the video of Jake and Rebecca, his parents, I knew immediately, without a doubt in my mind that they were guilty of something. And I turned out to be correct. But we do have to be very careful because we don't want to interfere with investigations and we don't want to hurt people's reputations if they're innocent.
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Interviewer
Gabby's mom sensed something was wrong from the wording of those texts. How important is it to listen to those subtle internal alarms?
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Narrator / Host (Katie Ring)
As a self defense instructor, I always say that a woman's most powerful asset is our intuition, and especially moms. I think moms have a very, very good intuition, so always listen to it. And in this case, especially if you think there may be something wrong in a relationship, your daughter or your kid is alone with someone who could possibly be dangerous, I know it can feel like it's over exaggerating or being dramatic, but I say absolutely, call the police because it's much better to be safe than sorry. And so if you see any behaviors that are out of the ordinary, whether it's texting or behaviors that are happening in real time, please always reach out to your kids. If they're not answering their phone or they're texting weird, call them and keep calling them until they answer. If they don't again, reach out to the police. Thanks so much for joining me for this episode. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to subscribe below. If you're listening on audio, please rate, review and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes and to get all of the episodes at once ad free. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Make sure to come back to the Tomorrow for our final episode on Gabby Petito.