INFAMOUS: Gabby Petito

Summary

Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaylin Moore

Episode: INFAMOUS: Gabby Petito
Date: September 17, 2025

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Overview: Main Theme and Purpose

In this deeply researched episode, Morgan Absher and Kaylin Moore explore the tragic, infamous murder of Gabby Petito—a 22-year-old aspiring travel content creator whose disappearance in 2021 turned into a global news event fueled by social media sleuthing, public scrutiny, and massive digital detective work. The hosts walk listeners through the timeline from Gabby's childhood through her relationship with Brian Laundrie, the national manhunt, the investigative missteps, and the lasting impact on conversations about domestic violence and true crime culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Rise of Gabby Petito and the Van Life Dream

• Gabby Petito was described as creative and vibrant since childhood and drawn to adventure over traditional life paths.
• Reconnected with Brian Laundrie, a quiet, artistic, and very different personality, leading to a fast, intense relationship.
• Gabby's plan: embark on a months-long, content-driven cross-country van trip, aiming to grow her “Van Life” social media persona.
• Notable Quotes
  • [07:42] Kaylin Moore: “She had a deep craving for adventure and for new experiences. And what she really wanted, deep down, was to be a travel blogger.”

Relationship Dynamics & Red Flags

• Gabby’s relationship with Brian showed early red flags: family tensions (notably with Brian’s mother Roberta), lack of boundaries, and Gabby becoming more isolated.
• The couple’s relationship was described as magnetic but marked by stark personality differences and gradual escalation of controlling behavior from Brian.
• Notable Quotes
  • [13:28] Morgan Absher: “There’s a boy mom and then there’s a mom who has sons and she is a boy mom...”

The Trip and Social Media Exposure

• The couple’s trip began July 2, 2021, documented through upbeat, beautifully shot posts by Gabby, masking underlying turmoil.
• As Gabby’s posts suddenly stop and family can’t reach her, alarm builds—her usually steady communication ceases.
• Notable Quotes
  • [22:45] Kaylin Moore: “All of her posts are so positive too. Inspirational stuff, filled with so much gratitude... And to those who were watching and hearing about Gabby’s adventure online, it seemed to be a total dream come true.”

The Vanishing: Timeline of Disappearance

• August 25: Gabby’s last Instagram post; last FaceTime with her mother on Aug 24.
• Strange texts followed—including one to her mother referencing her “Gampa Stan,” which was out of character and rang alarm bells.
• [25:34] Morgan Absher: "The text reads, quote, can you help Stan? I just keep getting his voicemails and missed calls... Gabby doesn’t call her grandpa Stan."
• Silence follows, and the last message says "no service in Yosemite" [25:59].

Family Concerns and First Evidence

• The Petito family members desperately try to reach Gabby, also contacting Brian’s parents—who remain silent.
• Sept 11: Gabby is officially reported missing; her van is found at Brian’s parents’ home in Florida, but with no Gabby.
• The Laundrie family immediately gets a lawyer and refuses to cooperate. [30:09] Morgan Absher notes, "It is beyond weird and frustrating..."

Key Evidence Timeline (with Timestamps)

• Clue 1: Out-of-character texts from Gabby to her mother [25:34-26:37]
• Clue 2: Gabby’s van at the Laundrie home [29:34-30:09]
• Clue 3: Suspicious debit card transactions by Brian and staged “goodbye” Zelle payments [34:40-36:31]
• Clue 4: Whole Foods surveillance footage—Gabby last seen alive [36:31-40:15]
• Clue 5: Body cam footage of police stop in Moab after a 911 domestic dispute call [46:12-53:49]
• Clue 6: Gabby’s digital footprint—a hiking app pinpointing her last location near Spread Creek in Grand Teton NP [53:49-55:19]
• Clue 7: Dashcam footage from the Batun family showing Gabby’s van at Spread Creek [57:19-57:53]
• Clue 8: Brian’s Ford Mustang clues for his disappearance [65:19-66:12]
• Clue 9: Brian’s confession notebook found after his suicide [71:25-74:24]

Moab Police Encounter and Law Enforcement Failures

• Released police body cam footage shows Gabby emotionally distraught, taking all blame for the incident, while Brian is calm and collected.
• Moab officers miss key indicators of abuse, ultimately separating the couple for just one night.
• Notable Quotes
  • [50:04] Kaylin Moore: “In the dashcam footage...they’re kind of agreeing that women can be emotional sometimes. Yeah, we get it, man. Like, we have wives.”
  • [51:02] Morgan Absher: “That’s why we’re getting a botched here…”

The Social Media Firestorm and Citizen Sleuths

• Gabby’s case goes viral, inspiring both productive tips and overwhelming, at times obstructive flood of theories and false leads.
• Citizen sleuths help uncover key evidence (like the Batun family's dashcam video), but TikTok and Reddit also contribute conspiracy and chaos.
• [44:39-46:09] “TikTok is also treating this like a real time mystery that they can help solve… at one point [the FBI] received over 4,500 tips just in that first week alone.”

The Search, Discovery, and Aftermath

• Jen Batun’s YouTube footage locates Gabby's van at Spread Creek, leading to the discovery of her body nearby.
• Autopsy confirms Gabby died by blunt force injuries and manual strangulation [61:00].
• Immediately after, Brian disappears and becomes the subject of a nationwide manhunt.
• [67:17-67:44] The search is chaotic, with police, searchers, and online figures all involved.

Brian Laundrie's Disappearance and Death

• Brian’s parents claim he left home for a hike and never returned, but their cooperation is highly suspect.
• His remains are found in October, cause of death self-inflicted gunshot wound, after his parents lead authorities straight to the site suspiciously quickly.
• Notable Quotes
  • [70:41] Morgan Absher: “People were really weirded out by the fact his parents seemingly just walked in the park and found him...”

The Confession Notebook and Family Involvement

• Brian leaves behind a notebook attempting to portray Gabby’s death as a mercy killing—widely dismissed as a self-serving fabrication.
• Evidence suggests premeditation, extensive cover-up, and family involvement, especially through the infamous "burn after reading" letter from Roberta.
• [78:57] Direct excerpt: “If you need to dispose of a body, I will show up with a shovel and garbage bags. If you fly to the moon, I will be watching the skies for your re entry. If you say you hate my guts, I'll get new guts.”

Lessons About Domestic Abuse and the Cycle of Violence

• The hosts discuss the cycle of violence in abusive relationships, drawing from both expert insights and Gabby’s behavioral patterns.
• Introduce the idea of "reactive abuse" or "self-defense," explaining why victims might blame themselves or be mistaken for aggressors.
• [88:56] Kaylin Moore shares: "I remember her describing it as being a frog in a boiling pot of water. You just don’t feel it at first.”

White Woman Syndrome and Missing Persons Inequity

• Gabby's father channels the visibility of her case into advocacy for missing persons of color, acknowledging that media attention is often biased.
• Promotes the Gabby Petito Foundation and its partnerships to improve outcomes for other missing persons cases.
• The episode ends with a spotlight on the still-active missing person case of Daniel Robinson [91:27-93:59].

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• [09:13] Morgan Absher: “She’s so cute. You watch these videos and you can just tell she's someone you want to be friends with.”
• [15:53] Kaylin Moore (on how Gabby’s parents learned of her engagement): "That’s really hurtful for Gabby’s mom."
• [46:52] Kaylin Moore: “You hear these horror stories...really good on this guy for seeing a guy slap a girl on the sidewalk and call it in...”
• [73:51] Kaylin Moore: "Just such cowardice."
• [79:40] Kaylin Moore (quoting the Bible verse from Roberta’s letter): "For I am convinced that neither death nor life… will be able to separate us..."

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Important Timestamps

• [04:25] Kaylin and Morgan outline approach: timeline, step-by-step investigation
• [13:28] Discussion of family dynamics and “boy mom” trope
• [22:45] Start of road trip, early van life posts
• [25:34-27:20] Gabby's last contact and the red flag “Stan” text
• [29:34] Authorities find Gabby’s van at Laundrie house
• [34:40] Digital evidence: debit card transactions and Zelle payment
• [36:31-40:15] Last footage of Gabby from Whole Foods and eyewitness accounts
• [46:12-53:49] Moab police stop: body cam breakdown
• [55:19-57:53] Social media sleuthing leads to crucial footage from the Batun family
• [65:19-66:12] Brian’s Mustang clue and misidentification by police
• [71:25-74:24] Brian’s notebook confession and lies
• [83:24-87:08] Discussion of warning signs, abusive patterns, and the Walker cycle of violence
• [89:55-91:27] The digitization and public sleuthing effect, Gabby’s legacy turns to advocacy

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Concluding Reflections

Clues’ hosts highlight the intersection of new media, public engagement, and law enforcement in modern investigations. They also underscore the heartbreaking patterns of intimate partner violence—and the need for societal vigilance, empathy, and resources for victims.

If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, the hosts recommend resources like loveisrespect.org, encouraging all listeners to check in on their relationship health.

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Case Advocacy: Missing Person of the Week

• Daniel Robinson: Missing since June 23, 2021, in Buckeye, Arizona.
  • Description: 5'8", African American male, 165 lbs, black hair, brown eyes, missing part of his right forearm.
  • Tip Line: 623-349-6411

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Final Thoughts

This episode is both an in-depth case analysis and advocacy for awareness of domestic violence warning signs. Morgan and Kaylin urge their listeners to stay vigilant, support other missing persons cases, and see beyond sensational headlines to deeper issues of interpersonal danger and media inequity.

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For Photos and More

See @CluesPodcast on Instagram for episode visuals and further content.

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This summary is provided to give you a comprehensive understanding of the "Clues: INFAMOUS: Gabby Petito" episode—a must-listen for true crime followers and anyone seeking insight into the entwined power and peril of modern-day digital sleuthing.

Transcript

[Morgan Absher]

Hey Cluminati, it's Morgan Absher. If you're enjoying clues, you'll love Crime House's newest show, Crime House Daily. Twice every weekday, host Katie Ring brings you the biggest crime stories as they unfold. Twice a day in the morning, get the latest updates. At night, dive into the moments that matter. Follow Crime House Daily wherever you listen or catch them on YouTube so you never miss an episode.

[Kaylin Moore]

Today we are going to talk about one of the most high profile cases in recent history, the case of Gabby Petito. She was a 22 year old aspiring Van Life content creator who went missing the summer of 2021 while on a cross country road trip with her fiance.

[Morgan Absher]

Gabby's disappearance exploded on social media and hashtag Gabby Petito was shared nearly a billion times. An army of Internet sleuths joined the search leading to the discovery of major evidence and some shocking theories about those involved. Hello Illuminati. Welcome back to another episode of Clues where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases.

[Kaylin Moore]

A I'm Kaylin Moore and I'm going to be digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories and the court files for these cases.

[Morgan Absher]

And I'm your Internet sleuth, Morgan Abshur. I'm the one who's diving into the evidence, the Reddit forums and pulling out the threads to figure out what is or isn't adding up at Crime House.

[Kaylin Moore]

We value your support. So please share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow clues to help others discover the show. And for bonus episodes, early access and ad free listening, join our Crime House plus Community on Apple Podcasts.

[Morgan Absher]

More on the case and the clues that defined it after this quick break. One of this week's partners is Jenny Bird.

[Kaylin Moore]

You know when you put something on and it starts to become part of your permanent rotation of jewelry? That's how I've been feeling about some of the pieces that I've gotten from Jenny Bird recently. I don't know if you can see Morgan. I'm wearing one of my anklets.

[Morgan Absher]

The pearls on that are beautiful Lucille.

[Kaylin Moore]

Anklet, but it's got shells and it's got pearls and it's. It's just so summery and dainty. I've been wearing it literally every day.

[Morgan Absher]

It's beautiful. The monogram necklace I got has been my daily wear. I love how water resistant it is because I'm lazy and I don't like taking off jewelry when I shower. So it's Perfect. It doesn't tarnish. It looks really cute. I got a cute little J to represent Justin A.

[Kaylin Moore]

That's sweet.

[Morgan Absher]

I'm obsessed. I also got my friend Alejandra the Gemini necklace for her birthday. Jenny Bird is just such a thoughtful gift for someone, and it's these pieces that people are going to actually love because they're trendy and. And they're gonna have for years to come.

[Kaylin Moore]

And they're timeless, too. Like, right now, I'm also wearing this pearl bracelet that I got, and I feel like pearls never go out of style, so I'll have it forever.

[Morgan Absher]

No, they'll never go to style. So if you're ready to try it for yourself, you can get 20% off your first order with Jenny Bird by visiting jenny-bird.com and using code clues at checkout.

[Kaylin Moore]

I feel like this case is one of the first things we bonded over, because one of the first weekends we started working together, the documentary came out on Netflix.

[Morgan Absher]

That's right. And I.

[Kaylin Moore]

We were in New York, and I Binged the whole thing just in the hotel room. While we were there, I didn't go out. I just wanted to watch the documentary and see the way that they. It was the Netflix documentary that had come out. Do you remember following it that summer?

[Morgan Absher]

I do. I remember seeing it pop up, and I don't like. I remember. I think the first video I saw, and it's one we kind of talk about, was a girl who was like, hey, I think I picked him up. If you've seen this person. And then from there, I was like, wait, what? And I go down the rabbit hole of, you know, all these people making TikToks and how the Internet kind of helped solve this case.

[Kaylin Moore]

And this is an interesting one because of how much social media really plays into it.

[Morgan Absher]

It's crazy. People were even, like, finding Gabby in the background of their photos. I mean, it really highlights the power of the Internet and, like, what it can do, what it can accomplish if everyone's connected, talking, sharing info, it's a really powerful, powerful story. And I'm ready. I'm ready to get into it.

[Kaylin Moore]

Yeah, let's just dive in.

[Morgan Absher]

Let's do it. As a quick reminder, for anyone who's watching this episode, you'll see a bunch of different photos that really help paint the picture of this case on YouTube. But if you're listening, you can find the same photos on our social media at Clues podcast on Instagram.

[Kaylin Moore]

And so when we were talking about how we wanted to tell the story today, I Think we really want to just kind of go through the timeline, how we all experienced it that summer, kind of from the beginning mystery, trying to figure out what happened and go all the way through in that way. So this case is really just a perfect example of everything you said about social media. Let's start the story back in August of 2021. So 22 year old Gabby Petito is on the road with her 23 year old fiance named Brian Laundrie. She's been posting non stop about this cross country van trip that they've been taking with with the goal of really trying to boost her social media following. She keeps using the hashtag vanlife. That was like really popular that summer. I think Covid people were just like spending a lot of time outside and she really wanted to be part of this van life community on social media. That month she had around a thousand followers or so, but she was still posting consistently. She was making a ton of content. She was really, really into trying to grow this social media. And around late August, after posting these photos that she had taken in front of a restaurant in Ogden, Utah, all of a sudden the updates stop. For someone who's been posting so frequently, it just completely goes dark. Gabby's friends don't hear from her, her family doesn't hear anything from her. And when people eventually start talking about this on TikTok, the mystery of what happened to Gabby Petito starts really going viral. But I actually want to take it back even a little bit further than that. Let's just start by talking about who Gabby was. Gabrielle Petito was born on March 19, 1999 in Blue Point, Long island, about 60 miles outside of New York City. Her parents, Nicole Schmidt and Joe Petito, ended up separating when she was really young. But they stayed pretty close. They were both obsessed with Gabby and so they, they tried to co parent as best as they could given the circumstances. And even after the divorce, they remained pretty close friends. It was kind of this big modern blended family. There ended up being six step siblings and half siblings just all kind of combined together. And from the very beginning, Gabby was described as being this really vibrant, creative kid. There was one story we read about how in preschool she would spend hours making really detailed art projects. Her parents remembered that she was just a really naturally creative person and she would get entirely absorbed in her creativity even from a very young age.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah, her art was beautiful.

[Kaylin Moore]

By high school, Gabby fully came into her own. She had this really magnetic personality that drew a lot of people to her. She hung out with what her friends called the, quote, cooler older kids. It was this diverse group that included a quiet, artistic guy named Brian Laundrie. But even with this strong group of friends, Gabby pretty much continued to move to the beat of her own drum. She was smart, but she always knew that taking the traditional path was not going to be for her of graduating, going to college, getting married, having kids, getting a house, like, doing that whole thing. She wasn't really interested in that, at least when she was in high school. After she graduated high school in 2017, Gabby decides that she's going to skip college, and she's going to spend just a little bit more time trying to figure out exactly what she wants to do with her life, which I think is really smart. I think more kids, honestly, should do that. Just, like, take a beat to actually figure out what you want.

[Morgan Absher]

Everyone needs a gap year.

[Kaylin Moore]

I love a gap year. She allegedly followed a boyfriend she had to a seaside town in North Carolina. She got a job there as a hostess at a local restaurant. But Gabby was too restless for that. She had a deep craving for adventure and for new experiences. And what she really wanted, deep down, was to be a travel blogger. She wanted to document all of the beautiful places she was traveling, all the places she wanted to travel, and she wanted to share that joy with others. She started talking constantly about wanting to explore the world and to show people that life had more to offer than just living in the seaside town with her boyfriend and working at a place. And then life threw her this kind of different surprise. In early 2019, on a trip back home, she ends up reconnecting with one of her old high school friends, Brian Laundrie. And in that chance encounter, it feels like, at least in that moment, she found someone who shared that same sense of adventure, someone who would embrace that lifestyle with her. Now, Brian was a year and a half older than Gabby. He was born in November of 1997. And the more you read about the two of them together, the more you learn just how different he was from her in a lot of ways. Gabby, you can see in the videos that she made, just like the couple of YouTube videos that are still up. She has such a magnetic personality. She's great on camera. She's very outgoing. She's funny, has, like, a wide range of emotions that she just shares with everyone.

[Morgan Absher]

She's so cute. You watch these videos and you can just tell she's someone you want to. She's got it. Friends with.

[Kaylin Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Absher]

Watch her content. I mean, it was. She was so great.

[Kaylin Moore]

Yeah, exactly. And Then Brian is pretty much the exact opposite. He's really quiet. He's really introverted. He comes off as self conscious. When you first meet him, he's kind of cold. He keeps this barrier around him. Not great on camera either. In the Netflix documentary, they actually show a couple clips like after Gabby stops rolling and the camera's still on and Brian kind of like enters the picture, you can, you can see him in the YouTube videos. And he just kind of comes off as like, curmudgeony, not really wanting to engage.

[Morgan Absher]

He's very pouty.

[Kaylin Moore]

He's very pouty. Yes. That's a good way to put it.

[Morgan Absher]

And it was, it was so interesting when you watched too. It was almost like she'd be super engaged, talking about making yogurt or doing something, and then he would like, almost sabotage some of the shots. He wasn't as into this vlogging as she was, and that's fine, but like.

[Kaylin Moore]

Let her have her fun poop and her Cheerios. Exactly. But at least on paper, he does come off as this artistic person. Yeah, he was described as loving reading, drawing, and playing guitar. After graduation, Brian also didn't want to go to college either. And at that time in your life, it can be hard finding someone who wants to go on that specific life path with you. So he stayed in New York for a little while, and his parents ended up relocating to Florida around 2017. And while he was there, he was just kind of like trying to figure out what he wanted to do. He was working on these odd jobs. He ended up living out of his car for a little while. He was just crashing on friends couches. He didn't really have that same kind of fire inside of him that Gabby had to go out and do something really extraordinary. And I have a note here that he was just like, drifting through life without much direction. But then In March of 2019, when he was 21 years old, it seems like a lot changed in his life because he was driving through their hometown of Blue Point, Long island, when he spotted Gabby at a local deli. And he. I mean, at that point, he hadn't seen her in a while. He literally pulled his car over, got out of the car and ran up to her. And later, which, with everything we know about this case, it's kind of like disturbing almost reading this. But he, he described it as love at first sight, which is normally a very cute thing to describe your partner as I fell in love at first sight. But with what we know about Brian, it was probably just like Toxic love bombing. He said that even though they had met before, it felt like it was the first time. And Gabby would go on to say the same thing about that interaction. After she saw Brian again after all those years, it felt like destiny. It felt like the universe putting them together. And that next week they ended up going on their very first date, which is where they went and got sushi. And very soon after this, Gabby hopped in her car and she drove down to Florida with Brian to go visit his parents. So then In October of 2019, the two had been dating for around six months and they decide that they're going to embark on this cross country trip. They drive south to Texas. They're just really roughing it, sleeping in Walmart parking lots in the back of Gabby's beat up Nissan Sentra. And they continue on to California and they end their trip at the Santa Monica Pier. And as soon as they got home to New York later that October, they had really caught the travel bug. They were ready for the next adventure. So Gabby agrees that she's going to pack up her life and she's going to move to Florida to live with with Brian and his parents, Chris and Roberta. Laundry. They're going to come up so much in this story. Gabby got a job while she was living with them, just working as a pharmacy tech, while Brian sold some of his art digital watercolor pieces. In the spirit of them being very opposite, you did mention that Gabby's art was very good. I would say Brian's art is very bad. If anyone has seen it, they show it in the Netflix documentary. According to Gabby's mom, Nicole, Roberta really liked to knit little things for her and treated Gabby like a second daughter pretty much. But as time went on, at least according to Gabby, she started feeling a little less welcome in the home. Text messages show that there was definitely growing tension between Gabby and Roberta. Brian often felt like he was stuck in the middle of the two of them. Nicole thought that it was probably because Roberta was jealous of how much time Gabby was getting to spend with Brian.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah, she's a boy mom. There's a boy mom and then there's a mom who has sons and she is a boy mom. We all know the TikTok videos that I'm talking about. Yeah, she's a boy mom.

[Kaylin Moore]

It's tough because it is just like such a specific type of parent who gets jealous that their child is spending more time with like a partner than with them. And he's 21 at this point. He's a full grown adult.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah. I mean, the videos you see of kind of all of them interacting to me, I found it so interesting. It felt. It felt like I was watching a competition for attention between the mom and Gabby. And Gabby's just kind of like. She's not going to interject, really? No.

[Kaylin Moore]

You're not on your turf at that point. You're trying to, like, also be a good roommate to everyone in the house. And now you have the mom who's. Yeah, it's a really tough situation.

[Morgan Absher]

And you're at an age where it's hard. Like, you're going from respect your elders kind of mindset. And now you're, you know, you're 20, about to be 21, and, like, you're coming in your own, like, how do you set boundaries with your partner's parents? It's. It's a tough transitional age.

[Kaylin Moore]

Well, we know that at this point, their relationship gets pretty rocky, probably for all of those reasons. In July of 2020, Gabby and Brian, at that point, they'd been together for a year and three months. They were out camping in the woods, just the two of them, by a secluded lake, when all of a sudden, Brian gets down on one knee and he proposes to Gabby. Now, he didn't have a ring, but that definitely didn't matter to Gabby. In that moment, something described as being magical happened, and that's that a firefly landed right on Gabby's finger as he was proposing without a ring. And she kind of saw that as a sign from the universe that there was some cosmic force that wanted them to be together. And even after they officially got engaged, it seems like the couple didn't really make a big deal about it. They didn't throw a party, which, like, that's fine. I didn't throw a party. Most people. People do their own thing for that. But what I found really strange about this is Gabby didn't even call her mom to tell her that she'd gotten engaged. Her mom found out from a Facebook post. And this was really hurtful for Gabby's parents. I mean, Gabby had been texting her mom pretty consistently throughout living with Brian and his parents. And so to not even text her to say that you had gotten engaged was really hurtful for Gabby's mom.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah.

[Kaylin Moore]

Her father later told the press, quote, I'm an old school person. And as an old school person, the one thing you do is go up to the father of the person you want to marry and you ask for their hand in marriage or parent ask for their hand in marriage. That didn't happen. We found out on Facebook. All of us did.

[Morgan Absher]

That's heart. That is really heartbreaking as a parent.

[Kaylin Moore]

It's really hurtful. Really hurtful.

[Morgan Absher]

It seemed like they were such a close knit family and so it's, it is very surprising. Which kind of begs the question, like, why didn't she tell them?

[Kaylin Moore]

Well, there's a lot of different theories about this. I don't know that Gabby necessarily ever came out and said explicitly, but I know some people really theorized that she was nervous her parents would be upset, that she probably knew that, hey, I'd been telling my parents all these bad things about living with Brian and his parents and now we're engaged and I think they're going to tell me this is a bad idea. So I don't even want to tell them.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah.

[Kaylin Moore]

Is potentially why that happened.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah, I could see it.

[Kaylin Moore]

Regardless, it didn't necessarily seem like Gabby was all that eager to plan a wedding anyways. After they get engaged, they don't really sit down and start wedding planning. They start trip planning. They have this other dream. They want to embark on this huge adventure. And Gabby actually comes up with an idea that pretty much changes the course of both of their lives. She wants to do a van trip. She says she wants to spend several months visiting dozens of national parks in a converted van, documenting everything in a video blog that they'll call Nomadic Static. I love her for this. I love that she came with a plan. She was like, we are going to get a van. We're going to go to all these parks and make content. Like, she was so determined. She just driven, had this drive in her and she even goes on to take a job, like an extra job at Taco Bell just so she can start affording this van. She's working 50 hours a week part time of that at fast food. As someone who's worked fast food, that is a hard job to have. You have to put up with a lot there. So she, it just like proves how much she wanted to do this. And eventually they do get enough money to buy their new home on wheels. And it's a white Ford Transit van. And this also becomes a project that they do together. They spend months renovating it themselves. They put in a bed, they build out this little kitchen area. They have storage for all of their camera equipment that they're going to be bringing with them. And Gabby, listen, she goes, she knows exactly like the shot she wants in her head. So she goes out, she buys drone equipment, she buys multiple cameras. She is ready to Document all of this journey and turn it into content that she can share with everyone. The, the dream that she'd been wanting to do this entire time.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah. And to take on that initiative, like to not have training in that, like, I've tried flying drones. It's hard. It takes a lot of practice. And so to just like have this plan and be so driven and motivated and self sufficient and independent at her age, I'm beyond impressed. It's so impressive.

[Kaylin Moore]

Yeah, no, absolutely. And so this van for them becomes this symbol of freedom and possibility. At least it does for Gabby. It's going to be just the two of them, the open road and already the several hundred or so of the Gabby's social media followers that she's been able to like, get at that point.

[Morgan Absher]

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[Kaylin Moore]

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[Morgan Absher]

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[Kaylin Moore]

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[Morgan Absher]

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[Kaylin Moore]

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[Morgan Absher]

Took me five minutes.

[Kaylin Moore]

I thought it was going to be a whole process. I thought I was basically going to have to reassemble my phone in order to do it or like lose all my contacts or lose my phone number. But no, you just pop a new SIM card in, you set it up through the instructions that they give you and then you can use your same phone. You can use your same phone number. It is very easy to switch over.

[Morgan Absher]

Super easy. And why wouldn't you want to save money? So quit stalling and start saving when you make the switch. Shop [e-mail] clues that's mint mobile.com clues upfront payment of $45 required equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time. New customer offer for the first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on a limited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mo for details. Another one of this week's partners is hellofresh. Fall is here and with it comes cooler nights. Heartier meals and a craving for something warm and satisfying. And that's where HelloFresh comes in. They bring you comforting, chef crafted recipes and fresh seasonal ingredients right to your door. So you can skip those annoying trips to the grocery store. All the meal planning and prepping, everything's pre portioned and sent right to you and it always tastes really good.

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Okay.

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[Kaylin Moore]

Sometime In June of 2021, Gabby and Brian drive their van up to New York to go visit her family. And then on July 2nd, which is exactly one year after Brian proposed, they say their farewells to their family. They hit the road for what they think is going to be the trip of a lifetime. Two days later, on the 4th of July, Gabby posts her first photo on the road at Monument Rocks, which is this really beautiful landscape near Oakley, Kansas. And the caption reads, quote, there's no place like the tiny home we built. Hashtag van Life. Then on July 8, Gabby posts photos from Colorado Springs, Colorado. And then on the 10th and 11th, she posts from these really beautiful sand dunes and Colorado's Great Sand Dune national park and preserve. By the 16th, she and Brian are camping in Zion national park in Utah. They have covered so much ground on this trip already.

[Morgan Absher]

Insane.

[Kaylin Moore]

So incredible how much they saw in that little time. And over the next few days, they bounce around to a couple more Utah parks and Gabby this entire time is documenting everything. She has her drone out. She's capturing These really beautiful sweeping shots of landscapes. She's figuring out all of the camera equipment and filming herself cooking meals. She's showing off how they organize their tiny living spaces. All of her posts are so positive too. Inspirational stuff, filled with so much gratitude. And it seems like the couple is settling into a nice routine, at least via the social media that Gabby's posting. In the morning, she has vlogs where she makes coffee or she'll shoot Brian doing a little bit of yoga. Then she films them having a day of exploring. Wherever park they're at, they'll do things like go for hikes, they'll soak in hot springs, and they'll just have a good time. And at night, Gabby spends pretty much the entire night editing all of the footage that she took during the day. It's a lot of work for Gabby at this time, but like we said, she's just really dedicated to grow her platform and so she's like willing to put in all of the work for it. The nice thing about all of this is Gabby's family is really supportive of this dream for her. Gabby called her mom essentially every day to fill her in on what they had seen. And in all of those early check ins, sources, including her mother, say that Gabby seemed to be pretty upbeat and in good spirits, beaming about all of the stuff that they had done so far. And to those who were watching and hearing about Gabby's adventure online, it seemed to be a total dream come true. And things continued that way for about the next month. But then on August 25, Gabby posts one more time on Instagram. It's this photo of her. She's standing in front of a mural in Ogden, Utah, and she's smiling and holding a pumpkin. And the caption says happy Halloween. That day, Gabby did not call or text her mom like she normally would. The last time that they had spoken was actually the day before they had FaceTimed and Gabby told her mom, Nicole, that the next stop they were going to was going to be the Grand Teton national park near Jackson, Wyoming. Nicole doesn't immediately worry when she doesn't hear from Gabby that day. There's so many reasons that this could be happening. Maybe they don't have service, maybe Gabby was just really busy. She doesn't really think that much of it right away. But on August 27, several days have gone by and she still hasn't heard anything from Gabby. So Nicole reaches back out just to check in and Gabby replies. She texts her saying that everything was fine and that Brian was going to camp in the woods so she could get some time alone in the van. And there's something about this text that sets off an alarm bell for her mother.

[Morgan Absher]

But that's not the only strange text that Gabby's mom, Nicole, gets. She actually gets another one later that day, which is our first big clue. The text reads, quote, can you help Stan? I just keep getting his voicemails and missed calls. The Stan she's referring to is Gabby's grandpa. But it's super weird for Nicole because Gabby doesn't call her grandpa Stan. She calls him Grandpa. So immediately, alarm bells are ringing even louder for her. She texts Gabby back, but gets no response. But on August 30, another text comes in from Gabby to Nicole, and all it says is, quote, no service in Yosemite. Nicole tries her daughter again on September 1st and 2nd, but still, there's nothing. She starts to wonder if Gabby is either in trouble or if for some reason, Brian is using her phone. I know in the Netflix documentary, she even kind of says, like, oh, well, maybe Brian was texting for her while she was driving and that's why Stan was used instead of Grandpa.

[Kaylin Moore]

But even whenever I grab Matt's phone to shoot off a quick text, especially, like, to his mom, I'll say, like, it's Kailyn.

[Morgan Absher]

Either that or I'll just pretend it's Justin. Like, I'm just pretending it's him and, like, you know, being like, hey, can you call Grandpa? Like, I'm not gonna be like, hey, can you call Jerry?

[Kaylin Moore]

I'll have him dictate the text to me. So it's still in his voice.

[Morgan Absher]

Exactly.

[Kaylin Moore]

So to get something that's, like, so not in the voice of your child. I understand, though. It's eerie. It's eerie. So I get why she picked up on it, but I also get why she thought maybe she was giving it.

[Morgan Absher]

A little bit more time. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, by the time we get to September 2nd, it's been almost a week since she's heard from Gabby.

[Kaylin Moore]

And you're not driving the whole time. At some point, you have to pull over and you would assume that she would call.

[Morgan Absher]

Something's clearly off.

[Kaylin Moore]

And so Gabby's friends at this point are also starting to get pretty worried because now multiple people have been calling and texting her and have not heard anything back. I mean, the fact that the first text said, what can you help Stan? I just keep getting his voicemails and missed calls. That means that her grandpa was really trying to get in touch with her. And whoever's using this phone is trying to basically, like, get them off their trail. But now everyone is contacting her and no one is hearing anything. Gabby doesn't call her best friend Rose on her birthday, August 29th. That is incredibly out of character for Gabby, especially since the two were supposed to meet up for a hike in Yellowstone that day. She was going to meet her on the. On the trip, Nicole texts Gabby's dad, her ex husband, Joe. She asks him, has he heard anything from Gabby lately, recently, in the last few days, but he texts her back that he also hasn't heard anything. On September 9, Gabby's younger brother Joey calls another one of Gabby's close friends and asks if she has heard from Gabby. And she has not either. And remember, it's like August 24th is the last time Gabby's mom heard from her. Pretty soon, the entire family is really desperately calling everyone they know just to find out if anyone has heard from her. And so when they do this, they also reach out to Brian's parents because they think to themselves, like, hey, this couple is engaged. If something happened to Gabby, maybe something happened to Brian, or maybe they have heard from Brian and he said something and surely these parents will want to help us because our children are engaged. We're all in this together. So they reach out to the laundries, dead silent. They don't say anything. They don't respond to a single call or text message from parents who are essentially pleading with them, have you heard from our daughter? Do you know anything that's going on with Gabby? So finally, on September 11th, this is over two weeks since they've heard from Gabby. At this point, not knowing where she could be, Nicole and Joe call their local authorities and they officially report her as missing. And that quickly gets the FBI and the North Port Florida Police Department involved.

[Morgan Absher]

That evening, officers from the North Port Florida police station dropped by the laundry home to take a statement from Brian's parents. And as soon as the North Port police officers arrive, they notice something in the driveway. Sitting there is Gabby's white Ford transit van. Our second clue, which means someone clearly made it back to Florida with this vehicle. But when officers knock on the door, things get even weirder.

[Kaylin Moore]

And this is all on camera, by the way. This is on YouTube. You can watch the body cam footage of them having this conversation with the laundries.

[Morgan Absher]

It is beyond weird and frustrating. Brian's father, Chris, answers the door, and before police can even explain why they're there, he announces, quote, brian is here. And that's All I'm going to say, that reads lawyer.

[Kaylin Moore]

That reads statement given to me by my lawyer to say to the police when they arrive. Yeah, no one's asking. No one has even asked you a single question yet, and you're already like, brian's here. That's all I'm gonna say.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah. And it becomes even more clear there's a lawyer involved because the next words out of his mouth are that he's hired an attorney.

[Kaylin Moore]

Exact. There it is.

[Morgan Absher]

We won't be speaking to you. Contact our attorney. Here's his number. It is beyond frustrating. It's just like, hey, like, where's Gabby? That's all we want to know. Hey, where's Gabby? The van's here. Where's Gabby? Nope, Brian's here. Talk to our lawyer. You guys. You'll watch some of the clips and let us know what you think. Like, was this a quick jump, or is it just responsible? I got a lawyer. Talk to my lawyer.

[Kaylin Moore]

That's for a police department.

[Morgan Absher]

Yes, I didn't.

[Kaylin Moore]

Sir, I apologize for.

[Morgan Absher]

For bothering you. I have the detective on the phone.

[Kaylin Moore]

You don't want to talk to us? Okay, she's on the phone. You don't want to talk to her now.

[Morgan Absher]

Okay. It's.

[Kaylin Moore]

It's. When was the last time that you saw Brian and.

[Morgan Absher]

And Gabriel?

[Kaylin Moore]

Well, Brian is here.

[Morgan Absher]

Brian is here. Yeah. And. Yeah.

[Kaylin Moore]

And that's all song of saying no. It's not responsible at all. I hate these people. But one thing, we've talked about it on the show before. Like, usually people get lawyers after they've already started talking to the police, and there is a confirmed murder that has happened. No one even knows what happened to Gabby at this point. And they're already like, well, we have a lawyer.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah. So I know Officer Ramirez, the one who shows up on scene, really, just really does try to squeeze more answers out of them, but they are not giving him anything. However, Brian's older sister, Cassie, who doesn't live in the house with them, does agree to speak by telephone with detectives from Suffolk County, New York. From her, the cops learned that Brian returned home on September 1st, and Gabby wasn't with him.

[Kaylin Moore]

Do you think Cassie told detectives this from the goodness of her heart, or do you think she just hadn't contacted her parents yet, who told her that we have a lawyer. Don't say anything.

[Morgan Absher]

I mean, Cassie kind of goes on the front lawn down the line, too, and kind of talks about being disconnected and all of this. Like, I truly. I don't know with her. Yeah, I Don't know. I don't know if it's guilt or.

[Kaylin Moore]

I don't know if she actually wants to help or. Yeah, interesting.

[Morgan Absher]

I want to assume she wanted to help. I'm like. But, yeah, the whole thing is. I mean, this is weird. This is so weird. And it's really weird for Nicole, Gabby's mom, when she hears this, her stomach sinks. There's a lot of reasons why Brian's parents would need to hire a lawyer, but to Gabby's family, none of them are good reasons. And the police here are in a really tough spot. They don't have probable cause at this point. They can't enter the house without a warrant or an invitation. They're certainly not getting the ladder. So their hands are kind of tied in terms of what they can do. But since the van is registered in Gabby's name, they are able to confiscate it, and so they have it towed to process it for evidence. And I will say, I think this moment could have very easily been a botch on our board because the detective from New York calls the police in Florida, and, like, she has asked for a supervisor to even, like, get this van towed. Like, it's a very tense phone call. A lot of it is on the documentary.

[Kaylin Moore]

Right. Because the officer in Florida is basically saying, well, what do you want me to do? They're not talking.

[Morgan Absher]

She's an adult.

[Kaylin Moore]

There's nothing for me to do. Yeah, she's an adult. She maybe just left.

[Morgan Absher]

She just. She's probably good.

[Kaylin Moore]

And the officer they're talking to is a woman and is really trying to figure out what they can do. Like, she's not ready to drop this case. Just.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah. And so she gets her supervisor on to talk with him.

[Kaylin Moore]

That's right.

[Morgan Absher]

And the tone, like, it's very frustrating for me because I feel like the tone instantly changes when it's supervisor talking to this police officer in Florida.

[Kaylin Moore]

Of course. Yeah.

[Morgan Absher]

And so he goes up to the door, and I really do think the reason he confiscated the van is because of how the laundries treated him. I think he kind of took this as like a. You're not gonna talk to me? You're not gonna give me anything? Fine, I'll take the van. Like it. Which.

[Kaylin Moore]

Fine, we'll take it.

[Morgan Absher]

I'll give me. I'll take anything at this point. Yeah, I'll take anything. But it's just a moment in this case that I feel that van could have been left there that night very easily. So shortly after this, North Point detectives are Starting to investigate from other angles, taking things a little bit more seriously. And this is when they happen upon the money trail, which is clue number three for us. On September 11, the very same day, they stopped by the laundry home. Detectives reach out to Gabby's banks to get a complete list of her transactions. Their goal is to confirm her last known location. They discover that between August 30 and September 1, after Gabby had already gone silent with family and friends, someone spent over a thousand dollars using her debit card. The transactions show purchases at gas stations along the route from Wyoming back to Florida. But there's one more detail that really stands out to them. Investigators find a 700 Zelle payment made from Gabby's account to Brian's, along with a message that reads, quote, goodbye, Brian. I'll never ask you for anything again. Now, this could be Gabby ending their relationship and giving him some money to get home. You know, her mom, Nicole, mentioned that Gabby was maybe going to potentially buy Brian out of the van and continue on this van life journey on her own. So maybe it was a payment for that. Or could be Brian trying to create an alibi for himself, a paper trail making it look like Gabby was still alive.

[Kaylin Moore]

But why do you need a lawyer for that?

[Morgan Absher]

That's a great question.

[Kaylin Moore]

If she dumped you and told you to find your way home, here's 700 bucks. Get home. You don't need a lawyer for that.

[Morgan Absher]

Do you think you would have taken a plane and not driven her van and used her debit card to buy the gas?

[Kaylin Moore]

Of course.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah.

[Kaylin Moore]

They're not dumb like the. The investigators that are looking into this are like, what's going on?

[Morgan Absher]

What's going on here? And it looks even weirder because after the stan and no service in Yosemite tax, no one besides Brian had any contact with Gabby. The only trace of her besides those transactions were several texts back and forth between the two of them. On August 29, a text from him to her that read, 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. Let me know when you're on your way. No rush. End quote. Another that read, quote, can't wait for you to see the mountains across the water again. Was he creating an alibi for himself? He's being very specific with the details of where he is. And it's definitely suspicious timing, considering the payment happened right around this time when Gabby stopped communicating with everyone else. Her last Confirmed financial transaction was two days before Brian sent those possibly misleading text messages. It was at 2pm on Aug. 27 at a gas station in Jackson, Wyoming. So on Sept. 11, the detectives in Florida call the Jackson, Wyoming Police Department and ask for their help. The Jackson police start at the gas station, and from there they kind of go door to door, collecting CCTV footage from all the local businesses in the area that have cameras. They comb through hundreds of hours of footage until they find what they're looking for. They find a video from Whole Foods on August 27th. Our fourth clue. So this video shows the van entering the Whole Foods parking lot at around 2:11pm they sit in the car for a few minutes before you can see Brian getting out. And I'm very curious what you all think about this clip. Okay. When you watch this clip on YouTube, this section of the clip is actually the most played in the video, but it shows Brian getting out of the van and seemingly, like, slamming the door madly. And I'm curious what you guys think. I'm going to read your comments. But from there, he heads to the back of the van, grabs a hat, and then they head into the store. You see Gabby and Brian shopping together, shopping separate. They wander through the aisles for about 15 minutes, not really talking or interacting much. And then they actually leave without buying anything. They head back to the van where they sit inside for about 20 minutes. It's unclear what they're doing. You can't really see based on the camera, but they do end up leaving at around 2:53pm Brian, who's driving, pulls out of the parking lot and turns onto Highway 89. And that road is the one that leads kind of into the national forest there. But that's kind of all they get from this footage. Kind of odd, clearly uncomfortable. They're in the store for that long, but don't buy anything. It's just really, really weird to investigators, but that's kind of all they get. There's no witnesses or other security cameras that could verify Gabby's whereabouts after that point, but the video gave them a place to start. Then by interviewing other witnesses in the area, they learned that earlier in the day, around noon, Gabby and Brian had eaten at a restaurant in Jackson called the Merry Piglet. According to witnesses there, they got into a huge argument and stormed out without paying their bill. A server actually had to chase them down in the parking lot to get them to come back in and pay. There's a lot of text messages between them at this time that do get shared. I know In Gabby's messages, her meal made her sick. And so she like didn't want to pay for a meal that made her sick. But Brian was at the table and had already received the bill and was kind of questioning like, do I go back to the car?

[Kaylin Moore]

And the witnesses said that this argument, it seemed a little one sided. Gabby was kind of crying. She was really upset. Brian's getting very visibly angry at Gabby also. I think he was being pretty aggressive with the wait staff. And Gabby's trying to apologize for his behavior. So she's trying to do recon and feeling really bad. And Brian is a little bit on a tear.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah, she's just kind of seemingly trying to deescalate the whole thing. And clearly it carries into the rest of the day for them. I mean, this Whole Foods video captures just how strained they still are after this very public fight. And at this point, investigators are thinking this Whole Foods footage is the last footage we have of Gabby alive. And then they're going down the rabbit hole of could this fight be enough motive for murder? One of this week's partners is Vori. I love my workout clothes, my lounge clothes. It's what I practically live in these days. So finding Vuori was amazing. Vuori makes these products that really stand the test of time and live up to whatever you're putting them through. These are garments you could wear to brunch and then go to your Pilates class after. They look great in the gym, but also outside of it. Whether it's errands, the office, meeting up with friends, the performance jogger has been my go to. I love that I can lounge in it, be comfy, but also put on a nice button up and make it look really cute and trendy. So if you're ready to try it for yourself, Vuori is an investment in your happiness. For our listeners, they are offering 20% off your first purchase. Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at vuori.com clues. That's V-U-O-R-I.com Cloos exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but enjoy free shipping on any US orders over $75 and free returns. Go to viori.comclues and discover the versatility of Viori. Clothing exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.

[Kaylin Moore]

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[Morgan Absher]

Whoa.

[Kaylin Moore]

When did I get here? What do you mean?

[Morgan Absher]

I swear it was just moments ago. That I accepted a great offer from Carvana online. I must have time traveled to the future.

[Kaylin Moore]

It was just moments ago. We do same day pickup. Here's your check for that. Great offer.

[Morgan Absher]

It is the future. It's.

[Kaylin Moore]

It's the present. And just the convenience of Carvana. Sorry to blow your mind.

[Morgan Absher]

It's all good.

[Kaylin Moore]

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[Morgan Absher]

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[Kaylin Moore]

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[Morgan Absher]

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[Morgan Absher]

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[Kaylin Moore]

They don't know what insurance is. Well, by September 15th, which is nearly three weeks after the Whole Foods video was taken, the investigation really starts reaching this fever pitch. It now included police and sheriff's departments from three different states, in addition to the FBI, National Park Service, and Teton County Search and Rescue. So that day, Brian was also officially named a person of interest. And while the cops are sifting through surveillance footage and trying to piece together a timeline, Gabby's family is doing everything humanly possible to help the investigation. Her stepfather, Jim gets on a plane to Wyoming to meet directly with the investigators there. And he's going to spread missing persons flyers out near Jackson, since that's where she was last seen. Meanwhile, Gabby's mom Nicole and her whole family are busy working around the clock. They're doing all these interviews, they're emailing news outlets, and they're starting to post the story on social media. And it really doesn't always happen in situations like this, but their efforts start really paying off. Specifically, on social media, videos about Gabby's disappearance start going absolutely viral. They all use the hashtag Find Gabby Petito. And actually, a few days earlier, on September 14, Gabby's friend posted one of the flyers on TikTok. Probably not even thinking anything would come of it, but just trying to exhaust all options that they have to post about her. And she wakes up the next morning and it has over 1.4 million views. There's something about this that's really resonating with people and they're sharing it everywhere. It was kind of like the whole world wanted to help find Gabby in that moment. And also at this time, tips start pouring in from everywhere, all over the country, just people who thought that they maybe saw a white van, people who were camping in the same area and they didn't know if they saw anything, but maybe they could be helpful. People are even going through pictures on their iPhones that they had taken while they were at these parks, being like, is she in the background? Like zooming in on the people in the background, trying to see if she's.

[Morgan Absher]

There and they find her in some of their pictures?

[Kaylin Moore]

Yeah, she is there in some of the pictures. And they start sending all of these to investigators. People also start going through Gabby and Brian's social media posts and they're really starting to pick those apart and just overanalyze everything. And it is around this time too, that while there's a lot of good that's coming from this, TikTok is also treating this like a real time mystery that they can help solve. And in some ways their involvement stops being helpful and starts kind of impeding the police. FBI Special Agent Jones said that at one point his Office received over 4, 500 tips just in that first week alone. It was so overwhelming that they had to set up a special team in the Denver field office just to handle the volume. And then on September 16, which really is a day after it all started going viral on social media, everything changed.

[Morgan Absher]

On August 12, two weeks before Gabby was last seen, the police department in Moab, Utah received a 911 call. The call came in from a driver who wanted to report a domestic dispute in downtown Moab. The driver said that he saw a man and woman arguing on a sidewalk. The man slapped the woman and they both got into a white van and drove off. But that's just the beginning of the story. The Moab police caught up to the couple in the van and pulled them over. You can see the dash cam footage of all of this going down and the van actually hits a curb before it actually pulls over. And in the van was Gabby and Brian.

[Kaylin Moore]

Which can I just add, I think a lot of times you hear these horror stories of people who witness domestic disputes and feel like it's not their business, especially men. I think women tend to report domestic disputes more than men do. And so really good on this guy for seeing a guy slap a girl on the sidewalk and call it into the police just like, yeah, that's, that's great.

[Morgan Absher]

It's very appreciated. And so the Moab police actually encounter this whole interaction on body cam footage, which is our clue number five. And hopping back into the timeline, we're at September 16th. This is when police release this video footage of Gabby and Brian and this interaction with officers. And it is a bombshell, especially on Tick Tock and other social media platforms. Yeah.

[Kaylin Moore]

Because they can easily share this video everywhere. His names, Gabby.

[Morgan Absher]

Brian. Okay, what's going on?

[Kaylin Moore]

How come you're crying?

[Morgan Absher]

I'm sorry.

[Kaylin Moore]

We've just been fighting this morning.

[Morgan Absher]

Some personal issues, and it is shared everywhere. And this footage is really heartbreaking because, you know, Gabby's missing. And now you see this. Gabby is crying the whole time in this video. She's visibly shaken as officers ask her about the incident, and she's blaming the whole thing on herself, her anxiety, overreacting, you know, whatever. And she says the whole fight actually started because Brian got into the van with dirty feet. And Gabby kind of joked about this in her videos with him all the time, like it was something Brian did often. And Gabby really wanted to keep the van clean so it would look good in their videos. But also, this is their home.

[Kaylin Moore]

This is their living space.

[Morgan Absher]

This is their home.

[Kaylin Moore]

Dirt everywhere in your living space.

[Morgan Absher]

And the argument really escalated from there. But Gabby goes on to say that she apologized for how she spoke to him. But in her telling of it, she apologized in a, quote, mean tone. They stopped at a coffee shop, and this is where Brian then snatched her keys, made it sound like he was going to abandon her, locked her out of the van.

[Kaylin Moore]

And she's still blaming herself because she said her apology was not in a tone. Her apology was in a mean tone that maybe triggered Brian, but that it was her fault.

[Morgan Absher]

That's what she's saying.

[Kaylin Moore]

So upsetting to hear.

[Morgan Absher]

And so she tries to catch up to him on the street when he's, you know, walking away with the keys. And this is when he slapped her. After that, they got in the van, where, I guess the argument continued. As Gabby's telling this to cops, she's constantly apologizing, saying things like, I was distracting him. I'm sorry. Like, I think talking about the driving when he hit the curb. But she's taking the blame for all of what happened here. And even though she says that Brian grabbed her face and hit her, she's telling officers that she was the aggressor, that she hit him first. And while Gabby is melting down in front of the Moab police, Brian is just a few yards away, totally calm, collected. He's actually cracking jokes with These officers about how the whole fight is just about his dirty feet and kind of, like, making it seem like it's really no big deal.

[Kaylin Moore]

I feel like at one point, too, in the dashcam footage, it's Brian and it's the officers, and they're kind of agreeing that women can be emotional sometimes. They're like, yeah, we get it, man. Like, we have wives.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah. The cops point to scratches on his face and neck. And Brian says he doesn't want to press charges against Gabby. He says he loves her and that things just got out of hand. And this whole time, he's playing the role of. I don't know, like, I don't know if patient is the right word here, but he's just, like, collected. Not upset, so composed. Just.

[Kaylin Moore]

He's playing the role of, oh, I was the victim here, but I'm such a cool, collected dude that I'm not gonna make a big deal about it because I know women can be emotional.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah.

[Kaylin Moore]

And the police are eating it up.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah.

[Kaylin Moore]

Even though the call that came in was about a man slapping a woman in the face, I don't think they asked Gabby at all if she wants to press charges.

[Morgan Absher]

No. And that's why we're getting a botched here. When you watch this footage, like, there are multiple officers that do talk about having a bad vibe and how they'd rather be overly cautious and, you know, get dinged for something they did than something they didn't do.

[Kaylin Moore]

But then they kind of talk each.

[Morgan Absher]

Other out of it. It's really. It's really hard to watch in hindsight. Really, really hard to watch. But, you know, that is kind of where they leave it. They separate them for the night and are taking Brian to a hotel.

[Kaylin Moore]

Yeah. They just tell them to not contact each other for one night, cool off, and then figure it out later. And so they let Gabby drive off in the van. They give Brian that ride to a hotel that they help him book with instructions to not talk to Gabby until the next day. And it does appear like they ignored those instructions pretty much immediately. That evening, Gabby goes and picks up Brian in the van, and they drive another 230 miles to Salt Lake City. Two weeks after this police encounter is when Gabby disappears. And when the Moab body cam footage gets released on September 16, it is absolutely just throwing gasoline on an already raging fire. It takes off everywhere. It's shared millions of times. Millions of people watch Gabby crying and apologizing. And now that she's missing and the world knows that, it takes on a Totally new meaning. It's like everyone can see through this interaction in a way that the police couldn't. Like, of course, this tiny crying girl in the passenger seat is not the aggressor in the situation. And so a lot of people immediately start blaming Brian for the disappearance. They don't know exactly what he did, but they sure as hell feel like he was responsible. And that Same Day on September 16, is when Gabby's father, Joe, flies down to Florida for a press conference. And in it, he begs the world to join the search for Gabby. He wants all hands on deck. And at this point, it seems like he is agreeing with everyone else who watched that body cam footage. And he pleads directly with Brian's family and friends to please help find their daughter. Protesters also at this point start lining up outside of the laundry family home with signs demanding answers. And you can see this. There's news coverage of it. There are people outside of that house screaming. They do not get a moment of peace. Once this video comes out, Brian becomes really one of the most hated men in America. And his family can't leave the house without facing that angry mob that's standing outside on the the sidewalk outside. But still they say nothing. They basically barricade themselves inside the house. They're refusing to talk, but at this time, the investigation is really starting to pick up steam. So they're not going to be able to get away with this for much longer.

[Morgan Absher]

No. It's around this time that police really start taking a closer look at Gabby's digital footprint, which is clue number six for us. When the FBI gets access to Gabby's laptop, they start going through her digital life to figure out where exactly she was in those final days. And what they find gives them their first real breakthrough in terms of where to actually search for her. From her computer, the FBI can see that the last time Gabby was active online was at 8:32pm on Aug. 27. And this was several hours after that Whole Foods video was taken. They discovered that Gabby had been using an app called the Dirt, and it's spelled D Y R T. And she used this to plan and track all of her hikes. And investigators learned that she had marked trails around Spread Creek near Grand Teton national park, right there in Jackson, Wyoming. So investigators now have a place they can narrow down their search kind of focus on that specific region. But it's still a lot of ground to cover, and the terrain is super rugged. The weather is pretty harsh. But they still, they do carry on with their search. They use Drones, horses, search dogs, basically everything you can think of to search that area. They know the clock is ticking. The laundries aren't saying anything, so this kind of feels like their only hope. And they know that they can't get a warrant or do anything about Brian until they either find Gabby or he starts talking on his own.

[Kaylin Moore]

Yeah, exactly.

[Morgan Absher]

And they also know that they're working against this weather clock because the first heavy snows in Grand Teton typically start in November. It's now the second half of September. And so once the snow and these storms start coming in, the search and rescue leaders are going to have to call it off until the spring. Luckily, the van life and vlogging community is pretty tight knit, and many of them have been scouring through their own footage for any sign of Gabby. And they're about to get a big breakthrough. Like Gabby, Jen and Kyle Batun were content creators who really yearned for adventure. In February 2020, they uprooted their cozy lives in Florida to travel the country in a vintage bus with their three kids and four dogs. And in late August 2021, that journey led them through the Grand Teton National Park. On September 18, just before midnight, Jen is editing footage for a YouTube video on her laptop when she gets a message from one of her followers. The follower asked if she was in the Grand Teton area. Around August 27, Jen's heart starts racing. She's in the van community. It's a really small world. She knows exactly what and who this person is talking about. I mean, the whole Internet has been looking for Gabby Petito. But Jen is still going off an early estimate from the FBI of when Gabby was in the Tetons, which was August 21st to August 24th. The batoons hadn't gotten there until the 27th, so in Jen's mind, there's no way they could have crossed paths. But now Jen's realizing this timeline is changing. It's actually, it's the 27th when she's there, and she starts combing through all of her footage that she was.

[Kaylin Moore]

They were also like Gabby. They took a ton of footage. They were filming everything.

[Morgan Absher]

They're recording everything, everything. Even just dash cam footage, driving.

[Kaylin Moore]

She has so much footage that she can start combing through.

[Morgan Absher]

And within a few minutes, she shouts to her husband, Kyle, come here. In her archived footage from August 27, she sees it. Gabby's white Ford Transit van parked right by a specific area near the park called Spread Creek. And this Batoon video is our clue number seven. This is a Huge break in the case. And without hesitation, Jen calls the FBI tip line at 1am on September 19th and sends them a copy of that video.

[Kaylin Moore]

The FBI pretty much immediately confirmed that this van in the Batoon video is Gabby's. They also can corroborate the timeline with the help of a couple of witnesses. So there are witnesses who claimed to have picked up Brian while he was hitchhiking alone in the area, and they offered him a ride on August 29, two days later. So the first was this woman, Miranda Baker, and her boyfriend.

[Morgan Absher]

I remember seeing this video. Like, I remember when the van footage came out from the road and the batoons, I remember seeing this video and this was huge.

[Kaylin Moore]

Absolutely. Because it's weird. Like, what she comes forward with is very strange.

[Morgan Absher]

Very.

[Kaylin Moore]

She says that around 5:30pm on the 29th, Brian offered her and her boyfriend $200 to go just 10 miles. And they immediately are like, what's going on? Why are you offering us so much money to go such a short distance? Like, gas is expensive, but it's not that expensive. And it seems like when Brian was in the car, he realized that they were actually headed towards Jackson Hole, the town, rather than Jackson Dam, which is where he wanted to go. And he starts freaking out and asks to be let out of the cart right away. So they're like, okay. They finally drop him off closer to where he wanted to go around 6:09pm and they also said that despite claiming that he had been out there camping for several days, he looked very clean and very put together. Around 6:20pm that same exact day, another female driver, one who saw Miranda Baker's video about picking Brian up on TikTok. She had talked about it on TikTok. So she says that she also picked up Brian and he offered her gas money to take him to the entrance of the Spread Creek dispersed camping area, the same place that that Batoon video was taken. She said he was acting really antsy the entire ride, and the second they got close to the campsite, he jumped out of the car and he refused to let her take him any closer to the area he was trying to get to.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah, she actually joked. She's like, oh, you don't want your fiance to see me drive you up. He's like, no, no, no, no. Like, don't worry about it, like, and just kind of like hopped out of the car.

[Kaylin Moore]

So even as it was happening, it's not even hindsight where she thinks it's weird as it was happening. She thinks it's very strange. That he's just really trying to get out of the car and not have her see what's going on.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah. There's another little thing she shares, too, in the Netflix documentary when they interview her, but she had a Bible on her dash, and it actually slid off the dash and landed right on Brian. And she was like, God, that's so odd. It never moves. But it's all in hindsight, right? Like, it's all in hindsight.

[Kaylin Moore]

Well, on the morning of September 19, investigators drive up and down that road near Spread Creek until they find the exact spot the Batoon video was taken. They're literally looking at the trees on the side of the road, trying to be like, where exactly was this footage taken? And then once they find it, they deploy all of their teams to comb the area systematically. They have mounted units follow the creek on horseback, going up and down the south bank and then crossing the riverbed to search the north. And it's at this time when one of the mounted searchers sees something out in the distance that when he sees it, it just doesn't look like it belongs to the natural landscape. He said it was like a rough texture. It seemed to be something fabric. So he rides over to get a better look at what he's seeing, and that's when he realizes that it is a body. It's wrapped in a sweater and it's lying on its side. And it's not long before they're able to realize that this is Gabby Petito. One person even described it like she. It looked like she had laid down for a nap. She had one hand under her head. She looked really peaceful, almost like you could shake her and wake her up. And the FBI immediately secures the scene, and they call Gabby's family to let them know what they had found. Jim Schmidt, which is Gabby's stepfather, he gets the news first. He learns that Gabby's body is pretty badly decomposed, but he is still able to help identify her just from photos that he sees. And it takes another couple of weeks before the police release the final autopsy report. But on October 12, the Teton County Coroner's office declares Gabby's death definitively a homicide, although she has signs of blunt force trauma on her head and neck. The official ruling is that Gabby died by manual strangulation, though one interesting note is that the FBI actually later reports that she died of, quote, blunt force injuries to the head and neck with manual strangulation. So just like a semantics on potentially when each attack happened, I guess. Unfortunately, there's one Person who seems like they would have a lot more answers about exactly what happened. Brian Laundrie. But he was already gone. When they go to check in with him. He's vanished. He himself was missing. So while the search for Gabby was now over, the manhunt for Brian Laundrie had just started. Gabby's family, the press and law enforcement had been banging down the laundry store, just begging them to cooperate with the investigation at all. But on Friday, September 17, Brian's parents, Chris and Roberta, finally decide they want to talk to the cops. This is the first time they decide, you know what? Let us call the police and tell them something that we know. But it's not to help with the investigation. It's not to talk about Gabby. It's not to connect with the parents that have been pleading with them for weeks at this point. It's to tell the police that their son is missing, that now they want help finding their son because they haven't seen Brian since the 13th, which was four days prior.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah, and this is where we are getting a. Another tally on the botchboard because police had the laundry's home fully under surveillance. And so the fact there was a mob outside. A mob. And so the fact that he was able to slip out undetected. Getting a botch. Getting a botch.

[Kaylin Moore]

Mark, how many cases have we looked at where the person just disappears before they're actually arrested for anything because they catch wind of what's going on or they. They know that they are the ones responsible, so they just sneak out.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah, it's really frustrating, especially considering his parents knew he was leaving and why he was leaving. It's annoying.

[Kaylin Moore]

So according to Chris and Roberta, Brian had been stressed about all the media attention and protesters camping outside of their house. And they were really sad that their baby boy was so stressed out. So Brian told them that he needed to go on a hike to clear his head. He took this backpack that he had with supplies. He took some food. He took a tent. And the laundry said that this wasn't unusual. Typically, when Brian was stressed, he liked to go outdoors to clear his head. And he often would bring a tent in case, you know, he wanted to stay the night. And, you know, his parents really thought, hey, we know your fiance's missing, and every sign is pointing to you being responsible for it, but you seem pretty stressed out, so why don't you go take a break? But when Roberta and Chris went to search for their son the morning of September 14th, the next day, they found Brian's car abandoned by the entrance to Myakahatchee Creek park, about five miles from their home.

[Morgan Absher]

And that kind of takes us into our next clue. Clue number eight, Brian's Ford Mustang. So after Roberta and Chris went to the park to look for Brian, they didn't find him. And so the next day on September 15, they returned to the park. And this time Roberta drove Brian's car home. And I've seen in some sources there's something about like a ticket. And that's why she drove it home. Which upon arrival, investigators staked outside the laundry's home actually confused Roberta for Brian. And when asking investigators about this, they say that they have similar body types and that's why they mix them up.

[Kaylin Moore]

They saw her in the car and they thought it was Brian.

[Morgan Absher]

Apparently she had a hat on. But investigators, yeah, similar body types, essentially saying they thought it was a man. They thought it was Brian.

[Kaylin Moore]

That is so strange.

[Morgan Absher]

So by the 17th, again, Roberta and Chris are extremely concerned. Enough to call police and invite them into their home to actually help locate their son. The FBI and law enforcement immediately zero in on Myakahatchee Creek park and the Carlton Reserve, these two parks that are right next to each other. And these parks are an absolute nightmare to search. We're talking about 40 square miles of wild terrain and swamp land filled with alligators, venomous snakes, wild boars. Some of it is completely flooded, making it impossible to access on foot.

[Kaylin Moore]

Yeah, I read that the, the water goes up and down a lot in those parks. So one day it could be completely flooded, the next day it's almost drained, and then it rains and it floods again. It's just total nightmare.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah. And the search teams are having to like, wade through this waist deep water all while worrying about alligators coming up behind them. And the search efforts have become enormous. Helicopters, drones, canine units, dive teams, dozens of volunteers.

[Kaylin Moore]

I also read, did you read about the influencers that showed up? At this point you have a lot.

[Morgan Absher]

Of Internet sleuths coming out to be private detectives.

[Kaylin Moore]

Yeah, this is what I was talking about earlier when I was saying that some of the social media stuff started impeding the investigation. But there were, there's video footage of some, like, tick tockers just out in the laundry's backyard tramping around trying to find Brian, like thinking that they're going to be the ones to find him. I remember there were a lot of theories that he got on a plane.

[Morgan Absher]

Yep. There were sightings in Mexico of him at this time.

[Kaylin Moore]

There was like a trail cam footage. Someone thought they saw him in their Backyard in like Tennessee or something.

[Morgan Absher]

I remember that the conspiracy theories were popping off.

[Kaylin Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Absher]

And when you have something like TikTok that can move news so quickly and it's on verified news, it was starting to get really, really, as you mentioned, difficult for investigators.

[Kaylin Moore]

It's so tough because sometimes like with quote unquote conspiracy theories, I'll ask myself, is there reason to believe this? And if so, is it necessarily conspiracy theory? So when you have these tiktokers saying he probably was buried in his backyard or got on a plane, the laundries have been so weird this entire time that all of those theories feel like they reasonably could have happened.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah.

[Kaylin Moore]

So I don't even know if they're conspiracy theories at that point. They're just like things the family could have done to cover up for their son because they've already been covering up for him so much.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah. Anything could fit. I mean people were, were really going wild with this dog. The bounty hunter showed up, I remember that. Claiming he was going to find Brian. Protesters are still outside chanting, holding up signs demanding justice for Gabby. And the search for him just dominates the news cycle for weeks. But still no Brian. He's not found.

[Kaylin Moore]

Throughout late September and October, heavy rains start flooding the area. And authorities end up closing the parks to the public. And they actually start scaling back the search. It's just getting way too hard to search these areas. And on October 20, which is more than five weeks after Brian's last sighting, Myakahatchee Creek park reopens for visitors. And that morning, around 7am, before anyone can really see them do this, Brian's parents drive to the park again to look for Brian themselves. And this time they're accompanied by law enforcement. They end up telling the police that they know where he likes to hike. So they immediately go to those areas. And that morning they find something. Around 8am they'd only been in the park really for an hour, Chris discovers Brian's dry bag sitting in the woods. And just 45 minutes after that, authorities make the discovery that everyone had been waiting for. He finds human remains that are barely recognizable after an entire month in the Florida swamp. And nearby these remains, investigators also find a gun. And on October 21, dental records confirm what everyone already suspected, that this is Brian. I mean, the fact that they had to use dental records kind of gives you an idea of how much of him was left. The autopsy later reveals that the cause of death was a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

[Morgan Absher]

And I will say Reddit, tick tock. The conspiracy theories around this were just insane.

[Kaylin Moore]

Oh, because they, at that point, if dental records confirm someone's identity, then it kind of is a conspiracy theory. But I know people thought that it was just someone else entirely.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah. I mean, people were really weirded out by the fact his parents seemingly just walked in the park and found him. Like, they had kind of known where he was all along. His uncle is a dentist, so people were like, oh, his uncle probably pulled his teeth and put him there. Like, a lot of conspiracies really took off at this point.

[Kaylin Moore]

I will say, though, that is weird that the parents found him in an hour once they were allowed back in the park. Tell police earlier that they knew where he liked to park hike again. That is really weird.

[Morgan Absher]

The whole investigation, they're playing games. They're playing games.

[Kaylin Moore]

Well, according to them, they were just listening to their lawyer. Our big, mean lawyer told us what to say the whole time. We would have said something different, but our lawyer kept saying what we should say, like, that's an easy scapegoat. Every single interview they've given has just been that.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah. So with this discovery comes a pretty big revelation, which is clue number nine. A notebook Brian left behind in his waterproof bag. Inside were goodbye letters Brian had written to his family. In them, he said, quote, I have killed myself by this creek in the hopes that the animals will tear me apart, that it may make some of Gabby's family happy, end quote. Brian did admit to murdering Gabby, but in his telling, it was a mercy killing. Here's what he said. Quote, this was an unexpected tragedy. Rushing back to our car, trying to cross the streams, I hear a splash and a scream. I can barely see. I found her breathing, barely gasping. She was freezing cold. The temp had dropped. When I pulled Gabby out of the water. She couldn't tell me what hurt. While carrying her, she continually made sounds of pain. Laying next to her, she said between violent shakes, gasping in pain, begging for an end to her pain, I ended her life. I thought it was merciful, but from the moment I decided to take her pain away, I knew I couldn't go on without her. I rushed home to spend any time I had left with my family. I wanted to let James or TJ kill me. I'm ending my life because I cannot stand to live another day without her. Please do not make life harder for my family. They lost a son and a daughter, end quote.

[Kaylin Moore]

Just such cowardice.

[Morgan Absher]

If they also lost a daughter, then why weren't they working with her family from the get go?

[Kaylin Moore]

No, I Mean, obviously he's lying. Come on, he's lying.

[Morgan Absher]

Like, I would never. I would never, ever take someone's life into my own hand. My fiance. I'm out in the wilderness with my fiance. Mercy killing.

[Kaylin Moore]

Obviously, that's not what happened. He was. There's just this air of not taking responsibility for anything in this family that I think has been taught to the children, or at least has been taught to Brian, where, I mean, this is clearly a lie. Even knowing he was going to take his own life, that there would never be any consequences for him, no matter what he said, he still chose to lie to everyone. And he also has that stupid line of like, hopefully this makes Gabby's family happy. It's giving the victim the. Yeah, oh, I guess I'm the worst boyfriend ever then. Just not even being able to have a conversation about anything is horrible. Just, this is so telling as to the type of person he was.

[Morgan Absher]

If you're gonna go out this way, at least just put it all out there, like, give the family some closure. But it's even in this, it's still about him.

[Kaylin Moore]

It's just, I did the right thing because I'm a really good guy and so I have to kill myself. So what? Like, it just doesn't make any sense.

[Morgan Absher]

No. And a lot of people point out that Brian's version of events don't match up with what the autopsy found.

[Kaylin Moore]

Yeah, I don't think any single person, investigator or Internet sleuth or anyone thought that this was actually what happened. No one believed it for a second.

[Morgan Absher]

No. Because Gabby died from blunt force injuries to the head and neck with manual strangulation. According to the FBI, none of what Brian mentions in this journal entry showed up in the autopsy report.

[Kaylin Moore]

Yeah, about how broken her body would have been.

[Morgan Absher]

Plus, Brian went to extreme lengths to cover up his crime. The fake paper trail, the Zell goodbye money transfer and message, it's not the work of a remorseful person and it obviously points to him lying. Again, there's no credibility with his story. And we even have those texts from Gabby to Brian on August 29th. And the FBI is actually able to show that their phones were basically next to each other at the time. Brian was creating a paper trail to throw the cops off. He's just texting the two phones back and forth himself because the messages were showing up almost like instantly to each other. But we're never really going to know what exactly happened at that campsite because the only two people who were there are no longer with us. And in the Words of Gabby's father. There will be no justice for Gabby Petito, as you can imagine. And it's clearly by my fire over this. There's so many loose ends in this case that the Internet all of us are still discussing. And a lot of it does revolve around Brian's parents. What they may have known, what they may have been involved in, what they covered up. There's so many cell phone records that people have analyzed their cell phone records that showed that at 1:20pm on Aug. 29, Brian called his mom, Roberta, and they talked for an hour. This was followed by a flurry of calls between Roberta and Chris and calls with an attorney.

[Kaylin Moore]

Well, also. Okay, so the 29th, they believe this happened on the 27th, that evening, probably because that was after the whole.

[Morgan Absher]

That was her last sighting.

[Kaylin Moore]

So, yeah, so he called her two days later. But then what was he doing for two days? Ugh.

[Morgan Absher]

It's very confusing. And a lot of people are questioning, what did he tell them on these calls?

[Kaylin Moore]

Right.

[Morgan Absher]

So there has been civil trials since with the Petito family suing the Laundrie family. And a lot of people question, like, what did he tell you on the call? How did you not question where Gabby was or what happened to her? And in a deposition I read, Brian's father, Chris, offered some insight. He said that on a call with Brian after the murder, Brian had mumbled, quote, gabby's gone, Gabby's gone. But he said at the time he had no idea what that meant. And they didn't really question him further.

[Kaylin Moore]

But it was followed by a flurry of calls to an attorney.

[Morgan Absher]

He said on the call, gabby's gone. Get me a lawyer. So.

[Kaylin Moore]

And the parents didn't ask any questions. I keep thinking about my parents here because that's the only, I guess, point of reference I have never. Oh, my God.

[Morgan Absher]

Why do you need a lawyer?

[Kaylin Moore]

Ask a follow up question.

[Morgan Absher]

What do you mean?

[Kaylin Moore]

One single follow up question?

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah, why do you need the lawyer?

[Kaylin Moore]

Like, because that's expensive, too, to get a lawyer. So, I mean, they know.

[Morgan Absher]

They wired the lawyer immediately. $25,000. You're gonna wire a lawyer $25,000 without knowing what it's for.

[Kaylin Moore]

But this goes back to what I was saying about this family never being able to take accountability for anything. Even the dad's like, well, but Brian said, get a lawyer. And so I guess I had to. So I wired him $25,000 immediately. Like they're just all trying to pass the blame onto someone else without saying anyone's responsible for Anything?

[Morgan Absher]

Absolutely. The. The depositions are wild. Wild to read. I read a lot of his mom Roberta's deposition, and she's lying back and forth. And these people are under oath, right? Of course. They're just. They can't even keep their own stories straight. So it's clear, like, you're not going to ever get the truth from them either. And there's an even more damning revelation that comes to light when police find a letter from Roberta addressed to Brian that said, quote, burn after reading.

[Kaylin Moore]

And was this sent before or after? So it is the whole, like, summer of 2021.

[Morgan Absher]

It is conveniently not dated. And when asked about it in the deposition, Roberta says, oh, slipped my mind, didn't date it. Which.

[Kaylin Moore]

Okay, so we'll never know.

[Morgan Absher]

Sure. So in this letter, she shares a lot, and I just want to read some of the quotes from it because I just can't even summarize how crazy it is. And you guys just need to hear it word for word.

[Kaylin Moore]

Quote.

[Morgan Absher]

I just want you to remember I will always love you. And I know you will always love me. You are my boy. Nothing can make me stop loving you. Nothing will or could ever divide us. No matter what we do or where we go or what we say, we will always love each other. Quote. If you're in jail, I will bake a cake with a file in it. If you need to dispose of a body, I will show up with a shovel and garbage bags. If you fly to the moon, I will be watching the skies for your re entry. If you say you hate my guts, I'll get new guts. Roberta's letter also included a Bible verse from Romans 8:38, which I'm not familiar with the Bible verses. So, kin. Can you pull it up for us?

[Kaylin Moore]

I pulled it up. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ our Lord. Kind of sounds like she was talking about herself, though.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah.

[Kaylin Moore]

None of this will ever be able to separate us from each other.

[Morgan Absher]

And Boy Mom. Weird boy mom. I mean, like right here, word for word. You are my boy. And she ends this letter by saying that nothing can get between us. Us. Not time, not miles and miles and miles. And this letter was in an envelope that said burn after reading. And again, she. She addresses this in her deposition. And she said. She said I put burn after reading reading on it because it was an Embarrassing letter. I didn't want people to know how embarrassing I was.

[Kaylin Moore]

Can you imagine getting a letter like that from either of your parents?

[Morgan Absher]

I would immediately think my mom needs some assistance and help.

[Kaylin Moore]

Yeah, like that's, it's. That's really intense to get from a parent.

[Morgan Absher]

Very intense.

[Kaylin Moore]

I would do anything for you. I would get new guts. If you hated my guts, I would.

[Morgan Absher]

Help you bury a body. This letter doesn't necessarily mean that she broke the law in any way. And to be perfectly clear, no one in the Laundrie family has ever been charged with a crime Regarding to this case, the civil suit was settled privately out of court. So what happened there is undisclosed at this time. But even if Brian's parents didn't necessarily help Brian cover up a crime, like they also didn't cover up cooperate with authorities and they could have then kind of interfered with this whole investigation. I mean, just not even. I still go back to like not even responding to Gabby's mom. Just it. It's just terrible for me. And as mentioned, there's a lot of bizarre theories still floating around in regards to all of this, especially that Brian isn't dead at all. Some people think he faked his death to avoid jail time, possibly with the help of his dentist uncle. I will say I read the autopsy report and they did find a lot more than just teeth. They actually DNA tested multiple different bones. I believe one of them was a hip bone. They did DNA test the teeth to make sure it was also his teeth. And there's also rumors out there that his uncle the dentist was the one that identified his body through dental records. That is not true. But still the discussion goes on and a lot of it then goes to why. Why? You know, obviously we had that incident in Moab. Brian flew home shortly after to empty a storage unit. Gabby was on, on her own. And actually on August 22, just five days before she died, Gabby had phoned an ex boyfriend and she had kind of seemingly needed support. This is when Brian was emptying the storage unit and she told him on this call that she planned to break up with Brian. So it's clear she was trying to get out. And you kind of have to wonder like, did Brian kill her because he knew she was edging towards freedom. And the most dangerous time for a victim can be when they attempt to leave or end an abusive relationship. Many domestic violence, murder suicides occur when the victim tries to end the relationship. It's why a lot of times they say don't end it, just leave, like get A go bag and discreetly leave. It is a really, really dangerous time.

[Kaylin Moore]

It's so scary. You can't reason with a person like Brian. His brain doesn't make sense. His decision making doesn't make sense. I think at least I can only speak to my experience of friends that I know that have been in abusive relationships. But it seems like there's this deep, dark, unknowable place inside of those people. And so you just never know what's going to set them off. So it can be really hard to definitively say why someone did something. And looking back, Gabby's family's actually had a lot of time to also try to process this and think back on Gabby's relationship with Brian. And were there any times that they should have intervened? And obviously, this is no one's fault but Brian's. But they did say that they saw some warning signs that they wish they had recognized earlier. And they do want people to know about these warning signs so that they can maybe identify them within their own relationships. For starters, they noticed that Brian had a very, very dark edge that most people ignored or would kind of joke about or laugh off. But his art was one thing that a lot of people found disturbing. He also had this, like, really weird fascination with weapons that people thought was a little dark. And when cops searched his room, they actually found brass knuckles, ammunition, and receipts for two different firearms. They also found a crossbow with a rifle scope. None of that can really. I mean, plenty of people have those kinds of things. Plenty of people draw dark art and stuff like that. It doesn't necessarily indicate that they're going to do anything horrible. It's really how he acted towards Gabby that, for Gabby's family, is the real giveaway that something maybe was going to happen. There's a concept coined by Lenore Walker called the cycle of violence. And it's described as having three stages. So Lenore describes it as having the tension building stage, the violent episode, and then the honeymoon stage. And this could be observed in Gabby and Brian's relationship. Some people say Brian was emotionally manipulative in ways that are pretty much textbook examples of abusive behavior. But he could also be really sweet. He would shower Gabby with love and affection. He would text her all these nice, wonderful, beautiful things to the point where Gabby would often say that she felt like she didn't deserve Brian. But when she wanted to do things without him, he would become extremely controlling. He actually pressured her to quit her job because he didn't like her co workers. He said they were low lives. He said they were low lives. This guy who had not really done anything up until that point. Yeah, besides finally decided to do something because Gabby had enough energy in her to, like, get both of them to do things. But he said that her co workers were low lives and he would make her feel guilty for leaving him alone. And once, when Gabby wanted to go out with her friend Rose, Brian stole her wallet and her identification so that she couldn't leave. He called her names often, but then he would apologize and he would do something huge and romantic just to win her back. And that is the classic cycle of tearing someone down and then love bombing them so they feel really guilty, and then you can just rinse and repeat after that. He also would really weaponize her guilt. He would make Gabby apologize for things that weren't her fault. And you can see this throughout their trip. Anytime they're on camera, she's apologizing. When she was in the restaurant, she's apologizing for Brian's behavior. She's apologizing to the police officers. That was something that he had conditioned her to do. These weren't just relationship problems. They were clear indicators of an escalating pattern of control that domestic violence experts recognize as being extremely dangerous. And towards the end, it seems like Gabby started realizing that she needed to leave, that this was never going to get better.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah, it's. It's very clear. I think one thing, too that this case really did highlight is the concept of self defense. And this is a term that's formerly been known as reactive abuse. But there's a big push to kind of change it. And it's when you have an abuser who just pushes, pushes, pushes, and then finally the victim snaps and does something back or defends themselves. And that's kind of seen in that MOAB video. She then takes the blame and says, I. I hit him first.

[Kaylin Moore]

So then they think they're the abuser.

[Morgan Absher]

So then that's why she was saying, oh, I'm the aggressor. I'm the aggressor. But it's literally that you're kind of.

[Kaylin Moore]

Put into a spot where you feel like that's your only option.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah.

[Kaylin Moore]

Is to fight back.

[Morgan Absher]

Exactly.

[Kaylin Moore]

Wow.

[Morgan Absher]

And I think, you know, she did kind of have an idea and was making a plan and told her ex that she was gonna leave him. But a lot of people, you know, you might be listening out there and your alarm bells could be ringing, but a lot of people, like these relationships, sneak up on them. It's not like instant. It's not, you know, quick right off the bat, it. Yeah, it sneaks up. And, you know, when you go through these cycles of like a honeymoon phase and everything's good in the love bomb, it's like when things are bad, you then rose colored glasses look back to that. It can be so easy to get stuck in this cycle. And it on Average takes people 7 attempts to leave a relationship that's abusive or toxic.

[Kaylin Moore]

Wow.

[Morgan Absher]

It's so difficult to do.

[Kaylin Moore]

One of my best friends was in an abusive relationship. She's out. She's married to this really lovely person. They have, like a beautiful relationship. So she's okay. But we spent a lot of time after she left that relationship kind of debriefing on it. And so obviously everyone's experience is very different, but I just have hers to kind of go off of. But I remember her describing it as like being a frog in a boiling pot of water. You just don't feel it at first.

[Morgan Absher]

Wow.

[Kaylin Moore]

And then eventually it gets so hot. But you. You've put so much time into the relationship, so you also feel guilty about that. Or you remember she would always say that he was so sweet in the first six months. Like, the first six months were so good. And so she would say things like, I know we can get back to it. Like, I know that's where we can get back to. And that was intentional, right? Like, he made it so it was a really beautiful six months. So that she was always going to think, well, it's my fault that we're not having this lovely relationship because he's capable of it. It's so. It's just devastating how it can sneak up on you like that. You don't even know you're in it by the time it's like really, really bad.

[Morgan Absher]

God. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I'm just gonna plug that quiz on love is respect.org.

[Kaylin Moore]

Yes. That made me think of.

[Morgan Absher]

Everyone should take it. No matter how great and happy you think your relationship is. See, make sure your relationship is healthy. Can never be too, too sure.

[Kaylin Moore]

And they ask, like, I remember the questions being like, oh, when you want to go do something, do you feel like your partner makes you feel bad about it? It's just. It's a nice little checkup. Yeah, it's a nice little thing to take.

[Morgan Absher]

Yeah, I think so, too. There's another element of this case that I want to kind of touch on that does make it somewhat of an unforgettable case. And that's just how captivated the Internet was with this it played out in real time on social media, kind of right in front of all of our faces. And it showed just how citizen sleuths could really change the course of an investigation. But that kind of brings us to where we're at today. Since Gabby's disappearance, her father Joe has really taken the platform that this tragedy has given him and his family and poured it back into highlighting other missing people cases. Cases specifically, though, involving people of color who otherwise may not receive media attention. Joe is actually working on a show right now to highlight these cases. And this is all because during Gabby's case, Joe kept getting tagged in video after video after video on his personal socials about missing White woman syndrome. And so he really took it upon himself to learn what this was and dive into it. And he did see that this was a real issue and one that now he wants to try to address.

[Kaylin Moore]

Well, also he saw how much Gabby's case benefited from everyone knowing about it. Yeah, it really was a big time where everyone came together and was able to search through their own footage, whatever, because everyone knew about it. And I think he just really wanted to make sure that other people are afforded that community when it comes to missing people.

[Morgan Absher]

Absolutely. So the family has started the Gabby Petito Foundation. It's a non profit that strives to raise awareness of missing people and prevent domestic violence. And with this foundation, he's spent the last several years advocating for missing black and brown people. Through it, the foundation partners with families of missing black and brown people, as well as groups dedicated to raising awareness of these cases, such as the Black and Missing Foundation. I know in one of our previous Missing People of the Week that we've highlighted, we did mention that the Gabby Petito foundation was working with the family. And on that note, our Missing Person of the Week is a case that Joe Petito has been really trying to amplify and has actually personally flown out to be involved in the search on. So our Missing Person of the Week is Daniel Robinson, age 24, was an American geologist last seen leaving a job site in Buckeye, Arizona. And it was near the Sun Valley Parkway and Cactus Road. And this was on June 23, 2021, around 9:45am he was seen in his 2017 blue gray Jeep Renegade and he was headed west towards the desert. He was reported missing later that day by his father at around 7pm Daniel's car was found on July 19, and it was found in a ravine less than three miles from the job site. There's been a lot of search on the ground Using aerial resources, investigators have downloaded the crash data from the Jeep. And this is where Daniel's family and police kind of have differing opinions on all of this. Police have extracted the data and say that there's no foul play suspected, while Daniel's father is very vocal about how the, the data is kind of different. To them, there's an 11 mile discrepancy and their interpretation from what I'm seeing online is that the airbags were deployed and then the car was still driven 11 miles. So in their mind it's, it's looking like the car might have been placed there after.

[Kaylin Moore]

Weird.

[Morgan Absher]

There's a lot going on with this case. It is very active and as I mentioned, Joe Petito has gone out to actively search with the Robinson family. So still very ongoing.

[Kaylin Moore]

I have here that Robinson is described by investigators and family as being 5 foot 8, African American, weighing around 165 pounds at the time of his disappearance. He has black hair and brown eyes and he is missing part of his right forearm, including his hand.

[Morgan Absher]

If you have any information on Daniel's whereabouts, you are urged to call the Buckeye Police or you can submit a tip online via their website. We will make sure it's linked. If you would like to call and leave a tip, you can contact the Buckeye Police tip line at 623-349-6411. That is all we have for this episode of Clues.

[Kaylin Moore]

This was a really big one to cover. It's one that's been in the news. I'm sure many people already knew this story, but we just wanted to go through it again today. And now we want to hear from you guys, thoughts, theories, feedback. Anything we missed, you can share it with us. We read through the comments and that's what makes this community so special.

[Morgan Absher]

At Crime House, we really value your support. Again, share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow to help others discover our show. And if you're hungry for even more content, we've got you covered. For more exclusive content, content, monthly bonus episodes, early access and ad free listening, join our Crime House plus community on Apple podcasts.

[Kaylin Moore]

We will be back next week with another case to unravel. And until then, keep searching and we'll see you next time on Clues. Bye, guys.

[Morgan Absher]

Martha listens to her favorite band all the time in the car, gym, even sleeping. So when they finally went on tour, Martha bundled her flight and hotel on Expedia to see them live. She saved so much, she got a seat close enough to actually see and hear them sort of. You were made to scream from the front row. We were made to quietly save you. More Expedia made to travel. Savings vary and subject to availability. Flight inclusive packages are at all protected twice every weekday. Crime House Daily has the latest stories in crime. Mornings are the headline updates, evenings dive into the drama. Follow Crime House Daily wherever you listen or catch them on YouTube so you never miss an episode.