Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Gabby Petito, Netflix, Crime, True Crime, US News
Ella Scott
Warning: this article contains discussion of suicide that some may find distressing
A diary written by Gabby Petito’s murderer, Brian Laundrie, has revealed that he was contemplating suicide just months before they began dating.
Laundrie is currently the subject of a new true crime documentary, American Murder: Gabby Petito.
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The three-part Netflix series chronicles the events that led up to the murder of the 22-year-old aspiring vlogger in the summer of 2021.
The programme, which has divided Netflix subscribers due to its controversial use of artificial intelligence (AI), pieces together Petito’s final moments and explores the aftermath of when she was killed.
Alarm bells are first raised when Laundrie, who lived at home with his parents Chris and Roberta Laundrie in Florida, returned to the state without his girlfriend, whom he reportedly began dating in 2019.
After being named as a person of interest in Petito’s missing persons case, Laundrie himself vanished.
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His remains were later found in a nearby national park, along with a waterproof notebook in which he appeared to confess to killing Petito.
Chris and Roberta Laundrie’s attorney, Steve Bertolino, later confirmed that their son had died via a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Last year, the New York Post revealed that FBI agents had raided Laundrie’s former home and discovered a wealth of strange belongings.
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One of these was a notebook with drawn skull graphics, which Brian Stewart, the Petito family’s lawyer, said showed the perpetrator was dealing with ‘mental health issues’ and marked him as a ‘narcissist and manipulator capable of violence’.
Alongside the drawing, the FBI also found notebooks belonging to Petito, a compound bow fitted with a rifle scope, brass knuckles, and multiple copies of a Jehovah’s Witnesses magazine called The Watchtower, as per the NYP.
Other items reportedly seized by officers included Glock 49mm pistols, hundreds of bullets, and Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Choke.
Some of Laundrie’s own private writings were also recovered during the raid.
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In a diary excerpt dated 26 October, 2018, Laundrie claimed he had experienced a ‘type of mania’ the previous year.
“I was smashing holes in the wall with my head, kicking throug (sic) paintings, tearing whatever I was working on, pouring gasoline on myself to burn alive but getting the lighter wet, parking out in murderland listening to Mac [unclear] with a gun to my head, wrestling alligators,” he scribed.
“I wanted to die and the weird thing is nothing’s changed, but the [timer’s] running down.
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“Under the mattress I’m on is a loaded 357 magnum revolver. A pull of the trigger and all my problems will be over.”
Another undated entry appeared to detail how petrified Laundrie was of his girlfriend leaving him.
“The ocean pours out of her blue eyes and the fire is out. With one word the pain is gone. 'Brian?'” he penned.
“Oh how sweet she is to say we should get together, but you know when you walk out that door she’ll be gone forever again,” Laundrie added.
“Your [sic] back in the car, haunted by the eyes you’ll never look into again. The pain burns fresh because you know it’s just tonight. You wake up and your [sic] both free.”
Stewart told the publication that the Petito family were unaware of these diary entries but understood that Laundrie was a ‘manipulator who hid his intentions’.
“It’s interesting seeing all these notes, knowing now how these types of domestic violence situations turn fatal,” he added.
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, please don’t suffer alone. Call Samaritans for free on their anonymous 24-hour phone line on 116 123.