Featured Image Credit: MOAB City Police Department
Topics: Crime, Documentaries, Gabby Petito, Netflix, News, TV And Film, True Crime, US News
Rhianna Benson
Topics: Crime, Documentaries, Gabby Petito, Netflix, News, TV And Film, True Crime, US News
Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide which some readers may find distressing.
After violently murdering and abandoning the body of his 22-year-old fiancée Gabby Petito in 2021, Brian Laundrie sent himself a chilling text message.
Though he subsequently ended his own life in the midst of the nationwide police investigation into Gabby's death, Brian spent several weeks attempting to cover up his crimes - firstly, by implying she'd gone missing.
The couple had been enjoying a road-trip through Wyoming in August of that year, when Gabby's mother Nichole Schmidt suddenly stopped receiving communications from her daughter.
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Concerned, Nichole attempted to contact Brian's parents Roberta and Chris Laundrie, who blocked all communications, and on 10 September, a missing person case was filed.
It was quickly discovered that Brian had actually returned home to Florida in the van without his fiancée several days earlier, claiming he'd left her at a hotel after they became embroiled in a spat.
Brian's family told investigating officers that he wouldn't be speaking to police, and that they'd hired an attorney.
Following a several-week search, on 19 September, the FBI discovered human remains in an area of Spread Creek Dispersed Camp, later confirmed to be Gabby. An autopsy determined she'd died via 'blunt-force injuries to the head and neck, with manual strangulation'.
Two days earlier, Chris and Roberta Laundrie alerted police to report that Brian was missing himself, having failed to return home after a hike in a nearby woods in Florida four days earlier.
According to a new true-crime documentary on the harrowing case, entitled American Murder: Gabby Petito, which landed on Netflix earlier this week (17 February), investigators were beginning to deep-dive into Brian's alibi at this point, looking for loopholes.
A month later, a police search found Brian's remains in an area of Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park that had previously been underwater due to flooding, with an autopsy reporting that he'd died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
A waterproof notebook was discovered beside his body, containing an untrue version of the story of Gabby's death, claiming she had become unwell after getting caught up in some ice-cold water.
The note also contained a nine-word claim that was interpreted as his confession to her murder, after Brian wrote: "I ended her life, I thought it was merciful."
After looking at telephone records, the FBI found that - around the time that the autopsy ruled that Gabby had died - a text message had been sent to her from Brian's phone.
On 28 August, he'd allegedly hiked away from his and Gabby's last known location in Grand Teton National Park to a new area, to send his fiancée's phone a text that read: "Hey Hunny, just calling to let you know I made it to Colter Bay!
"I think the campground is still a little ways up the road, I’m gonna go check it out! LMK when your[sic] on your way, no rush:)."
A second text, send to Gabby's phone reiterated that there was 'no rush' for Gabby to join him, adding: "Can’t wait for you to see the mountains across the water!"
It was later ruled that he would have been in possession of Gabby's phone the entire time, and that after sending the message from his phone, he hitch-hiked his way back to Spread Creek camping area - where their van had been left - and responded to himself, as Gabby.
"Yeah sure baby," the message from Gabby's phone read. "We’ll do one more night of dispersed and then we’ve got our site at Colter Bay for TWO NIGHTS!!"
Speaking in the documentary about the exchange, FBI Special Agent Loretta Bush tells viewers: "The activity between the two phone was almost instantaneous.
"Brian was holding both phones and talking directly to himself. It was an apparent that he was trying to create an alibi."
Following the discovery of Brian's body, however, FBI Denver Division later stated: "The investigation did not identify any other individuals other than Brian Laundrie directly involved in the tragic death of Gabby Petito.
"The FBI's primary focus throughout the investigation was to bring justice to Gabby and her family."