Full Transcript for Gabby Petito

again. and execute, uh, Krista Pike again. I, I don't know if that's going to happen. I know, I mean, they're paused at the moment until the investigation is happening. They're doing an internal review. So it is unclear at the moment. And I know that there are lots of investigations happening around that, that we cannot talk about. And my lawyer is nodding at me digs and he's saying schmackos again, uh, Caleb Flynn. So this was the American idol contestant turned pasta that murdered his wife, Ashley Flynn, uh, The latest confirmed legal development is that an attorney was appointed on the 16th of October to represent Caleb Flynn in his appeal against his conviction for murdering his wife, Ashley Flynn. He was sentenced to life without parole after a jury found him guilty of nine charges. His appeal is expected to challenge issues, including whether the prosecution sufficiently established prior calculation and designs. There was no further information I could find about that at the moment, but there is a lot of conjecture and a lot of talk online, and I was very careful not to put this sort of stuff in there that I wasn't 100% sure about. I also have to say, and this is a domestic violence story that is currently happening in Australia. It's unfolding in Australia. It's not currently happening. It is unfolding in Australia. Sam Wood first became a household name in Australia in 2015 when he starred in the third season of The Bachelor Australia, he was The Bachelor, where he met his now wife. He went on to build a hugely successful fitness and wellness business, 28 by Sam Wood, which he sold in a deal reportedly worth $ 71. 2 million in 2022. But the 46-year-old is now facing serious domestic violence charges following an alleged incident during a family holiday in Noosa, Queensland, in early October. Police allege he assaulted and strangled his wife, Snezana, leaving her fearing for her life. Court proceedings have also referred to allegations involving his adult stepdaughter. Wood denies the charges and has indicated he intends to defend himself. He was refused bail on 8 October and remains in custody at the Walston Correctional Centre. The largest development reported on the 23rd of October, while I'm recording this, is that he has launched a fresh bail bid in the Queensland Supreme Court with a hearing scheduled for the 4th of November. Meanwhile, the company behind his former fitness empire has ended its commercial relationship with him. The criminal allegations have not been determined at trial. Now, that is my update at the moment for those cases. I don't want to cover the Sam Wood case at the moment as it is unfolding. And my lawyer is giving me the heads up and again saying schmackos. If you are in Melbourne, I've got a lot of gigs coming up. I've got a lot of goddamn gigs because I'm working on a show for next year. And that means I have to leave the house. I have to leave the house and I have to do gigs. So this week, if you're listening on the Monday when this episode comes out, I am doing Comedy Republic tonight, a storytelling night. It'll be a really fun, relaxed vibe with Michelle Brazier and Damien Callinan. It'll be really, really fun, a fun event where we're all telling stories. On Tuesday night, I'm at Lido Comedy, which is in Hawthorne in Melbourne, and I will tell you about more gigs that are coming up. There's a few other ones that week, this week, well, the week that it is when you're listening to this, but I've got lots and lots of gigs, and I'll just update you as they... unfold. Thank you, as always, to the wonderful people that leave reviews for this podcast. It really does help. Every little bit that you do does help. You can leave a five-star rating, five-star review. That pushes this podcast out there to as many people as possible. Another great way to support this podcast is simply sharing it with a friend. I'm no goddamn mathematician, but that will double the numbers. So if you do that, I would bloody love that. Tag me and follow me on social media. Not another crime podcast on all the things. And me personally, Sammy Peterson unofficial. I would absolutely love that. Yeah, thank you. I'll do the mailbag section at the end. I always love hearing your voices, especially after recording this one. I was very emotional, so I was excited to to read your letters that I haven't read or listened to at this point of recording. I bloody love hearing from you, so please write to me, yeshelloattheproducerboy.com, or leave me a speak pipe, or if I call it a speak-a-pa pair, all the links are below in the show notes. To do that, I love hearing your voices, so please do that. And yeah, I bloody love you, and I love hearing from you. I'm loving recording this podcast every single week. It takes a lot to write these, And I think, you know, there are about 50,000 words, which is quite a lot, and I'm writing one a week at the moment. So it's really kind of hard, and I'm doing it all myself. So I really, really appreciate the support. And to help it keep going, those are the ways to kind of help it keep going. And when I muck up a name and my pronunciation, I'm trying to get better at it. But, you know, Carmen Chan, I'm so sad that I got that wrong. And I do this by myself, so, you know, I've got to fact check myself. I've got to goddamn fact check myself. But when you sit down and do a, you write that report and then you go and record a, you know, casey case file. God, he's good. God, he's good. But he's got a team behind him. Come on. I'm the lighter case file. That's what I keep calling myself. But another way to support me is you can buy me a coffee. It's a one-off donation to the podcast, Buy Me A Coffee. The link is below for that as well. You can just do a one-off payment just to say thank you for this podcast coming out twice a week for free. And you know what? I would bloody love that. You can also watch this episode in full on YouTube. The link is below for

that as well. This is the case of Gabby Petito. On Thursday this week, I will be having a chat with Kelly Moorish, who is a fantastic psychologist, and I'm hoping to have on every now and again to kind of talk about big issues and not always relating to the case. We speak broadly about different topics, but this week we'll be speaking about domestic violence, coercive control, different things that are... related to this case, not particular to the case, but related to this case. So that is coming out this Thursday for an open discussion about that. Anyway, this is this week's episode on Gabby Petito. There are millions of photographs taken every single day, and most of them will disappear into the endless scroll of the internet. But every photograph is, in its own way, a declaration. I am here. I was here. I saw this. And in the summer of 2021, one young woman documented almost every step of a journey across the United States, never knowing that these photographs, these videos, these tiny digital traces of a seemingly ordinary life would one day become some of the most important pieces of evidence in a murder investigation. Gabrielle Verona Petito was 22 years old. She was young enough that her life still seemed at the very beginning. It was. She had plans. She had places she wanted to see. She had a camera. She had a boyfriend. She had a white van. And she had an audience. On social media, Gabby had begun building the kind of life that millions of young people now build in public. She photographed sunsets. She filmed landscapes. She posed in front of mountains. She showed people where she was eating, where she was sleeping, what she was wearing, what she was seeing. Right? It was a record of movement, a record of youth, a record of life. And that is what makes the story of Gabby Petito so haunting, because for a while, the internet watched her travel across America. And then, when she disappeared, the internet began watching her last journey. Gabby was born on March 19, 1999, in Blue Point, New York, on Long Island. So, so young. 1999. I find it impossible to think that people were born in 1999. I know they were, but it seems impossible to me. When I was born in 1991, I remember people going, oh my God, I can't imagine someone was born in 1991. They don't say it anymore. No one says that to me anymore. That goes away. I mean, it's the same probably for people at one point who were born in like the 40s were like, can you believe I was born in 1941? You know? Anyway, we won't talk about the war. I don't want to go into the war, any of the wars, but let's move on. She grew up in a large blended family, surrounded by siblings and parents and the ordinary chaos of family life. She was energetic, she was social and creative, and those who knew her described someone who could make herself home almost anywhere. There was something about Gabby that seemed to draw people towards her. She was the kind of person who could turn an ordinary moment into something worth remembering. As she grew older, she became increasingly interested in photography, fashion travel and social media. The camera was not simply something she carried. It became a way of seeing, a way of remembering, a way of saying, even without words, look where I am, look what I've found, look what I'm doing, look at this life. That distinction matters because Gabby eventually, her eventual disappearance became inseparable from the digital record she left behind. There were photographs, there were videos, there were Instagram posts, there were text messages. There were credit card transactions. There were location records. There were other people's photographs. There were strangers who had unknowingly crossed paths with her. And eventually, there would be surveillance footage, body camera footage, and a vast collection of digital evidence assembled by investigators. Her life had been documented so thoroughly that when something went wrong, investigators were able to reconstruct pieces of it almost frame by frame. But before she became the centre of one of the most widely followed missing person investigations in American modern history, Gabby was simply a young woman trying to build a life for herself. She graduated from Bayport Blue Point, well that's a hard thing to say, maybe just for me honestly, I'm not dragging you into this, I'm sure you would be able to say this correctly, Bayport Blue Point High School. See, I think that's hard to say, tongue twister. Bayport Bayport Blue Point High School, Bayport Blue Point High School, Bayport Blue Point High School in 2017. I'm sure you were screaming at your phone or TV, whatever you're watching or listening to this on. Shut up and move on. After high school, she worked, traveled, and continued developing her interests. Gabby Petito grew up in Blue Point on Long Island, New York, as the eldest of six children in a blended family. By all accounts, she was a creative, adventurous young woman who enjoyed photography, travel and spending time with the people that she loved. Her family was an important part of her life and her mother, Nicole Schmidt, and father, Joseph Petito, would later become the people leading the desperate search for her when she stopped communicating with them. Gabby had grown up alongside her siblings, developing friendships and making plans for the future. And those who knew her remember a young woman who was still figuring out who she wanted to be. She met Brian Christopher Laundrie. Brian was born in Long Island and was around the same age as Gabby. The two began dating, and as their relationship developed, their lives became increasingly intertwined. They travelled together, they spent lots of time together, they eventually moved in together. And like so many young couples, they began imagining what their futures might look like together. There were photographs of them smiling, of them travelling. And the photographs kind of appeared to show two young people

deeply in love. To anyone looking at the curated version of their lives online, it could have seemed uncomplicated. But relationships are rarely as simple as photographs suggest. Behind the pictures, there were arguments, there were tensions, there were difficulties. And as would become increasingly important, there were signs that their relationship had become troubled. In 2020, Gabby and Brian moved into a house in Northport, Florida, where Brian lived with his parents. They began talking about travelling. Not simply taking a holiday, but travelling for an extended period of time. They had a white 2012 Ford Transit Connect van. You can tell I'm really into cars and vans, because the way I said that just rolled off the tongue. The van would become one of the most recognisable objects in the entire case. And also mentioning that she went to live with her parents, I think that is an interesting thing that we'll definitely come back to. The van would become one of the most interesting parts of this case. It was converted into a small living space. There was a bed, there was storage, there were the basic necessities required to live on the road. And in the spring and summer of 2021, the idea of travelling across America was began turning into a reality. The plan was extremely ambitious. Gabby and Brian would drive across the United States, visiting national parks and other destinations, documenting their journey along the way. For Gabby, this wasn't just a holiday. It was also content. It was photography. It was an opportunity to create something, make video diaries. And in June 2021, they began this very journey. The first photographs looked almost impossibly idyllic. The van parked across enormous landscapes, mountains stretching towards the horizon, open roads, blue skies, and Gabby smiling for the camera. The couple travelled through places that had become almost synonymous with the American road trip. They visited national parks, they stopped at scenic locations, they camped, they drove for hours, they filmed, and Gabby posted. The images were stunning. The story they appeared to tell was beautiful. Two young people in love who had packed their belongings into a van and decided to see the country. For people watching online, it was easy to romanticise. The van life. The open road. No fixed address. No alarm clock. No office. Just the next destination. The next photograph. The next sunrise. But there was another reality to travelling in a small van with someone for months. There was nowhere to escape an argument. There was no spare bedroom, no separate apartment, no easy way to create physical distance. Sometimes I correct myself, and sometimes I go, you know what? Just show what a goddamn fool you've just been, Sammy P. Show it to the lovely listeners. You've been a goddamn fool. And sometime during that summer, their relationship, began to show cracks between Gabby and Brian. On August 12, 2021, those cracks became visible to strangers. Gabby

and Brian were in Moab, Utah. Earlier that day, witnesses had seen the couple arguing. A woman named Mary Pillar and her husband Chris were among those who encountered them. There was also other witnesses. One of them called 911. The caller reported seeing a man hitting a woman. The police dispatch that followed would eventually become one of the most scrutinised elements of this entire case. The couple were stopped by Moab police. Body camera footage recorded the encounter. And watching it now, knowing what would happen less than six weeks later, is profoundly uncomfortable. Gabby was visibly distressed. Brian was questioned separately. Officers tried to establish what had happened. Gabby described an argument. She said that she had hit Brian first, and she was apologising the entire time for what she had done. She kept blaming herself. She described herself as struggling with anxiety and said that she had been trying to get away from him. Even the erratic driving when police pulled them over, she said that she was the one distracting Brian. Brian, meanwhile, described a very different version of offence. Events. Sammy P, you've done it again. The officers were dealing with something they had encountered many times before, a young couple arguing in a vehicle. At the time, the encounter would become one of the most consequential moments in the investigation into Gabby's death. The officers ultimately decided not to arrest either person. Instead, they separated the couple. Brian was taken to a hotel. Gabby remained in the van. That's also another really odd parts of this, that Brian was taken to a hotel. Gabby was the one visibly distressed and anxious. You know, you'd think that she'd probably want, but maybe, you know, I don't know if she absolutely wanted to stay in the van, but it does seem weird that they sent Brian to a hotel for the night. The separation was intended to cool things down. And for a short time, it seemed to work. But the later investigation into the incident found problems with how the officer's handled the call. An independent review commissioned by the city of Moab concluded that the officers made several unintentional mistakes, including failing to cite Gabby for domestic violence and failing to obtain a statement from the original 911 caller. The review recommended additional training and changes to police and procedures. And it actually says policies there, policies and procedures, that makes more sense. But I went with police. because sometimes I like to correct myself as I'm going, and then I realise I wrote it like that for a reason. Anyway, I'll move on. Just a note for myself. I can do that off-pod. I'll have a meeting with myself after this podcast. It is important to be careful here. The later findings do not allow us to rewrite history as though the officers knew what was going on behind the scenes, because they didn't. They were responding to a call involving a young couple. They did not know that one of the people standing in front of them would be dead within weeks. They did not know that millions of people would eventually watch their body cam footage. They did not know that every decision they made would later be dissected. At the time, it was one call, one argument, one night. But in retrospect, it became something else. A dire warning. A moment frozen in time. The kind of moment that makes people watching years later ask the question that hangs over almost every case like this. What if? What if somebody had seen something different? What if somebody had asked more questions. What if the police had actually asked the right questions and someone was trained to deal with a situation like this, where Gabby wasn't giving away what exactly had happened? She was worried for herself. She was worried for her safety. And in a way, she was also trying to protect Brian in this way as well. What if Gabby had gone somewhere else? What if Brian had gone somewhere else? What if that night had ended differently? There are so many questions like this to answer. There is only what happened. And after that incident, Gabby and Brian continued their journey. They did not immediately return home. Instead, they traveled west. They visited Salt Lake City, or as the Book of Mormon says in that famous musical, Salt Lake City. They moved through Utah. They traveled towards Wyoming. And Gabby continued documenting the trip. That is one of the strange things about the case. The evidence of her final weeks did not initially look like evidence. It looked like a holiday. A photograph of a mountain, a photograph of a road, a campsite, a young beautiful woman smiling, a video uploaded to social media, a timestamp, a location, a comment, a message. Nothing about those things by themselves necessarily screamed danger, but together they formed a trail. And eventually investigators would follow that trail backwards. On August 25th, Gabby and Brian were in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. If it's Teton and I've mispronounced it, I can only apologise. Teton. Teton. Dark and Teton. Gabby posted photographs. The photographs were extremely beautiful. They're exactly the sort of images that had defined the trip. The landscape was vast. The mountains rose behind her. She looked happy. She looked alive. She looked extremely happy to be there. She looked like somebody who had no idea that she was approaching the end of her life. And how could she? There is something especially cruel about photographs taken shortly before a person's death. We know that the person in the photograph doesn't. We know the ending. They don't. The photograph becomes almost unbearably ordinary. Gabby was simply standing there, smiling, living. And somewhere outside the frame was a future that nobody could see. On August 27, Gabby and Brian were still in the area. That day would become critical. At some point, the couple travelled towards the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping Area. It was a remote area near Grand

Teton National Park. The landscape was beautiful, but it was also isolated. The kind of place where a person could disappear into the landscape. And on August 27, something happened. Exactly what happened inside that van at the campsite would never be witnessed directly by investigators. There were no cameras inside. There was no neutral observer. There was no recording of the entire sequence. I hope you didn't hear my leg crack just then. It cracked really loudly. And I've never felt more 35. Again, 1991, not a young age anymore to be born, but bloody hell. Instead, investigators would eventually have to piece together what happened inside that van from physical evidence, digital evidence, witness accounts, photographs, vehicle movements, and Brian's own later statements. What is known is that Gabby was alive on August 27. What is known is that she was later killed. And what is known is that Brian returned to Florida without her. The precise circumstances of her death became the central question. But before investigators could answer it, They first had to realise that there was a disappearance, and that took time. On August 27, the world outside the immediate area did not know that Gabby Petito was missing. On August 28, it still did not know. On August 29, it still did not know. And on August 30, something happened that would later become one of the most haunting details of the case. A text message was sent from Gabby's phone. It was sent to her mother. It appeared to come from Gabby. But investigators would later determine that Gabby was already dead at the time that text message was sent. The message was one of the several pieces of evidence that helped investigators conclude that Brian had attempted to make it appear that Gabby was still alive after her death. The FBI later described the timing and content of the messages as indicative of an attempt to deceive law enforcement. Imagine receiving a text message from your daughter. You're worried about her. You haven't heard from her properly. But then your phone lights up and there is her name. There is a message. There is enough there perhaps to make you breathe again, to breathe easy. For a moment, the person you love seems to be alive. That is the cruelty of digital communication. A phone can make a dead person's identity appear to continue. A name can appear on a screen. A photograph can still exist. An account can still post. A message can still arrive. But the person is gone. Gabby's mother, Nicole Schmidt, continued trying to communicate with her daughter. There were concerns about the messages. Something didn't feel right. And then there was another message. The wording became increasingly strange. The location was unclear. And eventually, the family could no longer convince themselves that Gabby was simply travelling and had chosen not to communicate. The worry became something else. Fear. Now we're going to go to a part of the case that really upsets people, and I know that the whole

case is extremely upsetting, but this part of the case is extremely infuriating for many reasons. On September 1st, Brian returned to Florida. He drove Gabby's white van, but Gabby did not return with him. That fact itself would eventually become central to everything. He arrived back at his parents' home in Northport, and according to investigators, he did so without Gabby. Her family, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly desperate, as you would be. They had not heard from her. Her phone was not behaving normally in the way that they didn't understand the messages that were coming through, that the phone was probably off at different points, it just didn't seem like anything was right. And the messages did not feel like her, and the person who had been traveling with her was now home. But Gabby was not. On September 11, Gabby's mother formally reported her missing, and the investigation began. The FBI opened its investigation on September 12, 2021, after Gabby's Gabby's family reported her missing. Almost immediately, the case exploded. But not in the way most missing person cases do. This one was different because Gabby had left behind an enormous digital trail. People had photographs. People had videos. People had seen the van. People had encountered the couple. People had filmed the places they visited. And people online began searching. Remember, there had been a 911 call of Brian being physical with Gabby. The same platforms that Gabby had used to document her life were now being used by strangers to search for her. And this is what I love about the internet. I know the internet is a very dangerous and scary place a lot of the time, but when they're used for good, when it is used for good, I should say, I don't know their pronouns, I don't know the internet's pronouns, but I think when the internet is used for good, you look at the documentary Don't Fuck With Cats, we'll cover that case at some point, but when online sleuths really start to dig into it, and I think looking at this body cam footage that there's a, there's a quite a few documentaries I'll mention at the end about Gabby Petito, but oh my God, the, the heart heartbreaking footage of the body cam. Oh my God. Like it is brutal to watch now in hindsight, absolutely brutal. And I'm going to go into this. I've got a wonderful, wonderful psychologist, Kelly Morris coming on to discuss some of the signs maybe that, could have been picked up. And it's a broad conversation, not particularly about Gabby and Brian, but it is a fascinating discussion to really go further into that. And if you're watching on the YouTube, yeah, I just zoomed in on myself again, but now I know how to fix it. I call that progress, baby. And that's showbiz, baby. Let me tell you that much. That's showbiz. Me just doing this by myself. That's showbiz, baby. A lonely kind of showbiz. Now, people had encountered the couple. The same platforms that Gabby had used to document her life were now being used by strangers to search for her. Her photographs were shared. Her face was shared. Her last known locations were shared. Her van became recognisable. And the internet began doing something it had become increasingly capable of doing. Collecting and reconstructing a person's movements. People went through videos frame by frame. They examined photographs. They examined landscapes. They looked for the white van. They searched social media posts and tried to reconstruct where they were at this time. Was there a location attached? Was there not? Where were they at this time? They looked for the white van. They searched social media posts and they retraced routes. They looked at timestamps. And one of the most extraordinary discoveries came from the two people who had unknowingly passed Gabby's white van while travelling through the same area. On August 27, YouTubers Jen and Kyle Bethune were travelling through the Spread Creek area. They had been filming their own journey. Their footage included the landscape, the road, the surrounding wilderness, and almost incidentally, the white van. And at the time, they had no idea what it would all mean. They were simply recording their trip. But after Gabby disappeared, they reviewed their footage. And there it was, the van in the background. A small white vehicle surrounded by the Wyoming landscape. It was one more piece of the enormous accidental archive created by people simply living their own lives. That became a recurring feature of the investigation. People had been filming. People had been taking photographs. People had been travelling. And without knowing it, they had captured pieces of Gabby's final days. The case had become a search through other people's memories. On December 19, investigators found Gabby's remains at the Spread Creek dispersed camping area. The FBI announced that human remains consistent with Gabby's description had been discovered. Her family were notified. And the search for a missing young woman became a homicide investigation. The location was significant. She had disappeared from the same general area where her body was found. The beautiful landscape that appeared in her photographs was now a crime scene. The mountains remained, the trees remained, the road, the sky remained. But Gabby was gone. The Teton County coroner later determined that Gabby died from blunt force injuries to the head and neck with manual strangulation and classified the death as a homicide. Gabby had been killed. She had not simply wandered away. She had not chosen to disappear. She had not abandoned her life. She had been brutally murdered. And suddenly every photograph became different. The smiling photograph was no longer simply a smiling photograph. The campsite was no longer simply a campsite. The van was no longer simply a van. The final days of her life had been transformed into evidence. And the question became brutally simple. Who had killed Gabby Petito? Investigators focused on the person who had

been travelling with her, Brian Laundrie. He had returned home in the van. He was now at his parents' house where Gabby had once stayed too. Gabby's body had been found thousands of kilometres away. And Brian was no longer simply her boyfriend. He was the last person to have travelled with her. The investigation turned towards him. But Brian was already gone. Perhaps one of the most distressing parts of the case unfolded after Brian returned to Florida without Gabby. As Gabby's family became increasingly concerned about her whereabouts, they repeatedly tried to contact Christopher and Roberta Laundrie, Brian's parents, hoping they might know where she was or be able to explain what had happened. Their calls and messages went unanswered. In September, Gabby's family made a public appeal for the Laundries to help them find their daughter, while the Laundries communicated through their attorney. Very suspicious. The silence was agonising for Gabby's parents. who had no idea whether their daughter was alive or in danger. Years later, depositions released in 2024 revealed more about what happened inside the Laundrie household during those crucial days. Christopher and Roberta testified that Brian had called them on August 29, sounding frantic and repeatedly saying that Gabby was gone. According to Christopher, Brian asked for help and mentioned that he might need a lawyer, but did not explicitly tell his father that he had killed Gabby. The Laundries said they did not understand what had happened and maintained that their attorney advised them not to communicate with Gabby's family. Roberta acknowledged that she had not attempted to contact Gabby's mother, Nicole Schmidt, and said she was focused on her own son. The Petito family, however, alleged the Laundries knew Gabby had been killed and deliberately withheld information from them. These allegations became the subject of a separate emotional distress lawsuit. So it is important to distinguish the family's claims from what the Laundries said in their depositions. What makes this particularly heartbreaking is the contrast between the two family circumstances. Gabby's parents were desperately trying to locate their daughter, contacting people who had known her and retracing her last known movements, while Brian was already back at his family home. On September 14, the Laundries' attorney released a public statement expressing hope that Gabby would be found and reunited with her family. To Gabby's parents, who were still desperately searching for their daughter, the lack of direct communication was devastating. One of the most revealing details is that Gabby's mother, Nicole Schmidt, noticed something unusual in a message sent from Gabby's phone. The message referred to Gabby's grandfather by his first name, Stan, rather than the way Gabby normally referred to him. Schmidt found this out of character and became increasingly concerned. The detail is significant because it illustrates how a small change

in someone's usual way of communicating can become an important warning sign when a loved one suddenly disappears. Investigators concluded that messages sent after Gabby's death were consistent with Brian attempting to make it appear that she was still alive. On August 29, 2021, Brian was reportedly hitchhiking in Wyoming and received rides from two people, including Miranda Baker, who later described her encounter publicly. He told Baker that his fiancée was at their van and that he needed to get back to her. The following day, he began driving back towards Florida without Gabby. This is an important detail because it places Brian in the area during the period when Gabby disappeared and provides additional context for reconstructing his movements. Perhaps the most disturbing additional detail concerns a letter Roberta Laundrie wrote to her son, which became known as the Burn After Reading letter. In it, she wrote that she would bake him a cake with a file hidden inside it if he were in jail, and that she would turn up with a shovel and garbage bags if he ever needed to dispose of a body. When the letter emerged during the legal proceedings, those words understandably attracted attention. Gabby's family's lawyers argued that the letter could be evidence that the Laundries knew more about Gabby's death than they had ever disclosed. Roberta, however, maintained that she wrote it before the couple's road trip and that the language was intended as a private, darkly humorous expression of unconditional maternal support. The letter was undated and its timing became a point of dispute. It is important to distinguish the allegations made by Gabby's family from Roberta's explanation. The letter's existence alone does not establish that she helped conceal a murder. Gabby's parents, Nicole Schmidt and Joseph Petito, subsequently filed a civil lawsuit against Christopher and Roberta Laundrie, alleging that they knew their son had killed Gabby deliberately, withheld information while they searched for her. The Laundries denied the allegations and the attorney maintained that they had followed legal advice. In February 2024, the two families reached a confidential settlement avoiding the civil trial that had been scheduled for later that year. The settlement did not produce a public trial verdict, establishing the disputed allegations against Brian's parents. For Gabby's family, however, the lawsuit reflected their determination to seek accountability for what they believed had happened during the desperate days when they were trying to find their daughter. On September 13, according to investigators, Brian left his parents' home. His parents would later say that he had told them he was going to the Carlton Reserve. His Ford Mustang was found there. And on September 17, Brian's parents reported him missing. The chronology... Rainbow. The chronology was extraordinary. Gabby was missing. Her body had been found. Brian was a person of intense interest. And now Brian was missing too. The search had now expanded. Law enforcement descended. The landscape was enormous. Wet, difficult, dense. And searching it was not simple. The FBI and law enforcement locally began searching, but the environment itself became an adversary. The area where Brian would eventually be found had been affected by flooding. When investigators initially searched parts of the area, water made access difficult. Brian was not found. The public followed every development. There were helicopters, search teams, police vehicles, news cameras, social media speculation, people watching the reserve from outside the perimeter. The entire county seemed to be waiting. Where was Brian Laundrie? Was he alive? Had he escaped? Was he hiding? Had he killed himself? Was somebody helping him? Was there another person involved? Rumours multiplied. But the official investigation remained focused on evidence. On September 22, a federal arrest warrant was issued for Brian. The warrant related not directly to Gabby's homicide, but to the alleged assault. unauthorized use of her debit card after her death the detail was significant because it helped investigators establish what had happened after Gabby's death the FBI had determined that between August 30 and September 1st Brian used Gabby's debit card without authorization while traveling back towards Florida the implication was devastating Gabby had been dead yet her financial account was being used Her phone was being used. Messages were sent. Her digital identity was, for a short time, being kept alive. And meanwhile, Brian was safe and heading home. The investigation became a race against time. But Brian wasn't found. Weeks passed. Then, on October 20, everything changed. Brian's parents returned to the reserve. Law enforcement was present. An item belonging to Brian was located. Investigators searched the surrounding area, and that's where they found human remains. Brian Laudrey was dead. Near him was a backpack, a notebook, and a revolver. The search for him was over, but the case was far from it. Because now there were two bodies, two deaths, two families grieving, and one final question. What had happened between Gabby and Brian in those last few days? The answer came, at least in part, from a notebook. Investigators examined Brian's writings with a notebook found by him. Inside were statements in which he claimed responsibility for Gabby's death. The FBI later confirmed that its review of the notebook revealed written statements by Brian claiming responsibility for killing Gabby. The discovery effectively ended one of the central mysteries. Brian had killed Gabby. Now, we don't know if in these, you know, what he had actually claimed was that she had hurt herself and that he put her out of her misery, as he said, but that is not what the main theory of this is because of the strangulation. So, let's continue. Brian had killed Gabby, but the details surrounding the killing remained deeply

troubling, and because Brian was dead, there would never be a trial. There would never be a courtroom in which he could be cross-examined. There would never be a jury. There would never be a prosecutor standing up and reconstructing the final hours of Gabby's life while Brian sat at the defence table. There would never be a verdict. Instead, investigators had to build the story from what remained. The physical evidence, the digital evidence, the messages, the photographs, the witnesses, the videos, the campsite, the notebook, and the body itself. Brian's death was later ruled a suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The man who could have been prosecuted for Gabby's murder was gone, and the case entered a strange final phase. There was no trial to come, but there were still questions. Questions about what happened in Utah, questions about what happened in Wyoming, questions about the August 12 police encounter, questions about the final text messages. questions about the van and Brian's movements, questions about the exact circumstances of Gabby's death, and perhaps most importantly, questions about whether anything could have been done differently. The Moab encounter became a particularly painful part of that conversation. The later independent review found that the responding officers made several mistakes. The city of Moab acknowledged the findings and said it would implement recommendations concerning domestic violence training, legal training, and policy and procedures. But hindsight is an extraordinarily powerful thing. It allows us to look backwards through time with knowledge that the people living inside those moments did not have. We know Gabby was going to die. The officers did not. We know Brian was going to kill her. The people who saw the couple in Utah did not. We know the white van became a crime scene. The people who saw it parked in Wyoming did not. We know the photographs would become evidence. Gabby did not. And perhaps that is one of the most important things to recognise and remember about this case. At the time, none of these moments belonged to a murder investigation. They belonged to life, and that life belonged to Gabby. Gabby wasn't taking photographs because she knew they would be evidence. She was taking them because she liked photography. She was documenting her trip. She was planning a future. She was building memories. She was showing people where she was. She was saying in the language of the internet, I am here. This is my life. And there is something almost painfully human about that, because that is what photographs have always done. Before Instagram, before TikTok, before YouTube, before the endless scroll, people took photographs for the same fundamental reason, to remember, to prove something happened. to preserve a moment in stillness that would otherwise disappear. A photograph is a tiny act of resistance against time. It says, don't let this moment disappear. Remember this, remember me. Gabby spent

the summer of 2021 creating that archive. And when she disappeared, the archive became the map investigators followed. Her last known movements were reconstructed through photographs and videos. Strangers who had never met her became witnesses. A couple filming a road trip accidentally recorded the van. Another traveller's camera captured part of the landscape. Social media posts established locations, phone records established communication, financial transactions established movements, even after Gabby was dead. And the van itself became an enormous piece of evidence. The technology Gabby had used to tell the world about her life became the part of machinery used to investigate her own death. That is what makes the case uniquely modern. Gabby Petito did not simply disappear. She disappeared inside a digital world that had been watching her closely. And when people realised that she was gone, they went looking through the same world she had left behind. The FBI eventually concluded its investigation. On January 21, 2022, the Bureau announced that all logical investigative steps had been completed. And that investigators had identified no other individuals beside Brian Laundrie who were directly involved in Gabby's death. The official investigation was closed. But the story, of course, does not end here. Because Gabby's family had to continue living. Her mother had to wake up every morning knowing that her daughter was gone. Her father had to live with photographs of a daughter who would never grow older. Her siblings had to carry memories of a woman whose life had been violently interrupted. And the people who had watched Gabby's stories unfold online had to return to ordinary life too. And the case was a big part of the cultural zeitgeist. It prompted conversations about domestic violence and continues to do today. About missing person investigations, about social media, about the way women who disappear are discussed online. And the phenomenon sometimes called Missing White Woman Syndrome, the disproportionate attention certain missing person cases can receive. It also prompted conversations about the responsibility of law enforcement when officers encounter domestic violence. And it raised a really uncomfortable question about the role of us all playing in consuming tragedy. Because millions of people followed the investigation. They watched. They watched strangers become witnesses. They watched Gabby's photographs and films. They watch Brian's disappearance. And for a brief period, Gabby became one of the most recognisable missing people in America. But before she was a missing person, she was a person. Before she was a homicide victim, she was a daughter. She was a friend. She was a sister. Before she was a photograph in a news report, she was a person taking the photograph. And before the world knew her name, she was simply Gabby, a young woman from Long Island. a daughter, a sister, a friend, a girlfriend, a traveller, a photographer, a young woman who wanted to see America. The tragedy of her story is not simply that she died. It is that she was in the process of documenting her self-living. She was building a record of the places she had been, and that record became the roadmap to the place where she died. There is something almost unbearably poetic about it. The photographs were supposed to preserve her life. Instead, they helped reconstruct its endings. The videos were supposed to show where she was going. Instead, they helped investigators establish where she had been. The van was supposed to carry her towards the next adventure. Instead, it carried Brian home without her. And the phone that connected her to her family became, after her death, a tool used to create the illusion that she was still alive. That is the darkness at the centre of this case. Not that Gabby left behind a digital footprint, but that someone else briefly tried to walk in it, then speak through it, to keep her identity moving after her life had ended. But eventually, the photographs stopped. The posts stopped. The messages did. The journey stopped. And there was only evidence. There was the white van. There was a campsite. There were the photographs. There were videos. There was the notebook explaining what had happened in Brian's words. And there was the truth. Gabby Petito was murdered by Brian Laundrie. He killed her in Wyoming. He returned to Florida in the van without her. Disturbingly, he attempted to create the impression that she was still alive. He disappeared into the Florida wilderness. And he eventually died by suicide. There would be no courtroom moment in which Gabby's family heard a jury say guilty. There was only the conclusion of the investigation and the life of a young woman that had been violently cut short. And perhaps the final way to understand Gabby's story is to go back to where it began. The camera. The photographs. To the instinct that made human beings record themselves. We photograph our children because we want to remember how small they were. We photograph our friends because we want to remember what it felt like to be young. We photograph holidays because we know they will end. We film birthdays, weddings, road trips, sunsets, meals, dogs, like Diggs behind me right now. Sunsets, meals, hotel rooms, the silly little moments that seem meaningless at the time but become precious years later. We record ourselves because we know, somewhere deep down, that time is taking everything from us. And so we leave evidence behind. A photograph says, yeah, I existed. I saw this. I loved this. I was happy here. These are the people that I love. I was alive here. I was here. Gabby understood that instinct. She spent the summer leaving little pieces of herself behind. And those pieces survived her. It's so sad. The photographs remain. The videos remain. The memories do. And so does her name. 22 years old. A daughter who wanted to travel. A young woman who wanted to photograph the world.

A person who believed, like so many of us do, that if we capture enough of life, somehow... We can hold on to it. But perhaps that is what photographs really are. Not a way of stopping time, a way of proving that time happened. And when you look at the photographs Gabby left behind now, the most important thing isn't where she was standing. It isn't what she was wearing. It wasn't what mountain was behind her. It wasn't what campsite she had chosen. It wasn't what was going to happen next. It is simply that for a tiny fraction of a second, she was there. She was looking into a camera. She was making a memory. She was living a life that she had every reason to believe the world continued. And somewhere beyond the frame was tomorrow. A tomorrow she never got. But the photograph remains a tiny permanent declaration against the forgetting. I lived here. I saw this. I was here. And for as long as those images exist... For as long as people remember her name, Gabby Petito is still alive. In some small way. Yeah. The journey now turns from the romance of the road into the increasingly unsettling question of what was happening before the photographs. I'm going to stop recording for a second just to come back in a second. Hold on. Gabby and Brian had started their journey in June 2021, driving west from Florida and moving through the country with the loose itinerary of people who didn't necessarily want to know exactly where they would be tomorrow. They planned to visit national parks. They wanted to see the country. Gabby wanted to document everything. She'd been building her social media presence and the trip offered an almost perfect environment for it. Another landscape, another video, another story. There was also something visually interesting around the next bend. The van itself became part of the aesthetic. White against red rock, white against green forest, white against mountains. The van was to transport, it was a bedroom, it was a kitchen and home all at once. And from the outside, the whole thing looked like freedom. But freedom and confinement can sometimes look remarkably similar from the outside. Living in a small vehicle with another person meant that every disagreement travelled with them. There was no genuine escape from one another. There was no way to close a door and say, I need an hour alone. There was no separate apartment to return to. There was only the road, and the road that keeps moving. By August, the couple had reached Utah, and on August 12th, that apparently idyllic story collided with reality. A 911 caller reported seeing a man hitting a woman near the Moonflower Community Cooperative in Moab. Police responded. That caller's account would become extraordinarily important because it was an independent call. of Brian and Gabby. This person wasn't a friend. They weren't a family member. They weren't part of a relationship. He was simply somebody who saw something and said something, and that concerned him enough to actually

pick up the phone. And what he described to the dispatch was alarming. A man was hitting a woman. The vehicle was identifiable. The woman was identifiable. Police found them. And then came the body cam footage that would eventually be watched by millions of people. Gabby was visibly emotional. She was crying. She appeared overwhelmed. Brian was interviewed separately. They were both removed and taken apart. The officers were trying to establish what had happened. Gabby told them that she had hit Brian first. She described an argument that had escalated. She said she had been She said that she had become upset. She described difficulties with her mental health and anxiety. Brian gave officers his different account, and the officers ultimately treated the incident as something that could be resolved by separating the couple. There was no arrest. There was no criminal charge arising from the encounter. Brian was taken to a hotel, like I said before, and Gabby remained with the van. For that night, at least, they were separated. And in context of what we know now, that decision... has become one of the most painful parts of the entire story but it is important not to turn hindsight into certainty the officers did not know what was coming they were working with incomplete information they had two young people giving accounts and they had witnesses they had physical observations and they made a decision years later however the independent review commissioned by the city of moab found several unintentional mistakes in how the incident had been handled And if you've actually watched this footage, you'll see that the officers were all men dealing with this situation. At the end, a woman officer does come in, but it is too late at that point. They've already kind of made the decision of what is going to happen with Gabby and Brian that night. And at that point, they decided that separating them would be the best course of action. In hindsight, it was not. The review matters because it reminds us that the August 12 incident wasn't simply an argument that happened to be caught on camera. it was a documented warning sign of domestic violence. And yet, after that warning sign, the journey continued. Gabby and Brian remained together. They travelled, they took photographs, they went to restaurants, they visited parks, they continued west. And in the documentaries, if you see some of the footage of Gabby and Brian where the outtakes of what they're filming, you do see Brian's agitation and you do see moments in hindsight, again, that could just look like a bickering couple, it could just look like something... I don't know, it's something not to really focus and hone in on, but it is really horrible to look back on with the knowledge that we have now. Online, however, the story remained unchanged. A young couple travelling across America with beautiful scenery, sunsets, mountains, and then they came to Wyoming. And this is where the story begins to narrow. the enormous American landscape begins to feel much smaller in this circumstance because investigators would eventually need to reconstruct not just where Gabby had been, but when. Every day mattered. Every photograph mattered. Every text mattered. Every purchase mattered. And every sighting mattered. The timeline would eventually become the skeleton of the investigation. And one date in particular would sit at the very centre of it, August 27. That was the day Gabby and Brian were in the Spread Creek area near Grand Teton National Park. Again, if I'm getting that wrong, very sorry about that. I've been balling Mars out today, just so you know, right? Okay. I don't know why I'm attacking you like that. I'm very sorry about that. I will get through this story. It was also the last period in which Gabby was known to be alive. The landscape around Spread Creek is extraordinary. The Grand Tetons rise in the distance. The road winds through open country. There are places where you can look around and see enormous distances that seem to go on forever. But there are also places where a vehicle can disappear from the main road. A person can be alone. And that is where Gabby's story reaches its darkest point of all. On August 27, other people were moving through the same landscape. Some were camping, some were driving through, some were taking photographs, and some were filming their own journeys, their own accounts. Nobody knew. that they were moving through the final chapter of Gabby's life. One of those people were a couple travelling through the area and filming their own trip. The Bethunes had a YouTube channel of their own. Their camera was running, and they were not looking for Gabby. They were not investigating anything. They were simply documenting their own journey. And their footage happened to contain the white van. A stranger's camera had inadvertently recorded something investigators desperately needed. At the time, it meant nothing. Weeks later, it meant nothing. This is how digital evidence works. Context actually changes everything. A photograph can be meaningless when it's taken and priceless when it's viewed later. Deb, what are you doing? You cracking it or something? He just comes up for a little hug. He just wants a little hug. Oh, thank you, bubba. Thank you. I do appreciate that. Your dad's been tearing up. Poor Gabby. We're thinking about Gabby today, aren't we, bub? We're thinking about poor Gabby and Gabby's family. Yeah. Oh, Deb. Give me a little cuddle. This is why when, we're not getting Hungry Jacks. He just asked me if Hungry Jacks, I think that's why he came up in the first place. Oh, it's manipulative digs. It's very manipulative. That is why when Gabby was reported missing, people didn't just search their memories. They searched their hard drive. They searched their phones. They searched YouTube channels, social media accounts. They searched Google Maps. They searched videos they had uploaded months earlier that at the time

they probably thought meant nothing. Meanwhile, Gabby's family was experiencing something that no photograph could adequately capture. They were waiting, waiting for a message, waiting for a phone call. Had Gabby disappeared? Had she gone away? Waiting for someone to tell them where she was. At first, there had been reasons to believe she was simply travelling. Then the messages became stranger. Then there was silence. And silence is different when you know someone's normal patterns. A parent knows the rhythm of their child's communication. They know how they write. They know the words they use. They know when someone or something sounds wrong. And Gabby's mother began to feel that something, and it was deeply wrong. The messages had appeared to come from Gabby, but it did not settle the family's concerns. They intensified them. Because if Gabby was still alive, why wasn't she speaking normally? Why was communication so strange? Why wasn't there a clear location of where she was? why did the circumstances surrounding the messages feel increasingly unnatural? Investigators would eventually conclude that the post-death messages were part of an attempt to create the impression that Gabby was still alive to buy time for Brian. The FBI specifically said the timing and content of messages between the two phones were indicative of Brian's attempt to deceive law enforcement. And that is a really extraordinary thing to contemplate because a text message is supposed to be intimate, right? A message from a daughter to her mother is supposed to carry personality. It is supposed to sound like the person. But once the person is dead, the phone becomes just an object. The screen still lights up and the keyboard still works. The account still exists. The phone doesn't know that its owner is gone. And neither does the person receiving the messages. And that is the horror of those final communications. Somebody was typing. Somebody was trying to make it look like Gabby was still there, but Gabby wasn't there. The person was gone. The digital version remained. And the family was being forced to communicate with a ghost without knowing it. And isn't that particularly cruel? Isn't that just particularly whatever cruel in its own way? Now, let's get into what happened with Brian. On September 1st, Brian drove back to Florida. The fact would eventually become one of the most defining images of this case. Because that van did not belong to Brian. It belonged to Gabby. Now, the white van did return. Gabby did not. He arrived at his parents' home in Northport. The vehicle had carried the couple across America and was now parked outside of Brian's parents' house, where Gabby had once stayed for a period of time. They loved her. They loved Gabby. Well, they supposedly loved Gabby. You know, she had stayed with them for a period of time. They got to know her. They felt that she was... a daughter to them, or that's at least what they said. And somewhere thousands of kilometres away, Gabby was missing. Where was she? What were the questions? What were the conversations happening at the time in that house? Did the parents know what Brian had done? Were they trying to cover up for him? Were they trying to protect him? And you have to look at it from a perspective of these parents had lost Gabby, like Gabby's parents had lost Gabby, but these parents of Brian had also lost Gabby, someone that they supposedly loved. Were they trying to protect Brian? Did they know what was happening? Was he feeding them different information? But what was really heartbreaking in this case is that they stopped answering calls or didn't answer calls from Gabby's family and they had to plead with her publicly because they weren't talking to her and they weren't helping with that. And that was just a particularly heartbreaking part of this case that then all of a sudden they had to go publicly and go, look, Brian's parents aren't telling us. They were particularly close. Why aren't they telling us? where Gabby is why aren't they easing our minds about this what is Brian saying why isn't Brian returning our calls Brian wasn't returning the calls of Gabby's parents what the fuck was going on and somewhere thousands of kilometers away Gabby was still missing and that is a terrible simplistic contrast One person came home. One didn't. The family home became the centre of a completely different story. Because the road trip was over. The photographs had stopped. And yet Brian was back. And Gabby's family did not know that. They were still searching for their daughter. They were still searching and hoping there was some kind of simple explanation for all of this. The simplicity of that contrast is horrifying. Maybe Gabby had gone somewhere. Maybe her phone wasn't working. Maybe she decided to stay somewhere. Maybe she was just anxious. Maybe she wasn't feeling quite herself. Maybe there had been an accident. Maybe a fight between Brian and Gabby where they had actually broken up and neither wanted to say anything. Maybe she was waiting to call. The human mind does almost anything it can to postpone the worst possibility. We've all probably had a moment of that in our own lives where we decide that something else is true to avoid what the reality is. It's like terribly human, isn't it? It's a terribly human thing to just go, oh, I'll just put that off a little bit more. I'll just kick that can down the road a little bit more because the horror of this is devastating. And the human mind does almost anything it can to postpone that. On September 11, Gabby's family reported her missing. The FBI opened its investigation the following day. And suddenly the private tragedy became public. Gabby's photos spread everywhere. Her face became public. Her face became a really recognisable face across the world. Her face appeared on television. Her name was shared across social media. People who had never heard her name suddenly were learning the details

of her life. And because she had documented so much of the journey herself, investigators had an unusual advantage. They knew what she looked like. They knew what the van looked like. And they knew where she had been. They knew some of the places that she had visited. They had photographs, videos, social media posts, and the FBI appealed directly to the public for photographs and videos from the Spread Creek area between August 27 and August 30, asking anyone who had seen Gabby, Brian, or the van to come forward. And people did. Thousands of tips came in. The investigation was no longer confined to police officers working a conventional missing person case. It had become a massive crowdsource search. People were searching through their own footage, looking through maps again, like I said, looking through Google Maps, looking through everything. And eventually investigators found Gabby. On September 19, search teams located her remains near the Spread Creek dispersed camping area. The FBI initially announced that human remains consistent with Gabby's description had been discovered and that her family had been notified. The search was over, the waiting was over. But for her family, something else had begun. Grieving. The part no parent ever wants. The part where you have to understand how your child died. And you want justice. The Teton County coroner determined that Gabby died from blunt force injuries to the head and neck with manual strangulation. Her death was of course ruled a homicide. Now investigators had a body, they had a location and they had a time frame. They had a missing boyfriend who had already returned home. The investigation tightened. The question was no longer simply, where is Gabby? It was, what did Brian do? And where is Brian now? Because while the world had been searching for Gabby, Brian had become increasingly difficult to locate. His parents were at home. His car had been left at the reserve. And by September 17, his parents reported him missing. Two missing people. One died. One somewhere in Florida. And suddenly the search that had begun in Wyoming moved thousands of kilometres east. Brian's Mustang was found at the reserve, at the environmental park. Investigators searched. The environment was difficult. And like I said before, water had actually flooded the area. So it was really difficult to find at that point in time that the landscape had actually changed. And on September 22, a federal arrest warrant was issued for Brian. It wasn't a murder warrant. And that distinction actually matters here because he had actually been arrested for, like I said, I remember saying this before. I remember saying this. I wrote this in the report. Basically, that he was using her card. The intensity of the search had begun to ebb and flow. Weeks had actually passed at this point, and the public had moved through other news stories, but Gabby's family were still waiting for answers. Then on October 20, his parents went into the reserve with law enforcement nearby. And that's when they found Brian. The two people who'd left together on a road trip were now dead, but only one had been murdered. The medical examiner determined that Brian died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. And then investigators examined the notebook. What they found changed the nature of the case once again, because Brian had actually written in that notebook about Gabby's death. And the FBI later said its review of the notebook revealed written statements in which Brian claimed responsibility for killing Gabby. But there would never be a confession recorded. There would never be a jury. There would never be a trial. And then people had to reconstruct it. Because we carry our cameras in our pockets. We leave location data behind. We pay electronically. We send messages. We post photographs. We connect to Wi-Fi. We exist in the background of strangers' lives. We're constantly recording ourselves without necessarily realising how much of ourselves we are leaving behind. Gabby did that more than most. And when she disappeared, those fragments became a reconstruction of her final journey. The FBI announced in January 2022 that all logistical evidence had been completed and Brian was directly involved in Gabby's death. There was no conspiracy hiding the final cruel answer. No unknown killer waiting to be identified. No mystery suspect. The investigation had reached its conclusion. Brian had killed Gabby and then Brian had died. And Gabby's family was left to carry the consequences of what he had done. But before we leave the case there, there is something important about the story that deserves to be understood. Because it's easy, particularly with a case this famous, to reduce Gabby to the circumstances of her death. And I don't want to do that in this case. I want to tell this story a little bit differently and remember Gabby for who she actually was. Because we remember the van in this. The search, the boyfriend, the notebook, the photographs. The photographs she took, the way she liked the world to look through a camera. There is a photograph of almost every important stage of this case. And that is unusual. But perhaps the strangest photograph of all is the one we never get to see. The photograph from the next day. The photograph from the next trip. The photograph of Gabby at 23, at 25, at 30. The photograph she might have taken of her own wedding. The photograph she might have taken of her children. The photograph she might take of another sunset. The photograph she might have taken of some completely ordinary Tuesday. That at the time would have seemed too boring to remember. But those photographs don't exist. And that is what death ultimately does. It doesn't only take the moments away that have already happened. It doesn't only take the moments that have already happened. It takes all the moments that would have happened. And the photographs that will never be taken. All the messages that will

never be sent. All the friends that were made along the way. Gabby was 22. Her life had barely begun. And when she left behind, and yet she left behind, more evidence of herself than many people leave behind in an entire lifetime. Maybe that is why this case struck such a nerve with everyone. Because people recognised something in her. Not necessarily the exact life she lived, but the desire underneath it, the desire to see something, to experience something, to document, to share, to say, look, I am here, this is happening, this is my life. And perhaps this is why the opening image of this story matters so much, because photographs are often treated as proof of the past. But they're really promises to the future. We take them believing there will be somebody in the future who will look back at them fondly. We take them assuming we will be there too. Perhaps photos that she could show to her kids. Gabby took photographs believing she'll continue that journey. She didn't know she was documenting her final day. She didn't know strangers would eventually study those images. Searching for clues, searching for locations. Where was she? Where was she at that time? What was the timeline? She didn't know her name would become synonymous with one of the most widely followed missing person cases in American history. She was simply taking photos. She was simply living. And that may be the most important thing to remember because the final photograph isn't really about death. It's about life. It's about the person standing there before everything changed. The person who believed there would be another day. Another road, another mountain, another photograph, another post, another memory, another morning. There wasn't. But the image remains, and it's a powerful image. I saw this. This happened. This was my life. And Gabby Petito left behind thousands of tiny ways of saying exactly that. I was here. I saw this. I lived here. I was here. And there is another reason the photograph matters. They don't just tell us where Gabby was. They tell us who she was trying to become. The fuck? in your pocket was a camera. The camera was a diary, and the diary must be public. For Gabby, photography and social media were becoming part of the way she expressed herself. She wasn't simply collecting images of famous places. She was building a visual record of a particular period of life, the landscape, the expression. And on August 12, there had been an incident A serious incident, enough for a stranger to call the police. The body camera footage from that day is difficult to watch because it contains two versions of reality at the same time. There is a reality that existed for Gabby, and there is a reality that the viewer now possesses. We know what happened later. She didn't. And that creates a kind of dramatic irony that is almost impossible to escape. When Gabby speaks to the officer, she's not speaking as a woman who knows she's about to become the subject. of a homicide investigation. She's trying to explain an argument. She's trying to make sense of what had happened. She's emotional. She's apologising. She's apologising for Brian. She talks about her own behaviour. She appears concerned about Brian. And that, perhaps more than anything, demonstrates how complicated relationships involving domestic violence can be. A person can be frightened by somebody and still love them. A person can be angry with somebody and still want to protect them. A person can experience something frightening and then minimise it to protect someone. They blame themselves. They can believe they caused the argument. They can believe that things will improve. They can believe that what happened was an isolated incident and will never happen again. And none of those things make the relationship simple. The August 12 encounter has consequently been discussed endlessly. People have watched the footage looking for signs. What did Gabby say? What did Brian say? How did they say it? What did the officers notice? What did they miss? What should they have done? And that independent review concluded the officers had made mistakes in the handling of the incident. A police officer responding to an incident does not have the luxury of knowing the ending. They don't know which argument will remain an argument. They don't know which couple will go home and never have another problem. Brian went to a hotel. Gabby stayed with the van. For a brief period, they were apart. The journey continued. The decision would later become one of the great what-ifs surrounding the case. What if they had actually been separated? What if Gabby had returned home? What if Brian had returned home? What if somebody had recognised the relationship had actually become, in that time, dangerous? The trouble of what-if feels like an answer, but it isn't. It is simply another road the story could have taken. The road that actually happened took Gabby and Brian north. They moved through Utah. They travelled towards Wyoming and Gabby kept photographing. There is something almost unbearably sad about looking at those images now. Not because she looks unhappy. Often she doesn't. She looks exactly like somebody on holiday. And that's the point. Because photographs don't look like warnings. They look like memories. The landscape around Moab is extraordinary. Red rock, open sky, desert, roads that appear to run forever. Then the geography changes. The desert gives way to mountains. The colours change. The temperature changes. The scenery becomes greener. And eventually the Tetons appear. For Gabby, this was presumably one of the greatest rewards of the journey. For investigators, it would eventually become the location where the story ended. The Grand Tetons are so enormous that they make people look tiny. That's part of their beauty. And perhaps part of the tragedy of the case is that Gabby's final photographs exist beneath those enormous mountains. She was there. She was alive. She

was looking at something beautiful. And she had no idea how little time she had left. On August 25, she posted photographs from the Grand Teton National Park. The images were cheerful. They fit the visual language of the trip. They were photographs of a young woman travelling, And then on August 27, the couple were in the Spread Creek area. The significance of that location would not become apparent until weeks later. At the time, it was simply another pit stop, another place to stay. A person had driven by and again, like I said, they had actually documented the white van in there. Brian was no longer simply Gabby's boyfriend. He was the person who would return home without her. He had cruelly done that. The country began looking for Gabby, and Brian had known all along. There was a strange psychological shift. At first, people wanted to find Gabby, alive. Then they wanted to understand what had happened. Then they wanted Brian found, and eventually they wanted answers. But Brian had disappeared. He had died by suicide. His parents became central to the public conversation. The family home in Northport became surrounded by media. People watched the house. Reporters waited outside. The police searched. The public speculated. And the family faced questions about what Brian had told them. What did they know? What did they believe? What had Brian said when he came home? What did they understand about Gabby's whereabouts at the time? Those questions would remain part of the public conversation long after Brian was found. But the investigation itself continued to follow evidence. And one of those most important parts was Gabby's debit card. The FBI determined that Brian had used Gabby's debit card after her death. This was not simply a question of spending money. It was a timestamp, a digital record of movement. It helped establish what happened after August 27. The phone activity did something similar. The messages were another trail. There is a temptation with cases like this to search for some kind of final revelation, some hidden secret, some person who knows what really happened, some missing piece that will make everything just make sense in your head. But sometimes the truth is not complicated. Sometimes it's terribly simple. A relationship became dangerous. A woman was killed. The person responsible returned home. He attempted to conceal what had happened. And then he disappeared. And he died before facing justice. That is the story. But it doesn't explain the impact. For that, we have to return to the family. Because the investigation eventually ended. But the family's grief did not. And this is where Gabby's story developed another life of its own. Her parents and loved ones became advocates. They spoke publicly about domestic violence. They spoke about missing people. They spoke about the need to take warning signs seriously. Gabby's name became attached to legislation and initiatives intended to help other families. Her death became part of a wider conversation. And that may be one of the most meaningful things that can come from a tragedy. Not redemption. There is no redemption for murder. But meaning, the possibility that someone else's story might end differently because people learn something from hers. The possibility that somebody who sees a troubling relationship might recognize the warning signs. I'm just like picturing you, listener, probably going to work. Maybe when you're listening to this, you're probably just walking around, having a nice time, trying to have your coffee. I'm just crying heaps. Lovely for you when you're Monday morning or Tuesday morning when you're bloody listening to this. The possibility that someone who sees a troubling relationship might recognise the warning signs. The possibility that somebody who goes missing might be found more quickly. Gabby's story became a warning, but she should never have had to become one. And that's the uncomfortable truth here. We often learn from people after they die. We analyse their final days. We identify warning signs in others. We discuss mistakes and we change policies. We create awareness campaigns. But the person at the centre of the case doesn't get to benefit from those changes. They are for everyone who comes after. Gabby never got the next trip. She never got the next photograph. She never got the next birthday. She never got to become the older version of herself that existed only in possibility. And perhaps that's the part of the story that gets lost when we become too focused on the investigation. A murder investigation is not necessarily only about death. It's about human life. A human life is about everything that happens before it. She had family, she had friends, she had ambitions, she had interests, she had favourite places, she had things she hated, she had things that made her laugh, she had ordinary days, she had bad days, she had plans. She was more than the last few weeks of her life. And perhaps the greatest danger of true crime is that we can accidentally allow the crime to consume the person. We remember the victim because of the killer. We remember the life because of the death. We remember the photograph because of what happened after it was taken. Gabby was not born a homicide victim. She became one because of one person who cruelly took her life. She's not to blame for anything. Brian is. And we really have to remember that, that domestic violence is really, really, really hard to spot. And I think we've all, you know, everyone listening probably had their own experiences with something. If it hasn't happened to them, it's happened to a friend's. And it is so hard to spot the warning signs. A lot of the time it's so hard to spot them. And you never know. My conversation with Kelly Morris this week is on Thursday that will come out. It's about how can you spot the warning signs? How can you try to understand what's not normal? What question do you ask a friend when you go, are you

okay? Because are you okay doesn't really... fix the situation a lot of the time. It's not going to help. And I think that's what the officers lost when you watch that body cam footage is that they weren't equipped with what to do, especially when people say things are fine and that they're responsible for what their partner has done. Gabby used a camera to record her life. Investigators later used those recordings to reconstruct her final days. These were memories and then there were evidence. Gabby's digital footprint became her witness. Her photographs spoke to her. The videos spoke to her. The messages spoke for her even when someone else was controlling the phone. The van spoke to her. The landscape spoke to her. And strangers who had never met her became part of the record of her final days. And that's an extraordinary legacy. Perhaps a tragic one. Because of that evidence, because of that the evidence exists because she was trying to show a world that she was living, not dying, living. The distinction would remain at the centre of the story. And yet years later when people look at them, they know something Gabby didn't. They know that the future she thought she was photographing would never arrive. They know that the road trip had an ending. They know that the van would come home without her. And Gabby's parents eventually went and got that van from Brian's parents' house. They went and got that van because that was Gabby's and that belonged to Gabby. We can preserve almost anything except the thing we most want to preserve, the person. We can save their photographs, their voice, their messages. We can preserve the shape of their face in a million pixels, but we can't preserve their tomorrow. We can't save the conversation they would have next week. We can't save the joke they would have told next month. And that is why Gabby's photographs feel so significant. Because millions of strangers now know who she was and what she wanted to be. I've got to move through this. I've got to. Oh my God, Sammy P, what the hell are you doing? You're just crying all the time. We have to separate fact from the mythology that grew around the case because Gabby Petito became famous in a way that very few missing people ever do. Her photographs were everywhere. Her relationship was examined by strangers and pulled apart. Her final movements were reconstructed by people who had never met her. And because the investigation unfolded in real time, millions of people experienced the case almost as though they were watching a television series. But life does not have episodes. There's no music cue when something terrible is about to happen. There's no narrator telling you that that's the last photograph you'll ever take. There is no warning that the person you are looking at has only hours to live. Gabby didn't know she was in the final days of her life. Brian didn't know that the country would eventually know his name. The strangers who saw the van didn't know they were seeing it at the end of Gabby's life. Gabby's mother didn't know one of the messages arriving on her phone wasn't really her daughter at all. The uncertainty is what makes the original timeline so powerful. On August 12, there was an argument in Moab. On August 12, according to later investigative chronology, the couple's movements continued. On August 25, Gabby posted photographs from Grand Teton. On August 27, she was in the Spread Creek area. On August 30, messages were sent from her phone. On September 1, Brian arrived back in Florida. On September 11, Cabby Stanley reported her missing. On September 19, her remains were found. On September 22, a federal arrest warrant was issued for Brian. On September 17, his parents had already reported him missing. And on October 20, his remains were found in Florida. The timeline is clean when written down. Life isn't. Life is messy. There were conversations we will never hear. There were thoughts we will never know. There were decisions made in private. And there were moments that happened outside every camera. And that is perhaps the hardest limitation of a true crime case. We reconstruct. We have to reconstruct, but we cannot resurrect. We can establish. We cannot know everything. We can identify that the evidence supports something, but we cannot feel every silence. The FBI's final investigative update is unusually definitive about one thing. Investigators concluded that Brian Laundrie was the only person directly involved in Gabby's death. They also established that he used Gabby's debit card after her death, sent messages from her phone to her mother in an attempt to deceive investigators, and that the notebook found with his remains contained written statements claiming responsibility for her death. That gives us the broadest possible answer. But it doesn't give us the last conversation between Gabby and Brian. What happened? It doesn't tell us what Gabby was thinking. It doesn't allow us to hear her voice. And perhaps that is why people continue to return to this case. Not because the answer is still unknown. It isn't. Because the answer is difficult to accept. Because there is no satisfying end to a murder case. There never is. There's only an ending. And sometimes even that isn't really an ending. For Gabby's family, the investigation ending didn't mean the story ended. It didn't mean Gabby's story ended. It meant they had to learn how to live with the answer. And that is a different kind of story. One that doesn't make headlines as often. The days after the funeral. The Christmas. The first birthday. The first time someone sees a photograph unexpectedly. For a family, that moment when the outside world moves on. The headlines stop. The television crews leave. The social media posts become less frequent. People begin talking about something else. But grief doesn't follow the same news cycle. It has no closing date. And Gabby's family continued to speak about her. They spoke about the

person. They built a legacy for her. They spoke about the importance of recognising domestic violence and they spoke about missing people. And they used the enormous attention surrounding Gabby's death to try to help other families. That matters because of the enduring legacies. This case is about Gabby. It's always been about Gabby. The August 12 incident is especially important in that conversation. Gabby Petito's case highlights the double-edged nature of the internet in modern investigations. While digital content and public collaboration helped investigators reconstruct her final movements, the overwhelming volume of online information can also create significant challenges in distinguishing credible evidence from misinformation, speculation, and increasingly AI-generated images and fabricated content. But one thing remained through someone's love of photography and documenting their life. I lived here. I saw this. I was happy here. I was young here. I was travelling here. I was dreaming here. I was here. There are millions of photographs taken every day. Most will disappear. Some will be forgotten. Some will sit untouched on phones until the phones themselves stop working. But every once in a while, a photograph becomes something more. It becomes a piece of history. A memory. A witness. A reminder. And sometimes, tragically, it becomes the last surviving proof of life. Brian Laundrie's parents have been ostracised by their Florida neighbours, who still accuse them of helping protect their son after he murdered his girlfriend Gabby Petito five years ago. Even going on as far as leaving dog poop and dirty diapers on their front lawn, according to some reports. Gabby's parents set up a foundation in her name to drive real change in the fight against domestic violence and missing persons. For more information, go to GabbyPetitoFoundation.org. I'd like to end today on a quote from Gabby's mum. Just remember Gabby's spirit the way she was. Be fearless. Live in the moment. There might not be tomorrow, so love your loved ones. Be kind. Just all the good things. Enjoy your life while you're here, because it could be gone in an instant. Nicole Schmidt, Gabby Petito's mother. Look, I left out some information there. I've tried to cover it as best I could in a way that hasn't been covered before. And most cases I listen to, there's so much information about Gabby's case that I thought I could try and tell it from a more emotional way, talk about Gabby more and the person Gabby was. Obviously, that made me a bit of a wreck. I think when you look at this case, it is so heartbreaking in so many ways. And there are so many cases like this. This is just one of those really famous ones that you go, Oh, but there's so many, tragically, so many cases like this that you go, that we'll never hear about as much. We'll never know about unless we do some digging. And the point of starting this podcast was actually to tell it from a human perspective and the humans involved and more than the actual horrific details of the case. I mean, sometimes, I mean, with the Mr. Cruel one this week, I mean, that's heartbreaking. You know, last week... All these are heartbreaking. I'm going to have a little bit of a break. And I'm going to come back. I'm going to have a glass of jams. I'm going to cool myself down. And I'm going to come back. We're going to do the mailbag section soon. And I hope that you got something out of today's episode. And you heard me crying a lot. But you got something out of today's episode. And the case of Gabby Petito.