Downloaded from YTS.MX
.
- So me and Brian just got up and got ready,
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
made the bed in the tent...
and set up.
I think our plan for today
is to just hang out here
in the tent.
[echoes]
- Man, that smile.
That smile didn't change.
Those eyes didn't change.
I--those eyes...
they would get her out of so much trouble.
Didn't matter how old she got,
she would always be my baby girl.
No matter what she, you know, how much trouble she was in,
it didn't matter.
She was still my baby girl, you know?
These are all I have left now.
[somber music]
- People would meet her
and just fall in love with her.
She just had this presence.
I don't know what it was. It was just magical.
There's so many good memories over the years,
but the one thing that I hold dear to me
is the hug that we had
before she left for the trip in the driveway.
* *
It's just-- It's still unbelievable.
I don't understand it. It doesn't make sense.
[echoing] Sense...
- In June of 2021, Gabby and her fiancé
embarked on a cross-country trip.
They were traveling in Gabby's 2012 white Ford van...
[dramatic music]
* *
And documented their journey on YouTube and social media.
- Doing some morning yoga.
- We've been lucky so far at all the places we've stayed.
- Oh, my God!
[voice echoes]
- She maintained regular contact
with her family members.
However, that communication abruptly stopped
around the end of August.
- If you've been active on TikTok or watching the news,
you've probably heard of Gabby Petito.
- Everybody's on this case. Everybody's talking about it
because we have to find this girl.
- The twists and turns
throughout this case have been bizarre.
- We have this moment where we see behind the scenes
of their perfect Instagram van life.
[overlapping, indistinct yelling]
- People became obsessed with this case.
They wanted to find her
and they wanted to solve this case
really more than anything.
- The media and the internet just went crazy.
- I am going to walk down here a little bit
because I see something.
- Oh, my God, there's that van.
- Right here is where they think
that it's a shadow of someone digging.
- Human remains were discovered,
consistent with the description of Gabby Petito.
- It was like every parent's nightmare just, like,
in a flash of a second.
- Brian is currently on the run and hiding.
- He could be in the Appalachian Trails.
He could be in Mexico, Canada.
- Earlier today, investigators found
what appears to be human remains.
- The remains matched the dental records
of Brian Laundrie.
- It's just been confirmed the cause of death
is a gunshot wound to the head,
and the manner of death is suicide.
- There are so many questions
that we just don't have answers to.
- Who is Gabby Petito? - Who is Gabby Petito?
- She wasn't just a YouTuber.
She was an amazing individual, and she was our daughter.
- Gabby, Gabrielle Venora Petito,
was born in March 1999.
I was 20 years old, so...it was scary for me.
She was a big baby.
She came out crying and ready to start life.
It was her for the first few years, just no siblings.
So it was nice just to have that mother-daughter bond.
She was just such a loving kid.
I mean, she would sleep in the bed with me sometimes.
She loved to snuggle, and I don't know.
I loved all those years.
- I was 20 years old when Gabby was born, you know?
A new baby is terrifying, terrifying,
and when she was born, I mean, she--
I can hold in her my hands, you know, like, tiny.
And you're responsible for this perfect innocent,
you know, baby.
It's just an instant bond that it'll just never go away.
[quiet music]
She was just awesome to be around, you know?
Her smile, her eyes, all that stuff,
and I just remember melting, you know,
and she have me wrapped around her finger quick.
You know, that didn't take long.
That's my perfect little girl.
- Gabby was two,
just about turning three,
when I met her for the first time.
She had these little, like, pigtails
and you know, her blonde hair, these bright blue eyes,
and she was just this happy kid.
She was pretty amazing.
And I saw the way Nichole was with Gabby
and how amazing of a mother she was.
I'm like these... they're beautiful.
They're awesome.
- Jim is just as much as a dad that I am.
Tara is the only person that Gabby has ever seen me with,
that she would even remember, you know,
and she is just as much as a mom as Nicki.
So she always had four parents.
- And I never looked at Gabby as my stepdaughter.
She was my daughter.
I started dating her father when she was a year old,
and I fell in love with her instantly.
I loved just being with her.
I loved spending time with her.
We used to sit there. I used to tell her.
I'm like, "Gabby, I got a secret. I got a secret.
I got a secret to tell you," and she would come running up
and whisper in my ear, "I love you."
- Blue Point is a small town. It's a small school.
She had a lot of good friends.
She was a baton twirler.
She did that a little bit in her late elementary years.
Middle school, she ran some track.
You know, she always tried new things.
Just a spitfire, she had goals,
and she did what she could to get there.
As she got older, she just loved
to take lots of pictures, lots of videos.
- When we were always together,
all she wanted to do was take selfies.
She was always taking pictures of things
and put her twist of her artwork into it.
- She'd start uploading pictures and videos,
and she was putting her life out there,
and she would post a new picture or a new story
on Instagram every couple of days.
- She wanted to put her stuff
out there online for people to see.
- Gabby and Brian met in high school.
- They had the same group of friends in school,
common interests, you know?
They liked to do things together.
They're both artistic. - Very artistic, yeah.
They started dating after the first road trip,
the one when they took the car to California.
They were kind of friends when they left.
[upbeat music]
* *
Came back dating, yes.
She was so happy.
[moody music]
Gabby and Brian were dating, and he would come to my home.
Brian would be there, and he was very polite, very kind.
- Get your guard up as a dad, you know,
especially when it's one of your girls,
but when he would come over, he was respectful,
very quiet, very polite,
and, you know, he would actually take the time,
and he would, like, color with our younger daughters
and stuff and talk with them.
- I didn't see anything in him that would worry me at all.
- No.
- When her and Brian started dating,
and he was like, "I'm moving to Florida,"
and she was like, "Can I come with you?"
So she had no problem doing that.
She had no fear to move to another state.
I said, "You know,
"you're always welcome to come back home.
If you don't like it, this is your home."
- Gabby was living with Brian
and his parents in North Port, Florida.
- Gabby did have a close relationship
with Roberta and Chris Laundrie.
They treated her like their own daughter.
[soft music]
* *
- They were engaged.
So it was exciting, but I was like,
"Well, just make sure this is--
"You know, you're young, and make sure
it's what you want."
But I couldn't tell her,
you know, you can't get married now
because I got married very young.
- You know, as a dad, you're like, okay, you know,
that's great, you know, you can settle down a little bit.
* *
You're happy for her, you know, that she's found
who she wanted to be with.
- We're not going to talk about it.
- I thought she should finish school, get a job,
do all that stuff, you know, the traditional way,
but she had a different plan
and a different vision in her head,
and she knew what she wanted, and she did it.
- And she was like, "I--
We got to get a van and do this."
- They were fixing up a van,
and they're gonna do this whole van traveling thing.
We didn't really-- kind of heard of it,
but we didn't know what it was about.
She couldn't wait to show us.
And then when she opened the doors,
and we looked inside and we saw it,
we couldn't believe it. - I was like-my mouth dropped.
- I was like, "This is unbelievable."
- "You did this?"
- Every little nook and cranny of that
was planned out for storage,
the bed that folded up into a couch,
these fold-out tables that they could eat on.
Every little piece of it was-- - Just so creative.
-- Was so detail-oriented.
- Everything has to have a place,
and not to the point where it's OCD,
but just liked it neat and clean.
That was her van. She loved it so much.
- I love the van.
* *
- I was like,
"People don't get to live their dreams all the time,
"and you're doing it.
"Like, this was your goal, your dream,
and you saved your money and look what you're doing."
It's proud-- I was proud of her.
I really was.
I have so many good memories over the years,
but the one thing that I hold dear to me
is the hug that we had
before she left for the trip in the driveway.
[sniffling]
It was just a long, long hug.
I don't know. I can't describe it.
It was just...
I know I was saying goodbye for a long trip,
but it just felt different. I don't know.
Now that I look back, it felt so different,
and I squeezed her so tight, and I said, "I love you.
"Please be careful. This is going to be great.
You're going to have so much fun."
And she...
you know, she squeezed me back,
and it was just really--
It was great, and I'll cherish it.
.
[bright music]
* *
- Gabby and Brian were the perfect young couple,
started this journey together.
When you see that on social media, you think,
"I want to be like them."
- A lot of people felt close with Gabby,
getting to know her through her Instagram or YouTube.
That's how I related to her.
I saw myself in Gabby.
She wanted to experience the world, kind.
I mean, she seemed like she was always smiling
and happy, full of life.
- Gabby Petito never goes outside.
- As soon as you look at Gabby Petito's Instagram,
it's hard to not fall in love with this girl,
and people started watching her
and becoming a part of her life.
- Hello, hello, and good morning.
It is really nice and sunny today.
It's only 10:00 in the morning,
but it rained all afternoon yesterday.
- Gabby set up a YouTube channel called Nomadic Statik.
She wanted to document her life on social media and eventually,
as influencers do, make money doing it.
Gabby was such a positive force,
and she did a really great job enframing everything
she was putting out on social media
as a positive experience.
- Oh, my God!
The tent is just coming in on me.
The wind is so bad!
I've just been sitting here like this for a while.
- We looked forward to seeing new posts of where they'd been,
and, you know, Gabby had no fear when it came to doing,
you know, surfing the sand dunes and climbing the rocks.
She just went for it.
- Me and Brian just got up and got ready,
made the bed in the tent, and set up.
I think our plan for today
is to just hang out here in the tent.
Brian's stretching, doing some morning yoga.
- Brian seemed to be a very quiet, calm person.
- He kind of seemed like a guy
who focused on being one with the Earth.
- He definitely had an affinity for art.
He did his own illustrations.
- He liked to draw, and he created some
almost comic book-like sketches.
Some of them were pretty dark.
There was definitely an edge to Brian's posts,
whereas Gabby was showing these beautiful locations,
and it seemed like
he was using it as a platform to say something else.
[moody music]
* *
- Their first stop was Monument Rocks, Kansas
on July 4th.
On July 8th, they reached Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Their third stop, July 10th,
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado.
- We are right outside Capitol Reef right now,
in a free disperse camp spot,
and we've been lucky so far at all the places we've stayed.
But I'd say this is one of the best so far.
- Gabby was posting almost daily,
showing how she was living out of this van,
how she was making her own food.
- Now I'm going to make some yogurt.
All the chocolate melted. - That is so melted.
I know. It's a river of chocolate.
[laughs] Be cautious.
- You can't keep chocolate in Utah,
not in July. - [laughs]
Or in a clear plastic container--
- Or in--yeah. - That is always in the sun.
[dramatic string music]
* *
- On July 16th, Brian and Gabby
arrived at Zion National Park, Utah.
Next they went to Bryce Canyon National Park.
And then, after 24 days on the road,
they reached Mystic Hot Springs, Utah.
What you post on social media
is what you want the world to see,
and people were crazy about Gabby's life
because she put forward this front of this beautiful girl
enjoying these adventures and also this beautiful life.
- But there was definitely more to this relationship
than was being shown on social media.
[moody music]
* *
- Before they embarked on their cross-country trip,
I've heard from Gabby's friends
that Brian was a little jealous and overprotective.
I heard a specific incident where he didn't want Gabby
hanging out with one of her girlfriends
just because he didn't like her or thought that,
you know, she might be a bad influence on Gabby.
It seemed Brian wanted Gabby all to himself.
He didn't want her socializing or going out.
Hearing that from Gabby's friend, it seemed a little odd.
Gabby, didn't have that many friends here in North Port.
She had just moved here, and so for him to be,
you know, that controlling at that time,
it just seems, you know, very manipulative.
[heavy chords]
It seemed like one of those red flags.
[sweeping music]
* *
- In Utah, Gabby wrote a postcard to Brian's nephew.
- Looking at this postcard, it's clear that Gabby
felt so connected to the Laundries.
She felt that they were one of her own,
and she was one of their own.
- We would be in touch with her every day, for the most part,
but, you know, if we were busy, or she was busy,
it would be, you know, every couple of days.
- I had spoken to her on the 24th of August.
She was in Utah.
We were working on the website for the Nomadic Statik stuff.
She was having trouble with the email.
So we worked on it together,
and we got it to work and said, "I love you,"
and she said, "I love you," back,
and "I'll talk to you in a couple days."
[dark chords]
* *
- The last text message I received from her phone
was on the 30th of August.
And it said, "Can you call Stan?"
which is her grandfather,
who she referred to as Grandpa normally.
- It was very odd to see.
- [reading]
So I said, "Okay, there's no service happening.
I'll leave her be."
And then, you know, I told her grandfather,
"Just let her be for a few days.
She's in a place with no service."
And that was the last text I received.
- We realized that's not right,
and that she wasn't planning to head to Yosemite.
They were planning on going to Yellowstone in Wyoming.
One's slightly north of where they were.
The other one's hundreds miles west,
and it didn't make sense.
- And then we started to worry.
And then when her mom called me up and said, "Hey, listen,
I haven't heard from her, you know, in a few days"...
And that's when we started making phone calls.
- Kept texting, I would text every day,
thinking I got to get a response at some point,
and that's when I started getting worried.
- It wasn't uncommon, different parts of the trip,
depending on where they were,
where they would kind of be out of range of cell services.
So sometimes the social media posts weren't every day,
but they were every couple days, and...
it just stopped.
There was nothing.
- The thoughts that were going through my head were,
"Something really bad has happened to her,"
whether it was an injury, lost or something,
and I needed to get in touch with her.
[unsettling music]
I'm thinking maybe they went a hike,
and they're hurt somewhere.
The worst things are coming into my mind.
I did text Brian's mother.
I said, "Have you heard from the kids?"
I didn't say, "Have you heard from Gabby?"
I was concerned for both of them.
Got no response.
I texted his phone, got no response.
And, I mean, I was just like, "What is going on?
Why would anybody respond to me?
I'm asking if you've heard from the kids,
and I'm getting nothing.
- It was like every parent's nightmare just, like,
in a flash of a second, we just went into,
like, autopilot as parents, like, she's gone.
She's missing.
[uneasy music]
* *
- Out of nowhere, Brian suddenly showed back up
in Florida in Gabby's white van without Gabby.
- Brian did not inform Gabby's parents
that he had gone back to Florida.
If they had a fight, if she had met somebody else
and had gone her own way,
why wouldn't he just call and tell her parents about it?
- We started making phone calls...
- That was--
- To his parents,
and no one called back, not a text, not a voicemail,
not a missed call. - Something wasn't right.
- Like, we weren't getting anything back.
- Finally, on Saturday the 11th,
I walked into a precinct and say,
"My daughter is missing."
I knew the night the detective came to my door
to tell me the van was in Florida. I knew.
[somber music]
* *
- You okay?
- I knew she was gone that night.
* *
When I knew the van was in Florida,
I knew that my daughter was gone.
I didn't know how, but I just knew.
I didn't tell anyone else that
because I had to do what I had to do.
I had to report her missing,
and, I mean, I had to get her missing pictures out there,
and I just-- We had to find her.
- Gabby's parents filed a missing persons report
on Friday, September 11th.
Brian had actually driven the van home to Florida
on September 1st,
ten days before she was actually reported missing.
Had Gabby's parents known
that Brian had come back on September 1st without her,
they obviously would have called the police much earlier.
- Can you tell us a little bit about your daughter?
- Do it.
- Gabby's 22 years old.
She's an absolutely beautiful, beautiful soul inside and out.
She's incredibly artistic, creative, loving, caring.
- We love her very much, and we miss her,
and we want her to come home.
- Is there anything you would like to say
directly to her?
- Gabby, we just want you to come home.
Call us, let us know you're okay. We just--
Come home, please.
- We miss you.
It's just scary and surreal.
You go with the motions. You don't sleep. You don't eat.
You just...like a zombie.
- We just couldn't sleep.
We were up just searching anything we could
and getting online, trying to get the word out.
Friends and family calling.
Everybody offering to help, you know, and at the time
we didn't even know where to start.
- Brian was seen mowing his lawn, running some errands,
acting very bizarrely
for somebody whose fiancée went missing.
- His family took him on a camping trip.
Who does that? You come home without your fiancée.
You're in her vehicle, and you go on a camping trip.
- Developing this morning,
an Instagram adventurer
mysteriously disappeared
during a cross-country road trip with her boyfriend.
The boyfriend's back, the van's recovered,
but there's no Gabby Petito yet.
- I was hoping it was a hoax.
Like, I was. I was, like, "So what?
"I'll take the brunt of it. I'll hide you away.
"I'll shelter you somewhere, let the media attack me.
"I've got big shoulders. I'm fine, you know,
and I'll take care of you, you know, whatever."
But--
- I tried to have as much hope as possible,
but you still have that gut feeling.
- Night I reported her missing I went onto Facebook
and created the Find Gabby page and just kind of shared it
with everybody that I'm friends with.
I said, "Please share this, my daughter's missing."
And I don't know, by the next day,
it had had, like, hundreds of thousands of shares.
- After that came out, social media went crazy.
- Gabby Petito. - Gabby Petito.
- We're talking about the Gabby Petito case.
- Gabby Petito went on several--
- Brian Laundrie...
- Everyone wants to know, what happened to Gabby?
- It started going around on TikTok and online.
"Hey, she's missing," got shared and shared.
- If you've been active on TikTok or watching the news,
you've probably heard of Gabby Petito.
- Gabby Petito's disappearance, I want it
to go as far as it can go.
- It became a big story, a big, big story.
- Things are changing by the hour.
- And I believe if my child was missing,
would I want everybody in the country
to be talking about my child missing? Yes.
- Everybody is on this case. Everybody is talking about it
because we have to find this girl.
.
[uneasy music]
* *
- I was covering the story at first,
and Gabby was missing
when the police from Moab, Utah released a 911 call.
[phone line rings]
- Grant County Sheriff's Office.
- Hi, I'd like to report a domestic dispute.
- Where's it at? - They just drove off.
They're going down Main Street--
- And what were they doing? -...but, um,
we drove by, and the gentleman was slapping the girl.
- He was slapping her? - Yes, and then we stopped.
They ran up and down the sidewalk.
He proceeded to hit her, hopped in the car,
and they drove off.
- You could hear the caller actually say that they saw
Brian slap Gabby and then chase her down the sidewalk.
- Okay. You said it's a white van?
- White Ford Transit.
So you're right there by the post office?
- Right across the street, yep.
- Okay, and when they turned on to Main Street,
they went right or left?
- Right. - Right? So they went north.
- That caller was concerned enough to call 911
and to get police out there
because he thought the worst would happen.
And then the bombshell. This video became public.
- On September 15th, the Moab Police Department in Utah,
they released this bodycam video.
- I haven't been able to bring myself
to watch it, the whole thing.
- He hasn't yet. - I can't. It's too upsetting.
- I'm sorry.
- Earlier that day, she posted to Instagram.
I would say they looked like a couple very much in love,
but then again it's all about what you see on social media.
It became very clear that Gabby's Instagram photos
of the two of them just loving their adventures together,
smiling, holding onto each other,
that this was hiding a more complex
or even tumultuous relationship.
- It was a completely different side to Gabby.
All we've seen of Gabby up until that point
were the YouTube videos
where she was extremely happy, very cheerful.
[tense music]
* *
- I wanted to jump through the screen and just hug her
and bring her home, but...
- Oh, okay, that's cool.
[heavy music]
* *
- So in a domestic dispute, you want to get their stories,
get their stories separate
so that one cannot influence the other,
so that's the reason for the separation like that.
- Brian appeared to be very calm, cool and collected.
- The fight itself according to Brian was because
he had gotten the back of the van dirty,
and that's something that was really important to Gabby
was to keep their very small, very tight living space clean.
- Gabby didn't have the OCD where everything had to have
its, you know, exact way.
You know, she wanted, you know, she wanted things clean.
- She wanted-- It was her artistic vision.
She wanted to see things in her artistic vision.
- You know, when people talk about, yes,
if she had a vision in her head for her art
or the way she wanted to have something look,
that's one thing, but she wanted things clean.
- In the Instagram and YouTube posts that Gabby
was putting out, the van was in perfect shape.
It was very carefully maintained.
And then during that bodycam footage,
we get this glimpse inside the back of the van,
and it's really in a state of chaos,
and I think that was sort of a peek behind the veil
of the sort of Insta-perfect life that they were portraying.
- But the interesting piece of this is
that she actually took responsibility
saying no, she had struck Brian first,
that then he responded by hitting her,
and then she downplays that.
"Oh, it was really just grabbing my face."
- I feel like that's almost what threw things off
a little bit is all of a sudden,
we're watching this, and she's the one saying,
no, I started it.
No, I'm the one who hit him first
when the original 911 call
was because Brian had allegedly struck her.
- They decided, having spoken to both of them
for about an hour, that the best thing to do
was just to separate them for the night,
and so they put Brian up in a hotel,
and Gabby was able to stay with the van for the evening.
- It was so, so eerie, yeah, for him to say that.
It really chills your bones.
- It makes me sad, and I wanted to hug her.
I think once the Moab video came out,
you got to see a real human behind--
everybody looks great on YouTube and Instagram,
but people got to see,
"Oh, my gosh, she's a real person with feelings,"
and...
I think that touched everyone
when they got to see that she was hurting.
Just it's amazing how so many people could relate to her.
- It was an absolutely viral video,
and, you know, this is also really
where the Internet detectives in all of this came in
and started to dissect this video.
[tense music]
- The Internet went crazy.
- This is a part of this story
that is so weird to me, okay, that we have this moment
where we see behind the scenes of their perfect
Instagram van life.
- She was just showing so many signs of a woman
that has been severely gaslit emotionally.
- First of all, there's a lot
of conjecture around a cell phone.
- He clearly has a phone. He's seen using it outside
in front of the officers in this exchange
while Gabby is using her phone in the squad car.
- It is literally 4 a.m. Where I'm at,
but I cannot sleep because of this Gabby Petito situation.
- That Brian tells police that he doesn't really have a phone
and then he says he doesn't have a phone which is,
like, either you do or you don't, bro.
It's one or the other.
- There's just so many questions
and people really want answers, including me.
- With social media,
we found there's a lot of crazy bad stuff out there,
but there's also a lot of good stuff that can come out of it.
I always say it's like a blessing and a curse,
but in this instance, it was a blessing for us.
You know, a lot more great stuff came out of it than bad.
- They're incredible, the sleuths.
- Yeah, Internet sleuths.
- The Internet sleuths, they do a great job.
They really do.
- I think the hashtag FindGabby hit, like,
over a billion people, you know.
We saw it as an opportunity to help, you know,
get the word out there, and it did.
- When we were looking for Gabby,
what I would do, I would scour Twitter,
Instagram and Facebook and Reddit and YouTube
to find clues or tips for the FBI and screenshot them,
and I probably slept about an hour a night at best.
I didn't stop.
- In addition to watching the news unfold
about what was going on with the search for Gabby,
they were also analyzing the posts on her social media.
- The thing that stood out
the most was Gabby's final post.
- Gabby is holding a knit pumpkin in her hand,
and the caption reads, "Happy Halloween,"
but it's August 25th. So it's interesting, right?
- And so that was really alarming to people.
They really didn't think she posted the image.
They really didn't think
that it was a recent photo of her either.
And then alongside that, the caption had, like,
happy Halloween, made absolutely no sense.
And so it left people
scratching their heads and confused.
- She didn't put any hashtags.
She normally likes to hashtag her journey,
and it was very short,
.
[uneasy music]
* *
- On September 16th, the North Port Police Department
held a press conference.
- Two people went on a trip.
One person returned, and that person that returned
isn't providing us any information.
- So we think Brian is holed up in his house
with his parents, not coming out,
and on the advice of their lawyer,
they were not speaking with police as well.
As a person of interest,
Brian still was not obligated to talk to police.
- A person of interest, what it means is that a person
that is potentially a subject in an investigation
but that you don't have enough information
to make that person into a chargeable person.
So a person of interest
is a person that will likely become a suspect
but is not currently a suspect.
- He is the only person who was on this trip with her.
He is the only person who is not talking right now
about where she might be.
He's not helping with the investigation.
That is so suspicious.
- We are pleading with people out there
to give us information, point us in the direction
that we need to be and help us find Gabby.
- A reporter explicitly asked,
"Hey, do you have know where Brian is?"
And the chief said, "Yeah, we do."
- Do you know where Brian Laundrie is right now?
- Yes.
- They said they were respecting his rights.
They were respecting his space as well.
- The Fifth Amendment gives them the right not to talk
and not to incriminate themselves,
so under no circumstances
are they going to be forced to talk.
- My focus isn't to bring Brian in right now.
It's to find Gabby.
Brian is exercising his constitutional rights,
and I have to respect that.
- That time when we were looking for Gabby was--
it's a blur. - Horrific.
- It's really like-- - It's horrific.
The whole time, we were trying to stay as positive as possible
that we would find her.
- All right. What I need from everybody here is help
because the goal is still not met,
and that goal is to bring Gabby home safe.
All right. And I'm asking for help from everyone here.
I'm asking for help, everyone at home.
I'm asking for help from the parents of Brian,
and I'm asking for help of the family members
and friends of the Laundrie family as well.
You know, there is a tip line that you can call anonymously.
Whatever you can do to make sure my daughter comes home,
I'm asking for that help.
- Still in the back of your head, you know,
that we wouldn't get a positive outcome,
but we tried to still have--
I think that's what we were working on.
I think that's what was keeping us going was our hope
that we would find her.
- Anything else, it comes second to this.
Thank you.
- We'll answer any follow-up questions.
Thank you.
- At that point, it was a search mission,
and it was also so fascinating
because I don't think the Internet thought
they were trying to help figure out a mystery.
- I mean, this story has--
it's gone viral in every aspect
from the investigation side of things
to people like myself that have been helping out.
I feel like I'm pretty proficient
in audio-video software, specifically video software,
so I would spend the better part of the night
and the evening looking for clues.
But there's a community of people
that have all done the same thing.
It's overencompassing, the amount of people
involved in this case. It's mind-blowing.
- And I've seen a lot of videos being like, "Oh,
why are people talking about Gabby Petito case so much?"
I think a lot of it has to do
with maybe he did just leave her somewhere.
Maybe he did just leave her and went home.
Like, there is a chance she could still be alive,
and I think people are trying to find her safe.
- I thought maybe I could help find her.
I'm really good at the Internet.
I set out my mission to see if I could find anything.
[intense music]
I looked at hundreds and hundreds of photos,
zoomed in seeing if it caught her van in the background--
- The whole Internet was obsessed with the case.
- Even restaurants, tagged images, stores.
- A group of people and I were looking through Google Images
that were posted within a certain date period
in Jackson Hole,
which is where Gabby and Brian were spotted at a restaurant.
- Anything I could find, I was looking.
Wow, on this Gabby Petito case, so hear me out, wait.
I think I found something new.
I kept thinking, you know, they were hiking.
They could be on trails. What are the trails?
I found a trail app, AllTrails.
Well, I found Gabby Petito's and all the trails she saved.
I was like, this is crazy. She could be in this area,
hoping people locally would go look
or, you know, volunteers,
and then I passed it onto the FBI as well.
Here we go, Grand Teton Park, Grand Teton Park,
Colter Bay, Colter Bay. Now here we go.
- No matter where you go, there's always people.
There's always pictures being taken.
They were truly never alone.
- Now starts north of Colter Bay,
it goes way up into the middle of nowhere.
I was hoping he left her somewhere,
and people could find her.
Maybe she was lost. That's what I was hoping for.
- On the morning of September 17th,
I went to North Port outside the Brian Laundrie house,
and it was just chaotic.
- Arrest Brian! Arrest Brian! Arrest Brian!
Bring Gabby home!
Where's Gabby, Laundries? Where's Gabby?
Where's Gabby!
- We had residents.
We had people really from all over the state of Florida
in front of the Laundrie home just yelling,
"Hey, Brian, speak to police. Tell us what's going on."
Everyone believed that he was inside of that house
alongside with his parents.
- I was there for the better part of the day
until the police started showing up.
Us reporters, you know,
there's a gang of us outside the house.
We're standing around.
- Where is Gabby? - We were all so confused.
We didn't know what was going on.
We thought that the police
were going to bring Brian out in handcuffs.
- Where's Gabby? Where's Gabby!
- And, you know, people were yelling,
and they had signs,
and it was just a circus outside of the Laundrie house.
It was like a scene out of a movie.
There was so much noise.
- Where's Gabby? Where's Gabby!
- I see a couple of police officers leave,
and we then find out that his parents
were there talking to the officers
because they were filing a missing person report,
so Brian was not in the house like we had thought.
He was gone.
- I thought I couldn't be more surprised after that.
Then the revelation that he had been missing four days before
and that they had waited four days
to call the police and tell them.
- You think, oh, it can't get more weird.
.
- Brian is now missing. The internet went crazy.
[intense music]
- The motherlover is missing.
- How did Brian leave his parents' house
without nobody seeing him?
- When I found out about this information,
I was just kind of like, what the hell is this all about?
- I find it so crazy that all of a sudden,
they're saying that Brian Laundrie
is a missing person as well. He's not a suspect.
- How does he get away? How?
You have him home at his house with his parents.
He's there, you know, and he gets away?
He could have gotten away any other time,
but he's right there. It was crazy.
- When Chris and Roberta Laundrie
did eventually tell authorities that their son was missing,
they said he'd gone to the Carlton Reserve.
- The 24,000-acre preserve is about the size of Manhattan
to put it in perspective,
and so you have a starting point for Brian
to look for him.
It is the difficulty of this area being flooded
that makes this into a very difficult case.
There are wild boar. There are alligators.
There are snakes.
There are all kinds of dangers there that made it difficult
for law enforcement to operate in that environment.
- So we later learned that Roberta Laundrie
drove Brian's Mustang back to the family home,
and it was at that point that one of the surveillance team
from North Port Police saw Mrs. Laundrie,
thought it was Brian Laundrie returning to the family home,
and so they were under the mistaken belief
that Brian was at home.
- But, you know, people want to know, where is Brian,
and can we get him to tell us what happened?
- From a social media standpoint, it amped up.
They really, really wanted to find Brian.
- It seems like the more and more social media
dives into this case,
the odd eerie facts continue to come out.
- Everybody wanted answers.
Everybody is thirsty for answers.
- I'ma keep y'all updated
on everything going on.
This case has my full attention, you guys.
* *
- They're using their spare time and their passion
for this to, you know, try to help.
- I thought, well, you know what?
Maybe this is going to work.
Maybe, you know, someone is going to come up with a clue.
I was not prepared
for the type of clue that happened along the way.
- Y'all, look at this. It's the freaking Tetons.
It's been on our bucket list forever. I know it's been on--
- The Bethunes are a family from the Tampa area.
- Pretty cool. - Yeah, I mean,
without the smoke, it would be, like, even more spectacular,
but...
- They're also a van life family.
They have a couple of kids, a couple of dogs,
a little bit of bigger van obviously to hold this family,
but they were on a similar trek.
- Let's keep driving to our spot, Captain, Captain Kyle.
- The Bethune family had been traveling through
the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming on 27 August.
- They were also in the Grand Tetons at the exact same time,
and they had a dashcam, and then all of a sudden,
it struck the owner of that YouTube channel,
and she was like, hey, I think I saw that van.
So she went back, took a closer look and there it was.
- On August 27, 2021, we got camera footage
going through the Grand Tetons Park around 6 to 6:30 p.m.
- When the YouTube video came out with Gabby's van,
I was like, oh, my gosh.
- As we're coming up on it,
we're approaching it up here on the left-hand side.
This is most definitely Gabby Petito's Ford Transit van.
Here it is on the left.
- But the fact that they drove through at that time,
at that day, at that precise moment
and just happened to hit record, it's like, wow.
- Immediately, everyone across the internet, YouTube,
Instagram, Twitter, even TikTok were deciphering this video.
I was as well looking at it.
What could you see? What could you not see?
- If you look in the far left,
there's a little bit of a shadow,
so somebody think someone is digging there?
- So I zoomed in on the screen recording
where people are thinking
that we see somebody digging on the video.
- Here, let me just highlight this right here, okay,
is where they think that it's a shadow of someone digging.
- There was a lot of things going around,
all kinds of weird conspiracy theories, so I took that film.
I got the 4K version,
and I went through it with my software
to start debunking these theories.
[uneasy music]
Putting the film inside of the software
helped me slow things down,
really clearly show that what people were saying
was happening wasn't actually happening.
When I zoomed in to see that, I saw something new.
I was able to go through and blow it up
and work my magic to stabilize it
and essentially enhance the footage.
When I zoomed in... I saw the door close.
It completely blew my mind and sent a chill up my spine.
When I saw that, I instantly knew
that there was life in that van.
- I watched that video of the van
and seeing the door closing, like, probably 100 times.
I was like, I really believed
that was Gabby closing the door on the van,
so I just kept watching it. I don't know.
- The law enforcement agencies were already
in that area searching,
but it just basically helped them
pinpoint the site where the van was.
- And that was a giant break,
and I know that the FBI were tipped off to that location,
and that's why they started their grid search.
That was massive.
- I think everybody was still at that point in time
holding onto a little bit of hope
that maybe it was an accident, or something happened.
She disappeared. She's hiding.
- I was in Wyoming when they were looking for Gabby.
It struck me pretty quickly
that it was unlikely that she was just lost.
It could be 80 degrees in the middle of the afternoon,
but at night it got as cold as 27 degrees, you know.
It was a very big temperature swing,
and I just can't imagine anyone being able to survive
that without the proper camping gear,
you know, without shelter.
- So a body has been found in the area
that they were searching for Gabby Petito.
Now I can't say this is Gabby or not, but if it is,
it makes me really sad because I was hoping.
I was really hoping by chance they could find her alive.
- Earlier today, human remains were discovered
consistent with the description
of Gabrielle "Gabby" Petito.
Full forensic identification has not been completed
to confirm 100 percent that we found Gabby,
but her family has been notified of this discovery.
- So when Gabby was found, you know,
there still was some testing that needed to be done,
but based on the stuff that she was wearing,
we were confident in what was being said to us
and what was being relayed to us.
- You still don't want to believe it.
You still don't want to hear it.
Your body goes in complete and utter shock
that you're hearing this information,
and it's like your whole world is destroyed.
- The hope goes away. - The hope.
- First and foremost, on behalf of the FBI personnel
and our partners, I would like to extend sincere
and heartfelt condolences to Gabby's family.
- Even though I knew I was going to get the call,
I just didn't want the call.
- Once they discovered Gabby's body in Wyoming,
the focus of the story then immediately turned to Brian.
Where is Brian Laundrie,
and is he going to get arrested?
.
- We still at that point didn't know how Gabby died.
Did she accidentally fall and hit her head, you know?
Did something happen? It became a intense inquiry.
Where is Brian, and what does he have to tell us?
- The anger just from the public,
it was all pointed towards Brian's parents.
- There were journalists camped outside the front of the house
trying to get answers,
being stonewalled by the Laundrie parents.
- The FBI is on a manhunt for Brian Laundrie.
To search the terrain in someplace
like the Carlton Reserve is so difficult.
The number one thing you need is manpower.
You need the proper vehicles,
and drones are crucial in this case
because they have special devices that can be used
to track things like heat, heat of a human.
- There were multiple K-9 units from surrounding
police departments that all came into North Port
in order to conduct this search.
ATVs, swamp buggies, more vehicles than I could name
were coming in and out of the park,
and you could tell it was one of those efforts
where they were going to search every single corner
of it no matter what.
They were also focused on those walking trails very close
to the entrance of the park that Brian was known to go.
- Brian was very upset when he left,
and Chris conveyed to me several times that,
you know, he wished he didn't let him go,
but he couldn't stop him.
Brian is a grown man, young man, 22 years old.
He wanted to walk out the door.
He was entitled to walk out the door.
- On Sunday, Gabby's body was discovered in Wyoming.
By Monday morning, the FBI was at the Laundrie home.
Tuesday is when we learned it was indeed Gabby's body
and that she died by homicide.
It was shocking, you know?
It was like a crescendo of incidents.
- Yeah, it was just-- It's still unbelievable.
I don't understand it.
- Yeah. It's-- - It doesn't make sense.
- No. I have no words for it.
- I know that I speak for myself and the entire world
that's watching when I say this that I wish
we would have had a better outcome.
- We all pretty much knew this is what they were going to say.
Now they need to find Brian.
And I hate to say this, but I hope he's alive and well,
so he can suffer in jail for the rest of his life.
[somber music]
* *
- We have some huge breaking news
in the Gabby Petito case.
The FBI issued a federal arrest warrant
for Brian Laundrie.
- But it's not for homicide. It's for bank fraud.
- Ten minutes to air, we're all out there.
We're reading the bulletin from the FBI
and realizing it's for transaction of roughly $1,000
that Brian used on someone else's bank card.
- We found out that from Steven Bertolino,
the Laundrie lawyer, that it was Gabby's
bank account that Brian had used.
- This is not the charge that you're chasing Brian for.
You want to get Brian for the murder of his fiancée, Gabby.
But in the meantime, this is a legal device that could be used
to be able to secure future arrest warrants
or secure future search warrants.
- He's wanted on a federal arrest warrant,
and they'd be able to detain him.
So this was really meant, I think,
to help rev up the search.
- After that federal warrant was issued for Brian's arrest,
social media went into overdrive.
- Looking for Brian,
poring through his Pinterest accounts,
his Spotify playlists,
anything really to search for signs
about where he might be.
- When an Instagram Live was made for 3 seconds,
and all you saw was someone in a boat and a body of water,
they all speculated that that was Brian.
He's on the run, and he's taunting people.
- He appeared on Instagram Live accidentally
for two to three seconds,
and viewers saw water, as if he were on a boat.
- The Internet erupted. Social media went crazy.
- Two seconds in a boat surrounded by water.
- If you go live, doesn't it show you where you are?
So--My gut tells me tonight this guy is going to be found.
- There was someone sitting there,
clearly a foot with a camo Croc shoe,
and people were saying, "Oh, well, is this a sign
that Brian Laundrie is still alive?"
This is fake. I know it's fake, and I'm going to find it.
I have to find the original.
[intense music]
- You guys want to know where that screen recording
of Brian Laundrie on the boat actually came from?
I'll tell you. It didn't come from Brian.
I found the original video
was from a TikToker from Florida from 2020.
Someone--he had taken just a little snippet of the video
and used that to claim it was Brian Laundrie on a boat.
Brian Laundrie did not accidentally go live.
There's multiple buttons you have to press to do that.
- It's quite possible that they are just posting these videos
to get more viewers.
- I've learned two things from this.
Social media can help, but it can also hurt with rumors
and false accusations and things like that.
They're not sorry for what they do.
People believe it.
They fall for it because everyone wants, you know,
something crazier out of this.
It has to get crazier. People like that.
- On September 26th, before Gabby's remains
were even able to be brought back to New York,
her family held a memorial service for her,
and it was a very touching ceremony.
They put it out on a live link so people could watch.
- Gabby is the most amazing person I've ever met.
So if you're going to leave here today,
I'm asking that you guys be inspired
by the way she treated people, all people.
- You had people turning up to the memorial
who didn't know Gabby
but just felt a connection to her.
You had people tuning in online
who really needed to grieve,
who really felt connected to her and to this tragic case.
- And it was a beautiful day. It was--
The funeral home did a great job,
and all of the people that came out supported us.
It was amazing.
It was a really, really beautiful tribute to her life.
- This trip you guys want to take, take it now.
Do it now while you got the time.
If there is a relationship that you're in that
might not be the best thing for you, leave it now.
- Get out, get out before it's too late.
I mean, you can't help but wonder if he was
directly referring to, you know, Gabby's situation.
- He did tell me to shut up. - After Gabby's memorial,
there was an intense feeling of frustration
among the public about, where is Brian Laundrie?
You know, we'd seen the body cam footage from Moab.
- He, like, grabbed my face and was, like, like this.
- There was just an intense desire
.
[moody music]
* *
- They said Gabby died by homicide fairly quickly
after her body was discovered, but we never knew how she died.
We had to wait three weeks for that information.
- The Teton County Coroner Office
is filing the following verdict
in the death of Gabrielle Venora Petito.
We hereby find the cause and manner of death to be,
the cause--
death by strangulation, and manner is homicide.
Her body was outside in the wilderness
for three to four weeks.
- He wouldn't say much during that announcement,
citing state laws.
He wouldn't answer big questions like,
what state was her body in?
- But at the end he slips.
Somebody asks him, "You've done missing person cases before.
"Have you ever dealt with a case
that has received this much media attention?"
- Unfortunately, this is only one of many deaths
around the country of people
who are involved in domestic violence.
- He characterizes this as a domestic violence case.
He doesn't say who did it,
but, you know, the internet went crazy.
- Just a warning, this information
could definitely be triggering to some.
- The coroner most of the time won't give their own thoughts
and interpretations of the results of their work,
but this coroner did.
- Now we know some big pieces finally.
- There were criminal charges against Brian Laundrie.
He used Gabby Petito's credit card,
but he was not a criminal suspect
in the case of her death at that point.
- Right after this news conference ended,
we were emailed a copy of the determination of death,
and it was actually manual strangulation/throttling.
It's a very violent and personal death.
To hear that she had died
in this horrible and very personal way,
I think really hurt a lot of people.
- The mood really just changed to, who did it,
and why is there no suspect?
Why is there no arrest warrant?
Why are there no charges? Really everyone was thinking,
"Only Brian can provide the answers."
- Haywood County 911.
What's the location of your emergency?
- People were saying that they saw Brian everywhere,
and we constantly hear that he's in this state
and then that state. It becomes chaotic.
- People thinking he could be in the Appalachian Trails.
He could be in Mexico. He could be in Canada.
- He was acting funny,
and I'm 99.99% sure that was him.
- Everyone thought that
they were seeing Brian Laundrie somewhere.
- There was a sighting of him
in a Walmart in Tillmans Corner in Alabama.
- There's a lot of people that look like Brian Laundrie.
- I don't personally think that Brian is
in the Carlton Reserve, where they've been searching.
I think that that was a diversion.
- But there was some information they had
that kept sending them back to the reserve.
Every day the search would go on for hours,
and we'd be out there waiting, and they would find nothing,
like, literally not one piece of evidence.
And so a lot of us were questioning,
why do they keep going back to this reserve?
- We just have to believe that they know what they're doing.
- So the manhunt continues.
Let's just all hope that this guy is brought in alive.
- On October 19th, part of the reserve
was open to the public
for the first time since this all began.
That marked an end to a chapter in the story.
They had been searching this place for more than a month.
They haven't been able to find anything.
They're going to open it to the public now.
What I wasn't prepared for was the day after it was opened,
that Chris and Roberta Laundrie,
while searching with the FBI, found some of Brian's
belongings, his backpack and a notebook.
- And it was quite soon after that
that the human remains were located.
* *
- According to the Laundrie attorney,
Brian's parent alerted the FBI last night
they wanted to search the park,
met them here this morning and then went to a trail,
where they found Brian's belongings.
- Almost within half an hour to an hour,
they had located Brian's backpack.
- And late this afternoon,
North Port police clarified exactly what they found.
They described it as skeletal remains.
- Earlier today, investigators found what appears to be
human remains along with personal items,
such as a backpack and notebook belonging to Brian Laundrie.
I know you have a lot of questions,
but we don't have all the answers yet.
- Is it him? Is it not him? Too many speculations.
- It is crazy. If this is, in fact, him,
I mean, there's so many people confirming it.
Why would his parents go there if it wasn't,
all this kind of stuff, right?
- The remains that they retrieved from the reserve
matched the dental records of Brian Laundrie,
and that's how they were able to confirm.
- I see Twitter going, like, crazy.
And it's been confirmed. The human remains
that they found are indeed Brian Laundrie.
- Brian Laundrie is no more,
and for a lot of people, this is a relief.
- That was probably one of the oddest days
in my career thus far.
The Laundries show up,
crack of dawn to the very same park
that his Mustang was parked at now over four weeks ago,
going back in once again to look for their son,
and this just happens to be the time that they find an item
belonging to him in a place
that had already been searched many, many times.
- You telling me that all of these trained professionals
could not find any of this stuff,
but the father just so happened went to the exact place
where Brian Laundrie was and found his bag?
- Everyone is like, "How the heck could the parents
find these things
when the FBI and police have been searching?"
- Back in September,
the reserve was 75 percent covered in water.
When Roberta and Chris Laundrie
returned to that park in that very spot,
the water had receded considerably.
- They said he had gone to hike trails there.
These were trails that he was familiar with.
- That's why they were able to find his belongings
and then his partial human remains.
- The items that were located today
perhaps couldn't be seen.
We're not just saying it. I'm not just saying it.
The FBI is saying it. Everyone is saying it,
and yet these platforms are still running amok
with these ludicrous and, I have to say,
you know, nonsensical theories
of the parents planting things there.
I mean, enough is enough.
The Laundries have been cooperating with
law enforcement both locally
and federally since day one with respect to Brian.
- So the notebook may be the key.
It could tell us what went through Brian Laundrie's mind,
what his actions were, why he did what he did.
It could provide a confession.
That confession will lock him in to the crime,
but we may never know exactly what was in there.
- I really don't know what justice for Gabby
looks like at this point.
The one person who probably knows what happened
and why she died is dead.
- This is tragic, but I will tell you this tragedy
brings us all together, and the end result is one team,
one family working to bring closure.
Again, our thoughts and prayers are with the family members,
and it's a tragedy. Thank you.
- You cannot try a dead person.
So there is no case that is going to be brought forward
against Brian Laundrie in this matter.
If there's no criminal investigation,
there's no criminal prosecution in this case
that is going to be brought forward.
For the most part, this case is, in reality, ended.
- Okay, so it's just been confirmed
that the cause of death is a gunshot wound to the head,
and the manner of death is suicide.
This is in relation to Brian Laundrie.
- This case was one of those things that just--
it was crazy from the beginning,
from the get-go.
But there it is. But there's more questions, right?
Where's the gun? Where is the gun?
I mean, they told us everything else they found.
Why didn't they say, "We found a gun, as well"?
Why didn't they say that?
Why are they not able to get anything from the notebook?
Like, where's that update?
Is the end of the case for Gabby?
- We may never know why, now that they're both dead.
We may never know why this happened
and why it had to end this tragically.
* *
- Gabby's story got a lot of attention,
and everyone deserves a lot of attention,
especially if they go missing.
- I want Gabby's legacy to prevent this
from happening to someone else.
Even if it's just one, that's something. That's a lot.
- We received a tremendous outpouring of support
from our community, from our friends,
our family, from people all across the world,
and we were very lucky to have that,
and we want to be able to use the platform
that we made for Gabby as that voice for other people.
- It's amazing how many people have reached out to us,
either saying their story or how Gabby inspired them
to leave an abusive relationship.
It makes you feel, like, that her light did reach the world.
Her light, her bright beautiful light touched a lot of people.
- You see how much the planet has come together for Gabby.
So we should do that for others, too,
because everybody deserves to feel safe at home.
Everybody deserves to be found that is missing, everyone.
- It makes me proud of her
that she put herself out there,
and everybody fell in love with her,
and I am just really proud of her.
Her and her legacy are gonna do so much to help everyone.
- I miss seeing her.
I miss hugging her. I miss calling her.
I miss hearing her say, "I love you, too."
- Gabby Petito never goes outside.
- I find myself watching that video that she had online
just so I can hear her voice again.
- The tent is just coming in on me.
The wind is so bad!
- Just so I can hear her.
- I've just been sitting here like this for a while.