For months, the Gabby Petito case has garnered the attention of millions as the almost unreal experience has unfolded. The murder of the vanlife YouTuber and subsequent disappearance of her fiancé and lead suspect, Brian Laundrie, have dominated the news cycle as America latched onto the case. As new details have come to light and questions have been left unanswered, the case has struck a national nerve, sparking conversations about everything from race to police response.
Deaths and Disappearances
While the couple’s travels began in June, the real start of the case began Aug. 12, when police in Moab, Utah, responded to a report of a dispute between the two. The 911 caller described watching Laundrie hit Petito, and officers confirmed that the pair had been involved in an altercation, but neither wished to press charges. Officers suggested that they spend the night apart and then left the scene.
The first of many issues in this case, the officers’ response has been both praised and questioned.
“From a criminal justice perspective and coming to this as a thirty-year attorney, I am not happy with how the police handled the situation when they spoke with the two of them along the highway,” Miguel Rivera, criminal justice professor at JBU, said. “The phone calls and the descriptions of the events that led to the police visit, coupled with Petito’s emotional state, were sufficient, I think, to at a minimum require taking Laundrie into custody for questioning. Instead, the police seemed to label Laundrie the victim, despite the observations from the callers. That has been confusing to me from the beginning.”
Others had different opinions. Ria Coffey, junior criminal justice major, said she was impressed. “As a woman, I am very grateful for the way the officer handled it. As an advocate for police reform, one of those things I believe we should change is a much better education of psychology and mental health for law enforcement officers. This officer that was on the body cam footage passed with flying colors. Great job in terms of acknowledging she was very anxious. He did a great job of following the law in a way that was compassionate.”
The couple ended up in the Teton Range in Wyoming. Multiple people reported giving rides to Laundrie, who had been hitchhiking between Aug. 29 and Aug. 30. He was alone in each account. The last text that Petito sent to her mother was on Aug. 30, although the Petito family believe she was not the one to send the text.
On Sept. 1, Laundrie returned to the North Port, Fla. home that he shared with both Petito and his parents. On Sept. 11, Petito’s family, who lives in New York, reported her missing. CNN reports that “Petito’s family reached out to Laundrie’s family earlier in the month for information on Petito’s whereabouts, but his family refused to answer.”
On Sept. 19, two days after Brian Laundrie was reported missing, Gabby Petito’s remains were found in Teton County, Wyoming. The search for Brian was still ongoing, and a federal arrest warrant is issued for him on Sept. 23. After a few weeks, authorities announced on Oct. 12 that Petito’s official cause of death was strangulation.
While Petito’s cause of death had been revealed, Laundrie had still been missing for almost a month. The search was massive, with law enforcement, everyday social media users and even Dog the Bounty Hunter joining in to find the suspected killer. Finally, on Oct. 20, Laundrie’s parents found remains in Florida’s Carlton Reserve, and they were confirmed to be Brian’s a day later.
The Larger Issues
The case took over news cycles and social media feeds for months, and the coverage had a grip on everyone as it played out, as Coffey put it, “like an episode of Criminal Minds.”
However, for many, this has been more than just a murder case. It represents how all kinds of social issues are being revealed to the public in real time.
One of the many issues involves gender and the way that Petito’s fiancé—someone who should have been trustworthy—was willing and able to kill her. “She probably wasn’t expecting this from him,” Coffey said. “As a woman, this is confirmation for me that you can’t trust anyone. They were engaged. I am married. We should be able to trust people, and we do, but it’s hard to get that little bug out of your head telling you that you can’t trust anyone.”
The case also wrestles with the relationship between race and media. Many have felt that the coverage is representative of a systemic racial bias in the way that media cover crime. Rivera commented, “The Gabby Petito case is just another in a long line of examples of how the public and the media give massively more time, ink, words, pictures, video and commentary to the disappearance, and eventual death, of a pretty, blonde, white girl than to the hundreds of Native American, African American and Hispanic American women who go missing and are found dead each year.” He continued, “I am not saying that Gabby’s disappearance and death are not newsworthy; I am saying that the disappearances and deaths of women of color are just as newsworthy and either we give all the same attention, or we give none such bloated attention. This public and media bias is plain for us all to see.”
Coffey shared a similar take: “Something that bothers me about this case is how this is one young, white woman and one young, white man. How many hundreds of thousands of young women and people of color, specifically Native Americans, go missing daily—are killed daily—and there is no coverage. Maybe local, but not much else, when every news outlet in America is talking about Gabby and Brian.”
“The fact that this is probably going to get a Netflix documentary when there are hundreds of minorities going missing every day that no one talks about is problematic,” Coffey continued. “Sure, justice for Gabby, but what about everyone else? Justice for, you know, start listing the names. The media handled this in a way that prioritized it over national politics that will affect our lives as well as prioritized this over other victims, and that really bothers me.”
The role of the media in general is largely in question here, as some feel that the involvement of social media users has overstepped its usefulness and has added to the difficulty of this case. Coffey said, “There is certainly value in employing users of social media in bringing justice—with extreme amounts of caution. In the Gabby Petito case, it is really unhelpful. There’s only one perpetrator. We aren’t trying to track down hundreds of people. We ought to be careful when hypothetically deputizing all of social media. I’m excited to see this generation in law enforcement. We’ve seen so much go wrong that we wish that we could do better, but we can’t because we aren’t there yet. We are close though. TikTok, and other services, can be a great tool, or a great weapon.”
What Happens Next
With Laundrie found dead, this ultimately appears to be a shut case. What happens next is a huge question. With the fear of justice lost and the possibility of further involvement from Laundrie’s parents, there is still potentially more to this case.
“Legally, no, there is no justice lost,” Coffey said. “He’s dead. Who can they charge? Maybe his parents, and they should probably be charged to the fullest extent. I refuse to believe it was a shock to them that Gabby was dead. That’s probably as good as it gets.”
She continued, “Socially, yes, there is dissatisfaction there. I can’t pin it on anyone because I feel that everyone is doing what they can. Not only is this going unpunished, but it’s going unpunishable. There’s not much that can be done to remedy that.”
As far as actual legal proceedings go, Laundrie’s parents, Chris and Roberta Laundrie, have been under the microscope for most of the case. After refusing to help in the search for Gabby, they notably went on a trip with their son just days after he returned to North Port.
For now, the people will have to wait for answers. This may be the end of the case, or it could be just the beginning.
Photo courtesy of Gabby Petito’s Instagram account.