Gabby Petito: Police find suspect friend’s body

In US nature reserve
While searching for Gabby Petito’s friend: Police discover human remains and personal belongings

22-year-old Gabby Petito disappeared while traveling across the country with her boyfriend in a converted motorhome. Her body was later found.

Gabby Petito was strangled while on a road trip with her boyfriend. The suspect has disappeared without a trace for weeks. Now the police have found his body on the Carlton reservation in Florida.

When searching for the fiancé of Gabby Petito, who was killed on a US road trip, the police found suspected human remains. They were discovered together with “personal items” such as a backpack and a notebook of the wanted Brian Laundrie in a nature reserve in the state of Florida, as an investigator from the US Federal Police FBI said on the spot on Wednesday. “The objects were found in an area that was under water until recently.”

The investigations at the site should take days, said FBI investigator Michael McPherson. “I know you have a lot of questions, but we don’t have all the answers yet,” he added to the journalists present.

Brian Laundrie’s parents helped

The FBI had previously stated that the search for Laundrie had discovered “items of interest” in the Carlton Reserve. The 23-year-old lived in the nearby town of North Port in southwest Florida.

Laundrie’s parents sent word through their lawyer that they had joined the police in the area to find their son that morning. “After a quick search near a path Brian used frequently, some items were found by Brian.”

Fall creates international media interest

The Petito case has been keeping the US in suspense for weeks and is also generating international media interest. The 22-year-old disappeared while traveling across the United States with her fiancé. Her body was finally discovered after a feverish search in mid-September in Grand Teton National Park in the state of Wyoming in the western United States. She was strangled, according to forensic medicine.

Laundrie had initially returned alone from the trip to Florida in early September, where he lived with Petito. When Petito’s parents reported their daughter missing, the 23-year-old initially refused to testify and eventually disappeared. He was subsequently wanted by an arrest warrant – not directly for Petito’s death, but for credit card fraud after the death of his fiancée.

The dispute caused a police operation

The case also caused so much attention because the couple shared their experiences during the adventure originally planned for four months on the online services Instagram and Youtube. The photos showed a smiling couple and impressive landscapes.

However, there were apparently arguments between Petito and Laundrie during the trip. Police were called in an incident in Utah state in August. Petito can be seen crying on a police officer’s body camera saying that she hit her fiancé and he grabbed her.

The interest in the case took on bizarre traits: Countless Internet users took part in the search for Petito in the online networks, and a bounty hunter known from a reality TV show joined the search for her fiancé.

Forensic doctor criticizes “media circus”

Critics have raised the question of whether the case is getting so much attention because Petito is white – pointing out that the disappearance of young African-Americans and Latinos is much less covered.

The coroner who autopsied Petito’s body recently criticized a “media circus”. Unfortunately, Petito is just one of many domestic violence victims, he said. Much less is reported about these cases, and that is “regrettable”.

tkr
AFP

source site