[unsettling music playing]
[indistinct chatter]
[reporter] This breaking news just moments ago.
Authorities say Brian is also missing.
[reporter 2] Dozens of protesters descended on the Florida neighborhood
where Brian Laundrie's parents reside today…
[reporter 3] …saying they're not gonna leave until they get answers.
Clear the road!
A tremendous twist in this case. We now have two missing young people.
My first reaction when I saw that Brian was missing was like,
"No, he's not. He's running."
[reporter 4] Nobody knows where he is. Not police, not FBI.
His parents say they don't know either.
Experts have been asking is this someone
who seems like they would take their own life,
or is this more like somebody who would take off.
[Tara] I mean, Gabby was still missing,
and the one person that was with her now is gone.
[Nichole] It's turning from Gabby to Brian,
and I was still thinking, "I haven't found my daughter yet. I need to find my child."
[Loretta] The media shifted their attention to Brian missing,
but at this point in the investigation,
we needed a body to prove a crime.
We could not arrest Brian.
Our sole focus became finding Gabby.
[dramatic sting]
[reporter] Still no word from authorities about her whereabouts.
[reporter 2] Authorities are asking anyone who saw the couple to contact the FBI.
[Kyle] We asked for the public's help, and they more than responded.
We began receiving
around two to three hundred tips per day, throughout the whole country.
Today, someone posted that they found a picture of Gabby
in the background of another person's tagged photo.
[tense music playing]
[Norma Jean] I was just scrolling through my phone,
and there was a TikTok post
from a girl named Miranda.
Hi, my name is Miranda Baker, and on August 29th,
my boyfriend and I picked up Brian at Grand Teton National Park.
I'm hoping this can help someone identify him
because I saw him from TikTok.
I was thinking to myself, "That sounds like the person that I picked up."
So, I immediately I called the Teton County Sheriff.
[music continues]
[Matt] The last known location of the van
was a critical piece of the puzzle for us narrowing down our search area.
I feel like it was, like, the second week of September
is when we started really hearing something about Gabby.
When you hear a nomad go missing,
it… it spreads pretty quickly in the community.
Social media, it was everywhere.
[woman] They haven't fully identified it as Gabby…
[Jenn] And we were paying attention to the timeline.
The FBI was estimating the 21st through the 24th,
and so we weren't even there at that time.
[tense music playing]
[Kyle Bethune] On August 27th,
we were just looking for a place to stay over the night.
Our friends said, "Uh, Spread Creek, go check it out."
[Jenn] We came, we slept, and then we went on our way.
I was editing our YouTube video from the Spread Creek timeline
of August 27th,
and I was sitting next to my phone,
and I got this notification from one of our RV friends,
and they said, "Red White and Bethune, check any footage you have."
"The timeline has changed."
I read the National Park Service post,
and it said August 27th or 28th.
All the color and blood and life drained from my body
because I was, like, "I have it."
[music continues]
[music builds]
That's her van.
That's Gabby's van.
I said, "We're posting this."
And I said, "We got to get it out here, now."
By the time we woke up the next day, it was up over around a million views.
I almost jumped out of my seat. There's the van. They got it.
[Kyle] I was at the forward command post when we received the Bethune video,
and it did appear to be the Spread Creek area.
Once I got to the spot where their van had been parked,
I was able to look at the video and see that the trees lined up,
and the marks on the ground where the camper van had been lined up.
This allowed us to corroborate the information that we already had
from the phone companies, to give us a much better search area.
[dramatic sting]
[unsettling music playing]
[Matt] On the second day of our search,
we were focusing basically on the river bottom,
near the area where they were last known to be camping.
Horseback is a really good way to search wilderness areas,
so we had a horse team that was working their way up Spread Creek,
as well as our team on foot.
All of a sudden,
one of the team members saw what they believed was a body of an individual.
She was laying on her side.
Uh, she was wrapped up in a sweater.
The last time we had confirmation that Gabby was alive was on August 27th.
We didn't find her until September 19th.
So between that time frame, we believe she had been in that same position.
In front of her was a burn scar on the ground,
as if somebody had tried to light a small fire,
but we didn't find any fire-starting materials.
Her boots were off,
and they were next to her body and next to that fire.
She was not laying in a natural position,
and it appeared to the investigators at that time
that the crime scene had been staged.
[helicopter rotors whirring]
[Kyle] We had instituted a no-fly zone over the National Park.
However, there were still news organizations
that were sending helicopters towards our search area.
We needed to very quickly protect the crime scene,
as well as Gabby's dignity.
Later on, the coroner ruled that Gabby's death was a homicide,
as a result of blunt force trauma and manual strangulation.
[melancholy music playing]
[Matt] It was
just a lot of mixed emotions.
I think we were all hoping for a different outcome.
The FBI supervisor went immediately to inform the family,
so that they would hear from us and not from the national media.
[music fades]
[morose music playing]
[Jim] The morning of the 19th,
they told us that, uh, they… they had
found remains consistent with our daughter Gabby.
And I said, "Are you sure?"
"You… you have to be sure because I have to make this call."
He said, "I'm going to show you this, and I don't want to, but…
there's some stuff on here maybe you can identify."
It was Gabby…
[quivering breath]
…laying on the ground,
on her left side in a fetal position.
Just… Her hair, coming out of her hood that was over her head.
[sobs]
Just laying… [voice breaks]
…laying there on the ground for weeks.
In the wild.
[shaky breath]
Just left there like she was a piece of trash,
by someone who was supposed to love her.
[sobs]
And I collapsed to the ground. And I had to pick up the phone…
and compose myself
and call Niki
and get Joe on the phone and Tara in a conference call
and tell them, from 2,000 miles away, that our daughter was dead.
It was the worst phone call I've ever made in my life.
[deep breath]
I remember on September 19th, that I got a phone call
that I'd never see my daughter again.
[Tara] I don't remember anything.
[inhales deeply]
[exhales]
It's the worst day
of our life.
[Joe] I think about the last moments a lot.
I'm sure she was… scared.
And any time she was scared, she would call me or Jim, you know,
you or Niki.
So.
I don't know who she called out for.
[music continues]
[Nichole] I opened the back sliding door
because the kids were sitting outside during the call,
and I said, "Everybody, come inside,"
'cause I wanted to be the one to tell my kids.
[man] It was the worst feeling I'd ever felt.
I definitely broke down, like, really hard.
I… I don't honestly even know if it's still, like, fully hit me.
[Nichole] That was the first time I saw the girls break down.
[voice breaks] They knew their sister was never coming home.
[sniffling]
[pensive music playing]
[Rose] I got a text message from a reporter.
He said, "Did you see the news?"
My heart sunk.
And he said, "They found a body."
And that was the first time in my life that I could say I was truly speechless.
I've never felt something like that before.
I think the worst thing is, it's not even a loss.
It's someone being taken.
Somebody else decided that they had the right
to take somebody you love out of your life… forever.
Breaking news tonight on the disappearance of Gabby Petito…
[Jackson] I was watching a news broadcast,
and they had a breaking news story that they had found her body.
I was devastated.
She was my first love.
[friend] When the news had broke
that they had found her body,
I just didn't know what to think of it, you know.
I just wanted to shut it off or wake up,
like it was, you know, a bad dream or something.
[uneasy music building]
[tense music playing]
[Kyle] Once we found Gabby,
that really just expanded the investigation.
We now have to start shifting our focus to who is the suspect,
and how do we start building this evidence so we can
prosecute this case down the road.
We know that on August 27th,
around one o'clock,
Brian and Gabby were at a restaurant in Jackson called Merry Piglets.
While there, a female said she witnessed
Gabby and Brian having some sort of an argument.
It looked as though Brian was really upset.
Pissed off, I would say. He was angry.
They got up very abruptly and just like, you know, walked out the restaurant.
Gabby was really upset. She was crying.
[Jackson] When I got the call on the 27th,
I think back on the fact that maybe if I did answer that phone call,
I could've helped, or there could've been a different outcome.
[Kyle] After that, they went to the Whole Foods
where they were seen on camera.
[music continues]
Once they leave the Whole Foods,
they begin to drive up to the Spread Creek area from Jackson.
Video taken by the Bethunes show the white van on the side of the road
between 6:00 and 6:30 p.m.
[Jenn] As we passed by the van,
it just looked super dark, really closed up,
and I think I just assumed they were out hiking
or taking advantage of the outdoors.
Around 7:15,
she sends the last known text message to her mother…
[text tone]
…speaking about how she could make more money as a solo female van lifer.
We were able to look back and look at her usage of her computer.
Around 8:30, she was moving computer files around on her hard drive,
so we believe she was alive during that time
because the files were video files,
and this was consistent with the patterns she had done prior.
By the next day,
we have no information indicating that Gabby is still alive.
We were able to look back and look at all of her devices,
like the phone and her computer,
and at that point, there was no more movement.
The investigation found that Brian killed Gabby
and moved her body to where it was found.
[music fades]
[tense music playing]
On the 28th,
Brian had left from the Spread Creek area
and had hiked up north towards the Colter Bay camping area.
Along the way, he was taking photos.
Some of them were scenic, but he was also taking a lot of pictures
of bones of animals that were deceased.
On the 29th,
there was cell phone tower data that showed at 1:20,
he calls his mom, Roberta, and has about a 55-minute call.
His father then contacted an attorney.
They continue having calls back and forth with each other
until about 3:30 in the afternoon.
Information from the phone companies show that as Brian is hiking,
text messages are being sent to Gabby's phone,
which was back at the Spread Creek area.
[text tone]
Hi, my name is Miranda Baker, and on August 29th,
my boyfriend and I picked up Brian at Grand Teton National Park.
[Kyle] 5:55 on the 29th,
Brian was picked up by Miranda Baker,
and they began giving him a ride south towards Jackson.
At around 6:30 or 6:45, Brian was picked up by Norma Jean,
and she gave him a ride to the entrance to the Spread Creek camping area,
where he had left the van.
[text tone]
Text messages to Gabby's phone are not read until Brian gets back
to the Spread Creek area, where Gabby's phone was left.
[text tone]
The activity between the two phones was almost instantaneous.
Brian was holding both phones and talking directly to himself.
It was apparent that he was trying to create an alibi.
[music continues]
[Kyle] On August 30th, Brian departed from Wyoming to travel back to Florida.
A text message is sent from Gabby's phone to her mother's phone,
requesting that the mom speak to the grandpa
because the grandpa had been contacting Gabby.
He stops at multiple gas stations.
Through credit card records, we know that he uses Gabby's debit card
to pay for gas.
Also on the trip, there's a Zelle transaction,
from Gabby to Brian…
that says, "Goodbye Brian, I'll never ask you for anything again,"
and transfers $700 from Gabby's account to Brian's account.
And we know Gabby was deceased, and this was Brian using multiple devices
to send this to himself.
What this did, is it goes from him being a missing person,
to now making him a federal fugitive.
[Loretta] On September 23rd,
a federal arrest warrant was issued for Brian.
[dog barking]
[officer] This dude potentially has a gun, right?
[officer 2] Yeah.
[officer] Last chance! If you're in the shed,
come out now, make yourself known!
Breaking news. Authorities just issued an arrest warrant for Brian Laundrie.
[reporter] The FBI is asking the public for help in finding him.
We had over 4,000 tips generated just to the FBI alone.
[woman] Someone just showed me this on YouTube.
A person ducking up and down, up and down on this video.
And a lot of people are saying that it looks very similar to Brian Laundrie.
[man] The lady who took this photo said he ran to the woods
as a police car drove by.
[man 2] A possible sighting of Brian Laundrie in Ocala, Florida.
[reporter] Dog the Bounty Hunter joined the search for Brian Laundrie.
[Dog the Bounty Hunter] I know the kid knows me.
Probably one of my fans.
We get a scent of a trail… We get a scent, he's done.
[music fades]
[Loretta] In order to find out what happened next,
we need to retrace Brian's steps.
On the morning of September 14th,
three days before Brian's parents reported him missing to the cops,
we learned that somebody had left their car in the park
for a substantial amount of time.
[dramatic music playing]
They reported that to the North Port Police Department.
They ran the plates, and it turned out
it was the Laundries' car.
[pensive music playing]
After learning about the car being ticketed,
the Laundries picked up the car from the park and drove it back home.
[officer] Is it this, uh, this Mustang?
[protester] Where's Gabby?!
[Loretta] They informed law enforcement that the park where the vehicle was found
was one of Brian's favorite places to go hiking.
[music fades]
We learned that Brian told the Laundries that he was going for a hike
to relieve some steam from the pressure of the people in the crowd
that had collected outside of the Laundries' house.
[protesters] We want answers!
[Loretta] He had taken a backpack full of hiking equipment, a tent, food.
They believed he was going to return.
It wasn't uncommon for Brian to go hike
and stay out in the woods for a couple days.
[eerie music playing]
It was for this reason that the Laundries did not contact police about the car,
because they were holding out that he would return home.
[reporter] And police are now admitting they lost track of Brian Laundrie
after they confused him for his mother.
[text tone]
[tense music playing]
[Loretta] On September 18th,
we began the search for Brian in the park where the Mustang was found.
It was not an easy search.
The Myakkahatchee and the Carlton Reserve
essentially create one giant park.
It's approximately 40 square miles, so over 20,000 acres.
You're gonna see the trail once you get there,
but this is gonna intertwine.
[Loretta] We collaborated with our state and local partners.
We had volunteer agencies out there.
Team two is gonna be half of Sarasota County.
[indistinct radio chatter]
Everybody wanted to be a part of this search.
[drone buzzing]
[Loretta] We had drones trying to locate just any activity that we could see,
maybe some wrappers on the ground, maybe a heat signature.
We had dogs that were picking up some scents,
but they were being attacked by alligators.
We also had weeks of rain,
so the park had completely flooded out,
and the areas to be searched were literally waist-deep or up to your chest.
We had people walking through that for weeks, trying to locate Brian.
[music fades]
On October 20th,
the park managers opened the park to the public.
It had been closed because of the flooding.
[tense music playing]
We were informed that the Laundries were going to go to the park
as soon as it opened to try to locate Brian.
Law enforcement also went out there.
[tense music continues]
The Laundries began their search approximately at 7:00 a.m. in the morning.
They knew where their son liked to hike.
They knew where he liked to camp out there.
There was so much tension in the air.
They did not emote.
About an hour into the Laundries' search,
Chris Laundrie found the waterproof bag that belonged to Brian.
Forty-five minutes after that,
Brian's remains were located.
It was approximately a mile from where he had parked his car.
His belongings were still there.
His clothes were still there.
His shoes were still there.
But he had completely decomposed, all the way down to the bone.
The autopsy report later determined that the cause of death
was suicide by a gunshot wound to the head.
His parents found his remains.
That blew my mind.
I didn't even believe it. I thought it was, like, fake news.
I was like, "What do you mean? This makes no sense."
I was pissed off, to be honest.
I just wanted… answers,
and when we found his remains, their answers went out the door.
I know you have a lot of questions, but we don't have all the answers yet.
We are working diligently to get those answers for you.
[music fades]
[Loretta] Inside the waterproof bag were pictures of Brian and Gabby.
[somber music playing]
There was also a waterproof notebook that Brian had written in.
He wrote multiple letters to his family,
mostly to say that he loved them and to say goodbye to them.
There was a story in there
leading up to what happened to Gabby.
[camera shutter clicks]
[music fades]
[Jim] Not one of the versions of Brian's account was accurate
by the findings of Gabby's autopsy.
The sole cause of… of her death was strangulation,
and nothing remotely or even close to what he said.
[melancholy music playing]
Brian wrote in his letters, expressing wanting to come to New York,
come to Long Island to confront me
and to confess what he did
so that we could take care of him.
I always found it odd that he wrote in there,
"Leave my parents out of this. They didn't do anything wrong."
[Rose] I think the Burn After Reading letter from Roberta is disgusting.
I personally love my mother,
but I'd be very concerned if she sent me a letter like that.
[Tara] The first time we saw that letter,
we were just so in shock and angry that, how could she write…
this letter?
It's just disgusting.
Made me sick to my stomach.
[reporter] She told him,
"I'll bring you a shovel to help bury the body"?
Wow.
[Loretta] We still don't know the extent of Brian's parents' involvement,
but what we do know is that on August 29th,
Brian made a flurry of calls to his parents.
They contacted each other multiple times.
We learned that he told them Gabby was gone,
and that he needed a lawyer.
We found out Brian made a frantic phone call
to his parents that Gabby is gone
and he needs help.
[Loretta] At which point, his parents wired money to a lawyer.
[Jim] They contacted their attorney and wrote him a big check
and said that they didn't know anything other than she was gone.
We… we don't know anything.
You're gonna throw $25,000 of your hard-earned cash
out on a lawyer from fucking Wyoming?
And you're telling me you didn't ask where she was?
That's some bullshit. I'll tell you that right now.
[Jim] I don't think the amount of money they paid their attorney
would be for anything less than to represent somebody for murder.
[music continues]
We knew at that point we weren't ever gonna get remotely close to the answers
that we were hoping for,
because the only two people that truly knew what happened
are now both gone.
[music fades]
[friend] My image of Brian has completely shattered.
[sad music playing]
He did something awful.
There's no taking it back.
I was Brian's friend,
but I was also very close with Gabby.
I think about her family nonstop.
[sobbing]
[Tara] You grieve every day.
You can smile, the pain is always there.
[inhales deeply]
-It never goes away. -It never goes away. [exhales]
[music fades]
Gonna visit Tetons and Spread Creek.
Gonna go check it out.
[hopeful music playing]
We decided as a family that we all wanted to go visit the spot
where Gabby was found.
We wanted to take Gabby's siblings.
We also brought Jackson and Rose.
As soon as I landed, the only words coming out of my mouth was, "Oh my gosh,"
because of how beautiful it was.
[music continues]
[camera shutter clicking]
[Nichole] Here we are at Spread Creek.
Beautiful day here.
We're gonna make our way over to the spot.
[indistinct conversation]
[Nichole] Once we got to where Gabby was,
you could feel her presence and her spirit there.
[Jim] I know. I know.
[TJ] I love you, Gabs.
[woman] Fresh, new.
[Nichole] It was just such a beautiful moment.
I brought Gabby's ashes.
The kids all kind of walked around and found different areas
to throw Gabby's ashes.
-[sister] Mom, we did it okay. -[Nichole] All right.
Gabby's younger sister and I did ours together,
and it was so hard,
but it was so
exactly what Gabby would want.
[indistinct conversation]
[Nichole] It was just really healing to be with everybody and…
We truly felt close to Gabby that day.
I have a photograph,
of a huge orb in the middle.
I don't know if people believe in that, but there's an orb there,
and I know that Gabby was there with us.
[music continues]
[Jim] Although we lost Gabby,
many other people have been saved because of her.
[Rose] We get messages saying,
"Hey, Gabby's story is what made me leave my boyfriend."
"I got help, and I'm doing what I can."
And it is beautiful and heartwarming.
[Nichole] We started the Gabby Petito Foundation.
We wanted to bring attention
to the dangers and the signs of domestic violence,
more awareness,
prevention.
They're looking for help. "All right, I'll go to the Gabby Petito website,
the foundation page. What do I do? I need help."
And there is a literal help button on that page.
You can click on it, and it will guide you to the right resources.
[music continues]
This story is unique,
but I will tell you that there are so many other people out there missing, and…
[voice breaks]
They are important too.
So, my work is important.
Victims' lives are important.
[Nichole] I have spoke with many families
who are still looking for their missing loved ones,
and that is heartbreaking.
[reporter] Petito's story has renewed debate
about which cases get attention,
and the media's seeming infatuation with missing white women.
Imagine the men, women, and children
in the community where Gabby Petito went missing
who know that for the last ten years, more than 700 Indigenous people
have gone missing, and nobody has said a word,
and one missing white woman turns up in their backyard,
and the world pays attention.
When I heard that, my initial reaction wasn't a positive one.
Saying Gabby's color was the reason, you know, I was taken aback by that.
This isn't saying Gabby Petito is not important.
What it is saying is that there's an over-representation in media
when white women go missing, and an under-representation in media
when Black, Brown, and Indigenous women go missing.
And then I started to look into it.
The FBI had over 89,000 active missing person cases
at the end of last year,
and 45% of those were people of color,
and only a fraction of those cases were even covered on the news.
[Mara] The media is very powerful.
When everybody knows their face, it makes a real difference.
A domestic violence bill is sailing through the Capitol with huge support,
including the backing of Gabby Petito's parents.
You should not fear the ones you love.
[reporter 2] Petito's parents on Utah's Capitol Hill,
speaking out in favor of Senate Bill 117,
a bill that would require police to ask 11 questions
to determine if an intimate partner is at risk of being hurt or killed.
If this lethality assessment, which I've immersed myself in
over the last couple of weeks,
had been used,
I know in Gabby's case, if it had been used,
I believe she'd still be here today.
[music fades]
[poignant music playing]
It's still hard for us to realize that Gabby's gone, that she's not with us.
I can only hope we've made her proud, and she's looking down on us
and saying, "Thank you for being my voice when I couldn't speak anymore."
[Nichole] Every time I get upset about missing her,
I hear her voice in my head say, "Mom, I'm fine, stop." [laughs]
She just wants me to just have fun and live life,
and it's a really important message.
[Rose] Right before I met Gabby,
I was in a abusive relationship.
Gabby was the one that convinced me I deserved more.
I'm choosing to live my life because it's what Gabby would want me to do.
I think I'm doing good. I think she'd be proud.
[Nichole] Gabby really loved life.
Biggest,
fearless
life you could live.
And I was so proud of her.
She's inspired us to be better every day.
["Take My Hand" by Matt Berry playing]
♪ So take my hand, we'll disappear ♪
♪ To a pub that's not too far from here ♪
♪ Though I don't know you And you don't know me ♪
♪ I just had to talk to you, you see ♪
♪ The arrogance, a foolish move ♪
♪ If you take a risk, your odds improve ♪
♪ See, you don't know me And I don't know you ♪
♪ I'm not weird or queer, my aim is true ♪
♪ Everybody I know these days Is boring me ♪
♪ Or ignoring me, but not you ♪
♪ So take my hand, we'll disappear ♪
♪ To a pub that's not too far from here ♪
♪ Though I don't know you And you don't know me ♪
♪ I just had to talk to you, you see ♪
♪ So say you'll come, please don't go ♪
♪ You could be the one for all I know ♪
♪ Well, I don't know you Though I'd sure like to ♪
♪ I can see the light, it looks like you ♪
♪ So say you'll come, please don't go ♪
♪ You could be the one for all I know ♪
♪ Well, I don't know you Though I'd sure like to ♪
♪ I can see the light, it looks like you ♪
[music fades]