Found Deceased WY - Gabby Petito, Grand Teton National Park #88

[ch_13]

Here's a link to the FBI data dump:

https://vault.fbi.gov/brian-laundrie/brian-laundrie-part-01/view

Note that it's labeled "Brian Laundrie Part 01". More to come?

 

[Warwick7]

Like I said in my post. I can't fault the Laundries for not taking action for something they didn't now about. JMO.

It is a matter of opinion but personally I don't see the situations as the same (other than both situations involving parents whose son committed a violent crime.)

Ethan Crumbley was 15 when he shot students at his school. Brian was a few months away from turning 24 when he killed GP.

Despite the sound bites that may have come from prosecutors in the elder Crumbleys' cases, it was NOT simply a matter of the parents ignoring Ethan's mental health. Four days before the shooting, at Ethan's request Crumbley's father bought the gun his son later used to shoot 4 people. It was supposedly a Christmas present for Ethan. After buying the gun, the father failed to secure it. The mother took Ethan to a shooting range to practice shooting. Although the Laundrie family owned firearms as many American families do, obviously GP wasn't shot much less shot by a gun the parents bought that week for BL.

Crumbley's parents ignored explicit recommendations from Ethan's school counselor to get him help and to keep him out of school on the day of the shooting (although it's unclear if the school should have acted sooner. Given the earlier internal school emails, I think the school was also at fault.) We have no evidence to suggest Brian's parents ever received any warnings from counselors when he was in high school. (So far as I can tell, we don't have writings from BL when he was 14, 15, 16 either.) We also have no evidence to show whether BL ever received any sort of mental health help. He may have as he said at the Moab stop he didn't like to take medication when discussing his anxiety. But even if the parents had been warned when BL was 15 and even if they failed to try to provide mental health help, BL's crime didn't occur until almost a full decade later. A warning from a professional on the day of or even the week of a crime is an entirely different matter.

The article posted above discusses the expected impact of the Crumbley verdicts. Some posit they will set the stage for charging more parents for their children's actions. But not everyone quoted in the article agrees. For example:

"Indeed, the elder Crumbleys’ cases were so uncommon that their impact will likely be limited, Frank Vandervort, clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, said prior to the trials in January.

“I don’t anticipate there’s going to be a lot of this kind of thing filed; I think this is a pretty unique case."

I do agree it can be a Catch-22 when blaming parents. Adult children can't be forced to get mental health help by parents anywhere in the US. Getting an involuntary commitment is not easy unless the person is in imminent danger and quite impaired by mental illness. That's also true for teenagers in most states these days. So saying all of this would have been avoided had the Laundrie parents "done something" ignores reality IMO. (And assumes the parents knew something should be done.)

I do find it interesting that BL's mother was repeatedly demonized here for actions suggesting she MAY have not been happy with B&G's relationship, she may not have been happy having GP living in her house, and she may not have made GP feel consistently welcome. But it's a pretty small house for 4 adults to share. I wouldn't be happy sharing a small house with a young couple either! And maybe RL was in a position to see the relationship was not necessarily a healthy one for either party. (Cassie did say G&B argued frequently when they lived with her family but denied ever seeing any physical violence. Still, even constant arguing is not a sign of a healthy relationship.) But rather than seeing RL's actions as positive or even neutral, she's blamed for being "mean" to GP.
MOO

Edit: typo, missing word

Thus why I said it was a catch 22.

 

[RANCH]

Unless they did know and were covering for him... we know someone who did exhibit violent writings at age 17, and his mother covered up the fact that he was receiving psychiatric care from his social circle.

I never heard about a coverup.

 

[Wallendo]

Brian's statement “About a year ago I went in to a type of mania where I was smashing holes in the wall with my head, kicking throug (sic) paintings, tearing whatever I was working on, pouring gasoline on myself to burn alive but getting the lighter wet, parking out in murderland listening to Mac [unclear, but may be ‘DeMarco’] with a gun to my head, wrestling alligators,” Laundrie wrote in his diary on October 26, 2018." comes across very melodramatic. He obviously didn't wrestle alligators. I also suspect he didn't put his head through walls or kick through paintings. The pouring gasoline line also seems dramatic.

Although we will likely never know for sure, I suspect he hid his demons well most of his life. Unfortunately, Gabby was present and isolated with him when his demons reared their ugly heads again.

 

[Megnut]

Brian's statement “About a year ago I went in to a type of mania where I was smashing holes in the wall with my head, kicking throug (sic) paintings, tearing whatever I was working on, pouring gasoline on myself to burn alive but getting the lighter wet, parking out in murderland listening to Mac [unclear, but may be ‘DeMarco’] with a gun to my head, wrestling alligators,” Laundrie wrote in his diary on October 26, 2018." comes across very melodramatic. He obviously didn't wrestle alligators. I also suspect he didn't put his head through walls or kick through paintings. The pouring gasoline line also seems dramatic.

Although we will likely never know for sure, I suspect he hid his demons well most of his life. Unfortunately, Gabby was present and isolated with him when his demons reared their ugly heads again.

And sadly, she thought she could love his demons away.

Imagine the life she could have had on her own or with someone healthy who valued her.

She didn't get the chance to break free.

He made sure of it.

 

[wnk]

I think that a lot of bright young women tend to romanticize the "tortured poet/artist/musician" type. They interpret his dark thoughts as emotional depth and convince themselves that his moodiness is only because he's so much more conscientious about what's going on in the world than others are. They fall into a sort of "savior complex" over being the only one who really understands him, the only person whom he can really talk to, the only place where he finds beauty in this otherwise ugly world.

 

[Megnut]

A lesson she should have come to understand, in the rearview.

Let no one be fooled that he loved her so much he couldn't live without her.

It wasn't love. He didn't want her to live without him.

 

[Laura456]

Brian's statement “About a year ago I went in to a type of mania where I was smashing holes in the wall with my head, kicking throug (sic) paintings, tearing whatever I was working on, pouring gasoline on myself to burn alive but getting the lighter wet, parking out in murderland listening to Mac [unclear, but may be ‘DeMarco’] with a gun to my head, wrestling alligators,” Laundrie wrote in his diary on October 26, 2018." comes across very melodramatic. He obviously didn't wrestle alligators. I also suspect he didn't put his head through walls or kick through paintings. The pouring gasoline line also seems dramatic.

Although we will likely never know for sure, I suspect he hid his demons well most of his life. Unfortunately, Gabby was present and isolated with him when his demons reared their ugly heads again.

We need to focus as much on signs of partner violence in health classes as we do on abstinence.

"If you stay after seeing these signs, you WILL likely end up in hospital or a morgue. This is serious"