Found Deceased WY - Gabrielle ‘Gabby’ Petito, 22, Grand Teton National Park, 25 Aug 2021 #47

[squareandrabbet]

Maybe she called her grandfather, Stan, instead of her mom. That would explain why Stan kept calling when BL had GP's phone and (posing as GP), he texted her parent to stop Stan from calling. IMO.

even if she called her mom from the back of the cop car, this doesn’t necessarily mean the same news made it back to her father, as they are divorced, after all.

 

[nocommoncents]

The events of 8/25 make me think something bigger was going on that BL was losing his grip about - beyond DV dynamics. I am starting to think BL needed to protect some information about himself and/or himself and Gabby had something on him that he was not in control of (to end a sentence with a preposition). I also find the DV call in Moab, which appears to have been over a phone to begin with, relevant to timing and place and the initiation of escalating aggression on the part of BL. I think there is a larger pattern pertaining to BL about which Gabby was unable or unwilling to cover or protect him, and she may have had evidence on her phone. I might even go so far as to predict that her murder weapon might have been a phone.

I'll bite. Any theories?

 

[cady]

dbl post

 

[Bertha96]

I don’t know?..I’m a grandmother and I definitely wouldn’t have kept quiet.

We don't know if he kept quiet if that's what happened. He could have called the entire family after he heard from her but that won't be released to the public.

 

[RabidDogISC]

You cannot possibly know what LE are focusing on. She is dead at allegedly, the hands of her intimate partner. That is domestic violence.

As an ex law enforcement officer I have experience in missing persons, murder investigations, DV stops and more. It is common practice for law enforcement to look at the last week before a person goes missing to see if there was anything in their behaviors or signs that they may go missing. Most the rest of what I was saying was JMO. What do you think LE are focusing on at this point in the search.

 

[KBlackRabbit]

I guess the debate about whether DV occurred in this relationship will continue until there's a resolution to the case, but I have to say that every additional pc of evidence that has come out has only made him look more & more abusive, IMO.

DV doesn't have to be physical for it to cause harm (or for it to be illegal). (My partner wasn't physical with me till our 9th year, but he was abusive long before that.) There's reported historical behaviour on the part of BL in numerous articles that, if true, IMO, is abusive & controlling, including:

- stealing her id so she couldn't go out with her friend
- not wanting her to work
- numerous fights where she would have to leave the residence & stay with a friend
- BL forcing her to remove a safety tracking app on her phone, for her friend to be able to find her

This is the little bit we know, & combined with the traffic stop & her death, it's enough for me to not really engage in any doubt or thought experiments about it. JMO

Agree. She’s in distress, she’s crying, terrified, and anxious, probably scared if she says the wrong thing he’ll hit/abuse her again. He grabbed her by the face, hits her, yells at her, demeans her, and locked her out of HER car, trying to take off with all of her belongings including her cell phone and clothes, abandoning her in a strange place thousands of miles from home with nothing but the clothes on her back…

No doubt in my mind she’s a battered girlfriend and he’s an abuser.

 

[Sassafrass]

Would you not think that Gabby's parents might have wondered why the police wanted to put her in jail ... knowing their daughter the way they thought they did? A bright light.

My point is that something obviously serious was going on. That couldn't be easily explained away. If it wasn't so serious, and the police didn't have an obligation (as stated previously) to try to connect a DV victim with their family/other help, would Gabby have even called her parents right then about a 'simple' police stop and their fighting? Or would she have waited until their next FT call?

I think we may be underestimating Gabby's parents, who have been in this world for a long time, and might well have understood the implications.

Well, sure, and I actually took that out and put it back in when I was typing my post. Because it would be just as easy not to include and still have a plausible reason for being upset and scared at being pulled over, say, if you were worried that it might ruin your SM business ambitions. Or she could've lied and said he was speeding really fast and now she was afraid he would be put in jail. Who knows!

Without adding personal details, depending on their relationship, I could see a loving child either being too humiliated to detail an abusive situation, or wanting to protect her parents from knowing about it, or wanting to downplay it/protect her relationship from outside judgment or pressure. Many reasons to omit the worst parts, even when scared & upset & needing mom.

(And IIRC, I think I've read bits and pieces that suggested that maybe GP's father wasn't privy to the specific nature or trajectory of the relationship. Perhaps there was a learned approach to managing information that might upset a family nember, or maybe GP was just still figuring out the transition from child to adult and thought this was her problem to manage. So many reasons the parents might not have had real reason to be on immediate high-alert....)

 

[10ofRods]

So, if BL is in Mexico, central America or elsewhere outside the country how is he surviving? He isn't wealthy. I'm speculating BLs parents finances are being monitored by LE for transactions abroad. I just can't see him being able.to support himself while living abroad. It is my guess he is living in close proximity to an area he knows extremely well in the CONUS.

There are lots of ways that money can be moved around (and the parents would not use any of their known accounts). But I agree with you that BL is likely very close to an area he knows well, with nature, and maybe with enough cash to buy. himself protein bars for months to come.

 

[JayWill]

Ideally LE is not focusing on any single factor in this case but looking at everything that is relevant. JMO.

I agree, so why insist that they are not looking at one aspect? And how could anyone know to state that so confidently?
Her death is domestic violence, how could they not be looking at that aspect.

 

[ZoriahNZ]

Wasn't it mint colored? There is something that color on the back of the seat.

On BL's instagram there is a video clip in the Van Life section which shows the interior of the van. It looks like there is a mint green protector on the drivers seat. Very interesting if that was no longer there as of Sept 11th.

- @bizarre_design_

You can also see that there appears to be no partition or hard barrier between the front and back of the van. So it's unlikely she could have been unable to escape the van if the back was locked from the outside. In other words, I don't think she was ever 'trapped' inside the van via outside locking mechanisms. (This was speculated about some threads back but this moves so fast, it's hard to reply to things in a timely manner).

 

[Bertha96]

even if she called her mom from the back of the cop car, this doesn’t necessarily mean the same news made it back to her father, as they are divorced, after all.

If I had to bet, I would say her mother and father have shared every bit of information that they could about GP. They seem to get along well as displayed at the memorial service and the press conference. IMO.

 

[indycindy]

We don't know if he kept quiet if that's what happened. He could have called the entire family after he heard from her but that won't be released to the public.

True

 

[m00c0w]

I'm really not sure what you are saying.

Your previous post offered a couple of hypotheticals:

"[W]hat if (BL) left her without any means of survival? What if she died of dehydration?"

Her body was found a short walk from a heavily-traveled road in a campground full of vacationers. The means of survival were very close. The autopsy of her body found that she died from homicide so obviously there is evidence that she did not die of dehydration.

"What if she inflicted wounds on her own body in her agony? What if he found her lifeless body and just left her there?""

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "inflicted wounds on her own body in her agony." Tt seems like a flowery way to say that she killed herself. We know she didn't, the manner of death is officially homicide, though the means have not been revealed yet. If you didn't mean suicide, then she sat down in a place that is a fifteen-minute walk from the road in a busy and fully-booked campground and did... what? Ripped her own flesh until she died? I'm confused.

Not sure what they're saying either, but I will interject that people get lost in the woods only yards from well-known trails all the time. If (and this is only a hypothetical to illustrate what I think the other person is trying to say) BL committed an assault that left her unconscious for a period of time and bailed when he realized what he did, leaving her to fend for herself in the elements, that could still be considered a homicide because he should have known doing that would have put her in peril. Similar for if there was evidence of being bound, perhaps in an attempt to "teach a lesson" that went too far, but exposure or dehydration were ultimately fatal. The responsibility for the death still falls on BL, but falls short of BL actively killing her. I'm also not sure I believe these possibilities to be the actual case; it's probably more likely he outright killed her based on everything that has happened/come out so far.

MOO

 

[Roselle65]

even if she called her mom from the back of the cop car, this doesn’t necessarily mean the same news made it back to her father, as they are divorced, after all.

I think, even though divorced, the family gets along.

 

[squareandrabbet]

If I had to bet, I would say her mother and father have shared every bit of information that they could about GP. They seem to get along well as displayed at the memorial service and the press conference. IMO.

I don’t happen to think it strange that even in married couples, mothers might be susceptible to the tears and pleadings of their darling daughter (‘please don’t tell Dad!’); but, YMMV.

 

[bluwaters]

I haven't caught up with the thread yet, so I don't know if this has already been discussed. I saw an extended version of the interaction between GP, BL and LE when they interviewed them roadside.

Gabby was very emotional pleading with the officers to let them remain together. She didn't want to be separated from Brian. We all know that didn't happen and he spent the night in a hotel for free as victim of DV. Gabby was left with a van she didn't like to drive in an unfamiliar environment.

We've heard a lot of stories about Brian and his means to control Gabby. He has taken her ID to stop her from going out with her female friends for a night out. He has a habit of locking her out of the van. He has a habit of taking her keys. He always attempts to isolate her.

I can't even imagine the situations that occurred between the intervention by the cops and the day Brian left to go back to Florida.

Both of them seemed to be experiencing mental health crises. I have this horrible feeling that they fought many times during this period and Brian, true to form, took control of the van and left Gabby alone, extremely upset and took off.

How long he stayed away is unknown but what if when he returned Gabby wasn't there? What if she had been left for a couple of days, not knowing where he was, when he was coming back and without any means of survival? What if she died of dehydration? What if she inflicted wounds on her own body in her agony? What if he found her lifeless body and just left her there? Murder doesn't necessarily mean someone laid their hands on someone. Malice aforethought can also mean indifference to life.

Everything BL has done since his return to Florida reflects a level of guilt. Whether that is from actually murdering his girlfriend or just leaving her to stew in her own juices for an unknown period of time ends up with the same results. She's not here anymore.

The problem that I have with the theory that Brian took off and left
Gabby alone in the wilderness is that the campground was full of people.
It was an easy walk to the camper next door.
The Bethune's left because they couldn't find a place to park and camp.

 

[LAhiker]

The events of 8/25 make me think something bigger was going on that BL was losing his grip about - beyond DV dynamics. I am starting to think BL needed to protect some information about himself and/or himself and Gabby had something on him that he was not in control of (to end a sentence with a preposition). I also find the DV call in Moab, which appears to have been over a phone to begin with, relevant to timing and place and the initiation of escalating aggression on the part of BL. I think there is a larger pattern pertaining to BL about which Gabby was unable or unwilling to cover or protect him, and she may have had evidence on her phone. I might even go so far as to predict that her murder weapon might have been a phone.

While of course this is possible, I think DV dynamics may be sufficient to explain what happened, especially if he killed her as part of fighting with or abusing her rather than with longer-term premeditation. (I realize that if he strangled her, the length of that process may make it count as premeditated, but I mean he may not have been planning it for days or weeks.)

As others have noted, one thing that might help with an understanding of BL's motivations would be knowing more about what happened when BL allegedly flew back to Florida to move things into or out of storage. Apparently GP was at a hotel -- her Facetiming with her family may provide some evidence of that.

But it's less clear where BL was during that time and why. Presumably LE can verify whether or not he did indeed fly back to Florida. I'm wondering, though -- wherever he was, did no one (other than his family) see him there? I haven't seen any reports from people who saw him during that trip or who knew more about what was going on with him during that time. Of course, the FBI may have such reports.

JMO

 

[JudgeJudi]

1. Truck and camper at home
2. Camper at De Soto
3. Campsite 1, at De Soto (another camper). Note proximity to adjacent site.
4. Campsite 1 with water view
5. This was news to me - Gabby and BL had previously visited De Soto. She is pictured sitting on 1 of the 3 seawalls.



Couple claim they camped next to Brian Laundrie, his parents before Gabby Petito was 'missing' | Daily Mail Online

 

[Allabouttrial]

I think, even though divorced, the family gets along.

I agree. I love how this family have come together as one. Which leads me to believe they had a good relationship before all this. It's never easy at first but it appears they all respect one another.

 

[Figuring]

Agree. She’s in distress, she’s crying, terrified, and anxious, probably scared if she says the wrong thing he’ll hit/abuse her again. He grabbed her by the face, hits her, yells at her, demeans her, and locked her out of HER car, trying to take off with all of her belongings including her cell phone and clothes, abandoning her in a strange place thousands of miles from home with nothing but the clothes on her back…

No doubt in my mind she’s a battered girlfriend and he’s an abuser.

I agree totally, & I also think the way the stop turned out in his favour probably emboldened him greatly, & was something he could have weaponized in many ways to try & keep her in her place, afterward. JMO