I’ve said it before, but I think it’s really important to remember that Brian is just some 23-24 year old young adult who wanted to go on a long roadtrip with his girlfriend and not a criminal mastermind.
I see so many people here and other places suggesting that he was plotting or planning stuff like disappearing from the beginning and I think so of us have read too many crime novels.
More than likely, the news of being a POI scared the dickens out of him because he’s guilty as all heck and he ran. I would also guess that his plan this entire time hasn’t really been a plan- just a serious of actions and reactions as he is running scared from LE, even before they knew anything was wrong.
His comments to the TikTokker that allegedly picked him up speak volumes here. He had no trouble speaking to LE in Moab so we know he does talk to the police. I believe the ones who encouraged Brian to invoke his 5th amendment rights were his parents. They seem to be the secretive ones who are trying to protect their son.
This all means that Brian is very very very likely to have made major mistakes in all of this. He probably believed, as so many people do, that they’d never find her body or never look too hard into her disappearance and just take his word for what happened. But when he realized that the hikes they were taking were all carefully recorded on The Dyrt and their phones had other valuable stored information that can be retrieved through their network carrier, he panicked and ran.
I just want to reiterate- I think we are giving Brian way too much credit to assume he has some great plan here. I think he’s a 20-something baby adult who is way in over his head.
