Episode 28: After Show

Join in our unscripted discussion about the Gabby Petito case as we discuss the ins and outs of the case, and the timeline. Did his parents know? Should the police who pulled them over done better? How did his parents find the backpack so quick?

Don't forget to send us your feedback and ideas for future episode content at contact@deadlydivaspodcast.com!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Hey subscribers, welcome back. Welcome back to the Gabby Petito After Show.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Yes. So many things to say about this whole story. Alright, I'll go through my list first and then you can hit me with yours. Okay. All right. So, my first question is kind of obvious. Did he tell his parents? I think that's an absolute yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

I think that's a good question. And I I've wondered that would be a really difficult admission. Like, because it seems like he probably did based on that 55-minute phone call. And then his dad immediately contacting an attorney.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

But And then them hiding him and answering for him, saying he's not gonna talk, and them not reporting him missing for four days. Like all of it suggests to me that they knew. That they knew.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

How do you admit something like that?

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Well, they're not going to. My next statement was at the very least, they should have been charged with aiding and abetting.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Right. And I think that's why they've never admitted to the fact that they knew.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Right. Yeah. And I think that their loyalty to their son was just so fierce and they were in such a like a defensive mode that they were completely blinded to anything else. But what I was getting at was, I'm just so curious how that conversation would have gone and what he would have said, like, hey, mom, I did something bad. I made a mistake. Like, I would just love to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

It'd be great if they could download it somewhere. I mean, did he say to them, Oh, she was hurt and I was merciful? Or did he say to them, she tripped and fell? Or did he say to them, We got in a physical fight and I didn't mean to, but it went too far? I mean, I believe that they knew that she was dead, but whether or not he gave them the truth.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

I really highly doubt. I'm sure that he called with a sob story. And, you know, just like he told the cops, like, oh, she got physical with me first, and it was all just a horribly tragic accident, and you know, I was scared and bloody blah di blah. Like, there's no way that he gave a true account of what really happened. But whether he did or whether he didn't, the parents did the wrong thing. Absolutely. Period.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Right. We got heads up right from the beginning when they wouldn't have anything to do with Gabby's parents before they even went away that these were weirdos.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Yeah. And I wish, like you said, that somebody could hear that phone call. I mean, I know privacy laws, blah, blah, blah, but it seems like in a case like this, the cops should have been able to get their hands on that phone call. They should have been able to work with the phone company or whatever. That phone call must have been recorded somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

He has to have told them she's dead. Right. But the reason he gave could be anything. Yeah. I mean, we know that he's full of it.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Yeah, he's full of shit, and so are the parents. And I know it's an unprecedented situation. Like, say your son calls you and says there's been an accident, my girlfriend is deceased. Like, you would immediately just biologically, as a parent, go into, okay, I'm gonna protect my son mode, but also holy shit, somebody else's children. Right, that's somebody's daughter. So there's no way in hell that I would just be like, oh, everything from here on out protects my son, even though he's a murderer. Like, I just cannot see doing that and making this other family suffer. I mean, they just were in absolute agony, and you have information that can help. Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

But the only person they wanted to help was Brian, even at the expense of their own daughter. They shut her out to help Brian.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Right. And I think that that would be incredibly hurtful to the daughter. I can only imagine how she must have felt, but like good for her for standing up and saying, Hey, this is not okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Right. And saying, I know he lied to me because he said he flew home and the van's there. I mean, she didn't need to volunteer that information to police, but obviously she felt like she needed to do the right thing.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

That's a good point. How was the van there if he flew home?

SPEAKER_01 4:47

He drove home and told her he flew home.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Right. Which is weird. And that is a glaring conflict. Like you couldn't think of something better than that.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

It's not like they tried to hide the van either. It was parked in the front driveway. If you were gonna go with that story, you would have abandoned the van somewhere or in a storage unit or something.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

So I just wonder what that was about. I wonder if they had decided on one story and then they were like, oh no, this isn't gonna work. Now we have to do this, we have to pivot. How many days was it that they had before like they knew, okay, Brian is back home and Gabby is not? How long was it before the public knew? It was like 10 days. And I am so curious, and we will never know, but I am so curious what their timeline was and what they did with those 10 days, because 10 days is a long time to have this information and to be able to plan. And I think that they planned ultimately his suicide.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

And I think that's why if he had said that he was back home with the ban and without Gabby on September 1st when he got home, they could have put the missing persons report out sooner. I think obviously that was a deliberate ploy to keep it under wraps as long as possible. But every single day they must have been like, is today the day they're gonna realize, or is somebody gonna find the body? Or but yeah, they had 10 days planning.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

And what about this family trip? I think that was their last trip.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Yeah. I think that was deliberately a goodbye trip.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

And I just wonder about that that whole family dynamic. Like, obviously, Brian Laundrie, anybody to be able to commit a murder, um, especially of your girlfriend, you know, your vulnerable girlfriend, like there's something wrong with you, period. Right. And I just wonder this family dynamic, obviously, his parents also have their own issues and frankly are just scummy people. Well, they raised him. So right, and they raised him. And so that really connects some dots there for me. And the sister kind of seems like maybe she's the decent one. And in family dynamics like that, if the parents are abusive or narcissists or whatever, and I'm not diagnosing them, but just generally speaking, if you have parents that are toxic, abusive, narcissistic, whatever, that dynamic, they want to uphold that. And the sister was not having it. So what did they do? They cast her aside. Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

And I think that maybe because she had her own family and her own children is that she saw it from the correct perspective of somebody's child has died. The humane perspective. Exactly. But I think she was raised obviously the same way as him because they were raised in the same environment. But I think that that may have been what made her more human towards the whole thing. Right. Is that she'd given birth to her own children. I believe. And I know she was married, I think she had her own children.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

I think so. And what about the letter that his mom wrote? Yeah. Oh weird as fuck. I'll bake you a cake with a file inside, and I'll show up with a shovel and bury a body as someone with children, and you as well. Adult children, we both have them. Like, I can put myself into this situation. And I could never imagine, like, maybe in jest, right? Like, and even best friends say this, like, tell me where the body is, we'll be, you know, whatever. But when somebody's child has actually been murdered, yeah, you would have to be a fucking psycho to say something like that. Very odd. Very inhumane, sociopathic, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

I no, I just think it's odd that, like, at one point I wondered if it was even planted, because I do believe that the backpack with the other notes was planted. And they must have known that their house was going to get searched.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

So that letter was in that backpack?

SPEAKER_01 9:01

No, the letter was in the house. Once they found the body and they finally got a search warrant, they found the letter in the house during the search warrant. But like we said, they had 10 days to plan it. They knew the body was going to get found eventually. You would think that they would be aware of the fact that a search warrant would happen sooner or later, and that anything like that would have been destroyed ahead of a search warrant.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Maybe they thought he followed the directions and burned it after he read it. Obviously, he didn't.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Yeah. Or it was planted. I'm just referring to the backpack and the waterproof notebook that has basically everything that makes him look good after the final goodbye letters and the I was just being merciful. I believe that was planted to make him look better after the suicide, just in general to the public. So if they planted that, maybe she planted the letter. Why? I don't know. I don't know why she would.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Yeah, she's definitely a crazy bitch. I don't know why she would plant something that would make her look bad, though. No. I kind of tend to think that that letter was a genuine letter that she wrote, and that maybe she just didn't know it was there.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

I want to know when she wrote it.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Yeah, I do too.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Like before they went on the trip or after she got the call from him before he got home, just so that he knew hey, that would be the prime time to write it.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

And maybe he never even got to read it. Because as you can imagine, when he came home, like it was pure chaos every moment. So maybe she forgot she wrote it and he never even knew it existed. Very, very strange. Okay, so tell me more about the waterproof backpack. You think that it was planted?

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Yes, because the police had searched the area for weeks and weeks and weeks with professional search teams.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

And this is where we're talking about Brian's body. They were searching this big park, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Yeah, it was a it was a place where he used to go hiking and camping a lot. It's the place where they found the car that he drove there, which was registered to his parents. So the police searched there for him or any of his belongings for weeks and weeks and weeks. At the time it was flooded and they were worried about alligators, which is their excuse for not having found anything. But how the parents can find it within an hour after professional search parties can't find anything, I do believe that they planted the backpack and that everything in the backpack was made to redeem him as much as possible to the public.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Yeah, that's a hell of a coincidence, or that was orchestrated. Like, and I kind of lean towards what you said that it was planted and it was orchestrated.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Now, because the police looked incompetent after they found it after an hour, they said it was because the floods had receded so much. Um, so also highly convenient that it was a waterproof backpack with a waterproof notebook.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Right. And also, I think one of the points that was made was that, oh, we were able to find him so quickly because we knew the areas that he frequented. Well, if you knew the areas that he frequented, then why wouldn't you have just told the police, hey, check this area? Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

And it was within a mile of where the car was parked. And this was a 24,000 acre. You would have thought that they would have searched a mile radius within the car parked first. Right, exactly. And most thoroughly. And most thoroughly. Yeah. At the time that it happened, I remember thinking he's not dead.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

I thought that too. And there were other people with this opinion that he was just like gonna try to live out in the wilderness and rough it. Or that was a decoy.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Right. And that he had actually like, you know, fled the country. Right. And because if she's saying, well, I would bake a file into a cake and I would bring a shovel, then, you know, I'd also plant a backpack and plant your clothes. Mm-hmm. Um, I mean, he would have had to hack off his leg to leave a femur. I can't sort of justify how they found the body and the DNA matched, but there's still a part of me that says that wasn't him and he's living the high life somewhere. You think so? I don't know. I mean, I think it's a possibility. It is a possibility. Because obviously his mom had a kind of weirdly unnatural relationship with him that was a little too close for comfort. Close, maybe, or just it was weird, right? Yeah. Do you think that they would have spent ten days planning his suicide and that she would have been happy with that and let him just go off and do it? I don't, as a parent.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

No, I I don't.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

There's absolutely no part of that that I would say to my son, okay, yeah, go off into the woods and commit suicide rather than go to jail.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

And I think you're right. I don't think that she would have ever allowed that to happen. If it was within her capability, she would not have allowed that to happen. And maybe he went out and they had this plan for him to escape to like Mexico or or something or whatever. And then he just realized, like, A, I can't do this. B, this is miserable. C, I've I fucked up and I miss Gabby, and you know, I'm never gonna be happy living on the run. And then maybe he decided in the middle of the plan to like, well, let me just, I'm just gonna go ahead and end it all because what's the point?

SPEAKER_01 14:32

They never found a gun. Right. They never found a gun. So he dies with a gunshot wound to the head, but they never find a gun. But there was flooding and maybe it was swept away. Right. But again, they searched extensively for weeks.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Yeah, that whole thing is weird. It's very strange.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

It is them finding him as quickly as they did, there being no gun there, them not being freaked out by the fact that he's gone off to kill himself is just all not sitting right with me somehow.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

I agree, and I think that there's a lot there that we don't know, but it is very hard to dismiss DNA and dental records.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Well, so conspiracy theories at the time were that it was deliberately sort of falsified because this was so public and such in the social media that for the police to save face and for people not to be like constantly hounding them to find him is is that they they released this information that they'd found a dead body. Right. So, I mean, yes, it's a conspiracy theory, but the conspiracy theory at the time was that that information was falsified so that people thought that this had all come to an end.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Wow. Wow. I mean, yeah, anything is possible. You have enough corruption in the world that it is possible. It is.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

How did he get out of the house unnoticed? I mean, the surveillance could not have been that great.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

The the surveillance, but also just the people there. Like it was like with the Casey Anthony. There were people there around the clock like protesting and saying, Where is Gabby? You are a murderer. Um, so I just wonder if he put on a disguise, if they hit him, like he got in the trunk of a car and somebody left with him.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

I couldn't find a lot of information on it, so I didn't include it. But there was this weird thing about his mom driving away in that car and everybody thinking it was Brian and reporting it to the police. And apparently she had some kind of disguise on or whatever, but she laughed it off later as oh, I don't like anything like him. He's like tall and skinny and I'm short and dubby. And so there was something weird with her leaving in the car one day and people thinking it was Brian and her saying it was her, and how could they possibly mistake her?

SPEAKER_00 16:54

And well, I mean, if you're sitting down in a car and you've got on a wig, like you wouldn't know the context of like tall and skinny versus short and not skinny.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

But again, she just laughs it off. Like this whole thing, your your son's missing, Gabby's dead, and you think this is funny.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Right, this is what you're focused on. This is the facet that's important. Like, shut the fuck up. Yeah, I just want to punch her in the face.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

All right, next on my list. All right, so did the police that pulled them over fail her? Or did they do did they do the best with the information they were given?

SPEAKER_00 17:34

I think that they failed her. I do think that they followed protocol. And that I think was actually factually proven that they did what they were supposed to do per the guidelines, but also as a person of authority, like a police officer, you have to use a certain amount of discretion. And my discretion would have been this is a small young woman, this is a larger young man. Obviously, there is a power dynamic here that is imbalance, like period point blank. A woman versus a man, nine times out of ten, the man is stronger. That is just a biological freaking fact, like it or not. It is what it is. And they're like, Oh, you're the victim, Brian. We're gonna put you up in a hotel. Like, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah, are you fucking kidding me? She was distraught. I can't see.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

They didn't read the body language, they totally based their judgments on the words coming out of people's mouths and not on body language. She's shaking, crying in the back of the car, asking to call her mom. He's laughing, smiling, laughing it off.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Like And that's a sociopath. That is an absolute sociopath. They can be cool, calm, and collected so that they can take control of the situation. They have to have control of the situation, and they have to be calm, cool, and collected to be able to do that. So, yeah, he switched off the anger and the violence side of him to be charming as fuck, to talk to these cops, to keep his ass out of trouble.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Yeah. They actually interviewed them for over an hour. So you only see bits and pieces of the body cam footage on the news and in the Netflix documentary, but some of the other documentaries I watched, you saw other parts of the body cam footage. And they call in more and more officers. So it's not just the two officers that pulled them over. They call in someone that's supposed to be more of an expert on it. And the three of them are like discussing what we should do, should we charge her? Should we do anything? Who's the victim here? And they end up just saying to the person that was called in after that's that's more of the expert on abuse, it's up to you, it's your call. What do you think? What should we do? Um so there was definitely a lot of uh debating of what the right thing to do in that situation. So it does seem like they were a little baffled as to what was going on. But I do think that they 100% took the words coming out of everybody's mouth and not anything else into consideration. Yeah. Because of course she's gonna say, it's my fault, and she's not gonna admit that she's been hurt, and oh, he hit me with the back pat. But that is textbook.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

I feel like cops are trained on this though, and if they're not, they should be, and that needs to take the protocol.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

But part of what the Gabby Petito Petition is um doing is they've come up with this 10 question questionnaire, which in every situation like this, they now have to give both parties. And I don't know what the questions are, but there's telltale answers that will then produce the truth. So that's part of what the foundation is doing, is um they've had like a domestic abuse expert come up with this 10 question questionnaire that actually gets the truth out of somebody that's afraid to tell you otherwise.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Okay, that's good. And I hope that they can pass some actual legislation on that.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

That's what they're training all police officers in now, apparently, or trying to get that happening. I don't know. We'll have to look into whether or not that's I'm interested what the 10 questions are, but it'd probably take an expert to analyze the answers the right way. Right, yeah. But definitely something else had to be done than just judging it on I mean, they were there an hour.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

I don't know how you can Look at that as just an unbiased person, never mind being an authority figure, like a police officer. I don't know how you can look at that and come away with Brian is the victim, and we're gonna put him up in a safe space in a hotel and send this poor little girl off on her own in a van when she's shaking and crying and distraught and asking for her mom.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Like Right and leaving a tiny little thing, young girl like that on her own in the wilderness to sleep in a van is just it was a bad message. It is. I mean, I will say that there's an hour of body cam footage. It's been edited down to a few minutes, um, which was what was shown when they were looking for Gabby. Now, at that point, they knew Gabby was missing and Brian was home. So you've got to remember that it's then been edited to look a certain way. Right. So and we know you can record something for an hour and edit it to sound totally different and in a different context. Um, at the time that they're releasing it on the news, they knew she was missing. So that it is and on the documentaries, it's been edited based on the facts that he killed her. Yeah. Whereas unless you watch the whole body cam footage, I mean, obviously, mistakes were made. I'm not denying that.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

But the demeanor is still the demeanor of each one of them. She was still obviously distraught. Yes. He seemed fing fine. Like he seemed like he was having a ball. Right. He was like, oh, these cops are my brother. Found the whole thing amusing. Yeah. And that unfortunately is what happens a lot in domestic violence cases is you have a man and you have cops who are also men, and it's a boys' club, unfortunately, and misogyny is real.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

The expert that was called in was a woman.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Good. Yeah. I mean, a lot of good it did, unfortunately. But yeah. I mean, I'm sure those cops hate themselves now, but they probably live with a lot of guilt, and I hope that this changes how they move forward in situations like this.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Lesson learned. Mm-hmm. Unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Um, anything else you wanted to? Oh, like what was the deal with him with the money situation? Like, because as far as I can tell, Gabby was the only one who tried to hold down a job and and make money. Um, I don't recall ever hearing about Brian having a job or trying to bring in any money.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

She bought the van. The van was registered to her. She was the one trying to make money on the road. We assume he didn't have any because he needed to use her card for gas for home, unless he was just trying to get what he could out of her before they realized she was dead.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

And then the $700 Venmo or whatever. Like, so you've you've murdered this girl, and now you are stealing from her. So he was in a desperate situation. Yeah, he's a fucking murderer, he's a piece of shit, whatever. But being logical, okay, you've murdered her, you don't have any money, you need to get home. You have access to her funds, so you use that to get home because that's the only way you can get home. But then to Venmo the $700 is just like that was not necessary. Yeah. You were already home. So to me, that just was such a scummy extra thing to do. Like get a job. Right. Well, he can't if he's gonna hide at home. No, no, he can't. He sure can't.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Yeah. It it seems like he thought he was clever, sending himself text messages and posting on her account and everything else, but then he drives back the van, registered in her name, and pops it in his driveway. Right. Like, um, not so clever.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Yeah, and that's why I wonder if like they had a plan and something went awry and they had to to pivot. I don't know. Or maybe they're all fucking idiots, possibly. Yeah. For that 10 days that they had while Gabby's family was no doubt just writhing in agony. They were using that time to be calculated and cover his crime up. Right. And that to me is one of the most devastating things in this case is their total disregard for Gabby's family.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

And supposedly he loved her. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And their goodbye vacation.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

So obviously they knew that A, he was not going to be on this earth that much longer, or B, he was gonna have to go run or go to jail. He was not gonna be in their lives one way or the other. Right. So this was their last hurrah. Well, guess what? Gabby's family didn't get a last hurrah with Gabby. No.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

No. And those happy, smiling, hiking pictures, that's why I think that they weren't thinking that he was gonna kill himself. As a parent, if you were going on a vacation with your son and you knew it was the last time you were gonna see him, maybe before he went to jail, you'd be somewhat unhappy. But if you knew that it was the last time you were gonna see him before he killed himself, I can't imagine I would be happy and smiling in a family vacation.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

I can't imagine that I would be able to take a family vacation. Like, much less smile on a photo. Yeah. So I don't know what their plan was, but uh obviously they were not in reality because there was no way he was getting out of this unscathed. It seems like that mom was just delusional. They're just not human. No.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

They're lizard people. And they did get the wrongful death suit filed against them and it ended up in a settlement. But I honestly think they should have been charged with some kind of aiding and abetting. They should have. They definitely helped him. Like once they realized that he had murdered Gabby and they had like a warrant out for his arrest. I guess they couldn't prove that the parents knew, I guess is the issue. But I do think that they were aiding and abetting a known criminal and that they knew what he'd done.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

They were, and I understand as a parent that it would not be easy to turn your son over. Like I I have never been in that situation. I hope I am never put into that situation. I know that it would be probably the hardest thing that you ever had to do in your life, but you just do the right thing. You just do it, you don't make it worse, you don't put other people through hell.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Right. The minute he called them from Wyoming, the first thing she should have said was hang up and call the police. Right, call the police.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Exactly. But she instead chose the worst possible path. And she did make that choice. That was her choice. Yeah, she was something else.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Alright. I want to leave on a higher note though. I mean, I do love what the family's done. I love the fact that her parents and stepparents were all friendly before this happened. They all worked together during it, and they all work together now to support her memory and to hopefully help other people in that situation not end up like Gabby. Um, and I think that that's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Yeah, I love that they turned their tragedy into trying to bring something good into the world, and that tells you everything that you need to know about their character. Their family. All right. Okay, that was the story of Gabby Petito. Rest in peace, Gabby.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

I've literally spent the last week watching all these documentaries and putting together the episode, and it's been it's been a lot. I mean, just It's an emotional case. It is very much so. So I'm glad that we got it out, put out there for you guys, and it was a requested one. So let us know what you think. Let us know what you think, and what else you want us to cover.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

And we will be back next week with Tonda Dickerson and the curse of the lottery.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

The curse that sounds like um like a movie. The curse of the lottery.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

It would have been if if old Tonda had sold her rights, but she made a good decision and didn't. Yeah. And you guys will hear about that next week. All right, and until then. Be divas. Not deadly. Bye. Bye, guys.