After millions of Netflix viewers were left baffled over the news that Brian Laundrie's parents had escaped from the Gabby Petito murder case without being charged, a legal expert has revealed how this came to be.
Roberta and Chris Laundrie's 23-year-old son Brian violently murdered his fiancé Gabby, 22, during a road-trip of the US in August 2021, before abandoning her body in the Wyoming wilderness.
A missing person's campaign subsequently started by Gabby's heartbroken parents eventually uncovered Brian's heinous crime, and a month after her body was found, the Florida-local took his own life.
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Last week, however, (17 Feb) Netflix released a true-crime docu-series - titled American Murder Gabby: Petito - reflecting on the case, and hinting that Brian's parents may have had a bigger part to play in their son's crime.
Roberta and Chris Laundrie's rumoured 'involvement'
Several weeks into Gabby and Brian's August road-trip, the aspiring-YouTuber suddenly cut contact with her mother, Nichole Schmidt.
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After suddenly receiving a series of 'strange' texts from her daughter's phone, Nichole and her ex-husband Joe Petito appealed to Brian's family for help in finding the pair, but had their telephone numbers subsequently blocked.
On 11 September, the couple filed a missing persons report before discovering that Brian had actually returned home to Florida in Gabby's van without her.
By this point, Brian had been hiding out at his parents' property since the end of August, with Roberta and Chris having already hired a lawyer.
The Laundrie family refused to cooperate with law enforcement investigating Gabby's disappearance at the time, instead directing questions to their lawyer.
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Later in the documentary - ahead of Brian's suicide - it is shown that authorities searched his home for potential evidence, stumbling across a note Roberta had written to her son titled 'Burn After Reading'.
The note heard her pledge to help him if he ever need to 'dispose of a body', as per CNN, though Roberta later insisted that the letter had been penned prior to Brian's road-trip.
"We still don't know the extent of Brian's parents' involvement," FBI Special Agent, Loretta Bush admits in the doc. "But what we do know, is that on August 29, Brian made a flurry of calls to his parents."
Why the couple were never arrested:
To this day, Chris and Roberta Laundrie have faced no criminal charges for Gabby's death, for which Brian was officially blamed.
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This prospect has since left millions of viewers baffled, with one recently writing on X (formerly Twitter): "After watching the Gabby Petito doc on Netflix, my immediate and last thought is that Brian Laundrie's parents should be prosecuted as accessories after the fact.
"There is ZERO CHANCE they didn't know what he'd done when they aided his trip back home and sheltered him."
Another wrote online: "Still firmly believe that the parents of #BrianLaundrie should be charged with aiding and abetting and obstruction of justice…
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"I mean how convenient they finally join the search and shit magically appears…"
Addressing why this may have been the case, Ben Michael - a lawyer at M&A Criminal Defence Attorneys - told Dexerto this week that it was likely due to lack of evidence connecting them to the crime.
"While there is a possibility that they could at some point face criminal charges, I think that’s highly unlikely," Michael began.
"They were never charged to begin with because the evidence of their cause or involvement in the death of Petito was not strong enough."
Discussing the 'Burn After Reading' note, he added that even this would have struggled to prove the Laundrie's' guilt in court.
"With that letter, for example, where Roberta Laundrie wrote to her son statements like 'if you need to dispose of a body, I will show up with a shovel and garbage bags', the date in which that letter was written couldn’t be proven," Michael pointed out.
"Their lawyers stated it was written before Petito’s death and was unrelated, and there simply was not enough evidence to prove otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt."
The Petito family's lawsuit
In 2022, Gabby's parents Nichole and Joe accused Roberta and Chris Laundrie of assisting their son in covering-up Gabby's murder, and knowing she was already dead throughout the missing person's investigation.
They attempted to sue the couple for at least $100,000 in damages.
The Laundries ceaselessly denied these allegations.
Speaking in court - as per WFLA - Chris Laundrie admitted that his son had made a number of calls after murdering Gabby, but neither he nor Roberta knew at the time that a crime had been committed.
"I asked him, you know, how is he doing, and he — you know, he was not calm and he got very excited and told me things had — you know, 'Gabby's gone' and he got very frantic," Chris recalled.
"Everything was frantic and quick. So, you know, Gabby's gone..."
He continued: "He said, you know, 'Can you help me,' you know, and he might need a lawyer, you know. And I would — I asked him why he wouldn't tell me. He was very frantic.
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"Everything was frantic and I started to not really comprehend, and then he said just, you know, 'Can you help me?'.
"And I said, 'Okay. I'll help you.' And I calmed him down and I said — I don't know.
"It was — it was all mumbled and I still don't remember everything that happened."
In 2024, the case was settled out of court, with the Petito's parents telling press that, after a 'long day of mediation', all parties had 'reluctantly agreed' to the deal to 'avoid further legal expenses and prolonged personal conflict' - as per the BBC.
Topics: Gabby Petito, Crime, True Crime, US News, News, Netflix, Documentaries, TV And Film
Rhianna Benson