Brian Laundrie ‘was likely dead TWO DAYS after Gabby was reported missing’
Thursday, October 28, 2021
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BRIAN Laundrie likely died just two days after his fiancé Gabby Petito was reported missing by her mother, police believe.
North Port Police spokesperson Joshua Taylor told PEOPLE "there is a very good possibility" the 23-year-old fugitive died on September 13 - the same day he told his parents he was going hiking in Carlton Reserve but never came home.
Police say Brian may have died the same day he disappeared
Brian's remains were found last week
Two days earlier, on September 11, Gabby was reported missing by her mother in New York.
The 22-year-old vlogger had been on a cross-country road trip with Laundrie when she vanished sometime around August 27.
Laundrie returned home to Florida alone on September 1, offering no explanation for where Gabby was, and immediately retained an attorney.
Investigators began monitoring him on September 12, secretly planting cameras around his parents' home.
On September 13, North Port Police watched Brian leave his parent's home in his grey Mustang, Taylor said.
Two days later, investigators thought they saw him return to the family home in the same car.
Amid increasing media attention, North Port Police Chief Todd Garrison told reporters on Sept. 16 that police were confident about where Brian was.
"All I'm going to say is I know where Brian Laundrie is at," Garrison said during a press conference.
Brian's remains were found last week
Two days earlier, on September 11, Gabby was reported missing by her mother in New York.
The 22-year-old vlogger had been on a cross-country road trip with Laundrie when she vanished sometime around August 27.
Laundrie returned home to Florida alone on September 1, offering no explanation for where Gabby was, and immediately retained an attorney.
Investigators began monitoring him on September 12, secretly planting cameras around his parents' home.
On September 13, North Port Police watched Brian leave his parent's home in his grey Mustang, Taylor said.
Two days later, investigators thought they saw him return to the family home in the same car.
Amid increasing media attention, North Port Police Chief Todd Garrison told reporters on Sept. 16 that police were confident about where Brian was.
"All I'm going to say is I know where Brian Laundrie is at," Garrison said during a press conference.
HUGE BLUNDER
However, the next day, Brian was reported missing by his parents who said they hadn't seen him since Sept. 14. That date was later revised to Sept. 13 in a statement issued by the family's attorney.
"When the family reported him on Friday, that was certainly news to us that they had not seen him," Taylor told WINK. "We thought we'd seen Brian initially come back into that home on that Wednesday."
Taylor said the department now believes it was Laundrie's mother, Roberta, wearing a baseball cap, who they saw getting out of his Mustang on Sept. 15.
"They had returned from the park with that Mustang. So who does that? Right? Like, if you think your son's missing since Tuesday, you're going to bring his car back to the home. So it didn't make sense that anyone would do that if he wasn't there." Taylor added.
"So the individual getting out with a baseball hat, we thought was Brian," he said. "They are built kind of similarly.
"No case is perfect," he continued.
Taylor later told PEOPLE that the "misidentification did not have a big impact" on their investigation.
"Other than confusion, it likely changed nothing," he said. "There is a very good possibility that Brian was already deceased. He still needed to be found. We just wanted people to better understand why we thought we knew Brian was in his home."
BRIAN'S MYSTERIOUS DEATH
Laundrie's skeletal remains were located October 20 in Florida's Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park, which is adjacent to the Carlton Reserve.
The results of an autopsy on Brian's remains, found near his backpack and notebook, were inconclusive.
His remains are now with a forensic pathologist who is expected to return results in two or three weeks, the Laundrie family attorney said.
Petito, meanwhile, was confirmed to have been strangled to death by a "human force."
Her remains were found in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park on September 19. Coroners determined that she'd been killed around three to four weeks earlier.
Gabby's family has not yet spoken publicly since Brian's remains were found.
Through their attorney, Laundrie family revealed that they will be cremating their son's ashes and forgoing a funeral.
His family left their homes in North Port on Oct. 24 to grieve together in an undisclosed location in Florida.
Chris and Roberta Laundrie returned to their home on Oct. 26.
Brian has never been named a suspect in Gabby's death but is the sole person of interest in the case.
He was also wanted on bank fraud charges after allegedly racking up $1,000 in charges on a credit card belonging to Gabby in the days after she was killed.
An investigation into Brian's cause of death and Gabby's murder remains active and ongoing.
Gabby was strangled to death
Laundrie's cause of death is unknown
Originally published on The sun