Brian Laundrie’s Remains, Confession About Gabby Found One Year Ago

SARASOTA COUNTY, FL — Thursday marks one year since Brian Laundrie’s remains and belongings were found in a Sarasota County park following a month-long search for the killer.

Authorities have since determined without a doubt — thanks to a written confession from the 23-year-old before he took his own life in the Carlton Reserve last year — that he killed his fiancée, Gabby Petito, while they were on a cross-country trip last summer.

On the outside, the “van life” couple, Long Island, New York natives, seemed happy last summer, sharing idyllic photos of their travels in their converted camper van to visit national parks in the western United States on Instagram. Petito, 22, even dreamed of becoming a travel vlogger and influencer.

By the end of August, though, she was dead, killed at the hands of Laundrie.

Petito was last seen alive on Aug. 27, 2021. Witnesses saw the couple at the Merry Piglet, a Tex-Mex restaurant in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that day. They said an aggressive Laundrie stormed in and out of the eatery and argued with staff and Petito. She eventually apologized to the employees and paid their bill before the pair left.

New video footage shared earlier this week also shows the couple shopping at a Wyoming Whole Foods that same day, not long after the incident at the Merry Piglets.

Prior to their trip, they lived with Laundrie’s parents in North Port, Florida. On Sept. 1, 2021, he returned without her to his parents’ home in her van. Her family, after not being able to contact her, reported her missing to the Suffolk County Police Department in New York on Sept. 11 of that year.

By Sept. 15, Laundrie was named a person of interest in the case. But he and his family refused to cooperate with the investigation into her disappearance.

Days later, it was revealed that Petito’s fiancé was nowhere to be found, either. His parents told North Port police on Sept. 17 that their son had left for a hike at Sarasota County’s Carlton Reserve on Sept. 14 — weeks later telling authorities he actually left their home Sept. 13 — and he hadn’t been seen since.

Though North Port police kept a close eye on the Laundrie home, officers confused him for his mother one night, allowing him to slip away. He drove his family’s Mustang to the preserve, and never returned.

As the FBI and other law enforcement agencies launched their search for him in the Carlton Reserve and nearby Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park, Petito’s body was found on Sept. 19, 2021, in a camping area in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, near the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

After her body was found, authorities continued to comb the swampy reserve and the adjacent park, using K-9 dogs, ATVs, drones, helicopters, dive teams and airboats.

The search for Laundrie expanded, as well, after multiple alleged sightings of him throughout Florida, Alabama, Mexico, Canada, the Bahamas and along the Appalachian Trail — which he previously hiked — in North Carolina. Dog the Bounty Hunter, the reality TV star, even joined the search.

Laundrie’s skeletal remains, including a portion of his skull, were found Oct. 20, 2021, in the Carlton Reserve, along with several of his belongings. The FBI used dental records to match the remains to him.

The District 12 Medical Examiner’s Office also used DNA analysis to confirm the remains belonged to Laundrie and determined that he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

In June, Steven Bertolino, an attorney representing the Laundrie family, shared pages from a notebook found near Laundrie’s remains with the public.

In a written confession, Laundrie said Petito fell while crossing a stream at the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping area in Wyoming and injured herself. She had difficulty staying awake, and he said he worried she might have a concussion.

“I don’t know the extent of Gabby’s injurys (sic)," he wrote in his notebook. "Only that she was in extreme pain. I ended her life, I thought it was merciful, that it is what she wanted, but I see now all the mistakes I made. I panicked; I was in shock.”

He called her death “an unexpected tragedy.”

The Petito family filed a civil lawsuit this past spring against Laundrie’s parents, accusing them of intentional infliction of emotional distress and knowing that their daughter was dead, as well as the whereabouts of her body. The families will face off in a Florida courtroom next summer.