“American Murder- Gabby Petito” is a documentary series that just came out on Netflix containing three episodes. It depicts the cruel murder of Petito narrated by her friends and family to provide their emotional perspective as they found out everything along with the rest of the world.Petito is a Van-Life blogger who started a youtube channel and posted her only video in August before she was killed. Petito was murdered by strangulation and blunt force trauma in August of 2021 by her fiancé, Brian Laundrie.
When Petito met Laundrie, everything seemed like a perfect fit as they decided to move out and start van life. For years the two had a rocky relationship, and many friends explain how Laundrie was emotionally abusive towards Petito. It was ultimately too late, and they started their life on the road as a couple. A few months later she was found dead, with her fiance returning to his parents house in Florida like nothing had happened. Petito’s parents did their best to spread her case throughout the country, and people soon began protesting in front of the Laundries’ home. Soon thereafter, Laundrie went into the woods and committed suicide. The police concluded that he was the murderer of Gabby Petito using notebooks found by his body. However, the release of the documentary resurfaced many sinister theories of what actually happened.
In the very first episode, Petito and Laundrie’s close friend who is labeled as “Anonymous” has raised many questions from the people as she stated “Brian had always liked me as more than a friend, but I never saw him that way.” How is that relevant? After this, she only comes up a few times, because she seems completely unnecessary to the plot of the story as she provided no information.
The documentary painted the Laundrie parents, Christopher and Roberta, in a bad spotlight. They had treated Petito horribly when she was alive and seemed to be obsessive over Brian Laundrie. Brian Laundrie had called them after he killed Gabby saying that he needed a lawyer, and soon after, his parents called a lawyer and wired 25,000 dollars to him, claiming that the murder was an “accident”. When the police went to their door to try and talk to Brian, they refused to talk and let him talk, making them seem very suspicious.
After Brian went missing, the police searched his room and found a letter from his mom that said “burn after reading”. In that letter, Roberta said “If you need to dispose of a body, I will show up with a shovel and trash bags.” A case was opened against the parents in 2022, but eventually closed in 2024, not charging them. To this day they continue to roam free, while Gabby will never ever be able to. Personally, I believe that Roberta and Christopher Laundrie had something to do with the murder, and it is unbelievable to me that they did not get charged with anything.
In the third episode, they describe that they created Gabby Petito Foundation.org to help many more people leave their abusive relationships and find peace. This documentary highlighted how many women and men struggle with domestic violence but never speak about it until it’s too late. Ever since, they have been working to pass a bill that helps domestic violence survivors. Unfortunately, Gabby is in a minority of missing person cases that do get solved, and throughout the search for finding her, six bodies were found. To this day, many famous missing persons cases like Madeleine McCann have never been solved.
