Episode Details

Brian Laundrie confessed in a notebook recovered near his remains that he had killed Gabby Petito. In the handwritten note, Laundrie claimed that Petito had been badly injured after a fall near a creek in Wyoming and that he killed her because he believed she was suffering and wanted the pain to end. He framed the killing as an act of mercy, but that account was immediately at odds with the official findings that Petito died by manual strangulation and blunt-force trauma. The FBI had already concluded that Laundrie was responsible for her death, and the notebook gave investigators a direct admission from him before he died by suicide in Florida.


Gabby’s mother, Nichole Schmidt, reacted angrily to the confession and rejected Laundrie’s attempt to explain the killing on his own terms. She described the note as narcissistic and shared a message saying that narcissists rewrite history to avoid accountability, while also making clear that the family would continue pursuing the truth and justice for Gabby. For Schmidt, the confession did not provide closure so much as another attempt by Laundrie to control the story after killing her daughter. She and the rest of Gabby’s family continued to challenge the version of events he left behind and to pursue legal accountability connected to what happened before and after Gabby’s death.


to contact me:

bobbycapucci@protonmail.com