The fiancée of a young woman who disappeared after the couple chronicled their road trips through social media has been named a person of interest in the investigation, police said Wednesday.
Brian Laundrie returned home to North Port, Florida on Sept. 1 driving the white van the couple used on shared trips with hundreds of thousands of followers on the couple’s Instagram and YouTube channel “Van Life”. However, her 22-year-old fiancée, Gabrielle Petito, was nowhere to be found, police said.
It was ten days later that, according to police, Petito’s family reported her disappearance to the Suffolk County Police Department, telling investigators they had had no contact with her since the last week of August. Despite Laundrie’s return, police said they had not made any contact with police about her Petito’s disappearance.
On Wednesday, North Port police named Laundrie the “person of interest” in the case and said neither he nor his lawyer have answered questions about what happened to Petito or where he might be.
“We don’t know what Brian knows, that’s the end result,” Josh Taylor, the department’s public information officer, said at a news conference Wednesday. “We need to know exactly where she was, where she was, her last locations.”
On Wednesday, Moab police officials in Utah also released a report beginning Aug. 12, when officers were alerted to a “domestic problem” during which Laundrie had been seen allegedly assaulting Petito.
Investigators tried to talk to Laundrie Saturday night at his home in North Port, where Petito was also living at the time, Taylor said.
“We asked to speak to Brian and his family, and they basically handed us the information for their lawyer,” he said. “This is the extent of our conversation with them. In my understanding, we have had some conversations with their lawyer, but certainly nothing at the level of providing us with the details we would like.”
Laundrie’s attorney, Steven Bertolino, did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News’ requests for comment. But he told the Daily Beast Laundrie that he was instructed not to talk to police.
“In my experience, intimate partners are usually the first person the police focus their attention on in cases like this and the warning that ‘a statement will be made that will be used against you’ is true, regardless of whether the my client had something to do. to do so with the disappearance of Mrs. Petito, “he said in a statement.
Petito is believed to have last been in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, where she and Laundrie were traveling in a 2012 Ford Transit van with license plate number QFTG03 from Florida.
The couple had more than eight thousand subscribers and their Instagram accounts, which had amassed tens of thousands of followers.
According to Moab police, the couple was arrested on August 12 after notification that a man was seen to have “assaulted the woman”. Laundrie told officers the two had argued and that he “tried to create distance by telling Gabbie to go for a walk to calm down.”
Laundrie told police that Petito slapped him and “grabbed his face and pushed her back.” Laundrie tried to lock her out of the car, but Petito opened the driver’s side door and climbed into the van.
“Both the male and female reported that they are in love and committed to getting married and that they desperately did not want to see anyone charged with a crime,” the report states.
Throughout the conversation with police, an officer noted that Petito did not “stop crying, breathing hard, or composing a sentence without having to wipe away tears, wipe his nose, or rub his knees with his hands.”
An officer convinced the couple to have Laundrie stay in a hotel room while she stayed with the van to “restore it.”
Police said investigators took the van Saturday from Laundrie’s home and it was examined with the help of the FBI.
According to a GoFundMe account created by Petito’s family, some of his relatives have also flown to Wyoming in search of him.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, North Port Police Chief Todd Garrison sent a personal request to Laundrie’s attorney asking him to contact police to help find Petito.
“Call us to arrange a conversation with Brian Laundrie,” Garrison wrote, including the hashtags #wheresgabby and #findgabby in the tweet. “Two people went on a trip and one person came back!”