What Netflix's <i>American Murder: Gabby Petito</i> Reveals About ...

It was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime for 22-year-old Gabby Petito and her fiancé Brian Laundrie. Inspired by social media accounts chronicling glamorous lives on the road, the pair bought a van in 2021 to travel across America, keen to explore the nation’s vast natural wonder. For four months, Petito and Laundrie were going to stay in a number of America’s national parks while she started a blog and a YouTube account to catalog their trip. 

But the dream holiday ended in tragedy. Following at least one domestic dispute between her and Laundrie, which was contradicted by her glowing social media presence, Petito disappeared in 2021 and would never return home. Her body was found on Sept. 19, 2021.

A new three-part documentary series, out now on Netflix, tells the story of Petito’s life and death through interviews with her friends and family, and traces how the search for her sparked nationwide interest. Here’s what to know about American Murder: Gabby Petito.

How Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie became a part of #vanlife

Petito and Laundrie became friends after they met at Bayport-Blue Point High School in Bayport, New York. After graduating in 2017, the pair began dating in 2019, and Petito moved to North Point, Florida to live with Laundrie’s family. Living there was an uncomfortable experience for Petito, her friend Rose Davis says in the series. She struggled to get along with Brian’s family, especially his mother Roberta. The discomfort was compounded by Laundrie’s increasingly controlling behavior. In one instance, he stole Petito’s wallet and ID so she couldn’t go out with Davis, as alleged in American Murder, which shows Petito and Laundrie’s text messages. Petito and Laundrie shared an interest in long drives, National Parks, and traveling around the United States, including driving from New York to California. In July 2020, the couple got engaged.

Saving up for a cross-country adventure, Petito worked various jobs, including as a pharmacy technician and working at Taco Bell. Petito purchased a 2012 Ford Transit Connect, and the pair remodeled it to make it livable for what was to be a four-month adventure exploring various National Parks. On July 2, 2021, a year after their engagement, they set off from New York. Petito planned to document the journey on YouTube under the account Nomadic Statik and her Instagram account, the profile of which reads “traveling the world in our tiny van #vanlife.”

Gabby Petito reported missing, prompting an investigation

On Aug. 12, 2021, Police received a 911 call in Moab, Utah, claiming a man was attacking a girl in a van driving by. The police found the vehicle and intervened—it was Petito’s van. Based on the stories a panicked Petito and calm Laundrie gave the police, the conclusion was drawn that Laundrie was the victim of a domestic assault. Refusing to press charges, the pair were separated for the evening—Laundrie was taken to a hotel, and Petito remained in the van. The next day they continued the trip. A week later, Petito’s first YouTube video, called “Van Life | Building Our Van Life Journey,” full of images of the couple smiling, laughing, and kissing, was posted.

Despite the glossy appearance on social media, things were not improving for the couple. On Aug. 25, Petito posted on Instagram for the last time. Around then, Petito stopped responding to texts. Her family and friends reached out on multiple occasions, but Petito never answered. On Aug. 27, Petito’s mother got a strange text from Gabby’s phone: “Can you help Stan, I just keep getting his voicemails and missed calls.” The message referred to Petito’s grandfather—but Gabby never referred to him by his first name. 

On Sept. 11, Petito’s mother filed a missing persons report with the Suffolk County, New York Police Department. This led to a startling discovery by police in Southwest Florida. Not only had Laundrie returned to his parent's house with Petito's van, but she was not with him. The Laundrie family hired an attorney and refused to help the police investigation. 

Petito’s story became one of considerable national interest. Online, amateur TikTok sleuths pored over every detail in the archive of her posts and analyzed each new development in the case. The investigation to find her spanned over 2000 miles as police tried to retrace Petito’s steps.

What happened to Gabby Petito? 

The investigation led police to several places, including Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming—where her phone was last used—which covers 310,000 acres. Police appealed to anyone with potential information to assist, which led to the surprising discovery of another #vanlife blogger who pored through her footage to find images of Petito’s van, located in Spread Creek in Grand Teton. Three weeks after the search began, Petito’s body was found on Sept. 19th, 2021. It was believed by investigators that the scene was staged. An autopsy later revealed that Petito died of strangulation.

Petito’s friends and family were understandably devastated by the news of her death. “I collapsed to the ground,” her stepfather, Jim Schmidt, who went to Wyoming to help find Gabby, recalls of hearing the news. “And I had to pick up the phone and compose myself and call Niki, and get Joe on the phone and Tara in a conference call, and tell them, from 2,000 miles away, that our daughter was dead.” A friend of Petito’s from high school says in the series, “When the news had broke that they found her body…I just wanted to shut it off or wake up, like it was a bad dream or something.”

What happened to Brian Laundrie? 

American Murder reveals the details of Laundrie’s attempts to create an alibi for himself. On Aug. 29, he made numerous phone calls to his parents saying Gabby was “gone” and he needed help, and they called an attorney immediately after. Laundrie hitchhiked two separate times to get from where he placed Petito’s body to get back to the van. There, he created a conversation between Gabby and himself via text on both of their phones to make it look like they weren’t physically together. Laundrie also made a transaction on Zelle, moving $700 from Petito’s account to his own, with the memo reading “Goodbye Brian, I’ll never ask you for anything again.”

The discovery of Petito’s body allowed investigators to piece together the final moments of her life. On Aug. 27, 2021, Petito was seen with Laundrie around 1 p.m. in Jackson, WY at a restaurant called Mary Piglets—a witness said they were fighting. American Murder reveals that Petito placed a call to her ex-boyfriend, but he was working and unable to answer the phone. The pair was then spotted on the security camera footage of a nearby Whole Foods at 2:13 p.m. That footage was the last time Petito was seen alive. After Whole Foods, they drove to Spread Creek, arriving around 6 pm. Two hours later at 8:32pm, Petito was rearranging files on her computer—the police believe these were her last moments alive.

On Sept. 20, 2021, the day after finding Petito’s remains, the police executed a search warrant on Laundrie’s home, but Brian himself had gone missing, telling his parents a week earlier that he was going on a hike. The parents didn’t report him missing as they expected him to return. He was somewhere in the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park, which spans over 20,000 acres. Thirty-seven days after Laundrie was reported missing, his parents discovered his remains on Oct. 20 at Carlton Reserve.

Found with Laundrie’s body was a letter admitting he killed Gabby, claiming that he put her out of her misery after she had a bizarre accident and was in unbearable pain—though this is inconsistent with the autopsy. In 2022, the Petito-Schmidt family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Brian’s parents Roberta and Chris, which was settled for $3 million. No criminal charges have been filed against the Laundrie family.