Brian Laundrie’s chilling texts about ‘once in a lifetime’ trip to friend days after killing Gabby Petito revealed: report
Days after Brian Laundrie admittedly strangled his girlfriend Gabby Petito on a cross-country road trip, he exchanged text messages with a friend nonchalantly detailing the “fun” travels — but failed to mention the grisly murder.
“Trip was good,” Laundrie wrote to his pal Ben on Sept. 4, 2021 — after he had returned to Florida without Petito, but before she was reported missing to authorities by her family, according to newly revealed text messages reviewed by the Messenger.
“Gab and I had fun. Tired now, gonna sleep for a week,” he said.
“We made a lot of content,” Laundrie told Ben, in reference to the couple’s YouTube travel channel. “It was once in a lifetime.”
Petito, 22, and Laundrie, 23, were traveling across the country together in a van and recording their trip when she vanished in August 2021. On Sept. 1, Laundrie returned to his family’s Florida home, but without his girlfriend.
The Long Island native was reported missing on Sept. 11, and Laundrie was named a person of interest in the case. Petito’s strangled corpse was found on Sept. 19 in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park after an intensive search.
Authorities confirmed she was killed sometime around Aug. 28.
Laundrie fled into the Florida wilderness before he could be arrested. He was found dead in the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park in Florida on Oct. 20 after a massive manhunt. An autopsy determined he died as a result of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.
He was found with a letter in which he confessed to killing Petito.
“I ended her life,” he proclaims in the note, which was recovered by the FBI. “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 claimed he killed her to put her out of her misery after she suffered an injury in the wilderness as an act of “mercy.”
“From the moment I decided, took away her pain, I knew I couldn’t go on without her,” he wrote.
Days before the killing, the couple was pulled over for speeding in Moab, Utah. Officers found Petito bloodied and crying after an apparent fight. The cops separated them for the night, but took no further action.
Petito’s family has sued the police department for allegedly treating Laundrie like the victim during the stop.
Petito’s family also sued Laundrie’s parents — Chris and Robert Laundrie — in civil court in Florida, alleging they were aware that their son killed their daughter but they chose to remain silent during the investigation.
Earlier this month — and more than two years after Petito’s death — an attorney representing Laundrie’s family reportedly made a settlement offer to Petito’s family ahead of the civil trial scheduled for next year. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
