Brian Laundrie’s recently-uncovered allegations that he killed his fiancée, Gabby Petito, out of mercy have been disputed by two of America’s best medical examiners.
Laundrie, 23, admits that he killed his 22-year-old fiancée after she fell into a creek and hurt herself at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming on their cross-country road trip last summer in pictures of eight wet pages of his notebook given to DailyMail.com by the Laundrie family’s attorney Steve Bertolino on Friday.
In the notebook, he writes that despite his best efforts to console Gabby, she was already deteriorating quickly, sobbing in agony and trembling from the unrelenting cold when he made the decision to murder her.
Later, it was determined that Petito was killed by hand strangulation.
Medical Examiners Michael Baden and Cyril Wecht, however, informed FOX News that they had concerns about this account of events in light of the Friday disclosures.
Wecht remarked that while symptoms of hypothermia are difficult to detect on a corpse, intense shaking as Laundrie reported is not a symptom. Wecht had previously involved in the investigations into the deaths of former President John F. Kennedy and JonBenet Ramsey.
He explained, “Hypothermia, at first, you’ll be cold as hell.” However, when hypothermia is severe, you don’t shiver or move at all. In reality, this is the reason why patients are brought down to a hypothermic state during surgery.
While Petito’s autopsy did reveal some signs of hemorrhaging as a result of severe hypothermia, according to Baden, who previously served as New York City’s medical examiner and was involved in the investigation into the death of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, it is still doubtful that she had the condition.
He continued, “There is some information that there can be minor hemorrhages in the stomach in the extremely severe cold depths, but that’s in the weeds. In general, hypothermia does not create injuries that are easily seen at autopsy.
“That’s forensic pathology’s weeds,” someone said.
Laundrie’s account of the events was dubbed “farcical” by John Kelly, a criminal profiler and psychologist, and Jason Jensen, a private investigator.
Even if he may have killed Petito out of pity, euthanasia is illegal in all 50 states. Assisted suicide is murder.
Kelly also told FOX News that he was frustrated that Laundrie ‘tiptoed around the confession.
‘He wanted to serve it up as a mercy killing.
‘That’s the thing that’s bugging me more than anything,’ Kelly said. ‘He found her breathing heavily and gasping for breath, so he decided to choke her out?’
He continued to say that it made no sense that he would strangle Petito on the spot rather than drag her back to their van to get some help.
‘I don’t believe in all this accident stuff, because how can you say you love somebody so much, you can’t go on without her, you love her so much you’re willing to commit suicide like a Romeo and Juliet?
‘She’s hurt, and will not go and get help for her.
‘And not only will you not go the extra mile,’ he said, ‘you will not even report her missing.’
Laundrie had been the main suspect in Petito’s disappearance and murder after he arrived back home, alone, in North Port, Florida on September 1 from a cross-country road trip he embarked on with Gabby in her white 2012 Ford Transit van.
Jensen also said he found Laundrie’s story suspect, saying: ‘He writes this farcical tale about her falling down and getting injured while crossing Spread Creek, and describes how he couldn’t leave here behind.’
He called the notebook passage ‘an attempt to rewrite history.’
‘The truth is he killed her because he was a domestic abuser,’ Jensen said,. ‘He strangled her, and had done so before.’
The couple was previously seen on police body camera footage from Moab, Utah after fellow travelers said Laundrie hit her.
He also reportedly got into a fight with wait staff at a restaurant in Jackson shortly before Petito’s death, which Kelly says shows signs of extremely narcissistic personality disorder and sociopathic disorder.
‘The only thing I give him credit for, in any way, is he decided to get eaten up by animals himself,’ Kelly said.
‘In the end, it rang true he wanted to disappear. He felt he was a nobody.’
On October 20 of last year, when Laundrie had escaped to the alligator-infested Carlton Reserve near his house in North Port, Florida, his notebook was discovered in a dry bag next to his body. He had fatally shot himself.
He writes, “I am sorry to my family, this is a shock to them as well as a terrible grief (sic),” in an attempt to explain his version of events.
Please don’t make it more difficult for them; this was an unexpected tragedy.
After stopping in Utah on their journey west in Gabby’s 2012 white Ford Transit, the pair arrived at the national park. On social media, they were documenting their vacation.
Rushing back to our car, trying to cross Spread Creek before it got too dark and chilly, Laundrie wrote in his notebook. A splash and a scream may be heard. I shouted her name because I could hardly see and was having trouble finding her.
We had just left Utah’s scorching-hot national parks when I discovered her hardly breathing, gasping, and (because the ink is soaked) shivering in the frigid cold.
She was drenched in water and the temperature had dropped to below zero. When I realized I couldn’t carry her safely, I stumbled, fatigued and in shock, carrying her as far as I could down the stream toward the car.
In a sometimes perplexing monologue, he says, “I made a fire and spooned her as close to the heat, she was so thin, had already been freezing too long.”
I should have built a fire first, but I couldn’t see it at the moment, and I just wanted to get her back to the car and out of the cold. I had no notion where the car might be from where I began the fire. All I knew was that it was across the creek.
“When I dragged Gabby out of the water, she was unable to describe her pain to me. On her forehead, she had a little lump that grew over time. She was in constant pain as we carried her around—her feet hurt, her wrist hurt, but she was also numb and trembling terribly.
Then he starts giving his justification for killing his fiancée. He says: “While lying next to her, she uttered few words while shaking violently, gasping for air, and pleading for an end to her suffering.
She would nod off, and I would shake her awake out of concern that if she had a concussion, she shouldn’t close her eyes.
She would awaken in agony, begin her torturous cycle once more, and be angry at me for waking her.
She forbade me from attempting to cross the creek because she shared my belief that the fire would die out in her sleep.
Then, he writes, “I don’t know the extent of Gabby’s injuries, only that she was in great pain.” He then goes on to explain that he killed her out of mercy.
“I took her life.” I mistakenly believed that it was kind and that it was what she wanted, but I now realize how wrong I was. I was scared. I was stunned. But as soon as I made my decision, I took away her suffering.
He adds: ‘I knew I couldn’t go on without her.
‘I rushed home to spend any time I had left with my family.
‘I wanted to drive north and let James or TJ kill me, but I wouldn’t want them to spend time in jail over my mistake, even though I’m sure they would have liked to.’
Of his own fate in the 25,000-acre swampland on Florida’s west coast, he writes: ‘I’m ending my life not because of fear of punishment, but rather because I can’t stand to live another day without her.
‘I’ve lost our whole entire future together, every moment we could have cherished. I’m sorry for everyone’s loss. Please don’t make life hard for my family, they lost a son and a daughter. The most wonderful (?) girl in the world I’m sorry.
‘I have killed myself by this creek in the hope that animals may tear me apart that it might make some of her family happy.’
As an apparent after thought, and in larger writing, he finishes with the words: ‘Please pick up all of my things. Gabby hated people who litter.’
Laundrie began the notebook with the personal message to Gabby, writing: ‘I wish I could be at your side, I wish I could be talking to you right now. I’d be going through every memory getting even more xxx for the future. But we’ve lost our future.
‘I can’t be without you. I’ve lost every day we (indistinct) spent together… I’ll never get to play with (indistinct) again. Never go hiking with T….I can’t bear to look at our photos, to recall great times because it is why I cannot go on.
‘When I close my eyes I will think of laughing on the roof of the van, falling asleep to the sight of a (indistinct) at the crystal geyser. I will always love you.’
After meeting with the FBI in Tampa, Florida, on Friday to obtain Brian and Gabby’s personal belongings, attorney Bertolino and the Petitos’ lawyer Patrick Reilly gave DailyMail.com photographs from their notebook.
Three days before to the meeting, Gabby’s upset mother sobbed as her attorney referred to the behavior of killer Laundrie’s parents as “callous and despicable” in the courtroom.
As she sat next to her ex-husband Joseph Petito, 42, the father of the van-life girl, Nicole Schmidt, 41, fiddled tensely with a necklace.
The grieving mother and father are suing Christopher and Roberta Laundrie on the grounds that they knew their son had killed Gabby after he went home alone to their Florida house and that they attempted to assist him in eluding law enforcement.
They assert that the Laundries committed “intentional infliction of emotional distress” and that a statement made by their attorney in the purpose of putting an end to the hunt for Gabby, who was then missing, was “outrageous” because they allegedly already knew she was dead.
In Florida’s Sarasota County Court, their attorney Reilly stated: “This lawsuit is not merely about Robert and Christopher Laundrie’s silence when they knew their son had brutally murdered Gabby Petito.”
Additionally, he claimed that it wasn’t about their “callous refusal despite requests from the Petito family” to disclose whether or not Gabby was still alive or, in the event that she wasn’t, the whereabouts of her remains.
When they discovered on August 28, 2021 that their son had cruelly murdered Gabby Petito, they began acting in a certain way, he stated.
This, according to Reilly, contained a declaration made by Steve Bertolino, the legal counsel they were receiving at the time, stating their desire for the search to be successful.
The Laundries were not in court, but DailyMail.com spotted them the next day close to their North Port house.
Judge Hunter W. Carroll questioned Christopher, 63, and Roberta, 56, about what obligation they had to assist Gabby’s parents in any way.
Reilly responded, “It’s about what they did with the knowledge they had. Not just keeping quiet about what they knew.
The location of Gabby’s body may have been revealed by the Laundries making an anonymous phone call, he continued. The attorney claimed to be aware of Gabby’s parents’ “desperate search” for information.
The Laundries’ motion to dismiss the matter was up for discussion at the hearing. Judge Carroll stated that he wanted to render a written judgement in two weeks after hearing both sides’ arguments. The Laundries might have to go before a jury next year if he rejects the motion.
For the first time since their daughter Gabby’s sad death, Gabby’s parents had the chance to testify in court. After escaping to a Florida swamp, Laundrie shot himself, preventing them from receiving justice.
The hearing, however, made the couple’s suffering worse because they had to endure arguments. The court was informed that both sets of parents got along before Gabby vanished.