On the afternoon of August 12, 2021, a Moab City police officer pulled over a white 2012 Ford Transit van near Arches National Park in Utah. Inside were Gabby Petito, 22, and her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, 23, six weeks into a cross-country trip they were documenting online. Minutes earlier a 911 caller had reported seeing a man slap a woman outside the Moonflower Community Cooperative in town. Body camera footage shows Petito crying in the passenger seat, telling the officers that Laundrie had grabbed her face. The officers separated them for the night. Laundrie was driven to the Bowen Motel. Petito kept the van. Within three weeks she was dead.

A Van, a Camera, and a Plan

Gabrielle Petito was born March 19, 1999, and grew up in Blue Point, New York. She met Laundrie in high school, got engaged in July 2020, and moved into his parents’ home in North Port, Florida. The van-life trip was her project: a converted Ford Transit, a YouTube channel, an Instagram feed of parks. They left her mother’s home on July 2, 2021, planning to reach Oregon by Halloween.

Her mother, Nichole Schmidt, last spoke to her by phone on August 25. On August 27 the couple ate at Merry Piglets, a Tex-Mex restaurant in Jackson, Wyoming, where staff later described Laundrie arguing over the bill. Store cameras placed them at a Whole Foods in town shortly after 2 p.m. Then they drove north toward Bridger-Teton National Forest.

The Stop in Moab

The stop lasted more than an hour. Officers Eric Pratt and Daniel Robbins heard Petito say she had hit Laundrie first. He had scratches on his face. She said he had grabbed her face and pushed her. Rather than treat the call as domestic violence, which under Utah law would have required a citation or arrest, the officers wrote it up as disorderly conduct. The caller who reported the slap was never interviewed.

An outside review by Capt. Brandon Ratcliffe of the Price City Police Department, released January 12, 2022, found “unintentional mistakes”: the incident should have been classified as domestic violence, Petito’s account of being grabbed was never documented as an injury, and a required report was never filed. He recommended probation and training for both officers.

Silence, Then a Van Without Her

Text messages from Petito’s phone on August 27 and August 30 struck her mother as wrong. One read “No service in Yosemite,” though the couple was in Wyoming. Then the phone went dark. On September 1, Laundrie parked the van in his parents’ driveway in North Port without her. For ten days the Laundrie family said nothing to hers.

Schmidt filed a missing person report on September 11, and North Port police seized the van that day. Laundrie hired attorney Steven Bertolino and would not talk. Days later his parents told police he had gone hiking in the Carlton Reserve and had not come back. As in the disappearance of Maura Murray, the first crucial days passed with the person who knew the most saying the least.

Spread Creek

On September 19, searchers found human remains at the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping Area in Bridger-Teton National Forest, just east of Grand Teton National Park. Traveling vloggers had already posted footage of the white van parked there on August 27, accidental evidence much like the phone video in the Delphi murders. Teton County Coroner Dr. Brent Blue confirmed the identity on September 21 and ruled the death a homicide.

On October 12 he gave the cause: manual strangulation, with blunt-force injuries to the head and neck, three to four weeks before she was found, which put her death in late August. A federal warrant had been issued for Laundrie on September 23, not for murder but for spending more than $1,000 on a debit card that was not his.

The Carlton Reserve and the Notebook

The search for Laundrie centered on the Carlton Reserve and the adjoining Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park near North Port, 25,000 acres of swamp under water for weeks. On October 20, as the water receded, his father located a dry bag. Nearby lay partial skeletal remains, a backpack and a notebook. Dental records confirmed the identity the next day; on November 23 the medical examiner ruled it a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

On January 21, 2022, the FBI said the notebook claimed responsibility for Petito’s death and closed the case. That June, Bertolino released eight pages. “I ended her life, I thought it was merciful,” Laundrie wrote, claiming she had been badly hurt in a fall. “I panicked. I was in shock.” Manual strangulation does not fit that story.

Two Lawsuits

On November 17, 2022, a Florida judge entered a $3 million wrongful death judgment against Laundrie’s estate. Petito’s parents also sued Christopher and Roberta Laundrie and Bertolino for emotional distress, alleging they knew their son had killed her and stayed silent during the search. It settled at mediation on February 21, 2024, weeks before trial. Terms were not disclosed.

In November 2022 the family filed a $50 million wrongful death suit against the Moab City Police Department. On November 20, 2024, Judge Don Torgerson dismissed it under Utah’s Governmental Immunity Act, while noting the allegations suggested the officers’ conduct could have contributed to her death. The family appealed, arguing the statute conflicts with the Utah Constitution’s wrongful-death clause. The Utah Supreme Court set argument for March 4, 2026, then postponed it after the Legislature expanded the court to seven justices, who must all hear constitutional challenges. No new date has been announced.

The Documentary and the Foundation

Netflix released the three-part “American Murder: Gabby Petito” on February 17, 2025. Directors Julia Willoughby Nason and Michael Gasparro worked with Joseph Petito and Nichole Schmidt, who supplied home video and journals. An AI recreation of Gabby’s voice reads her journal entries, a choice the family approved but which drew criticism online. “It is a little off,” Schmidt said. The series hit number one on Netflix’s global chart.

The Gabby Petito Foundation, led by Schmidt, runs domestic violence and coercive control trainings across the country. In 2026 it held sessions in Ohio in January, at Fairmont State University in March, and a “Break the Silence” event in Nashville on June 28, where Gabby’s artwork, notebooks and travel items were shown in public for the first time.

Why This Case Still Matters

The Moab footage is the reason. Millions of people watched a young woman tell two officers, on camera, that her fiancé had grabbed her face, then watched the encounter end with a motel voucher. Utah’s predominant-aggressor rule, meant to identify who holds power in a relationship rather than who threw the last blow, was not applied. Whether a Utah police department can be sued for that failure is the question now sitting with the state Supreme Court. The case also showed how a relationship that looks flawless online can hide control and fear, as in the Watts family murders as well.

Somewhere in a Moab file is the name of the 911 caller who saw a man slap a woman on August 12, 2021, and whose statement no officer ever took.

Related Cases

• Chris Watts and the Watts family murders — a picture-perfect marriage, a pregnant wife, three graves in an oil field.
• The disappearance of Maura Murray — a crashed car on a New Hampshire road and twenty years of silence.
• The Delphi murders — two girls, a phone video, and the man on the bridge.

Sources

• CNN — Lawyer releases pages from Brian Laundrie’s notebook
• NBC News — Report finds Utah police made mistakes in Petito encounter
• KSL — Judge dismisses Petito family’s wrongful death suit against Moab police
• Deseret News — Petito suit against Moab police heads to Utah Supreme Court
• NBC News — Netflix docuseries’ AI voice sparks backlash
• WSMV — Gabby Petito Foundation hosts Nashville awareness event

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