Doesn’t make sense. Did he try to call her? Why not call her parents? Why not call the authorities? Who just assumes that someone made the trek 3,000 home with no money or transportation?
a) who said ‘rational’ ?
b) I thought I heard/saw a timeline where he returned to florida and then went back and retrieved the van.
people do stupid things all the time -
I don’t consider that so much “stupid” as so irrational that it is unbelievable. He is engaged to this young woman. He gets in a fight with her, they separate, and after not finding her he just says to hell with it and drives home? Most people wouldn’t leave their girlfriend five miles from the house in that situation, let alone 3,000. It is just an incredible story to believe.
then there is a trail of breadcrumbs showing he did this.
then you would agree his behavior was not rational.
Dive team arrives at nature reserve.
Something to keep in mind that I feel is often forgotten about amateur legal observers (and hey, I am one of those too, it’s not an insult!), juries have a lot more power and discretion than I think is commonly understood. Often times in discussions like this I see people postulating all kinds of “well I’d explain away this problem X way” scenarios, and assuming “hey, I thought up a scenario, so that means a jury has to give such a scenario weight.”
The reality is juries are empowered to, and regularly do, find explanations by defense counsel to be “bullshit” and convict. Reasonable doubt is not a quantified standard, and it doesn’t mean “no one can dream up another explanation for this”, it means what it says–is there doubt as to guilt, and is that doubt reasonable. It would be entirely in the purview of the jury to be given a brief closing statement like this:
“Brian was the last person who saw Gabby alive, he was observed striking her in a violent domestic incident days before, he transported a van he did not know across country after Gabby was last seen alive, he never told anyone Gabby was missing. Brian murdered Gabby and then ran across country to try to escape blame.”
Now, a good defense counsel has prepared a counter argument that’s been developed over the course of the trial, or maybe the defense counsel has just gambled that the prosecutor hasn’t put forward enough evidence to clear the bar of reasonable doubt and rests without an argument. But either way, the jury can listen to that and say “you know what, I agree, he did do those things and I agree with the prosecutor’s argument.” Appellate courts very rarely ever overturn cases based on second guessing a jury’s determination of reasonable doubt. It does happen, but it is not one of the common reasons for appeal, appeals are usually over procedural issues, inappropriate conduct during the trial, judicial mistakes by the trial judges, and even more rarely things like proof of “genuine innocence”, but sometimes that is even difficult to raise.
Once a jury of your peers has determined you are guilty, the entire weight of the system flips, going forward in most aspects of your case on appeal, you have to show some strong evidence to compel the jury’s decision being overturned.
Also too, the trial judge can overturn the jury’s guilty verdict during the proceedings of the trial even before an appeal–but the standard for that behavior is strict–the judge has to conclude that in their expert legal opinion no reasonable jury could have convicted, and for that reason that is a very rare outcome–it has happened in a few famous cases, though. Judges can also determine the jury convicted on an improper charge and change the verdict–for example in the famous “shaken baby” death involving British au pair Louise Woodward, the jury convicted on second degree murder. After review, the trial judge decided that the evidence did not support conviction on that charge and that it would be a miscarriage of justice, he changed her conviction to guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and sentenced her to time served.
But the reality is just based on the very brief paragraph summary I made, that could be a simplified form of a hypothetical argument for Brian’s guilt–many people have been convicted on less.
One somewhat plausible scenario is a lesser charge, like manslaughter as opposed to premeditated murder. It’s well-documented that both Petito and Laundrie were verbally and physically aggressive. It could be - and his best defense might be - that they had an altercation similar to the one in Moab. It got intensely verbal before quickly escalating into a physical assault. She attacked him first. She started hitting on his shoulders, his back, or slapping him in the face. That triggered a physical response, and “Oops, I killed her. And naturally, I panicked.” But that might be his ticket to a lesser charge. I don’t see him escaping a prison sentence though, assuming he’s even alive.
The forensics will be determine whether that story holds up.
At this point I think it’s more likely than not that he’s offed himself. There’s no indication that he has the survival skills to pull an Eric Rudolph or the wealth and connections to flee to a foreign jurisdiction. It’s nearly impossible for someone of his age to disappear into America without a trace. Maybe he initially thought he could get away, but he’s come down from the initial rush of fleeing the crime scene and then fleeing his parents’ home and now is facing the stark reality of his situation.
Yes… IF you know what you’re doing. Does he?
There is that. I mean, I’m sitting here thinking up alternative explanations but if he showed up at my door I wouldn’t let him in or give him a ride anywhere. There’s open minded and then there is stupid.
I can come up with some admittedly implausible but possible reasons… such as, she stormed off and he couldn’t find her… but in such a case I’d expect someone innocent to have contacted the authorities in the area of disappearance, contacted family and friends, and so on and only returned home in her vehicle after extended search turned up nothing.
It’s the return home solo and don’t inform her family for 10 days that looks hella suspicious to me.
Based on scant evidence, I think there is some reason to think that yes, he’s a young idiot. It’s a cheap tactic so worth trying.
There are also innumerable scenarios in which he could have died in the swamp. He might have heard people nearby, assumed they were looking for him, and darted up into gator- and snake-infested waters. He could have been attacked by wildlife. He could have hit his head on a rock or stump and drowned. But the longer he goes missing the more likely it is that he’s dead, assuming they have solid evidence of him being in that region.
I think the fact that a dive team is searching is telling. It is a 25k acre park. They aren’t just searching randomly. Perhaps the dogs got a hit.
I’d agree, I would not expect the dive team to just randomly start swimming in the swamp, it’s too big for that to be a sensible thing without at least some evidence to believe he’s in there. Doesn’t mean he is, but I don’t think they start doing something as silly as “randomly swimming around small parts of a giant swamp” for no reason.
Question, maybe for UltraVires, would her murder/manslaughter case have been a State of Wyoming case or federal case if it’s determined she was killed in a national park? For that matter, do we know if her body was found in a national park?
Your mistake is assuming all people are rational. There are a lot of people out there who run on emotion and little else.
Young and dumb.
Or he was pissed off at here and just didn’t give a damn how or if she got home on her own. Maybe he assumed she would call her parents to rescue her - if I recall, he didn’t contact her family at all, maybe he assumed she would. That’s assuming he didn’t kill her and dump her body.
So, you don’t do much social work, do you?
People do horrible things to each other, yes, even people they allegedly care about. My sister-in-law and her husband used to abuse each other, break bones, attack each other while the other was sleeping, and on at least one occasion she deliberately hit him with a car and left him pinned against the wall of their home all night. Yet last I heard (believe, I have as little to do with these people as possible) they’re still together and claim to love each other, and excuse it all as “all couples argue”.
I could tell you worse, from when I worked at an inner city clinic, but HIPAA forbids me giving most details.
Well, that’s not a good sign…
Nearly impossible for anyone of any age to disappear into America without a trace. You’d basically have to live as a backwoods hermit for the rest of your life, and even then there’s no guarantee. The Unabomber almost pulled it off - but the guy was an actual genius and he was already living off the grid when he started committing crimes. At that, his brother figured out what he was doing and tipped off the authorities. It is fucking hard to live long as an off-grid fugitive.
That’s not my area, but I believe that the feds have exclusive jurisdiction over National Parks. Then you have to factor in the common law rule that a murder can be prosecuted either where the fatal blow was struck or where death occurred—not simply where the body was found. So it is conceivable that if the blow occurred in one state, death in another (or in the Park) that you could have two states plus the feds all prosecuting him.
I would have to dust off the old Crim Law books for this one. 
Yes and no. Plenty of suspects are milling about without the full force of the FBI working to hunt them down. That this story became national and an inordinate amount of resources are being devoted to it is the exception.
In the New York Times today there is an article about a murdered Asian woman in NY (murdered months ago). The police have identified a suspect, but have not found him. There isn’t a massive search for that guy (David Robinson, 52).
This
Also in September, a woman publicly claimed that she and her boyfriend gave Laundrie a ride on August 29 in Wyoming – and that Laundrie claimed he’d been camping by himself for multiple days while Petito was at their van working on social media posts.
Is what I was thinking of
It seems plausible, but I don’t put a lot of stock in it. Assuming she isn’t an attention seeking crazy person, maybe it was a guy that looked like Laundrie? It doesn’t make sense that he is out there with Gabby and the van, then without a van and hitchhiking, and then shows up in Florida three days later with the van.