I agree with all of this. Also, for weeks the parents have been accused of lying about the nature preserve as a way of misdirecting the police when it seems as if they were telling the absolute truth. But no matter, they are still to blame.
I don’t know what they knew. But IF they knew something that could help the police, they likely had a moral obligation to share that information with police. If they didn’t know anything to help the police, then they had a moral obligation to share their lack of information with the police.
Refusing to talk to the police to help them find your son is certainly legal. But barring some kind of evil witch-hunt by the police who are engaging in unethical behavior themselves, refusing to help others is not being a good person.
Note: I have not followed this drama much at all, so I have no details to share or actually much concern about it at all. I just think refusing to help investigators because you’re afraid your son killed someone and might get caught, is not the good choice.
Yes, which I mentioned if you scroll a few posts down:
Assuming the buzzards didn’t leave an entire pound of flesh, people are looking to collect it from the parents.
If they had done this, maybe they wouldn’t be wondering if the corpse fished out of that swamp is their son. Of course, there’s no rush, they may have the rest of their lives to ponder that possibility.
Not if that could also implicate them in a crime, such as harboring a fugitive.
Yes- every time with out a lawyer, or when said lawyer tells you not to talk to them.
Thread after thread we have covered this.
Again, legally, you have no obligation to help the police at all. I don’t disagree with that. But if you committed a bad act, you have a moral obligation to atone for it, not to continue doing it.
If someone wants atonement, they can go see a preacher. Why do you need to go to jail to atone? And I’m not sure what you mean by “continue” to do it as if every day of not cooperating with the police is a new evil.
You are stating this dilemma as if it is a binary choice, that if I do X then my son will unfortunately have Y happen. If you do X, you don’t know what Y will be. Y is now out of your control and may be horribly unjust in the end. I’m not saying that the police are evil, but they are human. You will have lost control of the situation.
Kudos to @Martin_Hyde for the timeline. A few additions and corrections:
This is where your timeline is off a bit. I’m going to back up first and add the relevant info for 9/10, which you missed.
9/10: Gabby’s parents text and call the Laundries begging for information. One of Joe Petito’s texts said, “I’m going to call the police, just letting you know, because we have no idea.”
On 9/11, Gabby’s parents filed a missing person report, as you say, and when North Port police go to the Laundrie home, the Laundries tell them to contact the Laundrie’s attorney. Therefore, the Laundries had already retained Bertolino on or before 9/11, and not between 9/11 and 9/14. Was it before or after Joe Petito’s text saying he was calling the police? We don’t know. Was it before 9/10? We don’t know.
No, the Laundries said later that he’d left on the 13th. I’m still unclear how a family could forget by Friday that their son left Monday and not Tuesday. In any case, Brian apparently left the family home the day before the search warrant was executed.
Nope, not media “laziness.” Note this Tweet from the North Port police on 9/18:
The North Port Police Department, FBI, and agency partners are currently conducting a search of the vast Carlton Reserve for Brian Laundrie. His family says they believe he entered the area earlier this week.
Maybe the locals lump together the Carlton Reserve and the Environment Park. Maybe they shouldn’t. But it wasn’t media laziness.
I mean how long has the media had the fucking address the car was recovered at? That shows it was literally right beside the Environmental Park. I was able to find it in a few minutes of googling earlier today, but I’m not sure when the address the Mustang was recovered at was published, but with that in hand any responsible media organization should have noted the car was recovered in the far Southeast of the reserve, not the Southwest as many casual observers thought (and I think that’s because the entrance to the “reserve” and its trail system are flagged in the southwest on Google maps, but it actually extends all the way to the Environmental Park.)
You’re just repeating yourself. The fact that you can create a scenario in which it is OK to refuse to help the police does not nullify the fact that, in this reality, the Laurie’s had a moral (again, not legal) obligation to help uncover the truth.
You keep claiming that I am creating some wild hypothetical, so I feel as if I must repeat myself. It is not some wild hypothetical that by being a good citizen and simply reporting what you know in an honest effort to help the police will spiral out of your control and end up putting you or your family in trouble. It happens all of the time.
Just look at the good citizens calling the police in this case in Utah. They almost got Gabby arrested for domestic violence! There is nothing immoral about not putting yourself in a bad situation because you are dealing with people who do not have the information that you have.
Again, I know very little about this case. But are you saying it would be more moral for the witnesses to not report the fact that they witnessed a man slapping a woman? That the right thing to do would be to not tell the police if you witness domestic abuse? There’s a woman on a train in Pennsylvania who would like a word with you.
As I’ve said before in this thread, I’d rather be thought of as a murderer by not talking to police than convicted of murder by talking to police. I’d be interested if anyone in this thread that thinks the parents or Brian himself should have talked to police have also railed against the police getting a false confession or false conviction on some innocent person that didn’t get an attorney before talking to police.
I am against the police obtaining false confessions, violating Miranda, or in any way/shape/form abusing their power to bad ends.
I’d read about the Mustang on social media a week or two ago, but could only find a couple of news outlets mentioning it - The Sun (US) and Crime Online, which linked to The Sun article. I’d guess that maybe it was leaked by someone to The Sun and it wasn’t corroborated by other news outlets, or The Sun published uncorroborated social media rumor as news.
Maybe you should acquaint yourself better with the case, to be frank. What do you think the Laundrie family failed to do here? They told police when Brian went missing, they told them where they recovered Brian’s car, they told the police that the car was at a park he frequently visited, which was at that time underwater, and the first day the park was open to the public due to receding floodwater they told police they’d like to go search it for their son–which they and the police did, and that’s when the discovery of his remains was made.
Please be specific with what you believe the family had an obligation to do, that it did not do here, morally speaking.
Why are you assuming the media has long had this information if you couldn’t find it? The media, as far as I can tell, has been swarming whatever areas of the Carlton Reserve/Environmental Park LE has been in. Heck, according to Bertolino, Chris Laundrie picked up the dry bag when he found it because reporters were there, and he was afraid one of them would grab it.
I’m not saying the media is above reproach. I simply doubt that sheer laziness was the reason they haven’t said the car was “right beside the Environmental Park.” There’ve been dozens and dozens of media from around the world covering this story. You think the New York Times and Washington Post are lazy? You think the (insanely) intense competition for angles to this story has led to idle sloth? I disagree.
A reporter with local WFLA.com had access to the police report that showed specifically where the Mustang was abandoned at least as early as October 6th, not sure if that’s when it broke. But the idea that the police didn’t know Laundrie had gone missing by the Environmental Park until recently is demonstrably false because their own report is dated 9/14.