It’s very simple, and I’m not sure why you are fighting so hard. If I see something, I will report it. I am a good citizen and want the police to solve crimes. If they make a mistake and finger the wrong person, I hope that person gets an attorney who shows a jury how the police were wrong.
If I am not reporting an outside crime but one that I or my family member is a suspect in, then my interest in me or my family not being wrongly arrested overrides my general crime fighting desire.
I think I got it. If it’s family, it’s OK not to cooperate with police, but if it is someone else, then it’s wrong.
FWIW the entire area, including large parts of the Carlton Reserve, are part of the Myakka River State Park area. I think what simply happened is this–Brian told his parents he was going hiking at the Carlton Reserve, which I’ve already posted maps of–it’s a very large area that covers the Southwestern quadrant of the State park, and buts directly on the Environmental Park (which is very, very small.) They find his Mustang parked at the entrance to the Environmental Park, and they inform police that is where the car was found. The Environmental Park is, again, very small, most likely because it was flooded when they started searching, they did a cursory search of it and then moved deeper into the reserve–probably assuming Brian wasn’t “hiding” in the small 150 acre park, which is surrounded on 3 sides by residential area, but instead had walked across the connector bridge that connects the park to the Carlton Reserve.
When the water levels in the park had receded, the parents felt it was worth looking there again because they knew Brian liked that park specifically, and that’s where they found him.
I believe that there was no duplicity by the parents as to where the car was found–and plus, the police actually saw Brian’s abandoned car before the parents reported him missing, they noted it as an abandoned car parked in front of a park–as is typical of most police departments they’ll often take a report on an abandoned car, then leave–and then if they still see it abandoned a day or so later, they’ll have it towed. The parents went looking for Brian and found the car, so the police didn’t tow it, but they would’ve known it was parked at the Environmental Park whether or not Brian’s parents told them that’s where he was parked, but given the evidence I strongly suspect they honestly told the parents exactly where the Mustang was actually barked.
I think just the fact the park had lots of floodwater in it, it’s relatively small, and the Carlton Reserve is like 30,000 acres vs the park is 150 acres, they assumed he had walked on the connector bridge that connects the park to the reserve, since there was no reason to search the environmental park any further.
The parents referred police to their attorney when this all started, who said his clients were not answering any questions. That is not evidence they declined to help police. We have no evidence that, at that date, the parents had any information whatsoever on Gabby Petito. They knew she was missing; they knew the police wanted to talk to their son, they hired an attorney who told them all to not talk to anyone.
Literally within like 3ish days, Brian had left the family home to go hiking. It is unremarkable this was not immediately reported to police–he was not the subject of an arrest warrant, he was under no legal restrictions on his movement. The parents had no reason to suspect the police needed to be told Brian was going hiking. When he didn’t come back, they went looking for him after a bit, found the abandoned car, and then informed police. About the only criticism they could receive based on what we actually know, is they realized he was missing on the 15th when they went to the park and found his abandoned car, which they returned to their home. They didn’t tell police he was missing until the 17th.
That’s the grand total of the “PROVEN” sins we have against him–that their son, who was legally allowed to travel anywhere he wanted (including getting on a plane and flying out of the country), had walked into the nature reserve and not come home, and they held that information for two days. Note they could have held it forever, they were under no obligation to volunteer this legally speaking. Given the extreme stress they must have been under, and the fact they likely needed to confer with their attorney on the matter to understand what they should do from a legal perspective, crucifying them over 2 days seems…a bit much.
Also all these amateur detectives were oh so sure the parents were leading police on a wild goose chase, that they had “covered his escape.” None of that was true. He was most likely dead on the evening of the 13th, his parents knew he had abandoned his car on the 15th, they reported it on the 17th. The place they reported him as having gone missing, his body was found right there basically, it just happened to be underwater during previous searches. There’s no evidence that the two days the parents dithered cost the investigation anything, and it’s very likely Brian was dead at that point.
Here’s a Fox 4 article from September 20 last month:
Here’s a new timeline:
September 17 - Laundrie’s parents report him as missing
September 18-19 - Authorities search Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park
September 22 - North Port announce closure of Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park until further notice
Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park is not large - it’s 160 acres, which is around the size of 121 football fields - and the article says 50 officers searched for him there for two days.
My conclusion is that Laundrie was not there 18-19 September and was therefore still alive. Since authorities had searched there, it seems perhaps more likely to me that the subsequent closure of the park was due to the flooding.
Maybe Laundrie saw that Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park would be closed and felt it would be a safe place to hide, since it had already been searched and was also flooded?
Ominously, from the Myakkahatchee tweets I posted earlier:
I suspect he was there and had already died. It’s not at all unusual to miss a body, particularly if it was submerged in water.
I’ve unsuccessfully been trying to find daily rainfall records for Florida in September this year.
I found this September 20 article, though, about record rainfall across central Florida on September 19:
Could this be the rain that caused the flooding?
Exactly. Perhaps all of their help was filtered through the attorney to avoid
“He drove off at 9pm”
“We have evidence that he left at 8:55pm. You lied to us and are now being arrested for obstruction.”
it’s him:
Where are you getting information from that the Environmental Park was flooded when they started searching there?
Punta Gorda, FL Weather History | Weather Underground (wunderground.com)
If you check the weather history they got 5 inches for the whole month of September, around 1 inch on the day Sanford got 5 inches. I suspect that the inch of rain they got on the 22nd may have pushed the park to the point of being closed, but I also suspect the water level was high from the overall rains that month to begin with.
Regardless, I don’t believe the fact that you found a news article that says ATVs entered the Environmental Park on the 20th, is proof that they had searched every square foot of that park, or that none of the park was under water conditions at all, we only know that on the 22nd the park was flooded enough to be closed.
It’s worth repeating–Brian entered the Environmental Park, so it would stand to reason if he had gone into the Reserve, he would have taken the pedestrian bridge that links the park to the reserve, so all the ATVs etc going into the environmental park could be using the bridge to go deeper into the reserve. As far as I can see we don’t have any clear evidence on when, or to what degree, they searched the environmental park.
Occam’s Razor–simplest explanation and most likely explanation is he committed suicide the day he arrived at the park. It’d be weird to decide to wander around in a swamp for 5 days then commit suicide, I strongly suspect he drove there with intent formed to kill himself.
It also rained a total of 1.84 inches between the day Brian disappeared and the day that news article reports they had ATVs going into the park, so it’s not at all impossible wherever Brian killed himself had been low lying and flooded early in that rain, and then the rest of the park flooded with the 1.24 inches that dropped on the 22nd.
It depends. Cooperating with the police at all is frowned upon in some parts of the US.
Could you elaborate on that?
Don’t talk to the police (46 minutes but worth the time):
What’s interesting is how quickly “information” about this case shifts. The Daily Mail has a map of where Brian’s body was found, and if it is accurate it was not in the environmental park, but in the Big Slough reserve (which is also next to the Carlton Reserve.)
49483425-10117913-image-a-24_1634847815350.jpg (962×1147) (dailymail.co.uk)
I think at least some of the confusion may simply be because there’s apparently like 5 fucking different “nature” things there, several parks, several reserves etc, and since they are all one big "contiguous wilderness’ everyone is sloppy when talking about it.
I’ve marked up the previous map I linked to that showed the different nature areas in the region, and drawn a red rectangle around the area the Daily Mail is claiming the body was recovered in for reference: TZr5dtu.png (597×404) (imgur.com)
And your point is what, that the police were lazy? That people in that area should not refer to the Environmental Park and the Carlton Reserve by one name because they’re technically two different entities? I don’t see that either statement changes the outcome unless evidence emerges that Brian Laundrie was still alive on the 14th and would still be alive now if he’d only been found sooner. Since we don’t know that, I’m not going down this path any longer.
Wait. Now you’re telling me they refused to answer police questions? And telling me that’s not declining to help the police?
OK.
It’s only “declining to help” if they had any way to help. We don’t know what they knew before Brian was missing, since it’s entirely possible they knew nothing about a murder that occurred 3000 miles away, there is no reason to assume they had anything they could offer to help police. Your entire premise starts with the assumption that they had information they withheld. We have no evidence that that is true.
The only thing remaining is for people of certain sexual political beliefs to keep trying to smear the strangling victim as crazy and somehow culpable or deserving of her fate, and therefore paint Brian as the “true victim” here. It’s hand in hand with their persecution complex.
