After Murdering Gabby Petito, Brian Laundrie Allegedly Sent Text Messages To Her Parents Using Her Phone, Pretending toBe Her

 

In a recent legal filing, Petito's parents, Joseph Petito and Nichole Schmidt, claim that after Laundrie killed Petito, he exchanged text messages "back and forth between his cell phone and Gabrielle Petito's cell phone to conceal her death."

The young couple was on a cross-country road trip and sharing their adventures on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok when Petito, 22, vanished without a trace.

Her body was discovered in Grand Teton National Park on September 19. She died from blunt force trauma to the head and neck with manual strangulation.

According to the lawsuit, Laundrie allegedly sent a text message to Schmidt on August 27, 2021 – the day her family believes she was murdered - "in which he referred to Gabrielle Petito's grandfather, Stan, by name. Gabrielle Petito never called her grandfather by his name."

He allegedly sent another text from Petito's phone on August 30 to Schmidt "stating that there was no service in Yosemite Park to deceive Nichole Schmidt into believing that Gabrielle Petito was still alive," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit for emotional distress, which was filed against Laundrie's parents Christopher and Roberta Laundrie, claims that on August 29, two days after Petito's death, Laundrie "in a frantic phone call" told his parents that Petito was "'gone.'"

That same day, Laundrie's parents spoke with their attorney Steven Bertolino "advising him that Gabrielle Petito was ‘gone,’ that Brian Laundrie needed a lawyer, and sent him a retainer on September 2, 2021," the lawsuit said.

Bertolino, who is also a defendant in the lawsuit, tells PEOPLE he has no comment and "will be filing our answers soon."

PEOPLE has reached out to the attorneys representing the Laundrie family, but have not received a response yet.

The Petito and Laundrie families came to public attention last summer when Petito's parents reported her missing after she stopped responding to messages while on a cross-country road trip with Laundrie. It soon became apparent that Laundrie had quietly abandoned the trip early and returned to his parents' house in Florida — without Petito.

In October, after Petito's body was found, Laundrie was discovered dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the Florida wilderness.

After a months-long criminal investigation into Petito's disappearance and — later — murder, the FBI determined in January that Laundrie was responsible for her death, stating that he had written a confession in his notebook before he took his life.

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