Crime Junkie - MISSING: Gabby Petito

Episode Date: September 19, 2021

Summary: Gabby Petito is missing after a cross-country trip with her fiancée. He returned home alone with her van and since has refused to speak with her family or police. This case is actively unfolding in real-time and authorities urge anyone with information to call the FBI tip line at 1-800-CALLFBI (225-5324). The Family’s approved GoFundMe page can be found here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-find-gabbyNOTE: Be aware of other pages as they may be scams. Like Gabby, Lauren “El” Cho went missing this summer as well after her friends say she walked out towards the mountains and was never seen again. Police have found no trace of her yet there has been very little media coverage. Anyone with information about Lauren Cho is asked to call detective Shaunna Ables at the sheriff’s station at [phone]. and reference DR 092101115.For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-gabby-petito/ 

Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers, and I'm solo today because this isn't a regularly scheduled episode. We are still releasing a full-length episode out wide tomorrow, like always, but I'm here to bring you an extra episode this week, and honestly, for, I think, the first time ever, a breaking story. And normally, we don't do breaking stories outside of our headline segment in the fan club. We don't chase headlines, and if a story is getting massive amounts of attention, honestly, I sometimes find myself thinking that the case doesn't need our little podcast, and I should focus on something lesser known. I even did an interview recently, and I said I probably wouldn't cover the case I'm going

to talk about for that very reason. But then I got to thinking, A, if it were my daughter who was missing, I would want everyone, big and small, talking about it, and there would be no such thing as enough coverage. B, we aren't that small anymore. I still feel like the same podcaster I was almost four years ago because I feel like I haven't changed, so sometimes I forget that our audience size has, and we do have an incredible reach of millions of people every week. And C, I realize that I can use this opportunity to give you the story that you've been asking me to tell, and my God, you have been asking, I mean, in almost four years of doing this show, I have never, I mean, never seen you guys in

a frenzy the way you are now. Our emails are flooded, our DMs are flooded, our fan club, it is the only thing you want to talk about in the fan club, so I figured I should do the story that you want to hear because I want you to have a say in what we cover on this show. But in doing so, I can do the other thing that's important to me and tell you about another young woman who is missing under equally bizarre circumstances who I'm sure you've heard nothing about, but her family and loved ones deserve the same attention. So let me tell you everything you need to know as of this recording Sunday, September 19th, about Gabby Petito.

In the early days of September, Gabby Petito's family started to worry about her. She and her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, had taken a van out west earlier in the summer. They wanted to hit up all the national parks and document their journey online. And the trip had been going well, at least from the pictures on Gabby's Instagram and the frequent calls or video chats she'd made to her mom back in New York. But now, it had been a few days since her mom and stepdad in New York or her dad in Florida had been able to get a hold of her. And sure, sometimes when you're traveling, reception is spotty. Gabby's mom had received a text that had said as much from Gabby's phone on August 30th. According to CNN, it

read, quote, no service in Yosemite. But the more time passed without word from Gabby, the less sure her family was that that text even came from her at all. When her mom thought back on the last time she remembered, really talking to her daughter, hearing her voice or seeing her face, it was the 23rd, maybe the 24th, even up to the 25th, according to Newsweek. Either way, it had been too long. Something was wrong. It seems that while they tried to reach Gabby, they were also trying to reach Brian or his family, because according to an interview Gabby's parents did on Fox News, her mom tried to call and text Brian's mom on the 10th, September 10th, to tell her that she was worried about the kid because

she hadn't heard from them. But she couldn't even get a call or a text back from Brian's mom. And when Gabby's dad found out, he too tried to call and text, even escalating it, telling them that the next step is they were going to call the police, but even that didn't garner a response. And at that point, according to reporting by Michael Ruiz for Fox News, on September 10th, her father had had enough waiting and he drove to Brian's family's home looking for answers as to where his daughter was. Now, Brian and his family also live in Florida and Gabby was living with them. Based on the reporting, we don't know what was said at the home or who he talked to when he arrived, just that he got there at 6.30

on the night of the 10th, and we know he didn't go inside the house. But obviously, because there is a report, we know that at some point police were called and there was a public service incident report made. By the next morning, her mother and stepfather reported Gabby missing in Suffolk County, New York, where they live. Police seem to have taken the report pretty seriously since the same day they contacted police in Northport where Laundrie's family lived, and they asked them to go down there and basically see what's up, do a welfare check, maybe see if they have been able to get a hold of Brian who is supposed to be with Gabby. But when police down there get to the family's door, instead

of being met with another set of concerned parents, they were hit with a bombshell. First, they learned that Brian, oh, he's been home for a week. He drove Gabby's van back solo and arrived home on September 1st. This is, we're finding this out on September 11th, though all the time her family was looking for her or trying to get in contact with him, he wouldn't speak to them. Again, they didn't even know he was home until right now. And it's at this point, according to what Gabby's mom told Fox News, that they were even more certain that that August 30th text didn't come from Gabby. Because if Brian is home in Florida on the 1st, then how would that even be possible? She didn't make any mention

that they were separated or that she didn't have her van. Now, her mom doesn't have cell phone data to show where the phone pinged from when that text came through. She assumes the FBI is looking into all of that. But to her, it's quote obvious that it didn't come from her daughter at Yosemite, like it said. But if police have questions about all of this, and hi, they have a lot of questions about all of this, no one in the family is willing to answer those questions. Because according to a quote from law enforcement to CNN, the police were essentially given an attorney's number and told, if you got any questions, talk to him. This did not sit well with police, and it certainly didn't

sit well with Gabby's family. Police seized the van from the house and found quote unquote material in there, though as of this recording, we don't know exactly what that was. And this is about the time that this story started hitting all of your radars. A couple on a camping trip, the boyfriend comes home, but for 10 days doesn't mention to anyone that he came home without his girlfriend. And actually, according to what they were telling people just days before Gabby went missing, she was his fiance, though Gabby's mom says that they broke off the engagement and decided to go back to just being boyfriend and girlfriend. But either way, fiance or not, they were together. He claimed to have loved her, and yet here

he was alone, refusing to talk to anyone, refusing to say when he last saw Gabby why he's here alone, even despite pleas from her parents. And they weren't just asking Brian to talk. They were begging, absolutely begging anyone in his family to talk as well. I mean, my God, they all lived with Gabby. Surely they cared about her well being. Why wouldn't they convince Brian to cooperate? And was there anything that they could tell police to help? Gabby's family released a statement through their lawyer directed to Brian's family and published it in a number of outlets, quote, please, if you or your family have any decency left, please tell us where Gabby is located. Tell us if we are

even looking in the right place. All we want is for Gabby to come home. Please help us make that happen. We haven't been able to sleep or eat and our lives are falling apart. End quote. The laundry's statement to the public was that they wouldn't be talking. They had nothing to add. It was essentially no comment. So without getting any information from the family, police put the pressure on a little by officially naming Brian a person of interest on September 15th, according to the Independent. By this point, the whole country is watching the case and following every single move. How could this man just not say anything? Where did you leave her? If nothing bad happened, just talk. It was

the not talking that people became obsessed with because they would look at her Instagram and his Instagram and they seemed so happy. But you know what I know. Social media is a lie. It only lets you see the shiny parts of their lives kissing on the mountains, doing cartwheels on the beach. It doesn't give you insight into the real parts of a relationship, the darker parts. But there are no glowing filters on police body cameras. And on September 16th, the world finally got a real look into their relationship. According to a case document by the Moab Police Department filed for an incident that occurred on August 12, quote, MCPD officers were dispatched to a report of a domestic problem that had

taken place near the Moonflower co-op. It appeared that a male and female had left the scene traveling north on Maine in a white Ford Transit van with a black ladder on the rear after the male and female had engaged in some sort of altercation, end quote. By the time officers got to the co-op, the couple was gone. But an officer on the road spotted the van. Here are portions of the dash cam video released by police. The full video can be found on the Fox 13's YouTube page, which you can link to through our source material list on our website. The

officer pulls over and gets out of the car. At this point, the officer wants to get Gabby and Brian separated, so he asks Gabby to get Gabby out of the car and get Gabby out of the car and get Gabby out of the car. The officer asks Gabby to get Gabby out of the car and get Gabby out of the car. At this point, the officer says, listen, have a seat in my car. You're not in trouble. Just take a breath. I'm going to go talk to Brian. And he brings Brian out of the car. And same thing says you're not in trouble right now. Just tell me what's going on.

We see this gets worked up sometimes and I try and really distance myself from her so I lock the car and I walk away from her. What happens this morning is that she's trying to start up like her own little website blog and everything. We really had a nice morning with Gabby and everything, but she just worked up because we were trying to get her day going because we wanted to go like Archie. You want to tell me about those scratches on your face? She had herself on her hand. That's why I was pushing her away. I locked the keys so I could walk away. I said let's just take a breather and let's go anywhere. I was just on down for a minute because she was getting a little worked up. And then she had her phone

trying to get the keys out of the way. I know I shouldn't push her. I was just trying to push her away. Let's just take a little step back and breathe. And we see she got me with her phone. Do you want to see your hand? Oh, you got a mark right here. Oh, that's from a wire. That's from a wire? Yeah. You want to tell me about hitting that curb? Hitting the curb was very good on the wheel. She got the wheel? Yeah. She said I can't believe you're getting pulled over in this. What about the speed? Did she take over the road? The pedal on you. I was going fast. I'm sorry. I know it's probably just the moment of I'm still shaking out. The adrenaline was going to light splash enough and then the

herb grab from the wheel. So if I sped up, I'm sorry about that. If I was speeding beforehand, I'm sorry about that. Yeah, she's going to get quite a bit of a catch up to you. He has him sit on the curb while the officer runs a check on Brian. Another officer is also talking to Gabby in the car and you can hear them in the background of this body cam. She's admitting to hitting him and says that he grabbed her by the face, but she says he didn't hit her. At this point, the officer with the body cam comes back and they start to ask Gabby about why she and Brian hit the curb when they were getting pulled over. Had they been drinking? Did you already tell him all this? I didn't

get that far into it. She was hyperventilating a little bit. She's saying that they don't drink, but at the point where you put them up, they don't drink or anything. I was yelling at him and then when you said that, I got a punch in the arm. She's saying he hit the curb. Is it Gabby? I'm sorry, I'm really bad. Is it Gabby? Yeah. There's some audio redacted here and it cuts in and out, but basically one of the officers goes on to ask her about her anxiety and she says, yes, she has anxiety, stress and OCD. They ask her how is Brian? Is he pretty patient with you? And she says, well, you know, he definitely gets frustrated. A chunk more of the audio is cut out and it comes back with the officer

telling Gabby about his own personal experience in a bad relationship where he says, listen, I'm not telling you what to do with your life, but look at the situation and if you both are feeding off one another and making it worse, maybe this isn't the best. They leave Gabby at that point and go back to talk to Brian again. They ask him, start at the beginning, tell them the whole story again and start further back. Well, I don't know if that's too far back, but we've been in beyond land for the past week or so and the flies here are pretty intense, so the flies have definitely been getting to her and then my feet are dirty and everything, so I think that our little squabble started

because we were hanging out at the coffee shop and when we got back to the van, there was some dirt and stuff in the van and I moved our food around as a result of the service, so she gets a little So it was just more disagreement and I just wanted to say What was the disagreement about? It was, I haven't even called it disagreement, it was just that I'm dirty and I can't change being dirty like I got dirty feet, I got sand in my flip-flops and stuff like that. It was at the coffee shop we saw, we were there from nine to three, so yeah, there's a few little things, just a little relationship.

I've been married for over five years now. There's a lot of little things. We weren't physical before the point where I said, alright, let's just take a breather and walk away for a minute. I'll lock the van up and I'll go for a walk this way and you can go walk that way in the block. There's a moon. There's a couple of moon flowers. It's a nice area, you can go either way, it's all shaded, so let's go for a little walk and breather and come back.

I'm not upset with her. She got worked up and she had a phone in her hand and a keys and everything. She wanted, I'm not a key, her rings, the keys. I was all down with the keys because I didn't want to go anywhere. My big fear is, I don't have my phone, I don't have a phone, so she goes off without me. I'm on my own. So I was saying, let's just go for a walk and she was trying to get the keys for me. So I was just going, just wait back and back up and she hit me.

I didn't get, I don't want to push you, but I didn't get overly physical. I was just trying to keep her away if not get hit. And then I got really loud and like that's probably, whoever was catching where I was going. Back up, get away, just give me a minute. Okay, so you said you pushed her to create some distance obviously, right? What happened after that? What got the scratches on your eye?

The phone. The phone keys. So you pushed her and she hit you? She was, it wasn't like a push and she jumped. I mean she was already, she was already, I don't want to, she was already swinging. And I was just, a lot of angles, a lot of nails, a lot of rings. Yeah, you got three scratches on your neck. You got one on your left side of your nose.

You got one in your face here. And you got four for the left side of your nose. I was just trying to, it looks like two hands. Do you mind lifting up your right sleeve for me? I'm curious about something. I'm fine and I love getting it. I hope she doesn't have too many complaints about me. I'm just, I feel bad that I didn't get so perfect.

I was just trying to be loud to do some business. You know, try to make her calm down and be like, look, everyone's watching. They ask Brian if he takes any medications or anything like that. Again, there's a chunk redacted, but it comes back in with them saying, so you don't take any and he shakes his head and the officers ask if he's normally this hyper. And he just says that, you know, his adrenaline is going because of this interaction with police. He mentions Gabby doesn't take any medications either. Now, in the meantime, while this is going on, another officer is making contact with the witness from back at the co-op,

the person who actually called this altercation in to begin with. He got him on the phone to see if he could confirm the story they were hearing from Gabby and from Brian. And he did. He said he never saw the male strike the female. He saw the male trying to lock her out of the vehicle. She even told us that he was trying to lock her out, told her to go take a walk. So that she was trying to get in. She eventually couldn't get in and actually clawed her way in through the driver's door.

He says, I don't understand why she's doing that. Well, I think it's because it was the only door that wasn't locked that she could get through. She's trying to get in over here. He's trying to disengage from her. Her backpack on the back, probably, so she'd have her shit so that he didn't have to engage with her. Everything she's saying is the same thing I haven't heard what he said, but if that's what he said, it's also what the witness is saying. The witness says, I never saw him hit her.

I saw him shove her, but I couldn't tell if it was an aggression against her or a defense against her, as far as her, you know, being the aggressor. So at this point, unless the guy's screaming that he needs to go to jail and did something to this girl, I feel like she is the primary aggressor. Now, the problem with her being the primary aggressor is in an instance of domestic assault, be it a male or be it a female, we shall arrest. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean they have to go to jail. We can do a citation if it meets one of three criteria,

which one of them is making sure that they're not going to further risk each other's safety, but the problem with that is they live in the same vehicle. That's what I was going to say. The other part of it is... There was actually an injury, too, to the victim, which is him. Right, and I'm getting conflicting stories about why he hit the curb up here. What did he say why he hit the curb? Well, I've watched, this is what I saw first.

I saw him cross the double yellow. I was doing 42 miles an hour. I was, I don't know, probably two car lengths behind him. Tapping my whale's head, I'm trying to get his attention. They knew I was behind him. And then after he crossed the double yellow, he merged over into the right lane, and then out of nowhere, just pulled him into the curb. So did he tell you why?

He said that she grabbed the wheel and turned it real hard. She said that she was hitting him in the arm. So... Is that legit? I mean, I'm sure if I'm driving and my arm's on the wheel and I'm getting hit in the arm, I'm probably pulling out the wheel. And I'm sure it was a little of both. I'm usually the truth somewhere between me.

He's probably trying not to say that he hit her, because he probably doesn't want her charged with assault, domestic assault. He probably would rather say she pulled the wheel than hit him. Yeah. You know what I mean? So, unfortunately for her, she, we cannot, just because he's bigger and stronger, even if he's not one of the best chargers in the world. We can't treat this differently than...

They go on to talk about charging Gabby with assault. Even though she's smaller, she appears to have been the aggressor. So, they go to explain this to Brian, saying, listen, we don't, like, have the ability to, like, use discretion for domestic assaults, meaning we can't decide that, like, some people get charged and others don't, just because of their sex or their size or how they look. The witnesses now see a striker. So, at this point, you're the victim of domestic assault, and if you come out there,

even if you didn't want to pursue this, we don't have a choice. The best things we can do to not... The loss that we have to charge her doesn't mean we can't put her in jail. Okay? But it also says we have to separate, either no contact order, and we can have to put her in jail, even if we can't separate. And there's no problem here. You guys, on a floor, they're living in the bad, getting power reasons to separate her. Now, I don't want to take this small, 20-year-old- 22-year-old- 22-year-old bond,

you can definitely spend yourself against, but at the same time, we can't say because you're a male, we can't treat this differently than if you were the male victim of her. We got treated the same. But she's not even going to talk to us. Unless you have an idea about how she could not go to jail and be separated, you know, from every town, somewhere she could stay. Tomorrow, if you want to, you can go to jail.

You can't, because you'll have to charge her. Now, tomorrow, if you wanted to, you can get with her again tomorrow. Take your radio. If you wanted to, if you wanted to be with her again tomorrow, because after five, so officers close, you can go to the police department, go out of waiver, drop to no contact with her so you guys can still get to them, which is going to have a coordinate online.

After some back-and-forth and making some calls and more discussion, the officers wonder if this is more a mental health break than anything. So they go talk to Gabby one more time. She's on the phone in the car with one of her family members when they do. Gabby, this is a very, very important question. How you answer this question is going to determine what happens next. But the only person who can answer this question is you. Think very hard before you answer the question.

Do not quickly answer. Think very hard. When you slapped him those times, were you attempting to cause him physical pain or physical impairment? Was that what you were attempting to do? No. What were you attempting to do? What was the reason behind the slapping and the stuff?

What was it you were attempting to accomplish by slapping? I was trying to get him to slap him. What doesn't sound to me like she attempted an injury? It's your call. It's 100% your call. I support you either way. The officers go off and have a little sidebar where they seem to be having a discussion about who's going to take who.

And then something is said that echoes in my mind. You got this? I'm making this to say I'm going to sign it. I'm going to go all through the first. Would you feel more comfortable handling that guy? Yeah. Go ahead with that guy. Go ahead with that guy.

If you're more comfortable. It's six one-way half dozen. I mean, it's a headache whether I go left or it's a headache whether I go right. Another option is to not charge them but separate them through the night. If they find themselves together again, what is it to you that you separated them? You provide it for safety. If they find themselves together, what is it to you? That's what he said that stays with me.

Now, he goes on to explain this a little bit more. And from the way one officer is talking to the other, it sounds like he's training him, like this other guy might be new on the job. And he's not saying it like FM, it doesn't matter. He says, you have to abide by the law. You can't give them a warning like, hey, you know, if you call one more time, someone's going to jail because then if they need police and they don't call, something worse could happen.

So he's basically letting the officer know how to think of it, that if you don't do anything, if no charges are filed, you have to be okay, letting them go. And the rest is on them. Are you okay with that? And the officer was. Ultimately, he wrote up in his report that this was a mental health break. The couple separated for the night.

Brian went to a hotel and Gabby took the van. Now, Gabby's dad said he can't bring himself to watch the whole thing. And he said it doesn't matter anyways, because that happened days, if not a week before she actually went missing. So he said he needs to stay focused on finding her right now. But I think the family wasn't as shocked by the release of this footage as we in the public might have been, because they already knew about it. In the body cam footage, again, Gabby asked for her phone to call her family.

She's on the phone with them when they come back to the car at one point. So her family knew that they had trouble. And her dad made a statement to Fox News that he was told not to talk about his, quote, previous relationship with Brian, which to me doesn't imply that they had a good one. And Brian might not have had a good relationship with anyone in Gabby's life, because a friend of Gabby's named Rose came forward and told the Daily Mail, quote, he's got these jealousy issues and he struggles from what Gabby called these episodes,

where he would hear things and hear voices and wouldn't sleep. Gabby had to stay at my house a bunch of times because she just needed a breather and didn't want to go home to him. When I saw that Brian was back from the trip, that was the first thing that popped into my mind, that Brian had one of his episodes. And I was just hoping he didn't have a snapping moment, end quote. So we all thought that this is where we would wait for a while, intently looking at Brian and his family to say something and tell police where to start looking.

But we just learned that police can't press Brian anymore, because no one knows where he is. It was reported by CNN that the Northport Police spokesperson said, quote, we've been trying all week to talk to his family, to talk to Brian. And now they've called us here on Friday. We've gone to the home and they're saying now they have not seen their son, end quote. According to the family, he'd been missing since Tuesday, Tuesday, and they're telling police on Friday.

But according to reporting by ABC 7, Gabby's family says, no, there is a difference. Brian isn't missing. Our daughter is the one who's missing and they think he knows something. They think Brian is hiding, which to them is very different than missing. So police organized a search that is happening literally right now as I am recording this episode to scour more than 24,000 acres according to ABC 7's eyewitness news team. Police think he went to an area known as the Carlton Reserve sometime early this week. But at this point, they don't know any more.

And at the same time, according to Newsweek, the FBI has extended its search through Grand Teton National Park into Wyoming. Now, apparently where they're searching for Brian came from, I believe, scent dog. So when they went to his house, they actually pulled out bags of clothes to use in a search for him. So I'm thinking that that is what led them to this particular area that they're searching rather than information from his family because, I mean, again, we know that his family hasn't cooperated. So I doubt that they're saying anything more if they know it. And if they are saying where to look, I would almost discount anything they said

because they're not cooperating. And at this point, if things weren't twisty enough, have you guys seen TikTok? There was a video that blew up of this girl who said that she and her boyfriend picked up Brian hitchhiking on August 29th in Grand Teton. Here's the audio from user at Miranda Baker underscore. This is going to be my last video. I've said everything I need to say and what happened during my encounter with Brian. I just want to make one last video with everything in it because I know people are going out there to help search for her.

So I just want all the maps and the facts and in one place. Okay, this is the text I sent my mom when we dropped him off. This just has like the date in it and the timestamp. So we dropped him off at 6.09. But as you can see, we picked him up at 5.54. This is off my mom's because my Texas don't go back this far. And then, you know, it says we dropped him off at 6.09. So this is where we picked him up.

We picked him up in Coulter Bay and we dropped him off by this dam. He was hitchhiking. There was no van. Gabby was not with him. It was just him. So this is what the dam looked like. We dropped him off at the turnout because this is going south. If you're going like this, he then said, I'm going to get out.

I'm going to hitchhike, find a different ride. He said he was going to go across to the parking lot over here, which was filled with a bunch of people. Again, this is on August 29th at 6.09. So this is a map of Grand Teton National Park. During our ride, he said, well, before he got in the car, he said, I wanted to go to Jackson. So this, okay, this is Jackson. Like right there, you can see it says Jackson south of the park, right? Jackson, Jackson Hall is commonly referred to as well.

So I said, you know what? We're going to Jackson. He was very nice. He offered us $200 to give him this ride. And we picked him up. You can see here, Coulter Bay right there. It's like pretty north of the park. And he said he was hiking along Snake River, which is up here and it kind of like goes down a little bit.

And he said he was gone for multiple days and he had left his fiancee, never called her by her name, back at their campsite, which he said they camped in a dispersed campsite. So it's not a regulated campsite. And he was gone for multiple days without her and he was sleeping on a tarp. When we picked him up, he had a backpack, long sleeves, a hat on, and scruff. He wasn't clean shaved and he had hiking boots on, but he didn't look dirty. The only thing dirty about him were his shoes. And he was very nice during the trip, you know, very calm.

We were making small talk. He was agitated when I said Jackson Hall. Okay. So we were going south to Jackson. There's no other place in the Tetons called Jackson. Why he like became agitated. I don't know. He just was very set on getting out of the car, which is why we pulled out by the dam.

And that's why he got out. I don't know why he wanted to get out so bad. I don't know what other place he wanted to go to because there's only one Jackson. So that's all I have. And I hope she's returned safely and they find her safe. This was all the reminder I needed of how important it is for everyone to talk about missing persons cases, whether your reach is big or small. She realized it was him who had been in her car from TikTok videos, not from the big news outlets from TikTok. According to Peter Aitken's reporting for Fox News, police confirmed that this user had been in contact with them.

And they are quote potentially utilizing her info into our timeline end quote. What I find so interesting is that sometime in that hour and 17 minute body cam footage. If you listen to the whole thing, Brian at one point says he doesn't have money for a hotel when they're talking about splitting him up and he needs to stay in a hotel for a night. He's like, I don't have enough money. So how did he have $200 to offer them for this ride? And why did he suddenly freak out as Miranda says like, oh, we're going to the exact place you need to go to. Now, even the timeline is tight. If this is the 29th and then we know he's home with the van on September 1st, that doesn't leave him a lot of time.

And my biggest question is why is he hitching rides if he has the van and Gabby's already gone like so many people suspect? Of course, even though Brits not on this episode, her and I were talking about it and we've seen theories that maybe he was trying to get back to the van after coming from wherever Gabby might be. I don't know. But I have to think that police are at least considering this claim to be legitimate because their quote that they're potentially using it seems promising to me. Otherwise, you would think that they would just disregard the sighting. Now I have one last curveball to throw your way. As of this morning, September 19th, Mia.com posted an article that I found really interesting. According to the author, Kunalde, Gabby's all trails app, which she had been using to kind of like log her journey or at least like check in a few places is now saying that she's in Puerto Rico.

And I don't even know how to process that. I looked at her profile, which to be fair, everyone is assuming is her profile because it has her name and then some checked in places that look consistent with her travels. But there's no picture and it doesn't have a ton of info. And I can't even tell when the location was changed to Puerto Rico. Of course, the internet is in a frenzy that maybe Brian is there with her phone and anything's possible. I mean, I would encourage our listeners in Puerto Rico to keep an eye out just in case, but my gut says he's still in Florida and those listeners need to have their eyes peeled. And same for our listeners, you know, around Grand Teton and literally across the country. So that is where you come in and why I decided to do this episode.

Yes, everyone is talking about it. But if this story can reach the one person who didn't know about Gabby or Brian, like that girl on TikTok, maybe this will help. I'm going to have pictures of their van up online pictures of both of them. Please take a look. The link is right in the show notes. And if you're in our app, the pictures have been coming up all along as you've been listening to this episode. So if you remember even just seeing something in passing that maybe didn't mean much at the time, call police. Their info is in the show notes as well.

I'm not willing to write Gabby off. She could still be out there in need of help and time is precious. And please take a minute to do an updated search of your own after this episode. Literally since writing this new information has come out every hour that I've had to work into this script and I'm confident there will be an update in the hours it takes to edit and publish this. Definitely there will be updates if you're listening to this a couple of days later. And while I have your attention, there's another woman out there who needs your help whose case hasn't even gotten a fraction of the coverage Gabby's has and time is precious for her as well. And we're already behind. Her name is Lauren Cho, but her friends called her L.

L like Gabby had this dream of kind of starting over, driving across country in a van, being on the road. So she hopped in a tour bus with her friend who she used to date named Corey and they drove from New Jersey to California where they were staying in this like Airbnb situation with a bunch of other artists. L was a chef and while she was out there according to Stacy Moore's reporting for High Desert Star she quote bought an old school bus and was converting it into a food truck and quote. But all her dreams seem to have come to a crashing halt on June 28. That's when she walked out of the place that she was staying at 3pm and was never seen again. Her friends didn't know where she was going. According to a statement Corey gave Stacy Moore quote, she was apparently trying to take her car at the time, but she didn't have the keys. She had an intention to go somewhere and I know she was dating again.

He talked more about her dating saying that he knew that she'd gone out with someone previously but he didn't ask who. And of course now he's kicking himself that he didn't. Because in like the 10 minute window when they weren't together she walked out and he hasn't seen her since. Now something felt wrong to him right away about her walking away. Again, you know, I didn't see my friend in 10 minutes, maybe I wouldn't freak out, but he was freaking out. He immediately started looking for her and even got a group of friends to go out towards the mountains and trails in the direction he saw her walking to look for her. But they couldn't find anything. After a couple of hours like at 513 they were calling the sheriff for help.

Now because of how little reporting there is out there on this case, I don't have a ton of background about what happened before she walked out. But there was a reason for everyone being so frightened so quickly. According to Jake and Gracia's reporting for News Channel 3, Elle had made some comments about self-harm before walking out the door that day. So there was an urgency in looking for her. But when the sheriffs got out there they found something interesting. Quote, they found all of my tracks and my friend's tracks, but none of hers. End quote. And that was a quote from Corey.

Corey and the others wonder if she got in a car with someone. Maybe that's someone who she was seeing, or maybe she even hitchhiked. In the early days everyone hoped that this was some big misunderstanding, like she didn't even know people were looking for her. According to High Desert Star, quote, sheriffs calls show others claim to see her with a man at a restaurant in Yucca Valley. End quote. But nothing seems to have materialized from that. The sheriff's office did searches in the first two days, but after no one found anything, those were called off. They tried again on July 24th, even with a plane.

But again, they found nothing. And at that point, Elle had been missing for almost a month. On July 31st though, instead of searching out in the wilderness, investigators started looking a little closer to Lauren's home base. Because they served what we now know was a second search warrant on that Saturday at 6am to where Elle was living. But since that update, which came in early August, there has been nothing. Even in the month she was missing, there were only three or four news articles. So if there's a chance that she is out there and just doesn't know people are looking for her, how is it going to get to her? I am glad that Gabby is getting national attention to help find her.

And I'm glad that literally every outlet has a story on her. Her and her family deserve that. But I think Elle and every other missing person deserves that too. We need to get this on TikTok and social media because there's another missing woman for whom time is precious. Anyone with information about Lauren Cho is asked to call Detective Shauna Ables at the Sheriff's Station 760-366-4175. There's a reference number in our show notes. And anyone with information about Gabby Petito is asked to contact the FBI tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI. That's 1-800-225-5324.

And if you want to contribute to Gabby's, families go fund me to help with their investigative efforts. A lot of that is going to travel as they make trips across the country to search for their daughter. There is an approved go fund me by the family linked in our show notes and on the website. But please make sure to use the link as there are a number of fraudulent pages out there right now trying to exploit the tragedy. Again, I encourage you all set your Google alerts, look for follow up. This case is breaking as we speak and I hope that there will be an update soon where we can finally get some answers and find out where Gabby Petito is. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website crimejunkiepodcast.com. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast.

And I want to give a huge thank you to my brother and sister, David Flowers and Alyssa Flowers. They are both here in the office with me on a Sunday pulling this episode together for you guys. It is a true family operation. It is making me feel like it is, you know, the OG days. Like when we first started, I can't thank them enough for coming in and getting it done. I owe them a huge, huge thank you. So thank you guys. And thank you to the fuzzy guy who keeps me going.

Our other family member. What do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?