Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - CRIME CON DENVER 2025: Gabby Petito - Say Her Name

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Before a live audience at Crime Con Denver 2025, Nancy Grace is joined by Gabby Petito's father, Joe and step-mom Tara, along with Joseph Scott Morgan,  Professor of Forensics  Jacksonville State University, and Sheryl McCollum,  Cold Case Investigative Research Institute Founder.   Hear how the Petitos learned of their daughter's death, as well as how they have dealt with the knowledge that Brian Laundrie's parents reportedly knew Gabby was dead and did not share the information.   Learn more at the Gabby Petito Foundation,  https://gabbypetitofoundation.org and donate to their fundraiser to raise money for a security fence for a domestic violence shelter. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. She is a former prosecutor, legal analyst, host of crime stories and victims advocate. Please welcome Nancy Grace. First of all, I want to thank you all for being up bright and early this morning to be here with who I consider friends. And, you know, you meet friends in all sorts of ways, but I think friends are the closest to me are those that have lived through something, lived through something. together and come out on the other side, you know, like in the foxhole with you, right? Like people I tried cases with, my longtime investigator, Ernest, my family, who went through

the murder of my fiancé with me. I slept in the bed with them every night. They tried to feed me. They helped me get back in school when I dropped out. they went through it and we came out the other side and I am so happy to introduce to you four incredible friends first of all let me introduce to you Joe and Tara the parents the parents the dad and stepmom of Gabby Petito For all they've been through, she actually was going to leave her pocketbook in a conference room.

I'm like, okay, I think I'm right there. You still want to sit by him? Is that, is that okay? 25 years together, probably not. And I don't know how these two, they're just everywhere I turn, there they are. Okay. First of all, you know she's here. Cheryl McCollum.

Cheryl McCollum is a forensic expert. We have worked together in intercity Atlanta since I don't even remember. And she is still in law enforcement and she is a star of a hit podcast, Zone 7. And last but not least, our colleague, our friend, Professor of Forensics at Jacksonville State University, the author of Blood

Beneath My Feet on Amazon, and Star of Body Bags at Joe Scott Morgan, Joe Scott Morgan. Now, and there is the power behind the throne right there, his wife, Kim. But let me tell you something. Joe Scott has a very different recollection of our relationship than I do. Okay, so I was in Atlanta

prosecuting so fast I couldn't even keep up with it. Like 150 new felony indictments a week. Wait, that's twice a week. So 300 new a week to be sorted out by computer to 12 courtrooms. And one prosecutor would hand all the state's business. So needless to say, I was in a hurry, okay? And I needed a death

report. I needed to know the details in a murder case. Is that so unreasonable? So I call the morgue. I get some guy who starts some song and dance about why it's not ready. I'm like, there's a speedy trial demand on this case. And if I don't try it, it's an automatic acquittal. Are you familiar with speedy trial demands? If the state doesn't try it within two grand jury sessions, automatic acquittal. And he went, uh, yeah, and I'm like, he claims I cursed at him. I don't think that happened. And I, so I recall it, I hung up. He says he hung up on me, but that's totally not true. That said, renowned author and death investigator, Joe Scott Morgan, Forensics,

expert, Cheryl McCollum, and who I now consider to be friends, Tara and Joseph. We've got so much to talk about, but don't let me forget, they believe it or not, you know, sometimes when you go through H.E.L. You just want to curl up in a ball. Guess what they're doing right now. They're trying to. to raise money for somebody else for a shelter in Laramie, not far from Laramie, it's called Laradice, and for people that are going through the worst that need help. They're trying to raise money for a fence to surround the shelter. You know, a lot of people that have lived through what they have lived through

are still so engulfed in that process and I'm just amazed at what they are doing. So you know what? I just want to... Okay. I'm going to get to their

foundation and Laradice and everything else they're doing, but I think I like you, I'm so close of them. I'm not through a TV screen right now. I want to start with, when you knew something had gone horribly wrong, when I found out that my fiancé was killed, I just thought that there had been a car accident. I had no idea that some guy, he didn't know, shot him five times and destroyed my life and ended his life.

So at first, I didn't really get it. How did that day roll out? Let me start with you, Terri. So Nikki had called us and said, have you heard from Gabby? Gabby's mom. Gabby's mom. I'm bonus mom.

We actually say emotional support human, just letting you know. That's what the FBI called Jim and I. So there's two bonus parents where emotionally support humans. But anyway, so that she called Joe and she's like, have you heard from the kids? Have you heard from Brian or Gabby? I haven't heard from them in a while. And Joe immediately was on the phone with, we knew she was traveling across country.

So Joe was on the phone trying to figure out if we could locate her, locate her van. Is that normal from Nikki if she can't find Gabby that she calls you guys? Well, I mean, Gabby was traveling, so we didn't know how much service that she had. So nothing was normal. So nothing was normal, yeah. But yeah, if there was an issue or anything, yeah, of course, Nikki would always call us and see, like, you know, we would work together as four parents to try to resolve whatever issue that was going on. And that, that was normal. But this was different because we couldn't find her.

can figure out where she was. So Joey started calling everybody. At this point, I was, I didn't think it was serious. I was just like, okay, all right, well, she's out there in the camping, and she's exploring national parks, and she's having the time of her life. Maybe she just doesn't have service. How long had it been? How many days? That was a couple days. There was Friday afternoon where Joe looked at me, and he was like, no, this is, this is serious. Like, this is something, something's not right. And he had a lot of trouble trying to even report her missing. They would not report her missing because in the state of Florida, that's where Gabby was living, you have to report her missing in her last known location. At this point, we knew her last known

location was in Utah, Salt Lake, and in Utah, it is where they reside. So we were having these issue of trying to get her reported missing. We tried to call the laundries. We had a friend in insurance who kind of got in trouble who gave us their phone numbers because we did not have their phone numbers. That is hard to take in that you couldn't get a hold of them. Nope. Guys, if you don't know, Gabby Petito, beautiful, inside and outside. Takes after her dad. Well, it's crazy because everybody used to say that she looked more like me, and I'm like, Like, well, yeah, that's okay. But I'm like, she's way more beautiful than I.

But it's in all this effort and converts her Ford Transit into like a rolling camper and starts on a cross-country trip with the boyfriend. Was he really the fiancé? So they did get engaged. Okay. But I don't know if it was ever a serious engagement. I had to ask Gabby about it. And she kind of just, like, he didn't ask.

Joe for her hands in marriage. And we found out on a Facebook post from Roberta. That would be Roberta Laundrie and that would be Brian, the fiancé Laundrie's mother who

have come under quite a bit of scrutiny the way that they handled the facts as they progressed. Please jump in. Because Brian Laundrie and Gabby set off on the cross-country trip, and then suddenly nobody can hear from Gabby.

And then the next thing you know, the family starts getting these texts that don't make any sense. It would be like if I texted Joe Scott about Cheryl, and I said, where is crime scene analyst Ms. Cheryl McCollum, D-O-B-B, like, that's wrong. didn't Laundrie send a text asking about the grandpa and called him by his full name? That would be like my sister texted me. How is Elizabeth Stokes Grace my mother? I'm like, what is wrong with you? So they knew immediately this is not her texting. Gabby was murdered.

And if it hadn't been for you guys putting it out there for social media and more, I remember when their handle was red, blue, and methane, saw a forward transit in what is called dispersed camping, which is there's not an electrical hookup, there's not a port-a-potty, there is nothing but you and the critters saw her Gabby's transit there and called it in, and Gabby's remains were found. Brian Laundry murdered her. but before he murdered her he assaulted her on main street in some little town and the cop named gabby the aggressor even though witnesses stayed they saw him hit her so everything that could go wrong went wrong and somehow the laundries knew more than you did

No, I was the person who was responsible came home back into their house. And I think it was $25,000. You know, they had to write a check at $25,000. They sent a check for $25,000 to their attorney up in New York, Bertolino, who then sent it to a defense attorney in Wyoming. How did they know the location in Wyoming that they needed a defense attorney? you slow down and say that again so brian laundering the fiance walks in the door and nobody said hey where's gabby actually no that's not so he called he called his mom on his drive home

and they had a long conversation and immediately afterwards the parents called stephen bertolino and then i guess the next day a wire went from the laundries to burtelino and then bertilino hired some high power criminal defense attorney in Wyoming. And that was the retainer of $25,000. Now, I don't know about anybody in this room. If your child asked you for a $25,000 check, are you guys going to ask why? Right?

Just wondering. So he actually also called his father, and his father had said, so this is Christopher Laundry. that Gabby was gone and he needed help. And he tried to say Gabby was gone meant that she just ran off, but he needed $25,000 to pay to a defense attorney. Yeah, to pay for a high power defense attorney.

And their attorney, Bertolino, is the one that signed the retainer, not Brian. Guys, there is no parent-child privilege, like attorney-client privilege, husband, wife, privilege, priest, parishioner privilege. But none of this was revealed. What I'm saying is the all-out search for Gabby ensues, and the whole time the laundries allegedly knew Gabby had been murdered. Do you remember that, Cheryl? Oh, I remember.

And let me tell you, there's no POS privilege with a POS either. Listen, the first time I ever had a conversation with Joe, the information I had was incorrect, but the information I had was he went to their house and knocked on the door, and they wouldn't come to the door. And I'm like, I'll go with you. I guarantee you they're coming out, because we're going to set it on fire. Because let me tell you, Nancy was my prosecutor back in the day when we were both in our 20, y'all we had a good time in Atlanta too but listen I didn't I don't know what she's

talking about I had two night jobs I don't know what she was doing when I was teaching school I had one job that I barely worked I had some fun but listen what happened I used to be able to work these cases with Nancy just work them work them and then I had children and then Nancy had children and I'm going to tell you it changed everything about me it did it changed I changed how I worked every case, especially involving somebody's child. But when I tell you I would have gone with him, I would have gone with him. No question about it.

And I think y'all would have gone with us. Is that true? Did you go and knock on the door? No. I was informed. So we got a call that Brian was home with the van and Gabby wasn't there. How did you find that? Who told you that?

So when we tried to get Gabby reported, we couldn't, right? So it took Nikki begging on the floor of a precinct in New York to get it finally reported. And when the report finally went out, they did a welfare check, I guess, at the house. And I was going the next morning. And around midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning, we get a call from Nikki saying, Brian's home with the van, and Gabby's nowhere to be found. And if I go to the house, I was told I would be arrested. And so.

if we didn't have Gabby, me getting arrested didn't serve a purpose. Who told you you'd be arrested? I wouldn't have been able to contain it, to be honest with you, and that was sound advice. You know, you have to, listen, I hope no one is in that situation, you know, but if you have a job to do, and that is to find your loved one, being put behind bars isn't going to help. It's only going to compound the issue, so, but we were forced to, fortunate enough to have four of us. And that's, because you can't do this on your own.

Like, you need support systems and stuff like that, right? So, Nikki, Jim, Tara, to be honest with you, they deserve all the credit. I bring nothing to the table to letting you know that. But they really do everything, but they kind of kept it where it needed to be and where the focus was. And that was just simply finding Gabby, and that's what we did at that. crime stories with nancy grace when gabby's remains were found was she identified first by her shirt so what had happened was the founder and they only had minutes to get to because jim just happened to be in

Wyoming. We didn't just have to. He traveled out there. He went to Wyoming. We were told to stay in New York. Nicky was told to stay in New York because that's where the investigation started out of. But it was being run through the FBI in Tampa, so we were told to stay there. Jim said, screw it, I'm going to Wyoming. So he did. And when they found her, they had, I mean, they were running to get to Jim because a few minutes later, it hit the news. You know what I mean? Once they put

the tent up, they had helicopters and stuff. So they did identify her through her bunger shirt which is a local shop in Sable, New York was like a surf shop Okay, I want to follow through what you're saying

to its logical conclusion because in a case when you are building a case you get a myriad thousands of facts and I call it marshalling your facts and evidence

you cannot go into a trial, specifically, a felony trial, scattershot. So every fact proves something, and it's your responsibility to determine what that one fact proves. She was identified by her shirt. What does that tell me? That tells me her remains had been left out in dispersed camping, which is nothing but wild terrain, left there in the hopes that animals would destroy her remains and that she would never be identified. Isn't that true, Joe Scott? So that one piece of evidence tells me the frame of mind of the killer. Gabby meant nothing to him. He just left her there. Like a pizza box.

Yeah. And here's a bit of irony here. When you compare what he had done to Gabby and where he had left her, and you compare and contrast that with his remains that are found in that swampy area, his remains were affected. by animal activity in that area. Rodents specifically. I found that fast.

Rodents brought on him, which makes me really happy. Yeah, and I have to tell you, you know, having followed it from the forensics perspective, and those, the people that handled laundering remains there did a bang-up job, you know, of having to collect because everything was particulated at that point in time. Again, disbursement has due with the water. It also has to do with animal activity. I don't know. I don't want to whack spiritual, but when I think, you know, for a time, you know,

Gabby became everybody's daughter. And I have a daughter that looks almost the spitting image of Gabby, and it just broke my heart, and generally I can detach myself. As horrible as those circumstances were, it felt as though to me that it was almost an angelic presence, you know, there with her remains. As crazy as that sounds, that's the way I've always believed it in my mind. But back to the remains and how her remains were treated by him contrasting with how his remains were found. and the corner out there that handled Gabby's remains did a fantastic job,

given the isolated area that was out there. Yeah, see, I could appreciate that. But here's the thing. Yeah. When we went to go pick up her remains, I can't prove it. You know what I mean? This is only my opinion. I remember this.

There was paperwork you have to do, and Gabby's name was misspelled on the paperwork. So he's like, all right, give me a few, and I'm going to go redo the paperwork. So it goes, like, 10 minutes go by, he comes back. It's wrong again. Another 10 minutes go by, he comes back, and it's finally, right? Going through the paperwork, whatever. So we're there for like a half hour before we get her remains. It's my opinion that he tipped off some reporter for some outlet,

because there's now a picture of me leaving the corner with her remains. So it's great of a job that they might have done. I don't think it, I think that they just had bad intentions, you know, in terms of getting money and stuff like that. And that's a shame because that's not something you want to see. One other point adjacent to this that I found fascinating, I was talking to Cheryl about this backstage, is that that coroner released a manner of death, which there are five, before a cause of death was ever released. and generally it does not happen. I'm not saying that that's, you know, bad and any necessarily.

It's just odd because normally you want to establish the physical findings first. Let's clarify for our listeners. Manner cause of death is stabbing, choking, poison, asphyxiation, ligature, manual strangulation. Manner of death is homicide, natural causes, undetermined, suicide. I mean, it's different. It's two different categories. But to me, the fact that her remains were left out in the middle of nothing. I've camped out there and hiked out there.

There is nothing. But the animals didn't disturb her either. Right. I'm talking about his frame of mind. What can I prove based on that? I get it. Just such a callous disregard of her. He panicked.

Well, and the fact that he came home. And his mom knew. They knew she was out there. They knew it. So how is a mother you're okay with that? How is a mother you know that you're a woman that's supposed to be your daughter-in-law that has parents, that has siblings? How is a parent do you do that? Because I know I would probably kill my son right then and there.

How many days passed from the time laundry came home? home two no eight days they sent the money oh oh uh 19 days getting home no so he sent the money i think it was like september first or second and when did laundry get home he got home on the first the first yeah and he until gabby was found on the september 19 so for almost the entire month of December September yes thank you of September the laundries let them hang in the wind looking for Gabby after they had already paid a defense attorney. They actually went camping. They actually went camping and had s'mores.

Oh yes, please tell that. They also went camp, they also did like a planting tree type of thing that, I don't, what was it they, a planting class, it was like a couple hours that they took, which was weird. Like you're, how do you do that? Like you're, that's their frame of mind too. How do you take, Gabby was not there? Knowing Gabby's out there, they're going camping, having s'mores, and they're taking planting classes. Please tell them about the camping trip.

Well, they went on a camping trip. I think it was September 5th through the 7th. They changed the, I guess you had to make reservations and whatnot, and they kind of changed the reservations because Gabby's no longer there. And the sister ends. And this is the part that blows my mind, right? I'm going to say this out. So the sister, Cassie Laundrie, has a couple kids, all right? And those kids I feel really bad for it because they did nothing wrong.

And they have to go through life knowing if their uncle was a POS. I'm going to use that from that one, by the way. I don't want you to know that. And the mom let her grandkids hang out with someone who just killed, who's supposed to be the love of their life. Would you guys do that by showing hands? Would anybody allow that to happen? Yet, like, no, that is disgusting to me.

to get past the s'mores. You're right? Abby remains, ID'd by a shirt, which tells me the state of her remains. They couldn't say, had to do the shirt. They're lying there in dispersed camping. And Laundry's family, he gets home on September 1, and they go on a camping trip. I wonder if they thought their house was bugged or something. But they go on a camping trip and sit around the campfire and go hiking and have s'mores.

Can I jump in? What? Can I jump in? Yes. Remember, she changed the reservation. Yes. She said that. Okay.

So it was supposed to be two. They went to three. I wholeheartedly believe they were going to sit around and plan his escape. You're right. I think, yes. Nancy, for Tom, I remember being on crime stories with you. We had actually speculated that they had. had purchased some kind of cheap kayak to get him into the waterway. Remember this? And that he was

going to, you know, kind of vanish into the population in Tampa and maybe get into a homeless area. We'd speculated about this for a long time. We matched it out. We looked at routes, how he could go. They did get new phones, new sim words, new everything, you know, a couple of days before. Doesn't we have a conspiracy theory. All of us. Did you repeat that again, please. Oh, yeah. There's a video of them going to AT&T getting new phones. He phones SIM cards to plan his escape. You're right. Well, now Bertolino, they're a lawyer in New York, is a real estate attorney.

Yeah, he's not a criminal attorney. He's not a criminal attorney, real estate. So was they trying to get the escape where he was going to stay in one of his houses? See, I don't think an escape was ever in the cards. I really don't. In all honesty, like I don't, and this is my opinion, I think the four of us share it. You know, I don't think Brian killed himself. We all think the mom did it.

Yes, we do have, we do have our theories. I don't think he had the stones to do it himself. Let me just say no one has been named a person of interest or a suspect. Well, I did say. And everyone has presumed innocent until proving guilty. I did say this is my opinion, all right? And, yeah, I don't think he had the stones to do it. I mean, when you add, so there's some things that just don't add up to me.

You mean like how they went, walk, when everybody had been looking for laundry's remains, and they walked straight? I'm talking before that. So Brian drove to the spot, whatever, with his car. Right? Yeah. So the Maikahatchee Creek, right, or whatever reserve. 5,000 acres of mosquitoes. So he drove his Mustang there, and I guess like two days one passed.

It was three. It was three days? Three days passed, and the parents brought the car home. Now, it's not around the corner. This is a good distance from their house. He's just going to leave him out there. So, yeah, he doesn't have his keys. He doesn't have a wallet.

He doesn't have a phone. How is he going to get home? Why would you take the car back? Why would you take his only mode of transportation? Which means me to, have the parents ever been charged with anything? Well, listen, at the end of the day, it wouldn't have served us any good. Yeah, we've had a moment of, yeah, you know, that's great. But right after that moment, we're back to this sucks.

you know what i mean so um but nicky tara and jim myself i mean we kind of banded together and tried to use our tragedy to help others because gabby really touched so many people and it'd be wasteful and shameful to not utilize what she went through to to spotlight on how so many others go through it domestic violence is a crazy thing that no one likes to talk about about. Can I curse? Can I curse here? Is that okay? Talk about it. Talk about it. I'm dead serious. Like enough. The shame of domestic violence belongs to the POS that does it and not the people that have it done too. So if you hear or know or see or it went through you, put that shame where it belongs on the abuser because that's the piece of that deserves it. Right on.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace What leads you to believe that all along the laundries knew Gabby had been killed and did nothing. Of course, in our jurisprudence, you do not have the duty to act. You don't have a duty to save somebody, to report anything. You may have a fiduciary duty if it's your child or if you have a contractual agreement, like you're a babysitter or a granny-nanny or a custodian. But other than that, you don't have a duty to report anything to the police at all if you don't want to. In this case, what other evidence exists to suggest?

to suggest that they took part in a cover-up, or is there any? Well, I'll tell you how we got there. And this is because of their attorney, Stephen Bertolino, is how we got there. And this is why when you commit a crime, you don't hire a real estate attorney. I just want that to be sound advice for me. We had our attorney, Patrick Riley, who, by the way, is an amazingly handsome guy. I think my wife would lead me for him if he wasn't married. Listen, he's tall, he's handsome.

He's really tan. It's fantastic. Anyway, so he was looking for a reason of how to bring that suit. Because what happened was when everything was done, the FBI said, we want you to go after them civilly because you can get depositions. And those depositions we could use because they would be public. So we said, absolutely. To build a criminal case.

So he needed a reason to go after them. And what he went after them with is the words from Stephen Bertolino. know that we hope Gabby's reunited with their family. By the way, in court, they turned around and said, oh, we never meant her living. It could have been her corpse that we meant. That's what they said in court, by the way. Those bastards, right? Screw them. But it was because of their attorney. That's what we got those depositions. And they thought it was funny in those depositions. Like the mom was laughing. Roberta was laughing like it was a freaking joke. Laughing at what? Everything. So that whole burn after reading letter that she had wrote to

to Brian. We don't know when. She said it was right before the trip. We have, we don't, we still don't know when. She was laughing the entire. It was just a joke. It's just a joke. Everything in that letter was a joke. Me burying, you know, helping you hide a body. Oh, that's, it's, it's a, um, a children's book from a children's book. Roberta Laundrie wrote a letter to Brian Laundry offering to help bury or hide a body. letter said burn after reading and according to Roberta Laundrie what was the excuse it was from a children's book so it was just an inside joke that they had you know just something really funny and but her and Brian were having difficulties before they before they Gabby and him

left on the trip so she was writing it to him to try to let him know how much she loved him I've never offered to burn a body for my, or bury a body. Everybody, yeah. I mean, I never thought to say something like that. It's like Norman Bates, like she would wash him in a tub and stuff as a teenager, it's horrible. Honestly, I can't, I can't, she was the mastermind. Like, she was just sitting there at a deposition, and they wanted us to feel sorry for them.

Why do you say that? Because they said it. Bertolina was like they had pitchforks in front of our house. There was so many people with pitchforks and, you know, that was so unfair to us that they, why were they doing that to us? Are you kidding? Why didn't we go to them and try to, you know, have a relationship with them? Where does any legal action stand now?

Right now, well, the civil case is done. We had to settle because of a law in Florida where if they offer a settlement and you go to trial... You turn it down. And you turn it down and you go to trial and the jury awards you only 75% of that, you have to pay all of their legal fees. Yeah, it's kind of a way to make you settle so you don't go to trial. Then there's the other issue of freedom of speech where they would have appealed and we probably would have lost. We got the information we wanted them to be deposed. We wanted to see what they were going to say in the depositions.

We got all, we got those answers. And that's all we wanted. Once we settled with them, it was like a huge weight kind of lifted off my shoulders. I just want to forget about them. I don't want to think about them. I have really crazy thoughts of, like, what I would like to do to them. Sometimes she has some thoughts about me, too, right? I just want to lay that out there?

I'm annoying as anything. So we, after we got the depositions, we sent it over to the FBI because Christopher Laundry had stated that Gabby was gone in the depositions. And that, you know, they thought she just ran all. and that's you know why but they did not do anything that was that was it did you guys have any idea that Gabby was being beaten it's other than the Moab stop no to be honest with you like we didn't I did not like Brian why I had co-signed a car for Gabby before she even reunited with Brian and they started

dating again. This is when we were trying to get her to go to school and she needed a car and I was like, I'll co-sign this car for you. But you're making the payments. You're going to school and you're making the payments. I'm just here, God forbid, you need something to help and, you know, she wouldn't have got the loan otherwise. Well, when her and Brian left to move down to Florida after their first trip, pretty much all payments had stopped. She stopped making car payments. She wound up returning the car early to get the van and stuck me with a $3,200 bill to return the car early. At this point, I'm like, why isn't Brian helping her? They're a couple.

They're engaged to be married. Like, there's something not right. They're going on all these trips, and I just felt something was off. I had felt something. I have, I guess, like, visions a lot. You know, you were talking about the spiritual aspect. I do get visions and sometimes they come true and there's... I've got a question regarding that.

Do either of you feel that you have felt Gabby's presence or communicated with her in any way since she went to heaven? 100%, yeah. What happened? I get signs from her all the time. I actually, so I felt her presence like when we're sleeping. I would feel like she was going to try to walk into our room all the time and like want to hug us.

And I actually went to a psychic medium and they were like, you need to just go to sleep so she can. And they had no idea that I felt that. I didn't say it during this. No one would know that. He didn't even know that. Well, I have a deal with this. All right, listen, I don't mess with ghosts. Ghosts don't mess with me.

We're good to go. I don't, I don't, uh-uh. When she was, when we were trying to report her missing, there was a lot of rain and a lot of thunder. and we had just moved down to florida it was like an unseasonally about sorry unseasonably a lot more than normal rain of rain and we were actually going to get a bite to eat and they thunder lightning hit my car and it was like next to your car and i felt it in my spine and i was like that was gabby telling us to wake up i knew it like i knew it right then and there like that's gabby coming to tell me like we need to we need to start moving along and

But look what's happened since Well, she sends me signs all the time No, it's not what I mean, but look what's happened since Gabby, you know, all that happened. You see more missing person flyers, you know, on your social media feeds than you ever have before. You see more

missing person stories come up on social media I mean, on the regular mainstream media than you have before. The Emmanuel Harrow we were talking about before, you know, stuff like that. You start seeing that. You see domestic violence education programs being more put into schools and stuff. And that's really because Tara and Nikki,

they go across the country talking about education and prevention anywhere they can go. Colleges, high schools, conferences. There's a lot of amazing programs out there, but they're in pockets. So like one town will have an amazing program and they're working with the DV organization, but the next town over is not. What is your foundation doing? Well, we'll depends on who you ask. No, because there's four of us, right?

So Jim wrote an amazing first responder program where he goes around teaching firefighters and EMTs on signs of domestic violence and how to spot those and give information where to go if you're in that situation because that's the number one thing. Anyone here, like, see, it might be the wrong audience for this. But if you're in a domestic violence situation,

that's nonviolent. Does anyone not know where to go? Don't be afraid. You can raise your hand. If you don't know where to call, we always say the National Domestic Violence Hotline, 1-800-799-safe is the number that we like to give out. It's a great starting point, but most people don't know where to go. So Jim, he wrote that program.

He's going around. Matter of fact, I think it just went into the FDIC where it's going to get credited for it. So that's actually the gym is absolutely amazing. Well, he's a first responder. Yeah. And that's what he built his, that's his career. and he never received any type of DV training in his 20 years of being active service. And that's so critical here because in Moab, where Gabby was alive with laundry,

he domestically assaulted her, he slapped her. People saw him do it on Main Street. And if he would do that in public, literally on Main Street, Right in the face, what would he do behind closed doors? So when they were pulled over after that, Gabby was saying like, it's really kind of my fault because I started it maybe verbally. Maybe she said something and then she got beaten and threatened that he was going to leave with her car and leave her stranded. She was trying to get back in. I mean, that is domestic abuse.

and somehow the cops named her the aggressor. She's like this big and this big around, and she's the aggressor? He wasn't much bigger, you know. Well, I mean, and the state of Utah, they were supposed to be utilizing the lethality assessment. They had an hour and a half with her. They could have utilized it. It just was not mandated, where now it is mandated in the state of Utah. We got the law changed.

We helped change the law there. That's amazing. Yep. And in the state of Florida. Yep. It's really hard today to get a law changed. We changed the law in Florida. Then we also changed how missing persons are reported in Florida.

And we also did a national what's called Help Find the Missing Act for missing people. And now we're working on the lethality assessment we did in Utah and Florida. Is it October? I think I'm going up. To New York. Yeah, so we're doing there. And it's hopefully get passed in the House in January. in January for the next session, and that'll be five laws and four years.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah. What is the name of the foundation for people to go look at? Our foundation? It's Gabby Petito Foundation. Gabby Petito Foundation. I just wanted to say. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, so... So we actually designed shirts, and we also have a store, so to raise money, and it all goes to help with the foundation. So we were actually wearing two of the shirts that we have.

have on the store. Three, because I got my hoodie on. Because it's cold here. People don't tell you. Like, it's cold. So what kind of things do you do? Does the foundation do? Well, so Jim's got the first responder program.

I do all the legislative work. And then Tara and Nikki go around everywhere. Well, Tara does all the back-end work. First of all. I do a lot of the back, you know, I have a career. No paperwork for me. Yeah.

In finance. So I take care of all of the paperwork. and our bookkeeping and all of that. Would you guys be willing to answer questions from the listeners? Absolutely. But real quick, so if I can, just wrote about it. Sure. So I know we talked about Laramie in the beginning in Laredice.

So Nikki and I are actually going out there next week again to speak at their luncheon. Last year we spoke at the, and they had a hard time bringing in people to get to this luncheon. Because Nikki and I were there, they sold out. So that was amazing. But when we visited the shelter, they did not have a security fence. And that was something that was, like, shocking because the survivors that are going there, they need that for their protection. It's about 54,000 for the security fence.

So we're going to donate 27,000 from the foundation. And now we're trying to raise the other half. So if you all find it in your hearts and go to the Gabby Petito Foundation and just make a donation. You can do it right through PayPal, put in a message that this is for Laredice or Laramie or the fence. And then we'll make sure it gets to the thing. Yeah, we're going to make sure that they have security like they should have. On top of the 27,000.

Yes. Who has the question? Sure. Y'all go to those mics. There's one on either side. Right now I'm going through a situation, my niece. Haley Raleigh was murdered by her husband, April of this year. I consider what she was going through was domestic abuse.

It wasn't physical, but it was psychological. And her husband had threatened to commit suicide for maybe a year or two. We don't know the whole story, just like what y'all were talking about. My niece wasn't found for like four days, but her husband had committed suicide right next to her. My sister was informed that nobody had seen her at her office, and so that started the search for her. But like I said, I just wanted to mention my niece's name, and also I want to get the word out, that physical abuse is not the only domestic abuse. Psychological abuse is just as damning. Thank you.

I want to thank the whole panel, but thank you for doing where you're doing it, and thank you, Nancy, for doing this today. I'm so sorry for your loss, and her name deserves to be heard. Her story, you know what? Creating awareness sometimes is putting those all the stories out there. It's not easy. It's difficult, but as we come together, and our hashtag is, together we can. together. As communities, we come together with our, you know, their voices. Their voices need to be heard. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes. Hi. First of all, thank you guys all for being here and especially you guys for your advocacy and everything. It's really inspiring. My question, so I'm young, I'm on social media, everything, TikTok. I remember the news breaking. I remember watching it. I follow of the whole case throughout it. And I know social media really helped build the case and I think really helped where you guys are today.

But my question is, where do you think the case really would have played out if social media wasn't a part of it? I don't think we would have found it. I don't know. Yeah. To be honest with you, I really don't. And I'm not putting the blame on the police.

I won't do that. Because to be honest with you, I think they're very overworked, especially when you start talking small communities. Like in Moab, there's 19 officers in that precinct. Matter of fact. I want to just say there's 19 officers. All of them are new except for one. Right.

You can guess the one. The one. But when it comes to that, I don't think we would have found it. And that's my opinion because it was 2,500 miles. And the way they handle missing persons sometimes without the FBI getting involved, I don't think the jurisdictions would have played out. So, yeah, if you're ever in a situation, use, use those, use social media. I mean, that's how, as I was saying, red, blue and methane is their online, their social media handle, saw the transit and went, that was like Gabby's.

They have never met Gabby. The day after Gabby was found, it snowed. It snowed. So we might not have, yeah, they would have stopped. Yeah. So, yeah, you wouldn't have seen her until the snow thought. So, yeah, to answer your question, I don't think we would have. Yeah.

And it's because of you that we did. So I thank all of you, everyone, to be honest with you. And that's kind of the reason why we do what we do now is to kind of pay back the help that you guys gave us. But we also have tools on our website. So if your loved one ever does go missing, we have a list of tools of how to try to get their story out as much as possible. And because you're on social media, I'd like to give advice to everyone else here as well. Take as many photos and videos. Yes.

Because in the news or in TikTok, right, because that's, I love TikTok, by the way. It's like mindless to me, but it's also amazing at the same time. You learn a lot. But the movements and the body language and the sound of their voice helps sell their story. And that sounds horrible. Like it sounds really, really miserable to say it like that. But that's what gets it on the mainstream media to create that awareness. So annoy your kids and take the videos.

And I do believe it can help if needed. Yeah. You're right. And we have those memories. Video. Yeah. And I want to piggyback on that because one thing Nancy and I always do on every investigation, pre-and-post behavior, Gabby was fantastic about posting videos.

She was fantastic about texting and calling and checking in. She sent postcards. It all stopped. Yeah. There you go. That's very probative. Nancy, if I could say one thing about this. The line share, you know, you hear about it.

about a lot of cases in the news we cover them you know and if it doesn't catch the media's eye there are so many homicides that occur that no one ever it doesn't make it through one cycle of the news here's a little truth for you the lion's share of homicides that occur out there are not stranger on stranger deaths you know they paint it like somebody coming out of a dark alley they're going to attack in yes those do happen the lion's share of homicides occur with a person you're in relationship with they're rooted in domestic violence that's the line share of the ones that we say 90% yeah almost 90% and it's people don't really grasp that that's why what the potatoes are

doing this idea of getting at the grassroots relative to this insidious problem you're literally and I know this sounds so rope, but you're literally saving lives by doing this. If you can head these things off in the future, people like me that work for medical examiners and coroner's offices, we don't have to show up. Wouldn't that be a beautiful thing? That you can take another path, perhaps.

You don't want people like me showing up. And unfortunately, things get to this point where they boil over. And to those people in Moab, you know, they had an opportunity to identify that moment of time and in my opinion they failed miserably they've actually so they knew and Nikki were at a conference where they came to you afterwards and you guys were talking to them and yeah so there's a new officer that is um in Moab and he's really trying to revamp their

department they're taking the right steps but we have more questions yeah yeah what's your question my question is you mentioned that you didn't like Brian very much uh I I'm wondering what was the relationship before they moved to Florida and do you believe his move to Florida with her was to alienate her from the family? So before she moved down to Florida they took a cross-country trip they weren't dating at the time they started dating I guess on that said trip the second they came back is when they moved down to Florida and at that point yes I do 100 percent believe he was trying to isolate her. I had had a conversation with Gabby and I was like, listen, I understand you want to go and that's great. I said, but you just took a trip,

maybe try to make some money before you go down, plan it so that you're not just going down there and living with him and his parents and his family. And the next day they were, they were already on their way. Which is classic in domestic abuse to alienate, typically the woman from her family and support group. So yes, that happened. See, that's something I didn't know. So never had any, you know, prevention classes, never went to, when I went to school, there was nothing. They didn't teach about domestic violence. So that's what we're trying to change now, because everybody should learn the red flags. Everybody should learn to teach their children not to be abusers as well. It's not just about being abusive or, you know, learning the red

flags it's not being abusive. If you have children in schools, talk to your schools about these programs, because there are schools that won't allow us to mention certain things. Like we went down to a state and they're like, well, you can't mention sex. I'm like, so we can talk, listen, I don't care where you sit with, you know, politics or other stuff. Like, honestly, I just don't care about it. You know, I care about treating people right. You know, be nice to people. As long as you do that, you should be good. And the fact that we, don't teach our children. Everyone, what is it? It's life skill. We teach life skills, like how to cook, how to sew. How about staying alive? You know, it's a life skill. So these things should

be taught. So if you have, talk to your children, see if they're learning about it, if they're not. Send them to our website, find a different website. I don't care which one you go. It doesn't have to be us. Just find a program and talk to them, maybe show them the documentary, you know, and be like, this can happen to any one at any time. On our website, we have the Gabby Petito alliance where it's again together we can so there's other organizations on there that you can you can look on their websites to see if there's any tools that might suit what you need there's a really cool program called purple one this I love talking about this program it's got nothing to do with our foundation it's a good it's a

really good so what they do is if you have a storefront they'll teach you they'll do like a four-hour class I think you and it's a bystander program where it's a four-hour class it's all online it's free where they'll teach you because you might not know what to do you have a you have a storefront so they'll teach you this bystander program and they'll put you can put a dot on it and you put like a little stickers they might only be allowed to go to one store so now if they go to this store they know that they maybe can get connected to some resources within that community so if you have communities or storefronts that's a great program it's nationwide guys we just had a case

like this, the domestic violence victim was Momta Bot, and her friend was allowed to take her to the Indian spice store to pick up the spices to make the food. It's the only place she could go, right? Just what they're saying.

That, the purple, great. It's a fantastic program. Definitely check it out. Question? I have a 14-year-old, and I teach her all about the red flags, and she rolls her out. and all of that, but I know that her friends, they don't know anything about that. And how can I reach them and tell them, like, I think it's a good idea, you know, for that.

I think a movie is a great idea, like sleeping with the enemy with Julia Roberts. Oh, I like that. Have a sleepover. That was a brutal one. That's in 90s, but yeah, that was a brutal one. Yeah. Yeah. And say, ugh, that really happens.

I constantly send the children. this one is missing, that one is missing. I'm like, don't do what happened here. Don't walk to your car across the parking lot by yourself in the dark. Don't this. I mean, they're so over it, but I know they see those texts, so at least they see the headline. You can't quit.

You'll find a way. And encourage an open relationship with your kids at all times. My oldest boy and my wife, I mean, he tells us too much stuff. I'm like, I don't need to know all this information. But my other one, he does not. He's very quiet and trying to get, like, I mean, trying to get answers out of him. Sometimes it's just one word. I just constantly in trying to have a conversation with, trying to constantly making sure that, you know,

he knows I'm always there for him and that the lines of communication are open. My other son who, the older one, has always has his friends over the same thing. I talk to them. Yeah. I talk to them. I try to have their, you know, an open conversation with them just as much, just so they, that they know. I have a great idea.

Tell them about meeting Gabby's family. Yeah. And about Gabby. Oh, we encourage people to use Gabby's story. Oh, yeah. We encourage law enforcement to use the Moab stop. I mean, it's being used around the country. So yeah.

Hey, guys, they have literally one more minute. Quick question. Okay, thank you so much. Go. You're welcome. Hi, I was just wondering if you guys had any conversation connection with Cassie, Brian's sister, because her stories have changed a lot. Did she ever admit to knowing anything?

No. We have not talked to the laundries except with the deposition, but that was it. And we didn't even talk to them. Our lawyers talked to them. And to be honest with, I appreciate it, it's not, it doesn't serve us any good anymore. Now it's about everybody else. So if you have a missing person story or you need help getting something out there, you can reach out.

We'll try and get it out there, you know, and do whatever we can to help as many people as we can. If you didn't get all this information, they have agreed. I think he agreed while you weren't there. But to come on crime stories at your convenience and put out the websites, the numbers, the everything. And if you want, Twitter, Facebook, give us your questions, and I will send them onto them when they join us next week. Because this one hour was really just not enough. Not enough.

So we're also actually doing a 5K right now. So it's a virtual 5K. It's started already. I think I could do a virtual 5K. Yeah. And then it's in person. It's up in New York. It's in Gabby's hometown.

And that is on September 20th. Guys, the message is say her. name. Gabby Petito. Thank you.