Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Does Notebook Reveal Brian Laundrie Confesses to Gabby Petito Murder?

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

The FBI report on the death of Gabby Petito concludes that Brian Laundrie killed Petito while the pair were on a cross-country van trip. The report also states that Laundrie confesses to the murder in a hand written notebook, found near the remains of Laundrie's body. According to the report, Laundrie tried to cover up Petito's death by using the woman's debit card, and then also sending text messages from her phone, to give the impression that Gabby was still alive.Joining Nancy Grace Today: Dale Carson - High Profile Attorney (Jacksonville), Former FBI Agent, Former Police Officer, Author: "Arrest-Proof Yourself, DaleCarsonLaw.com Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst, www.drbethanymarshall.com, New Netflix show: 'Bling Empire' (Beverly Hills) Joe Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics: Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet", Host: "Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan" Michael Ruiz - Reporter, Fox News Digital, Twitter: @MikeRreports Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. In the last hours, bombshell discoveries in the murder of beautiful young girl Gabby Petito. Her body left out in a dispersed camping area near the Tetons to decompose. Now we learn that so-called boyfriend Brian Laundrie, who throttled her and bludgeoned her dead, then used her credit card sending fake texts all the way across the country back home to Florida, did actually make some self-absorbed musings in writing claiming responsibility for Gabby's murder. What exactly did that notebook say?

I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. First of all, take a listen to our cut 421 News Nation. for Gabby's death. But what else did he say? Was it a long note? Did he give a motive? It would be very, very interesting to see that. It's interesting even wondering where is the notebook right now? Because the Laundrie family attorney, Stephen Bertolino, told us that they were going through the process

of taking evidence back, both families. I was messaging with him earlier tonight, trying to sort of get that information out of him. I asked, can you say where the notebook is right now? And can you tell us what was in the notebook? And he just said, no and no. Why won't Steve Bertolino, the Laundrie family attorney, shut up and go away? There's really no nice way to put it. I mean, not very many lawyers get it, but there is a point in court and elsewhere where you should just sit down and try your best to keep your lips together because he keeps referring to Gabby's

murder as a tragic incident, a tragedy. It was a murder. And he keeps talking about how it's all been very sad. It's sad because Brian Laundrie murdered her. And I don't take to him putting Brian Laundrie, the killer, the abuser, in the same pot with Gabby Petito and her family. No. Take a listen to Hour Cut 417. These are our friends at WPBF. The FBI's final report into the killing of Gabby Petito does more than just wrap up the case. It includes details never shared before. And to former FBI agent Stuart Kaplan,

the biggest detail is the fact that Gabby's fiance, Brian Laundrie, confessed to killing her. Obviously, there is a confession that satisfies law enforcement that Brian Laundrie, in fact, took responsibility. According to the report, the confession was written in the notebook found with Laundrie's remains. The report, however, does not give specifics of the confession, if Laundrie said exactly what happened or why it happened. I think we're all interested to know how it escalated to the point where you have Brian Laundrie taking the life of Gabby Petito. The report does say Laundrie tried to cover up the murder, saying he used Gabby's debit card on his drive back to Florida from Wyoming, and he also sent text messages from her phone to his phone. The FBI says his actions, quote, are indicative of Mr. Laundrie

attempting to deceive law enforcement by giving the impression that Ms. Petito was still alive. Confession, notebook, schmoke book. It's all self-absorbed, woke musings by a woman beater. Self-absorbed, self-justifying, self-pitying. All three of those start with the word self, because that's all Brian Laundrie was concerned with, himself. With me, an all-star panel to make sense of what we know right now, high-profile lawyer joining us out of Jacksonville, former Fed with the FBI, FBI agent, author of Arrest Proof Yourself at DaleCarsonLaw.com. Renowned psychoanalyst joining us out of Beverly Hills.

Dr. Bethany Marshall at DrBethanyMarshall.com. Star of a hit series on Netflix, Bling Empire. Professor of Forensics, Jacksonville State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon and star of another hit series, Body Bags, with Joseph Scott Morgan on iHeart. But first, to Michael Ruiz, reporter with Fox News Digital,

who's been on this case from the very beginning. Michael, thank you for being with us. Tell me about the discovery. Oh, oh, oh, two things right now. One, the Moab police continue, even now, after we know Brian Laundrie murdered Gabby, are still claiming they were right, they got it right, that Gabby was the aggressor. They're still saying that. But before I get to them and their big self-justification of their crap report

and what they're saying about Gabby even now, let me talk about this notebook. Who, what, where, when, why? Hit me, Michael. This notebook they found on October 20th, right near Brian Laundrie's body, in the same area where his parents had been telling police to search for weeks. And if you remember, police had been going out into that swamp, and there was a big debate over whether he was there or he had run away up the Appalachian Trail or anywhere else. And it turned out he was there the whole time.

It turned out he was most likely dead the whole time. And when the floodwaters went down, they a bag they found some other belongings and they found brian's remains so that bag michael ruiz was a dry bag and as i recall i don't believe the notebook was in the dry bag which leads me to imagine that Laundrie was out there self-absorbed, writing his self-absorbed musings in a notebook. And he writes a so-called confession. Boy, I'd love to see what he wrote and then killed himself. Where that leads me is that I think he wrote his thoughts and then killed himself. And that's why the notebook didn't make it into the dry bag, which leads me to a whole forensic mess as to how you actually rehabilitate this notebook, this sopping wet notebook that has been underwater at Carleton Reserve for the rainy season, how you do that so you can read it. And I'll circle back to Joe Scott Morgan on that.

Again, Michael Ruiz, it was found in October. We're just hearing about it now. Tell me more about how it was found, where it was found and what happened then. So right inside the entrance to this trail, there was a little clearing on the left-hand side, and the parents had been telling the FBI and police to search that area for weeks. And they went on this morning of October 20th with one detective from North Fort Police and one FBI agent and the parents. And they were essentially zigzagging through the area, just looking around at places they thought they might find Brian. And the parents and they were essentially zigzagging through the area just looking around at places they thought they might find Brian and the parents came across the dry bag and split up from the law enforcement officers and when they met up a few minutes later the the Northport detective told

the parents we think we found something it's human remains and at that time they hadn't positively ID'd it as Brian Laundrie. But the next day, they came out and said with dental records, this is Brian Laundrie. Do we know if they ever got DNA identifying him, Michael Ruiz? I believe that later they did identify him with DNA. But at that time, it was dental records were the first means used on the 21st, the next day. Take a listen to our cut 424, our friend Evan Axelbank, Fox 13. And then on October 20th, he was found in the Carlton Reserve, which is a big, giant swamp, 25,000 acres here in Tampa Bay in Sarasota County.

He was found October 20th. They found him with a notebook. They found him with a revolver. And in that notebook, it is said by the FBI that he admitted and took responsibility for the death of his former girlfriend and fiance. And then a month after he was found with the notebook, they also revealed that he was found with a revolver. And they said after a lengthy investigation into his death, they found that he had shot himself. So that was the final piece there, the notebook and then the revolver. It showed the cause of death. And over the course of this, the FBI has said and other law enforcement has told us that there was no one else they suspected in this death of Gabby Petito beyond Brian Laundrie. And today, the FBI confirmed that all investigative leads led to no one but

Brian Laundrie. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Straight out to you, Joseph Scott Morgan, Professor of Forensics at Jacksonville State University. Many people have wondered why we are just hearing about the notebook and the alleged confession in the notebook. Now, how long would it take to rehabilitate a sopping wet notebook? Let's just say, yeah, where the musings were written in ink and it had actually been submerged during the Carlton Reserve rainy season. Yeah, it would be a protracted period of time, Nancy. The key to it is that, you know, paper, just like, you know,

human bodies and anything else out in nature, is actually made from trees. Okay, so it's an organic substance. And what that means is, the more you have it around water, the relative humidity, it begins to break down. So what they have to do, the scientists, and I would assume that they took this back to the question document section at the FBI lab. You mean in Quantico? In Quantico. And they would have to freeze that notebook in order to stop what's referred to as the decomposition of the paper. Because keep in mind, it's pulling apart at a molecular level. So you have to stop that first. Think about wet toilet paper. Oh, exactly.

That's what's happening. Go ahead. And it's a horribly hostile environment where this thing was found. And one of the keys here, Nancy, I think, is that you've hit upon this point of was it in the bag or outside of the bag? If it's outside of the bag, that means it's going to be chronically exposed to water over a protracted period of time. And so this kind of, you know, spiraling off into breakdown has got to be stopped before they can ever touch it, Nancy, before they can ever put any kind of alternative light like infrared.

So it's my understanding, and this is a layperson's understanding of it, they take the pages and they try their best to lay them out flat, if that's possible. Again, think wet toilet paper is how I would describe it to a jury. And then let them dry, either through a laser light or infrared light let them dry out how does that process work well what you would have to do Nancy listen they keep using the term notebook we really don't know what type of notebook if it's spiral bound or if it has like a standard sewn in spine hey yeah let me miss here that they do have a photograph of the book, the notebook that he purportedly had in one of our news articles. And in addition to which there, it appears they're

using indelible pen ink in order to write in the notebook. So that may answer the question of why we can see it later. Hey, what does a notebook look like, Dale Carson? In my mind, I imagine one of those, remember those notebooks that were sewn into the spine and they're black and white, squiggly on the front, like we had. Almost like a drum. Yes, that's just what I had in my head. This is a spiral notebook and it's green in color. Probably it's about 10 inches by 6 inches. And it's littered on the top with these indelible pins, sort of like a magic marker that you would use to write in. It's not a pencil. Oh, wait. Is that one of the photos, Michael Ruiz, joining us from Fox News Digital?

Remember that Gabby was posting her travel, her vlog, a video blog, which was really interesting. I watched every bit of that I could see. She's really good at it, by the way. She would have made a great travel editor. But there were a lot of photos as well. And very often you would see photos of Brian Laundrie lounging, reading and writing in his notebook. I wonder if that was the notebook, Michael Ruiz. I wonder too. I don't know for sure. That's a good question. And I guess, you know, we're asking the FBI for more information.

They've been reluctant to fill us in on these things. Oh, Jackie's pulling up the notebook. I see it. It's a Brian Laundrie. It looks like a big light blue blanket has been laid out on their camping trip. And he has that. Yes. Yes.

I see what you're talking about, Del Carson. It's kind of a greenish spiral notebook. Is it spiral, Jack? And there's. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And there is like a silver, I guess, a tree pattern on the top. And they're all his Sharpies laid out where he's writing his innermost thoughts and feelings, I guess. I bet that's it. Okay, back to you, Joe Scott. Yeah, you know, when you begin to think about this, as I stated, they have to freeze this thing. Get it away from any further exposure to humidity at all. Once that is accomplished and it begins to kind of dry on itself, we actually have what are referred to as evidence dryers at labs, Nancy, where we can hang clothes and that sort of thing up. You have to completely suck all of the humidity out of the

air. Now, this thing is going to be so fragile. It's almost like doing surgery. If folks have never seen a question document lab, they go into this thing wearing gloves, masks, this sort of thing. And my suspicion is they would have literally dissected out each page with a scalpel, getting as close to that spine. Slow down, slow down. I'm drinking from the fire hydrant here. Dissect each page with a scalpel. Take it apart with a scalpel, which should be much more delicate than your fingers. Very much so. Because they're all, by now they're probably dried together. I don't know that, but they could be, you know, waterlogged. Okay, go ahead.

Yeah, and then, you know, you had mentioned how they were trying to dry each page independently. So, that's the only way that this can actually be accomplished. Oh, my goodness. Can you imagine them trying to, they'd probably cut the spiral. Cut the spiral out because there's no way you could pull that page off the spiral. Again, wet toilet paper. You can't pull it off the spiral out because there's no way you could pull that page off the spiral again wet toilet paper you can't pull it off the spiral yeah and if it is spiraled uh they could go in with a pair of wire snips and cut it along the long axis of the spiral and then just kind of delicately pull it out it's a painstaking process remember how much is riding on this nancy anything anything that is disrupted can completely skew the narrative here.

Like, I mean, even if it were three words, I killed Gabby. Yep. I mean, if you lost those three words, you would no longer have a confession. Not that I think that's what it is. And I'll tell you what, hey, hold the thought, Joe Scott, Dr. Bethany Marshall, I can't believe you've held back this long. You know, the other day I tried to read Lucy's notebook. I mean, her diary, which is in a notebook. First of all, she writes in such tiny letters. Of course, looking for anything about drugs, alcohol, wild behavior. I found nothing like that. She's talking about something about Sunday school.

She was talking about the scout trip. She's talking about skin care. I'm like, oh, dear Lord. Who's trying to hear? Okay, nothing about murder and mayhem. But it was so tiny. I could hardly read it. And she writes, even when she writes a little note, it looks like calligraphy.

She's just, well, she's perfect in every way. That's just all I can say. Practically perfect in every way. But I'm thinking about Brian Laundrie. You know, at his age, my dad had already, let's see, Brian Laundrie, 23. My dad had already, I think, was still fighting in the World War. Mm-hmm. Was about to head back, meet my mom, get married, have three children,

and start trying to go to school at night to get his accounting degree. And here's Brian Laundrie, kicked back. Nothing wrong with that. Musing. His musings, it sounds like a 15-year-old boy. Yeah, and how old is Lucyy now my angel your angel lucy lynch and john david are both 14 so it is developmentally appropriate for her to be writing in a journal and john david my son wouldn't journal if it hit him over the head he'd go what if it bit him in the neck, it was hanging off his neck. He would not write in a journal.

You know, forget it. He's too busy watching Top Gear. It is developmentally appropriate for a young woman to be, not to be sexist, but women tend to do it more than men or girls do, to be writing in a journal

because she's trying to consolidate a sense of self. She's putting the words out there. She's reading them. She's reabs words out there. She's reading them. She's reabsorbing them. And she's learning who she is by documenting her life. And this is not the same as Brian Laundrie. How old was he?

23, going on 24. I mean, Bethany, I mean, you're using all these terms. But in my mind, what is he doing with his rear end on a blue blanket? He needs to be pitching the tent and getting firewood for Pete's sake. He's absorbed with himself. That's what he is. He's very self-absorbed, self-preoccupied. You know, it's a little bit like OJ Simpson writing, if I did it. I cannot believe you just said that. Those are in my handwritten notes. This might as well be oj's symptoms notebook scribbling at the defense table self-absorbed right doodlings of a killer

you got my thought exactly and you know the other thing is she in a sense is grabbing the spotlight gabby petito is because she's doing this blog and she's getting all these followers and people are interested in her. And sometimes I see in session, like when I see couples and there's an abusive dynamic and the victim is describing quite eloquently their experience, the perpetrator will grab a notebook and start writing down their thoughts, furiously scribbling. This is what I think that they want to get it out. They want to defend themselves. They want to be as important or as eloquent as the victim is in describing their experience. So it almost seems not only is he self-absorbed, but he's sort of emulating her, trying to get his point out, trying to be the important one. And you know what? Sadly, in death, that's what's

happened because he's the one we're talking about. He went out with this grand, grand gesture. And that's what happens with really self-absorbed people. You know how you say that you hear the term, oh, he took all the oxygen in the room? In a sense, he's taking our oxygen on the show, right? I've actually never heard that. He's the one we're talking about. What does that mean? Okay, so if I have someone come into my office and describe somebody's toxic or disturbed, that's really kind of torturing them. They'll say, you know, Dr. Beth'm sure when the Moab police officers pulled him over, he sucked all the oxygen out of the situation. It was all

about him. He got to go to the hotel. He got to take the shower. You know, he got the cushy, he got the cushy assignment. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. There would be no way in H-E-double-L, Dale Carson, that my husband, David Lynch, who is a saint, there's no way he would have stayed in the hotel and I sleep in the car. I wouldn't ask him to switch. No way. But there's no way that he would do that. He would sleep on the pavement before he would have me or the twins sleep in the car and him be slung up in a king-size bed with a shower. That wouldn't happen. That's what gentlemen do. They take care of their women. They don't injure them. I'm just, you know, it's bringing it all back, Michael Ruiz,

what happened to Gabby. And I haven't even touched on the Moab police still going down with a ship claiming Gabby was the aggressor here. But, Michael, I want to bring you back to, oh, my goodness, we're running out of time. I want to bring you back to the notebook. So we got the notebook. And what, if anything, do we learn? And do you think Michael will ever actually see what he wrote in the notebook? I hope so.

And we've asked to see it. And, you know, that's kind of on the FBI. But I don't I don't really know why they wouldn't release it at some point down the line. It's something you said at the beginning, Michael Ruiz. I want to follow up the fact that he's writing this confession of sorts as to what he did. But no, no, don't get sucked into his life. Take a listen to our cut 419 News Nation. Those final text messages, that was something new, at least coming from the FBI. You'll remember when all of this started, we heard from Gabby's mom and she said that something was very strange about the final text messages from Gabby to her mom. She called her grandpa Stan.

She would have never done that. It didn't make much sense at all. Well, now the FBI today confirming in this report that the final text messages sent by Gabby Petito's phone were actually sent by Brian Laundrie after he killed Gabby Petito. Get it. He's still lying after her murder, trying to cover up her murder. Let's clarify that with our cut 415. This is Evan Axelbank, our friend at Fox 13. Gabby Petito's body was found in the Grand Teton September 19th. Brian Laundrie's body was found a month later in a swamp near Northport. And with his remains, the FBI now says they found a revolver he apparently used to kill himself

and a notebook where the FBI says he'd taken responsibility for killing Gabby. The FBI released an executive summary-like explainer of the evidence they've gathered since the investigation into her disappearance began September 12th. It says the investigation did not identify any other individuals other than Brian Laundrie directly involved in the tragic death of Gabby Petito. They said they found text messages between their phones sent after they believed she was strangled that appeared to be Brian trying to make it look like Gabby was still alive. He'd returned to his family's Northport home in her van. But without her, the FBI did not say if they know why Laundrie killed her.

Actually, under the law, the state doesn't have to prove motive. We're not responsible for going in the mind of a killer and trying to make sense of why he would do such a thing to a defenseless woman out in dispersed camping. Dispersed camping being camping out where there's not a water or a pump. There's no hookup there. There's no lights. There's not a bathroom or run. Nothing like that. You're off the grid. We take her out there and murder her and bludgeon her. But there's more to his devious mind. Take a listen to our cut 423, our friend Evan Axelbank at Fox 13. Between August 30th and September 1st, they found that he'd used Gabby's credit card or her debit card during his drive back from Wyoming to Florida.

They then found text messages where it appeared that he was posing as Gabby Petito, trying to make it look to law enforcement like she was still alive. So basically they found both of their phones and then realized that he was simply using her phone to make it look like she was still the one sending text messages back and forth. So not only using her phone, but also her credit card to make everybody think that Gabby is still alive. And then in the bitter end, you jump in. Can I jump in on this place with the credit card? Law enforcement is saying he's trying to cover up that he killed her and probably he was

trying to cover it up at the same time he thought he owned her and possessed her therefore her credit card is his credit card sometimes things are more basic than we think and she's gone there's probably an extra couple hundred dollars in the bank account and he just thinks that those dollars belong to him i mean her life belonged to him in his mind. So I think it's symbolic of how he disposed of her and used her life like he used the credit card and used her bank account. Well, there's actually a little more to that because the FBI or law enforcement could have arrested Laundrie immediately after determining that, in fact, he was using her credit card without authorization and he attempted to cover up her murder. And it's surprising to me that they didn't arrest him down there, put him in custody, have hearings in order to solve this fully.

You know what I'm thinking about? This comes back to mind. And just bear with me one more minute, Michael Ruiz. Speaking of him using her credit card, I remember a case I had. It was a rape case, a very brutal and violent rape. And then after the rape, the defendant spit on the victim. Before you get angry like I did, just know that we collected the spit and got a positive DNA match back to the defendant. That said, it was just like adding insult to injury. After he had throttled her dead, he then crosses the country using her cell phone and using her credit card. He had already murdered her. I don't know if he raped her

first, but he did murder her and then used her van, her money, her cell phone all the way back. So that brings that to mind. Okay, this is what we know. We're still waiting for the FBI to release the notebook, the exact confession, if they ever do. Michael Ruiz, I also want to talk about another disturbing aspect of this entire, entire scenario that now the Moab police, while they had had Brian Laundrie in their grasp, they let him slip through their fingers and still to this day insist that Gabby Petito this waif weighs about 105 pounds versus Brian Laundrie approaching 200 pounds she was the aggressor did they miss every classic symptom of battering that she was abused, the denial, the hysterical crying, the desire not to be separated, the taking the blame herself, explaining away her own injuries, ignoring the 911 call

that had just happened where a witness outside, I believe the the Moonflower Co-op Cafe saw Brian Laundrie hitting her in the face on the street in broad daylight. And still, even with that knowledge, called her the aggressor. Okay, you know what? I want you to take a listen to, it's very, very disturbing to me. It's our cut 428. It's Nate Carlisle at Fox 13. Here on what's labeled page two,

the captain takes a moment to ponder, would Gabby be alive today if this case was handled differently? That is an impossible question to answer. For his part, Pratt told the captain he worried taking Petito to jail would embolden laundry. So if he's going to go bail her out, is he not going to have more control over her now?

Pratt's quoted as saying. Moab said it would adopt the recommendations to improve training and add a domestic violence specialist to oversee incidents investigated by its officers. So they're still sticking with. They're going down with the ship. They refuse to admit they screwed up. They had laundry. They did nothing. And they let him go.

And now she's dead. Jump in, Dale. When I used to teach domestic violence at police academies in Florida, One of the things that's mandated, certainly in Florida, and is now mandated everywhere, is to arrest one of the parties. And there's even legislation that prohibits individuals from suing the police if they arrest the wrong person. So back at that time that this happened, they should have arrested either one or both of these individuals.

And that would have resolved the problem at least for the moment. And then you can investigate further to find out because she's now removed from that individual, whether or not she's being in an abusive relationship that might concern her welfare. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Michael Ruiz, tell me about the Moab Police and the investigation by the neighboring county. I believe it was Price County. Yeah, it was Price Police who did the investigation. The Moab Police department is very small and and then the chief takeaways from the investigation into their handling of the traffic stop or the domestic violence stop was that these officers

involved need more training and they should go back on probation and you know it's a small department they're probably not as trained as as a lot of the big city departments we're used to dealing with. So they're saying hindsight is 20-20. We had no idea that Brian was a killer. And that's the point that they're sticking to. Well, I agree with that. I agree with them on that. But in this day and age, I mean, women are beaten all across the world. It doesn't matter if you're in a small town or a big city like New York City.

It doesn't matter if you dropped out of school in the sixth grade or if you've got your PhD. It doesn't matter if you make $200,000 a year or you make $30,000 a year or if you have one child, no children or six children. It doesn't matter. Women are abused, beaten senseless across the board. None of that socioeconomic distinctions, none of them matter. Period. That has been proven statistically. So the fact that Moab police is a small jurisdiction, does that mean the women there aren't getting beaten behind closed doors? No, it does not not and right there on the main street michael ruiz we have a witness calling 9-1-1 that gabby is getting beaten basically on main street in broad daylight what they couldn't check that out and figure out this is gabby so i spoke with

quite a few experts on the legal side and the law enforcement side. And, you know, they found the report a little bit lacking. They thought the findings might not have been as severe as they could be. OK, let's talk about what you just said, Michael Ruiz. OK. OK, let me get to my notes. I never saw any photos that they took of Gabby's injury to her face. They mention it in their body cam, but I didn't see any video.

Did you? They talk about them. Yeah, you're right. They talk about them in the body cam, but there's no documentation of them. So they take pictures of Brian Laundrie and his injury, but not Gabby. Yes, no. Right. Okay.

Did they contact the 911 caller who reported the Brian Laundrie attack on Gabby? Did they call him, Michael Ruiz? So we found out from this report, they circled back with one witness, but that witness was not the 911 caller. So then that would be a no. They did not contact the 911 caller. Not the one who said he saw the gentleman. I think the quote was, I saw the gentleman slapping the lady, is what the 911 caller said.

Did they mention Gabby's injuries in their written report? To the best of my memory, I didn't see anything about her injuries. No, the answer is no, they did not. Did they understand state law requirements for a claim of domestic assault? Michael Ruiz? I would think so because Officer Pratt even said so in his own body cam. He said, you know, the reason this law is on the books that we have to arrest one is because down the line someone's going to get killed. The domestic violence domestic assault law in that jurisdiction it seems like they had skimmed it but didn't really know what they were doing. In fact in the final findings they state the officers misunderstood state law requirements for domestic assault. Did they

ever consider or write in their report that Brian Laundrie could be considered the potential suspect, or was it always Gabby? In the initial police report, it was Gabby. In the review from Price, the captain who wrote that report said that there was evidence that Gabby was a long-term victim of domestic abuse. So in the officer's initial report, at the moment, they could have stopped Brian Laundrie and maybe prevented Gabby's murder. They never considered Brian Laundrie as a potential suspect. Is that correct? From the initial reports, that's how it seems. Did they ever connect either of them with mental health caregivers, such as even a volunteer like me at the Battered Women's Center? It's a toll-free number. I manned the hotline for nine years. Did they ever do that, Michael Ruiz. It doesn't look like they did.

They did bring Brian to a hotel through a charity for domestic victims. They checked him into the hotel through that charity. But in the report from Price, we see that they didn't connect them with professionals. They didn't give him documentation. So the answer would be no, would it not? I guess not. Dr. Bethany Marshall, what are the classic symptoms of a domestic violence victim? And don't get me wrong, I know that there are some men that are battered and abused,

but they are about 1, 1.5% of the entire partner battering universe. So let's just get real. Women are the victims. What are the symptoms that Gabby Petito displayed, Dr. Bethany? Well, everything she displayed, I mean, protecting the abuser, minimizing the harm done to her, self-blame, not telling a cohesive history about what had been done to her. The fact is that she owns her part in the in the things in the conflict. She says

she's punched him in the arm, but she minimizes that she punched him in the arm because she was so frustrated and he was driving erratically. He was taking her van and her cell phone. Exactly. And that you you put it more beautifully that I was trying to collect my thoughts on. I know he had taken the van. I know he had taken the cell phone. Well, that was that would be the final sign. Denial. Denial that she is a domestic violence victim. Her injuries, the fact that she tried to minimize, as you said, Dr. Bethany, the damage to her. I mean, it goes on and on and on. The classic signs that she is a domestic violence victim.

Joe Scott, I heard you jumping in. What were you going to say? Yeah, I think one of the biggest takeaways for me, Nancy, goes back to forensics. And what is Dr. Blue going to release from the coroner's office up there? Because this is why. If she has got ongoing abuse, Nancy, we will potentially, potentially be able to identify that at autopsy. It's just like we do with child abuse victims, Nancy. We look at bruises, we look at injuries, and we can date those. We can get an idea how

long this has been going on. Let me tell you something. A grown man does not just stand forth in the middle of a stream and spontaneously start beating a young woman who weighed, what, less than 100 pounds in in public view. This is not the first time they've been down this road. I submit to you that he has beaten her for a period of time. He feels comfortable with this. So at autopsy, one of the things that we can do is age injuries. Who else was aware of this? Who else knew that this was going on? And again, they're living under the laundry's roof. Is this something that they had had a history of, that the family hadn't said anything about in the past? I think that's a big question.

And I mean, saying would it have stopped Gabby's murder is like reading the tea leaves, but I know this, there would have been a much better chance that she survived if she had gotten battered women's counseling, even over the phone with a volunteer at the shelter. Even that could have saved her life. But the officers, to make themselves feel better, I guess, keep saying, well, you know, we don't think it would have made a difference, really. Well, you'll never know because you screwed it up. Take a listen to R-Cup 427, Nate Cronile, Fox 13. If I had any discretion in this, I would separate you guys from the day

and just give you warnings to stop hitting each other. But I lawfully don't have discretion here. Yet veteran Moab police officer Eric Pratt and the new officer he was training, Daniel Robbins, did let Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie go. The report by a Price, Utah police captain says that, by law, Petito should have been cited or arrested once officers determined she was the aggressor. The captain sustained, or confirmed, multiple complaints where Pratt and Robbins

failed to follow the law and Moab's own policies, including failing to obtain witness statements and properly documenting the roadside investigation. So give me your finals. Go ahead, Dale. There's a 50% reduction in homicides in domestic violence cases if one of the parties is arrested. That's the statistic that led to all this legislation. Bethany. And I would say if one of the classic signs of abuse is leaving the woman alone in a deserted place without resources, then all three men abused her. Joe Scott. I think for me, Nancy, is this idea that there is ongoing abuse with her. And I think that other people had a full

and complete awareness of this in their background. And it's a tragedy. It wasn't addressed earlier. And special guest Michael Ruiz, Fox News Digital. Well, we're just going to be waiting here to see what we can get from the FBI on that notebook and following this case. Not over yet. No, it ain't over yet, Michael Ruiz.

Truer words were never spoken at this point. No charges planned against the Laundrie family. We wait as justice unfolds. Nancy Grace Crime Story signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.