Crime Weekly - S1 Ep47: Gabby Petito: Breaking Down the Body Cam (Part 1)

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop 22 year old Gabrielle Venora Petito grew up in Blue Point, NY and it was during her time at Bayport-Blue Point High School that she encountered two factors that would change her life forever. She caught the travel bug, and began going on adventures and seeing new places, and she met Brian Laundrie, a classmate who would become her boyfriend, then her fiance before becoming the last person to see her alive. In 2019, Gabby and Brian began traveling together, and Gabbi documented their adventures on her social media platforms. The young couple went to California, North Carolina, Texas, and they did this all in a little Nissan Sentra. But Gabby and Brian enjoyed their travels so much, they wanted to do more, and so they converted a 2012 Ford Transit van into a camper, and with their excitement at new beginnings and a simpler lifestyle, the pair threw themselves into the van life community wholeheartedly. But something went wrong in the Summer of 2021, and Gabby Petito never came back home after a cross country trip with her fiance Brian. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

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And she met Brian Laundrie, a classmate who would become her boyfriend, then her fiancé, before becoming the last person to see her alive. In 2019, Gabby and Brian began traveling together, and Gabby documented their adventures on her social media platforms. The young couple went to California, North Carolina, Texas, and they did this all in a little Nissan Sentra. But Gabby and Brian enjoyed their travel so much they wanted to do more, and so they converted a 2012 Ford Transit van into a camper, and with their excitement and new beginnings and a simpler lifestyle, the pair threw themselves into the van life community wholeheartedly. But something went wrong in the summer of 2021,

and Gabby Petito never came back home after a cross-country trip with her fiance, Brian. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we are obviously from the teaser, you know, that we're talking about the Gabby Petito case. Derek and I are well aware that this case is considered the popular case of the moment. And everyone on social media has been talking about it, posting videos about it, even if they're not involved with the true crime community. But we personally don't look at Gabby in that way. We don't look at her as the story of the moment. And that's why we sort of waited to cover this on the podcast, because we wanted to have the best overall picture of what really went down so that hopefully we can get some real insights

into what happened to Gabby. Yeah. I mean, there were some platforms out there that were covering it before she was even found. And we weren't going to do that because we were still hoping that there was a small chance she was out there somewhere, maybe injured, but still alive. But once they found her body, we all assumed that this probably wasn't an accident. It was most likely a homicide. And then we had that affirmation maybe like a week and a half ago from the point where we're recording this, where they came out officially and ruled her death a homicide by strangulation. So, you know, we don't know what's going to happen with this case, where it's going to go, you know, if they're going to find Brian and if so, when it could be tomorrow, it could be years from now.

But as Stephanie said, everyone is talking about this case. She's covered it on her channel. I haven't really discussed it in depth, and I've been waiting for us to do it here on Crime Weekly. And I do feel like we do things differently, and we're going to take a different approach tonight as well. So we do see value in covering it this way because there are a lot of people asking questions about the moments leading up to her disappearance, specifically the stop by police. Could that whole situation have been handled differently and maybe avoided the situation altogether? So being a former police

officer, I was a guy who stopped many vehicles. I was a patrolman for a long time. Then I was a patrol sergeant. So I've had a lot of experience with this. And I do think I can shed some light on why we do the things we do as officers, some of the policies and procedures we're supposed to follow. And we're going to take it even a step further by diving into Utah law and how they handle complaints of domestic violence. So we're really going to dissect it from that angle. And we hope that after it, you guys have a better understanding of why things went down that night, or I should say that day and the traffic stop, and maybe an indication as to

why things went the way they did and why we are here now. And you probably responded to your share of domestic violence calls as well, right? I would say close to a thousand. Calls for domestic disputes are the most popular call in the city where I worked. They're not always substantiated, but you probably get maybe five to 10 of those types of calls per evening, especially in the area where I worked, where all the buildings were, we call them triple deckers. So there's not a lot of single family homes. It's a lot of apartment buildings where there's three different floors, three different apartments.

And so clearly your neighbors can hear everything you say and do in your apartment. So if there's ever some type of argument, usually the upstairs neighbors or downstairs neighbors are calling on you. Yeah. I remember when I lived in a townhouse, I would always hear the neighbors fighting and it was very clear that this man was beating her regularly. You could hear everything and the walls were paper thin. I called the police so many times. I don't really know what happened. I never really saw them outside, but one day, I mean, it stopped. I don't know what happened. But you're right. I can assume there would be a lot more calls. But that's scary because you got. A lot of the times it's not the victim calling the police. It's a bystander. It's someone who is not as attached as the victim. So you are right. Maybe being in that environment was advantageous for those victims because they were able to get

the help they needed even when they didn't ask for it. And that's kind of the case with Gabby and Brian as well. Yeah. I mean, she wasn't necessarily reaching out for help in this situation, even though it does appear that this was a very disturbing relationship that was possessive and violent and controlling and manipulative. And unfortunately, we didn't know about all that until after the fact. And that includes when we say we, I think that even includes some of her close family and friends. So it's unfortunate that we're finding out about all of this now. But I do think whenever we cover cases, in my whole life when I've covered cases, especially

when it's been in television, we're not covering the case to sensationalize a story or flip a buck. We're covering it because there's value in what we can take away from it. It's not victim shaming, anything like that. But just on the little information we have about Gabby and the information we get about a lot of victims, I believe in my heart, and this includes myself, if something happened to me, I would want people to look at my situation and learn from it. So maybe it can prevent it from happening to them or someone they care about. And that's, that's why we're talking about it because there is value and looking at Gabby

because she's very relatable and maybe seeing a little bit of herself in you and knowing that, listen, this isn't an isolated thing. Domestic violence happens all over the country every day. So if you're somebody out there who may be going through a similar situation, maybe tonight you hear something or see something that changes your outlook and helps you get out of a bad situation. That's why we're doing this. Or you have a friend or a family member who's going through something like this and this toxic cycle, and maybe you can say something or do something to help them. Maybe you see something, maybe a sign, maybe something in this conversation that you and I have.

You didn't recognize it until hearing it about someone else. And now the next time you see me go, you know what? That is something that I've heard and seen before. Maybe there's something more there. Maybe I should start asking questions. You know, if it even helps one person, then it was worth it, right? Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

And this is it's a complicated case and we still don't know everything, obviously. But what I want to do here is before we dive into the specific timeline, we want you to be aware of certain events and dates so that you can keep them in your mind as we go through the more detailed timeline. So July 2nd, 2021, that's the day that Brian and Gabby left New York in their van and they set off for what was supposed to be a four-month cross-country trip. On August 12th, the couple were pulled over by police in Moab, Utah, resulting in body cam footage that has been widely shared and viewed on social media. And today we're going to examine some of this footage and Derek, our resident law enforcement expert with a detective perspective, he's going to give us some insight on what was happening during that traffic stop and maybe what should have been happening. August 25th was Gabby's last post on Instagram.

This was also the last day that Gabby spoke to her mother on the phone. From then on, she would communicate through text and Gabby's mother doesn't necessarily believe that any or all of those texts were written by her daughter. A few weeks later, on September 19th, Gabby Petito's remains were found in a remote area of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. And as Derek mentioned earlier, her death was ruled as a homicide. So with all of those dates in mind, let's go back to the beginning and examine who Gabby was, who Brian was, and who they were together. Their relationship began while Gabby was a sophomore in high school and Brian was a junior, and reportedly, according to friends, the couple seemed perfect for each other, but they had their ups and downs. In fact, their

relationship was so on-again, off-again that it was difficult sometimes to know whether Gabby and Brian were together at any given time. Ben Matula, Brian Laundrie's best friend from high school, told People magazine, quote, one minute they'd be all over each other. The next minute he'd be like, we're fighting. They always had some sort of drama. There was always something below the surface where things weren't 100% wonderful, end quote. Alyssa Chen, a friend of Gabby's, said, quote, They had times where they were toxic and times where everything seemed a lot more healthy. They had very low lows and very high highs, but they really seemed to love each other. When things were good, you'd be like, why can't I have a relationship like that? When they were bad, you'd be like, oh, my God, just spare yourself from the drama and everyone else from having to hear about it. End quote. After Brian graduated from high school in 2016, he and Gabby broke up for several months, but they reunited after she finished school and the couple decided to pass on college, wanting instead to hit the road together and live a minimalist lifestyle while seeing all the natural beauty that this world has to offer.

In order to do this, however, they would need some savings. So Gabby left New York and her family, and she moved in with Brian and his parents, Christopher and Roberta Laundrie, on Wabasso Avenue in North Port, Florida. Gabby worked as a pharmacy technician and saved up money, and Brian made some money selling his artwork online. Derek, have you seen Brian's artwork online? I have not seen his artwork. I did not know he was an artist. Is it good? Your face says no. It's disturbing. Do you want to look it up really quick? Yeah, I'll look it up really quick. Look on his Instagram.

Oh, yeah. I'm looking at a picture right now. For anyone who hasn't looked it up, it looks like a human wearing a Letterman jacket. He's got a knife in his hand, blood all over himself, all over the Letterman jacket. He's got a tiger head. Then there's some stuff in the background where it's other animals with like a pig head. I've seen this before in like robbery movies and stuff where they're wearing like animal characters as masks, but they all got guns and knives or appears to be a lot of blood. You're right. It's disturbing. It's very disturbing. So a lot of people have looked at this and a bunch of people think it's creepy, violent, dark art. He seems obsessed with like Fight Club. He's very into pop culture, like current pop culture. But yeah, I mean, do you see the Fight Club painting that he did?

Yeah, I'm looking at all of them right now. I mean, it is very disturbing. And I'm sure as this case goes forward, you're going to have forensic psychologists weigh in on this and what does it mean? But speaking of psychology, and I know we're talking about drawings, but I wanted to go back to what you just covered because I want to draw on your psychology degree because there was some... I was looking up research for the part that I'm going to cover tonight, and I was seeing a lot of things that are coming out. Some of which you just hit on as far as like how controlling he was. I read somewhere. And again, this is all, I don't know how substantiated. We didn't talk about how controlling he was yet.

We haven't gotten there yet. But you started to talk about like how their relationship was very tumultuous. On and off again. Yeah, on and off. And we've all been there. We've all seen it. I'm sure you're going to probably cover the controlling stuff tonight. So we won't go in depth right now, but it is interesting that they decided to kind of move in with his parents. And then they eventually decided to go out on their own. I really wonder as we go forward, if this was because he wanted her to himself, I don't know. But reading some of the stuff that I read today, you know, it does seem like he was very possessive over her. He never wanted her to have friends or anything like that. So I wonder if there's a deeper meaning for Brian as to why he wanted to be on the road stuck in a van with Gabby all to himself. But I'm sure we're going to talk about that all at length. I'm sure you got something cooking, something written up to talk about it. Well, I mean, like I said, this guy, Brian, it looks like he may have had a darker side that nobody really saw, or he sort of was like, I'm an artist.

So, you know, this is art. And it was kind of like a front for his darker side because, you know, art is subjective and, you know, you can go, you know, kind of push the boundaries with art. But I mean, he wrote in an Instagram post that he was reading Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk, which is a horror satire novel. He said, quote, reading is different than any other consumption of media. It takes more effort than staring at a screen half alive. It allows you to use your brain rather than melt it. And there's no author more stimulation to me than Chuck Palahniuk. So Lullaby, published in 2002, tells the story of journalist Carl

Streeter, who's writing an article about crib death when he notices a strange connection between the deaths of babies and those of his own wife and infant. So he's got like sort of an obsession with serial killers. And it's so weird to say that because I feel like some of us who are watching true crime and talking about true crime, you know, we don't have an obsession with serial killers, but we enjoy reading about them and kind of looking into them. So is it something we can really look at and say this this is bad or he's bad and creepy for this? I don't know.

But in combination with the art, a lot of this art is very, very disturbing. So I just want to put that out there. Yeah. And I think you make a good point. There are people that are true crime fans that like to dive into serial killers, not because they want to be them, but because they're interested in how their mind works. Of course. Where people like this maybe are fascinated by serial killers, not because they want to

know how their mind works, but because they envy them. Yeah. And I think Dog the Bonnie Hunter said he thinks Brian's a serial killer. Did you hear that? I didn't. Um, maybe we'll get into dog down the road. You know, um, a lot of things have unfolded with him as well, you know, in the media, as far as, as far as, you know, we've talked about it off camera, as far as what were his intentions, the, I guess, apparently he's no longer down there. He had an injury. So, um, that's a whole, I think that's another reason why this case has

taken on a life of its own, because there's so many things going on where you're like, you hear it, you read it and you go, I got to be reading an article on The Onion. I have to be. There's no way this is legitimate, but it is. And so here we are. So Brian's making some extra money selling his artwork. All right. And they're trying to save up money so that they can hit the road because they still want to live this minimalist lifestyle. But you need money for gas. You know, you need to eat, et cetera, et cetera. So everyone was really envious of Gabby and Brian's free spirited personalities from their peers to their parents, while other kids their own age

were heading off to college and all of the adults in their lives were dragging themselves to work every day, Brian and Gabby were truly living, like experiencing life. Gabby's mother, Nicole Schmidt, said that her daughter wanted to throw herself completely into the van life world, saying, quote, everybody was jealous. Everyone was like, we want to do that too. We all think we have to just get a job and go to school, end quote. Gabby's father, Joe Petito, said his daughter and Brian seemed to have a solid relationship, saying, quote, I hate to say it, but they were happy. There are no red flags that stick out, end quote. So apparently, Brian's parents loved Gabby, and they treated her as part of the family. Brian's sister, Cassie, said that Gabby was a sweetheart. She was so kind and thoughtful with Cassie's children. So when Brian decided to

propose to his girlfriend of four years in July of 2020, everyone was happy for the couple who seemed genuinely in love. In an Instagram post, Brian called Gabby the love of his life, saying, My biggest fear is that one day I'll wake up and it will all have been a dream because that is what every second has felt like since the moment we found each other. Till death do us part or until I wake up. I'm so happy the answer was yes. End quote. Till death do us part or until I wake up. I guess the death part came first, huh? Yeah. Yeah. It's unfortunate.'s unfortunate that uh you see those quotes and you realize you know if only they knew yes but i i do want to kind of go back to something you

said earlier which is um it seemed like you know their their friends and family didn't even realize sometimes what was happening that there was so much under the surface or behind closed doors. What I do want to mention, though, is something you said as well. And what we were talking about last night on the phone, did Brian want Gabby all to himself? A lot of people look at Brian and Gabby and say, this is a mismatched couple, right? You have Gabby. She's young, youthful, vibrant, full of life, very outgoing um she just wants to be friends with everybody she's adorable and then you have brian and it's funny because when this first came out i looked at the picture without even knowing how old they were and i'm like yo why is this little girl

dating this like 45 year old man brian's not 45 years old he's just a year older than her but he looks so much older and his personality is so much more introverted and sort of like dark and sort of like, oh, you know, why? Why are we ruining the planet? Everybody sucks. I hate people. I hate humanity. They suck. And I think that he really did feel that he'd overkicked his coverage a little bit with Gabby. So he was going to hold on at all costs and he wasn't going to let her go. Kind of one of those if I can't have you, no one else can. Right. Makes you wonder if we find out that Brian is responsible for her death, which many people think he is, including myself. I was like, why are we posing this as a question? I thought we all come to the same conclusion.

You know, listen, I try to stay a cop. You guys want good cops out there. Good cops don't go off what everyone's reporting. We wait until we have the facts, but I do believe he killed Gabby. But it makes you wonder what happened that day. The what you're saying, you know, the way you're laying it out. Did she finally decide that she had enough? Did she finally decide that she was going to go home? Maybe one day we'll find out. I highly doubt it. Yeah, but sure. I mean, I would love to know what happened that day and what led to that. You know, I doubt it, too. And we did talk about this off camera, how I think it's kind of a Scott Peterson thing. Even if Brian gets caught and he's brought in, he'll deny it till the day he dies. He'll never tell you what happened that day. He'll never tell you why,

because it's an ego thing at that point. I agree. Let's take a quick break and we'll come right back. Discover the life-changing benefits of Meow Greens for your cat. Ever see your cat slowing down or having health issues and wonder, what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add Meow Greens to your cat's food for 90 days, and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings, I'm naturopathic doctor Dennis Black, inventor of Meow Greens, and I invite you to take the Meow Greens 90-Day Challenge.

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You discover the shipping. You don't have to change your cat's food to improve your cat's health. Just add a packet of Meow Greens. Yeah, you know, before the break we were talking about, we just finished Scott Peterson. I feel like that's like, that was our life for two months. And the parallels you see with these guys is it's, it's crazy because I do think, I think the more time that passes, you know, could he be alive?

Yes. Maybe he's dead. I do think it's really 50 50, but I I 100% agree with you that if by chance he is caught one day, he's going to say that he ran because he knew we all thought he did it. And by that time, he's going to have years or however long it takes to catch him to kind of conjure up this whole narrative of what happened and he probably knows how Gabby was found and all these things because he was there allegedly, then he's going to be able to paint a picture that's in line with the physical evidence as he remembers it. So I agree with you. He'll go to trial. If he's man enough to do that, he will most likely be found guilty and then he'll appeal it. And even if he's found guilty or it's substantiated, if his case is upheld, he will still die saying, I was an innocent man convicted of a crime I didn't commit. That's just his MO. It's the same reason why even though Chris Watts confessed to doing it now, isn't he kind of saying

now he didn't do it? He kept trying to change his story after he confessed. He was like, oh, well, I only did it because she killed the kids. So that's why I did it. But I mean, we all know the truth. And most people I feel like in prison, right? They're like, I'm innocent. I shouldn't be here. Listen, if you went to prison, and I'm not saying this to take light of it, because there are people who are innocent in jail right now. There's no doubt about it. But if you go to a prison, every person there is innocent. I don't know if you knew that or not. Yeah. Every single person. You'll never see more innocent people in one place than you will in prison. At prison. And, you know, there are some guys who are like, listen, I'm a cold-blooded dude.

This is what I do. You know what I mean? But most of the time, they're all there for reasons that are beyond their control. So if Brian goes to prison, he'll fit right in. Although I cannot see that dude in a prison. No, it will be the minimalistic lifestyle that he's been seeking for so long. It's actually perfect for him. He won't last in there, man.

He won't last. Mommy and daddy can't protect you in there. Oh, you did it, didn't you? I went there. You went there. I went there. So we got Gabby and Brian, high school sweethearts, on again, off again, right? They leave high school.

They move to Florida. We talked about this yesterday a little bit too. And I said, I really don't understand why they're both from New York. Why did Gabby move out to Florida to be with Brian's parents instead of Brian staying in New York to be with Gabby? I really think he wanted to pull her out to Florida and isolate her away from her friends, away from her family, as most abusers do, because then there's less people there to go to bat for you, to have your back, to pull you out of a bad situation. He wanted her all to himself. But according to Gabby's mother, Nicole, Brian and Gabby had recently called off their engagement, feeling that they were still very young. They didn't need to move that fast. However, new reports

place a darker filter over the engagement, which seemed to be following the same pattern as their high school relationship on again and off again. So there's this woman, her name's Sunny Mason. She believes that Brian and Gabby came into an ice cream shop that she worked at on either August 25th or 26th. This ice cream shop is about 30 miles away from the area where Gabby's remains would later be found. Sonny says that she bonded with Gabby because Gabby had a flower tattoo on her left arm, and Sonny and Gabby were talking, and Gabby claimed that she and Brian were heading to Yellowstone National Park next. But Sonny said that Brian's behavior was odd because Gabby had referred to him as her partner. So Gabby was like, yeah, me and my partner are going to Yellowstone.

And Brian didn't like that she called him that. Sonny said, quote, it felt to me that he almost prompted her to tell me that she was engaged. We get a lot of engaged couples and it doesn't usually come up that way. It just felt kind of odd, like it was a reminder to her to be like, oh, look, we're engaged, end quote. Sonny felt that Brian's reaction meant he was possibly feeling slighted that Gabby had not talked about their engagement and maybe she wasn't really excited about it. Now, we'll talk more about the way strangers perceived Brian and Gabby or how they perceived their relationship as we go through the timeline. But it does make me wonder if maybe it was Gabby who'd called off

the engagement before they left for the trip. And that may have been like eating at Brian, you know, bothering him. He's overthinking it like, yeah, we are young and we got lots of time, but is she seeing someone else? Does she not love me anymore? You know, somebody like this will whip themselves up into like a frenzied paranoia because there are some reports that Brian was possessive and the jealous type. A friend of Gabby's named Rose Davis claimed that Brian had jealousy and control issues. She described him as very manipulative, and she remembered an incident where Brian had stolen Gabby's driver's license, her ID, so that she couldn't join Rose out at the bars. Rose said, 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 he 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, end quote. Rose believes she was one of Gabby's only friends in Florida, but she believed that Brian was jealous of their friendship. Apparently, the two women used to share their iPhone locations with each other to make sure that the other was always safe, but Brian made Gabby stop sharing hers with Rose. Rose said, quote, Brian has a jealousy issue. I'm her only friend in Florida, and to my knowledge, that's not because she can't

make friends. He just didn't want her to have friends. He was always worried she was going to leave him. It was a constant thing to try to get us to stop hanging out. End quote. Rose also said something like, at first, her and Brian were friends and she thought he was cool. And he was kind of this nice guy. But she said it was weird because they'd go together to like the beach. And Brian would like set up the hammock for Rose and Gabby to sit on. But then Brian would like wander off and sit on a different part of the beach and he would

never like hang out with them. Yeah. Yeah. This is behavior that I've I've seen in person before. And it's like whiny little baby behavior. It's baby bitch boy behavior is what I like to call it. I mean, we've all we've all seen it. But, you know, and again, this is probably one of those spots where it's a learning opportunity for all of us because, you know, we've seen gradients of this where

there might be some fights between a couple, which everyone fights, you know, but some of these things that, that Rose is laying out, and this is by no means like shaming Rose at all, but these are things that as a friend, especially if you're one of their few friends, if you're seeing behavior like this, where it's really unhealthy to the point where, you know, the boyfriend has a problem with sharing of locations, those are red flags. Those are red flags. And if Rose, I really wonder if Rose had conversations with Gabby about it and maybe talked about some of the things that she was seeing. And did she give her any advice? Like, hey, Gabby, you know, I love you of the things that she was seeing. And did she give her

any advice? Like, hey, Gabby, I love you, but this isn't good for you. You need to get out of this. You need to move on. Maybe that's part of the reason Brian didn't want her around because maybe she was voicing these concerns. But at minimum, and I know it's easier said than done. And I don't know if Rose had a close relationship with Gabby's parents. I'm assuming she didn't because they were in Florida. Yeah. Well, she was in Florida and they were in New York. So I bet you they haven't even met, right? Exactly. So they probably had no clue. But I think if you really wanted to find Gabby's parents' information, you probably could, especially in today's world with the internet.

So if it's something that stood out to you so much where you felt like it was really toxic and going down a really bad path, I would rather my friend be mad at me for making her parents aware of what's going on than to not say nothing and have something happen. So it is a slippery slope and it is easier said than done. It's tough. It's tough. And I don't know the right answer. I've been there with people who are very close to me, friends, family members.

You see this pattern that they don't see because they're too close. And you try to bring it up to them. But at some point, they're like, yeah, you're right. I'm going to break up with them. And then two days later, she calls you and she's all sheepish. And she's like, you know, we talked it out and everything's fine now. And how many times can you continue to be the one who's like talking shit about their boyfriend or talking shit about their husband before your friend or cousin or sister or whatever is like, well, you're just so negative about my

relationship. And then you can't help them at all because now they've isolated themselves from you. And Brian's over here being like, Gabby, see, Rose is trying to break us up. Rose is trying to break us up. You need to cut her out of your life. Now Rose can't help at all because Gabby believes Brian and, you know, completely cuts off contact. And now Gabby has no friends in Florida. So it's a very slippery slope. It's not an easy situation to handle. And also, I think most people are like, oh, this is a bad relationship. This is toxic. He seems really controlling, but no one's thinking like he's probably going to kill her. Right. That's the last thing from your mind. Like maybe you're like, this is a bad relationship. I want to get my loved one out of this relationship, but I don't think she's going to be murdered anytime soon. Kind of thing.

No, I definitely don't think that. I don't but i you know and maybe it's because i have some training in it but usually if you have someone acting like brian it's only going to get worse from there it's usually not going to get better it's there's usually an escalation where it starts off as very minimal maybe just questioning who you're with or who you're out with. And then it goes to, you know, I don't want you going there to keeping you from going there and maybe gets to a point where when you decide to go against their wishes, they assault you. I mean, there's an escalation. It usually doesn't start with them beating you up in the beginning. So I really want to hear what you guys have to say too, because it is a slippery slope. Stephanie nailed it. The balance, right? Risk losing that friendship

where you might be her only connection to the outside world, her only lifeline, right? Or do what you think is right. And maybe because you see Gabby kind of being blinded by the situation, reach out to someone who may be able to get through to her because I'm only, it's easy to do it in hindsight, right? But from what I've read, Gabby's family was not aware of this stuff. They didn't know that this was what the relationship consisted of. And I'm sure just from the few interviews I've seen with specifically Gabby's father. He seems like the type of guy, if I'm reading them right, that if he had gotten wind of this, he would have been on a flight down to Florida. Well, he lived in Florida. He lived in Vero Beach, remember? That's right. Yeah, Gabby's mother and father. So he was in New York, but they got divorced.

Gabby's mother and father got divorced. They both got remarried joe patito lived in barrow beach which isn't like you know like right next to where gabby lived but close enough back in new york is he back in new york why do i keep saying thinking he's in new york now i don't know he may be like just going back forth because they had the memorial they just had the funeral you know they just they just uh had her cream they went out to wyoming to do like where nobody was found they brought her ashes and stuff very very freaking sad um no they Wyoming to do like where the body was found. They brought her ashes and stuff. Very, very freaking sad. No, they went to a place where she last took a photo, all these. But so even more, thank you for correcting me on that. He was in Florida at that time. He would have knocked Brian's ass out. If he knew what Brian was doing, he would have been there

knocking that dude out. I'm saying, right? Which is why Gabby didn't tell him, right? I think that is why. Because you can look at him. He kind of reminds me a lot of myself as like a father. Like he seems like a tough guy. You know what I mean? Like he don't pull no punches, literally and figuratively, right? And I do agree with you that if he heard this dude was treating his daughter like that,

I think he would have went and handled it even if Gabby didn't like it. And maybe that would have been what she needed. Maybe that would have stopped the situation right there. Or to what you said, maybe it has the adverse effect. Maybe it pushes her closer to Brian and she alienates her entire family. I don't know. So I definitely want to hear from you guys because I don't think there is a right answer. It's a it's a risk either way. Right. I'm going to be I'm going to be honest and like tell you all something. I was in an abusive relationship and first for way longer than I should have been. And I consider myself to be a pretty strong person who would never put up with any shenanigans. But I did for way too long and I lied to my family

because they'd see things and they'd be like you know that seems kind of and I'd be like no no no no you don't understand you don't understand I lied to my family and then I stopped going around my family because I didn't want them to see things that would then cause them to question me because I loved him and I didn't want them to not like him because I figured you know he's just upset he had a long day blah blah blah this isn't. This isn't going to happen. This isn't normal. And I don't want my family to hate this guy because this is the guy I'm going to be with forever. I don't want them to hate my husband, the father of my children. He was a dick. And I realized that after far too long, after being in the hospital and getting stitches on my head, I realized that eventually it did take

that. I could have died that night, but nobody could help me. I wouldn't let anybody help me because it was the sort of Stockholm syndrome. So you don't let people in. You don't let people close to you. And the second people try to help you, you just tell them everything's fine. There's nothing to, if you're in an abusive relationship and you're allowing this to happen and you don't you don't want help, you really need you need to seek help out. But it's so much easier said than done because you're so screwed up in your head. I wasn't completely aware of your situation beforehand. You had kind of said some things, but there may be somebody listening right now who didn't know that about you. And this kind of sounds like a stupid question, but is it fair to say that this person, prior to it getting to the point where you were in the hospital getting stitches, they started off as a good guy? Is that fair to say? Yeah. I mean, for the most part.

You might have had their quirks, but they were very minimal compared to where it went. And I've never personally been a victim of domestic violence, so I can't speak to this, but you can. Did you see that escalation where it started off where it just seemed like maybe he had a bad day, but then those bad days became more consistent? Yep. So listen to what Stephanie's saying here, because we're not just talking about this case from a perspective where we have no understanding. Stephanie's been through, because we're not just talking about this case from a perspective where we have no understanding. Stephanie's been through it. And obviously, she's done very well and came out of it and has an amazing family now. But it could have went the opposite way.

I might not have, though. And there's this big misconception that domestic violence victims are stupid or they're not strong or they're, you know, there's a million things that people say about domestic. I don't think that I don't think that I'm stupid. I don't think that I'm weak. In those moments, I was I don't know what I was. It's like a form of mental insanity at some point. I don't know why why I did it. I never I didn't have respect for myself. And I don't know. I don't know what it was. There's a million different reasons why it happens and why the person, the woman or the man, because, you know, men can be domestic violence victims as well. There's a dozen reasons why, you know, these victims continue to stay. And it really comes

down to matters of the heart. Like you think that you love them and you think that they love you. So every time it happens, they're always sorry, too. Oh, they're always so sorry. And, you know, then then then they're in the best behavior for like five, six, seven days. And you're like, oh, my God, this is exactly what I've been waiting for. You know, this is the person I want to see all the time. And then it switches back. But you just so badly want to get through those bad spots so you can get back to the good spots and the good parts. And it's just it's tragic. It's horrible. So, yeah, I don't think that Rose could have could have done much, because as we'll find out in the next section, you know, Gabby did seem to depend on Rose quite a bit for an escape, for a sounding board, for a place to go when she wanted to get away from Brian. And if she didn't have Rose, then where would she have gone?

Who would she have? No, I think I think it's a really strong argument as to why you wouldn't say something. And I hope people listening to not only this story, but to your story, because I think there's value in that and they can learn from you. I know a lot of people out there look up to you and they see how great you're doing now. And they probably didn't know that you were in a situation before where it was very similar to Gabby's in some ways. I'm sure they did. And it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing to admit it.

It is. It's like I know it shouldn't be, but it's embarrassing. I'm ashamed. He should be ashamed. Not you. He's the coward. He's not. He's not ashamed.

Trust me. Well, if he's listening to this, you're an idiot. And if you have a problem with that, come see me. On that note, let's take a quick break. All right. Okay, we're back. And I want to talk a little bit more about Gabby's friend, Rose. Rose also said that Brian and Gabby never fought in front of her.

But she always knew when they did fight. Because Gabby would end up spending several nights at Rose's house after a big blowout. And Rose said, quote, I do believe that their relationship as they kept going on was getting more problematic. It just seemed like there was more and more arguments. Everything she did, I feel like he thought it was wrong, end quote. This is very important because you might say, oh, everything Gabby did, Brian thought it was wrong. Maybe she was more in love with him than he was with her. No, this is Brian trying to make Gabby feel less than because he wants her to feel like

shit so that she feels like she's lucky to be with him. Like, I'm such a mess. I have all these problems. Thank God, Brian, the white knight, the steady man continues to put up with me because I just suck and I can't do anything right. And so thank God I'm with him. That's what's happening here. This isn't her actually doing anything wrong. This is Brian trying to make her feel like she's a piece of shit. So she feels like a piece of shit and she doesn't try to go and find anything better because she won't think she deserves it. It's so interesting to hear you say that because I can say that there's been so many times where we've had a woman, most of the time, actually, in my experience, it's always been a woman come in and she's got black eyes, the hair is ripped out of her scalp, and she's sitting

there saying to me, it's really me. I don't do enough around the house. I don't, you know, he complains because the house isn't always clean and he's right. I could clean more. And he does so much for us. He works. He's nice to us. He, you know, he'll cook for us. And I'm like, listen, that's what a husband and a father supposed to do. What are you talking about? about that's like that's not like something you should be like feel fortunate about yeah he doesn't deserve an award or a freaking parade for cooking and cleaning for his family right but it's so interesting to hear this intelligent woman say this because it's like he's brainwashed you you literally believe that bullshit at this point

where there's no doubt in my mind you didn't believe that initially but he slowly chipped away at you at your psyche to now when like he gives you a compliment you feel special because it's so rare it's i mean and i saw your face when i said it but it's like that's what they do that's what they do so um because it's easier to believe it's easier to believe that there's something wrong with you than to believe that you have been with this person for years, knowing what they're doing to you and what kind of person they are. And you've put up with it. It's easier for you to believe that it's you because otherwise you'll feel like an idiot. You'll feel like what the hell's wrong with me that I would put up with this kind of behavior.

So it's easier to say it's me. I trigger him. I'm too loud. My my friends come over too much. I'm on the phone too much. I work too much. Stuff like that. So, yeah, it My friends come over too much. I'm on the phone too much. I work too much. Stuff like that. So yeah, it's terrible. It's terrible. All right. So Brian and Gabby left New York on July 2nd. And by July 4th, the couple were at the Monument Rocks in Kansas.

Both Gabby and Brian posted on their Instagram accounts. Gabby posted a picture of herself next to some rock formations. and the caption said, quote, there's no place like the tiny home we built. Brian also posted a picture of himself sitting on top of their van with the caption, quote, downsizing our life to fit into this itty bitty van was the best decision we've ever made. With the limited space, we wanted to take advantage of every inch while also keeping everything minimalist. Definitely felt inspired by other van lifers on YouTube, but we came up with a completely original layout, barely spent anything on the conversion, and couldn't be

happier with the outcome. Van tour coming soon, sacrificing space to wake up in nature every day has been no sacrifice at all." What a pret What a pretentious do she is, man. So I get the impression that Brian says this and, you know, in the Instagram caption, like we definitely were inspired by other van life, you know, YouTube channels and stuff. Because by this time, van life has been such a big thing. It's been so pervasive online. It's very, you know, like aesthetic. It's super, you know, everybody wants to freaking get in their van and go and sleep next to the Grand Canyon. All right. Like in theory, it sounds

great. So he wanted to let everyone know, like, no, we're not copying other van lifers. We're not just doing this because it's like, you know, in and we're going to get new Instagram followers and, you know, hopefully make a channel and a lifestyle out of this. We're doing it. We're doing it our own way. So we were inspired by them, but we're not like copying them. We did everything originally. He can't stand for anybody to think that he is the basic person that he is because he's basic as hell. Right. So he can't stand to think or have anybody think that he's just like copying other people or following a trend because he's the kind of guy who you'll be like, oh, my God, I I love this song. He'll be like, is that song played on the radio? Because I don't listen to the radio. I only listen to indie music that nobody has ever heard of. That's who Brian

is, man. I freaking hate him so much. So he already knew that this van life thing had been saturated by tons of people posting the content. He wants everyone to know he's doing it differently. He's doing it better. On July 8th, Gabby and Brian were in Colorado Springs. On July 10th, the couple was visiting the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado. On July 16th, Gabby and Brian were in Zion National Park in Utah. And Brian Laundrie posted on Instagram, quote, Zion is proof that mankind can ruin anything, even in an effort to preserve it. Beautiful park, just with the unfortunate infestation of human beings, end quote. What do you think about that statement? The unfortunate infestation of human beings? Yeah, it's it's kind of sounds like basically we're saying that he looked at other human beings as a virus, like like rats. Yeah, like they're less than and that you know i don't know how that works when you are a

human yourself because he's better than all humans he's better than everyone else yeah that's uh he's a narcissist it's a weird way of that looking at yourself as a virus you know i think uh he doesn't look at himself as a virus you You think he's he's he's evolved. He's evolved past. You know, he's he's not adding horrible things to the environment. And he's living a minimalistic lifestyle by driving a gas fueled van around the country. He is making everything better. He's making the world better. In reality, he's just like everybody else.

But he likes to talk down about the human race. He's done this in other posts and there's a rant that he posts a little bit later, which we're going to get into. Yeah. He's an odd fellow. There's no doubt about it. And there's nothing wrong. I don't think you're saying this either. People who want to do better for the earth and live more off the land. And I know people myself that like to kind of live a very minimal lifestyle, but to, you know, demean others or think anyone who doesn't see things the way you do is less than or an infestation. Exactly. Is to your point of how contorted his his mind is and the way he perceives things. If his artwork weren't enough of an indication, his words definitely are.

Yeah. It's like, do you, you know, do whatever you want. Nobody cares. But why are you judging everybody else who doesn't, you know, want to do the same thing? And yeah, he's just he can't stand to be thought of as normal or like everyone else. He has to he has to be different and he has to be better. And it's just obnoxious when in reality, he is one of the most basic, simple, see-through people I've ever, you know, encountered in my life, even though I never encountered him. Thank God. So anyways, next, the couple, they went to Bryce National Park.

And by July 26th, Brian and Gabby were in the Mystic Hot Springs in Monroe, Utah. So by this point of their travels, Brian and Gabby had been in this teeny tiny little van together for about three weeks. And it seems that in certain areas, they'd run into some bad weather like windstorms and rain. And this probably kept them inside their van or the small tent that they'd sometimes set up outside their van for a little bit longer than they wanted to be. And as we know, or as we now know, this couple who would sometimes get into arguments that were so bad, Gabby would have to stay with a friend for days at a time to avoid going back home to Brian, you know, but they're living in a van now. So there's no place to go. There's no place to escape to. And they were probably getting on each other's nerves. On July 29th, they were in Canyonlands National Park where Brian was getting

strange looks because he apparently he liked to like hike everywhere barefoot. And Gabby wrote on Instagram that, you know, everywhere they go, Brian just will like walk around this rough terrain in barefoot and people would just stare at him and be like, oh, is that guy walking in barefoot? And Gabby wrote on Instagram that Brian inspired her every day to live a more natural lifestyle. She was trying to build up the soles of her feet so possibly one day she too could hike barefoot. So after this, neither Gabby nor Brian posted on social media for quite a while. But during their, you know, apparent social media blackout, they ran into a man named Jay Foster on August 10th. Jay was also traveling around in his converted van and he met the couple in Moab, Utah.

He stopped to talk to Brian and Gabby for about 40 minutes and they discussed different modifications that they had made to their vans as Brian and Gabby held hands. So we're going to talk about what Jay Foster said about Gabby and Brian after we come back from this quick break. So according to Jay Foster, Gabby and Brian seemed very happy and ecstatic about their rebuild. He said, quote, that's what I find so weird about the whole situation. They were both really cool. There didn't seem to be anything wrong whatsoever, end quote. And that's because in public, especially around strangers,

Brian's going to act like the perfect gentleman. We see it in the dashboard camera, right? When he's talking to the Moab police, he's so respectful. He keeps his tone very measured, very quiet and calm as to not offend or alarm anybody. He's kind of like growing it up with the cops. He's like, yeah, man, you know, women. And Brian will do that. Brian will do that when he's around other people. Abusers will do that when they're around other people because, of course, they don't want to set off any red flags. Now, according to Jay Foster, Brian had done most of the mechanical modifications to the van and Gabby had worked on the interior. She was especially proud of the sink she had installed. Foster remembered that Gabby had worked on the interior. She was especially proud of the sink she had

installed. Foster remembered that Gabby had mentioned that their next stop was Yellowstone National Park, and then he left to go on a hike, and when he returned to the parking lot, Brian, Gabby, and their van were gone. But then, on August 12th, law enforcement in Moab, Utah were called to a reported domestic violence incident near the Moonflower Community Co-op. According to a witness statement from a man who saw them, he had just arrived at the Co-op around 4.30 in the afternoon, and while he was standing on the south side of the street, he observed a man and a woman in the middle of what appeared to be some sort of dispute. The statement says, quote, they were talking aggressively at each other and something seemed off.

At one point, they were sort of fighting over a phone. I think the male took the female's phone. It appeared that he did not want her in the white van. He got into the driver's seat and she followed him. At one point, she was punching him in the arm and or face and trying to get into the van. She eventually climbed in over him and over to the passenger seat. I heard her say, why do you have to be so mean? I wasn't sure how serious this was. It was hard to tell if they were

sort of play fighting, but from my point of view, something definitely didn't seem right. It was as if the guy was trying to leave her and maybe take her phone, end quote. Now, this does not seem to be the same person who called 911, however, and whoever had called 911, they must have seen like a little bit more of Gabby and Brian's interaction before this person pulled up because this caller told the dispatcher that he was driving by the co-op when he saw Brian slapping Gabby. So he stopped his car and then he saw Gabby and Brian running up and down the sidewalk before Brian hit Gabby again and then got into the van. This call seemed to contradict a report written by the Moab police in which the responding officer had noted that no one had reported the male struck the female.

When the Moab police caught up to Brian and Gabby, the van was driving at high speeds, 45 miles per hour in a 15 mile per hour zone. And when law enforcement went to pull over the van, it swerved and struck a curb before coming to a stop. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot in there and we're going to dive into it in two seconds. And my initial thought just from hearing this in the kind of the order, to me, it almost sounds like the person who said that he struck her, to me, saw what happened before this person did, right? I know we're going to get into it where gabby's

telling the police i hit him first but it sounds to me like the second the first person you discussed saw gabby get into the van the the other person saw them before they got in the van yeah so it seems like one guy pulled up got out of his car and he was going to walk across the street to the co-op. But he stopped because he was watching what was happening on the other side of the street, which was Brian and Gabby. And then this other person, the one who called 911, because this initial person who was standing across the street, he said he found a police officer physically and told him what happened and then gave him his information to contact him. This other person who called 911 appeared to be driving by the co-op, saw it happen, saw Brian hit Gabby, and this caused him to stop his car so he could see more. And it looks like this person in the car driving got there before the eyewitness on foot.

Yeah, I agree. That's kind of the way I interpret it because it was a little mixed, and we're going to get into some of those details. But it does seem like, which makes sense to me, that the reason it kind of escalated where Gabby was striking him was because he had just struck her. Of course, yeah. Even though that's not what she told police. Yeah, but I mean, clearly, Brian got into the van, right, with the keys and possibly her phone. So she thinks he's going to leave her. He's already allegedly been abusive with her on the street. So she thinks he's going to leave her. He's already allegedly been abusive with her on the street. So she's hitting his arm and or face. And I'm not saying it's OK to hit

somebody, but she's doing this because she's terrified he's going to to drive away and leave her there. Yes, absolutely. And by the way, he probably just struck her at that point. He's thinking, I got to get out of here because somebody probably seen that we're in we're in a public area. And, you know, the cowardly thing to is you, you know, hit and run. So he probably got the last punch in there and got in the car and she had her shots when she got in. But there's a lot that's been made about this, this, uh, this traffic stop and what it represents, right. And what could have been if the police officers conducted themselves differently or decided to go a different route, maybe arrest Brian. And I've been seeing a lot of people dissecting this traffic stop, their body language experts, there's domestic violence experts. I even saw one from a former police chief of Moab. So there's a lot of people weighing in and by no means am I the authority on all law enforcement. But as I said at the beginning of this episode, before I became

a detective and a sergeant, I was a patrolman and I stopped a lot of vehicles, many of which were calls that came in for complaints of domestic disputes in the vehicle. So I'm very familiar with this. So I've been on the side of being the patrolman and being the supervisor, kind of overseeing the call as to whether or not an arrest should be made. And I thought it would be a little unique instead of me telling you just my opinion, going over it with you, Stephanie. We talked about this. This isn't like we, you know like you don't have a heads up,

but also kind of explaining to our viewers and our listeners what goes into a domestic violence call and how offices are trained to handle them, what they should be looking for, questions they should be asking, and fill you guys in on what they're trying to establish. So we'll go over all of that. We'll do a quick example of what you guys think would be the answer in this mock scenario. And then we're going to apply the same methods, the same ideology behind our training to this traffic stop. And instead of me just telling you what I think, which I will, you can also come to your own conclusions based on everything we just talked about. And I was a police officer in Rhode Island. So to make it even more of the officers said, quote, at no point in my investigation did Gabrielle stop crying, breathing heavily or compose a sentence without needing to

wipe away her tears, wipe her nose or rub her knees with her hands. In the body cam footage, one officer is heard saying to the other, quote, 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. So at this point, from what, unless the guy's screaming that he needs to go to jail and did something to this girl, it sounds to me like she was the primary aggressor, end quote. So this police officer literally says, like, I think Gabby's the primary aggressor, unless Brian starts screaming that I did something and I need to go to jail because I did something to Gabby.

Yeah. Yeah. And that was after watching a lot of the footage. I was leaning towards that as well as far as them looking at her as if anyone was getting locked up that day, it was going to be her. So I'm glad you brought up the quote, though. I actually have the quote listed here as well because primary aggressor, some of you may know what that means. Some of you may not, but that is the key to all this. Some states, they call it the dominant

aggressor. Some states, they call it the primary aggressor. Some actually have a primary aggressor, which is the person who strikes first, and then also a dominant aggressor, who is the person who is more, the strikes are more significant. So I'm going to go off how I was trained in Rhode Island. And again, try to keep this in mind because establishing who the primary aggressor is, is the key to any domestic dispute. Okay. So here's, and again, I don't read as succinctly as Stephanie. She writes these beautiful scripts. I'm kind of, I do my notes. So I'm going to be looking down a lot if you're watching on YouTube, but I apologize ahead of time. So when an officer responds to a domestic dispute, they have to establish who the primary aggressor is. And it's important to note that the primary

aggressor is not always the person who strikes first. There's a lot of other factors that go into determining who the primary aggressor is. You cannot strike first and still be the primary aggressor based on a totality of circumstances, which I'm going to kind of give you a rough idea of what you should be looking for. So what I actually pulled from was a card. I actually have the card here. We'll throw it up in the YouTube video and it's from 2004. So it's a little aged, but it still applies because even when I left in 2017, we were still using a similar format. So this is from the Los Angeles Police Department, and it's actually called the Dominant Aggressor

Pocket Guide. So this is something that police officers in LA are carrying around for this exact reason. When they go to a domestic dispute, what they should be looking for as far as was there a crime here committed as far as domestic violence is concerned. So I'll just read what we have here. An officer shall make reasonable efforts to determine the dominant aggressor at any domestic violence incident. The dominant aggressor is the most significant, not necessarily the first aggressor. So again, not to confuse you guys, in LA, they use dominant aggressor. It's the same thing as primary aggressor, which I will use only because that's what

I'm used to. But at the top of this card, if you're watching on YouTube, it does say dominant slash primary aggressor. So what will the officer consider? The officer shall consider intent of the law to protect DV victims, right? That's the whole purpose for domestic violence laws is to make sure that we err on the side of caution so that these victims who may be in fear to report that they're being abused, they don't have to do that. You're able to see between the lines when you're

there to protect them without them having to ask for it in front of their abuser. And I'll go through some of them more quickly. Threats creating fear of domestic violence, history of domestic violence between the two, if either acted in self-defense, presence of fear, credibility, offensive versus defensive injuries, seriousness of the injuries, corroborating evidence, height and weight of the parties. Listen, that's important. If you have a guy who's 6'1", 200 pounds and a female who's 5'5", 120, if she hits the guy, it's probably going to hurt a lot less than if he hits her. I mean, that's just common sense. Use of alcohol and or drugs, the amount of detail in their statements, are they kind of being vague?

The level of violence, criminal history, and then obviously, most importantly, any existing court orders. You know, has this individual had restraining orders in the past? Is there a current no contact order between the two? All very important stuff. These are all things that you're looking for to establish who is the primary aggressor between the two. So now once you have established some of those things, you may not have all of those, but you may have some, and that's enough. So now you get down to probable cause and what type of charge you're looking at. Well, you have a few different ones. You have a felony, which would obviously be between a spouse, a former spouse, a cohabiting partner, someone with a child,

two people with a child in common. If there's visible, verifiable injuries, it could be a felony domestic assault. If there's no injury. So again, it could just be the accusation, he hit me or she hit me, right? That in and of itself, without injury, could still be an arrestable offense. And again, that would apply to spouses, cohabiting partners, a child in common, et cetera. Then there's also even a lesser offense. And again, it's a misdemeanor still, but it's a different statute where it's with or without injury, and you only have to be engaged, formerly engaged, currently dating, or formerly dating.

So any existing relationship, usually if you're living together or having sex with each other, that's kind of the baseline that we go off of as police officers. So as far as probable cause, based upon locating the certain evidence that we've talked about, you want statements of both parties. You want statements from any witnesses. You want to establish the behavior of the parties. You want to collect physical evidence at the scene, whether it's damage to the surrounding area where the assault took place, whether it's photos of the victim that shows the injuries as you saw them when you arrived. Because again, usually with domestic violence cases, the injuries aren't as severe. When you first arrive, they may be just

red. So you take those photos, right? And some people may look at those initial photos and go, how do you know she didn't just do that to her? And then within 24 hours, we usually go to them or they come back and it's a black eye. It's completely swelled up and it's a black eye. And now you take an additional photo to show that's what I saw initially, but obviously it got a lot worse, which can also increase the charge. So based on those factors, you take all that into consideration and when you have two individuals, you try and establish a primary aggressor because the objective is not to arrest a victim of domestic violence. It's very easy to just say, you know what? You were both hitting each other. You're both under arrest. The courts, the laws are not written to do that. They're

written to protect a victim, not just kind of put the blame on both. That would deter them from calling you in the future. The burden is on the police officer to make that determination. And it's a difficult one in some cases, difficult in the one we're going to talk about in a few minutes, but that's a responsibility of a police officer. And we are trained to establish this. There's multiple hours. They bring domestic violence advocates to come in. Sometimes I remember in my academy, they actually brought victims of domestic violence, people who were formerly in hostile relationships. So we have a better understanding of what we're dealing with and

what to look for. So Stephanie, we're doing the crash course here. And this applies to everybody kind of listening or watching at home, because we're going to take the template that I just gave you guys, and we're going to apply it to Gabby and Brian's situation on that traffic stop. But before we do that, I want to have a quick little test with you guys, and we're going to apply it to Gabby and Brian's situation on that traffic stop. But before we do that, I want to have a quick little test with you guys to see if we're all on the same page as far as the mindset and what goes into establishing who is the primary aggressor, because ultimately that's the person who's going to be arrested more than likely. So I kind of created this like mock scenario, a scenario that I've experienced hundreds of times. And I want to hear your thoughts, Stephanie, but everyone back watching this or listening to it,

after the scenario, think about the facts, maybe even replay it and comment in the comment section. Tell me what you would do because there are some things that are contradicting in here, but I'm doing that on purpose to try to trip you up. But if you go back to what I just said earlier and even look at that card, if you're on YouTube, apply that to this scenario and tell me what you would do if you were the officer. Because ultimately, as we just said, it's your responsibility. So here's the scenario. You, the officer, respond to an apartment building for a report of a domestic disturbance. Caller states that he could hear the couple yelling and that there was a lot of banging coming from the apartment. Upon arrival, you see that the apartment is in disarray.

There's clearly been some type of physical altercation that took place within the house before you arrived. You first encounter the male, the boyfriend. He's 5'11", 190 pounds. He has a red mark on his face and scratches on his chest. You then go to the female. She's 5'7", 140 pounds. She's crying and has cuts on her face. She stated to you that she's been, that he, her boyfriend, has been verbally abusive to her for months. This particular argument started when he started calling her

a slut and accusing her of cheating on him. He was yelling in her face and she got upset, so she slapped him. He proceeded to smack her in the face multiple times and she then scratched his chest. She went on to state that they fight like this a lot and that it was no big deal. When asked if he had hit her before, she hesitated and then stated nothing serious. So she never confirmed or denied it. Nothing serious. She finishes by stating she does not want to press charges. She tells you that directly. Okay. You go out to the male subject. The male states the same thing, but says he only hit her back because she hit him first. When asked if she prevented him from leaving, he said no.

When asked why he didn't call the police, he said it wasn't that serious. When asked if she had hit him before, all he stated was, we've both lost our temper sometimes. So again, take that what you will. Now, before you answer, because we, you know, we got to keep it in line here. Stephanie, you think about it. When we come back from this break, you're going to tell us what you would do. You guys take the time in the comments section. Let us know what you would do as have the situation you're there you have to determine primary aggressor what what's your decision and why are you making that decision i think that the

i think the boyfriend is the primary aggressor um i think that when when the woman said nothing serious it wasn't really not confirming or not denying. It's kind of confirming. She's kind of saying, because she didn't say no, right? Has he ever hit you before? Nothing serious. Nothing serious, that's kind of subjective, right? What do you consider serious?

What does this woman specifically consider serious? And in the eyes of the law, it may be more serious than she's making it out to be. So she kind of said, yeah, he has, but it's been nothing serious. So we know this is a pattern at this point. He said that she never tried to stop him from leaving, so he didn't have to hit her back. He was being verbally abusive. He was screaming in her face. She slapped him and he proceeded to hit her back instead of walking away. So in my opinion, the boyfriend is the primary aggressor in the situation. Nailed it. And do you feel like going over that what we're looking for, it gives you an easier ability to kind of discern, yeah, no, there's something

here. Who's responsible? Did that clear things up for you as far as not someone who's ever responded to a domestic violence call. You know exactly what we use when we go. Yeah. Is there ever a scenario where they're both held responsible though? Yes. Yes, there is. You can have a situation where they're both... It's a rare circumstance. Again, the laws are designed to protect against that. But if it's blatantly obvious that they both just beat the crap out of each other. They both got serious to the point of felonies for both of them. Maybe they both stabbed each other or whatever. You can't just turn the blind eye. You would arrest them both for domestic felony assault and even domestic disorderly

conduct. And you would ultimately let that work out in the courts. But usually, if you're paying attention, there might be minimal things, but you can establish a primary aggressor. And I love what you said about this one, because some of the things she didn't say suggest a history of domestic violence, right? Yeah. By her responses. And that's where those verbal cues you have to pick up on as a police officer. And the questions you ask may also help you. So when I say to him, well, did you, after she struck you, did she stop you from leaving? He might be like, that's irrelevant. I'll just answer it honestly. Yeah, no, obviously she didn't stop me from leaving. But what he's actually doing is confirming that it wasn't

self-defense. This wasn't a defensive wound. This was an offensive wound. This was an offensive attack. Well, he could say she hit me first, so therefore it is self-defense. That's what he would argue, correct? That's what he's thinking. Correct. But the other variable to that, which I'm glad you just said it, is his size compared to hers. Because it's not self-defense if you have the ability to retreat, and it's reasonable to assume that the injury sustained is not significant. You don't have, in the eyes of the law, I know some people might morally feel different about this, but in the eyes of the law, if you are a man that's of significant stature, bigger than your significant other, and she strikes you, you can't strike her back just because she struck you. If you have the

ability to remove yourself from the situation as the quote unquote bigger person, maybe both physically and emotionally, it's your responsibility to remove yourself from the situation. If you're in a corner where she's in front of you and you're unable to retreat and you need to strike her in order to remove yourself from the situation, that's a different story. But I'm glad you brought that up because all these little variables, all these little anecdotal information that we are obtaining does ultimately help you decide which way you should go. But that's why it's important to ask a lot of questions, trick in there because I'm sure a lot of people are saying, well, she has the victim. If you've established she's the primary, she's the victim here. She doesn't want to press charges.

Right. That comes down to discretion. And we were saying this off camera. There are certain crimes as police officers where you can use discretion. If I stop you for speeding, usually I have the discretion to decide whether to give you a ticket or not. There are situations where you have someone who commits a larceny from a convenience store, but you apprehend them right outside the building. There are times where if you talk to the store owner, which I've done a million times where you can say, Hey, listen, I have your property. I want to just get this guy

to a shelter or something. He's on the outs. Would you mind if we just let him go with a verbal warning? No trespass complaint can ever come back. If they say it's okay, I may choose not to arrest them. When it comes to domestic violence, the law specifically wants you to act. They actually deter you from using discretion. These are one of the few types of crimes where they don't want to leave it in the hands of the officer to decide whether or not they're going to enforce the law in this particular situation. They want you to determine a primary aggressor. They want you to arrest someone. They want to remove one party from the situation to try to halt the domestic violence that's taking place within that household. You responded to a domestic dispute. They want you to stop whatever's occurring in that household. So in this situation, you would arrest the boyfriend? Absolutely.

You would? Absolutely. 100%. Even if she said, I don't want to press charges. I don't want this to go any further. In a similar vein to Gabby and Brian, where they both said, no, no, we love each other. Neither one of us wants anybody to get arrested. Neither one of us wants this to go any further. We're good. Yes. And that's why I brought this up because I have had many situations where the woman who is the victim usually says, officer, I don't know why you're here. We didn't call.

There's no problem. Nothing happened, but she's got cuts and bruises on her face. She doesn't even tell me he hit her. Right. And she says, there was nothing that happened. I'm fine. I fell. I don't want you in my home. And I still arrest him because, because she just fell there. No. Well, usually there's a call that came in you can hear her screaming for help there's a lot that goes into it if i get a call where literally someone says this guy's beating the crap out of his wife downstairs we get there we can hear it from outside but as soon as they hear us coming suddenly there's no problem but the kids are in the background bawling their eyes out i can hear, mommy, she's got cuts on her face and his shirt's all ripped up. And if she was alone with you, she might say, yes, he did hit

me, but she's afraid that no one's going to get arrested. You're going to leave and she's going to be left there. Yeah. Okay. And so we have to assume that's going to happen. And so we have to act once we respond. And at that point, I've had so many cases where I've arrested someone for domestic, clearly domestic assault. And we go to court and the woman, the victim is flipping me off. Yeah. As we're sitting at court. It's that home syndrome, man. I swear. You ruined my life. But guess what? I would rather do that and see you there flipping me off than find out something happened to you later because I didn't act. So I can deal with that. But that's why I wanted to lay out that scenario. I can't wait to read

your comments and see what you guys decided. Maybe you have a different perspective on it. I'm not trying to convince you. I'm literally telling you exactly the way we do it. So it kind of goes across the board. Some states are more strict than others, but I want to do a quick rundown of Utah law because that's where this happened. So if we really want to be accurate and I don't think anybody's doing it this way, that's what I want to do. So there's very clear guidelines for how you enforce reports of domestic violence. So I'm going to skip around a little bit, but I will read it to you. So this is the Utah Penal Code 77-36-2.2, powers and duties of law enforcement officers to arrest. This is in reports of domestic violence and reports of parties' marital status. So based on what their relationship is, that would dictate whether it's a domestic assault or not, or it would just be a regular assault. The primary duty of law enforcement officers responding to a domestic violence call is to protect the victim and enforce the law. In addition to the arrest

powers described in section 77-7-2, when a peace officer responds to a domestic violence call and has probable cause to believe that an act of domestic violence has been committed, the peace officer shall arrest without warrant or shall issue a citation to any person that the peace officer has probable cause to believe has committed an act of domestic violence. So basically what they're saying is there is no discretion. If you establish that domestic violence has taken place and you are able to establish who the primary aggressor is, you are to arrest that person.

The reason they put citation in here is some states, a citation can still be an arrestable offense. They go even further than that. And this is what I'm driving home to you, how serious domestic violence laws are. They basically take away your discretion by spelling different scenarios out so that it's not open to interpretation. So this is another one that's interesting. This is right after the one I just read to you. If a peace officer has probable cause to believe that there will be continued violence against the alleged victim, or if there is evidence that the perpetrator has either recently caused serious bodily

injury or used a dangerous weapon in a domestic violence offense, the officer shall arrest and take the alleged perpetrator into custody and may not utilize the option of issuing a citation under this section. Basically, they're saying, listen, if you have any indication that this person struck them before and that there's been injury, we're taking away your discretionary right to make that determination. Even if in regular simple assaults, you have the ability to issue a citation. We don't want you doing that here. We want you to remove that person from the home to give the victim an opportunity to

remove themselves from the situation. So the officer, if they don't do it in that situation, is now breaking the law themselves. So is that what happened here? With the whole case that we're going to talk about right now with Gabby and Brian? Well, we can get to that. So you kind of hit on the case. I think we've established the baseline

for what the parameters are for a domestic violence situation. And now, just like we did with this previous example, let's pretend you haven't heard or saw the body cam footage from this incident and apply the same methodology as if you were the officers, okay? So, some of the stuff you just said, but I'll repeat it in case we miss it. This is your new scenario. You're the officer. You guys figure out what you would do. So Moab, Utah, we've already established that August 12th, 2021, approximately 1600 hours. That's 4 p.m. Officers receive a call from dispatch. I'm going to read the exact quote from dispatch to the police officers. This is what you're hearing before you pull over the car. Very important, right? 911 call, by the way. Not a normal call.

This is in through 911. So clearly somebody felt like it was an urgent matter. RP states, so RP means reporting party. RP states a male hit a female. The dispatcher then gave the license plate number and then said domestic. He got into a white Ford transit van, has a black ladder on the back, Florida plate. The female who got hit, they both, the male, and there was a little bit of a pause, the male and the female both got into the van and headed north. Supposedly the caller was a guy by the name of Christopher. I don't know if that's been substantiated or whatever. I refer to you, Stephanie, for that. You're usually, that's your wheelhouse. But that's what I saw with that. I have no idea. Oh, I got one. And as you said, this all happened outside the Moonflower Community Cooperative.

It's a natural food store in Moab, Utah. So another witness, as you kind of alluded to later, so I'm going a little out of order here, wrote a written statement, told police he saw the couple in the middle of some sort of dispute, like you said, and something definitely didn't seem right. The witness also said it appeared Laundrie was possibly trying to lock Petito out of the van and take her phone. By the way, relinquishing a telephone is a domestic charge as well. What do you mean relinquishing it?

So if you have a phone and me or you are dating and I decide to take your phone in the middle of a fight so that you can't call for help, even if I leave the scene, it's relinquishing a telephone, which impedes your ability to call for assistance, whether that's law enforcement, a family member, a friend. That's an additional charge. Saying relinquishing your cell phone is a crime, it kind of seems like the person who's giving the cell phone up is committing a crime, right? That was the way the charge was. I remember it. I've unfortunately charged people so many times with that statute. 12-29-5. God, I don't remember it.

It's 12-29-5 always starts off a domestic charge. So it's usually like 11-3-5 simple assault. When you tack a 12-29-5 on in front of it, that makes it a domestic charge. So as you said, police stopped the van a few moments later. It was right outside of a national park. So you're the officers. You arrive. You meet Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie. Gabby Petito is 5'5", approximately 110 pounds. Brian Laundrie, 5'8", 160 pounds. So not too big of a difference, but I would argue 50 pounds, pretty significant. If you've ever been to an altercation, you having a 50 pound advantage is an advantage. And that's why in boxing and UFC, there's these weight classes by five or 10 pounds

because that extra five or 10 pounds can make a huge difference as far as power. And again, I'm repeating because I remember you gave these quotes. The officer who pulled them out noted that Petito was crying uncontrollably. Okay. This is as soon as they got stopped. The whole time. The whole time. He went on to state, and this is again, a direct quote that you said, at no point in my investigation did Gabrielle stop crying, breathing heavily, or compose a sentence without needing to wipe away her tears, wipe her nose, or rub her knees with her hands. That's not normal behavior. There's something going on there. That's self-soothing behavior, rubbing your knees with your hands. She's trying to soothe herself. Exactly. So again,

I'm pointing this out because the officers observed this behavior, not us. This isn't us doing it after the fact. This is in the report. The police officer went on to state in the report later, weeks of traveling together had created an emotional strain on their relationship. Laundrie told Moab police officer Daniel Scott Robbins the close quarters had increased the number of arguments between the pair. Petito also told police she had been suffering from serious anxiety. So again, we're reading between the lines a little bit here, but you can't expect Brian to come right out and say that we've been doing this consistently over the last couple of months. I would interpret that increased number of

arguments as what you're experiencing right now has been happening consistently, which is a domestic violence environment. And just getting worse and worse and it's escalating. That's an escalation. That's an escalation, Moab police. Right. And this isn't just a isolated incident where he said, listen, we never fight. Something happened today. They're acknowledging that this is an ongoing occurrence. And so that's something right there. Remember what we talked about earlier? You're starting to check a box, right? Next thing, both the male and the female reported they are in love and engaged to be married and desperately didn't wish to see anyone charged with a crime. Again, this is an opportunity where both the male and the female reported they are in love and engaged to be married and desperately

didn't wish to see anyone charged with a crime. Again, this is an opportunity where they're still together at this point and Brian's putting out a narrative while Gabby's still listening so that she can hop on board with him. That's why one of the number one things we can do as officers is immediately separate both parties so that the aggressor can't give any hints or make any passive threats to the victim as to what may happen if they're open and honest with the police. So they do eventually separate Gabby from Brian. And when they do that, she proceeds to immediately start to blame herself for the incident. Hold on a second. I want to go back. So Brian speaks first when the police ask what's going on. Brian speaks first. Yep. And he's pretty much like nothing. Don't worry about it. No, blah, blah, blah. And this

is a signal to her that he's setting the stage. That's the script. This is the narrative he wants her to follow. You got it. Okay. You got it. You got it. And that's something we look for. Hey, you'll look at, I might look at the person who I assume is the victim. Hey, you okay? What happened? If he starts talking first, I already know what time it is. I already know what time it is. Now that's not enough to arrest someone, but I already know where it's going because he's

going to say what he wants her to repeat. So that's something that you learn as after doing this multiple times. Even if they're in the other room, I've seen times where I'm standing two feet away from the person. They're screaming as they're talking to me. So the other person can hear. They want her to hear in the other room. And I'm like, dude, what are you yelling for?

I'm right here. And I've even gotten to the point where I've said, buddy, it doesn't matter if she can hear you. It's not going to help you. You need to just be honest. I know what you're doing. This isn't our first rodeo. We know what you're doing. So yeah. So that's definitely something you want to be aware of. And I made a note here. So when they do separate the two,

Gabby proceeds to just start blaming herself about the incident, but appearing quite scared and not really being able to explain how the incident began. To me, that fits the profile of a domestic abuse situation where you have a victim who's now self-blaming and trying to protect her abuser. There is some subjectivity with that, but that comes from years of training and experience where in my experience, that's what I usually see. Immediately as soon as they start separating, if she doesn't have the script from her abuser, she immediately turns to, it's my fault. Because that's the safe bet, right? It's my fault. He can't be mad at that, right? He can't be mad at that.

Can't get myself in trouble by saying that now, can I? And so for me, when they automatically start with, it's my fault, that's a problem. And again, another sign that she is very concerned for her safety and the ramifications that could come from this incident. And again, another sign that she is very concerned for her safety and the ramifications that could come from this incident. And again, she's not saying it outright, but as officers, we have to read between the lines that this is a victim of habitual domestic abuse. That's our job to be able to determine that and to see that. You can't just look over it. I mean, just the fact that she couldn't stop crying throughout the entire um you know altercation with the police like she she did not stop crying the entire time to me that's that's a huge sign like this is something that's overpowering to her emotionally at this point this isn't something that she's just gonna brush off she's clearly like

devastated under a lot of pressure anxious stressed out she can't stop crying you saw her in the body cam footage she's rocking you know she keeps kind of glancing over at brian because he's her abuser but at the same time like he's convinced her that he's the only person that can keep her safe and what did you establish earlier in this episode from rose he has control over her. He does, yeah. And that was a while ago, and now he's been with her in a van for months, manipulating her, coercing her into believing she's less than. There's even a part when the police officer's talking. There's a lot of conversation. I strongly recommend you go

check it out. But there's parts where she just passively says he doesn't support anything she does as a blogger. He doesn't think I can do it. He doesn't think I can do it. And Brian, what does Brian say to the police? Her little blog. He's so condescending. Oh yeah, she was working on her little blog. And why is he doing that? You're the psychology major. Well, why is he doing it to her or why is he saying it to the police? Why is he doing it to her consistently? Because he wants her to feel worthless. She's lucky to be worthless. Like she's lucky to be with him. She's lucky to be with him. She's worthless.

She won't find any better than Brian because who would want somebody who's so worthless? That is what he wants her to feel. And I'm not a psychology major, but to me it says, you know, he's not accomplishing much in life. That's what I'm saying. Exactly. He's jealous of her. Yeah.

She has goals goals she has ambitions she wants to do bigger things she's outgoing yeah and he is not and he wants to try and demean what she wants to her goals to bring her back down to her level even though he's presenting it as if she's already less than yeah but in reality in reality, he knows. He has no self-worth. So he's trying to make her have no self-worth so that she'll stay with him. Deep down, he knows he's not good enough for her. He overkicked his coverage all day.

And you know, Gabby's probably pumping him up behind the scenes like, oh, your art's so good. Even though nobody was buying that shit and you know it, right? And she's probably like, don't worry. They don't understand you're a genius. The world's not ready for you, Brian. You know, trying to make him feel good because she knows that as long as his ego is getting

stroked, he'll be nice to her. But the second he feels like crap about himself is when he starts using her as his punching bag. So all she's got to do is keep building him up, pumping him up, making him feel good, making him feel like the big man so that he's good to her. It's tragic. And at the same time that she's making him feel good about his crappy, weird art, he's over here downplaying every single thing she's attempting to do. Yep. And again, not that you're going to see all of this in this little interaction, but just from watching the video from the perspective of the officer, you're seeing it. You're seeing it where she doesn't even realize what she's saying,

but she's indirectly, not even probably knowing it, telling the officer things that are in line. Because we got to remember here, I don't know if I said it yet, domestic abuse is not always physical. There is a mental and verbal aspect to it that is absolutely still domestic violence. It's a lot of different things. And they happen conjointly, right? Absolutely. So we have to look out for the mental abuse as well. And she's saying it, not realizing that that's in and of itself is a problem. And she's just saying, he always puts me down. He doesn't support me. Gabby's not doing anything wrong, but she's telling the officer right there that that's evidence of mental abuse consistently historically over their relationship. And the officer should be sitting in his head.

I got to get I got to get these guys. I got to get him out of here. Yeah, already. And we haven't even got into the meat and potatoes of this conversation where Petito says Brian says right out Brian hit her. And then she kind of retracts a little bit. She she takes blame for the incident, telling the police she hit him first. The officer then asks. He said, telling the police she hit him first. The officer then asks- She said, I can get kind of mean sometimes. I don't mean to,

I don't mean to, but I can get really mean sometimes. Yep. And then the officer does the right thing and says, where did Laundrie hit you? And he encourages her to be honest, but she backtracks. And now she's realizing, oh my God, I just said a spontaneous utterance. I shouldn't have said that. I just, I know what that means. So let me pull it back. And this is her quote. Well, he like grabbed me with his nail and I guess that's why it looks definitely was a cut here. Petito says, and she, and then she goes on to say while pointing at her cheek, because I can feel it when I, when I touch it, it burns. So I don't know about you, but when I was watching the video, it's a little grainy and that's usually body cam. I couldn't see a lot

of visible injuries on either of them, but clearly there was something there because even the officer at one point says, did you get hit in the face? So I think they can see the abrasions to their face more clearly than we can see through the camera. And where do we think this altercation with him hitting her and her hitting him? It happened because he was trying to wrestle her phone out of her hands and then take the van and, you know, maybe just lock her out of it. But at the same time, this clearly terrified her to the point where she said, he's going to take my phone. He's going to take my van. He's going to take off. And I'm going to be here with no vehicle and no cell phone and no way to get help. Completely unprotected.

Yeah. Yep. So police say in the report later that Laundrie had no fear for his safety and the officers determined he was at low risk of danger or harm from Petito. And that was mainly due to the size of Gabby Petito. Tiny. She was tiny. She was tiny. And so the reason I bring this part up is because it's what we were talking about earlier, where after watching the video and some of the things that were said, it really felt to me that if there were an arrest, the primary aggressor, according to these officers, would have been Gabby Petito.

Was that your takeaway from it after going over what we went through? And, you know, it sounds like they were leaning towards arresting her, if anything. Well, they have. I'm not saying I agree with it. No, I think that you're right, because at one point the officer was like, oh, I had to make sure that Brian wasn't the victim of battered boyfriend syndrome. Like, get the hell out of here, dude. First of all, remember, you said taking someone's phone to begin with. That's illegal, right?

It's a crime. The freaking guy who told the police what was going on said literally like it looked like he was trying to take her phone and get in the van. So right there, he's the primary aggressor. The reason she's hitting at him and clawing at him is because she doesn't want him to take her phone and leave. So she's in fear for maybe not her life, but her safety at this point. She doesn't know where she is. She's in the middle of nowhere.

She's afraid he's going to leave her and take her phone. She's trying to fight him to get her phone back. If somebody takes your property, you best believe that you can do what you got to do to get it back. And that's what she was trying to do. So no, she's not the primary aggressor here. He's the primary aggressor. He was in control. He had her phone. He had the van. He had the cards, which is exactly how he wanted it. He wanted to be in control. She probably said something he didn't like, something that made him feel less of a manly man. And he said, I'm going to punish her.

You know, take a minute and go outside the van and cool down. Like, who are you? Her father, dude? Are you her father? Like, oh, you need to go and, you know, take a walk and calm down. And I'm going to take your phone while you do it. Like, is that necessary, Brian? I get it.

If you feel like she needs to take a break and take a walk, why do you have to have her phone when she's doing that? Why was he trying to get her phone? Was he doing it simply to make sure she had no connection to anybody else? Was he doing it because he thought she was talking to somebody he didn't want her to talk to? Maybe a friend he didn't like. Maybe he thought she was talking to another guy and he wanted to see. Maybe she didn't want him to see her phone. we don't know why he was trying to take that phone but the fact is he shouldn't have been trying to take it it wasn't his phone it was her phone so no he's um he's definitely the primary aggressor and the the person who reported this told the police that so even before hitting that scene they should have known that so what what's going on here no i think you laid it

out i mean that's that's kind of the court I am in. And one more thing before we dive into, because I'm sure you guys, your heads are spinning right now. There was one more thing, a quote from the police officer from the body cam footage that I wanted to say exactly the way they put it out, because it's really eerie when you think about what has transpired since. So ultimately, for those of you who don't know, they did separate them. They decided not to press charges against uh gabby uh they drove brian to a a hotel that was provided through the safe haven program they left gabby the safe haven program is a foundation that helps victims of domestic violence by the way so they are looking at brian

they didn't they didn't yeah they didn't bring gabby to the hotel. They left the little girl alone in the van in the wild. And they brought Brian, the poor domestic violence victim, to the hotel room provided by the Domestic Violence Foundation. Gross. Yeah. And so before they separate them, before they put Gabby in the van and they take Brian to the hotel, Officer Pratt says, and I quote, You know why the domestic assault code is there. It's there to protect people. The reason why they don't give us discretion on these things is because too many times women at risk want to go back to their abuser. They just wanted him to stop. They don't want to have to be separated. They don't want him to be charged.

They don't want him to go to jail. And then they end up getting worse and worse treatment and they end up getting killed. End quote. What? Yeah. When did, when did he say this?

It's at the end of the body cam footage before they separate. Is this real life? Is this the matrix? Yeah. And, and what's interesting about that is he, he's even acknowledging in there that discretion is out the window in domestic violence cases. You don't have the ability to say, you know guidelines that you had laid out, basically saying this is how you determine who the primary aggressor is. So they ignored all those.

They threw them out the window. And then they were like, ah, well, it's up to us. You know, it's not it's not up to us. It's not up to our discretion. We have to follow these these checkpoints here and see who's the primary aggressor. But we already ignored all of that. So we're going to ignore the fact that we don't have discretion either. We're going to use our discretion anyways. Is that what you're telling me happened here? Yeah. And here's my thing.

Before I get into what I think, even if they believe that Gabby was the primary aggressor and Brian was the victim, they're still contradicting that statement because if that's the case and they know the law, they should have arrested Gabby. It's not up to Brian to decide whether to press charges or not. So either way you view it, whether you're Brian on team Brian or team Gabby, which I don't think anybody really is on team Brian. But in this situation where you think, oh, maybe there are people watching this or listening right now saying Gabby was the primary aggressor based on what you told me. If that's how you feel, these officers, this officer Pratt, that he's acknowledging in this statement to them that this is what's supposed to happen in this particular circumstance. So I found that really interesting. I talked a lot, so I'll just make it very quickly. I have a couple points here as far as my analysis of it. You have an unbiased third

party that stated the gentleman was slapping the girl. That's one. You have a size discrepancy between the parties. You have multiple signs and statements of verbal and physical abuse from Gabby. You have an admission from her that he assaulted her. You have visible injuries to support the allegation that was made, even though it was kind of a spontaneous utterance. And Brian was in an outside location, able to retreat at any point. This was not a self-defense situation. Based on the law, one of them should have been arrested. And based on what I saw from the video, it should have been arrested and based on what we what i saw from the video it should have been established that brian was the primary aggressor and he should have been arrested for at

minimum domestic assault you know and a misdemeanor charge dude it's crazy i can't even believe it so they screwed up royally you can admit that i don't know if they you know this is going to come back to am i protecting the police This situation is not as clear cut as the example I gave you earlier. And there could be a situation here where these officers lack the training or the experience to deduce what's going on here. But I will tell you, it doesn't take specialized training from a psychologist to figure out based on the body cam footage that this woman is in a really bad place. And you have to wonder how she got there. And some of the things she said kind of gives you an insight to why those reasons are.

So did they screw up royally? I wouldn't go that far to say that because I will say this. You may get mad at me for saying this. They should have arrested Brian, bar none. Put a bookend on it. However, based on everything that I've learned from you tonight and your experiences and what I've seen in the past. It wouldn't have made a difference.

I don't think it would have made a difference. Doesn't make it right. But do I think their actions are the reason that Gabby is dead today? I don't. Okay, let me devil's advocate. But you go off. I've been talking way too much. My throat is aching. I don't know how you do it every week, girl. Tea. Hot tea. I'm going to take a drink from my Crime Weekly water bottle and shut up and listen to you. All right, well, don't shut up too long because I have a question for you.

I got you. Let's play devil's advocate here. Let's say they had arrested Brian. How long would he be arrested for? 24 hours. 24 hours. No criminal history, no previous contact order that was violated. He would be bailed out in the morning. He would be arraigned by a judge and they would release him with obviously a court date to come back for his arraignment. Unless. Or for his court date. Okay, hold on because there's other factors. Unless when they arrest him and Gabby's in the police station and he's behind bars and she feels safe to say, yes, he's hit me. And then, you know, they'll still release him and give him a court date. But at that point, won't they say, like, you cannot go near this this woman until your court date?

Like, you can't be hanging out with her driving around the country in a van at this point? Even if it's a simple misdemeanor, in any domestic violence case, there is an automatic no contact order issued where the accused cannot have any contact, whether it's physical, verbal, digital, with the accuser. If he even texts her, he can be rearrested. Okay, so logic would lead us to believe then if they had arrested him, Gabby may not be dead today. That's a fair assessment. That's a fair argument. Because she may have called her parents.

She may have left the van for Brian and said, you know, when you get out of prison or jail or whatever, you can drive back. I'm flying home to New York because we can't have any contact anyway, so we can't be driving this van together. Gabby would have gone home to New York. She'd be alive. Now, is that to say that later on she wouldn't have gone back to him? That's not to say that, but I don't think we'd be in this position that we are today. It's a great argument. I'm going off of times where we talked about where the person, the woman goes right back to him, they're flipping me off. And even your situation where you said nobody could tell you different. But I think you make a great argument because who am I to say that that's what she would have done? She wasn't given that opportunity. So, you know, my personal opinion is just based on what I've seen. It might

not have made a difference, but you're right. How do I know? How do I know she wasn't afforded that opportunity? Yeah. And if she goes back home and they get back together. She's got his van. Where's she going to go? Even the separation, she's got his van. She ain't going nowhere. No, I'm saying she has the van. She's going to leave it at the jail.

Here's the keys to the police. My parents sent me money. I'm flying home because Brian and I can't drive back together anyways at this point. He's not allowed to come near me. So I'm flying home. I'm back in New York. Now later, maybe Brian drives back. He goes to New York, Abby, I'm so sorry. But at least they're not out in the freaking middle of nowhere in a van where he can just do away with her and nobody can see. They're

back around civilization. They're back around her family. There's a chance that this may never have happened or she would have at some point been like, OK, enough is enough. She didn't have that opportunity. And I do think that the police probably had something to do with that. But that's just my opinion. No, but I think it's a valid opinion. I think that's why people are so upset about it. And, you know,

that's what I was kind of alluding to where they separated them, but they left her with his van. So what are they going to do as soon as the cops leave the hotel after they drop them off? Where's she driving to? Who knows? We don't even know if they spent the night apart that night the cops leave the hotel after they drop them off? Where is she driving to? Who knows?

We don't even know if they spent the night apart that night. More than likely, they didn't. More than likely, he told her where he... More than likely, he's at the hotel. He texts her. He's like, baby, I'm so sorry. I miss you. I can't sleep without you.

And she's like, I'll be right there. Or, you know, I'm going to drive up and come in. I mean, the hotel said, yeah, this room was booked, but we don't know if Brian Laundrie stayed there. We don't know if he stayed there the whole night. Like, we don't know any of that stuff. So who knows? No, I think it's a great point.

And I think that's why this body cam footage, and I didn't even mention, you know, there was initial body cam footage released. Yeah. And then the secondary footage that was released was a lot more incriminating when it came to Brian Laundrie. Because I will say the first footage, it was even more of a gray area. But when the second footage came out and she clearly states, yeah, he hit me, that's it. Most of the time, as soon as that phrase is uttered, that's it. He's going to jail and we've arrested people for domestic violence for less. I was telling you off camera because we've been talking about this. We can't

help but talk to each other as we're preparing these things. There's some cases where I would respond to a scene. The woman has a red mark on her neck or on her face. It could have been self-inflicted. And she looks at me and says, he hit me. I want him arrested. I don't have the ability to say, nah, I don't think he did. I'm not arresting him. It's my responsibility, my legal obligation to take a statement from her if she's willing to write it and arrest him, even without any significant evidence to suggest another witness or anything. That's the way the domestic violence laws are written. There's very little margin for making a discretionary call. It just doesn't exist.

Damn. So we are going to end it here. We have another part to follow, maybe two. There's a lot to discuss, especially the new information. But I do want to bring something up that I've seen a lot on social media, especially since everything that happened with Gabby Petito, this narrative of, you know, we need to stop teaching women how to protect themselves against men and we need to teach men not to hurt women. OK, although I'm sure this this statement comes from a very good place and a place of good intentions. It's stupid. It's stupid because you can do both, right? You cannot expect to say to women like, no, we don't need to teach you how to defend yourselves. We don't need to teach you any self-defense skills. We don't need to teach you how to notice these red flags. Go out

into the world because it is a completely safe place because everyone's teaching their sons to be good, upstanding men. We can't do that. Yes, of course. You as a parent, you should raise your son to not hurt women. I genuinely don't think that most parents are taking their little boys and saying like, oh, I can't wait to turn you into a domestic abuser. It just doesn't work that way normally. Usually it's something that happens in this person's childhood that has an effect on them and it turns them into somebody who becomes a domestic abuser. We need to do both. Right. We need to teach, teach our sons to be good men and we need to teach our daughters to protect themselves. Because as a woman, I'm not a little lamb let out for the slaughter.

I'm not somebody who needs to, you needs to just be handled with kid gloves and float around in clouds. I want to know how to protect myself. I've been in positions where I felt incredibly unsafe, where I felt that I could be hurt or killed by somebody I was with. And I wish that I had had certain self-defense skills at that point, but I was young and I didn't have that. And, uh, and I wish that I had, and now I will teach my daughters those things. And that's important. We can't just say women need to just go out and treat, treat the world as if it's, you know, their safe little playground. It's not, it's not, there are men out there who will hurt you. There's other women out there who will hurt you. So what you need to do is obviously be aware of your surroundings. Derek and I have talked about, you know, self-defense skills. We've talked about

certain tools you can have that give you a little bit of an edge that you might not have otherwise. But let's stop basically saying that women don't need to know how to protect themselves, that women just need to go out and live and, you know, hope that nobody out there wants to hurt them because this is a world that will never exist. Although it sounds amazing and I wish that we lived in a world where all of us could just walk outside and do whatever we want and, you know, walk down. I don't even go on bike rides by myself anymore because one time I was followed by this dude who scared the crap out of me and he was yelling things at me and he chased me. So I don't go out on bike rides anymore. Is that my fault? Is that the world's fault? Is that society's fault? Who knows? Who gives a shit? That is our reality

right now. So we need to teach women and young girls to protect themselves, to be aware. So I really don't like this narrative. I think it's problematic because it makes women seem like these defenseless beings that just don't have to defend themselves. They should just live in a perfect world. We don't live in a perfect world. And until we do, take care of yourself, be aware, be vigilant, and know how to protect yourself if need be. That's all I'm going to say.

Well, I only got one thing to say. And if I got your back, Stephanie. And for those of you don't know, I just I have a shirt on that's two skeletons. And one of the skeletons is holding. That's the one your daughter gave you? Yes. And it's holding the other one's spine. And Tenley bought this for me and was like, this is for you and Stephanie for Halloween. Because I was saying how Stephanie always has like her Halloween stuff decorated in the background.

So this is a glow in a dark shirt that says, I got your back. I love it. And I've got your back, man. Yeah. You know, if it ever comes down to a point where you're not being vigilant, which will never happen, I'll keep my eyes open. I appreciate that. No, it was a good episode. And you know, listen, for anybody out there who we said it numerous times, who's in a situation like this or knows someone in a situation like this. Every circumstance is different, but based on what I've seen, based on the cases Stephanie has covered, you got to get out of it as soon as you can. I know it's harder said than done. Stephanie can attest to this more than I ever will be able to, but you got to get out of it

because it's not going to get better. And let this situation with Gabby and all these other stories we hear about be the lesson for you so that you don't have to experience it yourself. Yeah. Yeah. The stories I could tell you guys, you wouldn't believe it. You would not believe it. It's embarrassing for me personally. I'm not saying anybody else should be embarrassed.

But for me, that is the emotion that I hold because you guys know me as who I am now. And you guys think I'm a badass. And I want you to keep thinking I'm a badass, but there was a time when I was not. And the stories I could tell you, you wouldn't think that they had happened to me. You wouldn't believe me. So I'll leave it at that.

But thank you guys so much for being here. We hope you join us for the next one. There's still more to go. You know, still more roasting of Brian, at least on my part, because, you know, Derek's much nicer than me, but I'm going to roast the crap out of this dude.

So we will see you next week. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Bye. Take care.