Front Burner - The mystery surrounding Gabby Petito

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

New York Times’ Katie Rosman on the internet’s obsession with the murder of Gabby Petito and the online sleuths trying to crack the case.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Driver is showing some obscure driving possibly intoxicated. Currently doing 45 miles an hour. Zone through here is 25. Oh! Subject just hit the curb.

you want to place your vehicle in the park and go ahead and turn it off for me no park oh it is in parking okay turn off your engine go ahead and set your keys on the dash for me all right what's your guys's names gabby brian okay Gabby. Gabby, Brian. Okay. So if you're on TikTok or Instagram, you've probably come across a story of Gabby Petito. This week, Gabby's body was found in a national park in Wyoming. Her death has been declared a homicide by a coroner in Wyoming. In the weeks leading up to her death, there were a lot of questions. But we do know that Gabby and her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, were traveling across the U.S. in their camper van,

documenting their adventures on social media. So, we are right outside Cappled Reef right now in a free dispersed camp spot. And we've been lucky so far at all the places we've stayed, but I'd say this is one of the best so far. Since we left New York, I've only set up my hammock once. This trip it was supposed to last months and from what the couple have shared it it appeared idyllic according to one video they published on YouTube. So me and Brian just got up and got ready made the bed in the tent set up.

I think our plan for today is to just hang out here in the tent. Brian's stretching, doing some morning yoga. But on August 12th, they were pulled over on the side of a highway in Utah, according to body cam footage released later by Moab County Police. I'm sorry I hit the bump there. I was distracting him from driving. I'm sorry. Can I get you to step out of the vehicle? The couple was also spotted by an eyewitness that day who happened to be driving by and called the police. That call was also released by police. Grand County Sheriff's Office.

Hi, can you hear me, sir? Yeah, I can hear you. Hi, can you hear me, sir? Yeah, I can hear you. Hi, I'm calling. I'm right on the corner of Main Street by Moonflower, and we're driving by, and I'd like to report a domestic dispute. Florida with a white van, Florida license plate, white land. What did you say?

What were they doing? We drove by, and the gentleman was slapping the girl. He was slapping her? Yes, and then we stopped. They ran up and down the girl. He was slapping her? Yes, and then we stopped. They ran up and down the sidewalk. He proceeded to hit her, hopped in the car, and they drove off. It's one of the first glimpses we have into what went on on the trip, beyond the carefully curated veil of Instagram.

On September 1st, just one month into it, Brian returned to his home in Florida, alone. Gabby's parents reported her missing on September 11th, and Brian refused to talk to police. A week later, on September 17th, he too was reported missing, and the police have been looking for him since in a 25,000-acre nature reserve in Florida, where his family says he is. The story has blown up on TikTok, where people have been piecing together their own theories and clues, and where the hashtag Gabby Petito has been viewed over 800 million times. Today on FrontBurner, we're talking to New York Times reporter Katie Rossman

about why this case has triggered an online sleuthing storm and what that says about the internet's evolving role in amateur police work. Hi, Katie. Thank you so much for being here. Hi, thank you for having me. So this case has captured an enormous amount of attention in the U.S. and outside the U.S. as well. And as I mentioned in the intro, it is completely blown up on Instagram, on TikTok, with all of these online sleuths. And why do you think it's captured the attention of this community so much? When something goes viral, it's really hard to pinpoint what makes it go viral. There really tends to not be a formula. So in this case,

too, I think it might be hard for any one person to say, I'm going to tell you exactly what's happened. But here are the things that my reporting has brought me to. The first thing is that she was a young woman who was active on social media, which makes her somebody who is relatable to a lot of other young women who are active on social media. That's number one. Number two, she left what are almost like these breadcrumbs, these clues on the internet with her Instagram posts, particularly and Brian's as well. And I think that fact that this started to get attention before her body was found and before Brian disappeared, and it gave this in real time feeling that people on the internet, you know, we like being a part of something that's happening in real time. We like to interact with it. I mean, that's part of what's great about the internet and social media.

And in this case, I really believe because obviously there's a lot, we still don't know, there's a lot of mystery, but during this time where sort of where is Gabby and then where is Brian and people could start screenshotting Instagram posts and, you know, enlarging them and trying to look for little clues. I think it was very engaging in that way. And we've spent 18 months glued to our phones, glued to our computers, going down the rabbit hole on anything we can to try to, you know, captivate us. So the question that we're all wondering is where is Gabby Petito? Okay. These are my top theories of what where is Gabby Petito? Okay.

These are my top theories of what happened to Gabby. Okay. I have a theory. It's just a theory, but hear me out. So like many of you, I have been very invested in this Gabby Petito case. And I think I just found something that I haven't seen anybody talk about. And what are those, you know, you mentioned these breadcrumbs, these theories. Can you give me some examples? Well, I can tell you one thing that one person told me, and I was interested in this because of what it indicated about the level of scrutiny people were, you know, just sort of armchair amateur sleuths were applying to, to things on Instagram, not because I think that there's actual information that is coming from this. I just want to make that distinction. But one person told me that one of her last Instagram posts, where if you zoom in,

you can see that her roots, the color of her hair at the root were blonder than how her roots looked in pictures that came before this was posted, leading them to wonder if maybe Brian had actually posted that picture to try to make it look like she was still posting on Instagram. So as you can see in this picture her blonde is pretty much right on the root. Look at her roots in this picture. They're brown. They are brown. And this was taken on July 26. So something's not adding up right. This is definitely like something a man would not notice and just skip on by, especially a man with no hair. Again, I have no idea, you know, that there's any truth to any of this, but that was interesting to me that that was,

that was the level of detail and frankly, sort of the sort of details that feed conspiracy theories. And talking about those conspiracy theories, critics of sort of this online sleuthing will say just that, right? That this kind of sleuthing really only spreads misinformation. Conspiracy theories doesn't actually help. But I wonder, you know, from your perspective, what kind of impact does this level of online sleuthing potentially have on an ongoing investigation like this, because there are thousands and thousands of people that seem to be very involved in this case right now online. You know, I'm sure that I'm sure the critics are right to some degree, I'm sure any sort of media

attention leads to a lot of false tips and things that can be a distraction. But But we also know that there was a family that I included in the piece I wrote for the New York Times, Kyle and Jen Bethune. They're a family who participate in this van life, you know, mobile road living where they have a bus that they've converted into a living space for themselves. They're three children and they're four dogs dogs and they make youtube videos when they heard that they may have been in the teton national forest around the same time that possibly brian and gabby were they went back into their raw youtube footage and they found that they had on film the van yeah we're as we're coming up on it we're approaching it up here on the left

hand side this is most definitely gabby petito's board transit van it's kind of wild like it's sane a little bit because we drove past we actually weren't able to find any sites and we ended up driving back through saw it again but here it is on the left. And so they contacted the FBI and that day the FBI found Gabby's body hundreds of feet from the van. Wow. From where, from where the van was no longer there, but from where the family had spotted the van and had it, had the footage of it. So the FBI did not tell me we found the van because of this, but I think it's pretty likely that they did. And, you know, that obviously shows that there's a lot of benefit that can come.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Do not know their own household income. That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. You know, this also makes me think of the Netflix documentary

that came out last year, Don't F with Cats, where online sleuths help solve the case of killer Luca Magnata. There's a lot of information in the video. You see a door handle, electrical receptacles. Everything pointed to North America. But then you hear some voices. It was Russian. Oh, maybe he's located in Russia. Thousands of people looking to find this guy.

There was a tidal wave of leaves. Can you tell me what happened there? I interviewed the director, Mark Lewis, for the piece because a lot of people I spoke to felt like that what had happened with Don't F with Cats had sort of transpired on Facebook and Reddit. And that this was perhaps the TikTok Instagram version of that. But again, it was it was a matter of people at home having no geographic connection, or, you know, did not did not know any of the players involved, but started going down the rabbit hole and looking at videos and, you know, trying to follow tips that they could see in the background of videos, which

ultimately led to Luca's. And these aren't the only two examples of it by, by Alonso, that this really is a dynamic and phenomenon that is only accelerating, has accelerated with COVID and is likely to play a role in investigations to come. Of course, though, probably worth noting, we've also seen this go very wrong. Hey, like I'm thinking of 2013 when Reddit users created this thread to circulate theories about the Boston Marathon bombings, and they ended up sort of wrongly implicating a lot of innocent people. So it's worth sort of mentioning, like the dark, like the very dark side of this as well. I mean, people get things wrong all the time, they get things wrong in newspaper reporting, let alone on social media reporting. So it, you know, journalists, I think, have the best of intentions and try to get it right and have some training and in some cases, at least, and it's very scary when, you know, people all over the place have access to broadcast

information that may or may not be true, it can be very damaging, not just to an investigation, but to the reputations of people who unfairly get drawn in, I agree with you 100%. but to the reputations of people who unfairly get drawn in. I agree with you 100%. Also, you know, the true crime nature of this case has become almost like a hobby for a lot of people online. It's such a tragic story that involves a homicide. But I do want to bring up one thing that you discussed in your piece for the New York Times as well,

the potentially disproportionate attention this case is getting and this idea of the missing white woman syndrome. And can you, can you expand on that for me? Well, I mean, I think well before the Internet, there has been disproportionate media attention paid to crimes in which white people are the victim and white women in domestic situations, especially white women and girls. and this story is certainly one with the attention it's getting that is causing people to ask a lot of questions about are we paying attention to this because she was an attractive pretty white woman and I think the answer has to be yes that that has played a role and I think that a lot of the attention that the Gabby Petito story is getting is a conversation about that. It obviously, you know, involves her and the crime that was committed, but there's a larger societal and media discussion that is going on as a result of the fact of the interest that it's attractive. Right, right. I think you noted this in your piece, Wyoming, where her body

was found. A study by the University of Wyoming found that 710 Indigenous people went missing between 2011 and 2020. Yeah, it's a very powerful fact to look at and think about and juxtapose it to this one woman now. And the abuse of any person and every woman deserves the amount of outrage and distress and attention that is being paid to the story of Gabby. There's no question but that it points to some real disparities, discrepancies, lack of equity in our culture. There's no doubt. It also feels like this case and how it's playing out on social media is this natural extension of the social relationship where people are like voyeuristically invested in people's lives online in the happy parts of this of their lives. So, you know, I do also wonder if that's also feeding into it, because why is it any different now than to be invested in like the tragic parts, right? Well, you know, she's absolutely more animated than a person who would have no digital footprint. You know, I mean, we're at least able to engage with

the branded version of her life that she showed on social media. And we all put out a branded version of our lives that, you know, I had a friend over for dinner recently and she said, wow, I've never seen anybody whose life looks so different on social media. I was like, oh no, that's a terrible thing. Um, but we all do it, you know, we all, we, we don't, you know, show the pictures of our kids crying because they've been punished. You know, that's not, You know, that's not, that's, that's not what we do. Um, so, so we're able to engage with, with what Gabby has shown and what Brian has shown by the way. And it, it makes it much more, um, if not real, cause of course, who knows what actually goes on, but in anybody's life, but it, but it gives us, it gives us something. And I think without that, this likely, you know, I don't know how much attention this

would have gotten. Gabby Petito never goes outside. Just one final question before we go today, you know, what does it say to you that this case has turned into a kind of opportunity for some people, content creators online, for sort of this instant entertainment or clout? Like, what do you think people are also getting out of this? I like to think that people start with good intentions. I know that's not always true. But I like to think that people start with good intentions, and they may get, you know, corrupted or blinded by the excitement of feeling that they're getting attention or relevance, which then can feed them to create more and more content.

I don't know what to say. It's so the world that we are living in now that I don't even know what to say about it. It is, there's something unsavory about it. I will absolutely say there's something unsavory about it, but I also see that there are people really trying to make sure that they're just sharing accurate information. I mean, I've seen a lot of that on TikTok of people saying, you know, but, you know, this is just a theory.

So we really can't put a lot of stock in. I mean, I do see some effort and I applaud that. I think that there are a lot of women who see themselves in Gabby and who see mental health issues that she may have been dealing with in their own lives and who see toxic relationships in their own lives that connect to what they're seeing online with her. So I, I like to think it starts from a place of concern and identification and it may turn into something else, but I think there are a lot of people who at least, um, don't walk into it saying, wow, a girl got murdered. Let me see if I can get some followers from it. I hope that they don't at least. Okay. All right. Katie, thank you so much for this. This is really interesting. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.

All right. So before we go today, some election news. Results from tight races have continued to trickle in as mail-in ballots are counted. And on Wednesday afternoon, a significant call out of Fredericton. Jennica Atwin will hold onto her seat this time as a Liberal. She had first been elected as a Green MP in 2019, but crossed the floor to the Liberals back in June. Her defection was, of course, a significant setback for Green leader Annemie Paul, whose own political future is in question after Monday night's loss in the rioting of Toronto Centre. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner, and we'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.