Hidden True Crime - GABBY PETITO: Criminal Psychologist Talks Body Cam While Gabby Petito is Missing

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

This interview took place on September 17th, 2021, while Gabby Petito was still missing. About Hidden True Crime: Lauren Matthias, a former television reporter, and her husband Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, started Hidden True Crime in 2020 with their Season, 'Beyond the Veil,' a psychological deep dive into the doomsday murders and prophet. What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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In those videos, it seemed like they had deep love for each other, truly cared about each other. When police were talking to them, at the end of the day, they didn't charge anyone with any domestic dispute, even though it was Gabby who was kind of physical with Bryant. What are your thoughts after seeing these videos at them together and actually hearing from them in that body camera footage? So I'm not sure I saw the deep love for each other there necessarily. In fact, it was a bit peculiar to me because I actually felt like he was being a little distant. You know, he locked her out of the van earlier in the day. And his comment was something to the effect of, I want to be a little bit.

wanted to distance myself from her. This is hidden true crime where we delve into the hidden motives of unimaginable crimes with my co-host, criminal psychologist Dr. John Matthias. Nearly four years ago, the world was captivated by missing 22-year-old Gabby Petito, wanting to find her and bring her safely home. It was nearly four years ago when the Moab, Utah police body cam footage was released. Another clue into Gabby's disappearance. And we learned through that body cam footage that Gabby, well, she was labeled the instigator.

labeled the violent one in a domestic dispute. So to set the stage here, the video we are about to watch takes us back to the time the world was praying and hoping to find Gabby. Breaking news during this report we're about to watch was that Brian Laundry was also now missing. Gabby was still missing and so many confused by what they saw as a loving relationship between Brian and Gabby. But Hidden True Crimes, Dr. John Matthias, saw it differently.

And the video you're about to listen to was recorded on September 17, 2021. The body cam footage, again, had just been released. Gabby was still missing and everyone was still hoping. In our next few episodes, HTC plans to go over this haunting time capsule and hopes that the world will see fewer Gabby Petito's one day. Biggest story that we are following right now. Of course, it is the disappearance and investigation for Gabby Petito as it continues on right now. We're all. always bringing you the very latest as it's happening in real time. And we wanted to dig deeper just a little bit more on everything that is happening around this case.

Obviously, she was big on Instagram. You see these videos. You see the fiancé right there. But we want to dig in a little bit deeper right here. So we have our very own Daytona Everett, who will be joining us right now on Live Now from Fox as well, all in the mix here, giving you the details as it's happening to in real time as well. So we'll get to that in just a moment. But we just wanted to show you some of these pictures.

That is who we are talking about when it's Gabby Petito. It's really taking the country really by storm and continues to be talked about on such a level that we wanted to bring that to you right here on live now from Fox. But now let's bring in Dr. John. Mathias. He is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist with more than 25 years experience and also part of a podcast that's called Host of Hidden True Crime. Let's bring him in right now for a little bit deeper dive in everything with this case and a little bit background. So thank you. Dr. John, you are on right here on Live Down from Fox. Thanks for having me. I appreciate being here.

So first off, can you maybe tell us a little bit. Why do you think this has captured the attention so much of the country? I think that Gabby tends to represent hope. You know, she's young and she's vibrant and she's boisterous and she's ambitious. She's starting this video blog. The world is in front of her, right? And I think, you know, she's just someone a lot of us can relate to. She's a very hopeful person.

And I think that that is, that's something that appeals to most people, you know. And then I think the other side of it is that we feel some fear for her disappearance. We're all kind of captivated by where she is and how she's doing and what happened. There's a mystery here. But there's also some fear. So I think that combination of hope and fear is really, really gripping us at the moment. And I wanted to bring in our colleague here, Daytona, Everett, that continues to follow this case as well. And I know you got a lot of questions to Daytona.

Yeah, hey, doctor. Last night, we played out the entire body camera footage released by Utah police. It was, like you said, captivating. So many people watching this across the country, just leaning in. It's gripping images. For people who didn't watch it, it was. It pretty much dove into a dispute between Gabby and her soon-to-be fiancé, Brian Laundrie. And I'm curious, from a psychologist's standpoint, what were your thoughts after having watched that?

Do you believe that there was more to this story than what's meeting the eye? It's a little problematic that, you know, there's going to be some increased risk of future violence potentially. So when this case first broke, I remember telling my wife Lauren who does the podcast, our Hidden True Crime podcast with me, that this has got to be domestic. This has got to be some type of domestic disturbance. And then a couple of days later, the Moab police released an incident report about the event. And that just kind of, you know, that was unsettling to me because I thought, oh, no, you know, that's, That's not what I wanted to hear, you know, in terms of maintaining hope that she's alive. All right. We got some big breaking news regarding this case that I want to continue to talk about here. But as we continue to look at some of these images, we got some big news from the Laundrie family attorney saying that the whereabouts of Brian Laundrie are currently unknown. The FBI is currently at the Laundry residents removing property to assist in locating Brian.

So that's confirmed from Fox News right now. As of right now, the FBI is now looking for both Gabby and Brian. So, doctor, when you hear something like that, what are you thinking at that moment? I'm probably thinking that he's either on the run or in hiding. You know, it makes me wonder if the family has found a place to hide him or transport him. I'm not sure. I guess, you know, the hopeful part of me might say, you know, and this is maybe far-fetched, but maybe she's still alive and maybe they were up to something.

I don't know what that would be, but, you know, best case scenario, maybe there's some type of reunion here. I don't see that, but let's keep hope with that, perhaps. Yeah, and kind of circling back, I think this is a good lead-in to what. but we were just talking about the relationship between those two people, Gabby and Brian, in those videos throughout a lot of it. It seemed like they had deep love for each other, truly cared about each other, didn't want to throw one another under the bus when police were talking to them. At the end of the day, they didn't charge anyone with any domestic dispute,

even though it was Gabby who was kind of physical with Brian. So looking at it from that angle, what are your thoughts as far as their relationship goes after seeing these videos at them together and actually hearing from them in that body camera footage? So I'm not sure I saw the deep love for each other there necessarily. In fact, it was a bit peculiar to me because I actually felt like he was being a little distant. You know, he locked her out of the van earlier in the day. And his comment was something to the effect of, I wanted to distance myself from her. And he wanted her to calm down, right? And so I kind of felt like the entire interview was him adding to that distance, you know, that there was distance there in the sense that he wasn't ever concerned about her well-being.

He never asked how she was doing. His first question to police was, have you talked to her? It was almost like he was afraid that they would delve into their relationship and figure out perhaps there was some type of violence previously or, you know, there were other issues that might be uncovered. So he seemed relieved when, you know, he learned that the police had talked to her and they didn't come back with anything negative or suspicious or violent, any type of violence. And, you know, he seemed a bit relieved by that. So I was really taken aback by the fact that I didn't feel like he had a lot of. of empathy for her. You know, if that's my fiance and on that position, I'm going to be negotiating with them and trying to get her released and saying, hey, look, you know, this was a, this was

not a big deal, you know, she, she wasn't violent. You know, I'm going to be advocating, I think, and there was no advocating for her. So maybe there's a deep love there, but I certainly didn't see it in the body cam footage. Yeah, actually, you know, I was thinking more towards the end, they were saying, hey, tell her that I love her, you know, tell him that I love him. That was the first kind of sense of love that I got from that. But now really thinking back to his demeanor during the entire video, he seemed pretty aloof to everything, pretty laid back, especially with the police officers. And like you was...

No, go ahead, Decker. There's actually a critical moment in there, I think, when he, they come back and say, hey, you're the victim of domestic abuse, and he laughs. It's a really, it's a really eerie moment because he's almost like, I mean, it could be, you know, some of it's nervous laughter, but it's also, I think, a little bit of, you know, maybe I got away with something here. I don't know that, you know, his role in this, I think, was probably larger than the police realized. You know, at the end of the day, a lot of viewers have been wondering this one,

what kind of guy is just going to say, you know what? I'm just going to go back home. I mean, at what point, I mean, this is just making no sense for a lot of people. Yeah, right. And that goes back to the demeanor we're talking about. You know, who's going to write? Who's just going to abandon someone? Let's say that she was injured in some way.

right? The natural response would be to find help for that person. So, you know, who's, yeah, who's going to abandon someone? Someone that has the demeanor we just talked about, someone who's a little distant. And, you know, if you looked at his body language and his voice, he was really monotone. He was laughing at times that, you know, were probably somewhat inappropriate. My first response to my wife after watching it was, and we, we, we talk about this stuff on our podcast, was that he was really over control.

In other words, he was working really hard not to show any emotion or anger or whatever he was feeling. He wasn't able to express that, and he was really suppressing that. And when I see that in criminals, you know, that I interview for my job, there's, I always think of, on the MMPI 2, which is a personality measure,

there's a scale called OH, and it stands for over-control. hostility. And when I see guys like him, and I'm not saying that's true with him, because obviously I haven't tested him, and I don't know him, I've never met him, but I think, you know, there's some measure probably here of hostility that he's really trying to suppress him in control. And, you know, that's a concern. But it's that type of thing and that type of demeanor that might allow someone to abandon someone. Doctor, there's been a ton of focus on Brian throughout all of this.

I want to dive a little deeper into Gabby because in the beginning, the beginning of the video, she is pretty hysterical. There were thoughts that she had taken the steering wheel and was trying to drive it off. And, you know, at the end of it, she almost had charges, against her for assaulting him, scratching him across the head and whatever on his body. You know, what did you make of her mental state during all of this? What's one financial lesson you learned the hard way? I'll go first. It's not too late to start saving. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Acorns is a financial wellness app that makes

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there's a really interesting article by Tinney and Gerlach in 2014 where they talked about the different kinds of domestic violence. And they looked at family violence and military personnel and a lot of different types of family units where there might be violence. And one of the types of violence they found is what they called resistive violence or reactive violence. And that was the type of violence that typically occurred where victims had been, abused to some degree, perhaps emotionally, perhaps physically, but it's a type of violence where someone is reacting to a situation, that they're anticipating that there's going to be some type of coercive control or some type of negative criticism or whatever. And so I think that they get used to these situations where they have to react to protect themselves. And sometimes that's a physical

reaction. So when I saw that, I actually thought, you know, this kind of fits the category of resistive violence, you know, that she, she seems like, yes, she seems like she's, she's very emotional she is, but perhaps that should be seen in the context of their relationship. Yeah, and, you know, might be looking too far into the future, but clearly nothing is off the table in this case. How do you see this body camera footage and this evidence and these pictures? and videos, how do you see those being utilized within a courtroom? Yeah, that's an interesting question. Right, that's, I wish we knew.

So I think you can, you know, I think this is a situation where potentially a defense team could argue in his favor that, I mean, first of all, we'd have to know where she is and how she's doing, right? If she's still alive and she's found and she's okay, then whatever charges are levied against him are going to be quite different than if she's not alive. So that's a big piece of that puzzle. But I think a defense team would probably use this

and argue that he was the victim. And that whatever happened to her, somehow he was just defending himself. And he said during the video that she's crazy, right, so that maybe their argument is something like that, that they'll use his term. I don't know if they'll use that term exactly, but I think they would try to frame this as,

that he's more of the victim and look at these scratches on him and look how violent she is. Whereas I think the prosecution would probably take something like this and go more in the direction that I mentioned in terms of she's, perhaps this is an abusive relationship. And again, I'm just really speculating here. We don't know enough. Right. But they might argue that she's simply, this is resistive violence. This is reactive to him locking her out of the van, her van, by the way, and him, you know, potentially being overly critical of her. And, you know, one of the things that I picked up on early in the video was the amount of hope she had for her V-Log.

And one of the comments she made, and I stopped the video, and I told Lauren, this is a really, really important line. She said, he doesn't believe I can do this. Right? Like, then why did he go? Why is he a part of that journey? If he doesn't believe in her, then what's he doing there? Is he trying to sabotage her? Right.

But it's a really disturbing line because, you would think at the very least that he would be supportive of her. And she's kind of saying, you know, I'm not really getting a lot of support here. He doesn't believe in my project. He doesn't believe in me, which suggests that he's probably overly critical, right? And so I think you can extrapolate that type of statement to something about their larger relationship, that this is a relationship that probably has some conflict. at least emotional and psychological conflict and potentially, you know, worst case scenario, physical violence.

And again, I don't, this is speculation. I don't know that for sure. But I found that to be a really critical statement that she made. Yeah, there's so many little segments and portions of that, Mike. I mean, this story just keeps on getting bigger, right? Yeah, it really, really does. And, Dr. I want to also ask you, Can you maybe talk to us about the psychology of the parents of Brian? What are they thinking at this moment?

Obviously, he is not talking with the police, and the family is not trying to help the police in any way at this point. But obviously they're trying to protect their son at any cost here. But, I mean, what is the psychology behind that? You know, there's many different types of family cultures. And I think, you know, some families would say, I think my son did something bad and he should be held accountable and they'd probably have him go talk to the police. But that might be a healthier family. So, you know, there's a continuum of kind of different family cultures and different types of health in families.

and families that tend to close ranks and have a lot of secrets and, you know, are overly protective are sometimes called a meshed families. And I think this might be a family that's amashed. And, you know, they're doing everything they can to protect their son. And they're not sharing information with the outside world, obviously, to help him. And, you know, I guess we could argue what we might do in a sense. similar situation, but it certainly doesn't seem like a super healthy response. Like one way or the another, I think the facts are going to come out and, you know, reality is going to set in for this family at some point, I would imagine. Yeah, up to this point we haven't seen or heard from

Brian Laundre's family at all, only via through words and statements. Anything in particular that you are going to be keeping your eyes on or something that you've just found unique for this case? I think, I think this is, you know, tragically, I think this is the story, you know, this is a story about domestic abuse. And, you know, unfortunately, I've seen this story again and again, and I've assessed, I've worked with a lot of batterers, as they're called. I've worked with a lot of victims of domestic abuse. And, you know, so I want to say that this is that narrative, you know, sadly. And sometimes that narrative doesn't, that story doesn't end well. And, you know, I have my fingers crossed that Gabby's still alive, as we all do.

But, you know, just based on what I've seen, you know, it's hard to imagine that, you know, know that she's safe right now. Yeah. And of course, we just got that in from the FBI that Brian Laundry's location is currently unknown for those of you who are just joining us right now. So this story keeps on getting bigger and bigger. Anything else that you guys both want to add right now?

I would just, I would just add here, you know, when we see these missing persons cases, I feel like in the past, though, when you think about the big ones like Lacey Peterson, And it seems like the person of interest was always talking. This one is much different because we don't have a person of interest that is talking or even wanting to try to find the person. Yeah, you know, right.

I think in those cases you mentioned, there's definitely some attempt to kind of manage public perceptions. But here, there's no concern for that at all. So it shows a real callousness. Right? Like there's, there's just a real indifference. I mean, whatever it is, you know, let's say that she had an accident and fell and hurt herself. And, you know, maybe he couldn't get to her in time. I mean, you'd still, whatever, you know, you'd still want to help her, I think. So there's just a real indifference and a real callousness. And I think, yeah, that makes this unique that he's, he's already lawyered up and, right? He's already closed ranks and the family isn't. I. It's, yeah, I agree with you. It's really peculiar in that sense. Most of these situations, and like Barry Morphew is a good example, too, right? His wife went missing.

I mean, he was older. But he still talked to the media at least once. He was still trying to kind of present his case. So I think that's a big concern. You know, when you shut down right away and you don't report a person that's missing for a week or over a week, That's a big concern. Yeah, definitely is a big concern, and that is why it's grabbed the attention of so many. Dr. John Matthias, thank you so much.

And before we let you go, can you tell our audience where they can check out your podcast host of Hidden True Crime? Yeah, sure. So we're on every major platform. Apple podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, Just, you know, when you're searching for podcasts, just type in Hidden True Crime or Hidden a True Crime podcast, and we'll come up. And we've been talking a lot lately about the Daybell case, which I know is something you guys have covered as well. But we are in the process of doing a really deep dive on the body camp footage, and we're going to hope to get that out in the next day or so. All right.

Looking forward to that and so much more. and we'll definitely keep in touch as this story and investigation does progress. We appreciate your insight on everything tonight and going forward. Thanks so much. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. No problem. Your old or broken phone can let you down.

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