SERIALously - 98: Missing 17 Year Old Girl Found on Neighbors Property, Brian Laundrie's Parents Knew Gabby was "Gone" and FBI Looking Into Karen Read Case

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

Missing 17 Year Old Girl Found on Neighbors Property, Brian Laundrie's Parents Knew Gabby was "Gone" and FBI Looking Into Karen Read Case Roberta and Chris Laundrie knew Gabby was murdered 13 DAYS before she was ever reported missing. The FBI is conducting a probe into the Karen Read murder investigation. Valerie Tindall, the missing 17-year-old from Indiana has been a highly requested case, and now disturbing revelations and barbaric details about her murder have recently become public.  Karen Read Podcast: https://pod.fo/e/1f1a9c Shop the Merch: www.shop10tolife.com   Follow the podcast on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@serialouslypodcast     Follow the podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serialouslypod/    Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/annieelise    All Social Media Links: https://www.flowcode.com/page/annieelise_    SERIALously FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/SERIALouslyAnnieElise/    About Me: https://annieelise.com/     For Business Inquiries: [e-mail] 

Hey true crime besties, welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to this week's episode of What's Going On in the True Crime World. We've got little tiny tidbit updates, which I hate that word tidbit, so I don't even know why I said that. But we've got like little tiny breaking news updates. We've got some larger updates. We've got some new cases. We've got a lot to talk about today, guys. So I hope you're comfy, whether you're on your commute, whether you're listening while you're cleaning and you're just going to get so infuriated in this episode that you're just like scrubbing your floor so clean, whatever it is. But we're going to talk about Brian Laundrie today, which I'm so over talking about that douchebag family.

Sorry. We're going to talk about Karen Reed and some more controversy going on there. Valerie Tindall, the 17-year-old missing for almost six months who was found buried on her neighbor's property and so much more. So now I want to talk quickly before I get into everything, everything about Valerie. This case has been highly requested and now very disturbing revelations have come to light about it. And when I first started looking into this case and researching more, I truly had no idea the level of just like depravity and disgustingness and awfulness that this case was and how barbaric the details were. So just a warning. Now let's kick it off with my favorite loser, Brian Laundrie. And I don't want to say favorite loser because that's actually glorifying him too much and giving him too much credit. But like, I don't even know how to describe

like the twerp of all twerps, the fact that he like made all these excuses for why he murdered Gabby and like positioned it as a mercy kill because he didn't want her to be going through any more pain. He just gets under my skin so badly and even more than him, his family, his dirty laundry family. So let me kind of start from the beginning. Let me get grounded before I start going on a tailspin. When news first broke about the disappearance of Gabby Petito and the circumstances around it, literally every single red flag and every was antennas immediately went up because you had this beautiful 22-year-old girl who was on a cross-country road trip with her longtime boyfriend at one point fiance, and then you have Brian show up in her van at his parents'

house without her, and his parents then refusing to speak to Gabby's parents and just acting completely sus from the get-go. There was a media frenzy, as we know, outside of Brian Laundrie's parents' home. Social media was going wild with people trying to find Gabby. I mean, you name it. At the time, we all had that sneaking suspicion that the Laundrie parents knew something. But now that the details of just how much they knew and the timeline has come out, as much as it really isn't much of a shock because we kind of expected that, it somehow is still pretty shocking because the truth is almost worse than what we had imagined. Now, a lot of these details are coming out because Joe Petito and Nicole Schmidt are

suing Brian's parents, if you want to call them that, Chris and Roberta, and also their attorney. They're suing them, claiming that they intentionally withheld information about Gabby's death and made intentionally misleading statements, causing them pain and emotional distress. Whenever they would release a statement that they hoped Gabby would be found and reunited with her family soon, basically giving them false hope that she was still alive. All the while, going on these like mysterious camping trips with their son, dodging their phone calls, dodging their Facebooks, it was really gross, and we all kind of felt something was off from the get. So through the civil suit, we're now learning that Brian told his parents that Gabby was, quote, gone in what was described

as a frantic phone call that he made on August 29th, 2021. In that phone call, he also said that he needed a lawyer. Now, the timing of this is what is so completely messed up because this was 13 days before Gabby was even reported missing by her family. 13 days. This was before Brian pulled back up to his mommy's house in Gabby's van, and this was before the Laundrie's sick little family camping weekend they had with Brian before Gabby's family reported her as missing. Now, they did all of this knowing that Gabby was dead,

knowing her body was in the middle of the wilderness, exposed by the elements, animals, everything. The nerve of this family honestly never ceases to disturb me and I'm looking forward to seeing them punished for this absolutely despicable behavior because like, and I'm not going to harp too much on this, but like I said, this camping trip, we all knew from the beginning that when they went on this camping trip, we suspected that it was most likely a goodbye trip, that they knew that Brian was going to go to either out on the run, potentially take his own life, which he did, and that it was their last hurrah, so to speak. They did all of this, knowing Gabby's family was looking for her, having fearing the worst of what could have happened to her, knowing that she was literally rotting in the wilderness and that her son was responsible,

and they were more concerned with having their last few, you know, precious moments with their son. It is sick, evil, and just beyond callous. A lot of people have debated what they would do if they were in the laundry's position, which yes, I understand to an extent if your son admits to killing his girlfriend, you're in between a rock and a hard place. Because as a parent, you want to protect your children, obviously. And some people say that they would turn their children in. Some people say they would do the same thing as the laundry's did. But at what point, honestly, does protecting your child turn into aiding and abetting a murderer? And how

much more do the Laundries really honestly know? Which earth to Roberta and Chris? How on earth does your son call you, freaking out, saying Gabby is gone? And then somehow the phone call ends with him leaving her body in the wilderness and him driving his sorry, loser, frail, skinny ass back to Florida in her van, using her debit card along the way. And then you guys ghosting the parents, not saying a single thing. It is truly appalling and sick. So whatever is coming to you, you deserve it. You probably deserve that times 100. And, you know, if the legal system doesn't deal with you, I'm sure the egging on your house is going to at least deal with you through the public. So shifting gears, let me take a deep breath.

Hold on. Maybe I need to take a moment to like chant something and just kind of calm myself down. But actually, I'm not going to be calm because now we're going to talk about Karen Reed. We covered the Karen Reed case a while ago, and I'm going to link that episode in the show notes. But it is gaining a lot more traction right now, guys, and so'm going to link that episode in the show notes, but it is gaining a lot more traction right now, guys, and so much controversy around it. Like Court TV is talking about it. What people used to think was just, oh, YouTubers are having conspiracy theories. No, no, no, no. Now

it's carrying weight. So watch the full episode and listen to that break, or sorry, listen to that episode and watch that breakdown on the YouTube version if you want to get the full story, but let me just kind of set the scene for you. It's a case of a woman who is accused of killing her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, killing him by hitting him with her car and then leaving him to die in a blizzard after a night of heavy drinking. The kicker is that she allegedly hit him outside the home of fellow Boston police officers who were all inside of the house partying while it all happened. So many people think that Karen is being framed by Massachusetts State Police, who are basically covering up for the officers who were inside the

home, basically saying that no, Karen didn't do this. Something went on site in that house, and they then left him to die. And now Karen is the scapegoat. So again, it's a really long story, and there are a lot of details, so definitely go check out the episode for everything that is involved in this case and to understand why people are so torn about it. But in any event, now the FBI is allegedly investigating the entire investigation into Karen Reid's case, and many Karen supporters believe that this means that there might be more to the cover-up than just this talk, and that some of the officers being investigated may have fabricated evidence in the case. The district attorney in this case has fired back to some media outlets that have called his office to ask about this FBI probe, and he said that he is

mystified that the FBI is probing into the police investigation, and he still adamantly denies that there is any sort of cover-up or wrongdoing by the investigating officers. He says that the FBI has not contacted him about anything prior to the decision to look into. And honestly, he seems pretty pissed off that the FBI is getting involved in general. That's just my opinion on how his reaction is coming across, but that's what it sounds like. The FBI has been pretty tight-lipped, famously saying that they don't publicly confirm or deny investigations of any kind. So maybe this is nothing. Maybe something will come out of it. I honestly don't know. But you do know that I will definitely be following this as more information unfolds,

because it really is just such a crazy and controversial case. One YouTuber who had adamantly been saying that Karen's framed this whole time ended up being arrested at one point, and like, he was on Court TV last night doing an interview, and it's just very, very bizarre. You need to listen to it to get the full scoop, so go listen to it. It personally does sound very, very suspicious, so go listen. So now let's talk about Valerie Tindall. She was a 17-year-old girl living in Arlington, Indiana, with her parents Jack and Sheena and her siblings. Valerie had a job working at a landscaping business for the summer season.

Her boss, Patrick Scott, was also their neighbor. Valerie was mostly in charge of mowing the lawns and would sometimes ride to different work sites with Patrick, which was something that her parents were more than comfortable with, because Patrick was not only Valerie's boss, but a close family friend and neighbor. Patrick and his wife got along with Valerie's parents as well, and they had even gone on a few trips together. Patrick also has a granddaughter who was around Valerie's age, and the girls would hang out together, and it kind of all worked out. Like, everyone had a buddy. It

was, you know, two close families. Everybody had a close friend. Well, Valerie's work schedule changed each week, and she didn't really work on specific days. It would mainly just depend on what jobs needed to be done. However, she typically never worked on Wednesdays. That's just how the weeks always turned out. So on Wednesday, June 7th, when Valerie told her mom that she was heading for work that day, she didn't find it odd at all, just a little different than the normal, but no big deal, right? So she told her parents goodbye, and then Valerie was off to work. And everything seemed fine that day, but her parents started to wonder later that afternoon where Valerie was. She was normally home after just a few hours, but this time she wasn't. Valerie's mom called her phone, but each call went straight to voicemail. She figured if Valerie

wouldn't answer, her next best option would be to call Patrick, her boss, directly, since he would probably know the status of Valerie's jobs for the day, and if she would be home soon or when to at least expect her. So Patrick seemed confused, though, because he told her mom that Valerie didn't work that day, and he hadn't seen her since the day prior. So Valerie's parents were very confused and obviously scared. They called all of Valerie's friends and family, but nobody knew where she was, and they hadn't heard from her at all. Her parents knew that something just wasn't

right, so later on they went down to the Rush County Sheriff's Department and they filed her as a missing person. Then, on June 10th, a statewide silver alert was issued. Nobody had seen or heard from Valerie, and she was considered at this point to be in extreme danger. After Valerie went missing, Patrick and his wife seemed to be there for her parents. They talked to them for hours, comforting them and telling them to try not to worry too much. Valerie's parents had talked to Patrick before about how Valerie had once met up with the boys that she met online multiple times and how it scared them, and they were hoping that this wasn't the case again. On June 21st, the Sheriff's Department asked the public for help, and they had no answers or even clues to where Valerie could be. They asked that any property owners between Shelbyville and

Arlington who have properties that are maybe hidden from the roadway, have deep creek beds or low-level fields, to just keep an eye out for Valerie's car, for Valerie, for any clues or evidence, especially for her car because she had left that day driving it, yet it still hadn't been found. Now, at this point, investigators thought that if she had possibly ran away or met up with someone, that the car more than likely would have been dumped on the side of the road, or somewhere pretty simple, but her green 2000 Honda Accord still hadn't been found. The case was quiet during the entire month of July, and then in August, the Sheriff's Department did a press release where they

alluded to the fact that Valerie could possibly be a runaway, despite her being classified as in extreme danger after she had first gone missing. By the end of August, Valerie's family was finally told that on June 26, just five days after that press conference focusing on finding Valerie's car, her car was found, and it was found at the South High Gardens apartment complex in Shelbyville. The Rush County Sheriff's Department started looking more into the case and wondered what was the reason that Valerie could have ended up at this random apartment complex in a neighboring town. She had told her family that she was working that day, and sure enough, investigators figured out that the complex was one of the places that Patrick's landscaping company does business at. So with this new information, the sheriff's department

contacted Patrick again, and he denied again seeing Valerie on the day that she went missing. department contacted Patrick again, and he denied again seeing Valerie on the day that she went missing. But they felt like Patrick was lying and that he knew more, so they decided to change tactics. This time, they decided to tell Patrick that Valerie's car had been located, and right now, it was believed that he had helped her in some way and was with her the day she went missing. Well, just as the police had suspected he would, all of the sudden, Patrick once again changed his story. He told law enforcement that he had actually seen Valerie on Wednesday, the day that she went missing, even though he had previously denied it multiple times. He said that the two of them met at an apartment complex. She left her car and rode back with him

in his car to Homer, where he claimed to have dropped her off with a man that he didn't know. He claimed that the man had been driving a little blue car, but that he couldn't remember the maker or the model of the car. He also said that the location where he dropped her off was just five miles away from where the family lived. Even weirder, he told the police that the next day after she disappeared, he went back to the car and moved it to that complex, where the police found her car. When asked why he did all of this, he told investigators that Valerie had asked him to, and that she told him that she was leaving and never coming back,

and all he wanted to do was help her out. But the police weren't buying Patrick's story at all. They even told him that Valerie's last known phone ping was in Arlington, not Homer. But he insisted that he had dropped her off at that point and wasn't with her. The last text message from Valerie's phone to Patrick was at 11.23 a.m., and it read, I'll be there soon. So it seemed that Valerie intended to meet with Patrick that Wednesday. But why? So that he could help her run away with this unknown man, possibly somebody she met online and help her run away with this unknown man, possibly somebody she met

online and wanted to run away with? Or had she truly believed that she was going to be working that day, only for something much more nefarious to happen? So Patrick was charged for providing false information and was named a person of interest in the case. Valerie's parents had their own suspicions about Patrick's behaviors toward their daughter as well. Her mom claimed that not long before Valerie went missing, she recalled a conversation where her daughter told her that Patrick had added her phone to his family's Life 360 app. She found this extremely odd and kind of unsettling. She said that she remembered feeling uncomfortable that he was even tracking his own family, let alone Valerie, who was in no way even related to him. So prior to Valerie going missing, Patrick had apparently

told Valerie that he wanted to take her to lunch one day, and specifically had said that he wanted to take her someplace special. This information came from a tenant at an apartment complex who overheard the conversation, and then after the fact realized how odd of an interaction it had been, overheard the conversation and then after the fact realized how odd of an interaction it had been, especially since Valerie was so young. Her mom described his actions toward Valerie all around to be more of like a jealous boyfriend vibe than an employer or even a family friend. One night, not long after Valerie went missing, so even though Patrick was charged with providing false information and was a person of interest, months had gone by and there were no leads in Valerie's case. After months of searches and leads that led to dead ends, finally a huge

breakthrough happened in the case. However, it wasn't the update that anyone was hoping for. On November 28, 2023, so just a couple weeks ago, Patrick was arrested and charged on a preliminary charge of murder after police had conducted a search warrant on his property and they found human remains. A spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals told the media that the agents were able to develop and follow leads pertinent to Valerie's movements on the day of her disappearance as well as the activity of the suspect. While family and investigators strongly believed that the body more than likely

belonged to Valerie, the Rush County Sheriff's Department was still awaiting final identification from the coroner. Now, what's interesting is that Patrick's property had been searched before. On October 11th, police had searched Patrick's property with cadaver dogs. The dogs positively identified the scent of human remains in a pond on the property, but when the pond was searched, there were no remains. Initially, the media was told that the remains had been found hidden inside a barrel on Patrick's neighbor's property, the barrel buried beneath a pile of rubble. However, in newly released court documents, investigators found two homemade boxes made from 2x4s during the search of Patrick's family home.

In one of the boxes were Valerie's remains, and in the other box, it contained VHS tapes and random paperwork. So now Valerie's family had to deal with the reality that their 17-year-old daughter, who had been missing for nearly six months, was less than 100 yards away from them this entire time, buried on their neighbor's property. The smell of decomposition was overwhelming before they even opened the box. When investigators opened the box with the remains inside, they noticed bright orange fingernails that matched the exact color of Valerie's nails in one of her last social media posts. As soon as Patrick was taken into custody, he immediately started confessing

to Valerie's murder. He told investigators that he strangled Valerie with a belt and had no intentions of killing her, but said that it just kind of happened. Which, how does something like that just kind of happen? He told them about his fears that Valerie was going to try to seduce him and blackmail him into buying her a new car, which I kind of feel like is an oddly specific thing to say, but for whatever reason, that's what he told them. He described the moment when he took her life, saying he used his belt, which he added that he still wore after the murder, and he had put it around her neck, held on to it, until she quit, which is a direct quote from him. The police were able to find records that Patrick had bought

the materials for the boxes the day after Valerie vanished, and he had bought them from a Home Depot. When he was asked about these boxes, he told them that he did buy the materials with the intention of putting her body inside of it, because up until then, her body had just been lying on his office floor. He wrapped her body in plastic before putting it in the box and then screwing the box shut. He then transported the box with Valerie's body inside of it on a dolly, then wheeled it out of his office and into the backyard. He had already been planning what to do with the box, so he made a huge hole large enough for it to fit in his backyard. Investigators later learned that the reason that the pond had alerted the dogs a month

prior was because the water holds scent, and the area where he had buried Valerie's body carried the scent downwind directly toward where the pond was. They had been so close the whole time, without even realizing just how close they really were. One day after the search of the pond on October 12th, investigators ordered a flyover of the property, and they saw multiple obvious areas where the ground had been disturbed. So this more than likely could have at least been one of the reasons why another search warrant had been conducted. When Patrick was asked by law enforcement how he felt about killing Valerie, or if he had any regrets and remorse, he told them, and I quote,

Valerie or if he had any regrets and remorse. He told them, and I quote, well, I wasn't too crazy about it. That's all he said, guys. He told law enforcement that his wife and daughter had no idea about any of it and that they weren't involved in any way. On October 29th, officers were still on the scene at Patrick's home. Law enforcement wasn't commenting on much or giving any specifics other than that. On November 30th, it was released that the coroner positively identified the remains as Valerie's. Although this was something that we pretty much knew and assumed, now it is official. And my question with that, he's trying to position it as though the reason was Valerie was going to seduce him, then blackmail him to buy her a new car, so he had no choice but to kill her so my question is

that is if she didn't quote unquote successfully seduce you why would you need to kill her why not just say no you're not going to seduce me no i'm not buying you a new car what i think and i could completely be wrong and if there has been information already on this that comes out let me know i think that there probably is proof of some sort of sexual encounter I think that's why he's leaning on that argument I think it was forced and I think that he killed her to make sure she wouldn't talk or because she threatened that she was going to talk and the reason I say that is because we hear the behaviors of him he was tracking her he acted more like a jealous boyfriend he was a little bit possessive over her to where this like infatuation and um obsession became too much to where he couldn't resist and i think the reason he told the authorities he was worried she was going to seduce him and then blackmail him is

because once there is evidence of a sexual encounter taking place if that does happen he's going to want to position it as though he wasn't the one who initiated it, that she seduced him. That's, again, just my early preliminary thinking. I'm going to be researching this case a ton and see what other information comes to light, but that's my initial guess. So we'll see what is the truth, what really happened. I pray she wasn't sexually raped by this creepo guy. sexually raped by this creepo guy but um I mean unfortunately just given all the cases we've talked about before it seems like the pattern was there the escalation was there and I mean I think it's pretty cut and dry maybe he tried and maybe she fought him off hopefully she did and it

resulted in her death I don't know but there does seem to be some sort of undertone of sexual involvement here so I'll be curious to know what you guys think and what more information comes out in this. So those are the big updates for this week that have come out. There have also been a lot of other, like minor little case updates, such as a church pastor allegedly had told a 13-year-old girl that it was God's will

that they have sex, which how many times are we going to see these predators do that? We also have been hearing, we heard about a woman who became acutely psychotic after smoking marijuana, and then she stabbed a man 108 times before trying to kill herself. Well, she was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, so good thing she's gone and off the streets.

A school bus driver preyed on a student, allegedly kidnapping and raping her in a parking lot while they were still on the bus. And another gross woman predator because a mom of two was accused of sexually abusing an 11-year-old boy. She was arrested for a third time in one month after a Snapchat streak with a girl. I just don't get it, guys. There are so many predators out there. I think what I'm going to start doing going forward actually on these episodes is for the cases that don't have longer updates, maybe I'll do kind of like what I just did, a read of the top headlines.

And then if there is more information, I'll tell you them. But kind of just like an overview of some of the crazier cases going on in the week. And then like the little like baby deep dives into some of the bigger ones like we normally do. So if that's something that you want me to do, let me know. know otherwise we can keep it to where it's like a little bit more of these mini deep dive segments i don't know we can make this whatever the heck you want because you're my true crime besties and i want to give you whatever it is you want so let me know in the q a section on spotify or if you're listening on apple let me know in the review and rating section what it is

you want these episodes to become because I am at your service. I am your true crime bestie here at your service, guys. All right, I'm signing off because I have to go record Dark Chapters, which is coming to you bright and early next week. Make sure you check it out on YouTube. That's all I've got for you today. I hope you guys stay safe. Have a good day. Be nice. Don't kill people. All right, guys. Signing off. Bye.