Bodycam: Gabby Petito argued with boyfriend before vanishing

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Police video shows a Florida pistillate who disappeared during a cross-country travel successful a converted camper van had an affectional combat with her fellow successful a Utah tourer municipality earlier she vanished.

The video released by the Moab Police Department shows that an serviceman pulled implicit the van connected Aug. 12 aft it was seen speeding and deed a curb adjacent the entranceway to Arches National Park.

Inside was Brian Laundrie, 23, and his 22-year-old girlfriend, Gabrielle “Gabby” Petito, who was reported missing by her household a period aboriginal and is present the taxable of a nationwide hunt joined by the FBI.

Police successful North Port, Florida, wherever the mates lived, accidental Laundrie is simply a “person of interest" successful her case. He's not been charged, but he's besides not cooperating.

North Port Police Chief Todd Garrison publically vented his vexation implicit his deficiency of assistance connected Wednesday, pleading for Laundrie's lawyer to put a conversation. “Two radical near connected a travel and 1 idiosyncratic returned!” the chief's tweet said.

Ad

The assemblage camera video shows Petito visibly upset erstwhile an serviceman approached them.

“We’ve conscionable been warring this morning. Some idiosyncratic issues,” she tells him, adding that she suffers from obsessive-compulsive upset that affects her behavior.

“Some days, I person truly atrocious OCD, and I was conscionable cleaning and straightening up and I was apologizing to him saying that I’m truthful mean due to the fact that sometimes I person OCD and get frustrated,” she said.

Laundrie says connected the video the mates got into a insignificant scuffle that began erstwhile helium climbed into the van with soiled feet, and said helium didn't privation to prosecute a home unit complaint against Petito, who officers decided was the aggressor.

“I’m not going to prosecute thing due to the fact that she is my fiancée and I emotion her. It was conscionable a squabble. Sorry it had to get truthful public,” Laundrie says.

Ultimately Moab constabulary decided not record immoderate charges and alternatively separated the mates for the night, with Laundrie checking into a motel and Petito remaining with the converted sleeper van.

Ad

Petito and Laundrie started their thrust crossed the U.S. successful July from New York's Long Island, wherever some grew up. They intended to scope Oregon by Halloween according to their societal media accounts, but Petito vanished aft her past known interaction with household successful precocious August from Grand Teton National Park successful Wyoming, authorities said.

Laundrie drove the Ford Transit van backmost to Florida connected Sept. 1 alone, constabulary said. Petito's household filed a missing persons study past Saturday with constabulary successful Suffolk County, New York.

Laundrie's attorney, Steven Bertolino, said the Laundrie household is hoping for Petito's harmless return, but he's asked them not to talk with investigators.

"I can’t speculate arsenic to wherefore he’s not talking, but helium has the pieces to the puzzle that we request to find Gabby,” Garrison said Thursday connected ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Garrison said astatine a quality league Thursday that the probe remains a missing persons case, not a execution probe, and that nary intensive searches person begun due to the fact that it's unclear precisely wherever authorities mightiness look.

Ad

“We're inactive trying to nail down geographic areas,” the main said. “There's a batch of accusation we are going through. Our absorption is to find Gabby.”

The missing woman's father, Joe Petito, besides appeared astatine the quality league to impulse anyone with cognition astir his girl to travel forward.

“What I privation from everybody present is help. Whatever you tin bash to marque definite my girl comes home, I’m asking you to help. Nothing other matters close now,” Joe Petito said.

Authorities are besides looking for immoderate imaginable transportation betwixt Petito's disappearance and the still-unsolved slaying of 2 women who were fatally changeable astatine a campsite adjacent Moab.

Their bodies were recovered Aug. 18, six days aft the incidental betwixt Laundrie and Petito. The 2 women, Kylen Schulte, 24, and Crystal Turner, 38, had told friends they feared a “creepy man” they had seen adjacent mightiness harm them.

Ad

“They're looking into that imaginable connection,” said Joshua Taylor, nationalist accusation serviceman for North Port police. “I person not heard of immoderate accusation that links these 2 cases together. I recognize the timing is suspicious. You ne'er know. I'm not going to accidental we've ruled it out.”

Petito and Laundrie were puerility sweethearts connected Long Island earlier moving successful 2019 to unrecorded with his parents successful North Port, astir 34 miles (54 kilometers) southbound of Sarasota.

An eight-minute YouTube video titled “Van Life: Beginning our Van Life Journey” features blessed and romanticist scenes from the couple’s trip.

Petito is white, 5-foot-5 (1.6 meters) and astir 110 pounds (50 kilograms), with blonde hairsbreadth and bluish eyes, constabulary said. She has respective tattoos including 1 connected a forearm that reads, “let it be.”

_____

Associated Press writer Sophia Eppolito successful Salt Lake City contributed to this story.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.