After almost a month-long disappearance, 22-year-old Gabrielle Petito’s body was found in Grand Teton National Park on the evening of Sept. 19. Petito was traveling with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, on a cross-country road trip at the time of her disappearance.
Laundrie is currently a “person of interest” in her disappearance after arriving back to his home in Florida on Sept. 1 in the couple’s van without Petito. Petito was reported missing 10 days later by her family, after not being seen since a FaceTime call with her mother on Aug. 25.
Laundrie has been missing since Sept. 17 after telling his parents he was going for a hike in the Carlton Nature Reserve. His current whereabouts are unknown, but police are looking for him after a warrant for his arrest was issued for purchasing over $1,000 worth of goods fraudulently on a Capital One debit card following the death of Petito. It is still unknown at this time who the owner of this debit card was.
“While this warrant allows law enforcement to arrest Mr. Laundrie, the FBI and our partners across the country continue to investigate the facts and circumstances of Ms. Petito’s homicide,” said Special Agent Michael Schneider of the Denver FBI, in a press release on Sept. 23.
The North Port Police Department in Florida is searching the nature reserve Laundrie is believed to be hiding out in — according to North Port police spokesperson Josh Taylor, he is extremely familiar with the area and has the skills to survive out there for quite some time.
“Our goal is to locate him and bring him to North Port,” Taylor said.
Police were called Aug. 12 after a domestic dispute between the couple that ended with the couple spending the night in separate hotels. The police were called after a witness reported a man slapping a woman several times.
The body camera footage of the incident sparked controversy after the officers seemingly joked with Laundrie about him being “the victim” after he said she attacked him, while Petito was being questioned and crying, despite the 911 call claiming he was the one hitting her. The officers did not think the situation warranted criminal charges.
Petito was an aspiring influencer popular in the #VanLife community, where she was uploading Instagram posts and stories, including ones pertaining to the road trip under the hashtag, as well as a YouTube video of the trip in the days before her death.
The story of Petito’s disappearance took social media by storm with tweets and TikToks about her going viral after she was reported missing. Users across the platforms used Petito’s social media presence to look for clues after gaining popularity in true crime communities.
While the popularity of her case led to several people coming forward with possible information about the case, it is also being criticized by many as “missing white woman syndrome,” which is a phenomenon where stories involving young white women who go missing are more publicized and widely received, in comparison to stories in which non-white women have gone missing.
In this case, critics often compare Petito’s story to those of the almost 700 Indigenous women who have gone missing in the area over the last decade who have received no media attention and barely any police coverage.
Several Winthrop University students echo this same criticism when it comes to the amount of media attention this case received compared to missing people of color’s cases.
“This case is tragic, and I’m glad she got the amount of coverage that she did so that she could get justice, but I do wish that the several missing cases of Black women and children and Indigenous women and children got nearly as much coverage as she did. She definitely deserved it so that her case could be solved, but it’s a little obvious as to why she got the insane amount of coverage that she did,” said Mary Abrahamson, sophomore secondary English education major.
Whether it was Petito’s whiteness, her online presence or the mishandling of this case that brought it such national popularity, most will agree that they are thankful they found out what happened to her and hope that, in the future, the media will include more on the people of color, especially women who have also gone missing in that area in their focus for missing people.
