The recap
On August 12, 2021, the Moab, Utah police stopped a sleeper van that was speeding and driving erratically.
The couple were interviewed by police and then separated for the night. According to communications from the woman to her family between August 12–25, the next day the couple reconnected and continued on their road trip. Six days after the woman’s last communication, on September 1, the family reported her missing.
On August 18, the Moab police reported that the bodies of two women were found about an hour’s drive from Moab in the La Sal Mountains. They were apparently murdered. However, the police said the missing person case and the double homicide were unrelated.
This week, the family of the man driving the van reported him missing. The woman’s family said he was not missing, he was hiding.
Going deeper
On August 12, the police found a male driver and a female passenger. Brian Laundrie and Gabrielle Petito were 23 and 22 years old respectively. Petito was visibly upset. Laundrie was calm, cooperative, even deferential.
The stop, recorded by the officer’s bodycam, lasted just under an hour. The camera then continued to record as the officer drove the male to a motel. The whole recording was one hour and 15 minutes.
Petito was given the keys to the van and told where to drive and park for the night. Laundrie was driven by police to a motel. There were, however, odd aspects. For example, Petito told police she rarely drove the van and was uncomfortable doing so. The officer assured her it was not too far. He also told her there was a pay-shower — “cheap, about $4-5.” He recommended she take a long hot shower. It appeared the police pre-paid for Laundrie’s motel room but not Petito’s parking and shower. Finally, during the ride to the motel, it was clear the police officer identified and sympathized with Laundrie.
The officer said, “She [Petito] seems a lot like my wife … my wife has bad anxiety. Sometimes it builds up and it just happens.”
The officer shared that, before he was a policeman, he was a long-haul trucker and sometimes took his wife along. He compared it to the Petito-Laundrie road trip in a sleeper van. The policeman described it as being “caged up” with his wife. However, he said there were good points, for example, she could crawl around and get him food from the cooler while he drove. He also shared that when his wife had an anxiety attack, a hot shower helped as did medication. He stopped short of recommending medication for Petito, but told Laundrie when his wife was medicated, it made his life easier.
Questions
Why send a young woman to a public place to park and sleep alone in a van? Why do so knowing the bathroom facilities were open and public? If police paid for Laundrie’s stay and not Petito’s parking and shower, then why?
Is there a connection between events that led to the traffic stop and the eventual disappearance of Petito? If so, did the police misconstrue what was going on and misjudge its seriousness? Why was arresting Petito considered but Laundrie, who was driving erratically and speeding, told “you are not in any trouble”?
Are the police correct in reporting no connection between the double homicide and the disappearance?
Finally, the North Port, Florida, police identified Laundrie as a person of interest because “two people went on a trip, and only one returned home.” However, the police now say they are investigating “two missing persons.” Which is it; is Laundrie a missing person or a fleeing person of interest?
Searching for answers
Laundrie blamed the erratic driving on Petito for “grabbing and pulling the wheel.” She denied touching the wheel. Though he was driving, she was blamed by police and admonished.
Laundrie was so deferential, almost obeisant, therefore he was clearly a conflict avoider in general or at least with men or men in authority. What does a man like that do if the woman continues to assert herself? According to psychological literature, he fights or flees. He might have harmed her or left her somewhere alone and defenseless.
Both Laundrie and Petito agreed it was all her fault. He blamed; she continually apologized. What does that say about the underlying health and safety of the relationship?
The police compared Petito to his anxiety-ridden and medicated wife. He said, “Sometime with his wife, it just happens.” What happens? Did he think he understood the dynamic between Petito and Laundrie? Was Petito really anxiety-ridden? What was that diagnosis based on? She cried for the entire recorded hour. Did that indicate anxiety or a rational response to a sad circumstance and a potentially toxic relationship?
What were the particulars of the fight? Laundrie described himself as dirty and messy. He described Petito as wanting to keep the van clean. Petito agreed to the descriptions. However, just as the policeman saw Petito as someone anxiety-ridden who would probably benefit from medication, Laundrie saw her as “OCD and needing to calm down.” Petito admitted to hitting Laundrie so he would stop telling her to calm down. Was her anger a sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder that she must control? Or was her anger a rational response to dismissal of her request for cleanliness?
Anything to learn?
First, it would appear it is difficult for a woman to complain in public or private without being judged mentally ill. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 734,630 women were raped in 2018 and only about 25 percent were reported to police, down from 40 percent the preceding year. Understandable, if reporting violence is proof of female insanity.
According to the Domestic Violence Prevention Center, in 2020, 2,000 women were murdered by a man with whom they had a relationship. In 93 percent of cases, a man kills a woman; only 7 percent of the time does a woman kill a man. As they placed Petito in the back seat of the patrol car and told Laundries, “You’re not in trouble,” were they aware of the statistics? Were they aware of female behavior with respect to reporting?
Do the conversations between Laundrie and the police officer, and the decisions made, mean the police officer was prejudiced? Not necessarily. It means he was neither educated nor prepared for what he was being asked to do, sort out a domestic disturbance, just as police are untrained and unprepared to deal with a psychotic break or other forms of mental illness and distress. We must stop asking police to answer these calls alone. It takes a team. A trained therapist needs the policeman and the policeman needs the therapist to diagnose the type and extent of distress before anyone decides what should happen next.
Anything for Berkshire County to learn?
This community has a plethora of mental health professionals. Enough that some would be willing to be on call for the police. One call and a team could respond to “domestics” and other mental health-based, non-criminal issues in the best way.
Petito is possibly dead, even probably dead* as she has not used a telephone or a credit card since August 25. Laundrie did something or knows something. Did he kill her? Did he dump her somewhere and leave her vulnerable to whatever happened next? Could this tragic continuum of events have been stopped on August 12? If that policeman had a trained mental health professional available for that hour to correctly diagnose and intercede, could the outcome have been better? We will never know.
This isn’t about blaming the police, it is about the community stepping up and demanding that the proper team respond. I hope our local health department, police departments, district attorneys, and the Elizabeth Freeman Center join together and call for the very best and most effective services.
*Since this post was written, remains fitting the description of Petito have been found in Wyoming.
