Gabby Petito: the strange last SMS received by her mother and the shadow of domestic violence – Paris Match

Each day that passes reveals disturbing new information. The investigation into the death of Gabby Petito continues in the United States. While her body was discovered Sunday in Wyoming and an autopsy must be performed, several elements shed more light on the suspicious role of her boyfriend Brian Laundrie. This last one is missing since last week, after police sought to question him for several days. He was last seen in a nature reserve, after leaving his parents’ home. The couple had left at the end of July on a road trip in a van through the American national parks. But it was alone that Brian Laundrie came home on the 1^er September, refusing to say what had happened to his fiancée.

New documents released on Monday show Gabby’s mother received a strange message on August 27 from her daughter. “Can you help Stan, I keep getting messages but I miss his calls,” she wrote. The mother explained that Stan was the girl’s grandfather’s first name, but she never called him that. “The mother started to worry about something wrong with her daughter,” wrote agent Daniel Alix in his report, quoted by the “New York Post“. “This was the last communication with Gabby. Her phone then stopped working and she stopped posting on social media. For his family, it was not normal on his part, ”said the agent again. Gabby and her boyfriend were indeed documenting their journey through videos and photos, especially on Instagram. However, this report does not mention another message that the mother says she received, in which her daughter explains to her: “There is no network in Yosemite”. For her mother, it is not her daughter who would have written these words.

“The boy was slapping the girl”

This information adds to fears of possible violence suffered by Gabby. During their stay, the couple called in the police after an argument. Filmed by a camera installed on an agent, the young girl in tears explains that she suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorders that affect her attitude. Police said they interviewed the two lovers, who each explained how complicated the van life was for them. “Gabrielle, who was in the passenger seat, was crying uncontrollably,” one officer wrote in his August 13 report. Officers wrote that the couple – while battling mental health issues that allegedly led Gabby Petito to slap Brian Laundrie – were smartly and sensitively trying to work out their issues.

On the day of their feud, Brian explained to police that his girlfriend was in a manic state and that she slapped him in the face because she thought he was going to leave her in Utah without a car. “I’m not going to sue anything because she’s my fiancée and I love her.” It was just a quarrel. Sorry, it got so public, ”Brian Laundrie says on the officer’s body camera footage. But in a 911 call, a man claimed to have witnessed violence that day by Brian Laundrie against his partner. “We saw, as we approached, the boy slapping the girl”, explains the man on the phone, in a call that the magazine got “People“. “Was he slapping her?” Asks the agent on the phone. “Yeah, so we stopped our car. They ran to the side of the road. He started hitting her, jumped in the car and they left ”.

It was following this report that the police met Gabby and Brian. But in his report, the police officer who intervened writes: “After having assessed all the circumstances, I do not believe that it is at the level of a conjugal assault, but rather a problem of crisis of mental disorders”. However, another officer adds: “It is not clear, but I believe someone said they observed the man attacking the woman”. The “Deseret NewsCites for its part the testimony of a ranger in Utah National Park, where this argument took place, who said that the relationship between the two looked “toxic”. Melissa Hulls was able to chat with Gabby on August 12, when she was in the back of the police car, believing that she might be more comfortable confiding in a woman rather than a police officer . “I was probably more involved than I should have been with her. I begged her to reassess her relationship, I asked her if she was happy with him, I told her that maybe it was the opportunity for her to choose another road, to change her life ”, a explained this ranger. But faced with the delicate and tense situation, authorities decided to drop the case after the couple agreed to sleep separately that evening. “It wasn’t a good day. We thought we were making the right decision by leaving them, ”said Melissa Hulls. “If we thought they were in danger, we would have separated them.”

Faced with all this information, the FBI announced Monday that it had issued a search warrant to search the home of Brian Laundrie’s family. According to Gabby’s parents, Gabby’s parents know things but refuse to speak. “As a parent, how can you let Gabby’s younger siblings go through all of this?” Gabby lived with you for a year. She was going to become your daughter-in-law. How can you keep the place where it is a secret? ”They wrote in a letter to the Laundries. The parents of the young man reported his disappearance on Friday. Gabby’s family lawyer assures his side that Brian Laundrie “has not disappeared, he is hiding”.

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