The mother of slain vlogger Gabby Petito is speaking out ahead of the release of the Netflix docuseries chronicling her daughter’s life and death at the hands of fiancé Brian Laundrie in 2021.
Petito’s parents and stepparents worked closely with the producers to make sure their late daughter’s story not only gets its due but also helps people in similar situations, her mother, Nicole Schmidt, told East Idaho News. It aims to both keep Gabby’s memory alive and to draw attention to the issue of domestic violence, in keeping with the mission of the Gabby Petito Foundation, which they established after her death.
“We really just wanted to tell our story from our perspective, and I have to say, it was done beautifully,” Schmidt said in advance of the premiere of American Murder: Gabby Petito, on the streaming service. “What we went through was horrific, but we have the experience, and we can use it to help as many people as we can.”
More from LittleThings: Police Release Letter Gabby Petito Wrote To Brian Laundrie Before He Murdered Her
Petito’s case gripped the nation after the 22-year-old vanished in 2021 while on a cross-country trip with Laundrie. When he returned without her on September 1, refusing to divulge any information as to her whereabouts, her family reported Petito missing. Her body was found September 19 near a campground in Grand Teton National Park in northwestern Wyoming. Investigators said she had been strangled, and ruled her death a homicide.
Laundrie went camping with his parents soon after arriving home to Florida and never returned. He was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a nature reserve in North Port, Florida, with notebooks by his side in which he confessed to Petito’s murder.
The three-part series contains “some new information and some things you haven’t seen before,” Schmidt told East Idaho News. “They did a beautiful job of highlighting Gabby’s footage and some behind-the-scenes videos different from what we see on social media.”
Petito’s own words tell part of her story, as new material includes never-before-seen text messages and personal journal excerpts, Variety reported. Police bodycam footage is also revealed, as are outtakes from the travel influencer’s vlog, Van Life, that belie the social media-ready face she put on for her social media followers in the last few weeks of her life, according to Variety.
Also new is a revelation by an ex-boyfriend, identified as Jackson, that Petito had reached out on August 22 after fighting with Laundrie, in what he later saw as “a cry for help,” according to USA Today.
“‘I have a plan,’” he said she told him. “‘I think I want to leave him. I’m going to do it. I have to figure out when to do it.’”
He added that it sounded as if Petito “wasn’t sure of what he would do or what he could do.”
—Theresa Braine, New York Daily News (TNS)
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