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(Trends Wide) — We now have a clearer picture of what happened to Gabby Petito after a coroner ruled Tuesday that she died from strangulation. But many unanswered questions remain.
Teton County Medical Examiner Dr. Brent Blue had previously ruled Petito’s death a homicide, and although the cause was revealed Tuesday, he declined to provide details about the autopsy or a possible suspect, saying that he was limited in the information he could legally disclose.
Who killed Petito, when she was killed, and what happened before her death remains a mystery.
Although there are more than 90,000 active missing persons cases in the US, few received as much national attention as Petito, who was reported missing on September 11 and whose remains were found more than a week later in the Bridger National Forest. -Teton in Wyoming.
Authorities are still searching for her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, who returned to Florida without her after his trip through the western United States.
The autopsy on Petito’s remains included a full-body CT scan, an examination by a forensic pathologist and forensic anthropologist, and a toxicology analysis, Blue said at Tuesday’s news conference.
A legal document Blue filed Oct. 5 with the Teton County Clerk of the District Court specified that the cause of death was “manual strangulation / strangulation.”
“We believe this was strangulation by a human being,” he told Trends Wide’s Anderson Cooper.
Blue said Petito’s body was left in the desert for three to four weeks before being found, but uncertainty remains about the exact date of his death. Death certificates in the state of Wyoming allow for approximate dates and the variability of those dates, Blue said.
“There will not be an exact date of death on the death certificate,” the coroner added.
The time since her death and the weather conditions she was subjected to make it more difficult to determine the exact date, Blue said.
The autopsy has revealed more information than was released, but this will be withheld due to the ongoing investigation, Blue said.
Blue said working on the case was “quite a media circus and continues to be so.” In addition to the disappearance and death, the case has sparked conversations about domestic violence due to the release of body camera footage of an interaction between Petito, Laundrie and the police during one of the couple’s fights.
“Unfortunately, this is just one of many deaths across the country, of people involved in domestic violence,” Blue said. “And it is unfortunate that these other deaths have not received as much coverage as this one.”
Mysterious text messages and a call to the police
The couple had spent the summer traveling in a white van and documenting their adventures on social media. But Laundrie returned to the Florida home they shared with her parents on September 1 without Petito, and her family was unable to reach her.
Her parents first reported her missing on September 11, and after an extensive search, her remains were found on September 19 near where her truck was last seen three weeks earlier. The national focus on their whereabouts revealed that they were involved in a domestic dispute in Utah in August.
From the social media posts, Petito’s last days seemed idyllic. But after she was reported missing, accounts of a growing conflict between the couple emerged.
Petito called his mother regularly, and those conversations seemed to reveal that there was “more and more tension” in Petito’s relationship, according to a police affidavit for a search warrant for an external hard drive found in the truck’s truck. couple.
On August 27, a “strange text” from Petito worried his mother that something was wrong, according to a search warrant.
“Can you help Stan? I keep getting his voicemails and missed calls,” the message read, according to the affidavit. Stan was a reference to Petito’s grandfather, whom his mother said Petito never referred to in that way, according to the affidavit.
During their travels, the couple were detained by police after a 911 caller told telephone operators on Aug. 12 that he saw a man hitting a woman, according to audio provided by the County Sheriff’s Office. of Grand in Moab, Utah.
“We drove by and the gentleman slapped the girl,” said the caller. “Then we stopped. They ran up and down the sidewalk. He proceeded to hit her, got in the car, and they drove off.”
Trends Wide obtained audio recordings of calls to the Grand County Sheriff’s Office last month that shed more light on what they told Moab police about “some kind of altercation.”
And on August 27, a witness described a “commotion” as they left the Merry Piglets Tex-Mex restaurant in Jackson, Wyoming.
Petito was crying and Laundrie was visibly angry, going in and out of the restaurant multiple times, showing anger towards the staff around the hostess booth, witness Nina Angelo said.
Angelo told Trends Wide that he saw no violence or physical altercation between Petito and Laundrie.
The search for Laundrie
Before he disappeared, North Port police were monitoring Laundrie as best they could legally, a police spokesman told Trends Wide’s Randi Kaye.
Investigators indicated that Laundrie’s parents told them on Sept. 17 that he had left home days earlier and was heading to the nearby Carlton Reserve, prompting a search of the 10,000-acre nature reserve. Initially, his parents said he left on September 14, but last week Laundrie’s family attorney, Steven Bertolino, said: “We now believe that the day Brian left for a walk on the reservation was Monday the 13th. of September”.
When he left, he didn’t take his cell phone or wallet, and his parents were concerned he might hurt himself, a source close to Laundrie’s family told Trends Wide’s Chris Cuomo.
He was later accused of allegedly using two financial accounts that did not belong to him in the days after Petito’s death.
In a statement Tuesday, Laundrie’s family attorney, Steve Bertolino, said Laundrie had used a debit card that belonged to Petito, but noted that he was not a suspect in his death.
Trends Wide’s Rebekah Riess, Rob Frehse, Jennifer Henderson, Christina Maxouris, Kari Pricher, Leyla Santiago, Jenn Selva, Amir Vera, and Steve Almasy contributed to this report.
