North Port, Florida, police said Wednesday they did not see or speak with Brian Laundrie when they went to his home on September 11, the day his girlfriend Gabby Petito was reported missing.
Laundrie and Petito set off on a cross-country van trip on July 2, but Laundrie was back home in Florida on September 1 — without his girlfriend. Neither he nor his parents ever spoke with Petito’s family, who were worried that they hadn’t heard from her since August 27.
We followed up with the public information officer and asked if police ever had eyes on Brian at all in September. “We currently cannot comment on what investigators saw to preserve the integrity of the investigation. Those questions can be directed to @FBIDenver”
— Dannielle Garcia WINK News (@Dannielle_Garci) September 29, 2021
Her family didn’t know that Laundrie was home until just before they reported Petito missing. Petito’s body was found at a remote camping area in Wyoming on September 19, and the coroner ruled she was murdered, although the cause of death has not been released.
North Port police never said they had spoken with Laundrie when they went to the Laundrie home, where he and Petito lived with his parents, on September 11. Police spokesperson Josh Taylor said a few days later that Laundrie’s parents “did not make him available” and that police had not had made direct contact with him. Taylor later said that Laundrie was “a person of interest” but also said “we’re not even sure we have a crime.”
At a news conference on September 16, North Port Police Chief Todd Garrison told twice told reporters that investigators knew “exactly” where Laundrie is. But the next day, Laundrie’s parents called police to report him missing, saying he had left home on September 14 and they hadn’t seen or heard from him since. That launched a search of a flooded, 25,000-acre nature preserve not far from North Point where Laundrie’s parents said he had gone.
On Wednesday, WINK reporter Dannielle Garcia followed up on the comment that detectives neither saw nor spoke with Laundrie on September 11, asking if investigators ever saw Laundrie after he returned home.
MORE FROM NOPD SPOKESMAN “FYI. Just bc we didn’t see him that night, doesn’t mean we never saw him.” Read through this thread to see what we asked today and his response in chronological order
— Dannielle Garcia WINK News (@Dannielle_Garci) September 29, 2021
“We currently cannot comment on what investigators saw to preserve the integrity of the investigation,” a police spokesperson said. “Those questions can be directed to @FBIDenver.”
“FYI. Just bc we didn’t see him that night, doesn’t mean we never saw him,” the spokesperson added.
It’s not clear if the spokesperson was Taylor, who grew increasingly testy with reporter’s questions about the investigation. At one point, responding to reports that multiple former investigators and missing person experts had called into question North Port’s strategy, told The New York Post, “These guys are full of s–t. We have a missing person case and we don’t have anyone to talk to and we don’t have any evidence of a crime on a case that’s outside our jurisdiction.”
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[Featured image: Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito/Instagram]
