Brian Laundrie’s Handwritten Confession Made Public
The confession that Brian Laundrie wrote in a notebook that was found in the Florida swamp where he killed himself last year has been made public.
“I ended her life,” reads the note, which the FBI recovered from the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park on Oct. 20, 2021. “I thought it was merciful, that it is what she wanted, but I see now all the mistakes I made. I panicked. I was in shock.”
Laundrie said he killed Petito after she injured herself in a fall in Wyoming. He also wrote: “From the moment I decided, took away her pain, I knew I couldn’t go on without her.”
“Please do not make life harder for my family,” he wrote, “They lost a son and a daughter. The most wonderful girl in the world. Gabby I’m sorry.”
Earlier in the note, he writes: “I am sorry to my family. This is a shock to them as well [as] a terrible grief.”
Laundrie’s parents met up with a North Port detective and a member of the FBI on the morning of Oct. 20, 2021, to investigate the place where they believed their son had disappeared weeks earlier. Extensive searches had previously been hindered by floodwaters.
Christopher Laundrie came across a bag that belonged to his son. A notebook collected by the FBI contained the confession.
The FBI revealed in January that investigators found Brian Laundrie’s confession in the notebook, which had been underwater for roughly five weeks.
Gabby Petito is believed to have been killed around Aug. 28. Her remains were discovered in the Bridger-Teton National Forest on Sept. 19. Investigators ruled her death a homicide by manual strangulation and blunt-force trauma to the head and neck.
Laundrie returned to his parent’s home in North Port, Florida, on Sept. 1, police said. According to the FBI, he sent fake text messages from Petito’s phone to cover up the crime.
On Sept. 13, Brian Laundrie snuck out into the swamp and that was the last time he was seen alive.
When his father voluntarily turned over the family’s guns to the FBI he said one might be missing. Investigators found a revolver near Brian Laundrie’s skeletal remains in the swamp.