American Murder: Gabby Petito, review: a tragedy played out in part on YouTube
On YouTube there is a video of an attractive young couple, Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie, documenting their road trip across the US in a little white camper van. They frolic on beaches and drive through national parks, sharing kisses as the sun sets. It looks idyllic. But, as someone says in the Netflix documentary American Murder: Gabby Petito (Netflix): 'The happiest people on social media usually have the darkest skeletons in their closet.'
Petito and Laundrie, newly engaged, took off on their adventure in July 2021. When she fell out of contact with her parents, they reported her missing. Police visited the home of Laundrie's parents to ask if they knew of the couple's whereabouts, and the response was unexpected: Christopher and Roberta Laundrie said that their son was back home with them, the family did not want to speak to police, and any further communication should be made via their lawyer. They couldn't have looked more suspicious if they tried.
The title of this three-part series gives the ending away. After a search that made headlines in the US for several weeks, Petito's body was discovered in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming.
Beyond the straightforward procedural elements of the story, which take us from the early days of the couple's relationship to the manhunt for Laundrie, there are thought-provoking elements here. One is the authorities' response to victims of domestic violence. Police bodycam footage captured the moment that they pulled over the van, after a passer-by reported seeing Laundrie hit Petito in public. Yet officers sided with Laundrie when he claimed that he was the injured party, packing him off to a hotel for the night and dismissing a sobbing Petito as suffering from anxiety.
You may also ask yourself how far you would go to save your child from prison. No criminal charges have been brought against the Laundries, but in a letter marked 'burn after reading'', Roberta Laundrie wrote to her son: 'You are my boy, nothing can make me stop loving you… If you're in jail, I will bake a cake with a file in it. If you need to dispose of a body, I will show up with a shovel and garbage bags.' The Laundries' appalling behaviour contrasts with the dignity and grief displayed by Petito's parents.
And then there is the influence of social media. Petito was attempting to turn their road trip into a YouTube hit, part of the 'van life' trend. Outtakes from the videos she shot hint at the strain behind the scenes, but you'd never know that from the footage she posted. Before her death, it had only 500 views. Thanks to the interest in this case, it now has over seven million.
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