Panicked Brian Laundrie Called His Parents 20 Times After Killing Gabby Petito

By Edward Era Barbacena 

Brian Laundrie called his parents up to 20 times in two days after he killed his girlfriend Gabby Petito, it has emerged.

The panicked barrage of calls was a marked change from Laundrie’s regular communications with his parents, the Daily Mail reported.

In the two months before Petito’s death, he apparently only called his dad, Christopher, once, and phoned his mother, Roberta, five times.

Laundrie, 23, eventually told his parents that Petito, 22, was “gone” and that he needed a lawyer two days after the blond Long Island native was last seen alive, a November 2023 court filing previously revealed.

Laundrie’s call lasted 55 minutes, followed by another 22-minute conversation around 9:20 p.m., the outlet said, citing phone records.

The first two calls were followed by several more over the course of Sunday and into Monday, Aug. 30 — most of which were between Laundrie and his mom, Petito family attorney Pat Reilly told the Daily Mail.

Laundrie supposedly made the “gone” comment to his father but on his mother’s phone.

“Brian told Christopher, ‘Gabby’s gone, I need a lawyer.’ And he was frantic, in Christopher’s words,” the attorney told the Daily Mail.

“They refused to acknowledge that that meant Gabby was dead, which flies in the face of logic. If your son calls and he’s frantic and he says, ‘She’s gone, I need a lawyer.’ What other explanation of ‘gone’ could there be?” he insisted.

Christopher dismissed Reilly’s interpretation, and said he thought his son was referring to “something to the effect of, well, there were times that Gabby would leave and go away for a couple days to meet with her friends or she’d just leave for a couple hours when she was living with us.”

“That was his explanation for why he couldn’t admit that ‘gone’ meant she was dead. It was a flurry of calls on those two days. The calls between Brian and his parents prior to that were very sporadic, around five,” Reilly said.

Gabby Petito’s dad, Joseph, was in court to hear the depositions, he added.

When the “gone” call came up, the grieving father “just put his head in his hands.”

Amid their son’s calls, Roberta and Christopher Laundrie also contacted their family lawyer, Steve Bertolino.

Bertolino — who is based on Long Island — was retained on Sept 2, and instructed the parents to stay silent.

After a nationwide search, Petito’s remains were found on Sept. 19 in a camping area of the Grand Teton National Forest in Wyoming.

Laundrie is believed to have strangled his fiancée before returning to his parents’ North Port, Florida, home on Sept. 1 using her 2012 white Ford Transit van.

His skeletal remains were found in October in the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park. An autopsy ruled that he took his own life with a gunshot to the head.

Petito’s parents are suing the Laundries and Bertolino for pain and emotional distress based on allegations that the couple intentionally withheld information about their daughter’s death.

The case hinges on the Laundries’ Sept. 14, 2021, statement, in which they said, “On behalf of the family it is our hope that the search for Miss Petito is successful and that Miss Petito is reunited with her family,” Reilly explained.

“The key is that they knew Gabby was dead at the time of the statement,” he said.

Roberta Laundrie, he added, “is cold, a very cold woman.”

“She’s unemotional, defensive [during her deposition],” the lawyer stated.

“Christopher is a different personality, he’s more unassertive, polite, and matter-of-fact. He wasn’t as stoic as Roberta, and I don’t mean that in a positive way,” he said.

Reilly slammed both Roberta and Christopher’s behavior.

“They were parents themselves and Gabby was going to be their daughter-in-law. How could they stay quiet when they know she’s no longer living?” he said.

“They know Gabby’s parents are frantically searching, they know they can bring some sense of relief to their suffering by letting them know where her body is,” he continued.

“And instead they allowed the body to remain out there in the wilderness to be attacked by animals or whatever else was out there. It’s just unconscionable,” Reilly concluded.

Petito’s parents have “sympathy and empathy” for the Laundries because they also lost their child — but “that is something they don’t see they are getting from Roberta and Christopher,” the attorney noted.

Reilly also took issue with the infamous “burn after reading” letter that Roberta wrote while her son was on the run.

“What kind of parent writes a letter to that to anybody, much less their child?” he said.

“But it’s up to the jury to decide when it was written. I don’t know when it was exactly. Roberta says it was written before, but it’s not dated. So it’s awful coincidental that she would discuss burying a body and him going to prison in a letter if it was before Gabby was actually murdered,” he insisted.

Reilly said Laundrie’s own statement in which he claimed Petito’s death was a “mercy” killing was “ridiculous.”

Going forward, Reilly explained, Petito’s parents simply “want to know what Christopher and Roberta know, what they knew, what they held back.”

“And this sounds simplistic, they want justice. They want the Laundries to pay for what they’ve done,” he added.

“They’ve been strong since this case was filed in 2022. But there have been moments when they’ve cried and there have been moments when they’ve been angry. They’ve gone through everything by reliving what happened. But their resolve is to keep moving forward.”