Gabby Petito’s mother, Nichole Schmidt, alleged this week that Brian Laundrie’s parents cleared out and renovated hi room while he was missing.
During an appearance on the podcast “The Squeeze” with Taylor Lautner and his wife, Tay, Schmidt revealed the allegation against the Laundries.
Schmidt said that the week her daughter vanished, police visited the Laundrie home to obtain a scent from their dogs to search for Brian, but noted that all of his belongings had been removed.
“At the house when Brian was missing and — I would say he was hiding, he wasn’t missing, but he was actually dead — but his room was completely gutted and renovated. None of his things were there anymore. It was gone.”
“The room was entirely cleared out, completely empty.”
She then added that the van her daughter and Laundrie drove cross-country was also “completely cleaned out.”
“The mattress was never recovered,” she said. “Gabby’s stuff was packed away in a closet. I don’t understand. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t get it. Just strange behavior.”
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Gabby Petito vanished in August 2021 while on a cross-country road trip with Laundrie. Her remains were found at a campsite in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming on September 19, 2021. Authorities concluded that she died by manual strangulation.
After murdering Petito, Laundrie is believed to have driven the van the couple was traveling in back to his parents’ home in North Port, Florida, where he arrived on September 1, 2021, alone.
Laundrie later drove to a nearby nature reserve in Florida about 10 minutes from his parents’ home, where he committed suicide. Investigators recovered what appeared to be a written confession by Laundrie that he murdered Petito.
Meanwhile, a witness, who claimed to have been present in the Laundrie house during that same time period, informed Schmidt that it was evident something was “off” with Laundrie’s mother, Roberta.
“They said that there’s something wrong with that mother, she’s clearly not mentally well, and I’m like that’s just add it to the list because I didn’t even know about that,” she said.
Schmidt told attendees at CrimeCon 2024 in Nashville, that she has forgiven Laundrie, claiming she “needed to release myself from the chains of anger and bitterness.”
[Feature Photo: Brian Laundrie/Instagram]
