GABBY PETITO INVESTIGATES INSIDE HER FINAL HOURS

A podcast and upcoming docuseries reveal heartbreaking new details about the travel viogger’s murder

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She was ready for a new adventure. In July 2020, amateur travel vlogger Gabby Petito announced on Instagram that her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, had proposed. "I said yes!" she captioned a photo from their first date in 2019, gushing, "Every day is such a dream with you." But ultimately, it turned into a nightmare. In the summer of 2021, Gabby and Brian posted photos and videos on social media as they explored the American West while camping and living out of their white van. Then Gabby, 22, disappeared - and Brian, 23, returned to his parents' Florida home alone. In the wake of reports that their relationship had turned abusive, authorities confirmed the chilling truth: Brian strangled Gabby then, later, took his own life. Looking back, there were "red flags" that the couple's romance had turned toxic, Gabby's mother, Nichole Schmidt, shared on the Jan. 28 episode of the CONNECT With Jonathan Mark podcast. Nichole said her daughter's final days and hours were filled with "anger and aggression. She would call me up crying.

[She] wasn't herself." Before the summer road trip turned deadly, Gabby hinted at strain. "Brian, you know how much I love you. So (and I'm writing this with love) just please stop crying and stop calling me names because we're a team and I'm here with you," she wrote in an undated letter that's part of a 366-page trove of information released by the FBI last year.