Brian Laundrie's mom allegedly wrote him a letter offering to help bury a body, an attorney representing Gabby Petito's family in their wrongful death lawsuit has argued.
Petito's family is currently in the process of suing the family of their late daughter's fiancé Brian Laundrie, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on a nature reserve near his parents' house in October 2021.
Laundrie, 23, and Petito, 22, had embarked on a road trip together during the Summer of 2021, with the pair being stopped by police in Utah in August following an apparent physical altercation.
Then, in September, Laundrie returned home without Petito. He and his family went camping 75 miles from their home in Florida soon after, ignoring the Petito family's requests to help them locate their daughter, who they had since reported missing.
Petito's body was found that same month, with a coroner determining she'd died about three weeks earlier of "blunt-force injuries to the head and neck, with manual strangulation," per NPR.
Laundrie subsequently went missing, with his body eventually being located on a nature reserve close to his parent's home in October. He had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Detectives later revealed that Laundrie had written about killing his fiancé in a notebook that was found in a backpack alongside his remains, saying that he'd only killed her because she'd been badly injured.
Also in the backpack was a note allegedly written by Laundrie's mother Roberta, where she stated that she would "bring a shovel and bury a body." The note was also reportedly labeled: "Burn after reading," The Daily Mail reports.
The attorney representing Petito's family in their wrongful death lawsuit, Patrick Reilly, added that the potentially incriminating evidence proves that Roberta was willing to help her son get "out of prison."
"This request would also include the note that Roberta Laundrie wrote to Brian Laundrie which she offered to bring a shovel to help bury the body," Reilly said in court documents obtained by CNN. "This note was released to the custody of Mr. Bertolino on Friday, June 24, 2022 by the FBI."
"The language in that letter is damning and that letter has a reference to bringing a shovel and burying a body," Reilly added.
A lawyer for Laundrie's parents has disputed the letter's relevance, however, Judge Danielle Brewer said on Tuesday (February 14), per CNN: "I don’t see how it wouldn't be relevant to the action."
The Petitos are in the midst of bringing a lawsuit against Laundrie's family for emotional distress, given that they allegedly withheld details of Petito's whereabouts from her family. The lawsuit is set to go to trial in August this year.
