A new Netflix documentary is examining the relationship between Gabby Petito and her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, who was suspected of killing her during a cross-country road trip.
Laundrie ended up killing himself before he was arrested in 2021, weeks after Petito’s body was found near Grand Teton National Park, USA Today reported.
The documentary, “American Murder: Gabby Petito,” looks at the couple’s story from before Petito and Laundrie started dating in 2019 until her body was found on Sept. 19, 2021, and Laundrie, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, was found in a Florida environmental park on Oct. 20, 2021.
A coroner ruled Petito’s death a homicide, saying that she was manually strangled and had blunt-force trauma to her head and neck, E! News reported.
A notebook found with Laundrie’s remains said that he “ended” his fiancée’s life after she was injured crossing a stream and she begged him to end her pain. The FBI and her family did not believe the reason, Laundrie gave for killing her, E! News reported.
The three-episode docuseries features interviews with Petito’s mother, Nichole Schmidt, who said, “I remember saying to Bryan, ‘You take care of her. Keep her safe.’ And he looked at me, and he smiled, and he said, ‘I will.’”
The program shows a different portrait than the one Petito shared on social media as she tried to become an influencer under the #VanLife hashtag, which chronicled their life on the road, driving around the country in a 2012 Ford Transit Connect Van, E! News reported.
There are also interviews with friends, including Rose Davis, who claimed that Laundrie took Petito’s identification so Davis and Petito couldn’t go out for an evening. Davis said Laundrie didn’t like his girlfriend working at Taco Bell, called her “disgusting” and said that he didn’t want her working at the fast-food chain because he was worried she would leave him and that he couldn’t live without her, USA Today reported.
Davis shared with the filmmakers that Petito would blame herself for making her boyfriend, and then fiancé, upset, saying, according to Davis, “I don’t deserve him. I’m hurting his feelings. I’m a bad person.”
In a text between Petito and Laundry, she allegedly wrote, “Don’t try to control me because it only makes me mad. I love you so much but it’s the way you speak to me that hurts me most,” USA Today reported.
Petito’s ex-boyfriend, only identified as Jackson, shared that she had reached out to him to talk while on the cross-country trip, writing in a text “I’m sure I’m the last person on the planet you want to hear from,” E! News reported. Jackson said that Petito told him on a phone call “I have a plan. I think I want to leave him.” Jackson said she just had to figure out when.
The documentary uses Petito’s own words, in an AI-generated voice to relay what she wrote.
“Gabby Petito’s journal entries and text messages are brought to life in this series in her own voice, using voice recreation technology,” the documentary states before the first episode, US Weekly reported.
“We had so much material from her parents that we were able to get. All of her journals since she was young and there was so much of her writing. She documented her trips and most of her life from a young age. We thought it was really important to bring that to life,” Michael Gasparro told US Weekly. “At the end of the day, we wanted to tell the story as much through Gabby as possible. It’s her story.”
They also said they featured Laundrie’s perspective.
“His point of view speaks for itself through the footage that Gabby took of them together. Then reflecting on what the news and different law enforcement covered around his parents, that also speaks for itself,” Julia Willoughby Nason told the publication.
“American Murder: Gabby Petito” is streaming on Netflix.
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