The Disturbing Letter Brian Laundrie’s Mother Told Him To ‘Burn After Reading’ – Grunge
Brian Laundrie’s mother, Roberta Laundrie, reportedly wrote a letter to her son with chilling references to burying a body and helping her son break out of prison, CNN reports. Roberta also wrote “burn after reading” on the envelope containing the letter. In a case that gripped the nation, Brian’s fiancé, Gabby Petito, was found dead in Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming after she was reported missing in the midst of a cross-country trip with Brian. Petito’s parents, Nicole Schmidt and Joseph, hope to include the letter as evidence in the lawsuit they brought against the Laundries alleging intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Brian and Petito were aspiring social media influencers when Petito went missing. Petito’s cause of death was ruled to be manual strangulation. After Brian, too, disappeared, his remains were later found near his family’s Florida home in an apparent suicide. Brian’s handwritten confession that he killed Petito was also recovered. Though undated, Brian’s mother said the letter she wrote pre-dated her son and his fiancé’s trip that culminated in Petito’s death. For this reason, according to a Laundrie family defense attorney, the letter is unrelated to the case. On what motivated Roberta to write the letter, she stated in an affidavit (via CNN): “I had hoped this letter would remind him how much I loved him.”
The Laundrie letter was in FBI possession
Gabby Petito/Instagram
The letter Roberta Laundrie wrote to her son referencing a dead body and breaking her son in prison was in the possession of the FBI when it was spotted in a regional office by Petito family attorney, Patrick Reilly. Reilly now hopes to enter the letter as evidence in the Petito family lawsuit, along with other examples of the Laundrie family behavior in the time before the remains of their son and his fiancé were found. As alleged in court filings, Brian Laundrie’s parents, Christopher and Roberta, reportedly refused to communicate with the Petito family during the investigation. The Laundries have said they were under no obligation to do so.
Once the contents of the letter were exposed, Roberta wrote in an affidavit that her grisly references were merely an attempt to show Brian the depths of her motherly love, not an indication she was aware of Petito’s fate. Roberta also wrote that phrases and statements in the letter were drawn from books that she and her son shared an interest in, including books from Brian’s childhood. “[T]hese phrases are common enough in our circle of friends and family, to describe who you could turn to in the most troubling times of your life. While I use the words that seem to have a connection with Brian’s actions and his taking Gabby’s life, I never would have fathomed the events that unfolded months later,” her affidavit stated (via the New York Post).
The letter is damning, according to a Petito family attorney
Octavio Jones/Getty Images
Despite the protest of the Roberta and Christopher Laundrie family and their defense team that the letter written by Roberta to her son is irrelevant to the case, in a court hearing about whether or not it’s admissible, prosecutor Patrick Reilly called the language Roberta used “damning” (via CNN). In response, Laundrie family defense attorney P. Matthew Luka said at that same hearing: “This document pre-dates Brian and Gabby’s trip so its creation really doesn’t have any relation necessarily to the unfortunate events that unfolded thereafter.”
In his court statement, Luka went on to add, “I know that some of the wording that was used in the letter is unfortunate and might suggest that it has some connection but it doesn’t.” However, Reilly said the decision on whether or not the note was admissible was best left up to a jury. As of this report, the trial regarding the lawsuit against the Laundrie family alleging intentional infliction of emotional distress during the time Gabby Petito was missing had been delayed until 2024, according to WFLA News Channel 8. The Petito family was already awarded $3 million in a wrongful death lawsuit against Brian Laundrie’s estate (via USA Today).
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