Almost a month after the Instagram adventurer was found dead, her parents can finally retrieve her body.
According to the American celebrity website TMZ The 22-year-old’s parents went to Wyoming, the US state on Wednesday, where their daughter was found dead in a national park on September 19.
Petito must be cremated. They will take her ashes home to New York, TMZ reports.
It is several weeks since forensic scientists began investigating Petito to determine how she died.
Yesterday came the conclusion: The cause of death was suffocation.
Forensic pathologist Brent Blue in Teton County announced at a news conference that it indicated that the murder was committed “in a rage”
The adventure ended in tragedy
FBI i Wyoming har issued a federal arrest warrant on Petito’s fiancé, Brian Laundrie (23).
Laundrie has no status as a suspect or accused of the murder, but the FBI says he used Petito’s bank card without permission during the period she disappeared.
According to the FBI, the card must have been used to withdraw more than 1000 US dollars on August 30 and September 1, writes Fox News.
According to the autopsy report, the 22-year-old’s body must have been outdoors for at least three to four weeks before it was found on 19 September.
The forensic pathologist believes she was probably killed just after August 25, when she talked to her mother on FaceTime.
–Received text message
However, the last sign of life from the daughter came via a text message sent on 30 August.
The next day, Laundrie returned home to her family in Florida alone.
The Petito family has said that they doubt that it was the daughter who sent the message.
The couple had spent the summer on the country road in the USA, and they shared sunny glimpses from the adventure together on social media.
Despite the idyll pictures, the two young fiancés are said to have quarreled so violently on the trip that someone outside a store in Moab in Utah alerted the police.
– It is a man who beats a girl, the person who called 911 should have said, according to Fox News.
The family reported Petito missing on September 11th. Shortly afterwards, on September 14, Laundrie also disappeared.
The most important dates in the case
This is what we know about the couple’s road trip:
- July: Petito and Laundrie travel on a road trip from her hometown of Long Island, New York. By then, they had first driven up there from Florida. According to the BBC the trip was to last for four months.
- 12. august: The couple is stopped by police in the city of Moab in the state of Utah. A witness had reported that they had seen something that was a possible incident of violence in the car. The couple tells police that they have been arguing, but that no one has been violent.
- 24. august: Petito talks to his mother on video chat. She says they travel on from Utah to Teton, Wyoming.
- 25. august: Petito shares her latest post on Instagram: “Happy Halloween”, she writes, while posing with a pumpkin.
- 27. august: Petito and his mother send text messages to each other. The family thinks she was in Teton.
- 30. august: The family receives a recent message from Gabby Petito’s phone number: “No coverage in Yosmite”, which is the name of a national park in California – 130 miles southwest of Teton, where she is said to have been found dead. The Petito family does not think it was Gabby who sent this message.
- 1. september: Brian Laundrie comes home to North Port, Florida in the couple’s RV.
- 11. september: Petito’s family in New York reports her missing, since they do not get in touch with her.
- 14. september: Laundrie’s family says this is the last time they see him. Now he is also missing.
- 19. september: A dead person is found in Teton, Wyoming. The FBI says the finding is consistent with Petito, but that they can not give a 100 percent confirmation until the autopsy is completed.
- 20. september: Police are searching the Laundrie family’s home in North Port.
- 21. september: The Petito family’s lawyer confirms that it was Gabby Petito who was found dead in Teton, Wyoming.
- 24. september: The FBI is looking for Brian Laundrie in a federal arrest warrant.
- 12th of October: Forensic pathologist Brent Blue of Teton County confirms that suffocation is the cause of death.
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