Police pause search at ‘vast’ preserve for Brian Laundrie, boyfriend of missing 22-year-old Gabby Petito

Update: 9/21/2021 1424 PST

Autopsy results have confirmed that the remains found Sunday in the Bridger-Teton National Forest are those of Gabby Petito, a 22-year-old woman who disappeared while on a trip exploring national parks with her fiancé, according to the FBI in Denver. The FBI confirmed the manner of death is homicide.——————-

Brian Laundrie refused to talk to police about his girlfriend’s disappearance. By Mark Osborne and Meredith Deliso September 18, 2021, 5:30 PM• 10 min read

00:5303:263:25

Gabby Petito’s boyfriend has also disappeared.

The first day of searching for Brian Laundrie, the boyfriend of 22-year-old Gabby Petito, who went missing while the couple was on a cross-country trip, has come up empty, police said.

“Be advised that the whereabouts of Brian Laundrie are currently unknown,” an attorney for the family said Friday. “The FBI is currently at the Laundrie residence removing property to assist in locating Brian. As of now the FBI is now looking for both Gabby and Brian.”

Laundrie, 23, has not been seen since Tuesday, according to police and the family’s lawyer.

North Port Police said Saturday morning that they were searching for Laundrie in “the vast Carlton Reserve,” a 24,565-acre preserve north of his home in North Port.

Additional photos from the search for Brian Laundrie around the Carlton Reserve area. If you have seen him please use 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit online at https://t.co/vlIagGqNPE. pic.twitter.com/X5QZmMJhTq— North Port Police (@NorthPortPolice) September 18, 2021

More than 50 police officers accompanied by FBI agents, drones, K-9 and bloodhounds are involved in the search, police said during a briefing Saturday afternoon. Authorities took clothing from the family home Friday to help canine units, North Port Police spokesperson Josh Taylor said.

I think he took a boat to Cuba…anyone check with the Coast Guard? Okay back to the story…

The North Port Police Department, FBI, and agency partners are currently conducting a search of the vast Carlton Reserve for Brian Laundrie. His family says they believe he entered the area earlier this week. More details when available. pic.twitter.com/I5x7DvQ3Jt— North Port Police (@NorthPortPolice) September 18, 2021

Petito’s parents reported her missing on Sept. 11 after not speaking with her for two weeks.

As the search for Petito continues, FBI Denver said in an update Saturday afternoon that authorities are “currently conducting ground surveys in areas of Grand Teton National Park that are relevant to the investigation.”

In response to the news Friday that Laundrie’s whereabouts were unknown, a lawyer for the Petito family said in a statement: “All of Gabby’s family want the world to know that Brian is not missing, he is hiding. Gabby is missing.”

North Port police were also forced to clear up a rumor about finding a body in the preserve that spread on social media Saturday, saying it was “completely fake.”MORE: Utah police release body camera image of Gabby Petito after apparent fight with boyfriend

Petito was last seen on Aug. 24 leaving a hotel room in Utah. The next day, she spoke to her mother, Nichole Schmidt, telling her that their next stops would be at Grand Teton and Yellowstone, Schmidt told ABC News this week.

Schmidt received two text messages from her daughter’s phone in the days after speaking to her, but it was unclear whether they were actually sent by Petito.

Laundrie has been named a person of interest in the case, but he has so far refused to speak to police.

“Many people are wondering why Mr. Laundrie would not make a statement or speak with law enforcement in the face of Ms. Petito’s absence,” the attorney representing the Laundrie family, Steven P. Bertolino, said in a statement Wednesday. “In my experience, intimate partners are often the first person law enforcement focuses their attention on in cases like this, and the warning that ‘any statement will be used against you’ is true, regardless of whether my client had anything to do with Ms. Petito’s disappearance. As such, on the advice of counsel, Mr. Laundrie is not speaking on this matter.”

The North Port Police Department said Friday afternoon it had entered the family’s home, where Brian was believed to be staying, to speak with the family “at their request.”

The police later tweeted Friday, “The conversation at the Laundrie home is complete. Once we have the details, a statement will be made. We ask for calm! Please let us work through this and information will be forthcoming.”

It was after that tweet that the family lawyer released the statement saying the location of Brian Laundrie was unknown.

“We’ve been trying to reach the family all week. This is the first time we’ve had communication with them, and now they’re telling us that he’s been gone for essentially the last four days,” Taylor, the North Port Police spokesperson, said in an interview with “Good Morning America” Saturday.

Laundrie’s family told police about where he went after becoming “concerned about his whereabouts” and wanted to file a missing person’s report, Taylor told reporters Saturday.

Laundrie’s car was at the reserve but then found again at the family’s home, police said. When pressed by reporters as to how the car would have gotten back without a sign of Laundrie, Taylor said, “We are going by [the family’s] word.”

“Our goal is to locate him and bring him to North Port,” Taylor told reporters

People had gathered outside the Laundrie home throughout the day Friday, some with bullhorns, chanting “Where is Gabby?” and calling on Brian Laundrie or the family to talk to authorities. Those people were moved from the lawn to the sidewalk as they chanted toward the house.

Earlier in the day, the Grand County Sheriff’s Office in Moab, Utah, said Petito and Laundrie did not appear to be connected to the murders of two women at a campground in mid-August. The sheriff’s office said on Thursday it had been in contact with Florida authorities about investigating a possible connection to the double murder.

The two women were last seen leaving a bar on Aug. 13, one day after authorities were called about a disagreement between Petito and Laundrie while they were traveling in Moab.

The couple’s white van had been pulled over after a witness called police about an altercation between the two at the Arches National Park. The couple admitted to arguing and that Petito had slapped Laundrie, according to the report. Both told police that Laundrie had not hit Petito.

There was “insufficient evidence existed to justify criminal charges,” Moab Police Department Chief Bret Edge said in a statement Tuesday.

ABC News’ Alondra Valle, Julia Jacobo, Joshua Hoyos and Matt Foster contributed to this report.

How many pe

‘I am not afraid of the park. I am terrified’: TikTokers are freaking out over just how many people are disappearing in national forests

America’s vast lands spark shock and awe from users.

 Michelle Brandabur IRL

Published Jun 4, 2021   Updated Jun 4, 2021, 12:43 pm CDT

In a viral TikTok video from May, Becca Goldman, @bbetter10, explains the global trend of missing persons inside heavily forested areas around the world. The video has more than 14.3 million views.

Now, she’s diving deep on the subject via a new TikTok series.

According to Outside, 1,600 people are currently missing within U.S. public lands. But Goldman alleges that this number is much lower than the reality as so many cases have not been publicized.

“We’re not seeing it in the news because it’s not really being talked about much at all. Why would they tell you? It would just be another thing that you’d be afraid of, and they want your money to go into the national parks so that you pay the fees to go and camp and hike,” Goldman told the Daily Dot.

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6958522736431992070?lang=en-US

According to the New York Post, 600,000 Americans go missing every year but 92% are found, dead or alive. However, notes the Post: “[H]ow many of those disappear in the wild is unclear. Neither the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, or the Department of Agriculture’s US Forest Service keeps track.”

In 2017, as Strange Outdoors notes, there were more than 4,000 search and rescue incidents reported in U.S. National Parks.

As a fan of the national parks herself, Goldman hopes that by talking openly about what is going on inside the parks, more people will understand how little is known about what happens deep inside the forest even within the United States.

“I just want to say that I am not trying to derail the conversation about how scary the U.S. national parks are, because they are, but this is not a U.S. problem. It is a global problem. We have no idea what exists inside heavily wooded areas,” Goldman explains in her viral TikTok.

Goldman continues by telling viewers of her experiences traveling in Australia and the Philippines, coming across tribal groups that live far from any neighboring cities or towns.

“We had been in the middle of nowhere for awhile and a person completely naked sprinted across the road in front of us. This person was pale white and blood red eyes. We don’t know what’s out there,” Goldman said.

Goldman told the Daily Dot she was completely surprised by her success on TikTok as she started on the platform making content for her friends and family, but felt this was a topic that more people should know about.

In response to the video, many viewers were shocked by how little is known about forests around the world, similar to the oceans, as so much of the topography much has yet to be explored.

“I’m from Washington!! We were taught young to respect the forest and ocean cause you never know what you’ll run into out there,” one user commented.

“Not heavily wooded areas slowly overtaking my fear of deep ocean omg,” another user added.

Indeed there is no comprehensive list of all persons who have gone missing inside the National Park System, according to National Parks Traveler.

“Within the legality of national parks, they don’t legally have to report missing people. So if somebody goes missing in national park, the national park itself legally does not have to report that person as missing,” Goldman told the Daily Dot.

That’s because, per Culture Trip, the National Parks Service leaves tracking missing people to local law enforcement.

Retired police officer David Paulides reportedly submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the National Park Service list of unsolved missing person cases for his book on stories of missing persons and was told he would be charged $1.4 million in fees, according to National Parks Traveler.

After the viral reaction to Goldman’s first video talking about the national parks, she decided to create a TikTok series titled, “Are You Afraid of the Park?” in which she discusses many different instances in which visitors went missing inside different U.S. national parks. Each of Goldman’s videos in the series chronicles a different victim who went missing in a national park. 

Viewers on TikTok were excited about the series and encouraged Goldman to create a podcast where she could go into depth about each story in a longer form, as TikTok creators are limited to three minutes per video.

The National Park Service did not immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment.

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*First Published: Jun 4, 2021, 11:41 am CDT

Michelle Brandabur

Michelle Brandabur is an intern at the Daily Dot and a student at Boston University. Her work has been featured in the Somerville Journal, Capital Public Radio, and WTBU Radio.

How many people have disappeared in National Parks in the United States?

National Parks USA, Disappearance statistics

The U.S.National Park Service (NPS) does not directly collect data on how many visitors disappear in the wilderness or backcountry in their parks, so the answer to the question is unknown. Neither the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service nor the Department of Agriculture’s US Forest Service keeps track of these numbers.

However, the NPS SAR (Search and Rescue) Dashboard gives an indication of the number of incidents where SAR operations occurred and where no one was located in a particular incident.

According to the data from 2017 relating to activities, there were 3,453 reported search and rescue missions and 182 deaths in American National Parks. See the 2017 Annual SAR Dashboard

NamUs (National Missing and Unidentified Persons System) has said that more than 600,000 persons go missing in the United States every year in all circumstances. Around 90 percent of these missing people are recovered annually, both dead or alive.

David Paulides, the author of the Missing 411 books, estimates that there are over 1,600 unexplained disappearances in North America.

If search and rescue parties are unable to locate the missing, no records are required to be kept by the NPS about the missing person case or the circumstances surrounding the event. When remains of the missing are found, again, no records are required to be maintained.

But there are several federal systems to capture information relating to law enforcement related incidents, including disappearances. Whether these are captured depends on the involvement of the degree of involvement of the County Sheriff and whether it is logged. But these tools are only for viewing by law enforcement, not for the general public.

A system called NLETS (National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System) does exist in the United States. It is a secure information sharing system that local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies use to communicate and share data. NLETS links together every law enforcement, justice and public safety agency for sharing and exchanging criminal justice information. The network includes an interface to the SD LETS network, allowing criminal justice and public safety entities to cooperate with other states and federal government agencies.

The FBI also has the NCIC (National Crime Information Center) has been called the lifeline of law enforcement. It’s an electronic clearinghouse of crime data available to virtually every criminal justice agency nationwide.NCIC was launched in 1967 with five files and 356,784 records. Now it has more than 17 million active records and averages millions of transactions each day. NCIC helps criminal justice professionals apprehend fugitives, locate missing people, recover stolen property and identify terrorists.

As of November 18, 2020, a petition by Heidi Steetman to “Make the Department of the Interior accountable for persons missing in our National Parks & Forests”, has reached 11,183 supporters out of a goal of 12,000. Link to Petition. Streetman is an affiliate faculty member at Denver’s Regis University.

The petition is demanding that a national, publicly accessible registry/database be created in which all missing persons are accounted for in U.S. national parks and forests and on BLM lands. The purpose of this would be to make the government accountable for keeping track and reporting of the missing, to inform the public of the facts surrounding missing persons cases on public lands, as well as keeping account of all missing individuals and the circumstances under which they went missing on public lands.

Q. Which U.S. National Park has the greatest number of SAR incidents?

The statistics indicate that Lake Mead, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Rocky Mountain are the parks that people are most likely to run into trouble, but of course, these are the parks with the greatest number of visitors or with more dangerous terrain or water.

Number of SAR incidents by U.S. National Park:

1. Lake Mead National Recreation Area (Nevada ) – 563
2. Grand Canyon National Park (Arizona) – 290
3. Yosemite National Park (California) – 233
4. Rocky Mountain National Park (Colorado) – 165
5. Sequoia and Kings Canyon (California) – 138
6. Zion National Park (Utah) – 114
7. Great Smoky Mountains National Park ( Tennessee–North Carolina) – 100
8. Bryce Canyon National Park (Utah) – 86
9. Grand Teton National Park (Wyoming) – 59
10. Glacier National Park (Montana) – 58
11. Mount Rainier National Park (Washington) – 54
12. Cape Cod National Seashore (Massachusetts)- 53
13. Yellowstone National Park ( Wyoming, Montana and Idaho) – 53
14. Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (California) – 51
15. Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (Utah and Arizona) – 50
16. Carlsbad Caverns National Park (New Mexico) – 47

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As a Black Woman I have NEVER camped at a National Park. When renewing my car tags I have paid the $30 for an annual membership to the National Parks. I do NOT sleep outside. I do not camp as I call that being homeless. I do not hike. I refuse to drink water that bears and fish poop in. I carry bear spray to fend off serial killers, not bears. I am holding out hope that Gabby will be found safe and healthy. It is my hope that when she is returned to the east coast, her engagement to Laundrie is over. I hope she gets a book deal and is interviewed by Michael Strahan on Good Morning America. I am visualizing this for Gabby. Everybody, be safe out here in this world.