Brian Laundrie scribbled his confession to the murder of his fiancée, Gabby Petito, on the pages of a spiral-bound notebook found near his remains in a Florida swamp last October.
In smeared blue ink, Laundrie wrote that killing the woman he loved was an act of mercy after she was allegedly injured in the Wyoming wilderness, according to Pages obtained by ABC 13.
“I don’t know the extent of Gabby’s pain (sic), just that she was in extreme pain,” he wrote.
“I ended her life, I thought it was merciful, it’s what she wanted, but now I see all the mistakes I’ve made. I panicked. I was shocked. But from the moment I decided to take her pain away, I knew I couldn’t go on without her.”
Petito, a 22-year-old from Long Island, embarked on a cross-country trip with her future husband on July 2, 2021. However, her family began to worry when Laundrie returned to his family home in North Port, Florida, alone. ., on Sept. 1. Petito’s disappearance sparked a massive search that culminated in the discovery of her body on Sept. 19 at a campground near Grand Teton National Park in northwestern Wyoming.
On one of the recently released notebook pages, recovered by the FBI last year, Laundrie recalls trying to race back to their vehicle one night before losing all the sunlight and getting too dark.
“I hear a splash and a scream. I could barely see. I couldn’t find her for a while, called her name,” he wrote, further explaining how he tried to carry his “soaked” fiancé back to their van in “freezing temperatures.
When he realized he couldn’t carry her all the way back, Laundrie said he had lit a fire and was doing his best to keep her warm.
“When I pulled Gabby out of the water, she couldn’t tell me what hurt. She had a small bump on her forehead that eventually got bigger. Her feet hurt, her wrist hurt, but she was freezing cold and shaking violently,” he said.
“While she was wearing her, she was constantly making pain noises. She lay down beside her and said little, faltering between violent jerks, panting in pain, begging for an end to her pain. She would fall asleep and I would shake her awake for fear she wouldn’t close her eyes if she had a concussion.”
Petito’s cause of death was ruled manslaughter by strangulation.
After killing her, Laundrie said he ran home to spend “every time I had left with my family.” They all went camping on the beach at Fort De Soto Park, south of St. Petersburg, and did not speak publicly about Petito’s disappearance.
Laundrie, who was named as a person of interest in the case, was reported missing on Sept. 17 and his skeletal remains were discovered just over a month later at Florida’s Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park. Authorities said he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“I committed suicide by this creek in the hope that animals would tear me apart,” he wrote in his latest post. “That it can make part of her family happy. Please pick up all my things. Gabby hated people who messed up.’
Steven Bertolino, the lawyer for the Laundrie family, said he released the notebooks after meeting the FBI and a lawyer from Petito’s family, where they collected Petito and Laundrie’s personal belongings.