Brian Laundrie likely committed suicide before manhunt even began: Police



Brian Laundrie likely killed himself before authorities even began looking for him, police said, according to a Saturday report from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Laundrie's partial remains were discovered in Florida's Carlton Reserve following a lengthy manhunt.

What are the details?

Sarasota County Sheriff Kurt Hoffman said that though Laundrie's initial autopsy results were inconclusive, he believed that it was possible Laundrie committed suicide soon after fiancée Gabby Petito's disappearance, later found to be her murder.

Hoffman said that Laundrie, a person of interest in Petito's strangulation killing, most likely took his own life before local authorities began seeking his whereabouts on Sept. 15.

Petito's body was discovered four days later on Sept. 19, and Laundrie's remains were discovered on Oct. 20.

"That guy went out there and by all accounts probably committed suicide, and he was right out there where we thought he was," Hoffman said, according to the outlet. "There was four feet of water out there at the time."

Friday night at a law enforcement panel at the South County Tiger Bay Club, North Port Police Chief Todd Garrison added that his team initially mistook Laundrie's mother — who was wearing a ball cap and carrying a backpack — for her son while keeping watch over the family's home on Sept. 15, leading the agency to believe that Laundrie was at home when he wasn't.

The mistake, according to report, initially led the chief to tell local media that he knew Laundrie's whereabouts, a statement that prompted him to apologize on Friday.

"The surveillance team told me, 'Chief, Brian was seen going inside the house,'" Garrison said. "Now, we know that, by the time we became the lead agency, Brian had already left the house and presumably had already been deceased out in the Carlton Reserve."

He continued, "Later on, we found out that Brian had left the house and now the parents on Friday wanted to report him missing. There was nobody more surprised about that than me. In fact, when my officers went out to the house to do the report with the FBI, I sat with the deputy chief in my office, hoping that they would find Brian hiding in a back bedroom. I was hoping, maybe it was a ploy. It wasn't."

Garrison lauded the department for officers' work.

"I can tell you one thing," Garrison said, "the amount of work that was done, behind the scenes, 24 hours a day, from our team and the FBI team working on the second floor of the police department, was phenomenal work."

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Brian Laundrie’s parents break their silence on son: Brian was 'grieving,' 'very upset' when he left the family's home for the final time — 2 days after Gabby Petito was declared missing



Chris and Roberta Laundrie — who remained mum after their son went missing into the Florida wilderness on the heels of Gabby Petito's disappearance and subsequent murder — now say that their son was "very upset" when he left the family home and disappeared.

Authorities on Thursday determined that the human remains discovered in a remote area of a Florida nature reserve are that of Brian. A cause of death has yet to be announced and may take some time to determine due to the condition of the body.

Brian was the only person of interest in the strangulation murder of Petito, whose remains were discovered on Sept. 19 in the Teton-Bridger National Forest in Wyoming.

What are the details?

The parents of Brian Laundrie have finally broken their silence on their son's disappearance and apparent death.

In a statement on the news, family attorney Steven Bertolino said, "I can tell you Brian was very upset when he left."

According to reports, Chris felt helpless when he couldn't stop his son from fleeing the family home.

"Chris conveyed to me several times he wished he wouldn't have let him go, but he couldn't stop him," Bertolino added. "Brian is a grown man. He was 22 years old. He wanted to walk out the door, he was entitled to walk out the door."

For the first time, we are hearing about the moments before Brian Laundrie left his parent’s home on Sept. 13 to go… https://t.co/gldnFSeeNB

— Kristin Thorne (@KristinThorne) 1634869234.0

What else?

According to a report from Fox News, Brian was "grieving" in the days before he vanished.

Chris admitted that his son was upset when he left for the Sept. 13 hike — which took place two days after Petito was reported missing — from which he never returned.

On Thursday, Bertolino told Fox News that he "immediately informed the FBI that his client had failed to come home."

"North Port PD was under the assumption that Brian was home, and so was the FBI when they got a tip on Friday that Brian was in Tampa, and they wanted to meet with us on Friday," Bertolino said. "I was shocked and said, 'That's good. You found him in Tampa,' and they said, 'What do you mean? I thought he's at the house.' I said, 'No, I told you the other day he never came home.'"

Bertolino did not clarify about Brian's mental or emotional state when he left the family home on Sept. 13, or what he was grieving over.

Bertolino also added that the Laundrie family is suffering a great loss, comparable to that of the Petito family.

"These are parents that are suffering," he said. "Now, I understand that whatever happened or whatever didn't happen ... this is tragic for two families. And anybody with a child, and anybody with a sense of humanity can understand the frustration that both families feel on that point."

FBI Confirms Brian Laundrie's Remains Found in Florida Reservewww.youtube.com