CrimeOnline’s Nancy Grace finds Roberta Laundrie’s “burn after reading” letter to Brian Laundrie “very bizarre” and doesn’t buy the mother’s explanations that she wrote and gave it to her son before he and Gabby Petito left on their cross-country trip and, of course, before he killed Petito.
A Florida judge on Wednesday ruled against Christopher and Roberta Laundrie’s attempts to keep the letter out of evidence in a lawsuit filed against them by Petito’s parents, Joe Petito and Nichole Schmidt, alleging that the Laundries knew about Petito’s death — and that their son had killed her — and kept it from them, as CrimeOnline reported. Petito and Schmidt’s attorney promptly released the letter to news outlets after the ruling.
The letter includes such gems as ““If you’re in jail, I will bake a cake with a file in it” and “If you need to dispose of a body, I will show up with a shovel and garbage bags.”
“The Laundries claim this letter was written before Gabby was killed,” Grace told Fox News. “The Petito family begs to differ.”
“Now there’s a lot in there about what she would do for him, but I don’t know a lot of mothers that would talk about digging up and burying a dead body or bringing a shovel or a plastic garbage bag,” Grace said.
Grace she’s “fine with all that, bizarre as it might be.”
“She goes on to write ‘burn after reading,’ and she tries to explain that away by saying they had a writing book, and it was called “Burn After Writing,” and this is a way to encourage self expression,” she said. “That falls really flat with me.”
Grace notes that the disclosure comes as “part of civil suit between the Petitos and the Laundries, not a criminal case.”
“However, I wonder if authorities are looking at the Laundries in any capacity as to aiding and abetting or encouraging Laundrie’s trek across the country, leaving Gabby’s body behind,” she said. “So far, no.”
Petito’s body was found in September in Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest, weeks after Brian Laundrie had returned home to Florida without her. He vanished before her body was found, and his body was found in a Florida swamp in October, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He confessed to killing her in an entry in a journal found near his body.
The letter from his mother that was released Wednesday was found in items taken from the Laundrie home by the FBI during their initial search after Petito was reported missing, not in his backpack with his body, as some news outlets report.
Roberta Laundrie provided a statement to Fox News after the letter was released repeating her claims that the letter pre-dated Petito’s death.
Grace also briefly discussed word that Idaho college murder suspect Bryan Kohberger’s parents have been subpoenaed to testify in a grand jury reportedly investigating the disappearance and death of Dana Smithers, a 45-year-old mother who vanished a year ago in the same Pennsylvania county where the Kohbergers live. Smithers’ body was found earlier this month.
“Kohberger claims he has an alibi. I’m not sure I buy that,” she said, noting that Kohberger left for college in Washington in August, months after Smithers disappeared.
For the latest true crime and justice news, subscribe to the ‘Crime Stories with Nancy Grace’ podcast.
[Featured image: Fox News screenshot]
