Gaby Petito wrote letters to the abusive boyfriend who would later kill her, asking him to stop calling her names, according to documents released by the FBI in her 2021 murder case.
In the letter, which is part of more than 350 pages of documents released by the FBI, Pettit tells Brian Landry that they were supposed to be a team.
“Stop crying and stop yelling at me because we are a team and I am with you,” Pettit, who was 22 when Landry killed her and left her body in Wyoming, wrote in an undated handwritten letter.
Pettit’s fiancé, Landry, killed her during the couple’s cross-country trip in the summer of 2021, which Pettit documented on YouTube and Instagram.
Attorneys who have previously represented the Pettit and Landry families could not immediately be reached for comment early Tuesday about the documents released by the FBI.
The search and mystery of what happened to her after Landry returned to his Florida home in a van without her has attracted widespread attention.
Pettit’s body was discovered in September of that year at Spread Creek Campground in Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming.
A month earlier, on August 12, police in Moab, Utah, responded to an incident that subsequent investigation revealed should have been treated as a domestic violence report involving the couple. The documents say a “strange text message” on Aug. 27 was the last contact he had with her.
Landry later committed suicide and admitted responsibility for Pettit’s death in a statement written in a notebook found near his body at a Florida nature preserve. A medical examiner determined that Landry committed suicide by gunfire. A Wyoming medical examiner determined that Pettit had been strangled.
The FBI file includes other documents, some of which are redacted, including evidence records and photos of mundane items like books, sneakers and a backpack.
Some of the documents detail reports of people who supposedly saw Pettit at a gas station in Utah.
Pettit’s disappearance received extensive media coverage, and there was criticism of the amount of coverage and attention given to the disappearance of a young white woman compared to other missing persons.
Pettit’s parents recently said they want more public attention to be focused on other missing people whose families also hope for the return of their loved ones.
“There wasn’t a demographic or race or country that we didn’t help out, so we’re going to give back in the same way,” Pettit’s father, Joe Pettit, told Tampa’s NBC affiliate WFLA.
Family members have been sharing information about other missing people on the website in hopes of raising more awareness of other missing people.
