The lawyer for Gabby Petito’s parents alleges that the mother of Petito’s alleged killer, Brian Laundrie, offered to lend her a shovel after the murder in Wyoming, while her legal team says it was written before the young couple left on an ill-fated cross-country journey. travel.
Pat Reilly, the attorney for the Petito family, wrote to Laundrie’s attorney, Matt Luka, in a Dec. 5 letter about the scope of documents Laundrie’s parents would be required to submit in a civil lawsuit.
The correspondence between Reilly and Luka became public after the former attached it as evidence in a December 20 court filing, and appears to refer to a letter Reilly had previously tried to obtain over the summer.
“This application would certainly also include the note that Roberta Laundrie wrote to Brian Laundrie, [in] who offered to bring a shovel to help bury the body,” Reilly wrote. “The note was delivered to the custody of Mr. Bertolino on Friday, June 24, 2022 by the FBI.”
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Chris and Roberta Laundrie at Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park the morning police discovered their son’s skeletal remains.
(Michael Ruiz/Fox News Digital)
That’s the day Steve Bertolino, the Laundromats’ longtime attorney, and Reilly met with the FBI in Tampa.
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Investigators turned over several items to Bertolino at the time, including the handwritten confession of Brian Laundrie, found near his remains at Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park, 10 minutes from his parents’ North Port home, on Oct. 20. of 2021.
Both attorneys at the time told Fox News Digital that other documents were served.
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Those included what Reilly described as a letter titled “burn after reading.”
Screenshots from the police body camera in Moab, Utah on August 12, 2021 show the couple after a domestic violence call.
(Moab Police Department)
“I don’t feel comfortable summarizing the letter,” he told Fox News Digital at the time. “The content is very specific and is best read when available. If my belief as to the time it was written is accurate, it shows that at least Roberta Laundrie knew of Gabby’s murder before Gabby’s body was located. The rest of the notebook contained letters to His family.”
Roberta Laundrie’s letter was undated, he added, but “the contents of the letter seem to indicate that it was written after Gabby’s death.”
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Bertolino has maintained that the letter was written long before the murder. He was named in the Petito family’s amended lawsuit earlier this month.
Chris and Roberta Laundrie push a shopping cart on October 19, 2021, the day before their son’s remains were found in the area they had been telling investigators to search for for weeks.
(Michael Ruiz/Fox News Digital)
“Attorney Reilly and his clients are entitled to make whatever they want in court filings, but their claims are not based on fact but only on conjecture,” he told Fox News Digital on Friday. “The letter in question was written before Brian and Gabby left Florida and has nothing to do with this case.”
He said Reilly was trying to “further sensationalize” the case and “take unrelated comments out of context.”
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Reilly did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment. Neither did Luka, another Florida-based lawyer for Laundrie.
Chris and Roberta Laundrie have not been charged with any crimes related to Petito’s death.
