Remains of Brian Laundrie Found and Identified

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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17 Responses

  1. Kolohe says:

    ‘the full truth’ seems to me that he killed her, then he killed himself. Not really more mysterious than that.Report

  2. Dark Matter says:

    Parents led the police to more or less where he was. That implies for all the talk about them not helping the police, they were.

    It’s impossible to give this kind of attention to every missing person. For all the talk about how we ignore missing people of color, we ignore almost all missing people. Florida, by itself, has 1252 missing people this year (total in nation this year 15k+). Ergo Florida has had another 400 go missing since Gabby was found dead. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/missing-persons-by-stateReport

    • Kazzy in reply to Dark Matter says:

      Wouldn’t that also imply they were in communication with him?Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to Kazzy says:

        Cops said he’d been dead a long time. They needed his dental records to ID him. Odds are he’s been dead longer than we’ve known for sure that she was.

        I suspect he had a favorite “spot” in that area and his parents knew about it. He went there, killed himself, that spot then became inaccessible (under water until very recently), then we found her body and the hunt was on.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter says:

          They needed his dental records to ID him.

          Not to be morbid, but I wonder if this is because the, erm, rest of his skull was strewn about.Report

          • fillyjonk in reply to Jaybird says:

            I assumed he was consumed at least in part my one of the many scavenger/predator species out there.

            this is a sad story. I know there are a lot more missing people who don’t get this level of attention (there was a graduate student who attended my grad-school alma mater who was apparently recently abducted and killed and some pretty horrifying details have got out). But it does seem the “pretty young white woman” is the type of missing person who makes the news stories.Report

            • John Puccio in reply to fillyjonk says:

              This became a global story for a lot of reasons far more significant than the victim being a pretty white girl. It combined the zeitgeist of the day (social media influencer) on the Great American Road Trip that turned into a missing person case with a fugitive presumingly on the run. All fueled by tons of gorgeous content (video and images) that documented the entire journey. Sure, her being a PWG could only help, but this was always going to be gigantic story. You couldn’t invent a better Dateline episode.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to John Puccio says:

                I assume luck played a big roll too. Slow news day, people started paying attention because people were paying attention.

                We have had more than a thousand people disappear in the last month. Highly likely that she wasn’t the prettiest girl.

                Her odds of going viral were better than most but she still beat long odds.Report

        • Dark Matter in reply to Dark Matter says:

          Timeline: https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/22/us/brian-laundrie-parents-law-enforcement/index.html

          Her remains were found September 19, 2021

          Parents claim he disappeared Sept 13 or 14 (sources differ), telling them he was going into the Nature Reserve. Parents found his car on the 14 on the rev and drove it home on the 15th.

          They reported him missing September 17, 2021 (two days before she was found).

          If you’re law enforcement, are seeing his car at the parents’ home, and in general believe the parents are helping him hide and actively know where he is, then them telling you he’s on the nature reserve somewhere isn’t going to be believable.

          Then we have various “reports” of him being spotted at various parts of the country.

          Odds are good the parents were cooperating, they just knew less than the cops wanted and lawyered up pretty early.Report

  3. Brandon Berg says:

    I’m not particularly interested in the Laundrie/Petito saga on its own merits, but I’m fascinated by the fact that the search just randomly turned up several other bodies. How many more bodies are just lying out there waiting to be found the next time a pretty girl gets killed?Report