For the first time, Brian Laundrie’s notebook in which he confessed to killing his fiancee Gabby Petito was released publicly, after eight months since Laundrie’s remains were found in the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park.
On Friday, Fox News the first outlet to publicly released the notebook said that Laundrie left his notebook in the Florida swamp where he committed suicide.
23-year-old Laundrie is believed to have committed suicide after he went missing following the murder of his fiancée Gabby Petito, whom Laundrie admitted to killing, according to the FBI.
“I ended her life,” Laundrie wrote in the note, which was recovered by the FBI in October, but the exact contents have not been released until now, according to Fox News.
“I thought it was merciful, that it is what she wanted, but I see now all the mistakes I made. I panicked. I was in shock,” he wrote.
Laundrie claimed that he wanted to put her fiancee Petito out of her pain and misery after she fell and hurt herself in the Wyoming wilderness, but said he immediately regretted after killing her.
“From the moment I decided, took away her pain, I knew I couldn’t go on without her,” he wrote.
Petito, 22, was found strangled to death in a camping ground near the Grand Tetons on September 19, 2021, after she went missing under mysterious circumstances during a road trip with Laundrie for several weeks. After Petito’s death, Laundrie disappeared and which led to the nationwide manhunt for the then-suspected killer.
Laundrie wrote, adding that he carried her as far as he could but had to stop to make a fire to keep them warm when he couldn’t make it back to the couple’s van.“Rushing back to our car trying to cross the streams of spread creek before it got too dark to see, to cold. I hear a splash and a scream.”
Laundrie returned home to his parents in North Port, Florida, on September 1, police said. According to the FBI, he also sent fake text messages from Petito’s phone in a bid to cover up the crime and stole her debit card.
Laundrie, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park near Sarasota, apologized and asked authorities to go easy on his family in the note.
“Please do not make life harder for my family,” he scrawled in the notebook. “They lost a son and a daughter. The most wonderful girl in the world. Gabby I’m sorry.”
He added, “I am sorry to my family. This is a shock to them as well terrible grief.”
Sources: TheDailyWire, FoxNews