Gabby Petito strangled 3-4 weeks before body found, coroner says
- Petito had been on a road trip with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, who returned without her and has since gone missing
- An autopsy showed she was killed three to four weeks before her body was found in Wyoming
Gabby Petito, the young US woman who vanished on a road trip with her fiancé and later turned up dead in Wyoming, was killed by strangulation, a local coroner said on Tuesday.
Teton County Coroner Dr Brent Blue, whose office had already ruled Petito’s death a homicide, said she was killed about three to four weeks before her body was found on September 19. Her partner, Brian Laundrie, 23, has been missing for nearly a month.
Petito, 22, was last seen alive on August 26. Her body was discovered on September 19 near the remote Spread Creek Dispersed Campground in Bridger-Teton National Forest in western Wyoming.
The disappearance last month of the young woman during a cross-country road trip with her boyfriend captivated the country, first as an internet sensation and then as a tabloid mystery that grew more enigmatic by the day.
Petito and Laundrie, who lived with Laundrie’s parents in North Port on Florida’s west coast, embarked on their trip in early July from New York’s Long Island, where her parents live.