Gabby Petito, who was 22 years old at the time of her loss, vanished as she was traveling across the nation with her fiance Brian Laundrie in the summer of 2021. It has been more than three years since her unfortunate passing.
The corpse of the deceased woman was found on September 19 in Wyoming, close to a campsite.
The body of Laundrie, who had committed himself, was discovered on October 20 in a natural preserve in North Port, Florida, close to the residence of his family. Within close proximity, the FBI found a rucksack that contained what they referred to be a notepad that “claimed responsibility” for the murder of Gabby, who had been strangled.
“Year three hit me the hardest so far for some reason, and I know there’s never going to be closure,” Gabby’s mother Nichole Schmidt says in an interview with People magazine after the fact. I guess the thing that really gets me is the fact that it has been three years since the last time I saw or heard her voice, and that is a pretty difficult number to bear.
In addition, she says, “We are never going to have the feeling that we have justice.” Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done to make us feel better; but, there is something that we can do to go on with her legacy.
Nichole, together with her husband Jim Schmidt, Gabby’s father Joe Petito, and Joe’s wife Tara, discovered a sense of purpose and healing after their daughter’s loss. They did this by using the immense notoriety caused by their daughter’s case to attempt to prevent other families from experiencing tragedies similar to their own.
In addition to establishing more stringent rules and protocols that control how the police react to accusations of intimate partner abuse and missing individuals, the two spouses established the Gabby Petito Foundation with the goal of increasing awareness about domestic violence.
In addition to this, they have been advocates for the work of organizations such as the National Domestic Violence Hotline, the Black and Missing Foundation, and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Relatives.
As she puts it, “We have the ability to provide ourselves with the motivation to keep going and to stop being sad all the time.” I have no doubt that Gabby would have been opposed to it.
Nevertheless, it might be difficult for them to go with their lives despite their sadness.
The video of Laundrie’s parents, Christopher and Roberta, refusing to speak to North Port police officers who arrived at their Florida home on September 11, 2021, asking about the whereabouts of the 22-year-old aspiring YouTube blogger, was released by the police body cam last week, as reported by FOX News. The officers had arrived in response to a report of a missing person.
Christopher explains, “I’m not talking to anyone at the moment.”
Christopher gave the following response when he was questioned by a law enforcement official when the last time he saw his son and Gabby: “Brian is here, and that is all I am going to say.”
Nichole adds, “I watched it,” in reference to the video from the body cam. “That made me feel ill. You don’t have any empathy. There is no sympathy. I shed tears… Simply said, it continues on. Stuff is continually being released, and even though it has been three years, there is still more to come. To put it another way, the infomercial is like, “Oh, wait, there’s more.” I’m thinking to myself, “When is this going to end?”
Nichole, who recently traveled to Wyoming with Tara to speak at a luncheon related to domestic violence for the domestic violence advocacy group SAFE Project and sat on a panel at a National Center for Victims of Crime panel in Portland, stated that the foundation is currently working toward the goal of developing a domestic violence awareness education program for schools. Students from anywhere throughout the nation would be able to participate in the program, and schools would not be required to pay for it.
She adds, “We want every child to have access to education about healthy relationships, self-respect, boundaries, healthy friendships, and just learning everything there is to know about how to be a healthy person.” “I believe that once we are able to have a program that is consistent across the country, it will not happen overnight, but we will see it change in a few generations down the line — where people are going to be better for that after learning about it at such a young age,”
To achieve this objective, the foundation is seeking to make use of technology to their advantage. “We want to use maybe some module-based online platform where it would be easy for schools to just bring in and eventually turn it into something where teachers are trained and it’s mandatory in the schools from early ages all the way through those high school years,” she adds. “We want to use it in a way that would make its implementation simple for schools.”
Regarding the issue of domestic violence, Nichole states, “It’s an epidemic.” It is a catastrophe that affects the whole planet. “We are doing everything in our power to slow it down and put a stop to it in its tracks, and the only way we are going to be able to accomplish this is by reaching out to the younger generation.”
It is essential to raise awareness.
An further statement made by Nichole is that “I learn what is going on in the world and I see the constant murders and the amount of missing people that have no attention paid to them.” As time goes on, I find myself becoming more and more enraged, and this is what motivates me. Not only is Gabby responsible for her own murder. I want to fight for all of these other victims and survivors, as well as everything else that I see, and I want to fight for them. I want to be their voice, and if people are going to listen to what I have to say, I will provide them the opportunity to do so.