Gabby Petito’s mother has shared her perspective on a potential third party’s involvement following the murder of her daughter by Brian Laundrie.
Nichole Schmidt disclosed ‘new information’ that she recently received from an unnamed source.
During her appearance on the podcast The Squeeze, hosted by Twilight actor Taylor Lautner and his wife Taylor, Schmidt put forward significant allegations about Laundrie’s parents, Roberta and Christopher Laundrie.
Previously, she had suggested they were responsible for Laundrie’s death and has now expanded on her theory regarding their involvement in his reported suicide.
“I actually just found out some new information a few days ago,” Schmidt stated.
“There was [a person] – I actually don’t know their name, which is better – that was at the house when Brian was missing and, I would say he was hiding – he wasn’t missing, but he was actually dead. But his room was completely gutted and renovated. None of his things were there anymore. It was gone.”
She further alleged that during the week her daughter disappeared, police visited the Laundrie home, and ‘all his things were gone’, suggesting that officers might have been there to use sniffer dogs to track their son.
“The room was completely empty, just gone,” Schmidt continued.
Discussing her source, Schmidt claims they were in the home at the time and later expressed to her that they felt something was ‘wrong’ with Roberta.
“They said that there’s something wrong with that mother she’s clearly not mentally well, and I’m like that’s just add it to the list because I didn’t even know about that,” she claimed.
In July 2021, Gabby and Laundrie set out on a cross-country road trip, living out of a camper they fashioned from a Ford Transit van.
Their Instagram-worthy romance was misleading, as the couple soon found themselves at the heart of a criminal case.
An autopsy revealed that Gabby died from ‘blunt force injuries’ to her head and neck and ‘manual strangulation’, believed to have occurred on either August 27 or 28, 2021.
A little under a month later, Laundrie’s suicide was reported, thought to have taken place on September 21. The next month, his remains were found, with a medical examiner determining he died from a gunshot wound to the head.
On Lautner’s podcast, Schmidt asserted: “I will say straightforward, I don’t think he killed himself. I think either his father or [his mother] did. That’s just my opinion, it’s not a fact, it’s an opinion.”
LADbible Group reached out to Steven Bertolino, the attorney for the Laundrie family, but he declined to provide a statement.