Brian Laundrie’s parents rail against ‘inaccuracies’ in Gabby Petito documentary – but don’t point to anything specific
An attorney representing Brain Laundrie’s parents has slammed the “many inaccuracies” in Netflix’s new docuseries chronicling their son’s final days with fiancé Gabby Petito – but stopped short of naming a specific problem.
American Murder: Gabby Petito, a three-part docuseries released on Monday, reveals new interviews and previously unseen journal entries and text messages from the case.
Laundrie quietly returned — alone — to his parents’ Florida home, driving the van that the couple used during their 2021 cross-country trip. Petito’s family reported her missing after they failed to get any information from his family, and her body was found weeks later in Grand Teton National Park. She had been strangled.
A month later, Laundire’s body was found in a Florida nature reserve. In a suicide note, he admitted to Petito’s murder.
And now, attorney Steve Bertolino claims the series has ‘many inaccuracies’ and ‘omissions of fact.’
“One perspective depicted as the ‘truth’ as seen through their lens. Similar to Republicans and Democrats fighting it out lately,” Bertolino told TMZ and The US Sun.
“Each side believes their perspective is correct. Hard to see through the lens of the other with all the noise and distrust. To be clear though, there were no contradictions by my clients Chris and Roberta Laundrie.”
Bertolino continued: “The documentary contained many inaccuracies, incorrect juxtapositions of timelines, and misstatements and omissions of fact — perhaps deliberate to capture their ‘truth,’ perhaps due to simple error. We all know Brian took Gabby’s life and Brian then took his own as well. Let the parents of both Gabby and Brian mourn them in peace.”
He did not specify which details were allegedly inaccurate.
The Laundries declined to participate in the docuseries, filmmakers Julia Willoughby Nason and Michael Gasparro, told US Weekly earlier this week.
“We did reach out to his family. It’s hard to open up about this [topic] for that side of the family. So we made best efforts to reach out to them,” Nason said.
“We reached out to the family, to their lawyer and to Brian’s sister,” Gasparro added. “But we respected the fact that they didn’t want to participate and that’s it.”
So the filmmakers relied on Petito’s family and friends, including a mutual friend of both Petito and Laundrie, to help tell the story. Laundrie’s parents also feature on police body cam footage.
“In all of our docs, we try to go for the source and the people closest to either the victims who are not alive or the people themselves who have experienced this,” Nason explained. “That’s really where we start in terms of sifting through all the data and information that comes with these huge stories.”
