[imagesource: AP]

It has now been confirmed that the body found in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, on the eastern edge of Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park, was that of 22-year-old Gabby Petito.

According to Teton County Coroner Dr. Brent Blue, the manner of death was ruled a homicide in his preliminary findings.

The FBI has stated that “the cause of death remains pending final autopsy results” and law enforcement is still searching for Petito’s fiancé, 23-year-old Brian Laundrie.

He was last seen more than a week ago. While he has yet to be named as an official suspect in Petito’s death, the evidence is starting to stack up against him.

CNN reports that before Petito disappeared, her conversations with her mother appeared to reveal she had “more and more tension” with Laundrie.

Her social media posts stopped in late August, and she was reported missing by her family on September 11.

A couple has now come forward, saying they picked up a hitchhiking Laundrie on August 29 in Wyoming, not far from where Petito’s remains were found.

He said he had been camping by himself for days, claiming that Petito was at their van working on social media posts:

Laundrie offered to pay $200 for the ride before he even got into the vehicle, [Miranda] Baker said.

Laundrie, who was wearing a backpack, pants and hiking boots, “looked clean and didn’t smell bad,” and was very polite, Baker said. Laundrie told them he had been camping “basically in the middle of nowhere” at a site outside the Grand Teton National Park, near the Snake River, she said…

Once Laundrie found out Baker and her boyfriend were going to Jackson Hole instead of Jackson, he got agitated, asked that the vehicle stop, and got out near the Jackson Dam, according to Baker. She said they dropped him off less than 30 minutes after picking him up.

Further details have also emerged regarding how law enforcement located Petito’s remains.

Jessica Schultz, a graphic designer who was at the Bridger-Teton National Forest in late August, reached out to the FBI “about a strange man she says she had encountered driving a van in the area”.

She told authorities he was “acting weird” according to The Daily Beast:

The man, who Schultz described as “generic” looking… was driving a white van very slowly down a narrow road in a camping area of the forest on Aug. 26.

“He was just acting weird,” Schultz told the [San Francisco] Chronicle of the encounter. “You know, when you’re out in the middle of nowhere, your hackles go up when you see something that’s out of the ordinary.”

“He was very awkward and confused and it was just him, there was no Gabby,” Schultz said.

Schultz then saw the van parked in the same spot the next day, although there was no sign of anybody camping.

It remained there for several days, said Schultz, but there were no “signs of actual life”.

On August 29, the van finally moved on.

After seeing news coverage featuring Laundrie’s picture, Schultz said she realised he was the “weird” guy she’d seen.

“My friend texted me a picture of the hat on the dashboard and I just lost my s—,” Schultz told The Chronicle. “And that’s when I called the FBI (on Thursday) and said, ‘Guys, look at Spread Creek.’”

…The potential sighting of Laundrie in the camping area would have occurred just a few days before he returned to his home in Florida in Petito’s van, offering no explanation as to why she was not with him.

The search for Laundrie continues, as does the intense media coverage of every aspect of the case, with some dubbing it ‘‘missing white woman syndrome’.

Nobody should lose sight of the fact that at the centre of the story is a life cut tragically short and a grieving family.

[sources:cnn&dailybeast]