The bounty hunter Hunden has called Brian Laundrie’s death ‘suspicious’ and described a number of inconsistencies in his disappearance and suicide.
The reality TV star suggested in his new memoir that Brian’s parents knew the location of his body all along after he killed his fiancee Gabby Petito in 2021 while on a cross-country trip.
Dog writes that it would have been a ‘miracle’ if Roberta and Chris Laundrie had really found their son’s remains by chance, as they claimed, in the 160-acre Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park in North Port, Florida.
‘I believe in miracles, but this really seems miraculous!’ Dog types snarky Nine Lives and Counting: A Bounty Hunter’s Journey to Faith, Hope, and Redemptionwhich will be released next month.
Dog joined in the search for Brian, but he killed himself before he was able to apprehend him, making him the first fugitive ever to elude the famous bounty hunter.
Dog says he is not convinced that Brian shot himself, and writes that it does not make sense that his suicide note was still legible despite allegedly being underwater for a month.
Dog The Bounty Hunter joined the manhunt for Brian Laundrie after he was wanted for killing his fiancée Gabby Petito in 2021
However, real name Duane Chapman, writes in his upcoming memoir that Laundrie’s death is ‘suspicious’ and points out several ‘inconsistencies’
Dog writes that it would have been a ‘miracle’ if Roberta and Chris Laundrie (pictured) had really found their son’s remains by chance, as they claimed
The case still bothers him because of ‘too many irregularities and inconsistencies that have not been satisfactorily explained’, he writes.
Petito, 22, of Blue Point, New York, was on a 2021 cross-country trip with Brian, 23, when her parents reported her missing in September of that year.
She had chronicled her journey on Instagram with her posts talking about how much she enjoyed the trips and living out of their van.
His memoir, Nine Lives and Counting: A Bounty Hunter’s Journey to Faith, Hope, and Redemption, is out next month
But after her parents didn’t hear from her for a month, they called the police, who later concluded that she was murdered by Laundrie in late August.
Laundrie disappeared soon after and became the prime suspect, even refusing to come forward when Petito’s body was found despite growing outrage from Petito’s family and the public.
Dog got involved in the case while Brian was still on the run and writes in the book that he interrupted his honeymoon in Florida with his sixth wife Francie Frane to go and knock on the Laudrie family home in North Port.
However, whose real name is Duane Chapman, writes that his daughter Barbara Katie died in a car accident when she was 23, the same age as Petito.
“I had an instant emotional connection with Gabby’s parents,” Dog writes.
After explaining this to Frane, he told her he wanted to knock on the family Laundries home ‘so bad’ and she agreed to go with him.
After knocking loudly on the property and no one answered, Dog became convinced he was nearby.
He writes: ‘I felt in my gut that the parents knew where their son was… I could feel that Laundrie was close.’
Dog told Francie: ‘That boy snuck home with his tail between his legs, and I’m going to find him – for Gabby!’
Cutting his honeymoon short, Dog began working on the case and “tracked a lot of leads” and set up a tip line run by former law enforcement agents he knew.
Dog’s suspicions grew even more when Roberta and Chris decided to ‘suddenly’ look for their son’s body in the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park, where his van had already been discovered.
Soon after, Brian’s remains were found along with a backpack and a notebook.
The reality TV star flew a banner with a message for Gabby Petito’s boyfriend: ‘Aloha Brian Laundrie’. The banner flew over the islands off the west coast of Florida
Dog is seen wading through water in the area around the campsite, where the laundries visited in the days before Petito was reported missing
Dog announced he was launching his own manhunt for Laundri days after Petito’s body was discovered. He posted footage of himself wading through Fort De Soto Park looking for him
However, questions were raised about how Laundrie’s suicide note confessing to Petito’s murder was in a wooden box in an area that had been under water for a month but was still legible.
The first discrepancy in the case, which Dog cites, is that reports said the area — which had been searched by law enforcement — had been under water earlier, but the water had receded.
Dog writes: ‘When I spoke to a group of Native Americans who lived nearby, they told me that the water had receded only about an inch in two months, so a body or a knapsack should still have been visible.’
A bigger problem was how Chris Laundrie could have led police to the exact spot where his son’s body was, even though it was off a trail inside a 160-hectare park, which was inside the 25,000-hectare Carlton Reserve.
Dog writes: ‘You read that right… I believe in miracles, but this really seems miraculous!’
However, questions also arose about how Laundrie’s suicide note, confessing to Petito’s murder, was in a wooden box in an area that had been underwater for a month, but was still legible.
He writes: ‘It was not a waterproof box, just an ordinary wooden box. Imagine this: Take a paper notebook and write in it. Put that notebook in a wooden jewelry box, then throw the box into a swimming pool and leave it underwater for a month.
‘Then pull the box out of the water and take out the notebook. What do you think the odds are that the paper hasn’t disintegrated or that a note you wrote on that paper would still be legible?
Dog writes that it seems ‘far-fetched’, like the idea that Brian had shot himself in the left side of the head with a .38 pistol.
‘This is strange as Brian was right-handed,’ writes Dog. ‘It does not follow the usual pattern of suicide by gunshot’.
Dog writes: ‘It all felt suspicious to me…to this day I think there are too many irregularities and inconsistencies that have not been satisfactorily explained. Officially the case is closed, but I feel we don’t have all the answers.’
Chris Laundrie led police to the exact spot where his son’s body was, even though it was off a track inside a 160-hectare park, which was inside the 25,000-hectare Carlton Reserve
Dog writes: ‘It all felt suspicious to me…to this day I think there are too many irregularities and inconsistencies that have not been satisfactorily explained’
Laundrie’s parents were never charged with a crime, but late last year they settled a civil lawsuit filed by Petito’s parents Joseph Petito and Nichole Schmidt for undisclosed terms.
The lawsuit alleged that the laundry had intentionally inflicted emotional distress on Petito because they knew about Gabby Petito’s death in August 2021 and the location of her body.
But instead of telling the authorities, they simply issued a statement expressing ‘hope’ that she would be ‘reunited with her family’, giving the Petito family false hope that she was alive.
During the case, the Petitos submitted to the court a letter written by Roberta, which was later found by detectives in Brian’s backpack next to his dead body.
In the note, she told her son: ‘If you are in prison, I will bake a cake and put a file in it. If you need to dispose of a body, I’ll show up with a shovel and garbage bags.’
On the envelope were the words ‘burn after reading’.
Roberta later claimed she wrote it before her son went on his road trip with Petito and that it was meant to be ‘jokey’, but given subsequent events she admitted it ‘sounds awful’.
The complaint in the case stated that Brian told his parents in a phone call on Aug. 29, 2021, that he frantically told them that Petito was “gone” and asked for a lawyer.
While the Petitos searched for their daughter, Roberta and Chris were accused of going on vacation with Brian in Florida.