Gabby Petito was a 22-year-old travel vlogger on YouTube who went missing in late August 2021 while on a cross-country road trip with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie. Gabby was last known to be in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Her family reported her missing on September 11, 2021, after not hearing from her for several days. The case quickly drew national attention, leading to extensive search efforts. Authorities found her remains on September 19, 2021, in a remote area of the park. The autopsy later confirmed that she died from blunt force injuries and strangulation.
The documentary American Murder: Gabby Petitio produced by Netflix which came out February 17th, 2025, covers Petito and Laundries’ tracks and what may have truly happened, including where Laundrie went after her death and why Laundrie didn’t report her. It undercovers all the darkness and lies behind Petito’s death.
Because of the gained popularity and curiosity in Petito’s case, they had numerous cops, FBI agents, and helicopters exploring areas from where the couple had gone throughout their road trip. As a result, many other bodies had been found from various other missing persons reports. People like Lauren Cho: a 30-year-old who went missing in June of 2021 and was later found in October of 2021 in Yucca Valley and Josue Calderon: a 33-year-old found the same day as Lauren along the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina stabbed to death. Along with this, Jelani Day: a 25-year-old, went missing in August of 2021 and was found in September 2021 in the Illinois River, and Daniel Robinson: a 24-year-old who went missing in June of 2021 but was never found. However, his car was found in a ravine. Along with many other bodies that were located because of these search parties.
But what do these missing people have in common? They’re all people of color. Lauren Cho a South Korean, Josue Calderon of Spanish descent, Jelani Day and Daniel Robinson are both African-Americans, and many more missing people were of Native American descent.
With all of these missing reports being updated and families being told of their missing family members, people became informed about the other people who were found. This brought about anger among viewers wondering how Gabby’s case could be so much more important than all of these other people’s cases, especially as the majority were colored people. It became almost impossible to miss the difference in the importance of their cases.
This sparked the theory of “Missing White Woman Syndrome,” where white crime victims receive more public attention than other demographics. This has been a commonly used term since a little before 2004 by Gwen Ifill, at a journalist conference, and Sherri Parks, an American studies professor who used it at her college University of Maryland. Its use in this situation caught the parents by surprise.
Petito’s biological father, Joseph Petito, eventually worked on a TV series called Faces of the Missing and he noticed it’s a real thing. He focuses on how many cases don’t get as much popularity or as much help: “Noticing stories that not only touch us but don’t really look like us,” says Petito on CNN.
However, several internet comments are bringing forth the theory that maybe Petito got more publicity because her family got her case out there more than the other families did. Nevertheless, the cases for those other missing people were already made so in that sense, why should families have to beg for people to find their family members?
