Finding the Missing: The Gabby Petito Case & How Investigations Really Work

When someone goes missing, every minute matters—but most people don’t understand what actually happens behind the scenes.

In this episode of The Hidden Threads Podcast, Macky and Jus break down the case of Gabby Petito and use it as a real-world example of how missing person investigations unfold.

This isn’t just the story you saw in the headlines. This is the process.

We walk through how investigators build a timeline from digital evidence, how social media and public tips can become critical leads, and how something as simple as a piece of video footage can shift an entire search. From identifying last known locations to narrowing search areas and coordinating resources, this episode explains how cases move from uncertainty to answers.

We also talk about the role of the public, the challenges investigators face when information is limited or misleading, and why some cases get solved quickly while others don’t.

If you want to understand what really goes into finding a missing person—and how small details can lead to big breakthroughs—this episode pulls back the curtain.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

All right, Juice, we're recording here. Yay! We were talking midstream out as hit recording. That was nice of you. I'm glad I didn't say something that everybody else shouldn't have heard. We're talking about your old dog with the bad hips.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Yeah, you asked me if I killed him yet. No, I didn't kill him yet. I love my dog. I know, but sometimes you just gotta put him down. You know what I mean? Well, he's not to that point yet. He's still friendly and love you.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Yes. I don't he's the only person that likes you.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

So no, my daughter likes me. Does she? Yeah. But if if I lock them both in a trunk for 24 hours, when I open that trunk, that dog's still gonna be happy to see me.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

Okay. She's gonna be mad. She can come out swinging. So that's why I like dogs more than people. Both of my dogs are always happy to see me come in the house. Yes. For whatever reason. They let me it doesn't matter. One brings me a bone and the other one just wants me to pet his head, you know. So well, I got a we got a new horse. It's got laminitis. Well, inflammation inflammation of the hoof wall. So she's on lockdown right now. You know it's caused by sugar. What? Yeah, it's like type 2 diabetes for horses. Are you serious? It comes out in there and inflames around. She got the bone that's surrounded by the hoof. Hey, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Did you know the horse had this before you picked it up? No. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Well, it was she was okay, but then we got her home. But the the missus knew. No. No? We thought she had something wrong with her back leg, but then she was okay. And then this started up. We fed her too much sugar grain and it causes it. So but she came out of a crappy situation. Kind of deal. And we kind of over it's our fault. We overloaded her sugar with sugar. Right. Which happens sometimes. We didn't know. But she's okay. She's getting better. She was hopping around.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Spoiler rescue.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Yeah. Yeah. She's hopping around this morning. She's getting her feet trimmed tomorrow. I think she's gonna be fine. So but yeah, laminitis is a big deal. And your dog with the hip things, they get old, their hips don't work. Yeah, he has sciatica. My hips don't work good either.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Well, at your age, you're lucky anything works. That's right. That's right. Says the oldest guy here. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

How old are you? 58. 58, 5'8. James Comey, former FBI director. I love this. Uh he's probably not gonna get convicted of anything. Who cares? It's just fun watching him on TV, yeah, have to go to court. But anyway, that's what they'll start doing to us around here is just we're gonna send you to court. You're not gonna get convicted, but it's just gonna be a pain in your butt. Yeah. You know, that's kind of what happened to me in Huntsville.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Yeah, that was I got convicted, though, jeez. Yeah, that was that's still questionable, even by a judge I know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

An open gate. Yeah. It's just because it was a police officer co-worker, they had to do something. Yeah. If that had been your house, the judge wouldn't even look at it. He's like, get out of here. Y'all get out of here. No. Be nice. Yeah. Just because of the police officer, who, by the way, killed somebody when he was a teenager drinking and driving. And got he got a lot of grace. I got none. So, but anyway. You know, I kind of knew how that was gonna go. I could have pled guilty. I just wanted to take up a lot of time. Yeah. Is that what you would have done? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Yeah. You want to do something stupid? We'll play games.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Anyway. I've had speeding tickets, it cost me more than that, though. Yeah. So now I've got a misdemeanor on my record, Juice. Big time, big time crime. So, first time ever. 51 years.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

I have nothing on my adult record. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

51 years. That's my first other than speeding tickets. Ooh, you are old. That's right. Big five-one. All right. James Comey being a pain in his butt. We did we hammered down the animal helmets. The big thing we're talking about today, though, is putting together a timeline. Now we use digital timelines as well for missing people.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

And you were discussing that a little bit before we started. Tell me a little bit what you know about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

So I gotta I put together a list. There's a lot of things that you could look at it as a macro list or a micro list. Macro list is everything, your normal, what were they wearing? When was the last time you seen them? And a lot of people guess because they don't know exact times. They'll say, Oh, it was around six o'clock. Okay, well, that means it could be 5 30, it could be 6 15. It but you're trying to establish a timeline. So in the initial investigation starts, you're you're looking at everything on a macro level, the big things. Once you get those big things, now you want to start getting into the micro levels. And there's several areas that people forget about, but they're very important to bring to light because it could help the investigation, it could give you a timeline. Could be, you know, where's their phone? Do they ever leave their phone? What is their habits to and from work? Is there a favorite coffee shop that they like to stop and get a latte or a Starbucks or whatever? That's gonna establish micro details in your case. And without that, it's it's you're gonna be chasing your tail. Right. So everything that the family can remember last time they were on the computer, where's the computer? What time did you get your last call? You're you're you're very techie. How many messages you get on your phone, you grab it and you pull it over and you can look and see exactly what time it got there. All that stuff plays in to setting up your timeline. And then it breaks down once you get the phone. Now you've got a very detailed timeline. But there's a lot of things that go into it. So even if you think the detail is very, very small and it doesn't matter, it does matter. It helps establish a timeline.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

Right. Yeah. That's correct. Now I've worked missing several missing people cases, right? Usually missing teenagers, I guess. We had one where the girl, her parents had locked her down and said you because she was doing bad stuff online, right? Which is fine. She was 16, I believe. And they took her phone and all that and she took off. Police, if you're under over 12, they kind of like, uh, whatever, it's just a kid, teenager, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

There's no foul play. Well, uh yeah, I mean, maybe some cops are that way. I wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

If you were missing, it was a big deal.

SPEAKER_02 6:27

Yeah. They they treated it like a big deal for about 48 hours and then it kind of quit. Yeah. But anyway, I went to the girl's room. The cops did not. Is that a problem? Yeah. I went to her room and looked looking for basic stuff. Like, is there a note left? Does she have a diary? You know, that kind of stuff. And I went through her garbage in her bathroom. And she had ripped up, she had written out an address and ripped it up and thrown it into garbage, and I pieced it back together and got that address. Guess where she was? At that address at some boy's house. Right. And he was 20-something. Oh, he wasn't a boy then. He got arrested. I watched him get cuffs put on. But anyway, he was in trouble. But we got there, and the boy's parents was they said, Hey, we thought she was just a girlfriend coming over to hang out, all this stuff. And she wouldn't come with me. Obviously, I didn't want her to. So I got the sheriffs over and they handled it. Right. I didn't want her in my car. But uh I mean, come to find out they were doing meth, all kinds of stuff. It was bad. But under the parents' noses, right? Should those parents be held accountable for that? Yes. Absolutely. In my opinion. Their 20-year-old son got in trouble, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

But well, you can't tell me as a parent you have a son that's he's a man. He's he's in his 20s. He's a grown man. You can't tell me a 14-year-old girl walks in and you're gonna think she's in her 20s. Come on.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

Right. It was a big deal. And Sheriff's Department didn't want a lot of news on this because it was embarrassing. Because I'm a you know a retard from Fife and I figured it out. Right. They guess showed up a little bit. Right. Uh, but anyways, I didn't care about all that. I just wanted to go back and I think she's in a some kind of place now, or she went to off to get some life training, right? Right. You know what I mean? One of those places. I haven't talked to him in a while, so I don't know what she's doing now. But the Gabby Petito case. You remember that one? Yeah. I remember that one. She went on a she made a little convert, converted, made a little van into a little home. Yep. A little RV. Her and a little boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, they drove around and went through Arizona, Utah, some out west, and vlogged about it, which is cool. Young people doing young people's stuff, right? Now her she was retalk, she was reporting in every day, live and on texting her mom and dad and stuff, and then she quit doing it. Right. And that's when they reported. That was around September 11, 2021. And they found her pretty quick. And they found her body on September 19, 2021. All right. Now her boyfriend in that time frame had driven back home in her van without her. Right. To Florida, I believe.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:02

What would you think if your son Hey, where's the girl?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Yeah, where's Gabby?

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Where's the girl? You're you know, y'all been together forever, and now you're just driving her van back without Yeah, where's she at? They immediately went lawyered up.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

So of course they did. But the issue I have, if that were my son, and I even thought anything was fishy, he'd be at the police department.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Yeah, with the van. Here's your Trace Evidence van. Because you know there's a ton of trace evidence.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

And I don't know why parents they think the smartest thing to do is help their kid and lie when they've done things like this. Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

So they were uploading dash cam footage, all kind of footage via YouTube, right? YouTubers. Oh yeah, they were vlogging. It showed them uh parked at Spread Creek Campground over in Wyoming. And that pinpointed the exact as the last time anybody had seen her. Right. And they started circling and they found her, right? Found her remains. And they went off social media and phones. Once again, we're back to this digital trail. Text messages and social posts showed now this was a lack of digital evidence. It all of a sudden stopped, which is a big deal. So it pinpointed where it's still. But it's still digital evidence. It stopped right where they found her, pretty much. Right. Right. Messages sent after her likely time of death appeared to be suspicious. So he had her phone sending messages. So there was some evidence going out, but it was her saying, hey, mom, and it didn't sound like her, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Right. Even in text messages, you can tell if your kid is texting you or if somebody else is using their phone texting.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

So my kids don't text me unless they want food. Right. And that's it. Like I can text them a serious question, they don't answer unless there's food involved. So both of them. And I know how their habits, I know my wife's how she texts and stuff. If somebody grabbed that phone and started firing off stuff, I'd know it wouldn't hurt immediately.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

Wouldn't you do the same thing?

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Yeah, and I'd be strapped and I'd be in my truck and I'd be going to the exact location because I have my daughter GPS located on my phone.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Yeah, we've got ours on the Live 360 or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Whatever we got a phrase that she can use if something's not right. And I know, grab my gun and head her way.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Cheeseburger.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Could be anything.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

You know what we did. You know, you see all these direct action on movies and TV and stuff where when they find the person they're looking for, they say the falcon is in the cage or something. Yeah. You know what ours was? This was real. Cheeseburger. That was it. I said really we found what we were looking for. Yeah. Wow. Anyway, we're very technical on ice. I see that. T-burger. It's all that black ops stuff. Cheeseburger. Black ops. So Laundrie's movement. So you turn home in the van, refused to speak to the cops, disappeared shortly after being named a person of interest. All right. Very strong indicators, indicators of guilt. I don't see it here, but did they confiscate that van immediately, the police? No. They didn't get a warrant for it or not to gate.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

There's there's a lot of things that that I would have done differently had I'd have been investigating that.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

They might have requested a warrant, but the judge is like, no, there's some layers involved there.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Yeah. There there is, but it there's there was enough there to articulate why in the request that you needed that search warrant.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Right. And he went out on a hike in the middle of Florida, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Supposedly, yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

And killed himself. Uh he written did a written admission of guilt.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

And the parents did not help law enforcement at all.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

They helped them search afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Yeah. Okay. They didn't help law enforcement at all. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

Now there were multiple witnesses reported seeing them arguing on this trip out west.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

The police even pulled them over. Yeah. They were fighting and fussing on the side of the road, right? Yeah. And there was some domestic violence possibly there. And the cops is like, hey, Gabby, we can't make you go, but we can, won't you go with us? We'll get you everything calmed down and get you. And she said, No, I don't want to. So, I mean, she's a grown-up. Unless she's under arrest, they can't make you do anything. And they kind of said, Okay, we'll let them go. But there was more than that. There was, she complained about it online too, like, hey, we're not getting along good and all this stuff. Oh, yeah. I'm different, I guess, if I see my daughter out there and I'm this and I suspect, I don't even have to suspect if I have an inkling that this guy's not treating her well, I'm gone. I'm out and I'm gonna ramp run over him. Yes. Repeatedly. I'm gonna take my wife's car. I don't like her car. Yeah, yeah, I would probably use that one. She don't like it either. She's ready for a new one. But anyways, run over him into the bad car, right? So yeah. But uh they did document at the Moab incident where they were fussing and arguing. Oh, yeah. Emotional distress, physical marks. They should have, he should have been at least held for that, right? Yes. But she didn't want to press charges, right? Doesn't matter. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

That's well, I mean I said it doesn't matter. There are some states, I guess, still they're archaic, and the individual has to press the charges. Here in Alabama, in Florida, South Carolina, the victim don't press the charges. Law enforcement does. The state does, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Yeah. This is in Moab, Utah, so they probably have laws that which which wipe did you hit?

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Yeah. I'm just kidding. They don't do that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

But but the the I don't know. I if if I see my daughter, like you said, she makes one post that something's not right. We're not waiting around.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Or if she texts me and says, if she if one of mine texts me and said, Brian's being a butthole, I'm gonna go ask Brian why are you being a butthole in person?

SPEAKER_01 14:37

He may not be able to breathe as I'm asking him those questions. And it doesn't matter. My daughter could be, I don't know, 50 years old. I'm still her dad, and you're not gonna mess with my kid.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Right. I get you fuss and argue, but hands-on is yeah, not happening. Nope, it's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

And I I I know when I screwed up as a kid, dad took me over to the police department and turned me over. Yeah, that had to happen once. Yeah, he said, yep, they called, you're gone.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

I got a speeding ticket when I was 16 and he was friends with the old DA down here.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

And they took me like booked me and talked to me like I was going to prison. Yeah, scared the crap out of me. Oh, yeah. It didn't work, obviously, but anyway.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Yeah, it it didn't work with me either, but you know, it I times have changed, I guess. I don't know. But if my kid does something wrong, I'm turning my son, I'll turn him over. My daughter, I'm gonna have to hear what happened first.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Yeah, the girls get a leeway. She's getting the leeway. So I got two daughters. I don't have any sons. Those girls, since they've been born, can get away with murder with me. Now my wife's hard on them. Now, if we had a son, it'd be the opposite way. I'd my wife, you know, she'd be the cupcake with him. Oh, yeah. I'd be hard on him, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Well, I'm estranged, you know. My son estranged himself from me because you know I was like, and I was a mean dad. No, you just wanted him to act right. Yeah. Act like some buddies. He had spanked once in his life, said I beat him. Oh. You beat him. Yeah, he was he was picking on a little girl. Oh, you don't his buddies. Yeah, him and his buddies thought it'd be cool to pick on her. Well, I grew up with this girl's mother. She lived three houses down from me. Yeah. And I was hoping I'd leave, and I found out about it, and I'm like, you're gonna have to taste some pain. That's not how boys treat girls. No, he got spanked for it.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

All right. So, yeah, it was kind of the lack of digital evidence that busted this guy.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Yeah, it's it's still digital evidence, even if it's not there, but that's where we were talking about where you build that timeline. There's macro and micro. That's part of the the timeline that you're building right there. And the the macro is you can go and look and see where they were and watch their footsteps and everything else, and then it stopped. That's macro, right? You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

You know, we get people that hand us over this is just cheating spouse stuff, not as not as high level, you know. Right. And they say, My husband has been using this phone to talk to girls on Tinder. He's in the porn and all this. We get the phone, we run it through the frenzy, so there's not much on there. Right. Now we still suspect that they're cheating, but it's just not we didn't have any smoking gun on this device. No. And they're like, You didn't do it right.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Okay, okay, we'll make this. Why don't you go get the other phone he's using?

SPEAKER_02 17:26

And go take this, yeah. That's what I'm saying. There's another phone, he's doing more physical communication, meeting in person. Yeah, those kind of things. We've got another phone, is typically what it is. Oh, I haven't seen him with another phone. Duh. Okay, there's a reason why he's keeping it somewhere, you know. Yeah. We we had one where a guy would go to the UPS store every day and then then go back at night. All right. Yeah. He was getting his phone out of his uh hidden his secret safe deposit box, using it to talk to his chick. They would meet up, then he would take it back and then go home. So and that at first I was like, UPS stores is weird. And then we got the watch and went in with him, you know what I mean? Yeah, he's putting a phone in there, you know what I mean? So, and that's what it was. And we caught him. That was another one where the first the client's like, y'all ain't doing nothing. Yeah, well, we are so okay, yeah. And then they left us a glowing review after it was over. So Imagine that. But yeah, man, missing people is tough. You you're like, you're you're correct, the global view, the macro view to start. You're looking for the haystack, right? To search for the needle, right? Yeah, like the one young girl I found. I went into her room, which was I said, Well, there's gonna be some clues here, you know. And they never went in and did fingerprint. The police didn't go in there once. Yeah, I just I I don't know why. They talked to the mom at the police station, that was it. They never went into the house. And they she said, We offered them, we didn't request a warrant or nothing. We said, Come on in and look around.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

You know, we had one here in Fife. 14-year-old girl went missing when I was policing here. Oh, yeah. Went over, talked to the parents. First thing I did was go through the bedroom. Yeah, they it it was about a week because she she was hiding pretty good. It was about a week till we found her.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

And they don't always leave clues, but typically teenagers do. Oh yeah. Notes or something, or uh, they leave a phone. Their secret, we've had that one once where they left their hidden phone was still hidden in the bedroom. Right. And we got that and opened it up. Oh, look, they're on Snapchat. Here they are. So from another phone. Yeah, they're barring somebody and logged into Snapchat, and which gives you a location. Snapchat does. Oh yeah. The messages go away, but it'll give you a location.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Well, I'm not so sure those messages go away either. They still leave artifacts on a device, right? But they they you just can't open it and look at the message anymore.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

Oh, but there's still stuff there. Yeah. Uh I remember first when Snapchat came out, they were like, oh, the messages go away. And I remember my techie mind. I was like, I don't know about that. It still goes through a processor, you know. Yeah. But that's just me thinking out loud, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, digital clues again. This is a big digital day today, Juice. It is. Everything is. Yeah. But yeah, it was a shame what happened to Gabby. I think she was a good kid and got caught up with this fool that know didn't know how to treat women properly. And lost a life, ruined a family.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

So yeah, and a lot of women, I get it. They don't come forward for several reasons. They're scared, they're embarrassed. I mean, it it the list can go on and on. But the thing is, if if it's happening, you gotta say something. Yeah. There are agencies, there's people, your family, somebody's gonna help you get out of that situation. Yeah, of course. That that girl, with the history they had, the families knew it. They should have gotten around that situation.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

Right. And Laundrie's family didn't help at all.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

No. They shouldn't have let her go on any round the states U.S. camping trip with that guy. Well, she's in her 20s, so it still doesn't matter. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

If I got a if my daughter's in her 40s and I'm still alive, I'm gonna be asking, who is this guy?

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Yeah. Exactly. That's your job as a parent, is to protect your child. My dad tried protecting me when he the day he passed away. He didn't want me to know how serious it was. Five hours later, he was gone.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

As a parent, you protect your child regardless of the age.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Right. My dad, he had to park, I had to go over and tend to him a lot because he couldn't walk. He hated that morning thing. Me being over there the one I'd make we'd have fun with it. But, anyways, you know, yeah. I I even though something might have bothered me, I didn't let on like it did, you know what I mean? Yeah. But anyways, yeah, we protect our kids, and there's a little bit on missing persons. Anything else, choose?

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Yeah, just if for some reason you guys have a missing person, give as much detailed information as possible. Start writing stuff down. If you remember it later, turn it over. If you if you can think of anything as minor as you think it is, it could help establish that timeline.

SPEAKER_02 21:59

Absolutely. So all right, we're gonna get off here for now and we'll be back soon with some more episodes. That's all, Juice. That's all. Your show teams. Oh yeah. You gotta sign out. Oh, by Juice. Okay.