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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Maroosha Muzaffar

New video emerges of Gabby Petito’s final moments

AP

Gabby Petito is seen just hours before she vanished in chilling new surveillance video from a Wyoming Whole Foods store that emerged more than a year after her remains were found.

The video is dated 27 August 2021, the day when Petito was last seen in public with her fiancé Brian Laundrie.

The surveillance video footage showed the white Ford Transit van in which the couple was travelling cross country, pulling up into the parking lot of the grocery chain store around 2.11pm.

Prior to this, they were seen at the Merry Piglets Tex-Mex restaurant in town.

The video from the Whole Foods in Jackson, obtained by Fox News Digital, showed that shortly after leaving the eatery, the couple pulled into the grocery store parking lot. They waited for about a minute before stepping out of the car. The couple ended up spending almost 15 minutes inside Whole Foods.

Laundrie was seen wearing a hat and sunglasses inside the store, with hands inside his trouser packets, while Petito had her arms crossed over her chest.

The video doesn’t have any audio. But at one point during the 15 minutes that they spent in the store, Petito could be seen picking up a packet of cheese which she kept in her tote bag.

They left through a doorway different from the one through which they arrived.

The couple ended up spending about 20 minutes in their vehicle, before leaving the parking lot for the road that led to the Bridger-Teton National Forest campsite where Petito’s remains were later found.

Her death was ruled a homicide and the coroner said she died of manual strangulation. A lawsuit filed by Petito’s parents accused Laundrie of killing their daughter on 27 August, the same day they were seen at the Wyoming Whole Foods store.

Investigators have, since she went missing last year, tried to retrace Petito and Laundrie’s steps. “The attempt to locate was the first thing we’d ever heard about Gabby Petito,” Jackson Police Lt Russ Ruschill said.

During the initial days of the investigation, Laundrie refused to talk to law enforcement officials. Later, he too went missing. Last year on 20 October, investigators discovered Laundrie’s skeletal remains. In a notebook that was found in a bag near the remains, Laundrie confessed to murdering Petito in his own handwriting.

“I ended her life,” the note read. “I thought it was merciful, that it is what she wanted, but I see now all the mistakes I made. I panicked. I was in shock.”

He continued, trying to frame the killing as a mercy death: “From the moment I decided, took away her pain, I knew I couldn’t go on without her.”

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