When officers pulled over a van for speeding outside of Arches National Park in August 2021, they found a visibly distraught young couple in an emotional fight. Gabby Petito, 22, and her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, 23, were driving across the United States, and upon observing the couple, police officers in Moab, Utah, decided to separate them for a night rather than issue a domestic violence citation or investigate further.
That decision proved fateful when, about a month later, Petito's body was found strangled on the edge of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Laundrie, the only individual ever identified as a person of interest, was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after returning alone to his parents’ home in Florida.
