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Brian Laundrie may have lied to his parents about going to a 25,000-acre Florida reserve and could be “almost anywhere,” a search-and-rescue expert says.
The FBI has spent the past week scouring the Carlton Reserve for Gabby Petito’s boyfriend after his parents reported him missing Sept. 17 — three days after he told them he was going on a hike there.
“People that are trying not to get caught for something sometimes use people, right? So he may have told his parents that’s where he’s going,” Chris Boyer, executive director of the National Association for Search and Rescue, told Insider.
“They may be telling the authorities that in all honesty, but he lied to them.”
Boyer said the delay in reporting him missing means Laundrie — a person of interest in Petito’s death in Wyoming — could be anywhere in the country now.
“There’s any number of ways that he could have hitchhiked or somehow found a collaborator to give him a ride somewhere,” Boyer said.
“He may not even be in Florida. He’s had eight days to be on the run right now. He could be almost anywhere.”
On Thursday morning, the silver Ford Mustang that Laundrie drove to Carlton returned to the Laundries’ driveway after police hauled it away earlier this week.
An underwater recovery team joined the search for Laundrie Wednesday in the reserve.
Laundrie, 23, vanished last week after arriving home alone in Florida from a cross-country trip with Petito on Sept. 1.
He quickly hired a lawyer and refused to cooperate with police.
His parents told police he went for a hike at the reserve on Sept. 14 and never returned, but they did not report him missing until Friday.
Petito’s body was found Sunday at the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming, and the case has since been declared a homicide.
Additional reporting by Jack Morphet and Gabrielle Fonrouge
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