Gabby Pettit is heartbroken In love letters she wrote to her boyfriend and future murderer, Brian Landry, before that fateful road trip, she expressed her excitement for the cross-country drive but also begged him to stop abusing her.
At the beginning of the handwritten letter, published in a trove of FBI documents obtained by The Washington Post last week, Pettit, 22, asked Landry, 23, to stop crying and yelling at him.
“Brian, you know how much I love you, so (and I am writing this with love), please just stop crying and stop yelling at me, because we are a team and I am with you,” she wrote in the undated letter.
Pettit referred to an argument between the two but did not go into details, apologizing for “getting angry over a stupid piece of paper.”
“Yes I know I can be childish sometimes but it’s because you give me energy. And because I love you. And I love you so much it hurts,” she wrote. “And so it hurts me to see you suffering. I don’t mean to be negative but I hate that there isn’t more I can do.”
It’s unclear from the two-page letter what Landry was suffering from.
Pettit also wrote that when she returned from New York, she would join him in fixing the van that they would travel across the United States in, a journey that ended with Landry killing her and later taking his own life.
“We were able to work together on building a van, which is now our dream,” she wrote.
“So when I’m feeling down I want you to know it’s because I love you too much,” she added. “So stop crying!!! And come home and hug me and tell me you love me.”
Pettit was then reported missing while the couple was traveling the country in their van and sharing their travels on social media.
Landry suddenly returned to his parents in Florida in late August 2021 without Pettit, sparking a nationwide search that has attracted national attention.
Pettit’s body was found strangled and abandoned at a remote campsite in Wyoming the following month, and authorities determined she had been killed around August 28th.
The letter was part of 366 pages of documents and other evidence collected and photographed during an FBI search of Landry’s Florida home after investigators discovered Pettit’s body.
The FBI searched the family’s home before Landry was found dead by suicide in a nearby national park.
The documents obtained by The Washington Post through a Freedom of Information request also contain strange and disturbing scribbles and writings from the killer himself detailing manic episodes and suicidal thoughts he experienced.
Blaine Stewart, an attorney for the Pettit family, said the newly released documents show Landry “was clearly a narcissist and manipulator with violent tendencies.”
IIf you or someone you know is experiencing any of the issues discussed in this article, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1.800.799.SAFE (7233) or text START to 88788.
