Gabby Pettit’s mother, Nicole Schmidt, shocked a packed audience on Friday when she said she had forgiven her daughter’s boyfriend, accused murderer Brian Landry.
“Brian, I’m here to speak for myself. I forgive you,” she said. “I needed to free myself from the chains of anger and resentment. I won’t let your vile act define the rest of my life.”
But she took out her anger on Landry’s mother, Roberta.
“You don’t deserve to be forgiven,” she said.
“You deserve to be forgotten.”
Schmidt, who never got to confront her daughter’s killer in court because she fled into a swamp and committed suicide after police launched a missing persons investigation, read a victim impact statement to the audience at CrimeCon 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee.
“When it comes to you, Roberta, I condemn you personally because you are clearly the mastermind behind the destruction of your family and my family with your evil ways. I see no empathy in your eyes,” Schmidt said.
“He has no remorse in his heart and no willingness to take responsibility for his actions.”
Roberta Landry testified in the civil lawsuit in the same car she used to sneak away and not cooperate with police the night her son shot himself. Pettit’s body wasn’t found until days later.
Landry’s parents acknowledged in their testimony that they had concerns about Pettit’s health after speaking with him irregularly by phone shortly after his murder.
Pettit’s parents alleged that the Landries knew about the murder and tried to cover it up and help their son avoid justice.
The parties settled the lawsuit earlier this year.
Schmidt also mourned her daughter, who she described as a talented artist, a tenacious free spirit and a “bright light” who was lost too soon.
“My plea to you all is to live by these simple words, spoken directly by Gabby: ‘Be a better person,'” she concluded.
Gaby’s stepmother, Tara Petitot, was also one of the speakers.
She slammed Landry’s actions after the murder.
He had driven home from Wyoming, where he’d dumped Pettit’s body, to go camping with his parents, his sister and her children and eat s’mores around the campfire while the victim’s family frantically tried to figure out what had happened and where she was.
“Only someone with truly evil in their heart would do something like that,” she said.
Landry’s parents denied knowing about the crime but had sent a $25,000 retainer to a top Wyoming lawyer.
He was the only suspect in Pettit’s murder when his son’s body was discovered in a park near their home in October 2021. The FBI also found a handwritten confession stored in a waterproof bag.
Pettit’s disappearance in late summer 2021 attracted international attention after he and Landry documented a road trip across the United States on social media, touring national parks.
Her posts stopped shortly after a domestic violence incident in Utah in which police were called but no one was arrested.
Pettit’s family founded the Gabby Pettit Foundation in her honor, a charity that fights domestic violence and supports missing people across the country.
They have lobbied for federal legislation, some of which became law with bipartisan support last year, as well as lethality assessment laws in Florida, Utah and New York.
Last year, the foundation donated $100,000 to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
