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Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie appear in Aug. 12, 2021, Moab, Utah police body camera videos.
Lawyers for the parents of Gabby Petito say they want to hear from the attorney for the parents of her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, who confessed to murdering her in August 2021.
Joseph Petito and Nichole Schmidt, Gabby Petito’s parents, sued Christopher Laundrie and Roberta Laundrie in March 2022, alleging that Brian Laundrie had told his parents that he killed his girlfriend while they were on a trip in Wyoming and that the Laundries not only didn’t share this information with Petito and Schmidt, they tried to make arrangements for their son to leave the country.
Brian Petito died by suicide after returning home to Florida.
The motion, which seeks to force the Laundries’ lawyer Steven Bertolino to testify about conversations he had with Brian Laundrie, says that both the Laundries and Bertolino knew that Gabby Petito had died and they “knew the location of her body at the time a statement was issued by the defendants on September 14, 2021, in which the defendants expressed their hope that Gabrielle Petito would be ‘reunited’ with her family.”
The motion comes after Christopher Laundrie and Roberta Laundrie gave their respective depositions on Oct. 10 and Oct. 11 — during which they waived attorney-client privilege between themselves and Bertolino — and Bertolino’s deposition on Oct. 17. Brian Laundrie’s father told lawyers that he had spoken with his son in late August and relayed the contents of that conversation to Bertolino — testimony that was largely corroborated by Bertolino.
“During Steven Bertolino’s deposition, he testified that Christopher Laundrie did advise him on or about August 29, 2021, that he has spoken with Brian Laundrie, that Brian Laundrie was frantic, stated that Gabrielle Petito was ‘gone,’ and further requested his parents obtain a lawyer,” the motion says.
Unlike the Laundries, however, Bertolino asserted attorney-client privilege regarding his conversations with Brian Laundrie “and refused to disclose any information he had learned from Brian Laundrie about Gabrielle Petito’s well-being and her last location.”
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The motion argues that Brian Laundrie’s suicide — and the notebook he left behind in which he confessed to killing Petito — amounts to a waiver of attorney-client privilege as to his conversations with Bertolino.
“Clearly, Brian Laundrie had no expectation of privacy in authorizing a confession and leaving it in his backpack to be found following his death,” the motion argues. “It is black letter law that once the privilege is waived, and the horse is out of the barn, it cannot be reinvoked.”
The motion concludes that because Brian Laundrie waived the privilege, Bertolino cannot assert it.
The lawyers for Petito’s parents also contend that Bertolino wasn’t asserting the privilege on behalf of his client — as the law allows — but instead “on his own behalf in an effort to keep him from testifying about what he knew at the time he made the September 14, 2021 statement.”
The motion asks for the judge to order Bertolino to testify “concerning conversations he had with Brian Laundrie regarding the murder of Gabrielle Petito and the location of her body.”
Read the motion below.
