She was ready for a new adventure. In July 2020, amateur travel vlogger Gabby Petito announced on Instagram that her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, had proposed.

“I said yes!” she captioned a photo from their first date in 2019, gushing, “Every day is such a dream with you.”

But ultimately, it turned into a nightmare.

In the summer of 2021, Gabby and Brian posted photos and videos on social media as they explored the American West while camping and living out of their white van. Then Gabby, 22, disappeared — and Brian, 23, returned to his parents’ Florida home alone. In the wake of reports that their relationship had turned abusive, authorities confirmed the chilling truth: Brian strangled Gabby then, later, took his own life.

Looking back, there were “red flags” that the couple’s romance had turned toxic, Gabby’s mother, Nichole Schmidt, shared on the January 27 episode of the “CONNECT With Jonathan Mark” podcast. Nichole said her daughter’s final days and hours were filled with “anger and aggression. She would call me up crying. [She] wasn’t herself.”

Before the summer road trip turned deadly, Gabby hinted at strain.

“Brian, you know how much I love you. So (and I’m writing this with love) just please stop crying and stop calling me names because we’re a team and I’m here with you,” she wrote in an undated letter that’s part of a 366-page trove of information released by the FBI last year.

Tensions grew during their journey. Police questioned the couple in Moab, Utah, after a motorist called 9-1-1 to report seeing Brian “slapping” Gabby, who told cops she’d hit him first.

(In a lawsuit against the Moab police department in connection with their daughter’s death, the Petito family contended officers failed to properly investigate the incident, adding, “Gabby’s murder might have been prevented if the officers had acted properly.” A Utah judge later dismissed the case.)

FBI files reveal witnesses reported hearing and seeing Gabby crying at gas stations in Utah. On August 27, 2021 — the last day she was seen alive — a witness told CNN Gabby was tearful and Brian was angry during a “commotion” at a Jackson, Wyoming, restaurant. The same day, Nichole received an “odd text” from her daughter’s phone that didn’t sound like Gabby had written it, a search warrant revealed.

Gabby’s strangled body, which a coroner confirmed showed “blunt-force injuries to the head and neck,” was discovered in Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest three weeks later. By then, Brian — who, along with his parents, refused to cooperate with police — had disappeared in a nature preserve near his family’s North Port, Florida, home and died by suicide.

In a notebook found near his remains a month later, Brian called his fiancée’s death an “unexpected tragedy.” He claimed she’d injured herself as they crossed a stream while rushing back to their car before nightfall. Freezing and facing problems with her feet and wrist plus a “small bump on her forehead that eventually got larger,” she was “begging for an end to her pain.” So “I ended her life,” Brian admitted. “I thought it was merciful, that it is what she wanted …”

There’s still more to reveal. On February 17, Netflix will release American Murder: Gabby Petito, a three-part docuseries that explores more details surrounding the travel vlogger’s death.

“Gabby and Brian seemed like a loving couple,” the show explains, “[But] the happiest people on social media usually have the darkest skeletons in their closet.”