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Was this part on an escape plan?
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Sep 23, 2021
As the search for Brian Laundrie continues, people all over the internet and across the country are searching for any clues or theories that might lead authorities to pinpointing Brian’s location.
Recently, Charlene and William Guthrie, who live opposite the Laundrie's North Port, Florida home, claimed the family had gone on a three-day trip a week after Brian returned home from Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming without Gabby.
According to William, about a week after Brian’s return home, he had seen Brian and his father packing up a new camper for a camping trip — leaving just before the Petito family reported their daughter missing on September 11.
Where did Brian Laundrie and his parents go in their camper after he came home from Wyoming?
The Guthries said the FBI are aware they witnessed the family head off on a trip but no further information has been released about where or why the family went.
"I saw them doing some work. And then when they prepared for their trip, I saw them loading the camper," William explained.
The couple admit they didn't know much about Laundrie or his trip with Petito and were unaware that she was missing. They also said they found it odd that the family took their adult son away.
"We just thought they had come back from wherever,” Charlene said in an interview with Fox about Brian’s return home from Wyoming. “We didn’t know they were on a trip. We assumed they went back to their house or wherever they got a house … We didn’t know much about them at all," she said.
They had no idea that Gabby was even missing — assuming that she had been inside the home living with them like she had been the entire time they were there.
This sparked all sorts of theories online about where they could have gone and whether or not he even came back from the trip.
According to Brian’s parents, he left on the September 14 to go hiking at the Carlton Reserve, and when they hadn’t heard from him in a few days, they went and retrieved his Mustang from where it was parked and reported him missing on Sept. 17.
The trip in the campervan may have helped Brian Laundrie flee Florida.
The alleged weekend away add fuel to the widely held theory that Brian Laundrie is trying to flee — or has already fled — to Mexico before he becomes an official suspect in Gabby's death.
Harvey Morse, a private investigator with Florida's Locaters International Inc., told Insider Laundrie could easily avoid being detected by wearing a face mask.
"It would be easy for him to get on a plane," Morse said. Or, they could have driven the camper all the way to Mexico and had Brian cross the border.
A quick Google Maps search shows that a drive from North Port, Florida to the border of Mexico would take approximately 20 hours — a 3-day trip is more than enough time for a drive there and back.
Since Laundrie remains a person of interest and can't be charged with anything unless they find some very damning evidence, he could leave the country and run away from the case entirely without being stopped.
Other people think that they loaded the camper up with tools that Brian might need to survive somewhere out in the wilderness or on another property.
“In conversation about hiking,” an old coworker of Brian’s told the New York Post, “Brian talked about the longest time that he spent in the woods was 6 weeks and bragged about only having a large pack of either cheese or peanut butter crackers to sustain him for that time.”
Survival expert Mark Burrow said, “If he's down there in the Carlton Reserve, he's living in hell,” but there’s really no telling where Laundrie could be.
After being on the run for 8 days, the search for Brian Laundrie has been coming up short, leading many to believe that he could be almost anywhere by now.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice and politics.