SARASOTA, Fla. (WFLA) — The family of Gabby Petito late Monday withdrew a motion to compel the testimony of the attorney who began representing the Laundrie family as the search for the travel blogger unfolded in the summer of 2021.
It was Sept. 14, 2021, and Petito’s family had just reported her missing. On the same day, Brian Laundrie’s parents allowed their attorney Steven Bertolino to make a statement.
“On behalf of the family it is our hope that the search for Miss Petito is successful and that Miss Petito is re-united with her family,” the statement said in part.
Pat Reilly, the attorney for the Petito family in their civil lawsuit against Bertolino and the Laundries, claimed that statement was released even though they allegedly knew Petito would not come home alive.
“I just think it’s another brick in our foundation of showing that they knew that Gabby was deceased at the time they issued the statement,” Reilly said.
Petito, 22, and Laundrie, 23, were in the process of driving through U.S. national parks for her travel blog when she was strangled, a coroner later determined. Her parents reported her missing on Sept. 11, 2021, and her remains were found in Jackson County, Wyoming about a week later.
According to Reilly, during a recent deposition, Laundrie’s father recalled a conversation with his son on Aug. 29, 2021, about two days after Petito was allegedly murdered and two weeks before that first public statement.
In a motion to compel Bertolino to testify, which has since been withdrawn, Christopher Laundrie said under oath that his son was “frantic, [and] stated that Gabrielle Petito was ‘gone.'” Laundrie testified his son asked him “to get him a lawyer.”
In their motion, the Petito family had asked the judge to rule against Bertolino’s claim that attorney-client privilege allows him to refuse to disclose information he learned from Laundrie about Petito.
Reilly told Nexstar’s WFLA that he withdrew the motion because he no longer feels what Laundrie told Bertolino is needed to make the Petito case.
Bertolino told WFLA that “the motion was not supported by the law of the facts.”
“He got the publicity he wanted from filing it, but once my attorneys filed a substantively superior response he had little choice but to withdraw it,” Bertolino said.
The motion had argued that the attorney-client privilege was “waived by the client” after he voluntarily included a confession in his suicide note found near his body in October 2021.
“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 Petito motion stated.
Reilly said allegations that the Laundries and Bertolino created hope with statements they knew were false is a key element of the Petito case.
“If their hope level was at one point and then there’s a statement made that elevates it, it gives them even more hope,” Reilly said. “The fall when they find out she’s not alive is even greater.”
