It’s been over three years since 22-year-old Gabby Petito disappeared during a cross-country trip with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, in the summer of 2021. Her body was tragically discovered on September 19 near a Wyoming campsite, and a little over a month later, Laundrie’s remains were found in a Florida nature preserve, close to his family’s home. Next to his body, authorities found a notebook in which he admitted responsibility for Gabby’s death.
Gabby’s mother, Nichole Schmidt, shared how challenging year three has been for her. “This year hit me the hardest for some reason. I know there’s never going to be closure,” she tells PEOPLE. “It’s been three years since I last heard her voice, and that’s the hardest part.”
Petito Family Never Received True Justice
Nichole knows the family will never feel like they’ve gotten true justice, but they’ve decided to focus on what they can do to honor Gabby’s legacy. Her parents—Nichole and Jim Schmidt, along with Gabby’s father Joe Petito and his wife Tara—have channeled their grief into action. Using the attention generated by Gabby’s case, they’ve dedicated themselves to preventing similar tragedies from happening to others. Together, they founded the Gabby Petito Foundation, which raises awareness about domestic violence and advocates for stricter laws and policies regarding how police handle intimate partner abuse and missing person cases.
In addition to their own foundation, Gabby’s family supports organizations like the Black and Missing Foundation and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Relatives initiative, as well as the National Domestic Violence Hotline. For Nichole, the work provides some comfort. “We push ourselves to keep going and not stay stuck in sadness,” she says. “I know Gabby wouldn’t want us to be sad all the time.”
But moving forward isn’t always easy. Recently, police bodycam footage surfaced showing Brian Laundrie’s parents, Christopher and Roberta, refusing to speak to North Port police officers who visited their home on September 11, 2021. The footage, where Christopher tells the officers “Brian is here, and that’s all I’m going to say,” was hard for Nichole to watch. “It made me sick,” she admits. “There’s no empathy, no compassion. It just doesn’t stop.”
Gabby Petito Family Focused on Positive Change
Despite the ongoing grief and challenges, Gabby’s family remains focused on positive change. Nichole and Tara recently traveled to Wyoming to speak at a domestic violence awareness event, and they’re working on a new initiative to build a domestic violence education program for schools across the country. The goal is to offer the program to students for free, teaching them about healthy relationships, boundaries, and self-respect. “We want every kid to have access to this kind of education,” Nichole says. “We’re hoping that over time, this kind of program can change things for the better.”
The foundation aims to utilize technology to create an easy-to-implement program for schools, possibly with a module-based online platform. “Eventually, we want to make this mandatory in schools, from early grades through high school,” she explains.
Nichole sees the work as crucial in tackling the widespread issue of domestic violence. “It’s an epidemic,” she says. “We’re doing everything we can, but the only way to truly make a difference is to start educating kids early. We need to stop it before it even starts.”
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