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Airdate: The Gabby Petito Story

Nine's Sarah Abo investigates the circumstances surrounding the death of Gabby Petito in the USA.

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Nine screens a true crime special The Gabby Petito Story this Sunday, made by the 60 Minutes team.

Gabby Petito and her fiancé Brian Laundrie were a young couple who seemed to have it all – an enduring love for each other and a longing to explore the world. In July they set off in their little white van on a road trip across the United States. Like so many others, Gabby and Brian wanted to show off their idyllic and carefree lives on social media. But their postcard images and million-dollar smiles were hiding an ugly truth. Along the way something went horribly wrong, adventure turned to catastrophe. Both Gabby and Brian are now dead.

In a special one-hour program made by the producers of 60 Minutes, reporter Sarah Abo pieces together the events that conspired to cause this modern-day tragedy.

In exclusive interviews with Gabby’s heartbroken parents, specialist detectives, forensic experts and eyewitnesses, Abo also investigates the circumstances surrounding the most difficult question: Could Gabby Petito’s life have been saved?

Reporter: Sarah Abo
Producer: Amelia Ballinger

9:10pm Sunday on Nine.

3 Responses

  1. A while ago I kept seeing all these stories about Gabby Petito in Australian newspapers and I wondered to myself, why is this such big news. Being an older male, maybe I thought she was someone famous and that is why it is such big news. No, she was just one of just under 20,000 persons murdered each year in America. She had some small level of “insta” fame, but the amount of time and news devoted to one person’s death, not even in this country, is out of all sorts of proportions. Sadly this is just another attempt by TV and News organisations in trying to wrestle some eyeballs back away from social media. To paraphrase “The Wire” – TV and Newspapers are dead – they just don’t know it yet!

    1. There are various factors in why this murder has received more coverage in the United States of America than others, and more often than not, it has to do with race and what the late American newsreader Gwen Ifill called “Missing White Woman Syndrome” and yet there was almost no coverage anywhere of Lauren Cho (Asian-American woman who disappeared on 28 June and whose remains was found on 9 October) as well as Jelani Day and Daniel Robinson (both African-American males, the body of the former was found on 4 September and was identified on 23 September) who disappeared at the same time as Gabby Petito.

      And it could be argued that this “Missing White Woman Syndrome” happens here in Australia as well, especially recently a kid was found and yet several others are still missing (there was a case here in Victoria of a girl who went missing) and has received almost no coverage.

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