Florida cops said they tried to keep tabs on Brian Laundrie before he slipped away amid the probe into Gabby Petito’s disappearance — but acknowledged there’s a lot of “oddness” when it comes to his case.
“We’ve said from the beginning there’s a lot of oddness here, a lot of things that just didn’t make sense,” North Port Police Department spokesman Josh Taylor told NewsNation.
“I mean, your son walks out there — now they’re saying on a Monday — to report that on a Friday and then be confused on what day that was,” Taylor said in an interview Friday. “There’s a lot of things that are odd there.”
Laundrie, 23, disappeared from his family’s North Port home last month after his parents claimed he went for a hike at the 25,000-acre Carlton Reserve, where authorities have been searching since Sept. 18.
His parents Chris and Roberta Laundrie initially told cops that their son left the house on Sept. 14 — but they waited three days to report him missing despite the notoriety surrounding him.
Last week, family attorney Steven Bertolino said in a statement that the Laundries had been mistaken and said Brian actually left the house on Sept. 13.
Brian had been sought for questioning in Petito’s disappearance during the couple’s cross-country trip — but had lawyered up and refused to cooperate.
Brian had returned home without his 22-year-old girlfriend on Sept. 1, nearly three weeks before Petito’s body was found at a Wyoming campground on Sept. 19.
Police have since come under fire for letting Brian — the sole person of interest in the case — slip away. But Taylor insisted cops did what they could.
“What I’ll say to that is that we were doing everything within the law that we could with the facts and the circumstances at that time,” he said. “What I’ll say is that that is … something that we’re working to figure out as far as how he got away.”
Asked if he thought Laundrie was still alive, Taylor said, “It’s possible.”
“I certainly think that it would not surprise me if he is,” he said. “It would not surprise me if he’s not.”