Cassie Laundrie, sister to Brian Laundrie, urged her brother to “come forward” as the FBI and numerous state and local law enforcement agencies continue searching for the missing 23-year-old.
Cassie sat for an interview with ABC News that aired on Tuesday. Her brother was last seen on September 14 by their parents days before authorities announced him a person-of-interest in the death of his fiancée, Gabby Petito.
“I would tell my brother to just come forward and get us out of this horrible mess,” Cassie told ABC News in the interview.
Cassie said she last saw her brother on September 6, less than a week after he returned from a cross-country camping trip without Petito. He went first to his parents’ house in the van that he and Petito had shared during the trip.
“I really wish he had come to me first that day with the van,” Cassie said, “because I don’t think we’d be here.” She later added that if she knew where he was, she would “turn him in.”
“We just went for a couple of hours and we ate dinner and had s’mores around the campfire and left, and there was nothing peculiar about it,” she said, reflecting on the last time she saw her brother. “There was no feeling of grand goodbye. There was no nothing.”
“I’m frustrated that, in hindsight, I didn’t pick up on anything,” she added. “It was just a regular visit.”
Authorities found Petito’s body last month near an undeveloped campsite in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. A coroner identified her body and ruled her death a homicide on September 21.
Petito and Brian were reportedly fighting in the final few weeks of Petito’s life. On August 12, several law enforcement officers responded to a domestic disturbance call on the couple and convinced them to separate for a night. One of the responding officers, park ranger Melissa Hulls, said she urged Petito to leave Laundrie. As The Daily Wire reported:
“I can still hear her voice,” Hulls said. “She wasn’t just a face on the milk carton, she was real to me.”
Hulls said that she warned Petito that her relationship with Laundrie seemed “toxic.” Body camera footage from the stop captured a distraught and crying Petito.
“I was probably more candid with her than I should’ve been,” Hulls said. “I was imploring with her to reevaluate the relationship, asking her if she was happy in the relationship with him, and basically saying this was an opportunity for her to find another path, to make a change in her life.”
The FBI has searched Brian’s parents’ house at least twice since he went missing. Agents conducted the first raid days after Brian was last seen.
Cassie urged her parents to cooperate with the authorities to help find Brian. An attorney for the family has stated that Brian’s parents do not know where he is.
“I don’t know if my parents are involved,” she told ABC News. “I think if they are, then they should come clean.”