Why is everyone so obsessed with Gabby Petito?

A large part of the fascination with this case is the fact that internet sleuths have almost countless nuggets of information to trace, making it a perverse scavenger hunt. Tracing their footsteps and activity on instagram, twitter, spotify, pinterest, etc. has created lots of armchair detectives.

Most missing Indigenous women don't have the same type of trail that is relatively easily followed.

the prize wrote:

A large part of the fascination with this case is the fact that internet sleuths have almost countless nuggets of information to trace, making it a perverse scavenger hunt. Tracing their footsteps and activity on instagram, twitter, spotify, pinterest, etc. has created lots of armchair detectives.

Most missing Indigenous women don't have the same type of trail that is relatively easily followed.

True, but that doesn’t explain why black or brown or Asian women even before social media days were rarely followed relative to white. I think an indigenous girl had as large a social media following, she’d fascinate more folks than one that didn’t but still far fewer than a cute white girl with a social media following. Think of Natalie Holloway. Or Elizabeth Smart, the little Utah girl who was kidnapped. Their pictures on the cover sold more newspapers.

I think it here are a couple of factors at play.

One is social class. As a general matter, the cases that garner media attention tend to Involve upper middle class, or at least middle class victims.

Race is certainly another factor. Whether that’s because this country is majority white and that means stories involving white victims appeal to a broader audience because the audience relates to the victim more, or whether it’s a matter of something more base - black and POC victims simply being seen as “lesser” and thereby not as interesting is the real question here. I’m guessing that there’s a bit of both going on.

The social media presence - and the schadenfreude associated with seeing the unseemly underbelly of what is going on under cover of these idyllic fantasy lifestyle portrayed via social media - has certainly amped this case up quite a bit.

There's a 30-year old, Korean American, named Lauren Cho that went missing from a small beach community in California in June. There are people complaining that her case never got the attention Petito's has had and it's due to her not being an attractive white woman.

The Cho story is different in that her disappearance has no aspects other than the fact she disappeared. She was alone with a guy who said she left to go for a walk, he thinks, at around 3:00. After a short period of time, he called some friends to help him look for her. At about 5:00, he called the police.

It's possible her friend could have killed her and buried her body somewhere and they had had a relationship at one time, but they had broken up months before. However, there were no firsthand accounts of them not getting along, bizarre behavior on his part or a police video of them having a meltdown. He's not considered to be a person of interest.

There have been no tips and really no new information since the time that she went missing. Do the people who are claiming that her disappearance should be receiving the same amount of attention as Petito, expect daily "Cho wasn't found to today" articles in the media? I believe that had it been Petito that disappeared under the same circumstances, it wouldn't have been a major story that would have received attention for more than a few weeks. The biggest reason Cho's story hasn't received nearly the amount attention that the Peterson, Arias and that Florida woman, is because there is no villain.

This is not upper or middle class people here. The two of them worked at a supermarket and lived in his parents' house (with other freeloaders). This is white trash through and through. Attractive white trash but let's call a spade a spade here.

Vax Man wrote:

bipoc people go missing too wrote:

Many people beg to differ:

https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol106/iss2/4/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/22/business/media/gabby-petito-missing-white-woman-syndrome.html?searchResultPosition=2https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/gabby-petito-case-missing-white-woman-syndrome-experts/story?id=80144611

"Missing white woman syndrome?"

How can you think something so stupid and racist? I think their is something wrong with your brain.

I found the racists, it's the people going on about "missing white woman syndrome" and "white grievance thread of the day", as if they are not racist nonsense but in fact real things lol.

CNN has jumped on it too. Hilarious since I saw Chris Cuomo do an entire piece on the case

fish man wrote:

Vax Man wrote:

"Missing white woman syndrome?"

How can you think something so stupid and racist? I think their is something wrong with your brain.

I found the racists, it's the people going on about "missing white woman syndrome" and "white grievance thread of the day", as if they are not racist nonsense but in fact real things lol.

CNN has jumped on it too. Hilarious since I saw Chris Cuomo do an entire piece on the case

https://www.cnn.com/

This link rather

Oil embargo wrote:

picnic for Yogi wrote:

I'm starting to think that the authorities' apparent lack of urgency in locating him may be because they have reason to believe he may no longer be alive. He may not have gone to the nature preserve to hide...

Wrong, Yog. The authorities' clear lack of urgency is due to (1) they know Laundry has given them the slip (duck and weave, skipped town, off the grid, laying low, circumlocute), (2) they can't do jack when they find, except ask if he's willing to answer questions, which he clearly is not, and (3) general incompetence and/or disinterest.

Embargo

What lack of urgency? The police have had dozens of people wading through swamps looking for the guy. They are also using dogs and drones

He's a nut, but heading to the reserve to suffer for a couple of weeks with no chance of escape, would be illogical. He knew he had a window of time before the police came for him and it would make far more sense to use it to leave the area. Lying to his parents about going to the reserve or having his parents lie for him, is a clever strategy.

TNrunnerTundra wrote:

This thread brought up another thought. Do you have a contingency plan in place in the back of your mind if you had to go into hiding? Maybe a place you have hiked a lot or a place you went as a kid. Anyone have a go bag in the closet with cash, clothes, and maybe a firearm. Every time I see a movie where the main character moves a hidden panel and retrieves a few bundles of cash and new id cards I tell myself I should do that. No ill intentions or anything but more like a situation from the movie "The fugitive" where the guy was innocent.

Not for a situation like this. If I killed my GF I'd either turn myself in or off myself. No way I could live with that kind of guilt.

Seems like this guy has mental health issues. She may of had them too. They were fighting each other leading up to this. Even had a domestic abuse call on them. And I think he even got into a fight with someone at restaurant on their travels. So he is likely not a normal person with a moral compass. They will eventually find him. He’s not smart enough to get away.

CNN telling its liberal audience, who love to be outraged, that the Petito media coverage is all "white woman syndrome," while at the SAME time being the number one network in flogging the Petito drama porn to its liberals audience for the last two weeks. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/23/us/families-missing-black-people/index.html

What a joke. If anyone is paying attention, they know the media always has one, and ONLY one, of these disaster/drama porn stories going at any one time. They chose them carefully and pimp ones with the most intrigue and ability to meet public's morbid curiosity. They aren't always successful - they tried to push that Morphew case (blonde woman) hard, but it just never caught on. But this Petito situation is just too good and has it all - wild story, videos, murder, trail of clues, guy absconds, parents involved - and her being a blonde, white woman has little, if anything, to do with it.

I don't track this stuff, but here are some examples:

Maya Millette - POC - got plenty of headlines for awhile, but has faded because they haven't arrested anyone yet, and there are no videos to keep us entertained.

Laci Peterson (Rocha) - POC - this was sensational for years. Story had everything. The newly wed thing, disappearance, body found, infidelity and mistress, in-laws change their mind, trial, wild stories, death row. The media milked this one for all it was worth for years, and she was not a white woman.

Elisa Lam - POC - several documentaries, because such a strange story.

Slightly different, but Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls - we still get documentaries on this stuff twenty plus years later.

bipoc people go missing too wrote:

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/21/1039268981/media-petito-like-racism-native-americans

Okay, so start a thread about these missing BIPOC women and help them get the attention they deserve. People come to this thread because the Petito case interests them. These complaints won't change that and I highly doubt we're going to end racism in this thread on this board.

Oil embargo wrote:

CNN telling its liberal audience, who love to be outraged, that the Petito media coverage is all "white woman syndrome," while at the SAME time being the number one network in flogging the Petito drama porn to its liberals audience for the last two weeks. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/23/us/families-missing-black-people/index.html

Daniel Robinson: Left a remote work site at the end of a day on a dirt road. Missing on hand and lower arm, so he drives with a one hand steering assist device on his steering wheel. His vehicle was found wrecked along the dirt road. It seems he went on foot to find help, and he likely had some injuries (car wreck). If he was unable to get help before dark, and he took a nap, it is likely he never woke up because exposed in the cold desert night will kill you.

His case is not like this domestic violence case, with the killer fleeing and immediately lawyering up and then going into hiding. I think Daniel Robinson's body is out somewhere in the unmarked desert. It is similar to case of the Bay Area runner who disappeared. That guy was closer to regularly used trails yet it took weeks to find him even using drones to scout the area.

What the Petito case shows is that police are ill equipped to notice domestic violence that has reached the critical stage. Robinson's and the lost runner's cases show that the tools to find bodies in wild areas is very limited. Better tools are needed to deal with these types of cases. Specialists on police forces to deal with high risk situations. And some type of drone tool that can detect bodies, even just bones, and paths of movement.

25 years ago I was with a camping group. There was another group of a dozen 11-13 year old boys with some parents there. The boys went to hike up a regular trail on a mountain about 2-1/2 miles up. There was a slow kid in the group who the other kids picked on, we found out. Anyway, on the way down the boys decided to run down trail and left the slow kid to hike out on his own. The kid was never found. Most of our group joined the search, as well as some 50 other people. It was no use. The kid had disappeared.

Remember that runner from Berkely that disappeared on his run on a really hot day? It was relatively small urban park, he told people where he was going, and his car was in the parking lot. Yet after weeks of searching with drones and dogs and hundreds volunteers they couldn't find his body that was not that far off the trail.

They are looking for a needle in a haystack searching those swamps.

I'm saying that he's not in the reserve. Why would he choose a plan where he is going to tremendously suffer with no chance of escape?

I am leaning toward believing Laundrie is quietly staying at a 2nd or 3rd cousin's place. Someone with a different last name. A relative, not obvious to law enforcement.