Lawyers for the Laundrie family are closing in on theories that Brian Laundrie parents planted evidence found at a Florida nature reserve on Wednesday, weeks after authorities came up empty-handed.
As we reported, Chris and Roberta Laundrie joined law enforcement together for the first time yesterday at Carlton Reserve, where they consistently told police they believed their runaway son was strangling his fiancée Gabby Pettito. was hidden after Wyoming.
Within hours of a search, police found human remains, Brian’s backpack and his notebook, while Chris found a white plastic dry bag belonging to his son nearby. But given how officers had already searched the area for weeks and found nothing, the fact that the search came only hours after Brian’s parents had joined is suspicious to many. Was.
FBI Special Agent Michael McPherson told press Thursday that the site where the remains were found at the time of the initial search was underwater, where officers used sophisticated search equipment such as sonar, drones, swamp buggies and fixed-wing aircraft. Was. .
RELATED: Traces of Bodies Discovered During Brian’s Manhunt
But because we live in an age of perpetual paranoia, where people believe pop stars are sending them hidden messages in their Instagram photos, the investigators who followed the Petito case immediately accused the laundries of finding evidence. The time claimed was just coincidence.
Law enforcement experts only added to the fire. K-9 handler and former police officer Kyle Heyn alleged that even though the remains were underwater when officers were looking, it is “highly suspicious” that the carcass dogs were still not able to smell it. He told NewsNation’s Dan Abrams Live:
“If the body had been there, when they went by with cadaver dogs, and the body had been there for more than two or three minutes, the odor would have come through the water. They should have been able to locate that body.”
On Wednesday, however, Steven Bertolino, a lawyer for the Laundrie family, said his clients had put up evidence that the theories were “hogwash,” telling CNN’s Chris Cuomo:
“Chris and Roberta went to this area first and as happenstance was, they stumbled upon these items.”
Bertolino also told CNN that he was the one who advised Chris and Roberta not to talk to the media or Gabby’s family — another thing the Laundrie has been exploding over the past few weeks. she added:
“Now is not the right time to talk about the situation with Gabby. The family was following my directions. I told them not to talk with anybody, not to say a word, I was the intermediary between the family and law enforcement. Everybody has the right to remain silent and that’s what I told my clients and that’s what they did… This is the advice they’re taking, and that’s on me. I’m the one who told them not to talk. That’s been on me from day one. That’s not on the family.”
Asked why the parents didn’t join the search at the park earlier, Bertolino said it wasn’t open to the public before Tuesday. He said:
“The parents had assumed that the experts, the FBI and all the tracking teams they had, would be able to locate Brian based upon the information that we had provided them to the specific areas and trails in the park that Brian liked to visit.”
As to why Brian’s father picked up the dry bag he found, Bertolino explained:
“Chris didn’t want to pick the bag up because he wanted law enforcement to see it. This was caught on camera. Chris couldn’t find the law enforcement because they were then out of sight, because Chris had been in the woods, so he didn’t want to leave the bag there with the news reporter standing nearby, so he picked it up… He did meet up shortly with law enforcement. They looked at the contents of the bag. At that time, law enforcement officers showed him a picture on the phone of a backpack that law enforcement had located also nearby, and also some distance off the trail. At that point, the Laundries were notified that there was also remains near the backpack and they were asked to leave the preserve.”
On Thursday morning, he added to DailyMail.com:
“Speculation is just that.”
Hmm…
What do you think about all this??