Dog the Bounty Hunter urged Gabby Petito’s fugitive boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, to turn himself in — saying that the Wyoming coroner’s finding that she was strangled makes him look guilty as sin.
Teton County Coroner Brent Blue, who on Tuesday revealed the cause of death of the 22-year-old Long Island native, later said in an interview on CNN that she had been strangled by “human force.”
“His best decision now would be to turn himself in,” Dog, whose real name is Duane Chapman, told the Sun, adding that the 23-year-old man’s parents “need to be doing more to signal Brian to stop running.”
The celebrity bounty hunter said that Blue’s “statement has established a timeline that looks worse for Brian Laundrie,” adding that Laundrie’s “continued evasion of law enforcement makes him look guilty.
“I can’t fathom how Brian’s parents can live with themselves. They need to be doing more to signal Brian to stop running,” the 68-year-old told the news outlet.
Meanwhile, Chapman told WFLA on Tuesday that he had decided to remain in Florida to continue his search for Laundrie despite suffering an ankle injury during the massive manhunt.
He told the news outlet that he made a “change of plans” to return to Colorado because he “couldn’t bring himself to leave.”
He said the coroner’s report is “not good for the Laundrie family,” adding that “strangulation is not an accident.”
Documents listed Petito’s cause of death as “manual strangulation/throttling.”
“Throttling means that someone was strangled by human force,” Blue said on “Anderson Cooper 360.” “There was no mechanical force involved.”
“People can be strangled by other means. We have seen people on snowmobiles who run into a wire — that would be strangling by a mechanical event. But this was, we believe this was strangling by a human being,” the coroner added.
Petito had been dead for three or four weeks by the time her body was found in Bridger-Teton National Forest on Sept. 19, ending a weeklong search that drew national headlines.
Although officials ruled her death a homicide, the cause of death wasn’t revealed until Tuesday afternoon when Blue briefed members of the media on the results of the autopsy. But he said that under Wyoming law, he wouldn’t release further details.
Although he didn’t speculate about Laundrie’s potential involvement, Blue said that Petito’s was one of many deaths of “people who are involved in domestic violence” and it was unfortunate that others don’t get as much attention.
Petito was last seen alive sometime in late August while on a cross-country trip with Laundrie. But the trip was aborted and Laundrie returned home to his parents’ house in Florida without Petito early on Sept. 1.
He refused to cooperate with police when Petito was reported missing on Sept. 11, and vanished shortly after.
