Analysis of ‘Burn After Reading’: Roberta Laundrie’s Letter to Brian

By: Andrea Cipriano, MAFP

Does an undated letter found in Brian Laundrie’s backpack uncover if the Laundries know their son killed Gabby Petito before her body was found?

Truth and lies — both are pervasive themes critical to many unsolved cases. Investigators are tasked with finding out what truly happened, all while sorting through evidence that could be leading them in the wrong direction.

And, with cases that have a written component like a ransom note, a penned goodbye letter, or damning written evidence, statement analysis can be the difference between discerning what really happened or being fooled by the content into believing a story that isn’t true. 

No family could use this more right now than the Petito family as they’re searching for answers in the undated “burn after reading” letter discovered in Brian Laundrie’s backpack.

Did the Laundries know their son killed his fiancée, Gabrielle “Gabby” Petito, before her body was found? 

Many are trying to find out. 

Mark McClish, a former federal law enforcement officer for 26 years, says statement analysis is the process of analyzing a person’s words to see if they’re being truthful or deceptive — or to uncover what they really mean to say. His years of working numerous cases has given him invaluable on-the-job experience detecting deception in verbal and written statements. Armed with his learnings, McClish then spent 9 years teaching interviewing techniques at the U.S. Marshals Training Academy.

“People’s words will betray them,” McClish says in a self-published YouTube series. “People give us more information than what they realize. The key to detecting deception is to listen to what a person is saying, and to know what to look for in their statement.” 

While McClish hasn’t published his thoughts or opinions on the latest damning letter Roberta Laundrie wrote to her son, Brian Laundrie, many of his lessons can be applied to her writing and language. 

But first, let’s rewind the clock to the 2021 search for Gabby.

Timeline of Gabby Petito’s Case

In the fall of 2021, the nation was glued to the news channels as high school sweethearts, Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie, became the focus of everyone’s attention. 

The timeline of the case starts well before Gabby was reported missing.

This letter has now been the subject of discourse. Did his mother know about Gabby’s death? Was this a letter addressing his possible thoughts of premeditated murder, or a note telling her son that his past actions are forgivable because of unconditional love?

Let’s dive deeper.

“Burn After Reading”: Letter Under Scrutiny

In March 2022, Petito’s family sued Laundrie’s parents and the Laundries’ former attorney for emotional distress in connection with her death. The Petito family alleges that the Laundrie family knew Brian murdered Gabby, and were working to help him flee.

A big part of their case is this undated and strange letter written by Roberta.

Laundrie’s parents filed for a protective order on the letter in March of this year, saying Roberta wrote it months before Gabby Petito’s death and so it was not relevant to the case and unnecessary to show it to the public.

Roberta Laundrie added in an accompanying affidavit claiming that she wrote the letter to her son at a time when their relationship was “difficult” and “strained.” She said that she did not know the exact date she wrote the letter but that she gave it to him before he and Petito left for their trip. 

“I was trying to connect with Brian and repair our relationship as he was planning to leave home — and I had hoped this letter would remind him how much I loved him,” she wrote. 

The Petito family and experts alike don’t believe her claim. Based on the language Roberta uses, the Petito family says it only takes “reasonable inference” to see that “it was written after Gabby Petito was murdered, and is evidence that the Laundries and Attorney Bertolino were aware of Gabby Petito’s demise when the statement at issue was released on September 14, 2021.”

On May 24, Judge Danielle Brewer denied the Laundries’ motion seeking to withhold the letter, and so it was released. To that end, the admissibility of the letter as part of the lawsuit hasn’t been decided upon.

Read the transcript below, and let’s analyze.

A Shovel, Garbage Bag, and Jailhouse Cake: Analysis

Breaking down the letter line by line, this is what Roberta wrote:

The first thing I notice in the letter is the unnecessary capitalization of the words Love and Life in lines 2, 6, and 18.

Even in the full Romans 8:38-39, the Bible doesn’t have “Life” capitalized in the writing.

This tells me it’s a conscious choice and effort to write it that way. Capitalization is used for emphasis, or to inform the reader that the word is a proper noun, or should be treated that way. I would argue that Roberta believes love and life are two of the most important things.

McClish says that all language has a purpose, and that if you read every word as truth the way the writer intended, then the real truth will be revealed when looking deeper. 

From this teaching, I’m drawn to what is written in line 3 and 4: the concept that “Nothing” can make a mother stop loving her son is common. Oftentimes, parents will say unconditional love goes without saying — so to say that there’s “nothing” hints to me that something could make a parent stop loving their child. 

Is it possible she had knowledge that something did happen for her to feel the need to write this reassurance and quell any fear that Brian is unlovable?

I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that Roberta began writing “will” before “could.” 

Take the sentences apart, the meanings change if they were: “Nothing will ever divide us,” vs. “Nothing could ever divide us.” The first is future tense rooted in absolutes, whereas the second is a hypothetical. Including “will” first indicates to me that the future tense meaning was what she most likely wanted to get across.

She continues to use “will” in the lines after this.

In line 9, Roberta crossed out the word “bring” before replacing it with “show up”.

McClish’s teachings say this is something to look deeper into.  

“There are no synonyms in Statement Analysis,” McClish says. “Every word or name means something different even if it is only slightly different in meaning.”

Because of this, it’s reasonable to note that “bring” is a verb meaning to “take or go with to a place.” Bring implies some level of planning. If there’s a picnic going on with friends, you’d most likely say you’ll bring the wine, not that you’d show up with the wine. 

The phrasal verb “show up” implies arriving unexpectedly. Is this her way of subconsciously noting that while she wouldn’t be there to “bring” the shovel and garbage bags to the planned proverbial murder, but that she would be there at a moment’s notice?

Lines 17 through 25 are Roberta’s summary of Romans 8:35-39 in her own words, even though she has it in quotes. You can see the differences in her writing, and what the Bible says below.

Noting that Roberta is devoted enough to her religious practice that she’d quote from the Bible, I think it’s only natural to look deeper into the concept of what she might be alluding to in the “thinkable or unthinkable” getting between them.

There is only one unthinkable sin mentioned in the Bible. It’s a sin deemed so evil, so wicked, and so unbelievably horrific that the Bible says it “never even entered into the mind of God” — this is the sin of parents murdering their children. It’s mentioned three times in Jeremiah.

Could Roberta be noting that no sin is even as horrific as what’s “unthinkable” — like taking the life of another person — get in the way of her loving her son?  

Then, there’s the stamped mockingbird.

Carl meets a woman, Helen, who agrees to go on a cross-country road trip with him (sound familiar?) to find remaining copies of the book to destroy them to make sure no one else can learn the rhyme. He and Helen have a romantic moment where they declare their love for each other, but Carl later is left skeptical of the relationship.

In the end, Carl ends up killing another character, and surrenders to the police. Helen uses magic she learns along the way to possess the police sergeant and joins Carl to kill everyone.

Is it possible Roberta used the mockingbird stamp to get Brian to “remember” the ending? To remember to surrender to the police because when it’s all over, he will be okay? Or, did Roberta simply say “remember” innocently as a way to help Brian tap into the book-loving adventure-seeking person she knew him to be? 

Or, did she use the mockingbird stamp for an entirely different reason… harkening back to the lullaby that the book itself was created after — a lullaby to quiet a crying baby, with the promise of all kinds of rewards given to the child if they don’t speak.

Hush, little baby don’t say a word

Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird…

At the end of it all, this is speculation. 

We’ll never know unless Roberta says so herself, and even then, the public may never know the truth. 

“We look forward to having a jury determine when the letter was written at the time of trial,” the Petito family said about the situation. The jury trial is set for May of 2024.