The Gabby Petito Story with Retired Fire Captain & Co-Founder of The Gabby Petito Foundation, Jim Schmidt!

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Mother Knows Death, starring Nicole and Jemmy and Maria qk.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hi.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Everyone welcome The Mother Knows Death. Today's episode is going
to be very heavy and just a little bit different
than any kind of episode we've really ever done here
on Mother Knows Death. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month,
and we're going to talk to our friend Jim Schmidt.
Jim is a former firefighter who now travels the country

(00:43):
educating first responders to help both recognize and prevent domestic violence.
You may have seen Jim in the news over the
past few years because his daughter, Gabby Petito, was murdered
by her fiance, Brian Laundry. Jim is a co founder
of the Gabby Petito Foundation. And today we're not only
going to talk to Jim about Gabby's tragic ending, but

(01:06):
also what their family went through over the past few
years and what he's been going through. And we're hoping
that we could just bring some awareness to domestic violence today.
So before we get started today with Jim's interview, we're
going to give you a brief overview of Gabby's story.
For those of you who are unfamiliar.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, because you know, sometimes when we have guests on
we have to interrupt them to clarify some details, and
we want them to just be able to speak freely
and not have to keep interrupting what he has to say.
So will this give you the basics of this case?
So basic background is Gabby was a travel vlogger in
her early twenties from New York, which she had been
living with her fiance, Brian Laundry, at his parents' home

(01:46):
in Florida. They had met in high school only dated
for about a year before getting engaged, so they were
really young in their early twenties. So together they went
around in a white camper van and documented their travels
for social media. And this case kind of goes back
to twenty twenty one when everything went downhill. So in
July of twenty twenty one, Gabby and Brian said off

(02:06):
on a trip out west and we're planning to reach
Oregon by that October. However, within a couple of weeks
it started to take a dark turn when Brian was
seen slapping Gabby in moab Utah and they got pulled
over by police.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, so that's something that we're definitely going to talk
to Jim about because that's part of his mission right
now is to try to educate people on how to
pick up signs of domestic violence because there, of course,
there are questions that if someone had intervened at that time,
that Gabby may still be alive today. So it's really

(02:39):
important for people who are working as first responders in
these situations that they're able to recognize the patterns well.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
And I guess this case is especially scary because you know,
she's far away from her family. She had been keeping
in touch, but of course all of a sudden, you know, communication,
I wouldn't say it fully cut off, but at some
point they had a FaceTime with her, and then it
all went to text messaging, which at some point they
didn't even believe it was her texting them anymore. And

(03:10):
just there was all this documentation after her body was
discovered a couple weeks later, that this abuse had been
going on. There's the incident in Moab where a couple
had seen Brian slapping her and called police and they
pulled them over, and then they determined that Gabby was
the aggressor, which is ridiculous because if you watch the
bodycam footage, it's unbelievable what goes down. And then they

(03:33):
had another incident in Wyoming where they were at a
Text Mex restaurant and they were also getting in a fight.
He was being very agitated, being very aggressive towards the
staff as well, and there were reports of that going around.
So you just have to think if they were acting
like this in public, and he was treating her like
this in front of other people, what was going on
behind the scenes.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, and these are all questions that we'll talk to
Jim about for sure. I just wanted to give you
guys a brief overview of what just the basic story
that goes behind this and now his mission with their
entire family and how they're trying to bring awareness and
of course this being you know, just because you're not

(04:16):
in a relationship that may involve domestic abuse. As Maria
was just saying, people eating at a restaurant were witnessing it,
and sometimes it's just easier to turn your head the
other way and to ignore it. And these people actually
went above and beyond and called police, which a lot

(04:37):
of people would just blow off and ignore, and it
still didn't help her. So we're in twenty twenty five,
we're still not anywhere near where we should be as
far as recognizing this and getting people the help that
they need. So we hope after speaking with Jim today
that we could bring more awareness to it and possibly

(04:57):
make things better for other victims in the future. Hi, Jim,
Welcome The Mother Knows Death.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Hey, thank you very much for having me. It's an
honor to be here with you all.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
It's so great to talk to you. Finally, I just
want to share your story with everyone. So before we
get into the story, let's talk about a little bit,
like what your life was like before all of this happened.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah. Absolutely, I mean we were just living a regular
life like so many people. My wife worked as a
teacher's assistant in our in our local school. I was
working in the fire service. I was a firefighter EMT
for well over twenty years, and you know, just a
normal life like anybody else. And you know, working in

(05:46):
that field, you know, you're exposed to a lot of things,
and you see things, but typically, you know, you just
think it's the people you're responding to that it happens
to like, nothing like this is ever going to happen
to you until you're you're kind of thrown into it.
So it was just raising our kids and living life
like everybody does each day.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
So you're married to Gabby's mom. Yeah, and when did
you first meet Gabby?

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Oh gosh, she was two, just turning three years old.
So my wife and I met as a EMTs together.
We started dating and she was very protective of Gabby,
you know, rightfully so. And finally I got a chance
to meet her and she was just little, bright eyed,
blue blue eyes, you know, blonde hair and pigtails, and

(06:36):
she was just full of life. And Nicole was an
amazing mom, and you know, she was just an amazing kid.
And it really, uh really made me want to, you know,
marry my wife. You know initially, you know a lot
of people at a young age would be scared of
like an instant family, but not me. I just I
saw how she was and how amazing they were, and

(06:58):
you know, I just wanted that to be a part
of that life.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
Yeah. That's it's interesting that you say that because with Maria,
I was how were you when we met?

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Ape I was thirteen?

Speaker 3 (07:10):
Yeah, yeah, And a lot of men don't realize that
you have to you can't just marry the mom. You
have to marry into a family.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
Basically, yeah, it's you know, her dad and stepbomb or
bonus mom. I hate using the words, you know, so
I do too.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
That's why I hate them too.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
And you know they're very much a part of her
life all throughout her life too. And you know, it
was always making sure there was that balance. I never
tried to overstep and be more than I should have been.
I always treated her as if she was my own daughter,
even though biologically she wasn't. And you know, it wasn't

(07:51):
always perfect. It never is, but at the end of
the day, the everything that was done was done for
her because seemed to many times that when the parents
don't get along, it's the children who suffer. And so
it was always about her and we could agree to
disagree sometimes on things with each other, but at the
end of the day, it was what's best for her.
I think that's something that a lot of people don't realize,

(08:13):
you know, when they get into relationships like that, or
the relationships don't work out.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Oh definitely.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
So you and Nicole get married and then you had
more kids.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah, yeah, we did. So we have three other kids together,
my son Thomas, he's twenty two, and then we have Maddie,
she's sixteen. And then we have our youngest one, our
little spark plug, Catherine, we call her kid Cat. She's thirteen.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Yeah, so okay, so I'm just trying to set the
scene for what your family was going through. And then
so you have her dad and her other mother as well.
They they got married. Now do they have children as well?

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Yeah, they have two children as well. So they have
two sons. One's get ready to graduate high school this
year and the other ones just in high school. So yeah,
they were all at an age where they were old
enough to realize that something something was wrong, like something
wasn't right.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Oh, definitely. Were you all living in New York at
this time.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
So we were living in New York at the time.
Gabby's dad they had just moved to Florida only a
few months prior. Okay, he had transferred jobs down there.
So they were literally like still had boxes in the
house when everything happened. You know, they hadn't fully unpacked
yet when they got thrown into it as well.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
So Gabby is the oldest of the children and she
so I just I'm trying to see how you guys
felt about this. Relationship. She meets this guy, and you
guys met him, mom, assuming, Yeah, we met him before.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
They went to high school together. He was a year
older than her. He was part of the friend group
that they were in. He was kind of always known
as the quiet, you know, strange kid, so to speak.
They were very like artsy group, And so they met
in high school. He graduated and Gabby had graduated the
next year. She had gone her her own way. She

(10:16):
put all of her eggs in one basket to go
to one art school and they rejected her portfolio. So
she kind of just went out into the workforce after that.
And she was starting to do a little bit of
traveling around a bit because that's something that she always
wanted to do. And she was back home. Had to
be some time. I think was around twenty nineteen ish
or so. Sometimes the dates kind of are fuzzy for me.

(10:39):
But she got reconnected with him. He came into her job,
they started talking, they started hanging out again. They went
on a road trip prior to that faithful one together.
They left us friends and as my wife says, you know,
they came back, you know more than that. And it
wasn't soon after that Uh, he said his family was

(11:01):
moving to Florida and he wanted her to go with
her with him, and so she did, and uh, you know,
that's that's kind of how things started playing out after that.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Were you guys at all worried as parents about her
moving so far away from you at such a young
age and the subsequent engagement.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
So, you know, she was she was in her in
her twenties. Now at this point, we're all, you know,
you're always worried about your kids, but she was she
was really grown into her own as an adult. She'd
been pretty pretty responsible. You know, she's a pretty tough girl.
She could take care of herself, and there was always

(11:41):
that worry about it. But the fact that she was
moving with somebody that she went to school with, that
you think you trust and and that you know, you know,
that kind of like eased it a little bit. But
it was it was something that she wanted. And we
got married young, my wife and I and you know,
I was kind of on my own after high school

(12:01):
at a young age too, So it's not the norm
for I guess a lot of people nowadays where sometimes
kids stay home a little bit longer. But it didn't
seem too too crazy at the time for us, we
did have some family living in and around the Florida area,
so if we needed something, you know, there was somebody
not too too far away, So we had that in

(12:22):
the back of our mind too.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
So you guys, didn't have any kind of a bad
vibe about this guy before she went.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
No, I mean, and he had come over to the house,
you know, I couldn't even tell you how many times.
And when he'd come over, he was always polite, he
was respectful, quiet, you know. He would play or do
art games or different art projects with our daughters while
he was there. So he never really never really gave

(12:54):
us any red flags from from the start. And like
as a dad, especially doing what I did for so long,
or your guard is usually up you know, and anyone
that comes around. Yeah, but for some reason, it wasn't
really up on head. And that's one thing I really
kind of kick myself in the butt ford of not
not being too not not being more of like judgy,

(13:18):
I guess, and I don't know if I were to
that right, but just letting my guard down.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Well, I think these people kind of are experts and
hiding their true selves. You know, and they portray themselves
as these wonderful people, and behind the scenes they're just
doing these terrible things. So I understand where you come
in and you kind of like, I don't want to say,
put the blame on yourself, but feel, you know, upon
reflection bad about it. But I think these people, just
in all these cases we cover, are just so good

(13:45):
about hiding it that it's impossible for anybody to detect,
even the victims.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
You know, And that's and that's something we you know,
you start to learn after the fact, so you know,
between what you experience in life, what you see on
TV and the media, and and what you believe, like
domestic abuse and domestic violence really looks like the first
assumption immediately is that it's all physical violence, and it's not.

(14:10):
It's all this other power and control and emotional and
psychological abuse that's going on that eventually leads to that abuse.
That physical abuse and the physical stuff and all that
other stuff typically happens behind closed doors. You know. That's
why it is such a difficult topic to really get
into that so many people don't understand now looking back

(14:32):
on it and knowing what we know now, like there
were signs and we just didn't know to look for them.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
You know, I have. I'm in a similar situation with you,
as you know that Maria was significantly older than my
younger kids. And when your kids are in your house,
you're kind of up their butt all the time and
you know everything they're doing and all their friends and everything,
and then when they move out, it's kind of you know,
she would go work at a bar on the weekends

(15:01):
and be out at three in the morning, and it's
just kind of an out of sight, out of mind thing.
And I'm sure that you guys were the same way.
Like she's she's there, and you think about her and
talk about her, you know, talk to her once in
a while or every couple days or whatever, but you're
you don't really know what's going on in her life
because she's an adult now. So she had she had

(15:24):
already went on a trip with this guy, and it
was fine, you I mean, seemingly fine. So then they
she calls you and says she's going on this other trip,
and you guys probably were just like, okay, cool, like
another trip, yeah, And it.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Was something that she talked about and that they were planning.
They wanted to change things up. The first trip they
did in her little Nissan Sentra and drove that little
tiny thing across the country. And so this time she
was like, well, you know, we're gonna plan it out more.
We're gonna do it a little bit differently. You know,
we're gonna get like a like a van and we're
gonna we're gonna convert it into like a little camper.

(15:59):
That way we have more room. And so it seemed
like she had this plan going and they were working
on it like it wasn't going to be an immediate thing.
There was like other things that were going on down
there that I guess we didn't really know about. So,
you know, for one of the one of the first
red flags was you know that quick attachment I think
you kind of mentioned earlier, where you know, the relationship

(16:22):
moved very fast, like love bombing, doting on her, you know,
the center of attention, which a lot of people might
think is a good thing but can be problematic. And
then moving to Florida, well then that kind of isolates
her away from her family. And then while she was
down there, she had a first job down there, and
she started making friends there and this is all stuff

(16:45):
we kind of found out after the fact, but didn't
like those friends, so she quit that job and then
she came to the same place that he was working,
and then we don't need two cars and save some
money and a lot of other little things there. And
it was all during COVID two, so the world was
a little crazy, but you're not there to see it
all the time, so you don't you don't see these

(17:07):
red flags. And then it just seemed like suddenly, boom,
we're going to take this road trip. And so yeah,
they came up in the end of June twenty twenty one.
Our son was graduating high school. She wanted to come
up for that, and that's where they kicked off. The
road trip from was from Long Island right around July
second or so, was the last time, you know, we

(17:30):
saw her in person.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
So so you're talking to her throughout the trip, either
by a text message or FaceTime or something. When when
was the first time that you guys started to think
something was not right?

Speaker 1 (17:49):
August twelfth, That was the day we found out that
there was an incident in moab Utah. And what was
explained to us that day was completely different than what
actually happened, and it's something that so many people that
are experiencing domestic abuse and domestic violence do. They downplay it.
They'll take the blame for what occurred that day. We

(18:12):
were basically told that there was an argument in public,
somebody called the police, they were going to give him
a ticket. They didn't, but everything was fine, you know,
and myself her father were like, we're gonna jump out
a plane. We'll fly out there right now. We'll get
your van home, you know, take a little break, and
she just kept reassuring, you know, no, no, no, everything

(18:33):
is fine. Everything is fine. And so there was a
little separation period between the two of them. He had
come back to Florida for a little bit to take
care of some stuff at a storage facility, and then
he flew back and they continued on their trip, and
there was still you know, I'd go to the firehouse
and you know, on the days I was working, and

(18:54):
I'd always check social media to see where she's at,
because she was always posting different pictures, and you know,
that was always I'm sitting at the kitchen table with
the guys and having a cup of coffee or something,
and you know, hey, where is she today. I'm like, oh,
she's over here, you know, check out these these photos.
And that continued on until the end of August, when

(19:14):
all those posts stopped. They just they just stopped. There
wasn't anything, and there wasn't any more communication. And the
last few text messages my wife received were very odd.
It just didn't seem like her. And so that was
right around the end of August. She received one that said,
tell tell Stan stop calling me. I don't have a

(19:37):
good signal on our way to Yosemite. Well, Stan was
a grandfather and she never called him Stan. She always
called him Grandpa. But we figured maybe she was driving,
maybe he was texting for her, and I thought it
was odd because they weren't going to Yosemite. They were
going to Yellowstone after Wyoming and then heading up through
like Idaho and into Oregon. So but maybe she mistyped

(20:01):
or something. And then there was another text message in
there about going off being a solo van lifer herself,
and so just the worrying of it, it didn't seem right.
But then all communication pretty much stopped after that, and
my wife got really worried. She thought that something happened
to the two of them, not just her, And so

(20:21):
she was calling, texting, We were all calling and texting,
no answer, no answer, trying to call down to his parents.
They wouldn't answer. And it took my wife well, probably
three days or so back and forth with phone calls
to different law enforcement agencies to report her missing, and

(20:42):
you know, she just kind of got bounced around like
a pin pulling ball. It's not easy to report an
adult missing in this country because they are an adult,
they do have the right to go missing if they want.
It was just crazy. And then you know, it was
just all different jurisdictional things like, well, where was the
last place you saw her? You have to report her there. No,

(21:03):
where does she live you have to report her there. No,
when was the last physical location you know she was at?
You have to call there. And finally, on September eleventh
of twenty twenty one, my wife walked into the fifth
Priescinct in a patchow of New York and she basically
threw herself at the floor in front of a female
detective and said, something's not right. You know, I can't
I can't get a hold of my daughter now for days,

(21:25):
and she took the report and that detective called down
to Florida where they were living, and that's when they
discovered he was there. The van was there. They handed
the police the cards had called our attorney and Gabby
wasn't there, and then that's just when like, oh, helber

(21:45):
close after that.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
So, what was your relationship like with her parents prior
to this? Had you ever met them in real life
or even talked to them on the phone. Did you
have any kind of relationship.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
Yeah, we met him and my wife for text occasionally
with them, and I mean they even had like a
Pinterest page or something like that that they used to
like share things on. We met them at at our house,
even though they deny that ever happening. We talked to
them in person, but yeah, we we spoke to them.
They seemed just like any other any other family, little quiet,

(22:22):
but they were, you know, nothing out of the ordinary.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
So when they weren't taking your calls and cooperating, did
you immediately have a gut feeling something was really wrong?

Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, you know, right from the beginning, you know the
fact that and that was that I think that was
one of the things that my wife really pointed out
to the detective was like I can't even I think,
like I can't get a hold of be the one
of these kids, and they're not answering my text The
parents aren't answering my texts or anything like That's that's
a little little odd, like I don't know what's going on.

(22:56):
So that kind of set things off. And then when
that detective came our door that evening and said, yeah,
your daughter's officially a missing person, you know, that's when
you know, all these things are going off of my head.
I'll say for myself, like my response to that, I
didn't go into a dad or husband mode at that

(23:17):
point because I didn't know how my brain was programmed
to respond as a first responder, and so you know,
I didn't know how to like console at that time.
I didn't know how to do anything other than start
doing my research, trying to put things together and like
respond to this, like like the tones dropped in the

(23:37):
firehouse and I had to go take care of this.
So you know, that's when I made the decision. I said, listen,
I'm going to go I'm going to go look for her.
I'm going to go try to find her and bring
her home.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
How did you even I mean this is just such
an unusual circumstance because she was traveling across country, you
knew kind of like around the way or she was,
but not.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
I mean, yeah, So she she had shared a bunch
of her apps with me, so and her brother too, so,
like different hiking apps, different camping apps for campgrounds and stuff,
which always amazed me because we've we've camped for a
long time. We had a camper going back years before this,
and she never liked it because it was too dirty,

(24:21):
there was too many bugs or whatever. And then as
she got older she started doing this and I'm like, really,
She's like, yeah, that's actually pretty fun now. So I
guess it just wasn't cool at the time being with
your parents or something. But so, so she knew that
I was into hiking. She knew I was in into
the outdoors and stuff, and so was her brother, and
so she would always highlight different places she went and say, hey, like,

(24:43):
you guys should go check this out. So I immediately
went went to those those different apps, and I looked
and I realized, like her, you know, leading up to this,
the last time we heard from her, she was in
and around the Grands Hetah National Park, so I said,
if I have a feeling that she's somewhere, she's got
to be She's got to be in there somewhere. And
I don't know, you know, I'm running scenarios through my head.

(25:04):
She had Jane Doe in a hospital bed somewhere, unable
to communicate. She'd lost in the middle of the woods
and injured. Did he leave her on the side of
the road. Did she get fed up or something and
leave with like another another group of people. But I
just figured that all my training, everything that I did.

(25:24):
You know, I have the I Love Me book, like
most firefighters do. It's like this thick of different certifications.
I said, I'm going to go, you know, in connections everywhere.
You know, we know people everywhere, So I'm gonna go
find her. So I packed up my gear, I flew
out two thousand miles and started doing what I what
I could do and meeting with law enforcement. When I
got out there, I had no idea what to expect,

(25:45):
because when you come from more part of the country,
you know, we're pretty rich with resources here. I'll tell
you this. Probably where I lived in Suffolk County, more
cops in that county than there are in the entire
state of Wyoming, so you don't know what you're going
to expect out there. But one of the first things
I did was I went to the little ranger station,
the little visitor station in Wyoming and Jackson and I

(26:08):
got a map of the area, and I started asking
that the person questions about campgrounds. I kind of knew
her camping style, where they would they would pay to
get a campsite, but if they could find a dispersed campground,
which which are free campgrounds in the area, and they
could find a spot in one of those free campgrounds,
they would reserve the campground that they paid for to

(26:28):
make sure they had a spot. But once they found
a free one that was close by, if it was
had all the things they were looking for, they would
cancel it just to save some money. So I had
them tell me where all the dispersed campgrounds were, what
they were all like. I didn't tell them what I
was there for, and I remember I got back to
the car and I circled this area on the map
and I said, if I had to guess, you'd probably
camp in an area like this because it's kind of

(26:48):
like in between the two entrances to the park. It's
on that way up the Yellowstone. It's got a creek
that's running through, it's got views of the mountains, a
big open area. They could spend a couple of days there,
up to seven days there. And from there I went
up and I had a meeting with the law enforcement
officials that day with Park Service for service, the Jackson

(27:10):
County or Jackson Police Department, Teton County Sheriffs, and I
basically told them, hey, like I'm here, I'm family. I'm
not here to interfere. I'm here to help. Let you
know that. You know, I want to answer any questions
you might have or assist you in any way you
might need. And here's what I know about our daughter.
Here's what I know about her, her traveling habits, this

(27:30):
is what I know about her camping habits. And you know,
whatever I can do. And this is what I know
up to this point. And when I pointed out the
area on the map where I'm like, this would definitely
be a place that she was, she would she would stay,
they didn't say anything, but they didn't really do a
good job of like hiding their reaction because they kind

(27:53):
of like shifty eyed each other like looking around and
unbeknownst to me at the time, that's the one of
the areas they were already looking for her. When when
I had that meeting.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Did you at any time think, I mean, I know
that you're a firefighter, so you see terrible stuff as
opposed to the regular, regular citizen. But did you honestly
think that she was still alive somewhere where you like
trying to tell yourself like, oh, there has to be

(28:23):
some kind of misunderstanding, she's like in the hospital or something.
Did you even let your mind go there prior to
finding this out? Uh?

Speaker 1 (28:32):
I would say that I probably in the back of
my mind. I kept it at the back knew that
it could be exactly what I was going to come across,
but I tried to run all these other scenarios of
what ifs, and I guess, you know, as I was
calling home and texting home, I was still trying to
keep keep them a little bit positive about about it.

(28:56):
But even that it was really a breakdown between my
professional and personal boundaries because like I still, I guess
I felt disconnected at that time, not realizing like, this
is our daughter that we're looking for. But I was
just trying. I was just trying to run all these
other things, you know, what have have we checked here?

(29:16):
Have we checked there? You know, just kind of like
checking off like different things, you know, And they had
the law enforcement, they had already run through all the hospitals,
they'd run through everything, and I knew that those were
no longer viable options and stuff, so I kind of
knew it probably wouldn't be good.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
How did you navigate your other kids during this time?
Were they aware since the first day, you guys suspected
something was wrong, that something was going on.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
They could tell like once once my wife. You know,
they pick up on parents' emotions and they could tell
something was off. But we would try to keep them
as calm as possible. When I was out in Wyoming,
we had a ton of friends, you know, the fire department, family,
everybody coming in the house. So they would they would
take like our daughters out or my son out and

(30:05):
kind of take him out of the house if there
was a lot of things going on, if there were
phone calls, and kind of keeping them busy so that
they wouldn't be kind of seeing, you know, the emotions
that we were going through and trying to just keep
them calm to so. But they were at the age
where they they knew something was wrong. I just don't
think they realized how how bad it was going to be.

Speaker 3 (30:29):
Yeah, when they got to Florida and found when they
called you guys and said her Brian's there at the
house in Florida and her van's because it was her
van right, correct, it was in her name.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
He was registered in her name.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
Yeah, how I mean, how come? What did the what
did the police do? They just were like they they
went there and said, oh, he's there, and that's it.
They couldn't do anything and question him or anything.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Uh well, they actually never even saw him in the house.
The parents just said he was there, so they never
even verified that he was in the house. But they
impounded the van that day and they were like, yeah,
take the van, there you go, and oh the only
thing we were told about that was that the van
was a heck of a lot cleaner than it should

(31:17):
have been, considering that it was just on a multiple
month road trip across the country.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
I just I mean, I don't I ever, I'm always
confused about how law enforcement works and stuff, But I
would think at a very minimum, if he had her
van and she wasn't there, then he could get in
trouble for like a stolen vehicle if it wasn't his.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah, I don't know. There was a lot of things
that I'm not too certain on either. You know, there's
and all sorts of other law enforcement agencies came out,
you know and say, you know, if this is my jurisdiction,
we would have done this or that. You know. I'm
not sure, but at that point, I guess they really
hadn't proved a crime or anything like that that occurred.

(32:05):
So at best, I don't know if it could be
like a unlawful use of like the vehicle, you know,
taking it without permission versus its stolen. Yeah, so I'm
not sure. I don't know if being handed a card
for an attorney kind of freaks them out a little bit.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
Well, that to me is a huge I mean, that
was a huge red flag obviously. So God, I feel
so bad for your wife to adoring this, just because
I always say this at any cases that we cover
when a person and you know, going to crime kind
you see all these people that have missing family members.
It just even though death is obviously the worst. Just

(32:47):
the waiting period of not knowing is just I can't
even imagine what that could have been like.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
And we consider ourselves lucky to some extent because I mean,
from the time that we were able to get her
reported missing to the time we found her was like
eight days, although you know, we knew like a little
bit before then, like something wasn't right. But really it's
it wasn't that long a time from when we knew

(33:15):
something was off to when we found her. And there's
other families out there that they go months, years, decades
with not knowing, And I can't imagine what that's like
for them, because I know what it was like during
that time, but be going, you know, and you've seen
them there, You've seen them at these at these different conferences,
like still decades later, like begging for help, like begging

(33:36):
for somebody to to listen and to kind of revitalize
the story and help help them. And then because they
feel like they're forgotten, you know, after a certain period
of time, and they're just doing everything they can to
try to figure out like what happened to them. And
I just can't imagine what that's like for those families.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
No I mean, I can't even imagine. I imagine those
couple of weeks took years off of your life.

Speaker 1 (33:59):
So yeah, I can always have this much gray. I mean,
I don't have any hair in my head, but like
I mean, it's yeah, it definitely did took a lot
out of us.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
This episode is brought to you by The Grosser Room.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
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(34:43):
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(35:04):
So if you have any advice or anything that, we
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(35:25):
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Speaker 3 (35:44):
So one conversation that we've had before is that you're
you're a firefighter, and you know, obviously we're a fire
family too, so we we know how Daddy is at
work right, and how he gets when he gets home
from work, and the things he sees, and you know,

(36:05):
we hear stories of how they see really horrible stuff
at work every day for years and years and years.
And it's especially with your particular culture in the fire service.
It's always taught to be suppressed and now I mean
more recently, it's getting talked about more and more not
to suppress those feelings. But you were one of those

(36:29):
firefighters that just kind of kept it all in. And
what happened when you were looking for Gabby and you
eventually found her, like explain to everyone what that was.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yeah, I thought all that stuff, you know, because whether
it's right or wrong, you learn to suppress that because
you can't get emotionally attached. You can't let these things
affect you. You can't show emotion. You'll never be able
to do the job. You'll have a short career, you know.
And it makes you tougher, but you don't realize it
really takes a toll on you. You know, you start to

(37:04):
build this vicarious trauma, and it looks different for each person.
You don't know, you know, what call or what scene
or scenario might might trigger something in you. But I
thought all that stuff kind of made me impervious to anything.
Like I was, you know, I'm tough, like there's nothing
I haven't seen or done. I got this, and then

(37:25):
I wouldn't change me going out there at all, because
I still think I would rather myself have absorbed what
I did versus anybody else in the family. And so
when I got out there, you know, I did, I
was like mission focused, did everything you know I said
I was going to do. And then on September nineteenth
was the day that I got the phone call in

(37:45):
the morning, they from the FBI from my advocate. She
asked where I was told her. She asked if I
could get back to the hotel. They said, yeah, absolutely,
I'm about twenty minutes out from there, and we had
to deal with the hotel. They had a little conference
room set aside that I could use pretty much anytime,
and there were windows that looked at him to the
to the front of front of the hotel, and it

(38:07):
seemed like an eternity, but it wasn't. It was relatively
short order. I saw two black SUVs come pulling up,
lights and sirens, basically like jump the curb, and two
people get out, and one of them was reading my
victim advocate and the other one was Charlie Jones, who
I hadn't met at that point, but he was the
senior FBI agent in charge of the case. And they

(38:28):
came into the room and Charlie said, uh, sit down,
and sat down. I'm like, this can't be good, and
he's like, I don't know how to say this, but
I'm just gonna say it. He said, I found we
found remains consistent with your daughter, Gabby. There was a
news helicopter flying overhead. They were videoing us as we
found her. Body, and we need you to call your

(38:49):
family and tell them before this hits the news. And
prior to this, like what the rest of the world
was seeing, we were finding out at the same time
as everybody else. It wasn't like we were a privy
to any of that information for the most part. And so,
I mean, that's a lot to take in. And I
just went into the shock at that moment, and I'm
like trying to figure out what what he was saying.

(39:12):
And I said, Charlie, I'm like, what is what does
remains consistent mean? Like what does that mean? He's like, well,
we're pretty sure it's your daughter, but we won't know
until we do a forensic autopsy. And I said, well,
how how long does that take? He said, I don't know.
He's like, I don't know what the capability of the
Medical Examiner's office is here. It's it's not good. We

(39:34):
may have to bring in experts from out of state
to do this, and then it can take weeks and
then toxicology reports and this and that to figure out,
you know, manner and cause and all these other things.
He's like, it could be it could be a while.
And I'm like, there was another girl missing out here though,
like that looked just like her. We were getting a
lot of tips about her, like how do you how

(39:55):
do you know it's not her? And he's like, well,
we won't defend it know until you know, we get
the results of the autopsy and DNA and different things.
And I'm like, Charlie, I'm like, you asked me to
make the most important phone call of my life, but
you're saying there's a chance, a slight chance, but there's
a chance it's not her. He was like, it's light.

(40:17):
I said, you got to give me more than that.
I said, you really do. You got to give me
more than that because I got to make this phone call.
I'm like, I have to be one hundred percent certain,
and he said okay. He stepped out of the room
for for a minute. He came back in and he's like,
I'm going to show you some photos. And he showed
me photos from the from the crime scene, and so
I was able to identify her through her clothing, through

(40:39):
some other things. I can tell you every everything about
that scene. I can tell you every I can close
my eyes, I could picture it, you know. And there's
a lot I don't remember from then, but I can
tell you every moment of that day. I can. I
can close my eyes and walk you right to where
she she was located, which direction she was, all sorts

(41:03):
of other stuff. But I fell to the ground, you know,
crying immediately because like now it's like it's definitely really
it's real. And he's like, jimm you got to make
this call, and and so I did. I got my
wife on the phone, and I got her dad and
Tower on the phone, and I told him that they
found her. And I think the hardest part was one

(41:29):
we lost our daughter. Right at that point, we didn't
know how. And uh. I was like, I said, I
was going to bring her home. And then I said, okay,
go you know when when can I take her home?
And he said you can't. And so I was out

(41:51):
there like two days later they did the autopsy on her,
and then I'm like, okay, you guys did the autopsy today.
Can I take her home? And he said no, and
so like, you know, you should go home to your family,
and I said no, I don't want to go home.
I said, she's been alone in the wilderness. She was
discarded like a piece of trash. I said, I'll camp
outside this medical examiner's office until I'm ready to bring

(42:14):
you're ready to let me take her home? And they said, Jim,
you can't do that. And I never felt like a
bigger failure in my life at that moment, one as
a father, for failing to protect our daughter. And I'm
not getting any type of like gender rolling or anything
like that. I can only go by what was instilled
in me at a really young age by my grandfather,
and that was, you know, never bring dishonor to the

(42:36):
family name, live with integrity, and protect your family at
all costs. And you can mess up a lot of things,
but if you mess those up, you know, they were
pretty unforgivable. But I felt like a bigger failure as
a first responder, and we don't deal well with failure
because I said I was going to bring her home
and I couldn't, and I returned home without her, and

(42:58):
we had a funeral for her without her body, and
I think that was probably one of the hardest things
for me.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
What did they I mean, they had to keep her
obviously because now it was a potential homicide investigation. So
were they able to explain that to you in a
way that at least you kind of understood why you
had to leave her there.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Yeah. Yeah, they basically said, you know, they know it's
they know it's looking like a homicide. At that point,
you know, there wasn't anything too obvious like like gunshots
or you know, fatal stab wounds or anything like that.
She was positioned in a place or in a way
that you couldn't humanly possible put your own body in

(43:48):
by yourself. It was a staged crime scene, you know,
the way she was facing. She was in a left
lateral recumbent position, like like kind of tucked in with
all these blankets tucked in around her. Her boots were
placed right next to her. There was the remnants of
the campfire like five feet away from her. So they

(44:08):
knew that it was a homicide, and so they were
able to determine through the autopsy that the cause of
cause of death, cause of manner of death was manual
strangulation throttling blunt force trauma. And so at that point
they then they you know, they knew it was a homicide,
but they were still you know, running some additional tests

(44:29):
and things like that. They had sent some stuff to
the FBI crime lab and it wasn't until gosh, we
want to say this, this is September nineteenth. It was
the end of October by the time we were able to
go back and get her.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
And that was after Brian was found dead.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Correct, Yeah, I think he was found Yeah, a little
little time after that.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
So once they figured out So when they when they
found her body, you're saying they right away they were like,
something is suspicious, just because of the way that she
was found. And then I'm sure you were also or
even they knew that the situation was just weird, that
he had taken the van back and everything.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yeah, because they the one thing that they were able
to find was that he had taken her one of
her debit cards or credit cards, and he was using
it on the way home. So that was like the
first crime that they had him on. But he had
already gone, He had already gone missing at that point.
So that coupled with where she was found and how

(45:36):
she was found, you know, obviously led them to the
and then the autopsy thought, yeah, this is this is homicide.

Speaker 3 (45:44):
So they went they went to his house to to investigate,
and he was gone already.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
You're saying, Yeah, he was gone.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
And the parents didn't really cooperate at all.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
Uh, you know, I think they you know, they kind
of knew that he was in an area because they
had they had found his vehicle. I guess over in
that area it was going to get like a parking
ticket because now I had the park there row and
I so the parents had gone and brought the car home.
That time of year, the area that he was in,

(46:19):
it's really like a swamp area, and when they get
heavy rains, it just fills up. And it had gone
through a period of really really heavy rain in the
whole place was underwater, and so they had a lot
of difficulty, you know, searching for weeks through there between
airboats and four wheel drive vehicles trying to get in there.
And it wasn't until it really started to the water

(46:41):
receded that they were able to get into that area
and look for him.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Didn't the parents find him very quickly after they started looking.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Yeah, they found his within forty five minutes of them
being involved in the search. They went right to a
specific location and found his backpack.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
So you guys go home and you have this funeral
for her, even though you didn't have her roomains yet
and what happens from there? How does your life? I
mean most people like me that haven't been through it,
but just every every person that has children are like,
how how does your life go on?

Speaker 1 (47:27):
It was I mean, it was just it was a
really crazy time. I mean, you left with so many
unanswered questions, questions, so many what ifs, you know, should have,
could haves. You know, hindsight's always twenty twenty. You know,
you're just in shock, your numb. It was that year
was a really really tough here. In particular, my mom

(47:48):
had died in April before that, and my grandmother passed
away just a few days after Gabby's funeral, so you know,
we had that going on. I was dealing with some
health personal health issues too at the time, and so
there was just a lot going on, and like you're
walking around in like this fog, like just not knowing
like what's next. And when she first went missing, my

(48:12):
wife started, you know, a Facebook page, you know, with
a missing poster like helped find Gabby. And almost immediately
after all of this, we started receiving messages back from
from people saying that you know, they watched it unfold
like the rest of the world, and they realized that
they were in potentially lethal relationship, an abusive relationship, and

(48:35):
that they got out there seeking help and they attributed
to our daughter's story. They saw so many similarities. And
we started getting a lot of these messages really from
all over the world, not just here in the US.
And my wife said, we're going to start a foundation.
I don't know what that looks like. We're gonna we're
gonna start a foundation because it seems like so many
people can relate to her story, and you know what,

(48:59):
off if it can help others, then we're going to
We're going to start this foundation. And so we did,
and that was like in November, and that's kind of
what we did to kind of like start to focus
our grief, kind of channeling it, channeling it to helping others.
I mean, we were still going through a lot of
other stuff at that time. I think thankfully we had

(49:23):
the ability to get connected to crime victim advocates, get
our children into therapy, getting ourselves into therapy, and then
start dealing with the emotional end of it as well.
But really the foundation, I think is what has helped us,
you know, get through these last few years.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
Well, you guys weren't only dealing with grief, but you
had a total media circus around you too.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Yeah. Yeah, you know, there's there's a lot of speculation
on you know, why her story got so much attention.
You know, it was a quiet news cycle. It was
COVID going on and kind of spanned the country. There
are certain cases, certain people, depending on what you look like,

(50:06):
you will get a lot more media attention than others,
which is very unfortunate. And that's a question we get
from the media all the time, like, well, why do
you feel I got so much attention. I'm like, that's
a great question. Can you answer it? Because you're the media,
you know, why do you pick and choose? Yeah, and
so you know, you don't really get a straight answer
with that, but you know, the world really kind of

(50:26):
wrapped their arms around us. They gave us a lot
of support. I feel like if it didn't get that
much attention, I don't know if he would have ever
found her, because not long after they found her, the
weather out in Wyoming, which if you've ever been out there,
you can experience all three seasons, like in three of
the four seasons in one day. But it started to

(50:47):
get cold. It started to snow out there, and I
feel like if it started the snow out there, we
might not have been able to find her. But really,
the world gave gave Gabby a platform, and we felt
like it was up to us to continue to share
her story what she experienced to prevent it from happening
to other people.

Speaker 3 (51:06):
So you you go back to living in New York,
and you eventually went back to being a firefighter, right,
you went back to your job, and but now your
life is totally different just because you not only because
you went through this tragedy, but also I hate to
say the word famous, but like you, your face was

(51:29):
all over the news and your We like to call
these deaths, you know, because on the website we cover
celebrity deaths, and it's it's like you become this celebrity.
But but not because of the tragedy, because of the
tragedy we call. We would say it's more of a
high profile case in this. But you know, now you're

(51:50):
at the point where you're going to showing up at
people's houses at calls and people might recognize you. You
go to the grocery store and people might recognize you.
Has that overall just been How do you feel that
experience has been. Is it helping you grieve because so
many people know your story or has it been you

(52:10):
think it's harder on you guys?

Speaker 1 (52:13):
Yeah, it was different, I mean there was. I mean
we still get it to this day. I mean my
wife gets it a lot more. She'll be coming out
of the bathroom in the airport and somebody will be like,
oh my gosh and start crying when they see her.
It can be overwhelming at times. You know, I could
tell you that there was people that I've been friends
with for a long time who didn't even know how

(52:34):
to approach us after that, you know, And if I
was on their end, I probably wouldn't have known either.
You know, what do you say to somebody who experiences
something like this, it's you know, you don't ever think
about it. But it got it got really difficult, and
for me, you know, I dealt with a couple of
health things afterwards, and I kind of made lied to

(52:55):
my doctor to get me back to work sooner than later,
because I figured I got to get back to get
back to work right, you know, get back to the
place you know you feel so comfortable in and I
quickly realized that was a mistake for me. I shouldn't
have gone back. My head wasn't there. I still hadn't
addressed all of the things that like I just went

(53:17):
through and for me, like I was making mistakes at work.
I was always really big into training with my firefighters,
and like I wasn't motivated to do that anymore. And
I quickly realized, like, you know, it's not just me,
and it's the lives of my firefighters and their families,

(53:38):
you know, expect me to keep them safe and bring
them home safe. And you know, I couldn't have that.
That weighed on me anymore. And so so I kind
of put my papers in and I found a job
down in Florida, still in a fire service, but not
out in the field anymore. And you know, on top
of that, it was because it was such a big
media thing. You know, we would have news cameras or

(54:03):
people taking photos or just rain them, people showing up
at our front door, knocking on our door because the
Lord told them to come speak to us, you know,
and so like our children can't even go outside anymore,
and so you know they're trying to live with that
too and go back to school and you know, get
bombarded with questions every single day from kids. And so

(54:27):
between all of that and getting this job offer down here,
you know, like, all right, maybe it's going to be
a fresh start, which it has been for the last
three years. You know, it's been a little bit more
semblance of a normal life, I guess for them for
the most part. And that was really important to us.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
So with your kids, because I do wonder about how
families move on and just i mean, it's been a
couple of years now, are things starting to resemble somewhat
of just it's not the same life, but it's just
a different life moving forward. But are you guys able

(55:06):
to go on vacation and have a good time and
laugh at dinner and just you know, try to heal
from this charm and just move on in a way?

Speaker 1 (55:17):
Yeah, And it looks different each day. And you know
there's like that old saying time heals all wounds. That's crap,
it's not true. I'll tell you that grief looks differently
as you go on. You know, it changes. And I'll
say it's definitely changed a lot for our kids as
they've gotten a little bit older and starting to realize
and understand more and more. And so you know, they

(55:41):
they still work with therapists, they still speak to them,
so that's really important. So they have that outlet outside
of us that they can talk to. But I'll say
we're a lot more intentional with the things we do.
Like we just did back in July a little staycation
down here in Florida. You know, we went like an
hour south and we just stayed by the beach and
it was really like nothing. We went to the beach

(56:02):
a couple of days, we kind of hung out in
the house that we rented, and afterwards we kind of
joked a little bit. We're like, you know, there wasn't
a lot of a lot of pictures taken, and we
realized because everybody was kind of in the moment while
they were there. Just making sure that you know, you're
taking advantage of that time and you're present in that
time and we disconnected from everything, you know, from the

(56:23):
outside world, and we're just together and we make sure
now that you know, even if we're sitting on the
couch at night watching you know, some mindless TV or whatever,
that like, we're present in that moment with them and
giving them their space to be able to express themselves
and talk to us when they want to talk to us. So, yeah,

(56:45):
it's important for them to know, like you know, bad
things happen. Sometimes things are out of your control. As
much as we'd like to think they are in our control,
they're not. But you can heal, you can still continue
to grieve, and you can have your days when you're happy,
and then you can have your days when you're said
that's okay too, And just know that we're all here
to help each other and uplift each other and work

(57:07):
with each other.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
So now you're doing a really great thing which is
kind of a branch off of all of your training
in yours as a firefighter first responder that you decided
that you're going to start traveling. Well, you've started going
around the country and talking about this, So tell tell
us some of the things that you found out afterwards

(57:30):
about the training of first responders as it pertains to
domestic violence.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
Yeah, and I it also you know, for me, it was,
you know, she was murdered by strangulation and I'm like,
how does this happen? Like, you know, it's so intimated,
so personal, and so I kind of started digging into
the topic right away and finding out a lot more
about strangulation and about the fact that even if somebody,

(57:56):
an intimate partner, puts their hands around your neck one time,
you're at a seven hundred fifty percent higher chance of
being murdered by them. In the domestic violence situation, it's
not a matter of if, but when that's.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
Like a really striking statistic, Actually.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
It is, it really is. And people who strangle are
some of the most dangerous people who walk the face
of the earth. When you talk about perpetrators who kill
law enforcement in the line of duty, a large majority
of those perpetrators have documented abuse of strangulation. Mass shooters, really,
the list goes on and on, and strangulation is a

(58:33):
preferred method because they can they literally have your life
in their hands and they can just let go or
not let go and have complete and full control. And
less than fifty percent of victims who are strangled have
any external marks in their body. There's very little signs.
If there are signs, they're very subtle, and so there

(58:53):
could be a multitude of underlying life threatening physical conditions
that if they're not gotten to the hospital on time
or within a certain amount of time that you know,
it could be fatal for them, but there's all these
very subtle symptoms. And while we were going through everything
we were going through, I was in a court deposition
where they were asking me about my training, and they

(59:15):
got into my EMS training and asked if I had
responded to domestic violence incidents and I said yes, and
they said, tell me about your training and I said none.
And it made me think about it because it's in
our It's in our e MT textbook, you know, it's
a couple of couple of paragraphs, but there's no questions
on the state exam, so they don't really cover it.
And so I started doing some research and looking around,

(59:36):
and there are some some places that do it, you know,
on a local level, they do DV training. There's two states,
Tennessee and Kentucky that do require like four hours of training,
but there's really nothing like across the board. And then
I found some some surveys and research papers where they
interviewed paramedics and EMTs, and I realized, you know, some

(59:57):
of the data there, I was like, not very good,
like some of their responses to the questions that were asked,
and so I realized in my career that I'd unintentionally
failed victims of domestic violence because I didn't know how
to refer. I didn't know how to respond. I didn't
know what trauma informed care really like, I knew what
it was, but I don't think I applied it to them.
And you know, I lived my career not ever wanting

(01:00:19):
to come on a situation and not know what to
do or who to call. But yet I responded to
these calls and they never gave it a second thought.
And so I put together I was a fire instructor,
So putting together training programs isn't you know, a big
deal for me? And so I put together a program,
and really it's bringing nine to one dispatchers, firefighters who
respond on EMS calls, our EMTs, paramedics, hospital staff, getting

(01:00:43):
the domestic violence advocates, even our legal judicial partners, all
in the room together and going through and really breaking
down you know what domestic violence looks like. Talking about
the statistics. I usually tell her to the area that
I'm traveling to, and I give them their local statistics,
talk about the non physical physical forms of abuse, the

(01:01:04):
power control, and then I get into neurobiology and trauma
and how it affects our brain, and then I get
into strangulation and how that further complicates these these cases,
how to respond to them, how to document things properly
on on the EMS and nine to one dispatch end,
and ultimately trying to get them transported to the hospital.

(01:01:26):
And I always provide them with their with their local
resources or national resources while I'm there that they can hopefully,
you know, use put in their arsenal that when they
go out there, at least if it's safe for them
to do so, they can quietly refer you know, that
that victim in that moment, because it's really a crucial
time for them. If we can make a connection right
off the bat, you know, and start regaining that sense

(01:01:49):
of hope and somebody that's experiencing abuse and has lost
all hope, that's really important. But if we don't do
it right and our interaction with them is a negative one,
you know, it just sets the tone how that's going
to go from there on out, and it's not gonna
be good.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
I feel like this information is good for not only
first responders, but just everyone in general, you know, you
work with. There was there was a woman we worked
with at one point that she had like subconduct evil hemorrhage,
and I just thought it was and we knew that

(01:02:25):
she did, you know, have a rocky relationship sometimes and
you come into work looking like that, and as a
person that kind of knows that that could be caused
by that, it's it's it's what do you What does
the person do that doesn't have any control?

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
You know? Can you explain what that is? For regular people?

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
Oh, like me, It's like when the white of your
eyeball looks bloody, Okay, not like bloodshot, Like it looks
like it's bleeding because you have this thin membrane over
top of your eye, and it's a bleed that's in
between that membrane and your eyeball. So it looks like
there's blood there. But if you touched it, it would
be like blood underneath a piece of saran wrap covering

(01:03:11):
your eyeball. Okay, So you could see it, and sometimes
that could happen in a case of manual strangulation. So
but it could happen like Joe Biden had it in
his eye one day. You know, it could happen in
old people. It could just happen. So you you can't
just automatically say, oh, you got strangled last night because

(01:03:33):
I see this, Yeah, happened naturally too. Yeah, so I
guess that's where for For family members or coworkers or something.
Some of the signs aren't as obvious because you might
you might be able to see the thumb prints or
something on a on a lighter skin person like myself,

(01:03:55):
but darker skinned people you you might not even see
a bruise, and a lot of the damage is done
in the deeper tissues of the neck that you can't
see into autopsy.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
Yeah, and like some of those signs that you see,
if they are visible, they're still very subtle. Even if
it's if it's some bruising or some fingernail marks, they
could be very subtle. Some other other signs you might
see as a tiki hemorrhaging, which is can be mistaken

(01:04:27):
sometimes as like a skin condition or something like that.
But really what that is is when there's increased pressure
from not allowing the blood flow to leave. So you
have your crowded arteries that pump oxygenated blood up, and
then you have your jugular veins that take the deoxygenated
blood away, and so if you restrict those jugular veins
and those arteries are still pumping blood up, you start

(01:04:50):
to build this pressure and the potikii is caused by
like the smallest blood vessels in the head, they will
start rupturing and you can see them in the face,
in the scale, out the hairline, even in the eye,
inside the mouth. But they can be very subtle too,
and you may miss them. But it's some of the things,

(01:05:11):
like you said that, it can also be caused by
other things too, so like katikii, so childbirth, So sometimes
women will experience from the you know, from trying to
push push the child out can can rupture those scuba
diving accidents. Forcefully vomiting or coughing very hard can also

(01:05:33):
rupture those.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
I was just gonna say, I just last week, I
like was drinking water and it went down the wrong way,
you know, and I was coughing so hard, and the
next morning it was like I had patikii on my cheeks.
Like it just you've probably had it before, you know, Yeah,
I mean when you were a kid throwing up drinking
too much or something. It's like you know what I mean,

(01:05:55):
everyone's seen them before.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
Yeah, And and like you said a lot that a
lot of that damage occurs underneath, so you can have
damage to you know, the larynx or your vocal cords.
Kind of a little bit more rare, but it can happen.
Is a dissection of the carotid artery where basically the
like the inner wall of it will kind of like

(01:06:19):
rip off a little bit. And then your body's always
trying to repair itself when there's damage, so it starts
sending you know, like more blood there, more platelets, and
it starts to build a clot and then eventually, you know,
it starts to narrow that carotid artery a little bit.
And sometimes those those clots that it's sending there to
repair it can break off and end up in your
in your brain, and you can end up with a stroke,

(01:06:41):
a traumatic brain injury. Somebody can suffer an anoxic seizure,
which is due to lack of oxygen to the brain.
So the one organ in your body that needs oxygen
more than anything is the brain. And so when you
start to restrict the blood flow to the brain, you
start causing a media brain damage to it. And like
one of the areas that really really loves oxygen is

(01:07:04):
the hippocampus, which is basically the file cabinet, the memory
bank of the brain. And so when you cut off
oxygen to that very oftentimes people who have been strangled
have very little memory of what occurred. On top of
the neurobiology of trauma, how that actually reprograms the brain
where they're in a constant fight or flight. They're not

(01:07:25):
in their front brain, their rational brain, so they have
an overactive amigdala, which is that fight or flight piece
that's always looking for danger, that's in a hypervigilant state,
continuously dumping like cortisol and adrenaline into our body to
react to these situations. You add strangulation, where you now

(01:07:45):
restrict the flow of oxygen and blood to the brain.
Their memory is completely gone, and so they don't look
like very credible people. They look like they're lying or
pieces of their memory are coming back, you know, a
little bit out of time. But if we don't get
to the hospital, if they've if they've been strangled, a
lot of these injuries and these underlying injuries and the

(01:08:06):
symptoms are so subtle. Sometimes it could be like a
scratchy throat, or like a hoarse voice, or a kind
of coughing a little bit or constantly clearing their throat,
or their inability to swallow. In more severe instances, they
might have urinated or defecated, which is a sign of
a very prolonged and serious strangulation. But if we're not

(01:08:28):
getting them to the hospital to do a CTA scan,
we may miss these underlying injuries and they might not.
It might not be fatal immediately, but it could be
days weeks later where they suffer a fatal stroke or
something from that incident.

Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
Have you found anything in your research with people who
because this is becoming more popular. We've talked about this
on a news story in this year about people who
enjoy partaking in strangulation during sexual activity.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
Yeah, that's that's something that I can't think of the
one organization, but there's one of them that's talks about
like the sexual rights of people and stuff. And I
believe they had just recently come out and said that
they no longer support strangulation during sexual intercourse.

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
But it is.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Yeah, yeah they did, but now that the data is
coming out about how dangerous it is. Because even if
if that's something that you're into and you know, you
get like a notarized, signed contract, whatever, and then somebody
passes away during that during that time, the other person
is still going to go to jail for it because

(01:09:39):
they didn't consent to being killed. And honestly, strangulation, you know,
a lot of people believe it should be attempted attempted
murder because without blood or braining, h blood or oxygen
to your brain, you can't live. And so, uh it's
something that's very popular. Uh starting to see it more
and more in high school and uh college kids. And

(01:10:01):
it's not normal and it's causing irreversible damage each and
every time it's done, and really need to be bringing
a lot more attention around it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
Is there any kind of correlation with people who decide
to take to partake in that during sexual activity and
end up doing strangulation as a form of violence towards
their partner.

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
It might be. I'm not one hundred percent certain of
the numbers, but I know oftentimes we've seen cases out
there where they'll use the argument that well, we did
it during sexual intercourse and there was an accident, I
didn't mean the killer. But yet there's like abuse leading
up to that point. And so we've seen it use

(01:10:51):
as an argument, you know, for defense that you know
it was consensual, it just went bad. But the exact
numbers I'm not certain on that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):
So the story that we did do you remember this
right in the news that it was like they were
talking about kids, like he was saying young teenagers and
college aged kids that that did that during sex, and
the number was super high. It was you just couldn't
believe how high it was. It was some abnormal percentage.
You just were thinking, Wow, I can't believe this many

(01:11:22):
kids are doing this.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
I mean when I was in high school back in
twosand and nine to twenty thirteen, there was a game
called the choking Game that was popular, and it was
it's so idiotic to think about kids doing this. But
it's like all these other horrible TikTok trends we cover,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:40):
Yeah, it's that's I remember when that was going on. Yeah,
absolutely terrible, and I think getting a lot more education
out there about it, because you know, your neck is
just such a vulnerable place. Your life literally runs through
your neck, you know when you think about it, and
it was I mean, you're final cord. You know, your

(01:12:01):
ability to eat, breathe, blood flow, like everything's there and
it is. It is so vulnerable that you know, we
should be protecting that at all costs, not doing self
harm to ourselves, you know in the name of like
views online and or for sexual gratification. You know, it's

(01:12:23):
a lot more education is needed on it. And I
know my wife and Tara, Gabby's a bonus mom. They
do a lot of you know, talks around colleges and
starting to get into some high schools and starting to
talk about a lot more that because people think it's normal,
because you know, kids these days have access to the

(01:12:44):
Internet at younger and younger ages, oftentimes to pornographic websites
where things like that are normalized, and it's not. It's
not normal. It's not normal. So they perceive it to
be something that you know, they should be doing or
they can be doing or whatever. But it's dangerous and
they need to know that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:06):
Where's the Gabby Patito Foundation? Now, Like, what are you
guys working on specific like a specific area or just
general education. How's it broken up?

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
So, yeah, we do a couple different areas that we
work on. So Gabby's dad, Joe, he spends a lot
of time working on legislative stuff and or bringing attention
to laws. So lethality assessment programs, he's been successful of
getting that pass here in Florida, working with the sheriffs

(01:13:43):
down here about that. With that in Utah, I think
he's working on New York right now as well. So
that's one area. Lethality assessment is a series of questions,
their evidence based questions. They were developed by doctor Jackie
Campbell and a John Hopkins University, and so there are
a series of not just a series of questions that

(01:14:03):
law enforcement can ask when they're called to the scene
of a domestic incident, but also provides them additional training
how to do trauma informed questioning, and those questions, depending
on how that person answers, can help determine the potential
level of lethality they're in. And if they are identified
as being in a highly lethal relationship, then at that

(01:14:26):
time they're also to work with their local domestic violence
organization and they will connect them right at that moment
to a domestic violence advocate if they wish, and start
safety planning for that person. So it's a real critical
time to start that safety planning process, and it's been
known to save lives. So that's one area that we

(01:14:47):
do a lot of work on. I mean, there's some
other lethality assessment programs out there that are all known
to help save lives. My wife and Tara, Gabby's Bonus Bond,
they do a a lot of the college education talks
and stuff like that. So they'll go around and they'll
do a lot of discussions on team dating, violence, healthy boundaries,

(01:15:09):
respectful relationships. Because so many people related with gabby story.
You know, it's these kids they see, you know, these
people on TikTok or Instagram or wherever, and they see
these lives that they believe are picture perfect, you know,
and Gabby's life look like that, where so many young
people want to emulate those lives and be like that,

(01:15:30):
only to find out that it wasn't so picture perfect,
and so they relate to it. So they use Gabby's
story to kind of connect with them and talk about
what's healthy, what's not, red flags, things to look out for,
how to keep yourself safe. And then I spend a
lot of time on the first responder training stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:15:50):
What does if there's a person that is in a
situation like this that might be listening right now, I'm
just curious because I've never personally experienced it. But let's
say you're married and you have kids and you're in
a situation where your husband's doing this that do they
they provide you somewhere to live and get you away

(01:16:10):
from this person? Like, how does that work?

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
Yeah? It depends, you know, So everybody's situation is unique
to them, so there's really no blanket answer for it.
And that's why getting on the phone with a domestic
violence advocate is paramount because they can gear a safety
plan specifically to you and what you're going through. But
some of the things that they do have out there
are shelter services, so if they if they need to

(01:16:36):
get out, they need a safe place to stay, they
do have shelter services. They'll have some of them will
have some financial help to give you a hand with that,
depending on the situation. There's also some transitional housing options
that some organizations have, counseling for you when your kids
while you're there, assistants trying to navigate the very complicated

(01:16:57):
legal system that we have, so it all kind of
it's all kind of specific and one of the hardest
things I think for a lot of people to realize
is you know, why don't they just leave? Why don't
they just get out? Well, it's not that simple one.
There's so many reasons why they don't leave. We know
that from anytime there's a separation or from the time

(01:17:22):
someone decides they want to want to leave in an
abusive relationship, that's the most dangerous time for that person.
And more than seventy percent of the homicides domestic violence
homicides occur after a separation period of when they're trying
to leave. So really having that safety plan is important.
And so that kind of looks different for every person.
And sometimes we you know, we see it in our
friends or our family. We want to rip them out

(01:17:44):
of that situation. But that's not the best thing either,
And it's it's so difficult to sit there and know
there's resources out there, but they won't go until they're ready.
And so if you see that and somebody's experiencing that,
you know, just to continue to be there and support
them and validate them and reassure them you know that
you're there for them. Don't don't give them multimatums like

(01:18:06):
you know, you know, if you don't leave, you know,
don't call me again. You know, I'm tired of I'm
not dealing with this anymore. They don't they don't need that,
they need to be supported. So it is very difficult,
but it's very specific to each each person's needs.

Speaker 3 (01:18:22):
Yeah, that's cool. It's cool that there's resources available because
I think that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:29):
Obvious.

Speaker 3 (01:18:29):
Like obviously, if you're in college and you have a boyfriend,
it's a little bit easier. It's easier to leave from
a fine you know, from a standpoint of uh, I
don't know what the word. I'm trying to just like
a procedural kind of thing because you're not sharing a
house with them, maybe in a mortgage and have kids

(01:18:52):
and have like all these this really in depth like
intertwined life. But yeah, even emotionally, it's it's still just
as hard. So it's it's nice to know that there's
resources out.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
There that will And that's a tactic if somebody has
children with that with the person abusing them, or even pets,
you know, that's a tactic that they use. Even after
if they do get out and they they're able to
you know, either divorce or in the relationship and and
try to move on. There's still post separation abuse that occurs,
and they use children oftentimes for that, pets, all sorts

(01:19:28):
of other things to continue to try to keep that
control over that person. And and that's the thing to
remember too, is you know, people sometimes think that the
abuser has a mental health issue or something like that,
but the majority of the time it's it's not a
mental health issue because they do all these tactics behind

(01:19:49):
closed doors where nobody can see it, but when they
go out into the public, you know, they're they're this
picture perfect person sometimes. And that's another thing that makes
it hard for survivors who want to leave, is because
who's going to believe them? You know, they might be
a pillar of the community, and you know, nobody's gonna
believe me. So And it's also sometimes takes a person

(01:20:12):
who's experiencing that abuse a while to realize that the
person they fell in love with and the person causing
them harm is the same person because of how their
brain is affected by it. So you know, sometimes they
just want it to be the way it was when
they first got together. So there's there's so many dynamics
into it, and I think really getting more education on

(01:20:32):
it out there for people because there's there's a few
things we don't talk about in our society. We don't
talk about domestic violence. It's considered a you know, a
private issue. You don't talk about mental health, sexual abuse,
and things like that. But I think the more we
start opening up and having these open conversations about it,
I think we can start affecting change and start reducing

(01:20:53):
the stigma behind it. You know, it's just kind of
my opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:20:58):
Well, thanks so much for being here today. Is how
could people help? If they either want to get involved
with the foundation or if they would like to have
you out for.

Speaker 1 (01:21:06):
Training, they can always go to our website Gabbypotito Foundation
dot org or info at Gabbypotito Foundation dot org. They
can reach out to us there if people want to
get involved. We always say, you know, kind of start
with your with your local community where you live. See
what's there, See how you can help out there. I

(01:21:29):
would say, you know, just getting some education yourself and
recognizing these songs, and and you know, supporting your local
agencies too, because we're in a crazy time right now
and funding is always an issue, and if you can
help support even with just a few dollars, that money
goes a long way to help somebody to safety.

Speaker 2 (01:21:51):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:21:52):
Thank you, Jim. Yeah, thanks so much. We know that
this is really hard for you and we really appreciate
you opening up to try to help others.

Speaker 1 (01:21:59):
Absolutely, thank you, and I appreciate you guys having me
on and all you guys do.

Speaker 3 (01:22:03):
Of course, thank you for listening to Mother Knows Death.
As a reminder, my training is as a pathologist's assistant.
I have a master's level education and specialize in anatomy
and pathology education. I am not a doctor and I
have not diagnosed or treated anyone dead or alive without

(01:22:26):
the assistance of a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website,
and social media accounts are designed to educate and inform
people based on my experience working in pathology, so they
can make healthier decisions regarding their life and well being.
Always remember that science is changing every day and the

(01:22:47):
opinions expressed in this episode are based on my knowledge
of those subjects at the time of publication. If you
are having a medical problem, have a medical question, or
having a medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit
an urgent care center, emergency room, or hospital. Please rate, review,

(01:23:07):
and subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube,
or anywhere you get podcasts. Thanks

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Gabby Petito Story with Retired Fire Captain & Co-Founder of The Gabby Petito Foundation, Jim Schmidt!