The Heartbreaking Reason Gabby Petito's Parents Destroyed Her Van

Interest in the Gabby Petito case has been renewed thanks to the new Netflix docuseries. That’s mostly folks with good hearts and lots of empathy, people who can’t believe what Brian Laundrie and his parents did. But there are also some vultures out there. It was those kinds of grifters her family was afraid of when it came time to deal with the van…

Yeah… the van itself. It was one of the last things the family had of their daughter’s. But it was also the vehicle that took her away from them, as Gabby and Brian crossed the country with just that and some clothes — a few months of #VanLife.

And more than that, the van was the red flag that first told Petitos something was really wrong. When they didn’t hear from Gabby for a while, her parents reached out to the Laundries. And then the police visited their North Port home, too. And they found not only was Brian home, the van — which was registered in Gabby’s name, not his — was parked in their driveway.

Gabby’s mom Nichole Schmidt revealed in the documentary learning about the van was the moment she knew:

“My body would not stop shaking… I knew something bad happened.”

Awful. Joe Petito added:

“We started screaming.”

Gabby’s stepmom Tara Petito “collapsed.”

So after it’s all over, what do they do with this thing?? They couldn’t sell it, but can you imagine looking at it every day? So Joe revealed in an interview with NewsNation‘s Brian Entin on Monday:

“We crushed the van.”

He explained:

“We didn’t want the van to be out there, someone owning it and, ‘Here’s the van that Gabby was…’ you know.”

Yeah. What an awful thing that would be. Heck, maybe even multiple parasites out there could have pretended to have THE van. Not now. They made sure of that.

But it was still Gabby’s. So how do you just get rid of it? They didn’t completely; they kept little pieces.

Tara revealed they kept, for instance, the white gas cap on which Gabby had placed a sticker which read, “Let’s get lost.” They display it like a commemorative plate in their home.