Holly MatkinNorth Port, FL – Brian Laundrie’s sister said she is angry and frustrated over his disappearance and publicly urged him to turn himself in to police.
“I would tell my brother to just come forward and get us out of this horrible mess,” Cassie Laundrie said in an ABC News interview that aired on “Good Morning America” on Tuesday.
Cassie Laundrie said she has been cooperating with police “since day one” and said her parents should speak up if about what they know.
“I don’t know if my parents are involved,” she clarified. “I think if they are, then they should come clean.”
Brian Laundrie, 23, had been named as a “person of interest” in the homicide of his 22-year-old fiancé Gabby Petito.
The couple set off in Petito’s converted camper van in early July to tour U.S. national parks.
Petito’s mother, Nichole Schmidt, said she last spoke with her daughter on Aug. 25.
Brian Laundrie returned to his family’s North Port, Florida home in Petito’s van on Sept. 1, but she was not with him.
He refused to speak with police or Petito’s family about where he last saw her before he supposedly vanished while hiking in a Florida nature reserve on Sept. 14.
Brian Laundrie’s parents claim they haven’t spoken to him since then.
Petito’s body was discovered in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming on Sept. 19.
Her death has been ruled a homicide, but her exact cause of death has not been released.
Police named Brian Laundrie as a person of interest in Petito’s homicide, but investigators have stopped short of labeling him as a suspect.
The U.S. District Court of Wyoming issued a federal warrant for Brian Laundrie’s arrest on Sept. 22 for use of unauthorized devices, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Denver office announced in a press release.
He has been accused of using a Capital One bank card and someone else’s personal identification number to make unauthorized charges or withdrawals exceeding $1,000, according to the Associated Press.
According to the indictment, the unauthorized use of the card occurred from approximately Aug. 30 until Sept. 1.
The name of the card owner was not listed in the indictment, the Associated Press reported.
Multiple law enforcement agencies have been searching for Brian Laundrie in the swampy 25,000-acre Carlton Reserve for weeks.
Police have also been searching the area around a campground where he and his parents stayed from Sept. 6 until Sept. 8, FOX News reported.
Cassie Laundrie said during the ABC interview that Petito’s family members “deserve answers” about what happened to her.
“I worry about him. I hope he’s okay, and then I’m angry and I don’t know what to think,” she said. “I hope my brother is alive because I want answers just as much as everybody else.”
Cassie Laundrie said she last spoke with her brother on Sept. 6, when she met up with her family during their Fort De Soto Park camping trip, ABC News reported.
“We just went for a couple of hours and we ate dinner and had s’mores around the campfire and left, and there was nothing peculiar about it,” she said. “There was no feeling of grand goodbye. There was no nothing.”
“I’m frustrated that, in hindsight, I didn’t pick up on anything,” Cassie Laundrie told ABC News. “It was just a regular visit.”
The Laundries’ attorney claimed Brian Laundrie was with his parents when they left the campsite on Sept. 8, WAGA reported.
Cassie Laundrie said she has no idea where her brother is now, but that she would “turn him in” if she knew.
She said she has spoken with investigators at her home multiple times about the case.
On Monday, Cassie Laundrie told reporters that her parents are no longer speaking to her or her husband.
“Their lawyer said not to,” she said.
Meanwhile, Duane Chapman, star of the reality television show “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” confirmed that he gathered items his team recovered during their search of one of the islands near the Fort De Soto Park camping area where the Laundries stayed and handed them over to law enforcement to be tested for Brian Laundrie’s DNA, the New York Post reported.
Chapman said testing would prove Brian Laundrie had been on the island as investigators try to piece together his whereabouts.
Just days earlier, a man who was out hiking the Appalachian Trail in Tennessee near the North Carolina border said he spoke with a man he believes was Brian Laundrie.
Dennis Davis said the encounter occurred at approximately 12:30 a.m. on Oct. 2, when a white truck flashed its headlights at him near the Northern Terminus of the Appalachian Trail as he was making a U-turn, WAGA reported.
“I pulled up alongside of the vehicle,” Davis told the news outlet. “I rolled my window down and I started talking with the gentleman. I could tell right away that something wasn’t right with him.”
Davis said he initially thought the driver was “on drugs,” but that he also “looked mentally shot,” WAGA reported.
“He said, ‘me and my girlfriend had a fight, and man, I love her, and she called me, and I need to go out to California to see her,’” Davis recounted.
The hiker told the driver to get onto Interstate 40 westbound, but said the man told him he’d rather say on the road they were already on, WAGA reported.
“He said, ‘no, I think this road that we’re on – I’m going to take it to California,’” Davis told the news outlet.
Davis said he continued to think about the odd exchange after they parted ways, so he pulled over a short while later and started looking at photos of Brian Laundrie.
He immediately placed a call to police.
“There is no doubt about it. That was Brian Laundrie I was just talking to. 100%. Not a doubt in my mind,” Davis told WAGA.
Law enforcement agencies have been flooded with tips about potential sightings of the wanted fugitive in multiple areas.
None have checked out so far.
Davis told FOX News he is scheduled to meet with the FBI on Tuesday to talk about his encounter with the man he believes was Brian Laundrie.
Back in North Port, protesters have staged large, loud demonstrations outside the Laundrie family’s home for weeks.
One of the Laundries’ frustrated neighbors was arrested for allegedly assaulting a protester who he said trespassed on his property.
On Monday, a plane flew over the neighborhood with a banner reading, “Justice 4 Gabby – tiktok times up,” WAGA reported.
