The Murder of Gabby Petito: Truth, Lies and Social Media

First, I grew up in Jackson Hole and was familar of the exact location where Gabby was found. My pet peeve throughout this documentry was the idiot social media peeps and the idiot media standing outside the home playing armchair detective. They along with these social media vlogers simply wanted followers, their likes, their 15 minutes of fame as most jouranalists do. I will concede the YouTube video of Gabby's van being spotted at the campsite was a major breakthrough but the family never grandstaned their video like these moronic Tic-tokers. Oh it is Grand Teeeeton, not Grand Teeeeten. Pronounce the park correctly or don't say it. I am personally sick and tired of social media people pkaying like they are experts on everything.

First off, as of now the other user reviews contain spoilers but the users didn't check the box. So if you stumble on this review first and didn't know about this case, you should skip the other reviews.

Without spoiling anything, this documentary clocks in at a relieving 1 hour and 25 minutes, so up front it's clear that it will be sticking to the story and not wasting our time with a bunch of auxiliary junk like podcast techniques and unnecessary graphical reproductions.

As the title states, this tells the story of the murder of Gabby Petito and all of the media and social media reactions before and after her body was identified. If you're interested in a recap with everything being in one convenient place, this film is recommended. Otherwise, if you followed the case as it unfolded, there probably won't be too much here that you didn't already know. 7/10.

This is one of a handful of documentaries that chronicle the Gabby Petito case, and it suffers from the same glaring problem the others do -- an over-reliance on social media randos who add nothing to it.

This one had potential. It included sit-downs with Gabby's parents and comment from a few critical investigators actually involved in the case. The focus should have remained on them but unfortunately there are way too many cuts to Tik Tokkers and YouTubers and podcasters "reporting" information that could have been delivered with more thought by actual reporters or law enforcement covering the case.

One "podcaster" repeats the phrase "The Internet went crazy" about a dozen times. It was annoying having to watch these people, with their inflated sense of their own importance, making mind-numbingly obvious observations, and talking as though they are experts who played a part in solving it.

I get that social media played a large part in some aspects of this case, like the family who found the van, but the majority of those featured continually offer nothing but slick graphics as they repeat information that everyone already knows.

As a parent, there is nothing in this world worse than losing a child. If I was Gabby's parents, I would be sick about how the producers of this doc decided to handle it with MTV-like graphics, and vacuous social media ninnies.

I am one of those who got captivated over the year 2021 regarding the Brian and Gabby story. Her disappearance just didn't make sense. Brian and Gabby literally grew up together in New York. It isn't clear what his ambitions were but she and he decided to travel and blog to have fun exploring and make money doing it. Something it seems many young people want to do. Photos and videos seemed to witness to how much they were enjoying it.

Then came a series of events, one involving a roadside stop by Utah police after witnesses had reported a "domestic" incident where the two were fighting. Not too long after we all got news that Gabby was no longer heard from. Her daily blog stopped. Then Brian showed up back at his parents home, in Gabby's van but without her. Then her remains were located. Some weeks later Brian's remains were located in Florida, the coroner determined he died of a self-inflicted gunshot.

So we will never know for sure what happened but Brian's notebook tells us that he was responsible for her death. My own speculation is they had a serious fight, Brian choked her and accidentally killed Gabby then panicked and didn't know what to do. And sadly his parents never cooperated, probably because they knew of his guilt. But that is sheer speculation on my part.

I watched this documentary, I didn't learn much new but it provides one long summary of the sad story of Gabby and Brian. It could have been better, of course. For example they spend some time on a video vacationers accidentally got of Gabby's van around the time she disappeared, analysis indicated the back door was closing, but they never indicated if Gabby's remains were found near there or if the video was just an inconsequential accident. It appears to have been rushed out while the news was fresh.

I watched it streaming on Peacock. I found it worthwhile.

I won't go into detail about the case as most would know the tragic case.

The documentary fairly straight forward retelling of the case and features powerful interviews with Gabby's parents as well as lots of the raw footage.

Unfortunately it increasingly relies far too heavily on 'web sleuth' attention seekers and this is where it falls apart.

They add nothing other than padding out the running time with seemingly endless clips of them talking to themselves online and pretending that they are somehow helping to solve the case.

Can't recommend as it is a 3 hour documentary, that could have been done far more effectively in 60 minutes.