Daily US Times: Gabby Petito, a 22-year-old “van life” blogger who went missing on a road trip with her boyfriend, was strangled to death, a Wyoming coroner has ruled.
The Teton County coroner said that her had been dead for several weeks when her body was found last month near a national park the couple had visited.
Brian Laundrie, Ms Petito’s boyfriend, is a person of interest in the case but has been missing since mid-September.
The plight of the Petito captured global attention.
Petito had been documenting her “van life” trip with her boyfriend across the country on social media.
Her mysterious disappearance also triggered a debate over the amount of media and social media attention accorded to missing white women.
In a news conference on Tuesday, Dr Blue said that Ms Petito’s body was found in a campsite with signs of strangulation.
The coroner said Petito’s body had been “outside in the wilderness for three to four weeks” before she was discovered on 20 September,
He wouldn’t confirm if an item was used to kill her. He did not disclose details of her toxicology report, but did say that Ms Petito was not pregnant at the time of her death.
Coroner Brent Blue’s ruling follows an initial post-mortem on Petito’s body, in which he had called the death a homicide, meaning it had been caused by another person.
Officials are in contact with the family of Petito about transferring her remains.
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