Brian Laundrie's Insta posts depicted violence and death before trip with Gabby Petito
Brian Laundrie is said to have shared a string of "sinister artworks" on his Instagram page just months before he and his fiancee Gabby Petito set out on a cross-country road trip in a converted van.
Twenty three-year-old Laundrie returned home from the trip by himself on September 1. He reportedly offered no explanation about Petito's whereabouts and mysteriously vanished on September 14, five days before his fiancee's remains were found in Wyoming. Coroners have ruled the nature of death a homicide, but the manner of death is yet to be established. Meanwhile, Laundrie is considered a "person of interest" in the case and currently has a warrant out for his arrest on bank fraud charges after he allegedly used Petito's debit card in the days after she went missing.
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While authorities continue to search for Laundrie in a nationwide manhunt, internet sleuths scoured his social media pages in search for clues suggesting he and Petito had problems between them long before they left Florida in a white Ford Transit van back in July. The controversial artwork shared by Laundrie on his Instagram page (handle @bizarre_design_) has now come under scrutiny.
On July 15, 2020, Laundrie shared a post captioned "Grim Reaper leading sheep to the slaughter." It showed a herd of sheep surrounded by ghoulish entities wielding scythes, with some of the reapers carved into mousetraps and outlined in red.
A week before that, another artwork shared by Laundrie showed what appeared to be a man wearing a wolf mask while sitting in a chair and holding a blood-soaked knife. There were red blood splatters up his arms and legs, while a red circle outlined the subject's head. Three other animal mask-wearing figures were also seen holding firearms and a bat.
Laundrie strangely captioned the artwork with a phone number that reportedly leads to an eerie voicemail message linked to the game Hotline Miami, which is said to feature "extreme violence", being "high-octane", and "overflowing with raw brutality, hard-boiled gunplay, and skull-crushing close combat." The voicemail reportedly features an eerie voice that talks about "marching into the future."
In his third artwork crafted with pen and watercolor, Laundrie depicted Frankenstein's monster chained to a chair made of rock and wood. The black and white image shows the beast with shackles around his ankles, feet, and neck.
A fourth post shows a blacklight painting depicting a red skeleton with its arms in the air and mouth agape, looking upwards as blood splatters surround it.
Laundrie describes himself in one of the posts as a comic book fanatic and appears to rely heavily on pop culture in most of his paintings and sketches. In one post from July 14, 2020, he uploaded a caricature style sketch of Brad Pitt's 'Fight Club' character Tyler Durden and quoted one of his lines in the caption. "Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart," he wrote.
Laundrie also describes himself as a "nature enthusiast" and urges others should "take a hike every day." He adds on his profile that “bug bites are better than being brainwashed by the media."